Sunday
Feb232014
Podcast: Should Win / Will Win
Sunday, February 23, 2014 at 11:00PM 
It's the final podcast before the Oscars! Join Nathaniel R, Katey Rich, Nick Davis, and Joe Reid as we reveal both our predictions and our preferences, one category at a time.
00:00 Directors, BAFTA, Bette & P¡nk
09:00 Should Win / Will Win Intro, Sound Categories, Doc, Animated, Foreign categories
23:00 Visual Categories
39:00 Screenplays & Acting
51:30 Director & Picture
55:30 Exit Question
You can listen to the podcast right here at the bottom of the post or download the conversation on iTunes. Continue the conversation in the comments... which of our ballots most closely resembles yours?Hunger, Shame, I Heart Huckabees, Taxi Driver, King of Comedy, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, Children of Men, Y Tu Mama Tambíen,
Reader Comments (27)
Nathaniel- I don't think you listed your picks for Documentary. I'm curious to here what you'd pick, particularly if you ended up watching The Act of Killing.
You guys are getting my hopes up for a Her win in Production Design. I would loooove to see that happen because of the world it created. I like to say it is the first film set in the future that might actually underestimate what that future looks like. A win for Her in score would also be lovely.
I think Dallas Buyers Club is walking away with three wins, which is just crazy considering that that it would be lucky for 12 Years a Slave and miraculous for American Hustle to win that many.
*hear. (I've got Bradley Cooper level writing skills, it would seem.)
Nick, Blanchett needs removal from your Slum Queens ghetto. She has done the improbable for everyone else but your favorites (Streep & Lange) and has risen up from the ashes of Supporting Actress into the immortalizing relevancy of Best Actress winners (Kathy Bates).
Great podcast, guys!
Here's my SHOULD win list:
Picture: Her
Director: McQueen
Actor: Ejiofor
Actress: Dench (I wouldn't mind anyone winning this except Bullock, but I want Dench to win because I don't see many more chances for her to get a lead actress Oscar)
Sup. Actor: Fassbender
Sup Actress: Lupita
Original Screenplay: Her
Adapted Screenplay: Before Midnight
Foreign: The Hunt
Animated: Ernest and Celestine
Documentary: Sadly I haven't seen any of them
Costume: Gatsby
Cinematography: Llewyn Davis
Production Design: Her
Editing: 12 Years a Slave
Visual Effects: Gravity
Makeup: Dallas Buyers Club (but none really)
Original Score: Her
Sound Mixing: Llewyn Davis
Sound Editing: Gravity
Original Song: Her
After this podcast was finished, my iTunes shuffle sent me right to Alone Yet Not Alone. It's like it knew.....
I think the preferential ballot is going to hurt 12 Years A Slave in Picture. When going for nominations it doesn't matter if you're second or third because the #1 vote is really all that counts, but the win works in exactly the opposite way. 12 Years A Slave will clearly have a ton of #1 votes, but will it be #2 on enough of the American Hustle ballots to ward off Gravity? Nervous!
Should Wins
Picture: 12 Years
Director: 12 Years
Actor: McConaughey (Jackman for "Prisoners," Washington for "Blue Caprice," and Bale for "Out of the Furnace" top my personal ballot though)
Actress: Blanchett (don't screw this up, Academy! My best actress hasn't matched yours since....1993?)
Supporting Actor: Cooper (WTF, Academy?! Gandolfini should be here)
Supporting Actress: Nyong'o (WTF, Academy!!! Where is Johansson for "Don Jon." That grinding scene is totally an Oscar clip!!)
Adapted Screenplay: Before Midnight (is this adapted from a novelization of the previous films or....?)
Original Screenplay: Blue Jasmine (none of the nominees impress me though. Would have loved to see "Frances Ha" or "Inside Llewyn Davis")
Oh and it really is so nice to have the full group back together. Great podcast, as always. If I were going to make one request, I'd have loved hearing what your Should Have Been Nominated picks would have been. There's always great work that goes unrecognized, but this year was just so rich that it really feels like a disappointment not to hear more of those names. Clio Barnard! Exarchopoulos/Seydoux! Gerwig/Baumbach! Bradford Young! Spring Breakers! The Spectacular Now! Fill The Void!
I would love to hear Nick's ultimate take on Blanchett in Blue Jasmine. He has been so vague discussing it and I have to say as much as I think Blanchett's performance will probably be the best winner int hat category since Holly Hunter, I kinda need his validation in some way hahah.
Nick, if you see this, can you please do one of your capsules on that performance? Thank you so much!
Great podcast guys, as per usual.
None of my score picks were even nominated, but I would vote for Philomena. It does what it's supposed to do. Great scores aren't always noticeable. They're about mood and supporting the action onscreen instead of being in your face and instantly memorable.
The problem is that it's easier to vote for things you remember. Louder, more in your face scores (which doesn't mean volume, but prominence) do well. Gustavo Santaolalla has two Oscars because he wrote great themes that were used over and over and over again in Brokeback Mountain and Babel. Whether they were the best those years (same with A.R. Rahman for Slumdog Millionaire) is always up for debate. The prominence of the score makes a big difference when everyone can vote on how well-composed a score is for a feature film.
I would love to hear Nick's ultimate take on Blanchett in Blue Jasmine. He has been so vague discussing it! And I have to say as much as I think Blanchett's performance will probably be the best winner int hat category since Holly Hunter, I kinda need his validation in some way hahah, since I have so much respect for his opinion particularly regarding female acting.
So, Nick, if you see this, can you please do one of your capsules on that performance? Thank you so much!
Great podcast guys, as per usual.
While I agree with you, Robert G, that people tend to unfairly vote for what they remember, I disagree with your implication that loud scores are more often for show than for building mood. If the score for a movie is one of the first things you think of when you think of a film (as I would say the case is for something like Slumdog), who's to say that that score didn't contribute to the film's mood?
And I think Santaoalla's Brokeback score is crucial to developing BM's slow, deliberate pace.
That's what's so interesting about film scoring. I don't think that loud or noticeable is automatically bad. It's all about what the film needs.
Sometimes, the music is essential to the piece. The Artist wouldn't work without a score, so naturally it draws attention to itself. Frozen needed a lot of underscoring for the final act so they could focus on so much action happening at once. Nicholas Winding Refn literally told composer Cliff Martinez to write a score that would tell the story of Only God Forgives because of problems with the thick accents of the native Thai actors in the film. These are all very loud, in your face scores that service the film.
Then there's the personal preference factor. There are filmmakers like Dario Argento who LOVE a prominent score. All of his films feature very noticeable music that fits in very well because of the over the top cinematography and storytelling. You can't paint everything onscreen bright red and bright blue and have a whisper of a string in the background. The presence of the score becomes essential to the experience because everything is so exaggerated.
It depends on what the material needs. The Stoker score, one of my favorites from 2013, was very prominent in the mix. It fit the story of a young woman who heard things no one else could hear very well. I also really like those bombastic flourishes of music in Gravity because they create such a strong contrast to the relative silence of the rest of the film.
As for Santoalalla, I don't have a problem with the Brokeback Mountain win. I do have a problem with the Babel win, namely because there's so little music in the film and I just don't think diddly diddly guitar arpeggios are in the same class as Pan's Labyrinth, Notes on a Scandal, or even The Queen (Javier Navarette, Phillip Glass, and Alexandre Desplat, respectively). But you can't escape Santoalalla's main theme, used in the opening credits, closing credits, every shift in the location of the story, and every montage in the film. It's not his fault that the final mix used such a small amount of his score. He's talented, for sure.
Did ya' all heard JLaw might be taking a year of from movies. Guardian reports so.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/feb/24/jennifer-lawrence-harvey-weinstein-year-off
I just copied/pasted what I posted on Facebook a few weeks ago after viewing all my screeners:
BEST PICTURE: 12 Years A Slave
BEST DIRECTOR: Alfonso Cuarón "Gravity" (runner up: Steve McQueen "12 Years A Slave")
BEST ACTOR: Leonardo DiCaprio "The Wolf Of Wall Street" (very VERY close runner up: Chiwetel Ejiofor "12 Years A Slave")
BEST ACTRESS: Amy Adams "American Hustle" (very VERY close runner up - almost a tie: Cate Blanchett "Blue Jasmine")
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Michael Fassbender "12 Years A Slave" (runner up: Jonah Hill "The Wolf of Wall Street")
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Sally Hawkins "Blue Jasmine" (runner up: Lupita Nyong'o "12 Years A Slave")
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: "Her" by Spike Jonze (runner up: “American Hustle” by Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell)
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: “Before Midnight” by Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke (runner up: “12 Years a Slave” by John Ridley)
BEST SONG: "Happy" (Despicable Me 2) (But we all know the insufferable "Let It Go" will take this.)
OSCAR NOMINEE THAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED THIS YEAR: Emma Thompson, Best Actress "Saving Mr. Banks" and Joaquin Phoenix, Best Actor "Her."
OSCAR NOMINEES THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED THIS YEAR: Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts for "August: Osage County"
Got a kick out of your podcast today! A few guffaws:
--floating ping pong paddles (so true!)
--not since Winona Ryder's old lady in Edward Scissorhands (although I think the aging makeup/hair for The Iron Lady was very good, and deserved Oscar attention)
--"I want to thank my husband first, because if you thank him at the end he gets played off with the music"
Also, definitely agree with Katey's vote, Best Actress going: 1. Amy Adams, 2. Meryl Streep (her performance IS much maligned; def. on par with Blanchette's Jasmine), and if McConaughey takes the Oscar from Ejiofor, I wouldn't be upset either.
My Should Win Picks:
Picture: 12 Years a Slave
Director: Steve McQueen
Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio
Actress: Cate Blanchett
Supporting Actress: Sally Hawkins
Supporting Actor: Barkhad Abdi
Anywho, my should win's:
Picture: Gravity
Director: Cuarón
Actor: McConaughey
Actress: Blanchett
Supporting Actor: Abdi
Supporting Actress: Hawkins
Adapted Screenplay: Before Midnight
Original Screenplay: American Hustle
Foreign: The Great Beauty
Animated: Ernest and Celestine
Documentary: The Act of Killing
Costume: American Hustle
Cinematography: Llewyn Davis
Production Design: Her
Editing: Captain Philips
Visual Effects: Gravity
Makeup: Dallas Buyers Club
Original Score: Gravity
Sound Mixing: Gravity
Sound Editing: Gravity
Original Song: Frozen
These should win:
Best Picture: 12 Years a Slave
Director: Steve McQueen
Actor: Ejiofor and Dern
Actress: Blanchett
Supporting Actor: Leto
Supporting Actress: Nyong'o
Original Screenplay: Bob Nelson, Nebraska
Adapted Screenplay: John Ridley, 12 Years
Cinematography: Gravity
Editing: Gravity
Music Score: Gravity
Still sorting out the rest of the categories!
Love that you guys dedicated an entire podcast to should/ will win. Could have listened to your reasonings and debates for hours… and it was especially nice to hear some acknowledgement of the (forgive me) 'gravity' of Lubezki's upcoming win. He is one of cinema’s most overdue masters in any field and I’m still bitter HUGO pulled off that atrocious upset. Along with 12 YEARS A SLAVE for Best Picture, his will be the most deserved victory of the night.
oh and my SHOULD/ WILL wins:
BEST PICTURE - 12 Years as Slave
DIRECTOR - Should: McQueen/ Will: Cuaron
ACTOR - McConaughey (all the way)
ACTRESS - Blanchett
SUPP. ACTOR - Leto
SUPP. ACTRESS - Nyong'o
A. SCREENPLAY - 12 Years as Slave
O. SCREENPLAY - Should: Her/ Will: American Hustle
CINEMATOGRAPHY - Gravity
EDITING - Captain Phillips
PRODUCTION DESIGN - Should: Her/ Will: The Great Gatsby
COSTUME - Should: American Hustle/ Will: The Great Gatsby
SCORE - Gravity
SONG - “Let It Go”
FOREIGN - The Great Beauty
ANIMATED - Should: The Wind Rises/ Will: Frozen
DOCUMENTARY - Should: The Act of Killing/ Will: The Square
SOUND MIXING - Gravity
SOUND EDITING - Gravity
VISUAL EFFECTS - Gravity
MAKEUP - Dallas Buyers Club
Nice picks you guys!
And I’m with you Joe on the possibility of a PHILOMENA upset in Adapted Screenplay what with all that crazy Weinstein campaigning. Even it taking Best Score would not surprise me. Ads have been *relentless*
My should wins:
Picture - 12 Years as Slave
Director - McQueen
Actor - Ejiofor
Actress - Blanchett
Supporting Actor - Cooper
Supporting Actress - I've been bouncing back and forth between Hawkins and Nyong'o here, but now I'm leaning toward Hawkins
Adapted Screenplay - Before Midnight
Original Screenplay - American Hustle
Cinematography - Inside Llewyn Davis
Editing - 12 Years
Production Design - 12 Years
Costume Design - American Hustle
Score - Her
Song - Her
Sound Mixing - Inside Llewyn Davis
Sound Editing - All Is Lost
Visual Effects - Gravity
Makeup - None of them!
Hooray for Katie's director favorites too! :)
My favorites/should wins:
Best Picture: Gravity is far and away my favorite movie of the year, but I totally understand the push for 12 Years and wonder how I will eventually feel about this win/loss. American Hustle was my #2 film of the year, but I don't need to see it win (12 Years was my #5 behind Before Midnight and Stranger By the Lake, which should probably be listed under 2014).
Best Director: Cuaron, though McQueen was fantastic too
Best Actor: Ejiofor is my favorite, but I wish they'd get DiCaprio's win out of the way; despite loving the McConaughssiance, Dallas Buyers Club doesn't need two acting wins
Best Actress: Adams and Bullock gave my favorite performances of the year full stop, so I'd vote Adams, but Blanchett will still rank very high in my list of all Actress winners, so I shouldn't complain too much.
Best Supporting Actor: I loved Leto showing us a transgendered woman when a lesser actor would've played a drag queen - so happy he's winning
Best Supporting Actress: Well this one's weird. My actual favorite is Julia Roberts but I wouldn't vote for her because she's more of a lead than Streep. Lawrence is my personal pick for supporting actress in 2013 (with Amy Adams in Her right behind her), but I have no desire to see her win again. I'd ultimately vote for Nyong'o, who was also great and who will potentially gain more than the two I listed by winning it.
Best Original Screenplay: Before Mid... Oops. I mean American Hustle, but Her is lovely too.
Best Adapted Screenplay: Before Midnight
Cinematography, Sound categories, Visual Effects: Gravity, slam dunk (for me)
Editing: I'd vote for Gravity, but I think Captain Phillips will win and I get why
Score: Gravity, but if Her pulls a surprise win I'd be very happy for that too
Song: I go back and forth between Let It Go and Happy... both so good. The Moon Song is great too.
Animated: Frozen, but I haven't seen Ernest & Celestine
Make-Up/Hairstyling: Dallas Buyers Club (where is Explosion at the Wig Factory?)
Costumes: American Hustle
Production Design: Her - so happy it was nominated (and I called it)!
I don't feel like I've seen enough of Documentary/Foreign or the Live/Documentary Shorts to comment. I saw Animated Shorts and I guess I prefer Mr. Hublot, but eh.
if any one deserves write-in votes it should be for AMERICAN HUSTLE in Makeup/Hair. that category left out so many dazzling achievements
Sorry to be a snob, but I know you'll all get this. I realize a lot of kids don't who Kim Novak is. But she starred in Vertigo, one of the most famous movies ever made. It's just ridiculous they don't know her. What sad sad lives.
Picture: 12 Years a Slave
Director: Alfonso/Steve - tie
Actor: DiCaprio/Ejiofor (McConaughey is great too tho)
Actress: Blanchett... no competition.
Supp. Actor: Cooper (Leto is good, but I feel like something was lacking. It might be in the writing tho. Fassbender is great, but a bit one-note...again, writing)
Supp. Actress: Nyong'o
Original Screenplay: Blue Jasmine
Adapted Screenplay: 12 Years a Slave
Song: The Moon Song
Makeup: Honestly? Bad Grandpa
Lovely podcast and I thank you all four for the awesomeness you provided us with this season.
I haven't seen enough movies for a should/will but I just want to say that I'm with La Dench winning because I just want it to happen.