In Contention

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  • Ranking the categories

    The Hurt LockerAh, Oscar lists — the gift that keeps giving. I’m not going to ape Kris’s impressive ranking of all the nominated features: we’d have the same #1, for starters, and we’re agreeing on far too many things these days. So here’s something else to play with.

    I’ve had a number of emails asking me how I would rank the 10 Best Picture nominees, were I filling out the preferential ballot. I was happy to oblige, but then went a little crazy and applied the same process to all the other races. Hey, Oscar day comes but once a year: get your geek on. With that, my personal Oscar ballot, in full preferential order:

    Best Picture
    1. “The Hurt Locker”
    2. “A Serious Man”
    3. “An Education”
    4. “District 9”
    5. “Inglourious Basterds”
    6. “Up in the Air”
    7. “The Blind Side”
    8. “Up”
    9. “Avatar”
    10. “Precious”

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  • Oscar day nuggets: Bigelow and Boal

    Kathryn Bigelow and Mark BoalPlenty of interesting Oscar-related floating around the web on the last day for any such discussion, but two pieces related to tonight’s principal “Hurt Locker” hopefuls stand out.

    Kathryn Bigelow’s likely win tonight will probably prompt some over-optimistic speculation in some quarters about the future of female directors in Hollywood. With that in mind, the L.A. Times’s Rachel Abramowitz seeks to keep those hopes in check with some sobering stats of present-day industry inequality that one Oscar can’t fix on its own:

    Although successful female directors appear to have gained higher profiles of late, the actual percentage of top films directed by women has remained static for 25 years at 7% to 9%, according to an annual study of women writers, directors, and producers of the 250 top-grossing films of the year by the Center for the Study of Women in Film and Television at San Diego State University.

    For instance, neither Warner Bros., the world’s largest studio, nor Paramount Pictures hired a single female director last year, while Walt Disney Studios and Universal Studios hired just one apiece. No woman has ever been hired to direct an event picture with a budget of more than $100 million, the kind of film most valued by the Hollywood machine.

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  • Why ‘Lebowski’ will win Bridges the Oscar

    Jeff Bridges in The Big LebowskiSpot quiz: how many award mentions did Jeff Bridges receive for his inspired comic turn in “The Big Lebowski” 11 years ago?

    If you guessed anything other than a single Satellite Award nod for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical, you’d be wrong. (That’s right, even the Golden Globes preferred Robin Williams in “Patch Adams” to The Dude.) Today, however, it ranks as possibly the most beloved creation in a beloved actor’s career, the character’s nickname having become Bridges’ own in a few short years.

    In a nice EW piece, Owen Gleiberman explains why that performance was never going to catch the Academy’s eye — yet at the same time, is partly responsible for his all-but-inevitable win for “Crazy Heart” tonight. Likening the scenario to disguised career-achievement Oscars for Al Pacino or Kate Winslet (or, more contentiously, Sandra Bullock), Gleiberman nonetheless thinks it’s this one 1998 performance that seals the deal for him.

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  • Sandra Bullock accepts her Razzie Award for Worst Actress

    Well, she said she would. (Video footage of her terrific acceptance speech after the cut.)

    Sandra Bullock Sandra Bullock

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  • If only

    I sometimes get a huge kick out of how I’m apparently perceived by some readers.  Take this email, for instance (which I think is fair enough to post, considering I’m not outing this person explicitly):

    I have a very interesting project for Juan Jose Campanella, ask him please to call or email me. Thank you but it would be much desired if he calls before next Friday 12. Good luck tomorrow.

    As if.

  • Bill Maher skewers Oscar dirty tricks

    EDIT: Well, the videos were pulled by HBO.  I laughed.  Onward…

    The bit starts about 20 seconds in:

    After the jump, a pro-Hollywood product tirade from the same show that could be the kind of opinion that leads to a win for Cameron and company tomorrow night.

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  • Guy’s final Oscar predictions

    Christoph Waltz in Inglourious BasterdsAnd so it comes to this: more months than I care to count of watching, thinking, sweating, fretting, writing, deleting and occasionally not caring boil down to single predictions in 24 categories. There’s a lot to get through here, and I’m not going to delay things with an introduction.

    Well, except for this one caveat — apology, even — of sorts. As you wade through my list, you may notice that my predictions look quite similar to those of one Mr. Kris Tapley. Remarkably similar, in fact. Unhealthily similar, even.

    What can I say? Short categories aside (which were subject to further research), the following predictions haven’t wavered in my mind since nomination day, over a month ago — and I see no compelling reason to go out on a limb this year. Sometimes great minds think alike. Frequently wrong, but alike nonetheless.

    With that, my predictions, preferences and rationales continue, category by category, after the cut.

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  • Andy Trudeau handicaps the original score contenders

    Sherlock HolmesOne of the best parts of Oscar season is NPR’s rundown of the Best Original Score nominees by music critic Andy Trudeau.  The copy is live now, but the audio won’t be up until noon (EST) tomorrow.  He says there’s not a real standout this year, and goes with Hans Zimmer and “Sherlock Holmes” for his prediction.  Last year he picked went with “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” but his “predictions” have increasingly become more about personal preference as of late.

    He has this to say on Zimmer’s compositions:

    The scoring assignment for director Guy Richie’s reimagining of Sherlock Holmes went to Hans Zimmer, a composer whose trademarks are loud and hard. Here, it was the director who urged the composer to change his persona. Zimmer obliged — sort of. Early cuts of Sherlock Holmes were temporarily tracked with Zimmer’s music for The Dark Knight. Rather than trying to match the continuous, pounding energy of that score, Zimmer often went the other way. But this is an action film after all, and the action sequences are where Zimmer is most effective. At one point, with the hero in harm’s way, he has fun with the Westminster Chimes melody — you’ll hear it in the low strings.

    Check out the rest at NPR.

  • Ranking Oscar’s 43 features

    Tahar Rahim in A ProphetLast year I did this just for fun, so I thought I’d give it another whirl.  My ranking of the 43 features nominated for an Oscar this year.  (Interesting to note, last year it was 36 films.  I wonder if it’s always pretty close to 40.)

    Feel free to offer up your list of whatever you’ve seen in the comments section.  The top 10 here, the rest after the jump:

    1. “A Prophet”
    2. “A Serious Man”
    3. “Up in the Air”
    4. “The Cove”
    5. “Avatar”
    6. “Precious”
    7. “An Education”
    8. “The Lovely Bones”
    9. “Star Trek”
    10. “The Messenger”

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  • Nut up or shut up: final predictions

    Jeremy Renner in The Hurt LockerAs I look over my final predictions for tomorrow night’s Oscar ceremony, I notice that I’ve made only one change — in the Best Live Action Short category — since taking my initial stab the day of the nominations.  And I haven’t made a single change since I started the Oscar Guide series.

    Am I that confidant in my picks?  Not really.  It’s a very unpredictable year all of a sudden (the AP chimes in on that here), even if conventional wisdom would have us believe much of this is a foregone conclusion.  But nothing has really moved the needle during the bulk of phase two and the one controversy that popped up may not be as detrimental as some suspect.  Regardless, I’m frankly bracing myself for having an off year.

    And it kinda sucks because I set a pretty high bar for myself last year, a personal best, as I nailed down a web-leading 21 of the 24 categories (23 of 24 if you count alternates).  That included a call for “Departures” that left me exposed to plenty of “You’re just trying to be different” heckling.  Ahem.

    If I even approach those numbers this time around, I’ll certainly be surprised.  I frankly don’t expect to hit 21 ever again, but who knows?  Many areas of this race are coming right down to the wire.

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  • Snark reigns during Oscar season

    Up

    More at College Humor.

  • Oscar’s bookshelf

    SpringPad blog has a nifty graphic illustrating 20 Best Picture-winning films that were adapted from literary works (not other films or plays, if I get the gist).  Trivia nuggets throughout.  Click on the image below for a larger version.

    Oscar bookshelf

  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Picture

    Quenton Aaron in The Blind SideAnd here we are. With one day until the Oscar ceremony, we wrap up our Oscar Guide series with a look at the 10 nominations for Best Picture. Yes, 10. The Academy decided to pump up the intrigue by expanding its Best Picture field this year in an attempt at securing some love for more populist films with a wider audience, and it seems to have worked.

    But let’s face it. The most brilliant irony of the season would be, if after all of its attempts, the field expansion, spiffying up the telecast, etc., the Academy is one-upped by a film that virtually no one saw winning Best Picture. It could happen, but the highest grossing film of all time could also win. No shortage of drama here.

    The nominees are:

    “Avatar” (James Cameron and Jon Landau)
    “The Blind Side” (Gil Netter, Andrew A. Kosove and Broderick Johnson)
    “District 9    ” (Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham)
    “An Education” (Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey)
    “The Hurt Locker” (Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier and Greg Shapiro)
    “Inglourious Basterds” (Lawrence Bender)
    “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” (Lee Daniels, Sarah Sidel-Magness and Gary Magness)
    “A Serious Man” (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen)
    “Up” (Jonas Rivera)
    “Up in the Air” (Daniel Dubiecki, Ivan Reitman and Jason Reitman)

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  • Emotions run high at the Indie Spirits

    Lee Daniels at the 25th annual Independent Spirit AwardsLast night’s Independent Spirit Awards ceremony was quite the touching affair, I have to say.  Early in the evening, tears were shed by Scott Cooper and Geoffrey Fletcher on stage as they accepted awards for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay respectively.  As Cooper and Fletcher are two of the gentlemen I’ve gotten to know more than most this season, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I didn’t get a bit choked up as well.

    Cooper was convinced before the show that Tom Ford was going to take home the prize.  He’s also lining up some interesting assignments (as one would expect).  His “Crazy Heart” train came to an end last night, but the show goes on Sunday as Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, T Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham go on to represent the film at the Oscars.

    I chatted with Bingham for a bit as well, conveying my sentiments regarding the original song contenders getting the axe by Oscarcast producers Bill Mechanic and Adam Shankman.  But I was frankly more livid at Bingham not getting his global audience moment than he was.  The guy couldn’t possibly take everything more in stride.

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  • ‘Precious’ takes five at Spirit Awards

    Predictable to the very last, the 25th Film Independent Spirit Awards honored the most Oscar-favored contender in almost every category they could. (Including a Best Foreign Film win for “An Education.”) Kris might have some first-hand perspective later; in the meantime, check out the winners at The Circuit.

  • Terry Gilliam calls bullshit on the Oscars

    Terry GilliamAs certain as carols on Christmas Eve, you can always rely on the pre-Oscar weekend to bring a surfeit of “why the Oscars don’t matter” pieces — all other angles on the race having been exhausted in the preceding months. Hey, I sort of did one myself yesterday.

    True to form, today we have David Thomson in the Guardian dismissively asking, “Who cares about the Oscars?” (If Mr. Thomson did some digging around the web, he’d be in for a nasty surprise.) Elsewhere, you’ll surely be stunned to learn that Armond White doesn’t approve of the annual ceremony, either: Kathryn Bigelow is better than a stinky Oscar, runs his general argument.

    Both pieces contain several nuggets of truth, but highbrow film critics kicking the Academy to the curb is hardly revelatory. More fun, then, is Vanity Fair’s slightly more inside view from filmmaker Terry Gilliam, a one-time Oscar nominee for “Brazil” whose latest effort, “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” will compete in two technical races on Sunday.

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  • Indie Spirits on the way

    I’m heading down to L.A. Live in the heart of downtown Los Angeles this evening for the Independent Spirit Awards. The nominations are here if you want a refresher. I’m not the best at predicting these awards, but I imagine “Precious” will have a pretty good night. If you’re watching the show and want an open thread to discuss, have at it here.

  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 24 — It’s all done but the cryin’.

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk, a weekly kudocast between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood.

    This is it. The final installment of Oscar Talk before the 82nd annual Academy Awards go down Sunday evening. Anne and I have our final say this week on the following:

    • We dig through the 24 categories one more time offering our perspectives and respective predictions. The toughest calls are in the cinematography, sound and original screenplay fields, though Best Actress, Best Art Direction and Best Film Editing stir some healthy debate.

    • With 600 ballots having been turned in Tuesday, one can only wonder about the effect of EmailGate (Anne spoke with Nicolas Chartier earlier in the week) and the pending lawsuit against Mark Boal.

    • Speaking of Boal, we debate the idea of whether his script is an adaptation or not, bringing the situation with Jane Campion and “Bright Star” make for comparison.

    • And finally, because I can’t help myself, I bring it back around to Best Original Screenplay one more time, because it’s so damn difficult to decide.

    Have a listen to this week’s podcast below. And as always, you can subscribe to Oscar Talk via iTunes here.

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