In Contention

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  • What is the most difficult category to predict this year?

    In your opinion.  I’ll be using the most agreed-upon answers as part of a contest Monday, so speak up.

  • Bridges does Ferguson

    He was off to film this Thursday after we had lunch, so I guess I can shed light on the Purell thing at the beginning.  Jeff’s pretty sick right now.  He’s been offering up elbow pounds in lieu of handshakes as a result.  Here he does a chest bump and Purell shake.  Part two after the jump.

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  • My dream Oscar ballot, part one

    For the past two years running, I’ve celebrated Oscar Nomination Eve by assembling my own ideal (and, usually, incredibly far-fetched) ballot, so here we go again. As well as a kind of last-ditch prayer to the Oscar gods, I also look on it as a salute to the worthy contenders who haven’t a hope in hell of hearing their names read out on Tuesday morning.

    At the request of some readers, I’ve bent the rules to accommodate several titles unfairly ineligible for Oscar consideration in any category: most of you are aware of the arcane ruling that has denied “A Prophet” the chance to ever compete in a non-ghetto category, while the TV airings of “Red Riding” and “Carlos” keep them out of the game too. I’m less clear on why the likes of “White Material” and “Fish Tank” aren’t on the Academy’s list of eligible titles, but they aren’t, and I must make my peace with that.

    Anyway, screw ’em: this ballot represents what I found most awards-worthy from all the theatrical features released in the US last year, and you can’t get fairer than that. I’ll begin, as usual, with the ten technical categories — in which I was pleased to end up with a healthy spread of 33 films across 48 slots. Jump in after the cut, and share your own thoughts in the comments. (Also, check out Kris’s very different ideal ballot here.)

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  • CINEJABBER: Find a happy place

    Catch up with the idea behind these weekend posts here.

    Three more days.  And then it’ll be five more weeks.  This season is unrelenting.

    It’s also more of a mud-slinging affair behind the scenes than I’m used to.  At least people are more vocal about the mud-slinging than normal (because let’s face it, Oscar campaigns are a bit dirty by necessity).  All eyes are pointed toward inevitability, and inevitability so seemingly secure that it would actually be an embarrassment for the frontrunner to come up short at this point.

    But I’m not going to talk about that.  I’ll save that mumbo-jumbo for the Oscar columns.  Cinejabber is for solace.  And brain leakage.  So let’s see…

    I’ve been pushing through my final predictions and have to say the most troubling categories are below-the-line areas, as usual.  Best Original Score is the biggest head-scratcher, while Best Costume Design is a little troubling, too.  But I’m inching toward that place of, “Screw it, that looks good enough.”

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Globes chatter, Batman buzz, foreign Oscar surprises

    • The Golden Globes did their thing, with Ricky Gervais’s antics drawing more attention than the sweep for “The Social Network.”

    • David Fincher’s film continued its dominance at the Broadcast Film Critics’ Association Awards, which Kris reported from first-hand.

    • As if to remind us that there’s more than one film in the race, this week’s BAFTA nominations were ruled by “The King’s Speech” and “Black Swan.”

    • Sadly, we bade farewell this week to regular columnist Chad, who left us with his idiosyncratic Best of 2010 list.

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  • ‘Of Gods and Men,’ ‘Ghost Writer’ lead César nominations

    The film may be smarting from its widely (if not, ahem, entirely) unexpected omission from the Oscar foreign-language shortlist earlier this week, but Xavier Beauvois’s sombre religious drama “Of Gods and Men” found more love in its home country, where it scooped a leading 11 nominations for the César Awards.

    The so-called “French Oscars” also unsurprisingly took a shine to Roman Polanski’s “The Ghost Writer,” which has dominated the European awards circuit and is angling for a surprise Oscar nod or two on Tuesday. Expect these two films to battle it out for the gold; I’d bet on the weighty prestige veneer of Beauvois’s film winning out, but sentimental loyalty to Polanski shouldn’t be underestimated — he is, after all, a previous winner for both “Tess” and  “The Pianist.”

    Beyond those two frontrunners, I’m pleased to see a strong showing for Mathieu Amalric’s scrappy burlesque comedy “On Tour,” though their other choices suggest the Césars can be as frustratingly MOR as their US counterpart.

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  • Evening Standard Award nominees, take two

    A couple of weeks ago, we reported on the nominations for the London Evening Standard Awards — a juried critics’ honor devoted to British films and talent. As it turns out, that “nominee” list was a bit of a false alarm; rather, it was a rough longlist of names considered by the jury that the Standard released prematurely.

    The official nominations for the awards were announced today, and I have to say, it’s my favorite such list I’ve seen all season. This year’s jury can’t be accused of playing it safe: it’s certainly ballsy to omit “The King’s Speech” in the top race.

    In its place, I’m thrilled to see my #1 film of 2010, Sylvain Chomet’s “The Illusionist,” as well as Peter Mullan’s riveting youth drama “Neds,” which I reviewed back in October. Add in due respect for Mike Leigh, and I don’t think the field could better represent the year in British film.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final analysis, part two

    Yesterday I began a final look at the crafts categories. Today, a look at the four remaining fields: Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design and Best Film Editing.

    BEST ART DIRECTION

    The precursors of the BFCA, BAFTA and Art Directors Guild have been fairly consistent in citing four titles in this category. Last year’s winner, Robert Stromberg, seems poised to dip again for creation of a 3D world on Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland.” Eve Stewart, on the other hand, will likely be returning to the fold after an 11 year absence for “The King’s Speech.”

    Guy Hendrix Dyas and Jess Gonchor also have got all necessary precursors, and have fashioned surefire Best Picture nominees, in “Inception” and “True Grit” respectively. It is true that they have had difficulty being nominated in the past but Gonchor has also never had such an Oscar-friendly opportunity, whereas the impressive, integral-to-the-story nature of Dyas’s work has been especially embraced by the precursors.

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  • Gosling croons with Kimmel

    Promoting the film in which he gives the year’s best performance. Fingers crossed for him on Tuesday.

  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 49 — Final pre-nod discussion

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    We’re moving into the last weekend before the Academy’s big nominations reveal on Tuesday. Anne is calling from Sundance, where the festival is just gearing up, leaving me alone in LA to my devices. But there are a number of things to address in these final pre-nod hours, so let’s see what’s on the docket today…

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  • Gervais calls it like it is

    Piers Morgan started his new stint filling Larry King’s shoes this week, and last night it was Ricky Gervais across the desk:

  • 1/21 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: French indignation, talking threads with costumers, Portman’s extended laugh

    • The French lose their marbles not just over the exclusion of “Of Gods and Men” from this year’s foreign film shortlist, but the INCLUSION of Algeria’s “Outside the Law.” [The Carpetbagger]

    • Elizabeth Snead talks to a number of costumers on this year’s awards circuit [Deadline]

    • Is this Banksy? [Cinematical]

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  • Costume confusion

    Gerard will address this category in tomorrow’s Tech Support column, but I did want to say something about Best Costume Design — partly because the Guild dropped some rather interesting nominations today, and partly because it’s the technical category that’s still prompting the most head-scratching as I work towards my final predictions.

    We all know the Academy favors lavish period productions with corsets and hoop skirts a go-go in this category, but 2010 served up remarkably few possibilities in this vein. Even “The King’s Speech,” the year’s default well-dressed prestige title, is hardly a sartorial showcase in the vein of “Marie-Antoinette” or “The Duchess” — Jenny Beavan’s crisp 1930s wardrobe is functionally stylish rather than spectacular.

    As if to illustrate the lack of conventional historical options, the Costume Designers’ Guild found only three films to nominate in their period category, instead of the usual five — and one of them, I’m thrilled to say, is the 1990s-set “The Fighter,” whose threads I was plugging just the other day.

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  • MPSE last industry organization to nominate

    Save for the Academy, of course.  And you can find sound editors’ picks at The Circuit. Just about every possible competitor was chalked up (and it’s the sound effects and foley category that tends to shed the most light).  Check out the breakdown of hopefuls, as always, at the film’s dedicated Contenders page here.

    “Black Swan” and “Inception” are officially the most-recognized films of the year when it comes to the guild/society circuit.  Each film was chalked up by every group.

  • Taking questions for Oscar Talk

    Totally spaced it.  We record in roughly an hour.  So I’ll try to amass a few questions for the show here.  Free-for-all.  Ask as many as you want.  Go!  Fast!

  • THE LONG SHOT: Don’t let ’em catch you caring

    (Updated Oscar predictions here. They’ll likely be tweaked once more before Tuesday.)

    Following the Academy Award season is a little like watching a particularly low-rent TV soap: just as the mindlessness and predictability of the enterprise escalates to a point where quitting seems the only credible option, some or other narrative curveball will lure you back in.

    So it was with me this week: after my column last week expressed a weary indifference to the race two weeks ahead of nomination day, along came the Academy to throw me a bone and re-pique my interest.

    The bone was, admittedly, a small one — a wishbone, if you will — but it did the job. By shortlisting Greece’s disturbing, tar-black adult fable “Dogtooth” for Best Foreign Language Film, the Academy sent out a reminder to bleary-eyed awards watchers not only that it is still capable of surprising us, but that good films can sometimes endure on their own merits — even if some of them do need an executive committee vote to help them along. (Hey, anyone else starting to think an executive committee for the Best Picture category would be a fine idea?)

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  • Banksy joshes Guggenheim in Cinema Eye speech

    Yesterday I dug through the 15 documentary feature short-listers to offer an idea of how that race might turn out.  Over the weekend, the perceived heavy of the crowd, “Exit Through the Gift Shop” (which is the most awarded doc of the year), was taking down yet another prize at the Cinema Eye Honors.  Director Banksy was not on hand to deliver his speech, natch, but the film’s producer, Jaimie D’Cruz, read it to the crowd and Matt Singer was on the ready with a recorder.  Here’s the speech:

    Now’s not the time for long, rambling speeches. I’ll leave that for the director of ‘Waiting for Superman.’

    I’d like to thank the Cinema Eye awards. It’s great to be recognized by people who are so obsessed with the documentary genre — in other words people who are even more socially retarded than myself.

    I guess some of you may be getting a bit suspicious about me. How can you know that this award is real? But I’d like to categorically assure you that this evening’s awards are not being staged by actors for a parody I’m making about film awards.

    I’d like to thank anyone who worked on the movie. Almost all of them did a great job. And I’d like to dedicate this award to anyone out there who’s ever looked at the state of this world and thought: “I can’t just stand idly by and watch this happen. I need to get it on tape.” Thank you and have a good evening.

    [Photo: Producers Distribution Agency]

  • Updates to The Circuit

    Today “Black Swan” and “Inception” maintained their uniquely perfect guild status (having been cited by every single guild and society) by nailing down nominations in the contemporary category from the Costume Designers Guild. Every frontrunning possibility was chalked up, so the task is still pretty daunting to predict how that will go with Oscar.  That leaves just one industry precursor, the Motion Picture Sound editors, which should announce nominees tomorrow.

    (Someone do the math for me.  Has a film ever been nominated for EVERY industry precursor?  PGA, DGA, WGA, SAG, ACE, ADG, ASC, CAS, CDG, MPSE and VES?)

    Meanwhile, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) spoke up with its list of nominee.  I’ve noted only the three film categories.