File Under Fun: Best Picture Palate Chart

Chart by Foodzie by way of I Love Charts

My favorite part is the chain from "imported or local", imported taking you to The King's Speech and local asking you "so local you'd forage it in your backyard?" which answers with The Fighter. LOLZ.

Review: Heartbeats

"The only truth is love beyond reason" goes the quote from French poet Alfred de Musset that opens Xavier Dolan's moody dreamy French Canadian film Heartbeats. That sounds beautiful in theory, sure, but living it is messier. Immediately the film cuts to a funny frank series of talking head interviews from people who have been unlucky in love. One woman compares herself to Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction and describes panicking at her computer, waiting for emails that never come.

If somebody died every time I hit refresh, there'd be nobody left alive. 

Poetic idealized notions of love clashing with humiliating darkly comic reality? It's a pretty apt way to introduce and describe this arguably slight but beautiful film...

Read the rest at Towleroad

Heartbeats is currently available in select theaters from IFC and On Demand. I'll have an interview with one of the actors shortly after Oscar weekend wraps up. 2011 Index of Movies. This will undoubtedly pick up soon.

A Map of the (Oscar) World

If all that chatter about the now infamous address where The King's Speech was partially filmed gets you thinking about location, location, location, here's something to make you even more obsessive. Here's  a map of the 83rd Oscar World.

View 83rd Annual Oscars, The Films of 2010 in a larger map

What's happening closest to your location? Is the Black Swan dancing near you? Maybe you're skinning squirrel's in those Winter's Bone Ozarks with Ree Dolly? Or horseback riding into dangerous True Grit territory? Or maybe you're attending college near The Social Network. (A lot of people do!). Maybe one of the foreign language films is happening right next to  you. Do you know where Amy Adams was born? I didn't until looking it up to drop the pin.

If you like it make sure to pass it on to friends. Or perhaps cartographers.

Related Charts: Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Animated Feature and Foreign Film.

Calling the Splits

Serious Film's Michael C. here to ask an inconvenient question. As predictions are being finalized around the web it becomes clear that a large bloc, if not a majority, of pundits are predicting a picture/director split with The King’s Speech taking picture but David Fincher claiming the director trophy. 

No doubt there is some wishful thinking at play by those still stinging from The Social Network’s flame out at the guilds awards. “Okay, maybe those Philistine voters will deny Social Network the big prize but how could they bypass an established master like Fincher in favor of Tom What’s-His-Name?”

The King Speaks. (The king being Fincher. His movies do rule.

I don’t mean to throw cold water on a plausible scenario that I would much prefer to a Speech sweep, but the burning question is this: When has a picture/director split ever been predicted? The answer: No time I’m aware of.

Here are the 6 times in the last 30 years picture director split along with the expected winners going into the ceremony:

2005 - Crash/Ang Lee
Brokeback Mountain was widely favored to win both prizes. There was, to be fair, an inkling of a Crash win here and there, but the vast majority called it for Brokeback early on.

2002 - Chicago/Polanski
The conventional wisdom that the only thing preventing a Chicago sweep would be the urge to give Scorsese an overdue win for Gangs of New York. Instead we got a Polanski win predicted by exactly nobody.

2000 - Gladiator /Soderbergh
Pundits thought they saw a spilt coming this year as most predicted DGA winner Ang Lee to repeat at the Oscars but popular favorite Gladiator to take top honors. They were half right. Traffic’s Soderbergh blindsided Lee. 

1998 - Shakespeare in Love/ Spielberg
Do we need to go over this one again? Private Ryan was thought to be a lock for both prizes.

1989 – Driving Miss Daisy /Oliver Stone – The smart money was on Born on the Fourth of July to take Picture along with director. Miss Daisy pulled an upset.

1981 - Chariots of Fire/Beatty
If anyone was going to upset the epic Reds in the top category it was assumed to be box office hit On Golden Pond, not tiny, foreign Chariots of Fire.

And here are two more widely predicted splits that never happened:

2006 - Little Miss Sunshine or Babel /Scorsese
Many imagined that voters would be satisfied looking elsewhere for picture after finally giving Scorsese his due. Nope. They genuinely loved The Departed.

1995 - Apollo 13/Gibson
The prevailing mood was that DGA winner Apollo 13 would take picture and, since Howard missed a director nomination, the acting branch would carry Gibson to a directing trophy. Braveheart took them both.

Fincher supporters can take solace in the fact that splits appear to favor big name auteurs in the directing category, or that we're due for a split since they seem to occur about every five years. Other than that, history suggests either the most obvious of outcomes or a wild card that nobody sees coming.  

My knowledge of what was predicted gets hazy before the 80's. Is there some precedent for a Speech/Fincher split I'm missing? Let me know in the comments.