Sound of Music's 50th: Austrian Alps and Julie's Face

In honour of the 50th anniversary of the world premiere of The Sound of Music (and truer to the actual anniversary date than the swell but superfluous tribute belted by Lady Gaga at the Oscars), The Film Experience's Nathaniel Rogers has made the beloved musical the latest subject of his perennial "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series -- always an Oscar off-season treat!

While the last two months of Oscar blogging have sapped much of the life force from my typing fingers, I have strength enough for this. How could I pass it up? The film sits comfortably within my top 20 all time, and is arguably the most durable relic of a now extinct studio culture that used to churn out lavish musical adaptations with a regularity comparable to the production of superhero movies today (I was clearly born in the wrong decade... sigh).

Director of Photography Ted McCord received the final of three career Oscar nominations for this movie, and considering that said movie was a record-breaking, Best Picture winning smash hit boasting breathtaking Alpine scenery as its backdrop, some might find it surprising that he didn't win. Admittedly, it'd be tough for any Academy member not to vote for Freddie Young's jaw-dropping widescreen cinematography in Doctor Zhivago that year, but it isn't hard to imagine McCord's splendid mountainscapes running a respectable second.

The most famous of these high-altitude shots will be, for many, the defining image of not only the film, but of the entire musical genre;

The sight of Julie Andrews spinning around the hilltops -- and trying nobly to avoid being blown over by the downdraft of the helicopter blades -- as the camera pushes in from hundreds of yards away, has rightfully earned its place as the most ravishing entrance in the cinematic headcanon.

And yet as unforgettable as it is, I'm not quite sold on it as the "best" shot of the picture. After all, McCord spun real visual magic with his interiors as well...

Putting the season to bed on a few positives

Not everything that transpired this season was cause for moaning and groaning. If there were never a handful of redeeming moments that make me sincerely happy every year, I wouldn't keep following this Oscar circus so closely. Some of this season's highlights include:

-Christopher Plummer

There's nothing new about the Best Supporting Actor category being used to bestow a better-late-than-never career honour upon a respected veteran actor, but rarely is the coinciding performance of such high quality that it could have won the award on merit alone. Such was the case this year as Christopher Plummer, at 82 years young, became the oldest Oscar winner ever for his graceful, emotionally pure performance in Beginners. Given that it was such an under-seen, understated little gem of movie with no other nominations, for Plummer to do so well by it is a small, but very satisfying, miracle.

-Foreign Language curse broken

I wasn't very smart in my prediction for Best Foreign Language Film, where I skeptically laid back on the category's history of shafting the critical favourite in favour of typical Academy bait. But if ever there was a film to buck the trend, it was A Separation, legitimately the best foreign film of 2011, and of the many predictions I missed this year, its Oscar win was the one I was happiest to get wrong.

-Muppets have an Oscar!

Hard to believe in retrospect that "The Rainbow Connection" from The Muppet Movie lost Best Original Song back in 1971, making it evident that the Academy might consider themselves to be just a little bit above those TV-based puppets. But even if it has to come with the asterisk of this year's dubious Best Original Song crop, it's still gratifying to see a Muppet film finally win an Oscar, and I personally was pleased to, for the first time, hear Jim Henson thanked in an Oscar speech.

-Smooth recovery from the Ratner fiasco

Brett Ratner's media fuax-pas back in November seriously threatened to become the major talking of the season, but the Academy's swift resolution (bringing on Brian Grazer as replacement producer and Billy Crystal as host) ensured that the whole messy affair soon became nothing more than a distant memory. The show they subsequently put on may not be the most special in Oscar history, but it was exactly what I'd have expected and wanted from that creative team, and not once did the proceedings feel like they were lingering in the shadow of the previous scandal. Sometimes a dose of familiar shtick really is the best remedy.

That's just about all there is left to say about this past Oscar season as far as I'm concerned. At some point in the coming months I'll start compiling some early predictions for next year. Speaking of early predictions, how well did I do predicting this year's nominees from a year back? I correctly anticipated 3/5 Best Adapted Screenplay nominees, 3/5 Best Art Direction nominees, 3/5 Best Sound Mixing nominees, 5/9 Best Picture nominees, 4/5 Best Cinematography nominees, and (if you count predicting Viola Davis in Supporting) all five Best Actress nominees! Looking forward to trying to improve that for next year!

Ta, for now.

Oscar Post-mortem

Where to begin on last Sunday's Academy Awards?

Obviously The Artist was the big winner, taking five trophies including Best Picture, Director, Actor. Hugo matched that tally with five craft wins, while the dreadful Iron Lady won two (gak!), and the list of one-win wonders includes The Help, Beginners, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and The Muppets (becoming the first Muppet movie to win an Oscar! YAY!)

Surprises were few and far between, and those that we did get were decidedly unpleasant ones if you ask me. The biggest of said unpleasant surprises was no doubt Meryl Streep's victory in Best Actress, but don't let me give you the impression that I'm vindictive. I'm as big a fan of the lady as the next man. Year after year, Streep continues to solidify her claim as the greatest actress of her generation with consistently excellent performances, unfortunately often in films less-than-worthy of her gifts. If there's any living thespian deserving of three Academy Awards, it's her...

...but why did it have to come at the expense of Viola Davis? This was clearly her year, and hers was clearly the best performance of the five. Not to pontificate too hard on the Academy's (and Hollywood's) demographic tendencies, but when is she going to have an opportunity like this again? I wonder if this might be Oscar's most severe mistake in years.

One Category at a Time: Supporting Actor

Best Supporting Actor is often a refuge for overdue veterans reminding the industry that they're still alive (unless they're in a film that's just too cool for the Academy - coughAlbertBrookscough!), and with the exception of one conspicuously youthful contender, that's exactly what the category represents this year. I think it's safe to assume that someone is finally getting his due this year, but while the precursors have made it convincingly clear which senior it'll be, I have some uneasy reservations.

SAG winners

Stunt Ensemble: Harry Potter

That's all well and good, but why wasn't Mission: Impossible nominated?

Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer,
Beginners

Hard to see how Plummer loses this on Oscar night, but the sudden appearance of Max von Sydow (in a Best Picture nominee, no less) has made me wary.

Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer,
The Help

Yep. Looks like the Oscar's hers. Nice speech too.

Well, damn. Only fifteen minutes in and two of the five awards I care about are done. Am I gonna have to wait an hour and a half until we hit another movie category?

Loved seeing Dick Van Dyke take the stage to introduce and narrate the tribute reel to Lifetime Achievement honouree Mary Tyler Moore. Less thrilled about listening to Mary prattle on about her showbiz name in her speech.

Actor: Jean Dujardin,
The Artist

Well well well, it looks like Harvey's been at it again. Did that pitch perfect Globes speech give Dujardin that extra push here? Where does this put us in terms of the Oscar conversation?

Actress: Viola Davis,
The Help

YES! I was so worried this was going to Meryl. But that acceptance speech. Wow. If that can't net her the Oscar I don't know what can.

Ensemble: The Help

Inarguably the best of the lot.

Well, I BOMBED my predictions (three for six if you include Stunt Ensemble, because why not?), but I'll confess that I was somewhat hedging my bets by predicting Meryl and The Artist; I just really wanted to see Viola and The Help win their respective categories, which they did, so yay!

Tonight marks the third consecutive televised wins for Octavia Spencer and Christopher Plummer. They are the smart Oscar bets, although I have an unsettling suspicion that Max von Sydow could sneak in the backdoor on Plummer. More on that later this week.

The Best Actress tiebreaker fell in favour of Viola Davis, and it was a huge win because it gave her another chance to move the room to tears with a staggering acceptance speech. Believe it or not, those can make a difference. It's PR gold that can tip the scales in your favour if you do it right, and in her two trips to the podium this season, Viola has NAILED it both times. I think the Oscar is her's to lose.

But what about Best Actor? I said that if someone was going to make a move on Clooney it would have to happen here, and it did. Clooney has the BFCA and the Drama Globe, Dujardin has the SAG and the Comedy Globe. It's worth noting that a comedic performance hasn't won the Best Actor Oscar since 1999 when Roberto Benigni ludicrously won for Life is Beautiful, but it's also worth noting that he also won the SAG and was backed by Weinstein (Mirimax, that is). I'm gonna have to think about this one.

BFCA winners

And so the Broadcast Film Critics have weighed in with their Oscar-predictive picks, solidifying The Artist as the frontrunner we all knew it was.

Two of the Acting categories will likely continue a pattern all the way to the Academy Awards. I refer of course to Christopher Plummer who is en route to finally claim that Lifetime Achievement Oscar they tried to set him up for with The Last Station two years ago, and Viola Davis who rocked her acceptance speech and will likely do the same at the Globes and SAG Awards. But I feel Best Supporting Actress and Best Actor might have some shakeups along the way.

Action Film: Drive Great movie with some action scenes, but NOT an action movie.
Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, The Help
Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners On his way to an Oscar.
Acting Ensemble: The Help
Animated Feature: Rango On it's way to an Oscar.
Comedy: Bridesmaids
Foreign Film: A Separation Easy call, but I still don't know about Oscar.
Young Actor or Actress: Thomas Horn, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
May be the only award this film wins all year.
Documentary: George Harrison: Living in a Material World
Adapted Screenplay: Moneyball Nice choice.
Original Screenplay: Midnight in Paris
Director: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Actress: Viola Davis, The Help Her year? Me thinks so. Nailed her speech.
Actor: George Clooney, The Descendants Damn. Was kinda hoping for Pitt.
Picture: The Artist Quelle surprise.

And the rest:

Cinematography: (tie) War Horse, The Tree of Life
Original Song: "Life's a Happy Song", The Muppets
Costume Design: The Artist
Art Direction: Hugo
Film Editing: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Visual Effects: Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Sound: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Score: The Artist
Makeup: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

As always, the BFCA is trying real hard to predict the Oscars in these craft categories. I think they're barking up the wrong tree with Potter winning Sound, but the rest seem like very plausible winners on Oscar night.

My Awards nominations: Supporting Actor

Supporting Actor:

ALBERT BROOKS in Drive:

Brooks finds the seedy darkness inside an outwardly affable facade that makes his villainous mob boss all the more threatening.

ROBERT FORSTER in The Descendents:

Even though he only appears in a couple of scenes, the impact he leaves is palpable. The only way he knows how to cope with the grief of his daughter's inevitable death is bitterness and anger, but we can sense his love and his hurt.

EZRA MILLER in We Need to Talk About Kevin:

We don't get much exposure to Miller (as the older Kevin) until halfway through the movie, but once he's there he carries a ubiquitous presence that you can't shake. His depiction of a disturbed youth is as unsettling as they come.

BRAD PITT in The Tree of Life:

With a galvanic performance that bests any other of his career, Pitt becomes the personified embodiment of Mallick's idea of Nature; raw, unrelenting, pure, instinctive. It's hard to play an abstract theme instead of an arc, but Pitt nails it.

CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER in Beginners:

Plummer's warm portrayal of dying man finally finding his identity in his last year of life is as inspiring as it is sad; a masterful stroke that blends the joy of his character's sexual liberation with the sorrow of knowing his own mortality.

Just missed:
Hugo Weaving in Captain America, Ben Kinsgley in Hugo, Nick Nolte in Warrior,
Patton Oswalt in Young Adult

Review - Beginners

Beginners, Mike Mills' gentle little drama about the generation-spanning challenge of finding happiness, succeeds in great part due to its three central performances and Mills' thoughtful screenplay. Ewan McGregor plays a lonely graphic artist still quietly reeling from a death in the family; his father, excellently played by Christopher Plummer, was 75 years old when he came out about his homosexuality and proceeded to try and grab once last slice of happiness before his terminal lung cancer took over. This story is told in flashback while we follow McGregor's pursuit of a relationship after his father's death. Having met an eccentric woman at a party, the softly radiant Melanie Laurent, he revels in his new found love, but his private insecurities about the finite nature of happiness threaten to sabotage the burgeoning romance. 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.

***1/2 out ****

One Category at a Time: Best Supporting Actor

As it was with Supporting Actress, I managed to guess three of this past year's nominees from a year out. I was relatively confident about some of those early picks too, but I can't say the same thing about any of today's advanced predictions.

It's odd to think that Paul Giamatti only has one nomination to his name (and for Cinderella Man of all things), but the Academy will have a chance to remedy that if he delivers in George Clooney's A-lister-filled drama The Ides of March. But will internal competition keep him from attracting enough attention? There are lots of possible Supporting Actor candidates in the film.

This category is often kind to respected veterans whose best work is behind them, but whose longevity and versatility allows them to continue working. After garnering his first career nomination last year, Christopher Plummer could return for another shot with Mike Mills' Beginners.

Meryl Streep has the tendency to steal her costars' spotlight, but recall Stanley Tucci's warm turn as her supportive turn in Julie & Julia probably helped him earn his nomination last year (although for a different movie). Maybe Jim Broadbent can win some awards love by playing her supportive husband in The Iron Lady?

For a few years Philip Seymour Hoffman was ubiquitous, first winning his Oscars for Capote and then following it up with two consecutive Supporting Actor nods. He's been absent a couple of years now, but Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian have probably written him a plum role in Moneyball. The film is being made by Bennett Miller who directed Hoffman to that Capote Oscar.

And for a really off the wall prediction, how about Kenneth Branagh in My Week with Marilyn? I always forget that he has four nominations (in four different categories!), although the last one was in 1996 for adapting Hamlet. Perhaps there's a chance he can nab a nod for playing Laurence Olivier.

Predicted five:
Christopher Plummer in Beginners
Paul Giamatti in The Ides of March
Philip Seymour Hoffman in Moneyball or The Ides of March
Jim Broadbent in The Iron Lady
Kenneth Branagh in My Week with Marilyn

Also consider: Vincent Cassal in A Dangerous Method, Daniel Craig in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Thomas Hayden Church in We Bought a Zoo, Hal Holbrook in Water for Elephants, Sean Penn in The Tree of Life, Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life, John C. Reilly in We Need to Talk About Kevin, Christoph Waltz in Water for Elephants