Funny Linky People

Drama
Mashable on the glory of the Oscar envelopes. May they never go digital 
The Village Voice Nick Pinkerton remembers the late great critic Andrew Sarris 
The Advocate ten reasons to watch the Oscars on Sunday. (I linked to the most succinct universal one!)
MovieLine taxi cab survey of who will win the Oscars. It's not the names that will  be called out when the envelopes are open. (New Yorkers apparently still think Lincoln is going to sweep!) 

Horror
THR a director votes on the Oscars. In detail. (I know you've probably read this already but just in case... there's a lot to discuss) 
Salon will Jack Nicholson be presenting Best Picture yet again on Sunday night? (As I've long complained and long tried to help them the Oscar producers never have any imagination in this one area)
Slate announces that the musical genre is never coming back by essentially changing the argument of what people who say it's back mean when they say, "the musical genre is back!" Yes, agreed, the movie musical genre will never be what it was back when it was the most popular genre and everyone knew the showtunes. But do not agree that it's not back. We've had a steady clip of musicals ever since that glorious one two three punch of Hedwig, Dancer in the Dark and Moulin Rouge! got the ball rolling again just over a decade ago.

Comedy
The Onion "Johnny Depp now made entirely of scarves and bracelets"
Happy Place the six types of people who watch the Oscars - this is a fun concept but it leaves out too many types... including Oscar Fanatics who are busy cataloguing it all in their head to reference for years and years to come. Hypothetically speaking. I've heard those people exist.
Vulture Best Picture as pie charts. I didn't want to like this -- i wasn't in a snark mood -- but they're funny 
Babble six year olds judge the Oscars by their posters... kids say the darndest things. Some are alarmingly accurate but I love that Les Misérables is about faeires and Argo is an earthquake... teehee. My favorite might be Silver Linings Playbook...

This is a movie about building things and it's a happy, good movie. The two people are inventors that invent things that have to do with fish because of all those little scribbles that look like fish. They work together. He's also really, really tall and she likes to wear her hair really, really high.

Hee. I would totally see a movie about Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence inventing fishy paraphenalia. She's right that Bradley Cooper is tall ~ 6'1"!

Making Peace With "Argo". How Many Oscars Will It Win?

When Best Picture locks up each year -- which usually happens sooner than February 2nd so we should count our blessings that this year had more drama! -- the best thing that one can do is find a way to make peace with it. I've followed the Oscars long enough to know that when your absolute favorite in a category wins you should feel rapturous but treat it like its as rare as Brigadoon since you might never see it's like again. The trick to staying sane (not that I've actually mastered this, mind you) is to enjoy the annual awards festivities without caring about the winners so much as the journey to crown them. In its better moments the awards season circus provides plenty of entertainment, delectable star-gazing, and even the occasional conversational or critical insight into what makes particularly movies great or what makes people love particular movies despite their unfortunate lack of greatness.

I've learned to enjoy it when anything in my top ten each year wins something since, in most years, actual favorites are not crowned. It's harder though to enoy your non-favorites winning when they're solidly in the middle of the pack or when a particular forthcoming win defeats something clearly masterful.

Which brings us to Argo...

Click to read more ...

Best Picture: What If There Were Only Five?

Life of Pi by Dean WaltonI was just looking as a series of graphic Best Picture prints designed by Dean Walton and my mind wandered into a geeky Oscaroborus that I couldn't break free of. The series of prints is referred to as a "full series" but there's only five: Django Unchained, Life of Pi, Zero Dark Thirty, Les Misérables, and Lincoln. Um. There are nine Best Picture nominees this year, Dean!

It got me to thinking. I don't even think those would have been "the five", had there been just five. It's not so easy to discount Argo, Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild and Silver Linings Playbook given the final vote tallies. I think we might have had a year of 3/5 Picture/Director split year. Or even gasp 2/5... which has happened before believe it or not.

Way back in 1955 the Best Picture nominees were: Marty, Picnic, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, The Rose Tattoo, and Mister Roberts. The directors branch felt quite differently going with only Delbert Mann (for Marty) who won and Joshua Logan for the big hit Picnic (we recently discussed that film and its Broadway revival) from the Best Picture list. Otherwise the director's branch threw their support behind David Lean's Summertime, John Sturges' Bad Day at Black Rock and Elia Kazan's East of Eden. 

But back to the here and now.

It's easy to twist yourself into pretzels devouring your own tail in trying to chase the "what if..." of five nominees. My guess is it would have been Argo, Lincoln, Life of Pi, Les Miz, and Silver Linings Playbook... but maybe that's too simple of a guess? We'll never know but it's fascinating to wonder. Number of nominations doesn't always tell the story -- remember when Four Weddings and Funeral crashed the Best Picture party in 1994 with only one other nomination to its name?!. What if it was Argo, Beasts, Lincoln, Les Miz, and Silver Linings Playbook with Life of Pi taking over the long held title of "Most Nominated Movie Ever Without a Best Picture Nom"? That dubious honor currently belongs to a great great movie known as They Shoot Horses, Don't They (1969) which won nine nominations but miraculous fell short of a Best Picture nod. (If you've never seen it you should drop everything and get right to that. It's better than almost all of the real Best Picture nominees)

Which five films do you think would have been nominated under the traditional system? Would Amour have been the first foreign film Best Pic nominated since Crouching Tiger (as it is know) or would we still be waiting for a subtitled picture to enter the race again?

Film Bitch Awards Best Picture Prizes (2000-2012)

Appropros of nothing other than to whet your appetite for more Film Bitch Awards announcements, this site's long running awards (I agonize over my snail's pace as much as any of you!) I thought I'd share all of Best Picture winners to date. [If you're just looking for Oscar stuff and clicked over, here's your current Best Picture race and Oscar related articles for the current competition. ] I'm mostly pleased with my choices in retrospect though I would make a couple of switcheroos. You'll notice that in the time I've been publishing my lists for the world I've only ever twice agreed with Oscar's final pic on Best Picture (2003, 2009) though I sort of count 2007 as agreement by virtue of coin-toss almostness. My motto with controlling disappointments with Oscar is to just be grateful if a couple of my favorites get nominated and be thrilled if something in my top ten wins the industry's top prize.

* I will eventually republish the now missing top ten articles - I have them on the hard drive.

Gold: Beasts of the Southern Wild 
Silver: Amour
Bronze: Magic Mike
Also Nominated: Moonrise Kingdom, Les Misérables
Top Ten Article

Gold: A Separation
Silver: The Artist
Bronze: Drive 
Also Nominated: Beginners, Weekend
Top Ten Article

Gold: I Am Love
Silver: The Social Network
Bronze: The Kids Are All Right
Also Nominated: Blue Valentine, Black Swan
Top Ten Article

Gold: The Hurt Locker
Silver: Hunger
Bronze: Bright Star
Also Nominated: Precious, Avatar
Top Ten Article No Longer Online

Gold: Rachel Getting Married
Silver: The Class
Bronze: WALL•E
Also Nominated: Reprise, The Wrestler
Top Ten Article No Longer Online

Gold: There Will Be Blood
Silver: No Country For Old Men
Bronze: Once
Also Nominated: 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Ratatouille
Top Ten Article No Longer Online

Gold: Marie Antoinette
Silver: Volver
Bronze: Shortbus
Also Nominated: Children of Men, The Fountain
Top Ten Article No Longer Online

Gold: Brokeback Mountain
Silver: A History of Violence
Bronze: Pride & Prejudice
Also Nominated: Caché, Me and You and Everyone We Know
Top Ten Article No Longer Online

Gold: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Silver: Spider-Man 2
Bronze: Vera Drake
Also Nominated: Before Sunset, Sideways
Top Ten Article No Longer Online

Gold: LotR: The Return of the King
Silver: Kill Bill, Vol. 1
Bronze: Lost in Translation
Also Nominated: Raising Victor Vargas, thirteen
Top Ten Article No Longer Online

Gold: Far From Heaven
Silver: Y Tu Mama Tambien
Bronze: Talk to Her
Also Nominated: LotR: The Two Towers, 25th Hour
Top Ten Article No Longer Online

Gold: Moulin Rouge!
Silver: LotR: The Fellowship of the Ring
Bronze: In the Mood for Love
Also Nominated: Mulholland Drive, Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Top Ten Article No Longer Online

Gold: Dancer in the Dark
Silver: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Bronze: Requiem for a Dream
Also Nominated: Erin Brockovich, Beau Travail
Top Ten Article No Longer Online

Is "Lincoln" Nervous About Losing SAG?

Early "Lincoln" SwagThis just in. A SAG voter shot me a note yesterday after received a Lincoln screener at the tail end of voting -- the Awards are this Sunday night -- wondering if the Lincoln team was nervous about losing the SAG Ensemble prize to one of its formidable competitors in the seemingly wide-open Best Picture race. 

It was sent last minute, priority mail envelopes, clearly put together quickly.  It wasn't on the initial list of screeners or downloads so it was a last minute decision, it would seem."

It seems weird to hear "put together quickly" about a Lincoln screener since mine was artfully packaged and I received it a month ago. Truth: Lincoln has been the most active movies in terms of continual swag at least at my house: I've gotten Spielberg books, Presidential cookbooks, a screener, a hardcover script (those are rare) and more... but it is a significant expense to send screeners to SAG voters as compared to 6,000ish AMPAS members and 300ish BFCA since members since the Screen Actors Guild has so very very many voting members. 

Do you think Lincoln is nervous about a potential Ensemble loss on Sunday... and thus less momentum heading into the final month of Oscar voting?  

I'm torn myself as to which film I think is winning: Momentum is with Argo, but Silver Linings Playbook is definitely a hit with actors and is campaigning hard. Maybe Lincoln wouldn't have had so much to worry about if they hadn't abused their ensemble by leaving out some of the best players... and not even campaigning for Supporting Actor for audience favorites like James Spader (dear god I never thought I'd write the second half of that sentence). 

only seven -- SEVEN -- members of Lincoln's sprawling awesome cast are nominated in the "Ensemble" category. That's less actors than are in most of the scenes! In contrast: Argo has 13 nominees; Les Miz has 12; Best Exotic has 8; Silver Linings Playbook has 6

P.S. For what it's worth if I were a Screen Actor (I am... not) I would probably vote for Lincoln in this category but not happily since the award would not go to many of the colorful performances featured.