7 Things You Need to Know About the 289 Eligible Oscar Contenders

As you may no doubt have heard AMPAS released the list (included below) of 289 Feature Films which have qualified for Oscar consideration this year in all categories beyond the specialties with complex eligibility rules (documentary, animated, foreign film, shorts). Here are seven things you should know about the list. 

Most Will Come Nowhere Near a Nomination
This list is 289 pictures long but typically only 25-30 feature films each year (excluding, again, the specialty categories which play by different rules) receive nominations of any kind with a few key pictures hogging the goods. In 2012 only 22 pictures won nominations (!) with Lincoln, Life of Pi, Les Miz, and Silver Linings hogging the goods whereas the wealth was spread out more in 2011 when 32 pictures were nominated in some capacity.

Too Easy
This year five films will be nominated for the Best Animated Feature title but only 19 animated films are eligible. Can you imagine if it was that easy proportionately for features, animated or otherwise, to win Best Picture nominations? If it was we'd literally have 75 Best Picture nominees this year since 289 films qualified. Instead we'll have a more sensible number, somewhere between 5 and 10 according to current rules, the number determined by how many films can rustle up enough high ballot support in the Academy membership. MORE TRIVIA AFTER THE JUMP

Click to read more ...

Team FYC: Neighboring Sounds for Best Foreign Language Film

In this series Team Experience sounds off (individually) on their favorite fringe awards contenders. Here's Amir Soltani on Neighboring Sounds.

Since the Academy wisely overhauled its nominating process for the foreign language film award and Dogtooth nabbed that delightfully shocking nomination, pundits tend not to take any film's chances too lightly in this category. Still, a nod for Brazil's intense and quietly powerful submission would come as a major surprise. That's partly because the film ran the festival circuit last year and its buzz has been more of a hum for a few months now so it's hard to imagine the executive committee coming to its rescue. It's a real shame because Neighboring Sounds isn't just the best of the submitted films; it is quite possibly the year's best film, period.

Sounds opens with a series of black and white still photos attuned to a rousing score that provide more social context for the story in 57 seconds than most films do in 90 minutes. Kleber Mendoca Filho - on his first try at helm - paints an increasingly unsettling portrait of an affluent neighborhood in the Brazilian city of Recife that wants to remain oblivious to the poverty and corruption that engulfs it. The greatest accomplishment of the film, and its rich but anti-climactic finale, is that it creates a sense of inescapable unease in the audience, not entirely unlike what the neighborhood residents deal with routinely.

Neighboring Sounds subverts our expectations at every turn, playing games with the laguange of cinema - both in the construction of its images and, as the title suggests, sounds - to shape our understanding of characters and the film's geopolitical space. It is the rare film that builds energy through completely inconspicuous means. It is not the guns and criminals that escalate violence; it's a meditative dip in the waterfall or a casual conversation between neighbors on a rooftop. The underlying sense of discomfort is a result of the film's "guilty until proven innocent" approach toward all its characters. By the film's end, the mistrust between the neighborhood's residents has slowly creeped in on us and become impossible to shake off. This is a masterclass in crafting a suspenseful piece, given by a man whose assured control of his film betrays no sign of his inexperience. Here's hoping Academy voters take notice.

Previously on Team FYC

Live Action Short Finalists

One of the most confounding things about following the non-marquee categories at the Oscars is that not every category operates by the same rules. For example they released the super long eligibility list for Best Documentary Feature but not the super long eligibility lists for the live action shorts. To further complicate matters, this doesn't seem to be the same strategy each year.

Tim recently shared the finalist list for Best Animated Short nominations and now we have the ten Live Action hopefuls from which Academy members will nominate three to five. I personally hate it when categories have a fluctuating amount of nominees. Commit AMPAS! There's no excuse for it really in short films since there are thousands made each year and certainly at least 5 of them would have to be great.

10 FINALISTS FOR BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT

Aquel No Era Yo (That Wasn’t Me) Esteban Crespo (Producciones Africanauan)
The always heartwarming topic of child soldiers. I honestly can't deal with these films and is it just my imagination or is there one on this topic every year in the shorts categories? It's just too overwhelmingly tragic for me.

Avant Que De Tout Perdre (Just before Losing Everything) Xavier Legrand (KG Productions)
a woman and her kids, who have pretended to go to school, are in a desperate rush. But to where and from what?

Dva (Two) Mickey Nedimovic (Filoufilm Dani Barsch)
A Serb and a Croat step on a landmine simultaneously as they attempt to kill each other and realize their lives are now intertwined. I don't know how you sustain that for nearly half an hour but maybe they can!

Helium Anders Walter (M & M Productions)
A sick boy in Denmark hears magical stories from a hospital janitor 

Kush Shubhashish Bhutiani, director (Red Carpet Moving Pictures) 
a teacher protects her sikh student from riots on a field trip 

Pitaako Mun Kaikki Hoitaa? (Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?) Selma Vilhunen (Tuffi Films)
A comedy about a family who wakes up late on the morning of a wedding 

RECORD/PLAY from jesse atlas on Vimeo.

Record/Play Jesse Atlas (Collaboration Factory) - complete film embedded above
For what it's worth, Focus Features is planning to adapt this sci-fi tinged short about a mysterious walkman that can transport you to the recording into a feature length film.

Throat Song Miranda de Pencier (Northwood Productions)
This one is about an Inuit woman with an abusive husband and a circle of supportive friends she finds.
 

Tiger Boy - Official Trailer [HD] from goon films on Vimeo.

Tiger Boy Gabriele Mainetti (Goon Films)
a young boy won't take his favorite wrestler's mask off. 

The Voorman Problem Mark Gill (Honlodge Productions)
Martin Freeman stars as a man interviewing a prisoner (Tom Hollander) who claims to be God

WHICH DO YOU THINK HAVE THE BEST SHOT? 

UPDATED CHART
Best Shorts, Animated Feature, and Documentaries

Animated Feature Contender: A Letter to Momo

Tim, our resident animation guy, sounds off on the eligible films vying for Animated Feature

Between now and the announcement of the Academy Award nominees on January 16, I’ll be taking a look at some of the films submitted for the Best Animated Feature award: specifically, the smaller, more easily-overlooked films from non-U.S. animation studios. For it strikes me that they are the more deeply in need of love and attention than the more visible mainstream American productions likely to dominate the race. Also, I don't imagine that anyone is desperate to have a conversation about Free Birds.

Our first subject is the oldest on the submission list: A Letter from Momo from Japan, which premiered at the 2011 Toronto Film Festival, only making its stateside bow this year.

[Does it deserve the comparisons to A Spirited Away? Find out after the jump]

Click to read more ...

"Critics Choice" Best Young Actor/Actress. Any FYCs?

Updated to add voting options!

Yesterday out of nowhere I suddenly felt a shiver go down my spine. I realized that if I didn't pull some advocacy action, my fellow Broadcast Film Critics might just give Chloe Grace Moretz TWO nominations for Best Young Actor/Actress for Kick-Ass 2 and Carrie and nobody needs that. Not even Chloe who doesn't strike us as the sort that needs the validation to go on. (Horror of horrors that's already occurred back in 2010 when she won a double nom) And then I pictured Quvenzhané Wallis getting nominated for her one line in 12 Years a Slave and remembered that frustrating nomination for Asa Butterfeld in Hugo (he could repeat this year for Ender's Game) and I knew I had to intervene with some advocacy or at least a helpful voting cheat sheet.

Thomas Horn & Quvenzhane Wallis, the last two winners of this category

See, sometimes the lazy voting in this category can be attributed to its low profile. If you're not actually researching / thinking about "which actors that aren't yet 21 did good work this year?" chances are when it comes time to vote you'll just be scribbling down whoever comes immediately to mind. That strategy favors the famous and the lucky (are they in a film you're thinking about for other categories?) and "Best" is not really even a part of the equation.

HELPFUL CHARTS AND READER BALLOT REQUESTS AFTER THE JUMP...

Click to read more ...