One Category at a Time: Director

In the Academy's 88 years, only a couple of filmmakers have won back-to-back Best Director Oscars; John Ford in the 40s and Joseph L. Mankiewicz in the 50s. Since then... Not even close. But that all looks to change this year.

Alejandro G. Innaritu wins DGA for second straight year

When was the last time we had a season as disparate and fractured as this one?

The Big Short wins the PGA, Spotlight takes the SAG, and then last night
The Revenant's Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu swiped the Directors Guild of America's top prize for the second consecutive year. It seems as though we've arrived at the point where all bets are off for Predicting the Best Picture Oscar. Which of these three will prevail?

Early Oscar Predictions: Adapted Screenplay

I've sounded off on some original screenplay possibilities, so here are my wild guesses at the adaptations:

Oscar Postmortem Pt. 4: Telecast Highlights

I always record the Oscars so I can go back and rewatch it later the same week.

It's practically a necessity since I'm often so distracted with my prediction lists and my agony and ecstasy over the winners and losers and whatnot, that I miss some of the little moments that make this whole meat parade worthwhile!

There are still glimmers of fun left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as awards season. So allow me to parse through the 3+hour telecast and highlight the diamonds in the rough. And believe me, it was rough.

Things didn't start off so bad, though. Rather than force host Neil Patrick Harris to struggle through an opening monologue, they fed him one solid joke and then he was off to the races with his song-and-dance routine, "Moving Pictures".

This show got 99 problems, but graphic design ain't one!

Lovely sets and animated title cards.

Oscar Postmortem Pt. 1: The Results

Happy New Year, everybody!

With the Oscars having come and gone (after three long hours at the end of three long months), it feels like 2014 is now officially over, and a new cinematic cycle has thankfully begun. But, since I, like most Oscar obsessives (or any kind of obsessive), have trouble letting go, it'll be about a week before I finally cease writing about 2014 in this space. Heed the lessons learned by Cheryl Strayed
(for whom they picked an awful Best Actress clip, btw); Closure takes time.
And so I must always allow myself several days to fully process the mad rush of euphoria and anguish that floods me before, during, and after this annual event.

My post-dated “live” blog of the Oscar telecast itself will arrive later this week, followed by my usual top ten of personal highs and lows of the 2014-15 awards season. But for today, its all about who won and who lost, and my immediate reactions to those, which I should document for posterity before my mind instinctively turns to 2015-16.

For starters, my own prediction results:

My Award Nominees: Best Picture

And the big category is at last unveiled. I don't know who these people are that say it was a weak year for cinema. It thought it was pretty great. Maybe not quite as many four-star knock-outs as last year, but more than your average year if you ask me.

These are the five that knocked me out. My five Best Picture nominees (plus the five runners-up that round out my top ten) are:

One Category at a Time: Original Screenplay

With the writing on the wall for Birdman as Best Picture and with all four acting races more or less calcified, the screenplay contests are now the biggest question marks of the major categories, and Best Original Screenplay may be the most perplexing of them.

Most years, with prestigious adaptations duking it out in their own ring, this award serves as a nifty consolation prize for a film that stands out for its uniqueness of premise or snazziness of dialogue, but is just slightly too left-of-centre to win in the top category. Even Best Picture winners Million Dollar Baby and The Artist were trumped in this arena by decidedly more imaginative efforts.

One Category at a Time: Director

Most years, the Oscar for Best Director goes hand-in-hand with the Oscar for Best Picture. It stands to reason that if you really love a movie, you love the way it's directed, but sometimes a tight race between two films can result in enough of a discrepancy for the categories to split. What we have this season is not simply a tight race between two films, but between four or five films, meaning dozens of winner permutations are possible.

Point is, we could see a Picture/Director split for the third consecutive year, and even though the critics have made it clear who their preference is, that frontrunner is not necessarily as safe in the hands of the Academy.

The Die is Cast: Inarritu wins DGA

The Directors Guild of America has spoken, naming Alejandro G. Innaritu's Birdman the best directed film of 2014, echoing the preference of both the Producers and Screen Actors Guilds.

That's the game, right? The only movie to collect that triumvirate of awards and not win Best Picture was Apollo 13. I suppose some could argue that with Oscar voting having just opened and with well over a week before the polls close, there's enough time for a backlash to take effect. However, backlash is always more of a media reaction to the awards race, and doesn't really reflect any shifting opinions within the industry. If Birdman somehow loses Best Picture, and it might, it'll be because some other option was always more popular within the Academy the whole time, not because voters suddenly decide they dislike it on account of its awards success thus far.

I, for one, can't complain about this. Birdman is one of the year's best, and what a refreshing change of pace it'll be to see a comedy win the Academy's top honour.

But that still doesn't quite settle things in Best Director...

Will DGA-BAFTA Weekend Clafiry Some Tight Races?

Final Oscar balloting started today, right on the cusp of a weekend that will unveil the winners of the Directors Guild of America and the British Academy of Film and Television. A number of the Oscar categories still feel maddeningly close a full three weeks after they were announced, so the pending results of this weekend's kudos could be the litmus test we need.

Or they could just be a bunch of red herrings.

Take the Best Actor race, for instance:

'Birdman' Shocks as PGA Winner

I was hoping I'd be wrong about The Imitation Game coasting to a Producers Guild Award, and subsequently the Oscar, on the preferential ballot system.
I knew there was at least a decent chance of it not having quite enough support to edge out other Best Picture heavyweights like Boyhood and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Any of those three seemed like plausible victors with the guild, given how they had all the requisite Oscar nominations needed to win the big prize.

But this, I did not see coming.

Inarritu rockin' the blazer and the hoodie... and the PGA Award for Best Picture.

My Award Nominations: Best Director

These directors are all master storytellers, but what I particularly love about this group is how they've all told their stories in such different ways. They represent a rich array of stylistic voices and I can't wait to see what they churn out next!

But before looking ahead too far, one look back at the Best Directors of 2014:

My Award Nominations: Best Original Screenplay

The Oscars are little more than five weeks away, so it's time to start compiling my own superlatives for the year, starting with Best Original Screenplay. Man, is this category stacked! Any of the five following films would have won in any other year. They're all available for downloading online, and I highly recommend giving them a look. They're all great reads.

You can keep track of my gradually growing list of nominees by clicking the Awards tab in the page header.

Let's dive in, shall we:

Golden Globes live blog

6:44
The stars are arriving. The show will start in an hour and a bit. Pumped up!!!

(You can read lots of fashion snark on Twitter, including from me, but I'll keep this space clear until the show starts)

Review - Birdman

Ids, egos and superegos collide and combust (in a single take!) on stages as concrete as the Broadway theatre and as fantastical as the imaginings of a self-obsessed actor in Alejandro González Iňárritu's Birdman. As in the myth of Icarus, to which his wily script often alludes both visually and verbally, Iňárritu has high-flying ambitions for what is possibly his most personal film to date. But rather than crash and burn, his satiric slant on the artist's odyssey soars magnificently on its dark feathery wings.

Michael Keaton stars – in a performance that vies to redefine his career – as Riggan Thompson, a washed-up former movie star seeking respect and validation by directing and starring in his own adaptation of Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love on Broadway. He had once played a popular superhero (the eponymous Birdman) in a series of lucrative but disposable comic book blockbusters that brought him fame and fortune, but not artistic fulfillment.

Now, some twenty years after hanging up his dopey bird suit, he's risking so much more than just his money and reputation by mounting this prestigious production. The tenuous relationship with his recovering drug addict daughter (Emma Stone), his fragile sense of self, and even his grasp on reality hang in the balance while the pressure mounts.

My Award nominations: Foreign Film

My picks for the Best Foreign Film of the year are always subject to change because so many of them don't even get exposed in North America until much later. But as of the moment this was typed, my five are:

All That I Love (Jacek Borcuch):
Poignant coming of age for the youth of 1980s Poland as seen through the eyes of a budding punk rock music movement. Wonderfully captures the tumultuous thoughts of both the nation and the individual characters.

Biutiful (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu):
A densely depressing existential essay, told with sure-handed restraint and tact by Inarritu and his star Javier Bardem. It's beautifully shot throughout, creating a beautiful sense of place with textured, carefully composed shots.

Dogtooth (Yargos Lanthimos):
If nothing else, Dogtooth is at the very least a hard film to forget (for better or worse). Lanthimos' style is simple, intimate, gives proper focus to his actors, and features some really sumptuous cinematography.

I Am Love (Luca Guadagnino):
A fervent but ultimately pessimistic interpretation about the dangers of succumbing to your passions and exploring beyond the societal norm, framed as a stylish melodrama. Tilda Swinton owns it.

Incendies (Denis Villeneuve):
Denis Villeneuve's back-and-forth chronology may bother some, but I think it succeeds at highlighting the passage of time and the values that differ as a function thereof. Performances are strong, as is Villeneuve's confident direction, which is unafraid to jar or disturb us.