One Category at a Time: Picture

Last year, I continued my practice of narrowing down the Best Picture field by simple analysis of which films possessed the necessary three nominations (Editing, Directing, Writing) to win Best Picture. Only three films met all the requirements, and those films went on to win a combined nine Oscars, including seven of the eight major categories. So let's do more of the same:

The Artist: Editing (Y), Directing (Y), Writing (Y)
The Descendants: Editing (Y), Directing (Y), Writing (Y)
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: Editing (N), Directing (N), Writing (N)
The Help: Editing (N), Directing (N), Writing (N)
Hugo: Editing (Y), Directing (Y), Writing (Y)
Midnight in Paris: Editing (N), Directing (Y), Writing (Y)
Moneyball: Editing (Y), Directing (N), Writing (Y)
The Tree of Life: Editing (N), Directing (Y), Writing (N)
War Horse: Editing (N), Directing (N), Writing (N)

So, the only three that can win (by this logic, that is) are The Artist, Hugo, and The Descendants.

Descendants rounds out good weekend with WGA win

It was a good couple of days for The Descendants, which took home an unexpected editing prize from the ACE and a less surprising USC Scripter award last night, and just this evening nabbed the Writers Guild of America's honour for Best Adapted Screenplay. It is likely on its way to the Oscar as well, and it bugs me to no end. Not to be too harsh, but lazy voice-over narration and tonal inconsistency aren't exactly qualities of a brilliant adaption. I had held out hope that the guild might opt for the dense thematic fibers of Moneyball, thus boosting its Oscar hopes, but no dice.

Meanwhile, Woody Allen collected another Original Screenplay award for Midnight in Paris to go along with his Critics Choice and Golden Globes awards. This comes to precisely nobody's surprise, especially with its chief competition for the Oscar, The Artist, out of the running on one of the guild's maddening technicalities. Here's hoping the momentum will carry over with the Academy.

As has become a trend this year, the guild's documentary category gives us absolutely no help for predicting the Oscar, as the Documentary Screenplay category went to the un-nominated Better This World. This is the first year I can remember when none of the Best Documentary nominees had a single guild win.

ACE, CAS, WGA, MPSE preview

It's a busy weekend for guild awards looking to have their say before Oscar polls close on Tuesday.

The American Cinema Editors would be a more important announcement if it weren't for their separation of the nominees into Drama and Comedy categories. The Artist is obviously going to win in the Comedy category, while Drama is probably going the way of Hugo (although I could see it going to Dragon Tattoo as well). As for the Oscar, it'll be down to The Artist and whatever film does win for Drama, as the Oscar winner for Editing has won the ACE Eddie for the last ten years in a row.

The Cinema Audio Society only nominated two films that went on to receive Sound Mixing nods from the Academy; Hugo and Moneyball. I'm anticipating Hugo will take it from the Society, but am still sticking with War Horse to impress the Academy.

The Writers Guild of America is probably going to award Midnight in Paris for Original Screenplay and Moneyball for Adapted, a pair of winners I wouldn't be surprised to see repeat at the Oscars, though I am expecting The Descendants to come out on top with the Academy.

Finally, the Motion Picture Sound Editors have a few categories in which to acknowledge the year's best sound editing. The important category in terms of Oscar is Best Sound Effects and Foley, where I'm guessing it'll be War Horse. Interesting to note: for four of the last five years, the winner of that category with the MPSE as gone on to win the Oscar for Sound Editing, and since the two Sound categories so often go to the same film, this guild is possibly a more accurate bellwether of Best Sound Mixing than the CAS.

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.

One Category at a Time: Art Direction

There are a number of categories this year where I have reasonable doubts about my predicted winner - too many categories. This is not one of them. There is a single obvious choice on which any sane Oscar-watcher should bet the bank, but it's only fair to give the other nominees their congrats:

One Category at a Time: Original Screenplay

I'm having a really tough time deciding how to feel about the slate of Best Original Screenplay nominees this year. On the one hand, there's nothing more gratifying than to see the two legitimately best screenplays of the year mentioned alongside each other. On the other hand, there's nothing more irritating than to see two uninspired screenplays squeeze out underrated gems like 50/50 and Young Adult in the one category where they could have earned some recognition. And then there's the Best Picture winner's token nomination for Writing. No strong feelings either which way about that one.

My Awards nominations: Cinematography

My nominees for Cinematography are:

Drive (Newton Thomas Sigel):

L.A. is sleekly conveyed through Sigel's luminous photography; a mesmerizing display of soft lighting and focus to offset the brutality of the content.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Jeff Cronenweth):

The film may be an empty exercise in style, but such style! The green-saturated coloration fits the murky story nicely. Some experimental shots work well.

Midnight in Paris (Darius Khondji, Johanne Debas):

The midnight sequences are beautifully shot with warm, textured lighting, before jolting us back into Gil's painful present with the hard, bright light of day.

The Tree of Life (Emmanuel Lubezki):

Be it the indelible vastness of an otherworldly shore, or the minute delicacy of a floating butterfly, Lubezki's compositions are lush and hypnotic.

We Need to Talk About Kevin (Seamus McGarvey):

McGarvey captures Eva's adhesive guilt through dozens of arresting (if not subtle) images symbolic of bloodstained hands with deep, cascading reds.

Just missed: The Artist, Bullhead, Hell and Back Again, Hugo, War Horse,
Miss Bala, Moneyball, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Martha Marcy May Marlene

My Awards nominations: Original Screenplay

On the heels of the WGA's announcement, here are my five best Original Screenplays of 2011:

50/50 (Will Reiser):
That the story of a young man diagnosed with cancer could be treated as a comedy is something of a small feat. That the humour never strays into morbid territory is more impressive still. One of the most emotionally compelling aspects Reiser's screenplay is how it devotes balanced attention to Adam's family and friends.

Beginners (Mike Mills):
This gentle little drama about the generation-spanning challenge of finding happiness succeeds in great part due to Mills' thoughtful screenplay. It's beautifully restrained, employing a melancholy sense of humour when needed to lighten his film's understated but deep-running sadness.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin):
Durkin is clearly a talent to watch. His screenplay is an artful psychological study that unobtrusively guides the audience to their own understanding of what is dream and what is reality, what is paranoia and what is justified fear. The story does meander a bit, but it feels real that way.

Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen):
Playing both cynic and sentimentalist, Allen presents us with a humourous and perplexing psychological love affair that draws us to an epiphany about the root of nostalgia and our human dissatisfaction. It is his freshest, most imaginative premise since The Purple Rose of Cairo.

A Separation (Asghar Farhadi):
A complex, layered story whose painful truths are universal ones. It delves deep into human conscience and exposes the dangerous inconsistencies between our personal moral codes, our responsibilities to model ethics for our children, and the emotional consequences of neglecting those responsibilities.

Just missed: The Artist, Rampart, The Tree of Life, Young Adult

Review - Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris opens, as one would expect from a filmmaker as nostalgic as Woody Allen, with a music montage starring the great city itself. And yet what we see is not quite the same city immortalized in art, song, and story from decades past. While landmarks such as Le Champs Elysees or The Eiffel Tower feature prominently, Allen carefully includes in each shot some peripheral reminders of how times have changed the City of Love; a scaffolding here, a chain-link fence there, tourists reading maps, the lights of congested traffic overpowering the old-fashioned streetlamps – all juxtaposed against a 1920s jazz standard on the soundtrack, recalling his 1979 masterpiece Manhattan.