One Category at a Time: Director

The die has been cast in the Best Picture category for several months now, but it seems that every year pundits start pontificating the possibility of a Picture/Director split. Is it just boredom with the scent of inevitability?
Is it wishful thinking from the frontrunner's detractors?
Is it skepticism that a first-time nominee can win over more established, Oscarless filmmakers? Whatever the reason, every year some people seem to come up with some excuse to predict a split. But don't do it! Splits are rare and when they do occur there's no consistent rhyme or reason as to why.

Reactions to 84th Oscar nominations

It all went down this morning more or less as expected. Hugo and The Artist unsurprisingly led the field of 2011/12 nominees with 11 and 10 Oscar nominations respectively. The next closest were Moneyball and War Horse with six apiece, followed closely by The Descendants and Dragon Tattoo with five (although the latter was squeezed out of the Best Picture lineup).

The most notable of the few inconsequential surprises was the breadth of the Best Picture slate, which ended accommodating nine nominees. Apparently Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close wasn't dead in the water after all; it was just extremely quiet and incredibly close to a Best Picture nomination. I thought I had dodged a bullet in not having to watch this critically derided film, but now I'll have to check it out. With only one other nomination under its belt (for sentimental favourite Max von Sydow, who could stealthily usurp Plummer's long overdue Oscar), one can't help but feel that this particular Best Picture nominee is out of place. This year's Blind Side? I'll hold off on a true opinion until I see it.

My Awards nominations: Director and Picture

I have a 4/5 overlap between Best Picture and Best Director this year, so I'm lumping them into one big post with the four also-rans that round out my Top Ten of 2011:

Best Picture AND Best Director:

Drive, directed by NICOLAS WINDING REFN:

An art house character study wrapped in a violent crime drama and advertised as a high-speed action movie, Drive offers us startling insight into the irrepressibility of one's true nature more than it offers us chases and fisticuffs. In more cinematic terms, one might describe it as Unforgiven set in modern Los Angeles, at least in how it pertains to the central character's noble attempt but tragic failure to smother his violent propensities. Refn directs his picture with intriguing flare, sometimes opting for odd aesthetic choices, but on the whole, it really works.

A Separation, directed by ASGHAR FARHADI:

An exceptional domestic drama about the failure of human relationships, and not just marital ones (as the title implies), one can't help but notice that the film's painful truths are universal ones, delving deep into human conscience and exposing the dangerous inconsistencies between our personal moral codes, and our responsibilities to model ethics for our children. Farhadi's aesthetic technique is economical but very polished. Every character is superbly played with authentic dimensionality. It's a testament to how well Farhadi wrote and directed his characters.

The Tree of Life, directed by TERRENCE MALICK:

Arguably the elusive master's most thought-provoking – and certainly his most artistically ambitious – effort to date; a flawed, painterly masterpiece that explores in broad, bold strokes mankind's search for God and the fluid relation between Nature and Grace. Malick blurs the venn diagram overlap between his looming themes with scenes that suggest the gracefulness of Nature and the naturalness of Grace. He creates a rich stream of consciousness, laced with internal monologue by our three principles that all seem to be asking “where are you?”.

We Need to Talk About Kevin,
directed by LYNNE RAMSAY:

Ramsay uses vivid cinematic techniques to immerse us in the guilt, anguish, and confusion of a woman whose son holds an inexplicable personal vendetta against her. She directs the hell out of this thing, and what she's ended up with is a disturbing work of art that gets under your skin and stays there against your will. Her evocation of Eva's frazzled memory is a stellar editing showcase. Lady MacBeth herself wouldn't have had such a hard time absolving herself of the guilt that stalks Eva's mind.

Best Picture:

Midnight in Paris

This beguiling psychological love affair that draws us to an epiphany about the root of nostalgia and our human dissatisfaction is Woody Allen's freshest, most imaginative premise since The Purple Rose of Cairo. Owen Wilson aptly plays an extension of the onscreen persona Allen spent years performing himself; the precocious, stammering sentimentalist prone to self-analyzing his own neuroses. The supporting cast that animates his possibly hallucinated alternate Paris is wonderful as well. The midnight sequences are beautifully shot with warm, textured lighting by Darius Khondji and Johanne Debas, before jolting us back into Gil's painful present with the hard, bright light of day.

Best Director: DANFUNG DENNIS

Danfung Dennis employs a smart chronological structure that toggles back and forth between the "Hell" of Afghanistan and the "Back Again" of America, although by the end of the film it's suspected that home may have become Nathan's true hell. He endeavours to dissect and present his subject's state of mind by drawing direct connections between his wartime experiences and his home-front struggles. In keeping with the spirit of true documentarianism, Dennis never indulges in talking head interviews of voice-over narration.

Just missed: 
The Adventures of Tintin
If your thirst for adventure is unquenchable, Steven Spielberg's rollicking popcorn pic should be enough to slake your thirst. Freed up by Weta's ground-breaking performance-capture system to play with the camera in ways he never has before, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is easily the funnest movie he's put out in nearly a decade; An Indiana Jones for the next generation.

Beginners
This gentle little drama about the generation-spanning challenge of finding happiness succeeds in great part due to its three central performances from Ewan MacGregor, Christopher Plummer, and Melanie Laurent. Mike Mills' script and direction are beautifully restrained, employing a melancholy sense of humour when needed to lighten his film's understated but deep-running sadness.

The Ides of March
The hypocritical game of politics is what's put front and centre for us to see; irredeemably cynical (maybe too much so) in its depiction of a profession in which one's career cannot survive without compromising, or even completely abandoning, one's principles. Whether you agree or not with this grim assessment, it makes for a terrific yarn.

Moneyball
This slow-burner of a sports movie (more of an anti-sports movie, actually) appreciates tremendously with time. It's more about ambition and paradigm shifting than it is about baseball, told not through the eyes of the athletes, but of the man putting the team together in hopes that his life and career will mean something. Splendidly written and performed.

LA Film Critics annoint The Descendants

It's been a busy day for critics awards, starting off with the Boston Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics Online handing out their year-end accolades, and capping off with the renowned LA Film Critics Association. But while the BSFC and NYFCO were trend-following, handing top honours to current Oscar frontrunner The Artist, the LAFCA was going their own way, shutting out the crowd-pleasing silent film entirely in favour of some more offbeat choices.

Ultimately, however, it was Alexander Payne's overrated The Descendants coming out on top, but I absolutely dig the support shown for The Tree of Life, with Terrence Malick winning his first directing prize of the season, while Emmanuel Lubezki remains undefeated on the year for cinematography awards. In addition, I love that they gave Best Screenplay to Asghar Farhadi's brilliant Iranian drama A Separation, for which I will post a brief review sometime this week.

By the way, someone should tell these critics groups that they aren't doing Jessica Chastain any favours by giving her these blanket awards that encompass her entire 2011 filmography. They need to get behind ONE performance in order to help her to a nomination

Best Picture
The Descendants

Runner-up: The Tree of Life

Best Director
Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life

(Runner-up: Martin Scorsese, Hugo)

Review - The Tree of Life

Note: I found it unavoidable to properly compose my thoughts on the film without divulging mild SPOILERS. Not that a non-narrative-driven movie like this one lends itself so easily to spoiling, but I would still encourage you to see it and mold your own interpretation before indulging mine.

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth... when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” Such is the Old Testament query that prefaces Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, arguably the elusive master's most thought-provoking – and certainly his most artistically ambitious – effort to date; a flawed, painterly masterpiece that explores in broad, bold strokes mankind's search for God and the fluid relation between Nature and Grace.

The aforementioned question, posed by God to the long-suffering Job, seems to make the point that one man's tribulations are trivial, petty even, in the grand scheme of things; a mere thread in the pattern of the grand design (to paraphrase Stephen Schwartz). Initially, this line of thought appears to be Malick's driving principle. He introduces us to his story's everyman incarnations of Job, the O'Brien family. The sweet mother (Jessica Chastain) and strict father (Brad Pitt) mourn the passing of their 19-year-old son. We also meet their eldest son Jack some decades later (played here by Sean Penn) reflecting on the anniversary of his brother's death. It is here that Malick proposes, perhaps facetiously, that one's life takes either the path of Grace – loving, gentle, and clearly represented in the form of the O'Brien matriarch – or Nature – raw, pure, and clearly represented in the form of the O'Brien patriarch. Where does Jack fit in? Grace? Nature? Oddly enough, the reactions of the O'Brien parents to the news of their son's death are contradictory to Malick's designations, whereby it's Mrs. O'Brien who collapses with natural, heart-wrenching agony, while Mr. O'Brien adopts a more silent, filtered sorrow. Are Grace and Nature so cut and dry?

One Category at a Time: Best Director

I think it's safe to say that the days of the lone Best Director nod are over. With ten nominees for Best Picture, your Directing nominees are going to be five of those ten. From my ten predicted Best Picture nominees, the five I'm guessing to land a Director nod are the ones who have been nominated there before.

The first, and most famous of whom, is Steven Spieberg. who was last nominated in 2006 for Munich. He looks to have a high-profile year with The Adventures of Tintin likely to make a big box-office impact and War Horse to tantalize awards-voting bodies at year's end. Spielberg has been one America's most important filmmakers since the 1970s, and assuming that he'll earn the Academy's attention is seldom far-fetched.

Also nominated in 2006 (for Capote) was Bennett Miller, directing this year's baseball-centred drama Moneyball. Some are quick to chalk his Capote nomination up as bit of a fluke in a weak year, but he's a sensible director who works well with actors. With Oscar-winning screenwriters Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian handling the script and an impressive cast signed up, Miller has a good opportunity to make something really good out of this.

And would you look at this, another person who was last nominated in 2006 (for Goodnight and Good Luck), the multitalented George Clooney. His political drama The Ides of March, which he also wrote and produced with collaborator Grant Heslov, lands this year and is poised to be a force to be reckoned with on the circuit. Clooney has a terrific cast with lots of awards potential. Multiple acting nods is often good news for the director's chances.

Last nominated in 2005 for Sideways, Alexander Payne has not made a feature film since. Everyone's very excited to see him return this year with his take on the acclaimed novel The Descendants. Payne is adept at tackling drama and humour in balanced measure, and the story of a soon-to-be single father trying to reconcile with his two daughters may benefit from his sense of poignancy and levity.

Terrence Malick has only ever made one film the Academy really responded to (The Thin Red line for which he was nominated in 1999), but he's only ever made a handful of films anyway. His filmography is so small and spread out that fans of his are always hungering for his next feature, often forced to wait several years. It feels like we've been waiting for The Tree of Life forever, but now that it has a release planned this spring, we can finally see if it was worth the wait.

Predicted five:
George Clooney, The Ides of March
Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life
Bennett Miller, Moneyball
Alexander Payne, The Descendants
Steven Spielberg, War Horse

Also consider: J.J. Abrams Super 8, David Cronenberg A Dangerous Method, Cameron Crowe We Bought a Zoo, Drake Doremus Like Crazy, David Fincher The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Jodie Foster The Beaver, Phyllida Lloyd The Iron Lady, Jason Reitman Young Adult, Tate Taylor The Help.

One Category at a Time: Best Original Screenplay

The field looks pretty adaptation-heavy this year, but I spy a few interesting original films with great promise.

The one which will garner many a cinephile's attention this spring is Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, at long last seeing a theatrical release after years on the shelf. If it impresses enough people to earn a Best Picture berth, as I've predicted, a writing nomination for Malick will likely follow.

But beyond that, I'm not finding a whole lot of original stories this year that immediately scream "Oscar bait". Maybe if independent drama Like Crazy catches on in an appreciable way, it could lead writers Drake Doremus and Ben York Jones to a nomination, but its chances are really no less bankable than any other small-scale dramedies and romances.

An example of one such small-scale dramedy is Jodie Foster's The Beaver, written by Kyle Killen and starring the infamous Mel Gibson. The premise is an intriguing one about an unbalanced man who communicates with the world by way of a beaver-resembling hand puppet. Sounds like there's lots of potential for comedy and interesting character development.

A writer/director combo who managed to successfully woo Oscar before is Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman (Juno), who will try to do so again with Young Adult, starring Charlize Theron as a woman still smitten with a now-married man. Or perhaps another previous Oscar nominee, Sarah Polley (Away From Her), can return to the big dance for Take This Waltz, with Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen.

Predicted five:
The Tree of Life
Like Crazy
Young Adult
The Beaver
Take This Waltz

Also consider: Beginners, The Conspirator, Contagion, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Midnight in Paris, Super 8, The Whistleblower

One Category at a Time: Best Picture (part 2)

As attested by those who attended it this past February, the Sundance Film Festival apparently did not offer up much in the way of Oscar fodder this year. But one that did turn some heads, especially for its breakout star Felicity Jones, is Like Crazy, a romantic drama about a British woman separated from her American lover upon expiration of her student visa. You may as well consider this prediction a placeholder for whatever small independent film happens to win the Academy's favour this year. There's always at least one (probably two, with ten slots open).

This past year's Oscar winner for Best Adapted Screenplay, Aaron Sorkin, may be back in the race sooner than we'd expect for Moneyball. He and Steve Zaillian, another past winner of Adapted Screenplay, have fashioned a script from the non-fiction book by Michael Lewis about how Oakland Athletic's general manager Billy Beane assembled a competitive team on a shoestring budget by employing analytical statistic methods. I'll admit it doesn't exactly sound rivetting, but neither did the origin story of Facebook, and we all saw how well Sorkin's take on that turned out. The film will be directed by Bennett Miller (nominated five years ago for Capote) and star Brad Pitt.

Let's not forget the reason the Best Picture field was expanded to ten nominees in the first place; to make room for critically-respected blockbusters. That said, it's quite conceivable there might not be any films that fit the bill this year, given how many sequels and superhero movies there are, but one original premise that already has the Internet abuzz with a titillating trailer is Super 8, from J.J. Abrams, whose Star Trek only just missed out on a Best Picture nomination last year. I'm not at all confident in this prediction. It'll need positive reviews to even stand a chance.

I've been predicting Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life for three consecutive years now, only for it to continue to linger in distribution limbo. Finally, this Spring, at long last, it will see the light of day, and I must say I'm excited. But will expectations be too high? Cinephiles have been waiting a long time to see this film. Can it survive after literally years of extended hype? And even so, is it the Academy's type of movie? I'm hoping for the best.

Steven Spielberg hasn't been a Best Picture nominee since Letter from Iwo Jima, but he could be back next year with another Academy friendly movie called War Horse, which tells the story of a young man who follows his beloved horse into World War I after it is sold to the cavalry. Nearly all the same department heads from Saving Private Ryan have joined up with Spielberg on this one, giving it massive across-the-board potential, and that sentimental storyline can only help matters.

Take these ten predictions lightly. It's just a shot in the dark. If even four of these make it into the Big Ten, I'll consider myself successful.

Predicted ten:
A Dangerous Method
The Descendants
The Help
The Ides of March
The Iron Lady
Like Crazy
Moneyball
Super 8
The Tree of Life
War Horse

Also consider: Albert Nobbs, The Beaver, The Conspirator, Coriolanus, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Jane Eyre, One Day, Water for Elephants, We Bought a Zoo, We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Whistleblower, Winnie, Wuthering Heights, Young Adult.

"Tree of Life" trialer

It's about freakin' time!



Lubezki's cinematography is looking good. Can't wait (although we've already been waiting over two years).