Visual Index ~ The Bad and the Beautiful

In Hit Me With Your Best Shot, an open source series if you will, movie-lovers are asked to select their choice for the pre-selected movie's finest visual moment. Movies are both communal and private experiences so its rewarding to look at them through multiple sets of eyes. This week's film is Vincente Minnelli's Hollywood-on-Hollywood drama The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) which holds the odd distinction of winning the most Oscars ever (5) without a corresponding nomination in the Best Picture category. (The Academy was weird about the Movies About Movies genre that year since they practically ignored the all time classic Singin' in the Rain) The most deserved of TBATB's historic five Oscars was surely for its stunning black & white cinematography by Robert Surtees, an enduring presence in Oscar's roll call from the mid 40s through the late 70s.

I think you'll really like these nine pieces on the movie (on seven different shots)... even if you haven't seen it! Click on any of these "Best Shots" to read why it was selected by these movie lovers.

Antagony & EcstasyWe Recycle Movies

Minnesota Gneiss - FIRST TIME BEST SHOT'ER !

I Want to Believe

Film ActuallyThe Film ExperienceAllison Tooey

Dancin' Dan

The Film's The Thing

NEXT WEDNESDAY NIGHT AUGUST 27th
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) available on Netflix Instant Watch, so please consider joining us. All you need is a pair of eyeballs, movie love, screen capture capability, and a web place to post your choice for the chosen film's very best image.

Should There Be An Oscar For Best Casting?

Yesterday I thought about casting director Juliet Taylor probably more than anyone on the planet who isn't Juliet Taylor. When her name came up on the screen in Woody Allen's trademark font during Blue Jasmine I smiled -- I love that font and those familiar names so much. I recalled that she'd narrowly missed our top ten for "Women Who Deserve an Honorary Oscar", winning the most votes for anyone not in the writing/directing/acting/producing fields. Her resume is astounding featuring the massive Woody Allen filmography and non Woody films as famous as The Exorcist, Taxi Driver, Terms of Endearment, The Stepford Wives and Interview with the Vampire (so you can probably thank her for Kirsten Dunst). We made that list in the hopes that someone with pull in the Academy would read it and think 'huh. These are great ideas to course correct!'

Woody Allen's infamous reputation as a silent director of actors extends into casting where his auditions are notoriously short... sometimes just a meet and greet is all you get. So you know Juliet Taylor works long hours before and after Woody says "yea" or "nay". So there I was thinking about her, wondering about how many decisions she's making on her own when the Academy announced that they were adding another new branch to their ranks, Casting Directors. People are already speculating about whether this means a Best Casting Oscar will be added to the annual horse race for gold.

poll by twiigs.com

My heart and mind war on this topic all the time. My heart knows that casting directors are crucial to a film's success and would warm to them being recognized -- it's obviously the single most important element of filmmaking that doesn't have a category. My mind, on the other hand, isn't sure this is a good idea. My mind knows that people would win the Oscars for the wrong reasons... even wronger [sic] reasons than people win other Oscars for in other categories! I'd argue that casting directors would win for which Movie Stars and Films were favored in any given year rather than their hard work filling the screen with less glitzy faces. I don't work in the film industry but I'd argue that Directors, Agents, Movie Stars, and Lawyers and Studio Heads signing off on budgets are the ones who decide which Movie Star is paired with which project -- especially since movie stars are often in place before the casting director is -- and that the casting director's brilliance is filling out the names in the below the title list, predicting the intangibles of chemistry and guiding the director to the right decisions about who goes best with whom. It's world building actually... the world of faces.

Rich DeliaI imagine Best Casting would nearly always line up with Best Ensemble at SAG and come to mean "Starriest Cast That Is Also Our Vote For Best Picture" which is quite reductive. Do you imagine the same?

If you had to vote on Best Casting for 2013 right now, what would you pick? Without contest I'd name Short Term 12 the winner for 2013 (thus far) which mixes the awesome Brie Larson with Tony winner John Gallagher Jr (currently on The Newsroom on HBO) and a large supporting cast of wonderful unknown child and teenage actors. So congratulations to  Rich Delia for winning my non-existent prize for this year! He only recently graduated to lead Casting Director (He also did Dallas Buyers Club this year) but he's been very busy for the past few years as a Casting Associate on dozens of movies including The Help and August: Osage County.

Number Crunching & The Crowded Oscar Pundit-Sphere

Nate Silver Sometimes, often even, I curse the heavens that I wasn't better at the business side of things when I started on my course as an Oscar pundit. I was one of the first handful to arrive and being 'first' (or among them) is helpful as any business major will tell you. The fabulous life I was meant to lead *sniffle*. But each year the small pond of Oscar prognostication grows ever more crowded with big fish. This is not to say that when Salon reached out to me to discuss famous statistician Nate Silver becoming an Oscar pundit I was all [rough translation] "grumble. grumble. sour grapes"-- so I hope my quote doesn't read that way! In fact I really respect the size of Silver's career (since he didn't scream natural TV presence at all when he first emerged and I myself am terrified on camera so points for perserverance!) Plus, as a matter of basic pride, I love it when out gay men who don't easily fit any particular mold make it big. But the truth of the matter is that long before Silver became the go-to statistician for everything, statistics have been my least favorite aspects of Oscar punditry.

Many people have tried pure numbers-driven predictions and obsessive formulas in the past. Those works to a degree (especially with eventual winners) but one area they're terrible at is "there's a first time for everything" excitement and, surely, navigating the ever changing rule book. Predict the temper of the race especially in the lead-up to nominations is the fun movie-loving part and it doesn't have much to do with numbers. In my mind you can separate true Movie-Lovers from mere Oscar-Watchers merely by observing whether they care more about nominations than wins. Even people in your office pool can predict the winner as well as professionals do because they become obvious a month or two out in the headline categories (the only categories professional pundits get asked about anyway).  

But now that I've been forced to think aloud about the crowded punditry game -- with someone famous like Nate Silver in the mix I'll never get back on CNN, damnit! -- you should think along with me. Do you think there are too many of us? Who do you listen to in all the noise? What value do numbers hold over narrative?

Welcome to the Academy!

Every time I see a grumpy post on the internet about how the Oscars don't matter or the Oscars are irrelevant or passe or [insert gripe here] my face contorts into a 'oh, that's cute' type of look, the one you might give the very naive if possibly well meaning transfer in your high school comedy.

I love her, she's like a Martian.

The Oscars have always mattered. The very fact that people can't stop bitching about them, for 80 some years now, suggests that they still very much do and always will. The Oscars have been synonymous with movie greatness for so many generations that whether or not any greatness is actually happening in their selections is the point of discussion. It's also why one wishes the governing body of AMPAS wouldn't act like such nervous jittery freshmen themselves, forever worrying about what they're wearing ('does this rule-change make me look fat?') and if they're listening to the right music ('no, yeah, i totally love that ____. Didn't you see my expanded BP playlist?!'') .

The Oscars are the cool table that everyone wants to sit at and 276 new kids (after the jump) have been invited to do just that.

Click to read more ...

The Linkover

Vulture whose butts have we seen on Game of Thrones. Funny interactive even if you don't watch the show
LA Times AMPAS just keeps on changing its rule. That board of governors is the fussiest and most bored ever, right? Always tinkering! Members are now no longer required to see foreign film and shorts at Academy screenings in order to vote on them. I personally liked the more restrictive voting in those categories. If I had my way nobody would be able to vote on anything unless they'd seen all the nominees in the category.
Slate wonders where Jay Gatsby's mythical mansion really is/was (The Great Gatsby) 
Pajiba wonders what Marvel Studios could do to make Daredevil work onscreen 
CHUD it's not every day that a movie spoiler comes by way of costume design (The Amazing Spider-Man 2)
MNPP Which is hotter George Clooney retro edition
Ender's Game website has gone live in anticipation of the trailer. Messages from the crew asking us to "stay informed" It seems to be mostly informative backstory journals at this point. Until Viola Davis is schooling me, I ain't learning this!

it's Bradley's world
Awards Daily Bradley Cooper might not be done with Oscar yet. He's now set to star for Steven Spielberg in American Sniper, a true story about a Navy SEAL who fell victim to another soldier's PTSD
In Contention Bradley will also star in Chef for August Osage County director John Wells

pretty pictures
imgur '50 greatest matte paintings from the movies.' a fine tribute to a lost art now that CGI fills in where set-construction leaves off
/film new images from Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind is Rising which we were just talking about in our
Animated Oscar Predictions (in case you missed them)
Hyung86 cute illustrations of Disney characters as college students. My favorites here are actually Hercules and Pocahontas