Can "Creed" Go 12 Rounds With Oscar?

In the past 48 hours I've screened The Revenant, Joy, and Creed. Since the first two are still under embargo we're not allowed to speak of them yet. I will say these non spoilers that The Revenant continues the tradition of Inaritu's love of miserable arguably suicidal men, and Joy continues in the tradition of David O. Russell sandbox like playgrounds for actors eager to play with their new parts. But...embargo!

As movie buffs well know, the original Rocky was a smash hit when it premiered in December 1976, becoming the biggest box office hit of that year, making a star of Sly Stallone, charting a #1 single ("Gonna Fly Now"), and earning an incredible 10 Oscar nominations. It eventually won Picture, Director, and Editing on the big night. And against unreal competition too: Network, Taxi Driver, Bound for Glory, and All The President's Men. The Rocky series spawned a few popular sequels but eventually exhausted its welcome as film franchises do. Creed, smartly plays like both a straight sequel (VII) and a spinoff or rebirth with Rocky Balboa passing the franchise torch to Apollo Creed's son Adonis (Michael B Jordan).

So let's talk Creed and Oscar and the ways it could well factor into the Oscar race after the jump...

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NYFCC Winners

 The New York Film Critics Circle takes their sweet time each year debating their "bests" and shouldn't we all? Nevertheless it's agony for awards addicts like us, the excruciating wait times that commence between 9 AM EST and continue for hours. With lunch break. If you want to have a laugh at my expense I tried to predict the winners as part of the Gurus of Gold chart this week (update: This year they wrapped up by 1:00 PM though so all is well. The only thing i got right in my predictions was Carol for Film/Director)

A bit of Oscar adjacent history: In the past 20 years of their long long history (they're octogenarians now!) they've selected 4 films that went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars, 11 more that were nominated and 5 that were critical darlings and eventual Oscar players but were shut out of the big race (Leaving Las Vegas, Topsy-Turvy, Mulholland Drive, Far From Heaven, United 93). Which is a long way of saying they have refined if not quite populist taste but they're never too far afield of Oscar's wheelhouse. Do they influence the Oscars? It's tough to say. The Film Experience's position is, generally speaking, that no single critics group influence voters beyond pointing them at films... but the NYFCC and LAFCA are the ones the industry cares most about and are most likely to let in... at least to pique their interest in particular films and performances.

So here we go...

Best Film Carol
Best Director Todd Haynes, Carol

It's worth noting, as Sasha Stone did, that very few directors have ever won Best Director twice at the NYFF. The list includes Martin Scorsese and Kathryn Bigelow and now Haynes. Carol was the big winner of today's announcement taking home 4 prizes.

Best Actress Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn
Best Actor Michael Keaton, Spotlight
Best Supporting Actress Kristen Stewart, Clouds of Sils Maria
Best Supporting Actor Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies

But not in acting. That said these are wonderful choices for the prizes, going out of their way to remember Kristen Stewart's amazingly naturalistic engaging work as Binoche's personal assistant in Sils Maria. That performance has already won her a Cesar Award in France but since she's not campaigning things will probably stop here. Saoirse Ronan and Mark Rylance will surely go the distance to a nomination in Best Actress and Supporting Actor and both could well compete for the win... though we'll have to see the whole field before we really get into that.

The strangest thing is to ignore the supporting campaign (a legitimate choice to make everyone supporting in such an ensemble film) for Keaton and give him the Best Actor prize. But he gives the best performance in a film filled with good work so hurrah!

Best Screenplay Carol, adapted by Phyllis Nagy from the Patricia Highsmith novel "The Price of Salt"
Best Cinematography Carol, Edward Lachman

A thousand times yes. The whole team on Carol was doing exquisite work. That's why we asked them all why they were such geniuses. NYFCC are Todd Haynes fans (as all truly outstanding people are) and they gave Far From Heaven 5 awards in 2002.

Best First Film Son of Saul d. László Nemes
Best Animated Film Inside Out (Pixar) d. Pete Docter & Ronnie del Carmen
Best Documentary In Jackson Heights d. Frederick Wiseman
Best Foreign Language Film Timbuktu (Mauritania) d. Abderrahmane Sissako
Special Award William Becker and Janus Films
Special Award Ennio Morricone, composer

Son of Saul looks fairly unstoppable for the Foreign Film Oscar this season so the race to watch is probably the nominations themselves. And whether Son of Saul can expand into other categories... which it wants to. As previously stated in the Documentary Finalist post it's odd that the Academy's documentary branch continues to pass on Frederick Wiseman's documentaries considering that they are routinely greeted with "masterpiece" level reviews; he's never been Oscar nominated.

That's it. On a scale of 1-10 how happy did today's announcement make you?

WE'LL LET CATE BLANCHETT HAVE THE FINAL WORD SINCE CAROL WAS THE BIG WINNER...

What do people think of the actual supporting players?

As I was updating the supporting actress chart I was reminded again why I hate category fraud. This year Mya Taylor, Alicia Vikander, and Rooney Mara have all been campaigning for supporting awards and in truth I love them. They're terrific in their films (Tangerine, The Danish Girl, Carol respectively) and in two of the three cases the MVP of their films. But all three are also leading ladies in films that are absolutely duets. There's been a lot of (deserved) discussion of these performances but category fraud creates a vacuum elsewhere.  It's not just that it's dishonest, a gaming of the system to give more attention to actors who usually already get plenty of it (Mya Taylor being an exception here obviously... but usually category fraud benefits stars), but it skews the conversation such that once awards season rolls around, you wake up and you realize you have precious little idea what anyone actually thinks of the supporting players of the year. This is one of the reason "coaster" nominations happen where people get in simply because their film is loved. People haven't really thought their choices through. Because they haven't been discussed. Not the way leading performances are.

Like these women... shouldn't there be more conversation about what they bring to their films? But how can that conversation even start when people are only talking about leading ladies.

The next time someone tells you the supporting race is thin -- point them to this graphic. I don't love all of these performances myself but all 24* of them, if they were to be pointed out to a wide group of voters as viable options, well, wouldn't they each have no trouble finding some fans? My point is this: you can definitely find 5 great performances in any category in any film year.

See the updated Supporting Actress Chart and discuss your favorites in the comments. Which of these 24 women do you love and who should we all be discussing? Not for their probability of a nomination but for their actual performances?

* I am torn as to whether Kristen Stewart or Elizabeth Banks can justifiably be called supporting for Clouds of Sils Maria & Love and Mercy. They're borderline cases. Each is the lead of their portion of the film but they're not the leadiest (if you will) since someone else is even more important and they both disappear for a section of their films.

15 Oscar Documentary Finalists... A Tight Race

Could Marlon Brando return to the Oscars posthumously? The documentary Listen to Me Marlon made the finals for the Best Documentary Oscar even though documentaries about Hollywood stars and movies aren't typically so favorited. Note that Ingrid Bergman's documentary --also famously "in her own words" -- and the enjoyable Tab Hunter: Confidential and the Sundance sensation The Wolfpack about living through the movies weren't as lucky and did not make the finals. 

The 15 Finalists

• Amy (PGA nominee, IDA nominee, NBR winner)
• Best of Enemies (NBR top 5, Spirit nominee)
• Cartel Land (Gotham nominee)
• Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
• He Named Me Malala
• Heart of a Dog (Gotham nominee, Spirit nominee)
• The Hunting Ground (PGA nominee)
• Listen to Me Marlon (IDA nominee, NBR top 5, Gotham nominee)
  
• The Look of Silence (PGA nominee, IDA nominee, NBR top 5, Gotham winner, Spirit nominee)
• Meru (PGA nominee, Spirit nominee)
• 3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets
  
• We Come as Friends
• What Happened, Miss Simone? (IDA nominee)
• Where to Invade Next
• Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom

Snubbed Again
Frederick Wiseman can't catch a break with the Academy though he's a legend and his latest In Jackson Heights met with the typical rapturous response among critics.

New Prediction Chart
I didn't have to adjust it too much. Why? Well I'm...

Psychic!
Of the 15 I Predicted for the Finalist, 9 of them made it so I did pretty well (of the films I predicted for nominations 4 of them are still standing). Bye Sherpa! Glenn is even better than me at Documentary predictions. Check out this prediction he tweeted back in October and all the films are still in the running:

As of right now I'd be predicting... 1. What Happened, Miss Simone? 2. Cartel Land 3. Winter on Fire 4. Look of Silence 5. Best of Enemies

— Glenn Dunks (@glenndunks) October 11, 2015

Noteable High Profile Omissions
Though these films made a name for themselves at the box office or with honors from various organizations none of them made it to the finals:  The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Dark Horse, Deli Man, Dior and I, Iris, Janis: Little Girl Blue, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, Meet the Patels, Only the Dead See the End of War, Stray Dog, Sunshine Superman, The Russian Woodpecker, and The Wolfpack

NBR takes Fury Road... but to where?

The National Board of Review used to be the unofficial kick off to awards season / best of year honors but though it's still early, the race for "first" got so ridiculous that we've crept into November of late. They lost that distinction but they're still doing their thing super early in December. The first day of it. Welcome to month twelve!

THEY LOOKED AT ME. THEY LOOKED AT ME.

This year they named George Miller's feminist action epic Mad Max Fury Road as the year's best and we salute them since we love it so and it's peak spectacle filmmaking. But Furiosa will be pissed to hear that they mostly ignored the other big female driven films this year.

Let's investigate after the jump...

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