Exactly two hours before I began writing up this article, the Producers Guild of America had just announced its complete list of nominees. In the “Theatrical Motion Picture” category, one film appeared that virtually no pundit had thought to anticipate: Sam Mendes’ British-produced Skyfall. But after recently crossing the $1 billion mark worldwide, not to mention its widespread critical acclaim and seven BFCA nominations, does this really comes as that much of a surprise? Oh yes, I forgot…Skyfall is a “genre” film, which means its “Best Picture” chances would usually be at the bottom of the barrel when stacked against baitier competitors that seem destined for Oscar® upon announcement. However, it has two things going for it that critically-beloved moneymakers like The Avengers and The Dark KnightRises do not: a late release closer to the pivotal Oscar® date and, most importantly, a huge chunk of support behind it in the form of the Academy’s hefty British voting bloc, who are no doubt beyond astounded by its record-breaking success, and not just for the James Bond franchise either.
Skyfall is currently the 14th highest grossing movie of all-time and the United Kingdom’s top movie earner in history, barely surpassing James Cameron’s Avatar. Not including the Harry Potter movie franchise, Skyfall is also the most successful British film (Eon Productions) ever released. With these figures and the aforementioned accolades and overall success, it may be time to not just realistically consider Skyfall for “Best Picture,” but also come to the realization that we’ve been underestimating the influential power of the Academy’s British voting bloc throughout this entire race. In addition to Skyfall, I’ll now turn your attention towards award hopefuls who have been under-the-radar all season long like Judi Dench as “M” in Skyfall, Maggie Smith in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and even John Madden’s British ensemble dramedy itself. I strongly believe these four British category contenders will receive their major boost from the crucial British voting bloc in the form of Academy Award™ nominations come the morning of January 10th. After the jump, you will see the ‘Skyfall’ category contenders in this first of a two-part article series… Read more on Are We Underestimating the British Voting Bloc? (‘Skyfall’ Edition)…
Winners to be announced live on the CW Television Network from the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica on January 10, 2013.
BEST PICTURE Argo Beasts of the Southern Wild Django Unchained Les Miserables Life of Pi Lincoln The Master Moonrise Kingdom Silver Linings Playbook Zero Dark Thirty
With two (really one) contender left to be unveiled, this is the most exciting awards race I’ve covered in all my years of Oscar prognosticating. Every category is competitive and with races like this, anything can happen. Along with updating the official Oscar Predictions, I’ve updated the major precursors such as the Golden Globe Awards and the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
As New York gets ready to lift on Monday, which I’ve attempted to take a stab at, the National Board of Review and Los Angeles Film Critics will start the chain reaction of the awards season. Before anyone knows the winners, I’m seeing this as a three-horse race between Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, and Ben Affleck’s Argo, more particularly the first two films. Currently I’m foreseeing Hooper’s film to lead the way on Oscar nomination morning with 13 nominations, assuming lead Hugh Jackman and standout Eddie Redmayne can plow through some of the veterans in their categories. Read more on Oscar Circuit – Music vs. History…
The Sizing Up Series continues with a look at the slate of Best Supporting Actress contenders. As always, this is as large a grouping of the hopefuls as possible (excluding some no shot contenders and members of bigger ensembles…or else this could have 50 or more people in the article), categorizing them by their assumed likelihood of a nomination come the big morning. Oftentimes, more than a few of the Best Picture nominees wind up with some form of representation here, and this year I think there will be more than a little correlation, but of course absolutely anything is possible with the Academy. We shall see what happens in the end, but enough talk for the time being. I know what you’re all here for, so let’s go right ahead and take a look at the contenders for Best Supporting Actress and size up the field! Read more on Sizing Up: Best Supporting Actress…
Hello there, Bond enthusiasts! We’ve had quite a fun couple of days here at The Awards Circuit with all the excitement surrounding our action-packed Bond Week. While the James Bond franchise has unquestionably launched the careers of so many of its actors who’ve taken on the brave mantle of 007, I’m here to remind you of some pretty huge – if not, colossal – stars that also got their big break from being a part of Bond history. The seven actors I’ve chosen to highlight may surprise, confuse or downright baffle. Whatever the case may be, I can assure you they are all of worthy caliber. Exploding pens at the ready (sorry, Q Branch!)? Good — let’s go! Read more on 7 Stars Career-Boosted by Bond…
Capping off Bond Week at the Awards Circuit is the much anticipated release of Skyfall. Spielberg’s grand biopic Lincoln gets a limited head start to its nationwide release next week.
After stumbling somewhat with ‘Quantum of Solace’, the Daniel Craig era of James Bond films has recovered spectacularly with ‘Skyfall’. Better even than ‘Casino Royale’, I’d actually wager that this could very well be the best Bond film ever. A phenomenally effective mix of old and new, this is exactly what I wanted out of 007. Credit is deserved all around for this success story, but chief among them has to be director Sam Mendes. The Oscar winner, along with his frequent DP Roger Deakins, has brought a beautiful visual style to this Bond flick. Armed with a strong screenplay from returning scribes Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, along with newcomer John Logan, Mendes and company have given Craig an adventure that both points the spy in a number of new potential directions as well as honoring the past in a way that the franchise has never really done before. The end result is riveting, and easily one of the most satisfying films in the canon, along with one of the best films of the year too. ‘Skyfall’ opens on Friday and should be a massive success. It certainly deserves to be. The talk about a Best Picture nomination is a bit premature, but there’s no denying that this is a great movie.
Nominating films from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel to The Imposter, the British Independent Film Awards cast a wide net with their nominations announced this morning. The aforementioned Best Exotic manage to nab 5 nods including Best British Independent Film, and acting notices for Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, and Tom Wilkinson. Also showing up in acting races are Elle Fanning for Ginger and Rosa and Oscar queen Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady (which also picked up a screenplay nomination. The Foreign Language race might prove to be the most interesting with films like Beasts of the Southern Wild, Amour, and Rust and Bone battling it out to take the crown. View the full list of nominees after the jump!
Since Daniel Craig took on the iconic role of the world’s most famous spy back in 2006 there have been some notable ups and downs. Casino Royale, to my mind at least, is one of the best Bond films of all time. Just as with Pierce Brosnan in GoldenEye, it introduced us to a completely new interpretation of the character, and with a healthy nod to the immortal traditions of the past, updated the franchise for a new decade and a whole new generation of fans. In it Craig had managed to sculpt the most brooding and rough-around-the-edges Bond yet. Following this came Quantum of Solace, which despite being a pretty decent action blockbuster, gets repeatedly slated because it ventured too far from the traditional Bond mould. Director Marc Forster seemed to draw more inspiration from the fast cuts and man-on-the-run pacing of the Bourne saga, than he did from the sophistication and tradition of 007. Read more on Skyfall (***½)…
I’m back once again ladies and gentlemen to do some more Sizing Up! This time around I’m going to be tackling the somewhat slight Best Actress field. For many, this is the worst category of the majors this year and for some the hardest to figure out, especially in terms of a victor. The ultimate winner won’t be of my concern too much now, but I’m seeking to try and make sense of the category and see which ladies can actually get to the final 5. Lots can change between now and the nominations, but this is where I think things currently stand, and it’s certainly a rather fluid list now. At the very least, it’ll be interesting to see how this matches up to the eventual slate of nominees, since so much is sort of guesswork with Best Actress.
As a proud member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association and the International Press Academy, both of which host the Critic Choice Awards and Satellite Awards respectively, screeners and gift bundles come by the dozens beginning in October. I know before I ventured off on this journey in film criticism, I always wanted to see what people in the industry were receiving as they became available. This year, I attempt to do just that. The Awards Circuit’s FYC Tracker (For Your Consideration) has just gone live. Read more on Awards Season FYC Tracker and Gallery Launched!…
Adele, the British chanteuse whose lovely voice and incredible songwriting talent won her 6 Grammys this past February seemed like a no-brainer to contribute a song to the Bond franchise at some point in her career, and now you can hear what that sounds like. Released in some leaked capacity over the past few days, Adele has posted the song “Skyfall” to her personal Youtube page in sync with its iTunes release. The song sounds great (obviously, this is Adele we are talking about) and it re-purposes the original Bond theme, which might keep it from being the contender we all think it is come Oscar time. We know how the Music branch likes to do. Anyways, listen to the full song after the jump! Read more on Listen to Adele’s Bond theme ‘Skyfall’…
Stars in Shorts is a film/television special (courtesy of Shorts HD) featuring a collection of seven shorts that famous (or should be famous) stars…well, you know…star in. If I haven’t reiterated that four-letter word enough yet, I hope you’ll catch my drift by the end of the review. The good news about the inconsistent, if at times alarming wonderful, Stars in Shorts is that nearly every actor diverges from the roles one might normally see them play on the big or small screen, especially those of Hollywood British Royalty. I reckon that the people who are interested in watching this special will be more invested in the performances from big-name celebrities — who ironically are given the chance to show more range as an actor in a far shorter space of time — than the actual short stories they are meant to uphold. Film director/screenwriter/playwright Neil Labute pens three of the shorts, and proves that when he is not exclusively sitting in the director’s chair, he could be a major writing force in Hollywood. His writing style strikes a unique chord by never really defining its tone: there are elements of drama and black comedy in his works, and I find this purgatorial realm he’s living in utterly fascinating. Neil Labute is the true star in this slice of celebrity potpourri. Read more on Stars in Shorts (***)…
What makes October Baby so disappointing is not just the “cheese” that’s spread all over the film like a tray of orderves at a church cocktail party or the uninspired and forceful humor we’re suppose to laugh at; it’s the poor attempt at taking a seemingly interesting premise, a girl who finds out she’s adopted and was a failed abortion, and executing it like third grade love story that “Curious George” could have told better. Read more on The Blu Circuit – Bad “Baby” and “Exotic” Bliss…
Academy Award winning director Sam Mendes (American Beauty) will deliver the latest Bond flick, Skyfall, to us this November 9th. I don’t know about you, but I am anxiously awaiting the third film in the Daniel Craig/Bond era. Along with Craig, the 23rd Bond film will star Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Naomie Harris, Albert Finney, Ben Whishaw, Helen McCrory, Ola Rapace and Tonia Sotiropoulou.
And so, in what seemed like an impossible dream to just about every comic book geek in the world, the first-ever major superhero crossover film finally opens in America today. There’s really no point in pretending that this won’t absolutely kill at the box office this weekend, it’s just a matter of how high it can soar at this point:
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.
Without the Academy Award worthy performance of Michelle Williams in the title role, there wouldn’t be too much to get excited about with ‘My Week with Marilyn’. Nothing is bad, but everything pales in comparison to Williams. She’s so good as Marilyn Monroe, you hardly notice the rest of the film. This is nowhere near the disaster some anticipated, and Williams is far better than even the most generous predictions had hoped for. The thing is, her phenomenal work (second only in her career to last year’s turn in ‘Blue Valentine’) is stuck in an only decent movie. Director Simon Curtis is sure to make sure Monroe is handled perfectly, he kind of loses sight of the rest of the production. This is in some ways a movie in search of a story. A docudrama more than a biopic, it’s never too heavy or too light, but much of it feels inconsequential. I liked the characters and the acting, but I just wish they had more to do. It’s not quite a missed opportunity, but there’s a much better movie that could have been made than this one. That being said, it’s still satisfying enough and I can’t say enough about Williams’ performance. The rest of the cast, including Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Redmayne, and Judi Dench do their part, but they’re merely orbiting around this stunning performance. But what a performance it is!
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.
