I knew this day would come, and it is with a sense of both excitement and sadness. By the end of my long deployment, I will have earned the most difficult and significant achievement of my life – Surface Warfare Officer Qualification, and finally perform the mission that my ship and I have been training toward for over a year. On the other hand, I must sacrifice the time and effort I have placed into a site that has grown so much in such a short time.
As our Editor himself would agree, what makes me value Awards Circuit is the staff – all the different backgrounds and perspectives on film from all walks of life. To proudly welcome Nicole and Tiff into our family, I will be assisting Clay in integrating them into the staff top tens dating all the way back to 2000 before my departure. After that, for operational security purposes, you will not be hearing from me for a while. But I will not be gone forever! One of my shipmates advised me a long time ago not to let the Navy become my sole identity, and I will hold to that. Come late 2013/early 2014, I will be back to resuming my full staff writer duties. Read more on Oscars 2013: Will Win/Should Win (Hamer)…
Categories: Article Tags: Amour, Argo, awards season, Beasts of the Southern Wild, divisive films, great performances, Holy Motors, How to Survive a Plague, Lincoln, Looper, Magic Mike, oscar predictions, Robert Hamer, Tabu, The Turin Horse, Will Win/Should Win
 For Your Consideration – Best Lead Actor – Joel Edgerton
Film: Warrior
Director: Gavin O’Connor
Screenplay: Gavin O’Connor, Cliff Dorfman and Anthony Tambakis
Realistic Nominations: Best Supporting Actor – Nick Nolte
Oscar Scene: “I’m sorry, Tommy…I’m sorry…tap, Tommy…it’s okay…it’s okay…I love you, I love you, Tommy!”
Warrior is an endearingly predictable and sentimental sports drama with big lunges of emotion that end up being more powerful than they have any “right” to be. This success can be primarily attributed to the film’s two stars Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton, who articulate the Bitter Introvert With A Dark Past and the Everyman Thrust Back Into One Last Fight, respectively, much better than its screenplay ever does. Many critics have (not unjustifiably) heaped praise on Hardy, but sadly, Edgerton’s work has been relatively ignored. That’s unfortunate; for my money he was actually the film’s MVP. Read more on Circuit Consideration: Joel Edgerton in Warrior…
 So in case you weren’t aware, there were a few announcements of critics’ group awards yesterday. As in, a seeming tidal wave of them. Most of the announcements were relatively diverse compared to previous years, even if The Artist has clearly positioned itself as the film to beat come Oscar time. But as usual, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association marched to the beat of their own drum and had (if we ignore its rotting corpse of a Best Picture winner) arguably the most interesting and laudable picks of the bunch. The most egalitarian of their choices, by far, was their Best Actress citation of Yun Jeong-hie for her performance in Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry.
While some have hastily dismissed this verdict as deliberately going against the grain, those who have actually seen the film were far more complimentary. Yun, it should be noted, is not some outsider who stumbled into an extraordinary performance. Quite the contrary, she is arguably South Korea’s answer to Meryl Streep, with nearly three hundred films and several acclaimed performances to her name ever since her feature debut Sorrowful Youth in 1967. She retired in 1994, and though she received numerous offers to return to acting, she claimed she “was waiting for something special” to bring her out of retirement. In Korea, Lee Chang-dong is about as special as it gets, especially when it comes to great acting roles for women. Read more on Poetry (***)…
Born: March 15, 1943
Place: Ontario, Canada
Major Awards and Citations:
48th Berlin Film Festival Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Achievement (eXistenZ)
49th Cannes Film Festival Jury Special Prize (Crash)
32nd Toronto International Film Festival People’s Choice Award (Eastern Promises)
Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Screenplay of 1991 (Naked Lunch)
Central Ohio Film Critics Association Award for Best Direction of 2005 (A History of Violence)
Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Director of 2005 (A History of Violence)
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Director of 1988 (Dead Ringers)
National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director of 2005 (A History of Violence)
National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director of 1991 (Naked Lunch)
National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Screenplay of 1991 (Naked Lunch)
New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay of 1991 (Naked Lunch)
Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Director of 2005 (A History of Violence)
Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Best Director of 2005 (A History of Violence)
Vancouver Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director in a Canadian Film of 2007 (Eastern Promises)
Oscar Snubs: Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, A History of Violence
So here we are, at the end of David Cronenberg Week and at the opening of his latest film A Dangerous Method. What was the purpose of all this, besides an excuse to wax poetic on one of my favorite working directors? Read more on Under the Circuit: David Cronenberg…
 Jeremy Irons gave one of my favorite Oscar acceptance speeches. Upon winning Best Actor for his shrewd performance as Claus von Bülow in Reversal of Fortune, he gave a very special penultimate acknowledgement: “Thank you also, and some of you may understand why…thank you David Cronenberg.” Those who had seen Dead Ringers just two years earlier understood exactly why he had thanked the director, as his dual performance as twin gynecologists Beverly and Elliot Mantle is – without exaggeration – one for the ages.
Irons plays both twins with such specificity that after only a few minutes it becomes obvious which one is Elliot and which one is Beverly, even when one of them is pretending to be the other. Both deeply nuanced portrayals of these characters draw out two sides of what amounts to essentially the same person – men who complete each other yet are undone by their own unbearable closeness. Read more on Historical Circuit: Dead Ringers (****)…
It’s no secret by now that I am very excited for Bridesmaids. Not just because of its great reviews or my not-so-secret crush on Kristen Wiig, but also because the film stands for something you rarely see in Hollywood: the great comedic film actress. Not that women haven’t given funny performances in the past, far from it. Throughout the history of cinema, many talented actresses have made us laugh time and time again, but sadly aren’t often recognized for it. In honor of the release of Bridesmaids, I’ve put together a list of the ten funniest female film performances ever given. This all about the laugh factor; you will find no serio-comic or dramedy work here (otherwise Diane Keaton’s performance in Annie Hall would have been a shoo-in). So without further adieu…
Read more on Top Ten Funniest Female Performances of All Time…
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