In case you missed part one of this year's shots column, be sure to catch up before diving into the final five here today.

I glanced back at some prior lists yesterday for formatting reasons and was surprised to note that my closing commentary on the 2010 collective was remarkably similar to the sentiments I conveyed yesterday, namely the notion that a year thin on striking singular images makes my appreciation of the work that much stronger because of what goes into digging them up. Interesting.

Regardless, last year I was remiss in leaving out a few honorable mentions, which had been a bit of a tradition, so before getting to today's run-down and the top five shots of 2011, let's take a quick look at a few of the images that just missed making the cut.

For instance, I can't deny the vertigo-inducing effect of rising above Tom Cruise and looking down the face of the Burj Khalifa in “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.” The closing frame of “The Descendants,” meanwhile, ties up its narratively warmly and succinctly with three members of a family snuggled under remembrance of another (as the blanket in the shot is the one we see in the hospital, in case you missed that).

The overhead glimpse of a vicious warrior in “13 Assassins” preparing for further combat as crimson blood trickles passed him in a stream stuck out to me when I saw the film earlier this year. And a long, patient shot of Lisa Cohen in the distance walking out into the living, breathing world as she learns its harsher ways really connected in “Margaret” (though I can't sample it for you here as screeners of the film weren't sent to press).

And then, of course, there are plenty of other stunning frames from “The Tree of Life,” whether they be owed to effects (like a vision of the earth as a dot against a fiery sun, embossing the film's central theme) or simply beautiful staging and photography (like the reflected image of Mrs. O'Brien moving in one direction outside their home, as her husband moves in the other direction inside, a wonderfully expressive beat that accents yet another theme).

There are always many to be assessed, but they all give way to 10. And today, to five. So let's dive in…

#5

“MONEYBALL”
Director of Photography: Wally Pfister

“Our earliest conversations about the style and look of the film was that Bennett [Miller] wanted to have it grounded with a real indie feel, regardless of who we were putting on the screen and what the subject matter was. We looked at 'Sugar' and a lot of other great stuff. Bennett described the locker room, the weight room, the hallways as the submarine, and the stadium was 'above water,' and that made it very clear to us where the delineation was and the difference between those two environments.”

–Wally Pfister, Movie City News*

I found “Moneyball” to be a meticulously crafted film and was happy to see its film editing singled out by the Academy this year. The construction of the film, scene-to-scene, is very much a part of its power. But Wally Pfister's photography was award-worthy, too, finding the right moments to accentuate precise relationships of character with environment. (And he's our returning champion this year!)

One running current I found compelling throughout the film was Billy Beane's (Brad Pitt) relationship with the baseball field. He nearly jinxes his team's win streak by returning to the field at one point, while a torrential downpour greets him at Fenway Park during a job interview. It's as if he's not welcome on the diamond, and his place is in the bowels of a stadium, changing the game.

But one moment toward the end of the film ties that thread together nicely as Beane walks out onto the grass of Oakland's Coliseum and lies on the ground, finally able to have that intimacy with the field. One shot preceding it, of Beane walking out (used for the poster) is aesthetically rich, but this one has more feeling, particularly since its viewed as security camera footage, as if we're peeking in on this private, important moment in the character's life.

#4

“TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY”
Director of Photography: Hoyte van Hoytema

“We wanted to build up the paranoia in one single shot as a real time build-up, adding elements progressively: starting from them getting out of the car, the car suddenly speeding off and during that dialogue the plane landing. It was shot on a ridiculously long lens to tighten the actions happening on the various planes. Throughout the film, the camera is observant at times, almost voyeuristic. We wanted to create a feeling that people where being watched by yet another pair of unknown eyes. The whole MI6 world was primarily about people peeping on each other, and people moving around in secrecy. We tried to make the language very unsettling at times.”

–Hoyte van Hoytema

So much of Tomas Alfredson's “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” is about a sense of paranoia and heightened awareness of “the other.” And one image from the film really nailed that vibe with an unsettling mix of performance, framing and background action.

As Gary Oldman's George Smiley lays it all out to fellow British Secret Intelligence Service member Toby Esterhase (David Dencik) and how he's been played by Soviet spymaster Karla, a twin propeller airplane lands in the background. The shot is held as the airplane wheels to a stop, Smiley never looking back once but Esterhase ever aware.

It's an arresting image because of the long lens used, making the airplane appear closer than it is throughout. But it also builds on that claustrophobic, unsettling atmosphere threaded throughout. It's really become something of an identifying frame from the film, actually. (Hoytema's work in 2008's “Let the Right One In” turned up in the #1 spot that year.)

#3

“HUGO”
Director of Photography: Robert Richardson

“With a 3D rig, you have a very large camera and matte box, so technically you're looking at something that's like two feet. It's an extraordinarily large shape. What happened was Sacha [Baron Cohen] was looking toward Asa [Butterfield], and he began to lean down toward Asa. But because his lean requires the camera to move in order to frame him, the matte box and every other element of the camera moved along. So he kept continuing to move deeper, and that shot became itself because Sacha had to reach Asa, but he couldn't see him by nature of the technical properties of the camera rig. After we saw that, Marty decided he would make it a part of what he was doing.”

–Robert Richardson

Martin Scorsese's leap not only to 3D filmmaking, but to fully endorsing it and its place in the progression of cinema, was one of the bigger stories of the year, I feel. And in “Hugo,” he went to great lengths to employ the technology as a story-serving device, as opposed to a mere gimmick.

For cinephiles, it's already intriguing that Scorsese would go there. But to bring his trusted and talented frequent collaborator Robert Richardson along for the ride was icing on the cake.

A number of images were fetching for this reason and that. And even without the 3D, Richardson's color palette is a gorgeous one. But I felt that the unsettling effect a shot of actor Sacha Baron Cohen moving closer and closer to the camera as he interrogates the titular character, his face pushing further and further into the audience, really stuck out. Funny that, according to Richardson, it was an effect discovered purely by accident. (Richardson showed up on last year's list with a shot from “Shutter Island.”)

#2

“THE IDES OF MARCH”
Director of Photography: Phedon Papamichael

“It's the two sides of the coin. In front of it, ironically, he's giving his speech at the same time. He's selling and representing the facade, and in the back you have the sort of inner unraveling of the inner doings of the machine. That was not preconceived too much. That flag went up and then when I lit the stage we saw it had this transparent value. I said to Clooney, 'We've definitely got to stage something back here and play these small figures silhouetted.' It's almost like the anti-'Patton' shot. It sort of naturally fell in place but it just applies, also, so perfectly.”

–Phedon Papamichael

George Clooney's “The Ides of March” was unfortunately cast aside for the most part this season (though I'm thankful it was remembered by the writers). I personally always felt Phedon Papamichael's photography was exemplary, finding slick but purposeful ways to capture the rather straightforward narrative.

The shot of campaign consultants Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling) and Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) standing behind an American flag as Clooney's political candidate gives a speech to a crowd on the other side is almost too obvious. (Indeed, an LA Times piece looking to crib off this column's conceit already covered it a bit.) But it's also too good to pass up.

The ideas are clear and striking: the men behind politics, in the shadows, pulling the strings. And as the quote above illustrates, it's a shot that was purely suggested by the production design of the film, a great illustration of synergy in filmmaking.

#1

“THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN”
Previsualization Supervisor: Jamie Beard

“When we started animating ideas for Steven [Spielberg] and Peter [Jackson], years ago, we would do it with a single camera, no editing, mainly so we could show the idea and not lock Steven into anything. By doing that it made us often have to compose with a lot of deep staging and complex choreography. Buster Keaton was a huge inspiration for us. He would often keep the camera rolling and do very complex deep staging. When we started to try and edit them together, what Steven realized was that he really loved that single camera technique, particularly for this sequence. So he actually threw down the gauntlet for us. He loves the single camera technique, which he's used since “Duel”; he loves keeping the camera rolling so that you don't have the chance to blink.”

–Jamie Beard

I'm very aware: this is cheating. I've never included or really considered animated films for this annual piece because it goes against the grain of its intention: spotlighting photography and photographers.

However, as previs supervisor Jamie Beard makes clear above (and he was ultimately THE best person to talk to about this shot), this stunning moment from Steven Spielberg's “The Adventures of Tintin” — a single “take” motorbike chase through the stepped streets of a Moroccan village — was fully suggested by camera movement. And since the sequence began with practical filmmaking elements — cameras, actors, staging, etc. — it felt like the cheating was okay.

And regardless, the exhilaration of the shot can't be dismissed. “Tintin” was one of the year's best films, a burst of creative cinema from a mind desperate for decades to capture moments just like this one, but inhibited by the limitations of the medium. Here he and his collaborators cooked up the defining image of the film, the defining element of that desperate imagination. How could it not be the shot of the year?

And there we have it! The top 10 shots of 2011. Feel free to discuss these and your thoughts on them in the comments section below, and as always, do offer up your own choices for images that might not have made the list.

*Wally Pfister was unavailable for original comment.

The top 10 shots of 2011: part one

***

The top 10 shots of 2014

The top 10 shots of 2013

The top 10 shots of 2012

The top 10 shots of 2011

The top 10 shots of 2010

The top 10 shots of 2009

The top 10 shots of 2008

The top 10 shots of 2007

Whether you’ve been delighted or irritated by the publicity machine surrounding him, you’d have to agree that few stars this season have been run quite as ragged in their promotional duties as Uggie: in his position as official mascot for “The Artist,” the adorable 10 year-old Jack Russell has been carted around from one red carpet do to another, performed tricks on demand, conducted interviews, with nothing but an unnamed shaking disease for his pains. Well, after months of helping his cohorts win awards, he received one of his own on the weekend: inevitably, Uggie took the Best Dog in a Theatrical Film prize at the Golden Collar Awards, beating, among others, his own performance in “Water for Elephants.” Well deserved, boy. Now, go play. [The Odds]

With “The Artist” poised to break the trend, Tom O’Neil wonders why movies about the movies haven’t previously done better with the Academy. [Gold Derby]

“The Guard” has taken The Guardian’s annual First Film Award, ahead of such shortlisted contenders as “Tyrannosaur” and “Sleeping Beauty.” [The Guardian]

ZOMG Bradley Cooper is presenting at the Oscars! Oh, come on, feign excitement. (Anyone else betting he gets to do Best Foreign Language Film? In French?) [Deadline]

Lowen Liu’s idea for fixing the Oscars: hold a re-vote on categories from a decade ago, then hold a ceremony officially reallocating the awards as necessary. [Slate]

Erik Childress predicts next year’s Oscar contenders. Given that “The Artist” wasn’t on anyone’s list a year ago, wouldn’t it be more fun to predict the high-profile failures? [Movies.com]

With the film long gone from the conversation — if, indeed, it was ever there — Darrin Franich wonders how “Contagion” never got any Oscar traction. [EW] 

Sophia Savage talks to Philippe Falardeau, director of “Monsieur Lazhar” — which should not be underestimated in the foreign-language Oscar race. [Thompson on Hollywood]

Opening up a painful avenue of what-if thinking: what are the best Oscar speeches that never got to be delivered? I still regret not hearing Mickey Rourke’s. [The Film Experience]

Director James Spione”s Oscar-nominated short documentary “Incident in New Baghdad” focuses on one of the Iraq War”s most controversial events. On July 12, 2007, two Apache helicopters opened fire on a group of people in Baghdad, killing two Reuters journalists and a number of other unarmed civilians. Nearly three years later, in April of 2010, WikiLeaks released classified footage of the incident from a gunsight camera, turning the eyes of the world toward what became known as the “Collateral Murder” video.

One of the first infantry soldiers to reach the scene on the ground, Ethan McCord, also became the only veteran willing to speak publicly about the events of that day. McCord saved two children who were caught in the fire and later became an outspoken supporter of the anti-war movement, as well as the primary subject of Spione”s documentary short. You can take a look at a clip of McCord”s description of the killings in an excerpt from the film here and, if you so choose, the actual “Collateral Murder” video here.

I must warn that this is some fairly graphic material. It is unspeakably horrible to witness the deaths of these men. In terms of the perspective we are given on the military, however, the most disturbing aspect of the footage is the sense of disconnect. The soldiers giggle intermittently as they open fire on the men, and then later on, the van attempting to pick up the wounded (a van that carried the two children). One laughs outright when he realizes he has run over a body.

Perhaps it is a detachment born of necessity. One gets the sense that the soldiers in the Apaches are getting caught up in the situation, that the sense of enmity feeds on itself. I cannot know what it is to live a soldier”s life, to fight in a war and exist under that threat death day-in and day-out, though. I accept the limited reach of my own perception, and yet I also cannot deny that the behavior is chilling.

There is humanity present as well, of course. McCord and the members of his unit who discovered the children can be seen running with them and attempting to get them to safety. Sadly, they were instructed by their commanding officers to leave the children to the Iraqi forces and the local medical care.

In terms of culpability, some of the men who were cut down in the initial fray were indeed armed. Yet as you can see in McCord’s recounting of the events at the Tribeca Film Festival, he maintains that the weapons were likely taken out for show, as a demonstration for the journalists, and presented no true danger.

I”ve not been to Iraq, and cannot speak to the war there or to what happened that day. It is impossible to know what any one of us might do if we felt our lives were in imminent danger. But I have been to an area of conflict. And McCord”s description of citizens showing off weaponry for the cameras was eerily reminiscent of my experience. I remember kids showing me their guns, hoping to get on camera, hoping to be seen. We must concede that in certain times and places weapons may be visible without denoting the presence of a viable threat.

As to the “Collateral Murders,” the U.S. military claimed that the soldiers were engaged in a combat situation against hostile forces; Reuters demanded an investigation and the military ruled that the Rules of Engagement had been observed. The military refused to release the video of the incident per Reuters”s request, but someone did leak it, opening the door to one of the most heated moments (just this side of Abu Ghraib) in the Iraq war.

Sadly, McCord describes the events of that day as just one of many, citing another where he witnessed a Bradley (tank) fire on a van filled with kids, after which he saw the Iraqi police pull pieces of the slaughtered children from the decimated vehicle.

The Dissenter reports that McCord’s participation on Spione”s documentary has once again stirred the hornet”s nest of controversy. The former soldier has become the subject of repeated death threats following the attention that the Oscar nod has afforded the film. The bulk of the threats are coming from the soldiers McCord served with in the 2-16 Infantry, men who feel betrayed by his rejection of the purpose and validity of their mission and, in fact, the entirety of the Iraq war.

McCord has a simultaneously stoic and proactive response to the volatile reactions of his former brothers in arms. “I did live with these guys for quite some time,” he said. “I do know what they are capable of. I”m challenging their views, challenging the actions of people and what”s the first thing that”s going to happen? They”re going to get angry.”

Understanding that an ideological threat can easily translate into physical violence, McCord has purchased a handgun in order to protect his family. It”s striking and heartbreaking to track the back and forth between McCord and those he served with. It feels like such a perfect reflection of how conflicts build and thrive in the broader arena. Wars are primarily fought by nations who are hoping to gain or maintain access to resources. But the cold decisions based on economic needs are often made by those who will never truly be touched by the bloodshed and loss.

There is no one simple answer for why a solider consents to fight. But over the course of history, the heat of (many) wars, the motivations that fuel the soldiers who see them through day to day and the citizenry who accept their necessity can be found in the well of identity and the belief that whatever or whomever threatens our notion of who we believe ourselves to be must be destroyed. McCord is offering up a version of the events of July 12, 2007 that calls the legitimacy of the military”s actions into question. The response on the part of his fellow soldiers? To threaten to kill him.

Social issue documentaries can be very frightening to those they confront. They do run the risk of falling into myopic or proselytizing realms, but they also often shed light on issues that may have otherwise escaped our notice. Spione has shaken the dust off the skeletons in the closet of a war that has just recently ended, but that many at home had already forgotten existed, a war which few of us fully understand.

The director has been accused of offering a skewed and false perspective with his film. Naysayers contend that McCord”s account is limited at best and false at worst. Spione has responded to the critique by inviting the other soldiers who were present during the “Collateral Murder” incident to participate in a longer form documentary. If any of them do step forward, it will be enlightening to hear (and attempt to comprehend) their point of view about what it is they were doing there and why.

In the interim, you can look to the “Incident in New Baghdad” website for available screenings of the short.

For year-round entertainment news and commentary follow @JRothC on Twitter.

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(The Oscar Guide will be your chaperone through the Academy’s 24 categories awarding excellence in film. A new installment will hit every weekday in the run-up to the Oscars on February 26, with the Best Picture finale on Saturday, February 25.)

Quick, what do Walt Disney, Jean-Claude Carrière, Taylor Hackford, Christine Lahti, Andrea Arnold, Martin McDonagh and that bloke who directed “The Devil Wears Prada” all have in common? If you wouldn”t have needed the headline of this post to tell you that they all won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film, then you are a sage and dedicated Oscar scholar. If you didn”t know that, however, you might now realize that the winner of this humble award, used by many a viewer as a bathroom break opportunity, is often a name worth filing for future reference.

Whether any of this year”s nominees in the category have quite such bright futures ahead of them is open to question – well, except in the case of Terry George, twice Oscar-nominated in the past for feature film work. For my money, it”s a below-par field this year, with one clear standout – I hope the Academy agrees, and not just because I want to repeat my 3-for-3 prediction tally in the short races. If you fancy making your own educated guess, the films are currently in selected theaters, courtesy of Shorts International.

The nominees are… 

“Pentecost” (Peter McDonald and Eimear O’Kane) 

“Raju” (Max Zähle and Stefan Gieren)

“The Shore” (Terry George and Oorlagh George)

“Time Freak” (Andrew Bowler and Gigi Causey)

“Tuba Atlantic” (Hallvar Witzø)

As usual, it’s a pleasingly international slate, with one entry from the US pitted against two from Ireland, one from Germany and one from Norway. For the last two years running, the lone American nominee has triumphed — though this is an award the Academy is often happy to export, and I have a feeling that’ll be the case this year. 

One of two 10-minute films in the running, Peter McDonald“s “Pentecost” is comfortably the slightest – and shabbiest. A cutesy, one-joke exercise in Irish whimsy, drawing strained parallels between the duelling religions of Catholicism and football, it tells the story of Damian, a rebellious pre-teen altar boy banned from watching his beloved Liverpool matches after causing trouble in mass. When the archbishop visits his local church, it”s a golden opportunity for the tyke to exact his revenge – but the punchline is a bit of a so-what, and the gags feel mistimed. Cute kids count for a lot with some voters, but this trifle is lucky to be here.

If any voters are feeling broody, they”re likelier to respond to German newcomer Max Zähle‘s “Raju,” a reasonably well-made, well-acted mini-drama covering the topical theme of international adoption, but weakened by its attempts to create moral conflict where none really exists. (It’s “Gone Baby Gone” all over again.) Taking place over a few days in Calcutta, the film follows a childless, clean-cut couple as they complete the process of adopting a saucer-eyed Indian orphan from the slums – or so they think, until the kid disappears and the husband realizes something fishy is afoot. It”s the plottiest and most serious-minded of the nominees, which could give it a leg up in the race, but the thriller element strains credibility, and the film rushes its emotional reversals in the final minutes.

This category is generally the domain of up-and-comers, but Irishman Terry George needs no introduction: the Irish writer-director was Oscar-nominated for the screenplays of “In the Name of the Father” and “Hotel Rwanda.” Things have since taken a turn south, however: after the disaster of 2007″s “Reservation Road,” perhaps downscaling to shorts was a good idea. Sadly, regardless of length, “The Shore” is no return to form: a pedestrian, sentimental story of an Irish emigrant returning to the Emerald Isle after a quarter-century”s absence, it feels distinctly televisual in form, and doesn”t give the great Ciaran Hinds much to chew on in the lead. The presence of familiar names may give the film an advantage with some voters, but others might feel newer talents deserve the exposure more. 

For two years running, a quirk-laden American comedy has taken the prize ahead of more straight-faced contenders. If that pattern continues this year, the beneficiary will be Andrew Bowler“s “Time Freak,” an amiably goofy time-travel skit that plays a little like “The Big Bang Theory” for the indie set – but could probably stand to extend its conceit past 10 minutes. Not unlike “Groundhog Day,” the narrative pivots on a character given multiple opportunities to replay and perfect the same everyday situation, but the film leaves its central logistical paradox unaddressed, and doesn”t push the premise”s absurdities as comically as it could. Still, it”s bright, gamely performed and audience-friendly enough (as evidenced by prizes at several festivals, including Seattle) to be a spoiler in the race.

Still, it”ll have to get past a more layered comic contender in Norway”s “Tuba Atlantic,” by far the most narratively distinct and technically accomplished of the nominees. Hallvar Witzø“s debut effort is already AMPAS-endorsed to some extent: it won the foreign film category at the Student Academy Awards last year. Shot through with a typically mordant Scandinavian brand of black humor and taking full cinematic advantage of its icily desolate coastal landscape, the film portrays the unlikely bond between a crusty pensioner given six days to live and the perky teenage girl appointed as his “Death Angel” by the local authorities: together, they laugh, cry and learn inventive new ways of murdering seagulls. It”s an affecting oddity that also boasts more surface polish than any of its rivals in the category: I”ve a feeling voters will be tickled.

Will win: “Tuba Atlantic”

Could win: “Time Freak”

Should win: “Tuba Atlantic”

Should have been here: (abstain)

(Read previous installments of the Oscar Guide here.)

For more views on movies, awards season and other pursuits, follow @GuyLodge on Twitter. 

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They're heeeeeeerrrrreeeeee. That's right, the images have been assembled, the conversations have been had and the top 10 shots of 2011 are ready for their close-up (or over the shoulder, or two-shot, or insert, etc.).

It's become a bit of a tradition to note in this space that the year in cinematography wasn't particularly compelling on the whole. The 2007 season that first inspired the idea behind this piece (now entering its fifth year) really was an exceptional year for the individual film image.

However, while a year abundant in obvious visual takeaways would make writing this up quite a bit easier, I've grown to appreciate the digging and re-considering a lack-luster year requires. It's forced me to appreciate the images all the more.

With that in mind, this year's collective is very much a reflection of, as usual, the frames that really grabbed me thematically or spoke inner narratives to me in profound ways. So it's almost become a sort of cathartic exercise to better understand a given film year and how it has impacted me, a nostalgic scrapbook saying as much about me and where I am in my appreciation of cinema as it does the work of the cinematographers involved.

Speaking of which, I have to thank the various DPs who hopped on the phone or exchanged a few emails to better contextualize this piece. Year after year, their input and perspective on the various choices is invaluable, and I think you'll again find that to be the case this time around.

A closing note, though, before getting to the shots. I'm very happy that this is such a popular feature that I am asked — incessantly — when it will come out every year, beginning around early December and lasting clear through phase two of the Oscar season. For the record, though, the 2007 list came out on February 21. 2008: January 14 (I was actually on top of it for once). 2009: February 16. 2010: February 22. And now, 2011: February 14. So, for future reference, you will most likely NEVER see this list before early February of a given season, and certainly not as an end-of-year feature in December, as a great many apparently expected this year.

The reason is simple: I have to take the majority of these images from screeners, which I don't fully have in hand until late December. So it's rather impossible to gather everything up, get the DPs on the phone and crank this out before February. Keep that in mind when you get an itch to ask, “Hey, Kris, are you doing your shots column this year?” The answer, of course, is: “YES.” You'll be the first to know when it drops. I promise. :)

Nevertheless, as I said, it's good to know it's become such a hotly anticipated item. So I really do appreciate it.

Now, on to the shots…

#10

“MELANCHOLIA”
Director of Photography: Manuel Alberto Claro

“The plan was always to finish the film with that shot. We actually storyboarded it before finding the location. In the end the VFX guys had to stitch it together from many different plates to create the perfect setting. They made a small-scale 2D model of the magic cave and the actors, which they used for the explosions. In the editing it turned out to be too static before the impact, so we re-shot Charlotte moving in despair and inserted her into the shot. This was during sound editing, a few weeks before finishing the movie.”

–Manuel Alberto Claro

The cinema of Lars von Trier has increasingly reached new visual heights. I felt it hit an apex with 2009's “Antichrist.” Interestingly enough, that film was a personal favorite top-tier effort behind the camera, yet not a single image founds its way onto this column that year. Perhaps it's indicative of the whole being richer than the various separate parts.

“Melancholia,” though, was a film built on cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro's images and their specific impact, I felt, more so than the overall assemblage. Numerous frames stick out for their emotional or visceral effect. Indeed, the entire opening sequence is a cinematic picture book dedicated to the film's various themes.

For me, though, it was the cathartic impact of the film's final image: the titular menace on approach before its ultimate cleansing collision. It took a combination of technology to achieve the look, but it's a stirring image regardless.

#9

“MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE”
Director of Photography: Jody Lee Lipes

“It really makes you feel like she's alone and there's nowhere for her to go. It almost makes you feel like you're not sure if she's going to swim out into the distance and never come back. That's also the first time that you see the whole house that the movie takes place in. I wanted to save seeing that environment looming over her until the very end. We basically had one chance to shoot it because the water was so freezing cold and we were concerned that Lizzy wouldn't be able to take it for too long.”

–Jody Lee Lipes

The construction of Sean Durkin's “Martha Marcy May Marlene” via compelling editing has very much been the story on its craft accomplishments. But Jody Lee Lipes's crisp and fluid photography was an unsung virtue, properly capturing the claustrophobic, paranoid vibe of the narrative.

One image always stuck out to me as something that particularly accentuated the atmosphere the film conjures. Young Martha (Elizabeth Olsen), swimming in a lake near film's end, stares off toward the inwardly-zooming camera at something as the wind ripples the water ominously past her.

Again, though, it's the juxtaposition of imagery that really makes the image pop. The next cut is one of the film's most unsettling, but its impact would have been lessened without the voyeuristic patience of this particular shot.

#8

“THE TREE OF LIFE”
Director of Photography: Emmanuel Lubezki

“We were trying to get all these different feelings and emotions out of not only Sean [Penn], but the architecture and the spaces. Five years later the shot was in that scene and became a little more than what we really shot it for, or what I at the moment thought we were shooting it for. That”s the great thing about working with Terry. Sometimes a shot you think is going to make the cut because it”s wonderful or very expressive or beautiful or scary doesn”t make it, and that one we shot that day with probably 300 more that had to do with the same scene, that one makes the cut, and the way it”s put together in the movie becomes so strong.”

–Emmanuel Lubezki

My pick for the best cinematography of the year was Emmanuel Lubezki's lush lensing of Terrence Malick's “The Tree of Life.” Great photography on a Malick film is something we've come to expect, but it was particularly compelling this time around for its use in an urban environment, something we've never really seen out of the director.

And the image that I found captivating, both in regard to that and to one of the film's many themes: the convergence of man and nature, was this shot of a cloud-filled sky bleeding into the glass facade of a reflective tower. They had a few cracks at it, as there are two other shots in the film's first act that are quite similar, but this one — the next-to-last image of the film — was the most beautiful and perfect representation.

Like the actors of a Malick film, the work of a cinematographer could be bent and manipulated to the director's will, as Lubezki explains in the quote above. There were many great images in the film, but this one seemed to land at just the right time.

#7

“DRIVE”
Director of Photography: Newton Thomas Sigel

“The scorpion was a visual representation of the scorpion and the frog fable. Yet there's obviously this emotional side to Driver that makes him not only fall in love, but be willing to make a sacrifice. Making that sacrifice is sort of done by making the scorpion side come out. And the scene in the elevator is a turning point: There's no going back. There's no, 'That's not really me.' She sees a side that had to come out in order to protect her, and she can't embrace it. He knows she'll never embrace it, and their relationship will stay one of sacrifice. Framing the scorpion without his head, it shows you that it will be the controller of his destiny.”

–Newton Thomas Sigel

Newton Thomas Sigel is one of my favorite working cinematographers, so getting a chance to speak with him for this piece was a real pleasure. But to be able to discuss the imagery of Nicolas Winding Refn's “Drive” made it all the more compelling and stimulating.

The film is exquisitely shot, countless images sticking out as instantly iconic. And the closing frame following the film's intense centerpiece elevator scene was one of the first shots I saw this year that I knew would survive until this column. It's a simple image, the signature scorpion design on the back of Driver's (Ryan Gosling) jacket framed in rusted shadow. But it stood out for reasons I couldn't properly explain.

Sigel's compelling consideration above does a nice job of it, though. With that in mind, in many ways, the image therefore becomes the crux of the entire visual enterprise, the fulcrum about which its thematic structure ultimately pivots.

#6

“SHAME”
Director of Photography: Sean Bobbitt

“We always talked about the weighting of the frame and how you can place things within so you avoid the center-weighting of composition until that moment that it really counts. So for a lot of the film, it's consciously framed off-center. The way the light falls across the body and across the folds of the sheets, it felt right to leave the space. But also by putting his head so close to the edge, it does make it just slightly disconcerting, just a little uncomfortable. And his eyes are so compelling, you're sort of drawn up into the top of the frame. If he was put dead center, I don't think it would strike you.”

–Sean Bobbitt

Steve McQueen's “Shame” brings the first returning DP to this year's installment of the column: Sean Bobbitt. He previously popped up rather high on 2008's list for his work on McQueen's “Hunger.” Both that film and their latest collaboration, “Shame,” feature actor Michael Fassbender. And, interestingly enough, both shots featured Fassbender on a bed.

The context of that fact is much different this time around, however. The previous image was all about a starving Bobby Sands, his soul desperate to escape his self-inflicted torment. Here, it's about a no-less tormented Brandon Sullivan, his soul suppressed behind icy blue eyes as he wills himself to get out of bed.

It's the film's opening image, and it sets the emotional tone, the overriding theme and the lead character's disposition all at once. It uses Fassbender's physicality to accent his shame laid bare, his inner monologue loud and clear, and it also signals the patient photography you'll see throughout the film, already a hallmark of McQueen/Bobbit cinema.

Continue to part two and the top five shots of the year!

***

The top 10 shots of 2014

The top 10 shots of 2013

The top 10 shots of 2012

The top 10 shots of 2011

The top 10 shots of 2010

The top 10 shots of 2009

The top 10 shots of 2008

The top 10 shots of 2007

The showbiz-geek fascination with the holy grail of the EGOT – that is, an individual who wins Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony Awards over the course of their career – is something I don”t entirely share in, largely because because at least one of the wins always comes with some kind of diminutive asterisk. (Seriously, should spoken-word Grammys even count? Call me when someone wins a Best Actress Oscar, Album of the Year and the Nobel Peace Prize. In a single year.) Still, I”d never have guessed that the first new member of the club in over 10 years, joining the likes of Whoopi Goldberg and Audrey Hepburn, would be super-producer Scott Rudin: he made the list on Sunday by sharing “The Book of Mormon””s Grammy for best musical-theater album. At least the man behind “Extremely Loud” and “Dragon Tattoo” has won something this season. [Carpetbagger] 

Ed Gonzalez on why “A Separation” will lose the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. I fear he’s probably right. [Slant] 

Nathaniel Rogers breaks down the “Bridesmaids” scenes that presumably earned Melissa McCarthy her unlikely Oscar nod. [The Film Experience]

Hadley Freeman interviews “god of gravitas” and dark-horse Best Supporting Actor hopeful, Max von Sydow. [The Guardian]

Michael Coleman sits down with the sound team of “Hugo,” who won the BAFTA on Sunday and could well take the Oscar. [Below the Line]

Nick Davis on the best visual effects of the year, including two films totally shortchanged by the Academy in that category. [Nick’s Flick Picks]

I feel a bit bad for Viola Davis having to constantly field questions about Meryl Streep. But she does so with such grace. [The Race]

From Gary Oldman to Asghar Farhadi to Thelma Schoonmaker, David Poland rounds up his impressive season’s worth of interviews with this year’s Oscar nominees. [Hot Blog]

I’m just going to quote this headline as is: “Meryl Streep’s British ancestor ‘helped start war with Native Americans.'” Because that’s how much we have left to talk about. [The Telegraph] 

BERLIN – You may have noticed a lack of Berlinale updates over the weekend – to apologize for that would be to suggest, presumptuously, that you missed them, but please accept my excuses for slacking off anyway. Between a flurry of screenings – which finally, after a tepid start, unearthed some B-plus-plus efforts, though from exactly the sources I”d been expecting – a flurry of snow, a blurry of BAFTAs and an awful lot of queuing for tickets, there weren”t too many waking hours to process what I”d actually seen.

Plus, you know, there was the “Iron Sky” party to attend. In a festival starved for silliness, the sci-fi flick, a sci-entry in that hoary old what-if-the-Nazis subgenre, was a hot ticket right up until the moment it screened – so much so that I, along with many other journalists, was shut out of the Saturday press screening. This prompted enough collective vocal dismay that the festival steward manning the door told us, with customary German delicacy, to “disband before I call security.” Being a critic has never felt so righteous.

No matter: friends who did make it to “Iron Sky” me that the film was everything you”d expect and less from a film about Nazis in space starring Udo Kier. And it can”t possibly have matched the WTF factor of the premiere party at a central Berlin club, where guests questionably clad in SS regalia milled around to grinding Teknomusikk, as waitresses in frilly Alpine garb handed out pretzels from giant wicker baskets. At least when Gaspar Noé remakes “The Sound of Music,” I”ll know roughly what to expect.

After that, even the most pedestrian film would have been comforting, but a few were rather better than that, as the Competition picked up with two weighty works, one Sundance story made good on its across-the-pond hype and one name documentary matched expectations of both its subject and pedigree. (I”m still chewing on Christian Petzold”s “Barbara,” so will save it for a later round-up, but I don”t mind saying it”s easily my film of the festival so far.) What”s particularly notable is the strong showing for actresses, both fresh and familiar, over the past two days of programming: Isabelle Huppert, Charlotte Rampling, Nina Hoss and Andrea Riseborough are all front and center in their Berlin outings, though one of them drew the short straw in  the script department.

We”ll begin with Riseborough, an evidently intelligent and talented actress whom I”d nonetheless begun to despair of ever actually liking, despite the industry”s persistent attempts to sell her to us as a bluestocking alternative to Carey Mulligan. Critics have played along, portraying her as a stoically brilliant survivor of the wreckage of “W.E.” and “Brighton Rock” – but she wasn”t terribly good in either of these false starts, and it was always going to take a vehicle of some gravity and dexterity to show us what she”s really got.

That vehicle has arrived in the shape of “Shadow Dancer,” a trim, taut, tidy IRA thriller that sees director James Marsh, still best known for his documentary work, extend the coolly, methodically drab approach to recent British/Irish history that he mastered in his segment of the recent “Red Riding” trilogy. Riseborough plays Collette, a working-class Belfast radical who, after being arrested for the attempted bombing of a London underground station, must become a mole for the British government, effectively trading one state of justified paranoia for another. Riseborough fills out the character with a quiet, bristly wariness, shifting where necessary to more calculated girlishness as she feels her way out of authoritarian traps. It”s smart, empathetic work, and if once or twice we catch her overplaying the underplaying, a shade too evidently aware of the role”s strength, the film around her sometimes does the same thing.

Marsh”s keen, unpretentious documentarian”s eye may well serve his narrative filmmaking even better than it does the likes of “Man on Wire” and “Project Nim,” where his storytelling instincts occasionally overwhelmed his observational ones. Here, they”re comfortably in balance, his patient scene construction and grainy atmospherics – set in 1993, the film looks very much like it was shot then, and not in a pre-distressed way – lending a ring of authenticity to a carefully plotted exercise in tension. If the film”s structural beats get a little predictable, the story itself doesn”t: it”s surely the most candid and least sensationalized study we”ve yet seen of a woman”s place within the IRA. To the end, Riseborough”s Collette remains neither the anti-heroine nor the victim we keep expecting, perhaps even wishing, her to be.   

If Riseborough”s stripped-back sobriety in “Shadow Dancer” is impressive, she has some way to go in the actress-as-martyr stakes before she can match the peerless Isabelle Huppert, who seems to be spending her middle age actively seeking out the most physically and emotionally gruelling projects she can find, and laying herself bare to their challenges. Most Western actors would baulk at a phone call from Brillante Mendoza, the Filipino provocateur who caused a stir at Cannes in 2009 with “Kinatay,” a formally admirable long-night”s-journey-into-day anti-thriller, explicitly detailing the rape and dismemberment of a prostitute at the hands of corrupt policemen. For Huppert, the jury president who handed Mendoza a prize for that very film, such a collaboration is all in a day”s work.

Happily, if not quite pleasurably, the two firebrands bring out the best in each other in “Captive,” a propulsive pummelling of a survival drama dramatizing the true-life ordeal of over 20 tourists and missionaries held hostage for over a year by the Muslim Abu Sayyaf rebel group in the Philippines ten years ago. The characters have been fictionalized, but their suffering hasn”t: with mud on the lens and an aptly loose commitment to structure, Mendoza dives into this sweaty worst-case-scenario with vivid, unsubtle sensory aggression.

Not as putatively shocking as “Kinatay” – though there”s still plenty here to rattle the squeamish, including the most up-close-and-personal childbirth scene I can recall in a feature film – the film is, in its own way, an equal endurance test, with a generous, not-unfelt running time and unnervingly consistent pacing mirroring the victims” own indefinite captivity. Huppert, back in elemental, dirty-nailed “White Material” mode, unravels brilliantly as a French social worker who remains the most outspoken of the hostages, even as friend-enemy boundaries blur over the course of a year; there”s striking support, too, from Kathy Mulville as a British tourist whose bottled sense of disbelief at the her misfortune overwhelms her in a key outburst.

The film is sharper on experience than argument: that it”s Mendoza”s first largely English-language film may partly be accountable for the dialogue”s over-emphatic underlining of political ironies and hypocrisies on the kidnappers” part. (It”s fair to say that Islam doesn”t get the most diplomatic of shakes in Mendoza”s dramaturgy.) And language issues can”t be held responsible for the film”s overreliance on nature-based visual metaphors for terror, though I”m more forgiving of the director”s most fanciful stroke – a late-game appearance of a dreamily colored CGI parrot in a jungle clearing – than most. Mendoza”s a ferocious attack auteur whose previous films (most recently, the surprisingly thoughtful old-age study “Lola”) deserved greater international arthouse exposure; here”s hoping his well-judged alliance with Huppert brings it.

Like Huppert, Charlotte Rampling is another actress whose adventurous taste in directors has sustained an exciting second act to her career. If it seems her instincts have failed her on “I, Anna,” however, there”s a perfectly reasonable explanation for that: this woefully foggy British semi-noir is the directorial debut of Rampling”s son, Barnaby Southcombe. That”s obviously a hard proposition to turn down, but still, Mom might have gently suggested a few adjustments to Southcombe”s over-structured, under-motivated script, perhaps starting with a new one entirely.

Adapted from a novel by Elsa Lewin, the film casts Rampling as the titular Anna, a sixtysomething divorcee whose speed-dating dalliances embroil her in a murder investigation headed by sad-sack cop Gabriel Byrne. The whodunit question is eminently answerable from the outset – “It”s blue-rinse ‘Basic Instinct!”” the colleague next to me excitedly observed, a mere 15 minutes in – but I”ll admit that we aren”t prepared for later, loopier twists, not least because the film isn”t, either. For his part, Southcombe trusts his mother to deliver the pathos while he and DP Ben Smithard focus on finding the fussiest possible ways to light and frame her: a jolly drinking game could be invented around the camera”s repeated decapitation of characters and through-glassware shots. The actress just about maintains her dignity, but I hope she”s getting more than flowers for Mother”s Day this year.

Finally, a word on “Marley,” Kevin Macdonald”s lengthy but thoroughly absorbing music doc on the life and times of never-to-be-usurped reggae king Bob Marley. After his dalliances with Hollywood fiction and last year”s YouTube experiment “Life in a Day,” this is a fine return to Macdonald”s old-school, Oscar-winning documentary form. It”s already been picked up by Magnolia, and I foresee it doing rather well – perhaps even in the 2012 awards race. If you”re interested, check out my Variety review here. 

Four days in Berlin remain; my next diary entry should feature thoughts on Billy Bob Thornton”s “Jayne”s Mansfield”s Car,” a terrific Melissa Leo performance in “Francine” and whatever bizarrely themed cocktail parties I stumble upon in the interim. Until then. 

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(The Oscar Guide will be your chaperone through the Academy’s 24 categories awarding excellence in film. A new installment will hit every weekday in the run-up to the Oscars on February 26, with the Best Picture finale on Saturday, February 25.)

Predicting the makeup nominees is annually a total crapshoot; predicting the winner, on the hand, is almost always disproportionately simple. That speaks to the vast difference between the branch vote and that of the general Academy: while fellow makeup artists often surprise by leaving out seemingly grabby transformations, less informed voters inevitably gravitate toward the nominee with the most makeup.

This year”s nominee list was predictably unpredictable: any combination of three titles from the seven-film bakeoff in the category, far heavier this year on period than fantasy work, seemed plausible. Only one was unanimously picked by pundits – Meryl Streep”s elaborate, decades-spanning Maggie Thatcher makeover. Though the British biopic would appear to be the frontrunner for the win as well, one other nominee from the UK ensures this race feels moderately less cut-and-dried than usual.

The nominees are:

“Albert Nobbs” (Martial Corneville, Lynn Johnston and Matthew W. Mungle)

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” (Nick Dudman, Amanda Knight and Lisa Tomblin)

“The Iron Lady” (Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland)

The four films left on the sidelines were “Anonymous,” “The Artist,” “Hugo” and wild-card bakeoff pick “Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life,” though none of these omissions raised as many eyebrows as “J. Edgar””s failure to make the shortlist in the first place – the crusty ageing job on Leo DiCaprio and Armie Hammer seemed primed for recognition in the category, but branch members clearly agreed with the critics that the stiff results weren”t worth their weight in latex. A good call on their part, though I still wish voters would focus less on overtly altered appearances and more on subtler evocations of period looks in such films as “A Dangerous Method” and “Jane Eyre.”

After the film”s soggy reception on the fall festival circuit, if you”d told most industry observers that “Albert Nobbs” would wind up with as many nominations as “The Tree of Life” and “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” they wouldn”t have believed you. Yet the tepid cross-dressing melodrama is indeed a triple nominee, scoring its least anticipated bid for the low-key prosthetics applied to Glenn Close and Janet McTeer”s 19th-century ladies disguised as workingmen. More adjustments and attachments have been made to their features than meets the eye, and I hear branch members were particularly pleased with the subtlety of the work, but many viewers will find it tough to buy into the masquerade: Close and McTeer simply don”t look a lot like men. Lynn Johnston and Martial Corneville will likely have to remain content with their first nomination, five-time nominee Matthew W. Mungle must wait for a bookend to his 1992 statuette for “Bram Stoker”s Dracula.” 

With its vast ensemble of well-known actors hiding behind assorted fantastical disguises and tangled hair pieces, you”d expect the “Harry Potter” series to be something of a mainstay in this category – yet the surprising truth is that while closing chapter “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” earned the boy-wizard franchise its fifth BAFTA nod for makeup and hairstyling, this is the very first time the Academy has relented in this category. That makes first-time nominees Nick Dudman, Amanda Knight and Lisa Tomblin“s chances hard to gauge: conventional wisdom would dictate that if these familiar creations haven”t struck the Academy as award-worthy before, little will change this year. But the Academy at large has never before been given the opportunity to reward the films here: who”s to say non-branch voters wouldn”t have wanted to vote for, say, Ralph Fiennes”s unrecognizable Voldemort visage in years past? It helps, too, that the film is far more widely liked than its two rivals in the race: if voters feel like finally throwing a bone to this unrewarded cultural phenomenon, here”s as good a place as any.

However convincing the case for “Harry Potter” on paper, however, “The Iron Lady” has an even stronger one on celluloid: amid its critical mauling, the film”s two components to receive almost unanimous admiration have been its two Oscar-endorsed ones: Meryl Streep”s lead performance and first-time contenders Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland“s astonishing makeup work. That”s hardly a coincidence, of course: their moulding of Streep into Margaret Thatcher”s various severe appearances over the decades, culminating in unsettlingly authentic old age, is the essential enabler to her virtuoso turn. Just as the makeup artists were recognized alongside Marion Cotillard for their joint Edith Piaf metamorphosis at the 2007 Oscars, it”s difficult to appreciate one without the other. Streep may well be in second place in the Best Actress race, but look for the Academy to indirectly acknowledge her effort here.

Will win: “The Iron Lady”

Could win: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2”

Should win: “The Iron Lady”

Should have been here: “A Dangerous Method”  

Keep track of our current rankings in the Best Makeup category via its Contenders page here. 

What do you think should be taking home this gold in this category? Who got robbed? Speak up in the comments section below!

(Read previous installments of the Oscar Guide here.)

For more views on movies, awards season and other pursuits, follow @GuyLodge on Twitter. 

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http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4913958297001

As a wrote in my Oscar Guide piece on the Best Foreign Language Film race a while back, the Academy has compiled a more commendably tough-minded selection of films in the category than usual, and no nominee is tougher than Belgium’s entry, “Bullhead.” A complex, muscular fusion of thriller and character study set in the corruption-riddled European cattle racket, but delving into far darker and more inscrutable psychological territory than the trade of steroid-pumped cows, it’s probably my second-favorite of the nominees.

Michael R. Roskam’s debut feature was an adventurous selection on the Belgians’ part, particularly with the gentler charms and familiar auteur brand of Cannes critics’ favorite “The Kid with a Bike” also in the running, and it was similarly gutsy of the Academy to take it this far in the race. There’s speculation that the executive committee stumped for this challenging contender, though it’s performed well enough at the AFI and Palm Springs festivals — winning prizes for Roskam and his remarkable leading man, Matthias Schoenaerts — to suggest art house audiences are willing to take it on.

Some of you will get a chance to see for yourself when “Bullhead” opens in limited release on Friday, just in time for the end of Oscar voting. Meanwhile, see how you get on with this exclusive clip from the film, foreshadowing a crucial ordeal in the protagonist’s childhood around which the narrative revolves. I won’t spoil anything beyond that, though the repetition of one particular phrase may tip you off.

For more views on movies, awards season and other pursuits, follow @GuyLodge on Twitter.

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We couldn’t rightly lead off a round-up without noting the biggest entertainment news of the weekend: the sad death of singer Whitney Houston just prior to yesterday’s Grammy Awards. Houston crossed paths with the movie industry for the first time in 1992’s “The Bodyguard” opposite Kevin Costner (which was announced by Warner Bros. to be rebooted almost a exactly a year ago). She circled back a couple more times in the 1990s, in Forest Whitaker’s “Waiting to Exhale” and Penny Marshall’s “The Preacher’s Wife.” She will once again be seen on the big screen when Salim Akil’s “Sparkle” releases in August, while her big screen debut will hit Blu-ray on April 10. It seems there’s going to be a lot of Whitney this year, but she will nevertheless be missed. [HitFix]

Meanwhile, this is probably the only celebrity Tweet worth forwarding. [@pattonoswalt]

VFX trailblazer Douglas Trumbull describes his radical 3D experiment to save movies. [Movieline]

Steve Pond reports from the annual AMPAS Sci-Tech Awards. [The Odds]

Clara Sturak talks to “Kung Fu Panda 2” helmer Jennifer Yuh Nelson, “the most successful female director in Hollywood history.” [Awards Daily]

Dustin Hucks sits down with “West of Memphis” (and “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory”) subject John Mark Byers. [Film School Rejects]

Fifteen-time nominee Greg P. Russell gives his thoughts on the sonic progression of a franchise through “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.” [Hollywood Reporter]

Bill Desowitz talks “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” with director William Joyce. [Thompson on Hollywood]

In case the Oscar season wasn’t boring enough, let’s throw in a pundit squabble (and coverage of same). [Hollywood Elsewhere]

“The Deadline Team” corners “My Week with Marilyn” star Michelle Williams. [Deadline]

The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) held its annual awards ceremony this evening, honoring achievement in feature film photography. After dominating the precursor circuit with win after win for his beautiful work on Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” Emmanuel Lubezki walked away with the top prize from his peers.

Will he put a cherry on top of the season in two weeks with an Oscar win, though? I’m still not entirely convinced. And Lubezki is no stranger to having the carpet pulled out from underneath him when he looked like a no-brainer (losing in 2006 to “Pan’s Labyrinth” when his work on “Children of Men” seemed like the one to beat).

Tuesday brings the first part of our fifth annual “Top 10 Shots of the Year” column, and in preparation for that, I’ve been talking to a lot of lensers lately. The vibe I got was that, surprisingly enough, Jeff Cronenweth’s work on “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” not Robert Richardson’s 3D photography on “Hugo” or Guillaume Schiffman’s black-and-white lensing of Best Picture frontrunner “The Artist,” was the one giving Lubezki a run for his money. Fascinating, that.

And speaking of Richardson, who is a two-time Oscar winner, he’s now 0/10 with the ASC. How does that happen?

The other nominee was Hoyte van Hoytema for his work on “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” which was replaced by Janusz Kaminski’s lensing of “War Horse” by the Academy. Kaminski’s ASC snub came as no surprise to him when we spoke briefly at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards last month. “I’m not a member,” he said. Indeed, he resigned from the Society in 2006, but was nominated by them the very next year for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” so I’m not sure how much of an impact his no longer being in “the club” really had. And he might be formidable at the Oscars. “War Horse” sure was purty.

Nevertheless, I’m still counting on Richardson and “Hugo” to prevail in two weeks’ time. For now. It’s one of the more difficult categories to predict this season, I feel.

Previously announced honorary ASC winners were Harrison Ford, Francis Kenny and (a personal favorite) Dante Spinotti.

Don’t forget to check back Tuesday for the first part of our top 10 shots column. And Thursday, we’ll be closing up the weekly Tech Support Interview Series with a chat with, ironically enough, Emmanuel Lubezki.

As always, remember to keep track of the ups and downs of the film awards season via The Circuit.

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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Fresh off “The Artist”‘s BAFTA dominance earlier today, we might as well post last night’s “Saturday Night Live” riff on Michel Hazanavicius’s film. Hey, when you hit SNL, you’ve really made it.

Jean Dujardin stopped by 30 Rock for a bit of shenanigans with gust host Zooey Deschanel and cast member Taran Killam for that French bit, “Le Jeunes de Paris.” It’s not particularly interesting and I’m sure any number of people across the country were thinking, “Who’s that guy?” But they’ll all remember back on this sketch when “The Artist” wins Best Picture in a couple of weeks.

Kristen Wiig made a quick appearance as Bérénice Bejo’s Peppy Miller, so I guess it was kind of neat to see her and fellow Oscar nominee Dujardin cut a rug. It’s not as good as Dujardin’s Funny or Die thing a few days ago, but it’ll do. Check out an embed of the sketch below. Meanwhile, here is HitFix’s Ryan McGee with a recap of the entire show.

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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Well, quelle surprise. While its hometown advantage and impressive haul of 11 nominations gave “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” the appearance of a fighting chance in the BAFTA race, I think we all knew that the Brits, like pretty much everyone else, would fall in love with “The Artist.”

And boy, did they fall hard: with seven wins, including Best Film, Director, Actor and Original Screenplay, the French silent phenomenon completed the most comprehensive BAFTA sweep of the top categories in many a year. (Octavia Spencer, who added yet another Best Supporting Actress trophy to her mantel tonight, must be thanking her lucky stars that BAFTA voters correctly placed Berenice Bejo in the lead race.) “Tinker, Tailor,” meanwhile had to be content with the consolation prize of Best British Film, as well as Best Adapted Screenplay – a distant runner-up if ever there was one.

For the most part, it seemed, BAFTA voters were dutifully following their brief as Oscar bellwethers: Octavia Spencer and Christopher Plummer”s films haven”t the public or critical following in the UK than they do in the US, but their precursor sweep of the supporting categories were unimpeded here. Expect a number of their technical picks to repeat at the Oscars, too: though not nominated in the top race, “Hugo” took a pair of trophies for art direction and sound, no mean feat considering “The Artist” tore its way through costume design, score and cinematography (where “The Tree of Life” was unaccountably not nominated).

Where they veered from the frontrunner consensus, it was usually to recognize their own – or least this year”s honorary Brit, Meryl Streep, who predictably beat Oscar frontrunner Viola Davis to the Best Actress prize for her point-on interpretation of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The Streep faithful will doubtless use this win as a springboard for renewed speculation on her Oscar chances, but should bear in mind that the American legend essentially won the BAFTA the minute she accepted this role.

Parochial voting has its upsides – inaugural Best Documentary champ “Senna””s additional win for Best Film Editing is delightfully well-deserved, and a happy outcome of BAFTA”s branch-only voting system in the technical categories. But it has considerable downsides too: Americans will no doubt be scratching their heads over the public-voted Rising Star Award, where British actor-rapper Adam Deacon (far from a household name in these parts)  was carried by the UK”s texting youth masses to beat a field of more internationally known names.

One offbeat vote that can”t be put down to patriotism was the loopy upset in Best Foreign Language Film, where “The Skin I Live In” beat “A Separation” – presumably due to Pedro Almodovar”s greater name appeal among general voters. As far removed from the Oscar race as that particular winner is, here”s hoping it doesn”t foreshadow a similar surprise on Oscar night.

And that, really, is all I have to say about that: due to the BBC’s infuriating decision to tape-delay the ceremony by two hours in UK, I haven’t actually seen anything but the list of winners. Get a clue, guys.

Check out the full list of winners below, and as always, remember to keep track of the ups and downs of the 2010-2011 film awards season via The Circuit.

Best Film: “The Artist”

Best Actor: Jean Dujardin, “The Artist”

Best Actress: Meryl Streep, “The Iron Lady”

Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”

Best Animated Film: “Rango”

Best Adapted Screenplay: Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” 

Best Documentary: “Senna”

Rising Star Award: Adam Deacon

Best Original Screenplay: Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist” 

Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, “The Help” 

Best British Film: “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” 

Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, “Beginners” 

Best Production Design: Dante Ferretti, “Hugo”

Best British Debut: Paddy Considine, “Tyrannosaur”

Best Foreign Language Film: “The Skin I Live In”

Best Makeup: “The Iron Lady”

Best Costume Design: Mark Bridges, “The Artist”

Best Cinematography: Guillaume Schiffman, “The Artist”

Best Film Editing: Gregers Sall and Chris King, “Senna”

Best Sound: “Hugo”

Best Music: Ludovic Bource, “The Artist”

Best Visual Effects: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2”

Best Live Action Short: “Pitch Black Heist”

Best Animated Short: “A Morning Stroll”

For more views on movies, awards season and other pursuits, follow @GuyLodge on Twitter.

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The Gurus o’ Gold collective of Oscar dorks (yours truly included) at Movie City News have offered up final-ish predictions. I imagine David Poland will give us all an opportunity to change this or that, and certainly, my own picks aren’t final until the Friday or Saturday before the show, but for the most part, these are where the chips lie.

No one is betting against “The Artist” winning Best Picture and Best Director at the moment. The only George Clooney holdouts in Best Actor are Grantland‘s Mark Harris, Entertainment Weekly‘s Dave Karger and The Wrap‘s Steve Pond, three smart guys in this game so that raises my eyebrow. Karger’s colleague Anthony Breznican, though, is way out on a limb for Demián Bichir. The rest of us are picking Jean Dujardin.

The Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell and the LA Times‘ Greg Olsen seem to think Meryl Streep will pull off the Best Actress win over Viola Davis, while everyone agrees Octavia Spencer and Christopher Plummer will triumph in the supporting categories.

In Best Adapted Screenplay, things get slightly more interesting. Poland and Karger are springing for “Hugo” while Harris is springing for “Moneyball.” The rest of us are sticking with “The Descendants,” but something tells me “Hugo” might wind up on top there. Everyone is betting on Woody Allen to steal the Best Original Screenplay win away from “The Artist,” which is actually interesting. Well, not everyone. Howell somehow thinks “A Separation” has more than a snowball’s chance.

Speaking of “A Separation,” everyone but HitFix’s Greg Ellwood is banking on the film to win the Best Foreign Language Film prize. (Ellwood is putting his chips on “Monsieur Lazhar,” which is not at all a bad guess.) And “Rango” is the expected animated feature victor across the board.

As for Best Documentary Feature, things are all over the place. Seven of us are picking “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory,” which is surely a mixture of anticipating timeliness to play a part and the fact the film really is a great distillation of everything the series has offered. No one is picking my current back-up in the field, “Hell and Back Again,” but Deadline‘s Pete Hammond is currently betting on “Undefeated” (as good a pick as any). The rest are banking on Wim Wenders’s “Pina” to take it. The lesson here is that this category could go any which way. More in the doc feature Oscar Guide next week.

In the below-the-line categories, things get even more spread out. The only category we all agree on is Best Art Direction, which each of us foresee going to “Hugo.”

In the cinematography department, most are naturally picking “The Tree of Life,” but Hammond, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone and I are going with “Hugo.” But that’s not the second-place film in the predictions: “The Artist” is, though that’s just because it’s just about everyone’s back-up pick. Only USA Today‘s Susan Wloszczyna is currently betting on the black and white to seal the deal.

Best Costume Design is also rather all over the place. Most are expecting “Hugo” to pull it out, but a few of us have doubts. Ellwood, Movieline‘s Stu VanAirsdale and I are currently picking “Anonymous” (though I am by no means locked in), Stone is picking “The Artist” and Karger and Poland are picking “Jane Eyre.”

“Hugo” is coming out on top, just barely, for Best Editing. It’s almost an even split between that and “The Artist,” which I, along with Ellwood, Karger, Pond and EW’s Breznican are predicting. The only peripheral pick is VanAirsdale’s choice of “Moneyball.”

Best Makeup is mostly “The Iron Lady,” though Breznican, Karger and Poland are all picking “Albert Nobbs.” Hammond and Pond are (interestingly) going with “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.” Meanwhile, Best Original Score is all about “The Artist” (with Breznican’s “Hugo” pick being the lone holdout).

Best Original Song is also largely decided, with almost everyone expecting “Man or Muppet” to prevail. But Stone is somehow on a limb for “Real in Rio.” (It’s not a terrible call or anything, mind you, as I could see it happening. Nevertheless, knowing Stone’s well-documented anti-Muppet thing, I wonder if she just couldn’t bring herself to join the consensus there.)

As usual, the sound categories are all over the place. “Hugo” came out on top in both fields, though. In Best Sound Editing, though, Breznican, Ellwood, VanAirsdale and Wloszczyna are bravely picking “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.” (This is actually the category I think it would win of the two, if any.) Hammond, Harris, Poland and I are on the “War Horse” train here, while Stone is picking “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

Stone is also the only one picking “Dragon Tattoo” for Best Sound Mixing, while VanAirsdale and Wloszczyna are going with “Transformers” (each of them, then, banking on it to win both categories). Things are more of an even split between “Hugo” and “War Horse” here, though, with Breznican, Howell, Karger, Olsen, Pond and Thompson on Hollywood’s Anne Thompson taking the former, the rest of us taking the latter.

And finally, Best Visual Effects. Most of us are sticking with “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” here, but Karger, Poland and Stone are opting for “Hugo.” Something tells me they could be right, as this category feels ripe for an upset.

So, in a nutshell, these are the Gurus’ calls:

Best Picture: “The Artist”

Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”

Best Actor: Jean Dujardin, “The Artist”

Best Actress: Viola Davis, “The Help”

Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, “Beginners”

Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, “The Help”

Best Adapted Screenplay: “The Descendants”

Best Original Screenplay: “Midnight in Paris”

Best Art Direction: “Hugo”

Best Cinematography: “The Tree of Life”

Best Costume Design: “Hugo”

Best Film Editing: “Hugo”

Best Makeup: “The Iron Lady”

Best Music (Original Score): “The Artist”

Best Music (Original Song): “The Muppets”

Best Sound Editing: “Hugo”

Best Sound Mixing: “Hugo”

Best Visual Effects: “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”

Best Animated Feature Film: “Rango”

Best Documentary Feature: “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory”

Best Foreign Language Film: “A Separation”

So, five wins for “Hugo” to four for “The Artist.” I guess all of this isn’t a bad way to go if you’re wanting to enter an idle pool, but the Gurus are neve 100%, obviously, so some of these will certainly be off.

We’ll continue to analyze each field as best we can via the daily Oscar Guide series (which as of Thursday’s Best Documentary Short entry has reached the half-way point). Follow those for more insights along the way to Oscar’s big night on February 26.

Which of the Gurus’ picks do you think they have wrong? What needs to be tweaked from that list of predicted winners? Have your say in the comments section below!

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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Somewhat lost or at the very least under-considered this year when it comes to the Best Animated Feature Film category is the success of indie distributor GKIDS in the field.

As usual, the Oscar is expected to go to the most popular film of the bunch, the film that reached the most eyeballs from a powerhouse studio: Gore Verbinski’s “Rango.” And a very deserved win it will be. But after getting “The Secret of Kells” in back in 2009 and sitting pretty with not just one but two nominations this year, I’d say GKIDS has become a premier destination for alternative contenders in the medium.

“A Cat in Paris” and “Chico & Rita” are gorgeously rendered stories, the latter particularly engaging with its combination of animation and Cuban music. It’s a passionate, adult-oriented ode to a time and place.

But I always wondered what took it so long to find a home. Studios showed some interest back in 2010 (when the film played the festival circuit), but it just kind of floated around, waiting for a buyer for a while. It wasn’t even picked up until September of last year, a full 12 months after it first bubbled up at the Telluride Film Festival.

Well, it turns out the company was interested way back then, but it was a process of pulling teeth to bring it into the stable. According to GKIDS president Eric Beckman, who Jeffrey Wells spoke to recently, the company “chased the damn thing for a year, talking mainly to Cinetic, holder of US rights, and getting nowhere. We finally just called producers of the film directly and we had a deal signed in two weeks.”

Beckman alludes to parallels with this year’s Best Picture frontrunner, “The Artist,” which I hadn’t really considered. Mainly of note is a chunk of “Chico & Rita” dedicated to film history that stands out for cinephiles, surely (and was one of the main reasons I thought it would appeal to Oscar voters when it eventually did see a release).

Director Fernando Trueba, by the way, is no stranger to the Oscar game. He won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1993 for “Belle Epoch.” It’s just a shame that it took so long to get this one percolating in the season, because I think more time might have allowed for serious consideration of Bebo Valdés’s original music compositions to get some traction.

In any case, hats off to GKIDS for being formidable in a field with the big boys of animation. If you weren’t paying attention to them and their Oscar season offerings before, you certainly should from now on.

Here is David Poland’s recent sit-down with Trueba:

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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BERLIN – “Are these real films?” a colleague asked, his tone pitched halfway between irony and incredulity, as he contemplated a potential Berlinale marathon of such appetizingly titled sidebar entries as “The Woman Who Brushed Off Her Tears” and “The Woman in the Septic Tank.” “Or are audiences simply being punked by festival programmers, and no one can stay awake long enough past the opening credits to realize?”

We were killing time in the languidly paced press ticket queue, waiting to be told, rather curtly, that seats for Sundance critical hit “Keep the Lights On” were no longer available – with the wisdom that comes of experience and persistent disappointment, the aforementioned colleague already had his mind on plan B. More subtly coded but even more bewildering than the press-badge caste system at Cannes, the press screening schedule at Berlin is so riddled with conditions and restrictions (access levels to journalists vary from strand to strand, hour to hour, cinema to cinema) that planning a day”s viewing is scarcely less work than filing a day”s tax returns.

Two days in, I”m already fretting over films missed and impending timetable clashes – and that”s before I get to my concerns over what I have actually seen. Three Competition entries in, meanwhile, revelations are as thin on the ground as broadly recognizable names: even by Berlinale standards, it”s been an austere start to the festival. That”s what you get for kicking off delegate screenings with a three-hour-plus Werner Herzog death-row documentary, I guess. (I arrived in town too late to catch it, but word is wearily positive.)

Austerity and mortality were very much on the mind of this morning”s Competition entry, “Aujourd”hui (Today)” – a woozily allegorical life-in-a-day drama from Francophone writer-director Alain Gomis that looks likely to wind up in the upper tier of this year”s Golden Bear hopefuls on its considerable tactile merits alone.

The film”s biggest hook for African cinema laymen may be the unlikely presence of American hip-hop poet Saul Williams (best known on screen for headlining the more tailored US indie “Slam”) in the inscrutable lead role of Satche, a mild-mannered Dakar everyman inexplicably given one day to live at the film”s outset. He”s an appropriately grave, dolorous presence, handed little dialogue that might expose his incongruous accent – though there”s little that a quick blast of “NiggyTardust” wouldn”t fix in the film”s dawdling, metaphorically over-inscribed second half – but a reflective vessel for Gomis”s keener communal concerns.

“Aujourd’hui” opens with an exquisitely protracted sequence of mass mourning, disembodied wails bouncing off silently stricken faces; just as we wonder whose funeral we”ve walked in on, we learn that it”s something of a living wake for Satche, whose death is announced and accepted with no protest, but much ceremony. As in much African folklore, group sentiment stands in for individual experience, and we wind up learning far more about the man from the variously affectionate and wary responses of those he visits on his mortal victory lap – from a Cheshire-cat uncle to an embittered old flame – around a sun-beaten skeleton city that seems to be on borrowed time itself.

The chronologically elastic outcome will inspire debate, while a brief segue into straight-to-camera politicking is ungainly and arrhythmic, but it”s quite literally the local color that compensates in this sensual essay on neo-colonial placelessness: Christelle Fournier”s camera drinks in the brick-dust landscape with a patiently journalistic eye for life at the edges, its yawing wide angles exposing both the social clutter and ghostly absences in Satche”s unhurried final hours.

Would that Tony Gatlif, another French-African auteur troubled by themes of personal and political community, had half as much faith in his imagery as Gomis does. His latest we-are-the-world effort, Panorama entry “The Outraged (Indignados),” follows the stoic misadventures of wide-eyed, wild-haired immigrant urchin Betty (Isabel Vendrell Cortes) as she gets passed from one unwelcoming European shore to another, her victimized voicelessness a handicap the film seemingly never pauses to considers its own complicity in.

Proceedings open with a languorous tracking shot of immigrants” sodden shoes washed up on a Mediterranean beach – a symbolic stroke that scarcely affords the viewer time to contemplate its tasteful obviousness before the director begins tagging his screen with any number of thuddingly self-evident slogans, all idly pinched from Stephane Hessel, to drive home his scantly researched point. “The earth is not a commodity!” a day-glo title card helpfully informs us. “Violence is not a solution!”

Quite true, but neither is this narrow, Occupy-era filmmaking, which smugly traces longstanding social iniquities without offering any provocative arguments for change. You”d call this attractively mounted visual essay designer socialism if Benetton still qualified as designer: by the time the single word ‘Espoir” (hope) pops up on screen in a stencilled typeface that makes it all but indistinguishable from the Esprit label, you have to wonder if Gatlif, whose 2004 Cannes winner “Exiles” covered this worthy thematic ground with far more visual and narrative jazz, is in on the joke.

The day”s second Competition film, Frederic Videau”s grimly compelling but enervatingly formless child-captor study “Coming Home” has its own plucked-from-the-headlines topicality: an opening title card may staunchly insist on the upcoming narrative”s fictitiousness, but it”s impossible to imagine that the horrific story of Natascha Kampusch was far from Videau”s mind when he conceived his time-scrambled script about an 18 year-old girl, Gaelle (the impressively hard-eyed Agathe Bonitzer), unhappily adjusting to liberty after a decade spent in the clutches of a weak-willed kidnapper (Reda Kateb).

It”s the film”s own bad luck to arrive on the heels of Markus Schleinzer”s much-admired 2011 Cannes entry “Michael,” which covered superficially similar ground with more technical panache; “Coming Home” can”t help but feel a superfluous addition, even if it”s more compassionately performed and generously scaled than Schleinzer”s disingenuously tricksy exercise. Indeed, in attempting to give equal consideration to both violator and victim, to both trauma and recovery, Videau”s film bites off a little more than it can chew, its non-linear structure attempting to paper over crucial leaps in emotional logic, imagining moral ambiguities where the lines of right and wrong are exactly as they appear on paper.

I wish more of “Coming Home” centered on the bruised, loving, ultimately irreparable relationship between Gaelle and her shell of a mother (a superb Noemie Lvovsky), and I wish precisely none of it featured the bizarrely peppy synth score that Videau presumably opted for on a dare. Most of all, I wish two evidently skilled filmmakers hadn”t landed on this subject matter in the space of a year, but that says rather more about the world they live in than the films they”ve made.

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Simply by virtue of being the last televised precursor stop en route to the Academy Awards, the BAFTA Awards attract far more eyeballs, and provoke far more speculation, than they would at any other point in the calendar — as an Oscar bellwether, they’re somehow as encouraging to win as they are irrelevant to lose.

On the occasions that they anticipate sharp left-turns in the Oscar race — Marion Cotillard and Tilda Swinton’s wins in 2007, Roman Polanski’s out-of-nowhere triumph in 2002 — people look back and credit the Brits for their influence. On the occasions they go off on their own, often parochial, tangent — Colin Firth and Carey Mulligan’s wins in 2009, for example — people shrug their shoulders and say, “What did you expect? It’s the BAFTAs.” 

This year, BAFTA seems poised precisely between those two courses of prediction and self-assertion: between the two leading nominees, “The Artist” and “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” they can either rubber-stamp the all-but-assured Oscar champion or defensively side with their own neglected pet. Recent BAFTA history points to the former option as the likelier one. For the last three years running, they’ve sided with the eventual Oscar winner — even if, on two of those occasions, they got to keep the home fires burning in the process.

The Best British Film award gives BAFTA voters the get-out clause of exporting their top trophy while still handing a major honor to the home favorite. Formerly an award that routinely recognized offbeat independent fare over nomination-guzzling prestige items (see the victories of “This Is England” over “Atonement,” or “Fish Tank” over “An Education,” as examples), this consolation prize has been defanged now that BAFTA has ditched the select jury that used to choose the winner, and handed the task instead to the general membership: as they automatically check off 11-time nominee “Tinker, Tailor” in the British race, many voters will thus feel liberated to succumb to the suave charms of the French silent.

BAFTA voters have also been offered an easy outlet for their national pride in the Best Actress category — look for Meryl Streep, an honorary Brit this year for her pointed Maggie Thatcher impression, to beat comfortable Oscar frontrunner Viola Davis, even if the voters felt sufficiently cowed by US hype to nominate “The Help” for Best Picture, in spite of its tepid commercial and critical reception on this side of the pond.

More telling, however, will be their choice in the Best Actor race, currently the most malleable of Oscar fields. Gary Oldman’s recently mooted uptick in the race pretty much lives or dies by his countrymen’s vote on Sunday; it seems likelier, however, that they’ll shadow SAG, and thereby foreshadow Oscar, by indulging their Jean Dujardin crush. And if it seems vulgar to relate BAFTA’s choices on Sunday directly to the Oscar derby, without even the briefest pause to consider their own prestige — well, they’re the ones who moved their show to mid-February.

With that, my picks and tips for Sunday’s ceremony:

Best Film
Will win: “The Artist”
Should win: “Drive”

Best British Film
Will win: “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”
Should win: “We Need to Talk About Kevin”

Best Director
Will win: Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”
Should win: Lynne Ramsay, “We Need to Talk About Kevin”

Best Actor
Will and should win: Jean Dujardin, “The Artist”

Best Actress
Will win: Meryl Streep, “The Iron Lady”
Should win: Tilda Swinton, “We Need to Talk About Kevin”

Best Supporting Actor
Will win: Kenneth Branagh, “My Week With Marilyn”
Should win: Christopher Plummer, “Beginners”

Best Supporting Actress
Will win: Octavia Spencer, “The Help”
Should win: Jessica Chastain, “The Help”

Best Original Screenplay
Will and should win: “The Artist”

Best Adapted Screenplay
Will and should win: “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”

Best Foreign Language Film
Will and should win: “A Separation”

Best Documentary
Will and should win: “Senna”

Best Animated Film
Will win: “The Adventures of Tintin”
Should win: “Rango”

Best Art Direction
Will and should win: “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”

Best Cinematography
Will win: “The Artist”
Should win: “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”

Best Costume Design
Will win: “Jane Eyre”
Should win: “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”

Best Film Editing
Will win: “Senna”
Should win: “Drive”

Best Makeup
Will win: “The Iron Lady”
Should win: “The Artist”

Best Music
Will win: “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”
Should win: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”

Best Sound
Will win: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2”
Should win: “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”

Best Visual Effects
Will win: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2”
Should win: “The Adventures of Tintin”

Best British Debut
Will and should win: Paddy Considine, “Tyrannosaur”

Rising Star Award
Will and should win: Chris O’Dowd 

Remember to keep track of the ups and downs of the 2011-2012 film awards season via The Circuit. 

For more views on movies, awards season and other pursuits, follow @GuyLodge on Twitter.

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I wasn't much of an Oscar-watcher in 1999. I was naive enough to think, surely, “The Insider” would be a big winner that year. “Three Kings” would definitely get a few nominations. “Magnolia” would HAVE to be a Best Picture nominee. None of that happened, of course.

I never liked “Star Wars.” Still don't. Not one single entry in the franchise. Look, fans, I respect your obsession, admiration and commitment. But they don't work for me. So when I lined up for “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace” on May 19, a high school senior soon to enter film school (and let me tell you, what a year to be a film school student), I wasn't too pumped or anything. I had a number of friends who were, surely, but even they — some of them on their third and fourth viewing of the DAY — were beginning to cool on it a bit when I finally got there to see it that afternoon.

Technically, the film was a marvel, of course. Particularly in the aural arena. I wasn't all that educated enough to get the minutiae of all this yet, but you get a sense. I was still “meh” on it on the whole, though. And the film seemed to come up short even more because it was opening in the shadow of the true early landmark of that year.

Andy and Larry Wachowski's “The Matrix” hit theaters in March of 1999 after a nebulous marketing campaign that still had me wondering what I was about to see when I went to the theater. Indeed, “What is the matrix?” remains one of the more fetching and curiosity-piquing campaigns building to a movie that I've seen. The movie was a burst of creativity, precisely the kind of thing I needed at that point in my progression, a dazzling, unique glimpse of dystopia.

Fast forward a year to March of 2000 and the annual Academy Awards. “The Matrix” found itself in direct competition with “The Phantom Menace” in three categories: Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing and Best Visual Effects. I was staunchly pro-“Matrix,” but I really didn't expect it to take down a “Star Wars” film in those categories.

But it totally did. The cartoonish effects of George Lucas' dubious prequel were no match for the innovative work done on “The Matrix,” and I still remember visual effects supervisor John Gaeta's acceptance speech to this day, when he offered what sounded like a subtle shot across Lucas' bow: “MVFX's Rob Bobo, thank you very much for putting all of your efforts behind innovation, behind the spirit of doing visual effects in service to a story.” I think he even accentuated those last five words.

Not only that, but the film's audio qualities beat out names like Ben Burtt, Gary Rydstrom and Tom Johnson in the sound categories, which, tied to a Best Film Editing win, made for a clean sweep for the film. “Wow,” I thought. “The Academy's pretty cool.” (HA!)

A few years later the Wachowskis would learn the same thing Lucas did on his prequels, about losing the goodwill of your fans with crappy new installments of your franchise. But in that small window of 1999-2000, it was pretty sweet.

Nevertheless, “The Phantom Menace” is getting trucked out yet again this weekend to soak up some more dollars and line the ole' pockets one more time. I'll probably go see it, though, because I'm curious about the 3D post-conversion. But all of the pomp and circumstance surrounding the latest re-release got me thinking about that nifty night that saw a true underdog blockbuster kick Darth Lucas' teeth in.

Of course, “The Phantom Menace”'s bad Oscar luck was just a harbinger. 2002's “Attack of the Clones” only registered a visual effects nod as the sound branch couldn't be bothered with this stuff anymore. By the time “Revenge of the Sith” rolled around in 2005, even the visual effects guys were out, though the makeup branch did throw it a bone. Still, five nominations and zero wins stretched across the trilogy, compared to 17 and seven from the first (which lapped up three separate special achievement prizes along the way). Yikes.

But what does Lucas care? $430 million at the box office, baby.

But I don't want to end on a sour note, so let me promote a series Drew McWeeny has been doing over at Motion/Captured that is adorable and delightful. He took his son, Toshi, up to Skywalker Ranch a few weekends back for the film's junket, where the youngster had a blast with lightsaber battles and model making and got to meet Darth Maul. Hey, even I won't take that away from a kid with my ennui.

“Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace 3D” opens in theaters nationwide today.

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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