Podcast: Best Actor Captain Phillips? Plus Inside Llewyn Davis

For this weekend we have a mini podcast but good things come in small packages.

Katey & Joe attended the Inside Llewyn Davis premiere at the New York Film Festival and tell Nathaniel about it from Garret Hedlund's ponytail, Carey Mulligan doppelgangers, Coen ambience shenanigans and film festival fashions.

All three of us loved Tom Hanks performance in Captain Phillips and Nick joins us, finally, to chat about the Best Actor race. We reference this "no frontrunners" article if you missed it. You can listen at the bottom of the post or download it on iTunes. Join in the conversation in the comments.

[Editor's Note: Because iTunes only hosts the 10 most recent episodes (I'm not sure why that is), the podcasts for this year's films we'll start disappearing after this particular episode so make sure and download them if you haven't yet listened to any episode.]

Inside Captain Phillips, Best Actor

LFF: All is Lost

David reports from the London Film Festival on his first voyage to meet Robert Redford, lost at sea... (This film is also playing at NYFF)

Since Kanye West just brought The Truman Show and its climatic sailing sequence into public parlance again, it’s perfectly appropriate for me to refer to All is Lost as an enlarged version of that scene. The manipulator of the heavens here is not a flatcapped Ed Harris, but writer-director J. C. Chandor, fleeing from the immensely talkative boardroom of Margin Call to the vast sea of a practically wordless one-man-show. ‘Our Man’ (as the credits call him) is Robert Redford, in an Oscar-buzzed performance that is certainly his most remarkable in many years. Not only for the physical commitment - the rough winds of the sea buffet the sailor every which way - but for the restraint with which he crafts a stolid and complex man who barely says a word.

Click to read more ...

There is No Frontrunner For Best Actor

By and large pundits seem to have narrowed down the Best Actress category, sadly before all the films have even premiered, to about 6 or 7 women... but many of them won't be able to win for their roles (when you've already won it's more difficult to build a "more" case - this ain't the Emmys) so the fight for the actual statue will probably not be bloody at all. Here you go, Cate! The supporting categories (both male and female) are still hugely competitive as far as nominations go but again the winning could well be set in stone as soon as the nominations are facts rather than assumptions.

Will Oscar feel sentimental about Dern or Redford?

But Best Actor just can't be narrowed down. Not yet at least. [more...]

Click to read more ...

Thoughts I Had... While Staring at This Poster for "Nebraska"

Behold the new poster for Alexander Payne's Oscar Bait, 2013 Edition. Thoughts I had... brought to you uncensored as they came to me while staring at it.

• This is why I shave my head.

• Gee, do you think this movie is in black and white? Black and White In Your Face

• Alexander Payne's ERASERHEAD

• DERNHEAD

poll by twiigs.com

• So proud of them for not caving to pressure to campaign Bruce Dern as supporting. Now let's hope they also admit that Will Forte is a lead as well (Fact: Road trip movies about two people travelling together have two leads. See also Thelma & Louise, Two for The Road, Planes Trains and Automobiles, Y Tu Mama Tambien, etcetera) 

• Recently I forced The Boyfriend to watch Alfred Hitchcock's last film Family Plot (1976) and halfway through (he's clearly hating it) whilst Dern is making a confused face onscreen he says "why is everyone in this movie so ugly?"

• The Descendants was Alexander Payne's worst movie (still puzzled by the avalanche of praise if not the Oscar nominations). Can he redeem himself and make another Sideways? 

• When the Best Actor Nominees are announced, if Dern is among them, I promise to mock up all their movie posters like this just for comparisons sake: PROFILE vs. PROFILE!!!

• How many people do you think type in urls when they see websites listed at the bottom of movie posters or at the end of trailers?  NebraskaMovie.com 

Your Thoughts?

P.S. Oh and the movie's new trailer

Oscar Chatter: If It's Yours To Lose, You Can Still Lose

Each year as the first "wow" factor players emerge in the Oscar race, pundits (professional and amateur alike), jump all over themselves to declare "winners!" in each of the acting races several months in advance. I always want to pass on analgesic creams when this begins to happen but then I'm more patient than some Oscar fans and prefer the slow sexy fight for nominations to the wham bam foregone conclusions of Oscar night.  If you believe the internet Cate Blanchett has it locked up in Best Actress (on the strength of her work in Blue Jasmine) and Oprah Winfrey has it locked up in Supporting Actress (on the rush of excitement that's greeted Lee Daniels' The Butler and her against type work... if you can have a type when you rarely act.) The only trouble is that no one has seen their competition. And your competition is half the equation at least as to whether or not you'll win. (One example: Does Reese Witherspoon's Walk the Line win in a highly competitive year? I think not.)

Oscar loves a drunk. Can Cate & Oprah both win while boozing it up?

The male categories are less clear though we've already heard quite a few "Leonardo DiCaprio finally has it for The Wolf of Wall Street!" (on the strength of his meme-worthy dancing and lively charisma in the trailer) and some have floated Bruce Dern as your future Supporting Actor winner for Nebraska... though his campaign remains a question mark. Nebraska, we know, is one of those Two Lead/Same Gender films that Oscar's acting branch has forgotten how to parse. Nobody ever tried to suggest that Salieri or Amadeus were supporting each other or that the true lead of Thelma & Louise was Thelma OR Louise but they would if those films opened today because times have changed and fans and campaign managers got increasingly shameless. 

So will any of these four win? Quite possibly, sure. But they could also all lose. One or more of them might not even be nominated! We haven't seen most of the competitive sets and until the great winnowing of December begins when the precursor awards race in to borify the entire race... let's keep an open mind and enjoy the wide world of possibilities!

OSCAR CHART UPDATES
Best Actress - Will Amy give Cate B a run for her money with Meryl maybe dropping out?
Best Supporting Actress - Can Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer stay in the conversation as Oprah sucks up all the late summer oxygen?
Best Actor -It might come down to Leo vs. Matthew unless Old Hollywood rallies for career honors for Dern or Redford or someone else surprises. Oh god, please let there be surprises this year!
Best Supporting Actor - only the editors know... seriously... nothing has happened yet. (sigh)

more updates to follow on the remaining charts