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 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.