April Foolish Predictions Complete: Actress & Picture

So my "April Foolish" Oscar Predictions are now complete. I rejiggered two tech predictions once I finally decided on my ten Best Pictures but honestly, any combo of the top 20 listed seems just as plausible as any other so long as the obvious get, War Horse, is there. (It's practically as obvious as The King's Speech was a year out.) We won't know until January how well I did but it's exciting this far out when anything seems possible yes?

BEST PICTURE
I didn't expect to get so fully behind Super 8 but sometimes your own predictions surprise you once you have to work every category out. My wishful thinking pick is David Cronenberg's psychoanalytic period drama A Dangerous Method which is a big old question mark for a number of reasons. But my hunch is that Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender and Keira Knightley will all bring it which will heat up the material which is already sexual conceptually speaking since it's about Freud and Jung. But Cronenberg has never been to the Academy's liking so I'm probably wrong. My wildcard guess -- as in something that's not an obvious contender -- is Oren Moverman's Rampart, a police corruption drama. This film will have the same challenge as My Week With Marilyn in that it will only win real Oscar traction if it feels much larger or more mythic than a telefilm on the same material since both cover topics that have been dramatized on television many times: cop dramas and Marilyn Monroe respectively. My guess for Smallest Nomination Tally But still Best Pic competitor is We Bought a Zoo (just a hunch). My guess for Film With Most Noms That Doesn't Get Nominated For Best Picture (whew) which was Alice in Wonderland last year and Nine the year before (i think?)  is The Adventures of TinTin: The Secret of the Unicorn but if I'm wrong on that, I feel certain it'll be Hugo Cabret.

QUESTIONS FOR YOU:
Which film am I greatly overestimating?
Which movie am I greatly underestimating?
Where am I Goldilocks "just right"?
I'll admit I had NO idea what to make of Moneyball. You?

BEST ACTRESS
Elizabeth Olsen and Felicity Jones were the twin Sundance bids for this category in January and we know how last year and the year before (Bening & Lawrence, Mulligan & Sidibe) turned out: all were nominated. But in a fit of bravery, I'm not predicting either of them.

I'm going with a mostly Previous Nominees lineup. How do you deny Michelle Williams, Glenn Close or Keira Knightley for example this far ahead with juicy roles? As for never-nominated people, I'm totally curious to see what happens with Charlotte Rampling's film The Eye of the Storm.

ACTRESSY QUESTIONS FOR YOU:
Anyone think they'll pass on Meryl Streep this year? (I perversely wanted to predict it.)
Which actress am I underestimating?
Could you see Williams winning for Marilyn?

Note to New Readers
The navigation bar up-top has pull down menus for each Oscar charts or you can click on the Prediction Index and investigate from there. Join in the conversation!

Cast This: "From Here To Eternity" Redux

By now you may have heard the news that an uncensored version of the famous novel From Here To Eternity, a "director's cut" to speak in film parlance, is being released on e-books next month? It will restore profanity and some homosexual content to the military epic; In the 1950s, you didn't ask and they certainly didn't want any telling (or cussing).

"THE BOLDEST BOOK OF OUR TIME... HONESTLY, FEARLESSLY ON THE SCREEN!"

It's maybe a bit corrupt of me to play a casting game with a remake I've never rooted for -- it's a terrific movie as is -- but "Cast This" is fun, isn't it? And in the case of a this new author's cut, why not? Movies have been remade for far stupider reasons. And I don't feel too bad at proposing a remake of 1955's Best Picture From Here To Eternity because it's already been remade once as a television miniseries in the late 70s.

The reinserted homosexual content would be mostly in reference to offscreen events but it got me to thinking about the movie and the fact that Frank Sinatra, an able actor and massively popular singer won an Oscar for the role that contains the content. (Basically it amounts to him being gay for pay, a hustler.)

Monty & Sinatra in From Here To Eternity | Sinatra's Oscar Win

Meanwhile Montgomery Clift, an actual homosexual and one of the defining actors of the 20th century, never won one. What a world. I don't know how close Monty ever came to winning in his four times at bat, but it would make sense that he had a reasonable shot with From Here to Eternity. It was a wildly popular film and won eight other Oscars. It's also one of those rare films where every principle member of the cast was nominated.

CAST THIS
So who would you place in the five main roles?

Prewitt & Lurene, bickering loversPrewitt (The Monty part) is a stubborn principled transfer from the Bugle corps who used to box but refuses to fight anymore... even when provoked violently. He takes up with a nightclub girl and keeps getting dragged into Maggio's troubles, some violent. This actor should be handsome and believable as a former fighter and be a bit of an enigma.

Lurene (the Donna Reed part) is a girl of somewhat shady reputation -- and conflicted about it -- who works at the nightclub where all the soldiers go for entertainment. She wants to be something other than what she is and return to the mainland (if I remember correctly?)

Maggio (the Sinatra part) is the undisciplined volatile Private and loyal friend to Prewitt, who has a hustling past and gets in bar fights and is later violently abused by a superior officer.

Karen (The Deborah Kerr part) is the Base Commandes's neglected and unfaithful wife. She takes up with the Sergeant under her husband and is eager for him to become ambitious so she can divorce her husband and marry him without, one presumes, losing her way of life. She has a great line I've never fully understood which I've written about before when she's flirting with the Sergeant and invites him in.

You're doing fine sergeant. My husband is off somewhere and it's raining outside and we're both drinking now. You probably only got one thing wrong: the lady herself. The lady is not what she seems. She's a washout if you know what I mean. And I'm sure you know what I mean.

Sgt Warden and his Captain's WifeI don't!

Like every other character in the story, she's pretty conflicted about her own desires and action.

Sgt. Warden (The Burt Lancaster part) is a man who's conflicted about cheating on his Commanding officer by bedding his wife. This actor should be masculine, confident someone you'd take orders from but who is complacent about being a cog in the machine. So a leader but not too much of one.

Obviously Sgt. Warden and Karen have to have sizzling chemistry for their legendary beach sex scene.

GO!

2011 Oscar Contenders. Did I Miss Any?

UPDATED W/ SUGGESTIONS - FIRST WAVE CHART PREDIX (04/01 THROUGH 04/08)

As you can see over at the Oscar chart pages, I'm setting up the charts for Oscar's 84th year. This takes me awhile, alas. But here are some films I'm pondering for the "April Fool" predictions. i.e. not truly a prank but still foolish to try and guess this far in advance. I'll be filling in the pages all week. I never get this done in one day's time. Bear with me. Am I missing any 2011 films of note?

BIGGIES
These are the films that only have to be "good". Some will be much better than that and others will be worse but they'll get plenty of attention no matter what.

• CARNAGE Roman Polanski adapts the terrific one set/four character darkly comedic stage play. Can Jodie Foster, Christoph Waltz, Kate Winslet and John C Reilly pull this off?
  
• HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2 Will Oscar take this opportunity to reward the series as a whole or will they figure a couple of nods here and there were reward enough? 
• THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET Martin Scorsese tries his hand at adapting a children's book, a Caldecott winner too.
• J. EDGAR Clint Eastwood's Hoover biopic is supposedly a 2012 film. But Clint is fast and they've been filming for some time. I'd be very surprised if it wasn't December 2011.
• SUPER 8 JJ Abrams tries to become the new Spielberg with this child's eye sci-fi
• THE TREE OF LIFE Terrence Malick's mysterious 50s-era (sort of) drama. Even if people don't love it, they'll pretend that they do.
• WAR HORSE It's been six years since Steven Spielberg was enmeshed in an Oscar race (Munich). Will this WWI drama return him to AMPAS's good graces (not that he ever left. Can we please let someone else present Best Picture goddamnit.)

Many more after the jump. What am I missing? Save me from my own forgetfulness!

Click to read more ...

Best Posters of Best Pictures?

I visit the IMP Awards pretty often since it's such a great source for movie posters, and because they get posters from different markets, not just the typically lesser American ones.

At the moment they have voting open for you to choose the best movie posters from all 83 Oscar winners. I'm telling you about this because West Side Story (1961) is not in their top ten at this current voting tally and that is yo-yo, schoolboy... KRUP YOU, voters!* You'd think that this would be the one type of voting where the most recent movies wouldn't automatically win from familiarity because it's a visual marketing opinion, not a "which movie is your favorite?" question.

The famous poster conveys two things that you'd think wouldn't go together. It gives us the gritty edge of inner city stories and the transcendent power of the musical genre and it manages both in perfect harmony. It's just Reason #100,721,009 that Saul Bass was a buggin' ever lovin'* genius. I have the West Side Story poster framed on my wall right next to the All About My Mother poster as they're maybe my two favorite posters of all time.

Go vote... and tell us what you selected in the comments.

*Creative profanity courtesy of the immortal West Side Story, the 50th anniversary of which we'll celebrate this coming October.

Best Picture Title Cards

♪ Tradition.... TRADITION.
This is beautiful even if 65% of the movies were undeserving of the Best Picture of the Year title. [via]

We'll undoubtedly be adding The King's Speech to this tonight, though we know which movie* is really deserving. You can vote for it at the Best Picture chart.

*whichever you want it 2 B -- opinions are magic that way!