If you want a good laugh, take a look at early Oscar predictions of any given year. It doesn’t matter who you look at, they’ll look ridiculous. Not only are some of the forecasted contenders mediocre at best, but it seems obvious, looking back, that of course such films wouldn’t make any headway in the awards season. And make no mistake, they always pop up. Last year it was Hereafter and Love and Other Drugs, before that we had Nine and Invictus, and so on.
This year probably had some of the most surprising nominees and omissions of any Oscar year in recent memory, with films well outside of their wheelhouse actually making it in (yep, I was the biggest Tree of Life skeptic on the site), and of course that left several early frontrunners in the dust, most of the time deservedly. So which “serious contenders” fell flat on release, and what can we learn from them? Read more on Hindsight’s a Bitch…
As my colleague Joey Magidson wraps up his series on the contenders for the “major” categories, I’m going to take a look at the Oscar chances of those hard-working folks behind the camera. Also known as the “technical” or “below-the-line” categories, these award fields honor the building blocks of cinema, the kind of work that most people don’t pay attention to. Unfortunately, even fewer people seem to truly understand the technical aspects of filmmaking, and the Academy isn’t that much better. The rule for predicting the nominees and winners of these categories usually boils down to how noticeable and obvious is the technical element in question.
Take for example today’s installment: Best Art Direction. Despite its title, this trophy is not actually awarded to the Art Director of a film. It goes to the Production Designer and the Set Decorator(s) of the film with presumably the best use of set design in its overall mise-en-scène. Looking through Oscar history, it’s apparent that truly unique production design most essential to the overall effect of a given film rarely even get nominated (see: The Ghost Writer or Synecdoche, New York), yet showy sets that draw attention to themselves – even if the effect is intrusive – have the highest chances of victory (see: Alice in Wonderland or Memoirs of a Geisha). This is why period pieces and fantasy films have the most successful track record here. It also helps if a film is an Academy darling overall. As we’ll be observing in this series, this is a pattern that manifests throughout just about every category at the Oscars.
Helmed by a powerful lead performance by Elizabeth Olsen, Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene dribbles right on the edge of thriller and suspense without coming off gimmicky. Olsen evokes and drowns herself in her character keeping the questions right on the surface and not losing sight. Though the film’s narrative never fully develops and fails to explore the deepest parts of this cautionary tale, the full commitment from the directing style and its performers transform a seemingly A-typical story to something new and dynamic. Co-star John Hawkes shines once again in a new villainous and demented turn which remains one of the great supporting male works this year. A notation for Hugh Dancy is worth mentioning in a presumably vacant character but effective and taunting performance.
I'm always thankful for the existence of Hannah and Her Sisters on any day.
I’m a lot more grateful this Thanksgiving than in previous ones. Though I am away from my family this year, I have never felt more surrounded by a support system of friends and professional colleagues, including my fellow Awards Circuit team members Joey Magidson, John H. Foote, Michael Ward, Anna Belickis and Clayton Davis. But even in the narrow confines of movies and the Oscar season, I have much to be thankful for:
I’m thankful for the current Best Picture frontrunners being outside the paradigm of typical Oscar-baiting fare, and I can’t wait to see them for myself. I’m even more thankful that, after so many previous years of foregone conclusions, it’s still a genuine mystery as to which film will take the top prize. Read more on I’m Thankful For……
While the cat could not make it a trifecta, “Puss In Boots” nearly upended Adam Sandler’s “Jack And Jill” for second place, missing the runner-up position by a scant $275k and rolling past $108 million in domestic box office receipts. Soaring above all of the competition was innovative director Tarsem Singh’s third film, “Immortals”, which served as his widest opening film to date and banked $32.2 million in its opening weekend. While some have reported this as a mediocre or even disappointing opening, some people were projecting “Immortals” to finish second or third with a mid-$20 million gross. Relativity Media are ecstatic at how the film was received and their implementation of having a market-by-market determination on critical screenings seemed risky, but ultimately did not hurt the film’s opening numbers.
The events of the previous week – as far as the Oscar season goes – were, shall we say, acompleteanduttershitstorm. Obviously the Ratner fiasco was the biggest thing on every Oscar-watcher’s mind for the past few days, but we at The Awards Circuit had plenty of other content for y’all despite that, such as:
Admittedly Kris Tapley over at Hit Fix beat me to this, though I have been tooling around on it for a week or so.
Actors revere Eastwood. They admire the fact he does not get in their way when they are working, creating a character for him in his film. They are hired to serve his film, and they know this. Going in there is an understanding that they will show up and have the role create and be ready to work. Maybe they know he often shoots and prints rehearsals, maybe they will learn that as Meryl Streep did while shooting The Bridges of Madison County (1995). Eastwood creates a hushed set for his actors, so they have a quiet area in which to create. There is no yelling, no temper fits, no cussing someone because you can, just a well oiled machine that the actors are expect to become a part of very quickly. There is a discipline and professionalism that is simply implied and if the actor struggles with that, Eastwood deals with it. Kevin Costner found out the hard way. An Oscar winning directing himself, he pitched a fit over something silly, and stormed off to his trailer. On the spot Eastwood decided to shoot the scenes he needed with Costner’s double, over his shoulder. They had the scenes done by the time Costner returned from his tantrum at which point he very sheepishly apologized and never again let Eastwood down. As Eastwood stated to him, “I am here to shoot film, not fuck around.” And shoot film he did that day. Rarely does he do more than three takes, believing the actors do their best in the early ones, and for those actors who do not do their best in three…catch up and do it. He does deal with egos on his set, and as Sean Penn aptly said, “he is the least disappointing icon in America.”
Okay, so in perhaps my worst Weekend Openings yet, I predicted that Brett “rehearsing is for fags” Ratner’s Tower Heist would be “the guaranteed hit of the weekend.” Looks like my crystal ball was broken last week, or more likely I just foolishly underestimated the power of an animated cat with a Spanish accent. Not this time. Puss in Boots will probably hold on to the top spot a third time this Veteran’s Day weekend (though with my luck it’ll tumble now).
The most successful new release will most likely be Immortals. Or, at least it had better be, because dear god America will be lost forever if the other one grosses more. Declaring war on humanity, King Hyperion searches for a weapon that would free the Titans and take revenge on the Gods who imprisoned them. The Gods select as humanity’s champion Theseus to stop the king of Crete. The only interesting thing about this sword-and-sandals epic to me is that it’s from the visually creative Tarsem Singh, who at least will guarantee some great eye candy. Critics are once again dazzled by his impressionistic aesthetic but are less enthused about the film’s shameless style-over-substance. I’m going to predict an $18-23 million opening, and if Immortals ends up on the high side of that, it could be looking at Oscar nominations for Art Direction, Sound, Costume Design and/or Visual Effects. Read more on Weekend Openings (November 11-13)…
Thomas Horn being campaigned as a Lead Actor in "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close"
The Warner Bros. Awards Site has gone LIVE and they have their lineup of contenders including Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part II, Happy Feet Two, J. Edgar, Contangion, and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.
Stephen Daldry’s film, on the cusp of being completed, has listed it’s child actor Thomas Horn as a Lead Actor candidate for this year’s consideration pool. While this significantly hurts the actor in making the lineup with an extremely crowded field already, it’s good to see the belief placed in the performance. Tom Hanks and Max Von Sydow are listed in the Supporting Actor category and Sandra Bullock and Zoe Caldwell are listed in Supporting Actress. With Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar seeming to fall by the wayside as of late, I bet Warner will be placing all bets on Daldry’s picture. Harry Potter is already making a strong push for itself but it’ll need some major precursor support to make it in the end.
The problems start almost as soon as the lights dim in Clint Eastwood’s eagerly anticipated biopic, “J. Edgar”. J. Edgar Hoover, the iconic American lawman, director and overseer of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is late in his life, elderly, puffy in appearance, gruff in tone, and passionately dictating to his lead biographer, Agent Smith (Ed Westwick), the events which led to his appointment as a top ranking official in the Justice Department. We catch him almost in mid-sentence it seems, as he jumps right into running through the details surrounding the storied Palmer Raids of 1919, a strategy used to snuff out perceived left-leaning anarchists after the conclusion of World War I and during the height of the Red Scare of Communism in America. From the opening moments, we are scrambling to catch up to the facts and details Hoover is sharing; details perceived to be basic and primary for most viewers, but presented in a hazy and unframed context.
Directed by Clint Eastwood, “J. Edgar” falls victim to many of these moments. Context is fleeting and the screenplay from Oscar-winning writer Dustin Lance Black (Milk) feels akin to flipping randomly through a biography of Hoover’s life – or worse, a textbook. Black and Eastwood have opted to tell Hoover’s story in a non-linear cross-cutting style which, either because of some surprisingly shoddy editing by Eastwood’s long-time collaborators Joel Cox and Gary Roach or Eastwood and Black not being on the same page, “J. Edgar” is undoubtedly well-intentioned, but amounts to nothing more than a turgid, meandering 137 minutes.
There is little doubt in my mind that like Oliver Stone’s brilliant Nixon (1995) there will be critics who admire Eastwood’s J. Edgar and those who do not. They will each have their own reasons and be downright passionate about their opinion, because Eastwood’s work, and the subject of Hoover brings out such emotions.
Count me in as one of the critics considering this an American masterpiece (however flawed) and brilliant study of a man’s tortured soul. Oddly though he hated President Richard Nixon, the pair had more in common than either would liked to have confessed. Daringly, writer Dustin Lance Black, who won a well deserved Academy Award for Milk (2008) and Clint Eastwood have explored Hoover’s life warts and all, focusing on his huge contributions to law enforcement in the United States, but not forgetting what a cruel, vicious and vindictive man he could be. The film is also about power, how to build it, keep it insulated, keep yourself in a position where you are not only respected but feared, never recognizing what you are doing to be an abuse of that very power. For fifty years he held the position of FBI Director, in some cases because Presidents feared replacing him because of what he might had on them. Presidents, the highest office in the land, feared J. Edgar Hoover, and they were right to do so because he was sometimes vicious in his zeal to protect the fabric of America, never really understanding that often he was he people needed protecting from.
Had anyone in the seventies suggested to me that Clint Eastwood, at that time best known as the renegade detective in Dirty Harry (1971) and a slew of spaghetti westerns would one day be a two time Academy Award winner for Best Director, twice awarded Best Director by the Directors Guild of America, and having won countless other critics awards for direction, I would have laughed in their face. Further had they told me he would produce his Oscar winning films, thereby earning two more Academy Awards I would have doubled over in hysterics.
Eastwood?
Come on!! He was at best a limited actor of limited expressions and depth, who from time to time made movies with an ape! His forte would forever be box office hits, nothing more. What then would I have said had people suggested he would be nominated twice for Best Actor when he was over sixty??
"Let Mr. Clooney know that I have an Oscar campaign of my own."
The imminent release of Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar reminds us that almost no form of cinematic drama is more tried-and-true than the biopic. There is an added sense of fascination when an audience is told that the amazing or inspirational or tragic story they’re watching is based on true events and real people. As anyone who knows about Oscar history can tell you, the Academy is often obsessed with them as well. Despite Hollywood seemingly lapping up the tales of every interesting person in history, there are a number of incredible figures with potentially ripe cinematic potential not yet realized.
Clint Eastwood’s new film J. Edgar has screened and been reacted to, and the response…decidedly mixed. Most seem to praise Leonardo DiCaprio for his portrayal of J. Edgar Hoover, but many are saying the film is unfocused and somewhat of a letdown. As a bit of a primer, here’s The Hollywood Reporter’s mostly positive review (here), Variety’s mostly negative review (here), and In Contention’s mixed review (here).
With J. Edgar and The Iron Lady likely to play big roles in the upcoming awards season and Oscars, I though a look at the great biographical films might be kind of cool. Let me know which ones you like.
Far too often film biographies play like a “greatest hits” album, focusing only on the best known events in the subject’s life. Other times the character’s life is glossed over, overly sentimentalized so that we barely recognize the subject or life being explored. For me, the hope is that I will emerge from the film knowing more about the subject than when I entered the theater, but far too often that has not been the case. Only in recent years have film biographies (biopics) really come into their own, as there has been more pressure on the storytellers to tell the real story, to get to the meat of the character and try and find out what made them tick. Show them warts and all, because it is the flaws that we human, those flaws connect each of us to the human race. Most film biopics tell the story of a lie or events surrounding a real happening, and for many years they were romanticized by Hollywood to be a pale shadow of what had really happened. As previously mentioned, in recent years, there has been a great deal more honesty on screen when dealing when a biographical subject or true events. Certainly the person(s) being portrayed deserve that respect, and the historical events deserve to be shown as they were rather than as moviemakers imagine them to be. Read more on On Great Biopics…
My esteemed staff of writers have updated their Oscar predictions. The rest of my predictions will be updated periodically throughout the weekend but the staff have made some bold picks in their choices. Many of them are very high in hopes for Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn while others are thinking outside the box with choices like Moneyball for Best Picture, Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part II as a Best Picture nominee, Michael Shannon beating out DiCaprio, Dujardin, and Clooney in the Best Actor race for Take Shelter or Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris taking it all the way. Discuss their picks in this thread or discuss it on the FORUM along with your own predictions.
Clint Eastwood finally releases some less than impressive, J. Edgar posters showcasing a very strange looking Leonardo DiCaprio. The Human Centipede: Full Sequence has a very risque looking poster. And Lars Von Tier has some beautiful character posters for the Cannes Award Winner, Melancholia. Check out all the posters after the jump.
My Oscar Predictions are due this weekend and I’ve been playing with them quite a bit. I’ve even been having mini-pow-wow’s with some of my staff talking it up with them and what we think will or will not make it. It’s funny that this time of the year I foresee many possibilities as almost assured things but that’s just my ego talking. Ain’t no way, we’re close to sewn up in any category in October. This is wide open for many surprises and this makes this year very exciting.
In my next round of predictions I’ll likely be dropping the ten Best Picture nominees. I’ve known for a while that there would be anywhere between six and eight nominees with the new ruling but I’ve stayed with ten for percentage purposes. In the big category I’m definitely staying with Steven Spielberg’s War Horse for now. It’s the safest bet, the new images that hit are actually very beautiful and the story itself will have critics and audiences cheering. Many (and I am fully aware this to happen as well) think Spielberg’s film will crash and burn. In the likely event, what would jump out in front? I’m thoroughly feeling Michel Hazanvicius’ The Artist could be the big darling of the season leading all the way to Oscar love. Many pundits out there that have seen it including critics from Telluride, Toronto, and Cannes have championed the film. Hopefully it’ll be something that will age well with audiences overtime. Do we all still think Crash was the best of 2005? Could ever fathom the Academy choosing Braveheart again with the same lineup from 1995? Hell no.
Well, we are now out of HTML format (in most aspects), some of the kinks of the new Awards Circuit are still being worked out but everything for the most part seems to be running quite smoothly. Twice a month, and more often when we get into the real epicenter of season, I’ll be diving into the Oscar predictions with an in-depth analysis here while then transitioning into the official Oscar predictions of the Awards Circuit.
Predictions have begun and for the first time ever in my predictions career, I’ve inquired with a few of the writers and close colleagues on some of their thoughts on one or two categories to see if I discovered something new or feel validated in making certain choices. There are various things flying around the web as this article is being written: Venice Film Awards have gone out, Toronto is in full swing and some films are making a ton of money. With the Academy’s decision to not fully commit to ten films but at least five, prognosticators are speculating how many films there will be. I estimate there will be somewhere between seven or eight. Until December sometime, I’ll keep predicting ten just for accuracy purposes.
I know I wasn’t the only one wondering when Clint Eastwood would spring his Hoover biopic on audiences. Well, now we seem to have some information about when. It’ll be screening as the opening film at the AFI Fest this year. It’s right before the film has its limited opening, so take that as a good or bad sign. Here’s part of the press release that just hit, after the jump…
The team for John Hillcoat’s “Lawless” released a bunch of posters, some rugged and brilliant, others are wimpy and uninspired. My favorite is the sexy Jessica Chastain sporting a big, bad handgun. Check them all out after the jump. Read more on Beautiful Character Posters for ‘Lawless’… No related content found.share […]
