My Award Nominations: Adapted Screenplay

A far more competitive field than it was last year, with some truly heartbreaking decisions about who to leave off. But five is the ceiling, and these are the five Adapted Screenplays that I thought were tops:

October Recap

So October is a wrap! As I was cobbling together my last-minute Doof Warrior costume in time for last night's frivolities, I figured now was the best time to start taking note of how the 2015-16 Oscar race is shaping up.

I realize that for many, the September festival circuit is the official kick-off of awards season. But for those of us without press credentials or travel time to burn, October is when we actually get to see the buzzy titles we've been reading about for a month or more. And this October was chalk full of them.

Early Oscar Predictions: Adapted Screenplay

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

One Category at a Time: Adapted Screenplay

As it is with Best Original Screenplay, the crop of Adapted Screenplay nominees this year includes the two legitimately best adapted screenplays of the year, but also a couple I could have done without. It's still a good lineup on the whole, and the race between the two frontrunners is just close enough for me to have an active rooting interest in this category.

My Awards nominations: Adapted Screenplay

Strong crop this year. Here's what I deem the best Adapted Screenplays of the year:

Drive (Hossein Amini):
The irrepressibility of one's true nature is a theme that's startlingly made in Drive. Amini minimizes dialogue and focuses more on implied backstory to illustrate the driver's character.

The Ides of March (George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Beau Willimon):
Clooney et. al. realize that making the actual politics the meat of this story would either alienate or bore their audience, so they wisely keep it on the side, keeping the screenplay lean, polished, and efficient.

Moneyball (Steve Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin, Stan Chervin):
While not one that always pops, the script does brim with ideas. The dialogue willfully revels in awkward beats that force unspoken characterization. Anyone who can make baseball stats interesting has to be a good writer!

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Bridget O'Connor, Peter Straughan):
This is a thoughtful and attentive screenplay that intentionally moves a bit slowly, but at least it allows its audience time to process all the little narrative cogs that compose the complex plot.

We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay, Rory Kinnear):
The book's more objective narration is translated into a brilliant first-person character study that comes tinted with its character's guilt and confusion. Cleverly structured as a pseudo mystery.

Just missed: The Help, Project Nim, Tintin

Review - Moneyball

Like the game of baseball itself, Bennett Miller's Moneyball is mostly a slow-moving affair that picks up here and there, but carries a payoff that's well worth it for those who stuck the whole thing out.

Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, player-turned-scout-turned-GM whose promising MLB career fell through and left him embittered towards the whole system. He despairs that the league is governed by a financial hierarchy that sees the rich teams get richer and the poor teams (specifically his own Oakland As) get poorer, and he's equally cynical about the archaic scouting philosophy faithfully practiced by his older staff. Naturally, he's intrigued by the number-crunching sabermetrics of recent Yale graduate Pete Brand (Jonah Hill), a system that emphasizes statistical player projections for runs and wins while minimizing cost. It flies in the face of conventional wisdom about drafting superstar players, but Beane, unsatisfied with what he considers an unaccomplished life, is willing and eager to rock the boat.

One Category at a Time: Best Adapted Screenplay

There look to be a lot of previous Oscar nominees (and winners) for screenwriting back in play this year for high profile adaptations. Certainly more than in the original field, but that doesn't make it that much easier to predict from a year out.

Alexander Payne won this category for his last feature film Sideways with his writing partner Jim Taylor. He's got two new collaborators in Nat Faxon and Jim Rash with whom he's adapted the Kaui Hart Hemmings novel The Descendants, which fits with Payne's style of balancing smart humour and real emotion. I'm looking forward to it.

Another past Oscar winner in this category is Christopher Hampton, who received his Oscar back in 1989 for Dangerous Liaisons which was based on his own play. For this year he's adapted another one of his own plays with the word ''dangerous'' in the title; A Dangerous Method, which explores the work of and relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.

And yet another pair of previous Adapted Screenplay winners with a project in the race this year are Steve Zaillian (Schindler's List) and Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network), who have teamed up to adapt Moneyball, Michael Lewis' nonfiction account of Billy Beane's computerized drafting system of MLB prospects, for the screen. I'll be interested to see where they can go with it.

George Clooney and Grant Heslov were nominated five years ago for writing Good Night and Good Luck, and are collaborating again to bring us their adaptation of Beau Willimon's play The Ides of March. Political dramas are never an unwise bet, and this one has enough star power to make it a big awards magnet for Clooney and Heslov.

Back in the realm of more traditional Oscar bait is Steven Spielberg's War Horse, based on Michael Morpurgo's novel which is also coming out as a Broadway play this year. Richard Curtis and Lee Hall have written the screenplay, which is sure to catch many an Academy member's fancy with its sentimental story and hefty WWI setting.




Predicted five:
A Dangerous Method
The Descendants
The Ides of March
Moneyball
War Horse

Also consider: Albert Nobbs, A Better Life, Coriolanus, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Iron Lady, The Help, The Skin That I Inhabit, Water for Elephants, We Bought a Zoo, We Need to Talk About Kevin.

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.

WGA winners

Adapted: Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network
Original: Christopher Nolan, Inception
Documentary: Charles Ferguson, Inside Job

GREAT trio of winners. Even if I might have preferred to see The Kids Are All Right bring a prize to Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg, it's great to see Christopher Nolan receive his due for one of the most impressive filmmaking accomplishments of the year.

Aaron Sorkin continues to clean up, deservedly so, and Charles Ferguson snatched up a major award for his excellent breakdowns and effective explanations in Inside Job.

WGA, ADG, Annie Preview

Having won the USC Scripter prize just last night with Ben Mezrich, Aaron Sorkin is likely to continue The Social Network's screenwriting winning streak with an Adapted Screenplay win at tonight's WGA awards. Any winner other than him would be a total shock.

As for Original Screenplay, intriguing scenario. David Seidler's soon-to-be-Oscar-winning script for The King's Speech is ridiculously ineligible, of course, so who takes it? Could they tip a hat to Christopher Nolan in consolation of his Director snub by the Academy? Could the general affection felt towards The Fighter push its team of writers to a win? Or will this be the one major industry prize Lisa Cholodenko (along with Stuart Blumberg) can lay claim to this season? I'm hoping for and predicting the latter. The Kids Are All Right is just too good a movie for her to go completely unrewarded this year.

Let's not forget two other industry groups announcing their winners tonight; The ADG and the Annie Awards.

I see The King's Speech, Alice in Wonderland, and Black Swan emerging victorious with the art directors, while the animation academy will probably provide How To Train Your Dragon with a hearty love fest, given how much of their organization is composed of Dreamworks employees.

One Category at a Time: Adapted Screenplay

This past weekend saw the awards race continue to take a turn for the worse as The King's Speech strolled through the DGA and SAG awards that aught rightfully have gone to more deserving films. It's likely heading for a sweep of sorts, much to the detriment of the superior Social Network, but there's at least one category where Fincher's film won't be in direct competition with the kingly juggernaut.
Needless to say, anybody other than Aaron Sorkin nabbing the Adapted Screenplay prize would be an utter shock and embarrassment. What he accomplished with The Social Network is one of the finest pieces of intelligent and artful screenwriting in years.

That being said, the rest of the field is still a respectable bunch. True Grit is wonderfully written by the Coens, as always, featuring period-appropriate dialogue and an excellent sense of timing. Toy Story 3 is also one of the year's best scripts (although it should be competing in the Original category), lingering on the verge of greatness for the first 90 minutes, and then finally not only meeting it, but exceeding it with that potent, beautiful ending. Danny Boyle's innovation as a filmmaker continued exploring tricky and challenging territory with his and Simon Beaufoy's unique work in 127 Hours, and Debra Granik & Anne Rosellini did a fine job at building intrigue in the grainy Winter's Bone.

It's a shame David Lindsey-Abaire's Rabbit Hole or Polanski & Harris' The Ghost Writer couldn't find room here, but at the end of the day, it's a moot point.

The Academy 'Likes' Aaron Sorkin.

Will win: The Social Network
Runner-up: True Grit

Should win: The Social Network
Should have been nominated: Rabbit Hole

My Award nominations: Adapted Screenplay

Best Adapted Screenplay:

The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski, Robert Harris):
The script, cowritten by Polanski and novelist Robert Harris, is smart and ironic. Their style is simple and unfettered by needless genre tropes. The characters are written consistently with economical and effective dialogue. All around, a chilling and intelligent exercise in constructing tension.

Never Let Me Go (Alex Garland):
The film as a whole may have gone down as an admirable miss, but Garland's adaptation of Kuzuo Ishiguro's book is an elegant study of character and theme; themes about mortality, the intangibility of love, and how in the grand scheme of things, the amount of time we spend on this earth cannot quantify the lives we lead.

Rabbit Hole (David Lindsay-Abaire):
Lindsay-Abaire opens up his Pulitzer-winning play for the screen so effectively that you never would have guessed that it was based on a play. Understated grief and tactful humour mix to form an interesting emotional flavour. A fine study of not only coping with loss, but coping with other people's coping.

The Social Network (Aaron Sorkin):
If the movie has to belong to anyone, it's Aaron Sorkin. His loose adaptation of
Ben Mezrick's book slices through the perceived glory of the Internet with a cynical but perspicacious edge, extrapolating from a small group of characters to make comment on broader societal virtues and faults. The dialogue is deliciously verbose.

True Grit (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen):
Despite the conspicuous absence of their usually idiosyncratic personality, the Coens' faithful retelling of Charles Portis' novel provides a rip-roaring adventure tale with smooth character arcs, well-appointed comic relief, and delighfuly antiquated dialogue. Impeccably paced to boot.

Just missed: The American, Scott Pilgrim vs the World, The Town, The Way Back