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Oscar Takeaways
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Entries in Oscars (12) (299)

Sunday
Aug192012

148 Days Til Oscar Nominations!

Do you ever marvel at the countdown clock in the lefthand sidebar and think "Wow, only ___ days until Oscar nominations!". I know I do. As of right now there are only 148 days and some hours left until Oscar nominations. 21 weeks! That means the universe has plenty of time to back me up on my current predictions or destroy them savagely. Either way is fun for me which is, I suppose, why I've never been able to quit predicting Hollywood's High Holy Night.

CHART UPDATES

Best Picture & Best Director - The Great Gatsby and Baz Luhrmann exit the charts, both moving to summer 2013. And though I never had faith in Gatsby as an actual finalist (the book is too perfect as a book) what can rush in to replace it on the charts? The race is still wide open as it should be.

Gatsby will sit this particular party out. He'll throw his own next Summer

But from where I sit though I'm sure some will disagree, the franchise hopefuls are toast. A lot of people still think that The Gidling of the Lord of the Rings Lily: Part 1 of 3 will factor in but Oscar is not Emmy and LotR is not The West Wing. Fantasy is still a novelty for Oscar voters and I can't imagine that handing the last one 11 Oscars won't feel like enough of a reward for Jackson & Middle Earth. Yes, they've had a decade long breather but I figure the only way The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is competing for the top prize is if people go crazier for it than the original trilogy. And that would be an unexpected journey. 

Meanwhile I suspect that The Avengers and The Dark Knight Concludes Divisively will have a rough time making it through the wild rapids of winter campaigning and I don't expect either of them in the big show beyond a few craft nods. I don't even have faith in the eagerly awaited Django Unchained as an Oscar hopeful. Quentin Tarantino, when he leans toward retro remixes of less prestigious film genres, is just not necessarily for them (see: Jackie Brown, Kill Bill). Yes,  he leans towards that.. always... and he has made two big Oscar hits. But Pulp Fiction was the kind of pop-cultural zeitgeist breakthrough that's impossible to ignore and Inglourious Basterds was a WW II fantasy and Oscar does his own share of fantasizing about that.

All of this nitpicking doubt leads me to believe that Beasts of the Southern Wild, a movie that doesn't look much like an Oscar film (yay!), is on its way to locked up status as an Oscar film. While it didn't become the crossover hit we'd hoped it would, it's done well enough financially to ride the "beloved indie / critical darling" into the mainstream competition for gold. (Think Winter's Bone.)

Best Actor - It's been 11 years since Denzel Washington won his second Oscar and in that whole time he hasn't done anything worth Oscar's time. Will they welcome him back if Flight is a big hit?

What's Denzel's poison? And was he drinking it before the Flight?

 

 

The way I see it mainstream dramas that become big hits are shoo in for Oscar play. Oscar likes drama best and when films without genre trappings that are intended for adults soar at the box office, they join in the applause. I'm feeling it'll hit. Just a feeling.

But the big question in Best Actor is whether the Weinstein's will try to convince AMPAS voters that Joaquin Phoenix is "supporting" Phillip Seymour Hoffman (or the other way around) in The Master. If they risk a double lead campaign and the film is the critical mega-success the internet seems to be expecting, could they be the first Actor Pair since *gulp* Amadeus (twenty-eight years ago) to hog 40% of the shortlist? It's hilarious (and depressing) to view Amadeus in retrospect and know that campaign teams would try to pretend that Salieri or Mozart were "supporting" players in their own riveting brutal musical duet. 

Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress -- We discussed these last week here

Best Supporting Actor - This category hasn't come into focus yet which should make the fall extra exciting. So for the moment, you can predict just about anything (at least here) and feel like a true psychic. You can feel like a psychic right up until the moment the films open and prove you wrong! But the foggy nature of the Supporting goods me wonder if I'm not underestimating those that have already arrived and delighted (like Matthew McConaughey and Michael Fassbender) despite the lowbrow nature of their roles... at least accordingi to Oscar's general aesthetics.

Ruth E Carter, two time Oscar nominees, doing retro-chic looks for Sparkle

Best Visuals and Best Aurals - UPDATES STILL IN PROGRESS -- THIS TAKES TIME.
The latest film to enter the ring visually and aurally is the Motown musical Sparkle (my review tomorrow) and while I don't expect Oscar play anywhere stranger things have happened in the below the line categories. 

Screenplay, Animated, Foreign Film and the Complete Prediction Chart. Check them out and report back.

Thursday
Aug162012

Oscar Watch, Israeli Edition: The Ophir Nominees

[Editor's Note: I asked our sometime correspondent in Israel, Yonatan, to bring us up to date on Israel's Oscar submission possibilities. They've been scoring nominations frequently of late. Alas my single favorite Israeli movie of all time (Late Marriage) was rejected by Oscar voters in its year - Nathaniel]

Can "Filling The Void" fill one Oscar spot in Foreign Film this year? 

Ten Israeli movies have been nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category, four of them in the last five years. That list includes one indisputable landmark: Waltz with Bashir (2008) which is the first and only animated film, despite frequent submissions from all around the world, to score a nomination in this category. 

Israel's Oscar History
With links to Netflix pages -- all but one of them are available for rental!
1964 Sallah
1971 The Policeman
1972 I Love You Rosa
1973 The House on Chelouche Street (instant watch!)
1977 Operation Thunderbolt
1986 Beyond The Walls
2007 Beaufort (instant watch!)
2008 Waltz With Bashir
2009 Ajami (instant watch!)
2011 Footnote 

Still, without an Oscar win, Israel is the Peter O' Toole / Deborah Kerr of the foreign film category with the most never-winning nominations (just ahead of Poland's 9/0 record and Mexico's 8/0). After so many loses, a win seems perpetually just around the corner...

Click to read more ...

Tuesday
Aug142012

'Til Link Do Us Part

The Film Doctor usually finds interesting angles. For Hope Springs he interviewed his signifant other on the depiction of marital turmoil and therapy therein.
Final Girl this one is for you horror fans, a funny mashup of The Human Centipede with slasher icons.
The Playlist 15 new stills from P.T. Anderson's long awaited scientology drama The Master
Coming Soon Life of Pi will open the New York Film Festival and...
Awards Daily Flight will close it. (Will Robert Zemeckis and Denzel Washington and Ang Lee all be returning to Oscar's good graces?)

In Contention You've probably read Guy Lodge's Sight & Sound top ten list by now but in case you haven't it's interesting from top to bottom. Somehow I hadn't completely registered that Guy shared my love of Colorogy. So much green and red happening here!
Guardian so Jennifer Aniston is engaged and there's a whole new round of false romcom press narratives happening
NYT interesting observations on the trainwreck spectacle of online confessional blogging
AV Club Jodie Foster to direct a female-led mob drama on Showtime. Interesting... but I sure wish she'd rediscover her love of bigscreen acting instead. There are a lot of directors who are good at helming TV series. There are very few actors who can be Jodie Foster on the bigscreen.
/Film lately I actually forgot Ron Howard existed but they've reminded me that he is making a movie with Chris Hemsworth and the adorable Daniel Brühl called Rush
Film Junkie has behind the scenes photos from 12 Years a Slave 
Pajiba on 8 memorable marital fights on TV

 

Sunday
Aug122012

Anne vs. Amy. Oscar Chart Updates!

If anyone can threaten the widely held assumption that Anne Hathaway will win the Supporting Actress Oscar come February for dreaming that dream in time gone by in Les Misérables, isn't it Amy Adams in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master? In the heat of August, Anne seems to have this thing sewn up. But August is August. It ain't February.  

Actress Wars 2012: Anne vs. Amy

Though we haven't seen either performance yet, it's worth noting that Oscar wars are rarely won by a stand alone acting achievement. They can be, sure, but more often than not they're fought with a fluctuating combo of deft campaign tricks, strong timing, media drum beatings, general feelings for the film that houses said performance, barely acknowledged collective memories of past triumphs and defeats, preconceived notions of what the actors in questions are capable of, and other films  -- particularly brand new ones or "snubbed" but beloved efforts -- that contribute to or detract from the "It's Her/His Time" argument.

So, let's discuss ANNE & AMY (&, yes, STREEP) with a fancy battle chart...

Click to read more ...

Saturday
Aug112012

MIFF 2: Will "The Sessions" Make Oscar Feel Good?

[Editor's note: Glenn of Stale Popcorn fame is back to report from Melbourne Iwith a look at an Oscar hopeful that's been working the festival circuit all year - Nathaniel]

I suspect it will be easy for cynical audiences to look upon Ben Lewin’s The Sessions as merely a hurdle to get over this upcoming awards season. Yes, it’s about a man with a disability and, yes, it co-stars Helen Hunt, but the mere fact that it got made at all makes it an important film whether you consider it good or not. Given Hollywood’s fussy attitude towards sex (particularly the sex that makes us feel good), it’s strange to see so much talk about The Sessions (nee Six Sessions, nee The Surrogate) in regards to the Academy Awards. That the film is about sex and disabilities and religion, and examines it with maturity and gentle pathos, just makes Lewin’s film that much more of an anomaly worth exploring.

John Hawkes (Winter’s Bone, Martha Marcy May Marlene) stars as Mark O’Brien, a real life figure who lived with Polio into his 40s who has already been the subject of one Oscar-winning movie already. If the rest of the plot – O’Brien hires a “sex surrogate” to lose his virginity – elicits giggles from the viewer then that’s a-okay since the film and the man have a sense of humour. Yes, you know where it’s going, but it's so refreshing to see this topic played out openly that it’s almost hard to care.

The Sessions, for me, most resembled Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids are All Right. [more after the jump]

Click to read more ...