Updated Oscar Predix: Saving Blue Jasmine Station

It was time to check back in with our popular charts, clean off the dust and rearrange the furniture. But, that said, the Oscar year has been off to a slow start since the blockbusters have had little in the way of Oscar contending elements (beyond visual effects) and the best films so far have been tiny (Frances Ha, Before Midnight, Mud) and Oscar is a size queen.

PICTURE & DIRECTOR
Before you say anything, no, I do not think Fruitvale Station will win Best Picture. I've placed it at #1 on the charts this week merely because it's the only film I'm certain will be nominated at this point. When you start getting grabby media headlines like  "Can a movie heal the nation?" people are already making your case for you. And, as rankings go, one should always remember that the charts are about nominations (until the actual nominations take place 178 days from now) rather than wins. I'm not one of those pundits that cares about who will win before we even have a nominee list; the nomination competition is the best part! I'd love to believe that Before Midnight had also already sealed up a nomination but I've never been convinced that AMPAS is really watching that intimate talky ephemeral once-a-decade brilliance. If they were they're crazy for not nominating the second film for Best Picture & Best Actress in 2004 (Million Dollar Baby's got nothing on Before Sunset in either category).

In other chart-shifting I've boosted Saving Mr Banks way way up (I know people were down on the trailer but Oscar predictions are about Academy taste rather than internet taste) and lost a bit of faith in Foxcatcher, though only really because its release plan is either nonexistent or very shy. [more]

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Visual Index ~ The Talented Mr Ripley's Best Shot(s)

For this week's edition of Hit Me With Your Best Shot, we stayed another summer in Italy. We didn't follow an American spinster this time but a young shapeshifter known as The Talented Mr Ripley. He was sent to Italy to fetch trustfund baby Dickie Greenleaf but he likes Dickie's life so much he fetches it for himself instead. 

Outside the film's actual narrative, based on the famous novel by Patricia Highsmith (whose work is oft-adapted - The Two Faces of January is next) things were just as dramatic. The movie was a Prestige Event since it was Anthony Minghella's (RIP) follow-up to his Best Picture winner The English Patient (1996). It wasn't quite a slam dunk with Oscar, despite the pedigree and the quality (I prefer it to Patient, myself), though it sure was a thing of beauty. The Talented Mr Ripley featured one of the most impressive collections of young stars at seemingly simultaneous points in their careers ever assembled; the world had just fallen for Gwyneth Paltrow (hot off Shakespeare), Jude Law (hot off stealing Gattaca), Matt Damon (still glowing from Good Will Hunting), and Cate Blanchett (hot off Elizabeth) and writer/director Anthony Minghella (RIP) managed to corral them all for the same movie.

Here are the 15 images that the 17 wide Best Shot club went a little mad for. Click on the link for the corresponding article and refresh your screens since more articles are bound to come in (including my own). Next week's film is Disney's grand 40s experiment Fantasia (special instructions here) and you should join us.

BEST SHOT(S)

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Top Ten: Cate Blanchett

Cate Blanchett in Woody Allen's "Blue Jasmine"Today is Cate Blanchett's birthday and since we just celebrated her Oscar-winning altar ego Katharine Hepburn, why not extend the love? As longtime readers know I have been notoriously cool on the Aussie star over the years equating her work with the kind of "click click click" technique-first acting that Meryl Streep was sometimes discredited for early on. But since I actually think it's interesting to hear other people talk about their favorite perfromances from actors they don't naturally respond to, I hope it will be interesting to you to hear the things I do love about Cate the to-others Great. Cate was EVERYWHERE throughout the Aughts aggravating me with her ubiquity (I have issues with this in general, I know. It's not just Cate but Hollywood's tendency, especially in the past decade, to put the same actors in every movie and wear me out on them) but after four relatively Blanchett-sparse years (2009-2012) wherein she was only doing cameos or that Robin Hood no one liked, I am actually excited to see her again. Which is a relief because they'll be no escaping her again soon...

She's coming back in a major way over the next 24 months with new pictures on the way from Terrence Malick, Woody Allen, George Clooney, and Peter Jackson. She'll cap off that new flush of activity with a blockbuster-hopeful evil queen showstopper in Kenneth Branagh's production of Cinderella. 

Here are the ten Blanchett performances of which I am most fond...

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Woody Comes Home: Blue Jasmine Tea Leaves

Hey folks. Michael C. here. There are few constants in my pop culture life. Woody Allen is one of them. The last time a year passed without a Woody Allen movie was 1981 when I was one year old. Like The Simpsons or SNL, I don't pay nearly as much attention as I used to, but I take a great comfort in knowing they're always there and always will be. I'd be lost if they ever went away.

The past eight years of Woody. How many did you see? Enjoy?

So I'm on board no matter how many Jade Scorpions he compulsively cranks out from now until eternity. I'm already picking through the just released details of his 2013 film, Blue Jasmine, if only in the hopes that my annual pilgrimage will be a brilliant Crimes and Misdemeanors or at very least an entertaining Vicky Christina. At this point there is no more than a title, a cast list, and a brief synopsis, but I already spot some reasons to be optimistic that this might be Good Woody Allen or at least what passes for Good Woody ever since the 00's showed just how painful Bad Woody could get.

5 Reasons to Be Optimistic About Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine

1. The synopsis released by Sony Pictures Classics reads...

the story of the final stages of an acute crisis and a life of a fashionable New York housewife.”

MORE...

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Cinderella Unenchanted

JA from MNPP here - back at the start of December we took a look at the news that Never Let Me Go and One Hour Photo director Mark Romanek had supposedly set his sights on reimagining Cinderella live-action-style for Disney, with Saoirsie Ronan maybe stepping into the glass slippers, and Cate Blanchett playing the villainous Stepmother. To me this certainly seemed an odd fit for him and I said at the time that, knowing his sordid history with the studio system (woe be The Wolf Man production), I wasn't sure why he was tossing himself back into the belly of the beast.

Well maybe he finally sat down and watched Tarsem's Mirror Mirror because sure enough, cut to a month or so later and he's dropped out of the project because of "differing views on how to tell the story." I guess Disney wasn't keen on having Gus the singing mouse reenact the video for "Closer."

Chris Weitz (About a Boy) wrote the script so my guess is, if he's keen to direct something big like this after the Golden Compass semi-debacle, he's got a shot at the gig, or they'll just hire some boring director-for-hire... but for a moment let's pretend we work at Disney (close your eyes and feel the felt mouse-ears cap on your head, I know you can do it) and it's our job to find the perfect director for a live-action Cinderella. Who do you hire? Imagine what someone with real vision could do --- what would David Cronenberg make that pumpkin carriage look like? Or the scene with the slippers! He'd go all old-school Grimm on it with the foot-goring. Sigh, I dream too big.