Hey all, Just thought I'd post my Oscar predictions for Sunday night. If you're in a pool or going to a party with a pool on Sunday, these might come in helpful. I've won an Oscar pool the last couple years so I'm not too bad at guessing, but of course, use at your own risk.
BEST PICTURE
No Country For Old Men
-This film has completely swept almost every major award so far except the BAFTA (which went to Atonement). There is, I think, a
chance that Michael Clayton could upset, but I doubt it. My concern here is that voters could be split between No Country For Old Men
and There Will Be Blood which could cause a Juno or Michael Clayton
upset. As much as I hate to say it, Atonement really doesn't have
much of a chance here despite its 7 nominations. It has no Director
nomination which severely cripples its chances. I believe the last
time a film won Best Picture without a Director nom was 1989 when
Driving Miss Daisy won. I really don't think No Country can be denied at this point, and it is truly deserving of the title.
BEST DIRECTOR
Joel & Ethan Coen, No Country For Old Men
-This is a tough category to predict, but I'm going with the Coens. This feels like their time for starters, and they did win the Directors Guild award. Michael Clayton is enjoying a late surge, but I really think the voters will choose to honor it in another category, especially since this is Tony Gilroy's first directorial effort and first nomination.
Juno's Jason Reitman doesn't really have a shot here even though the movie is widely loved, and the Academy will honor There Will Be Blood in other categories than recognizing P.T. Anderson here (although he will get his Oscar at some point). That leaves the Coens' biggest threat with Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Sentiment for this film runs high and it's bound to get honored for something, and it could very well be done in here. To sum it up, go with the Coens, but if you're feeling lucky, pick Schnabel.
BEST ACTOR
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
-This is one of the closest things to a lock on Sunday night. Day-Lewis's performance is probably the most talked about aspect of the film, it is a fierce performance, he doesn't necessarily make movies every day, and it is a fierce performance. He's been sweeping critics awards as well as the BAFTA & SAG awards, and has been extremely classy and gracious in his acceptance speeches. It's Day-Lewis by a mile.
BEST ACTRESS
Marion Cotillard, La Vie En Rose
-This is another difficult category to call (it's a very interesting Oscar race all around this year). Julie Christie has won lots of critics awards as well as the SAG, but Cotillard has been enjoying a recent surge and won the BAFTA. Some think Ellen Page from Juno could take it, but I keep having this nagging hunch that Cotillard is going to take it. Anyone that watches the film can't deny the transformative power of her performance.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Javier Bardem, No Country For Old Men
-Another basic lock on Sunday night. Bardem gave an unforgettable performance that is "supporting" in the true sense of the word. He's won scads of critics awards, the Golden Globe, the SAG, and the BAFTA. He's unstoppable. If anyone can stop him, it's Hal Holbrook for Into The Wild but that's an extreme longshot.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton
-A very tight race here, but I'm going with Swinton. For starters, her performance is incredible - another true "supporting" performance. Secondly, the Academy clearly loves MIchael Clayton and will honor it somewhere, and here is one of the places where that will happen. Ruby Dee won the SAG and could win this on the fact that the Academy would be honoring her entire career (she's never been nominated), but her screen time in American Gangster is extremely low. Any one of the women in the category has a viable chance, but I really think the momentum has swung to Swinton.
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Diablo Cody, Juno
-This is a fairly close lock. Cody's screenplay is widely admired and is an especially considerable acheivement considering it is her first. And let's face it - the writing and acting is what really drives Juno. Her closest competition here is Tony Gilroy for Michael Clayton. He could upset and it wouldn't be a surprise at all. I wouldn't actually be surprised at all if Brad Bird took it for Ratatouille due to a vote split between Juno & Clayton, but go with Cody for Juno.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Ronald Harwood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
-This might be a bold choice, but I feel that the Academy is going to honor this film in one of it's major categories. If you're not feeling risky though, go with the Coens for No Country For Old Men.
For the rest of the categories, I'll just give you the pick since you're probably tired of reading my explanations. Have you even made it this far??
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Ratatouille
ART DIRECTION
Sweeney Todd
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
COSTUME DESIGN
Sweeney Todd
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
No End in Sight
FILM EDITING
The Bourne Ultimatum
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
The Counterfeiters
MAKEUP
La Vie En Rose
SCORE
Atonement
SONG
"Falling Slowly" from Once
SOUND EDITING
Transformers
SOUND MIXING
Transformers
VISUAL EFFECTS
Transformers
DOCUMENTARY SHORT
Freeheld
LIVE ACTION SHORT
Tanghi Argenti
ANIMATED SHORT
I Met The Walrus
Happy Oscar Sunday!
JT
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Radar
Haven't posted in a while, but here's what's been on my entertainment/cultural radar as of late...
There Will Be Blood
If I had been able to see There Will Be Blood before posting my top films of 2007, it would have definitely been on the list - more than likely at number two, just under Atonement. Paul Thomas Anderson has proven himself time and again over the last decade to be a master filmmaker with such films under his belt as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love. Never before though have his writing skills, directorial brilliance, and artistic purpose been so intensely focused and honed in on telling a single story; and the results are practically earthshaking.
For a time, PT Anderson was becoming known primarily for his sprawling, multi-character, multi-story films - films much in the vein of the late, great Robert Altman, films like Nashville, Gosford Park, and Shortcuts. Anderson even served as a veritable assistant for Altman on his last film, A Prairie Home Companion. He moved away from this style with Punch-Drunk Love starring Adam Sandler and Emily Watson and proved that he could be equally as, if not more, effective in servicing a more focused narrative.
With There Will Be Blood, Anderson delivers his highest achievement to date. Very loosely adapted from Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!, There Will Be Blood tells the tale of two men; Daniel Plainview, an obsessive, self-made oilman and Eli Sunday, an obsessive, self-made frontier evangelist; both locked in an intense battle of will for the hearts, minds, and -perhaps most importantly- the pockets of the smalltown, frontier people in the small town where Plainview has set up an oil-drilling operation. The film follows Plainview more closely than Sunday, and, essentially, he is the center of the story; but his story does not fully exist without Sunday's so the two characters are irretrievably bound together.
Daniel Day-Lewis, who may be the finest living film actor of our generation, plays Plainview with such strong conviction and hot fire, that you can hardly believe your eyes. Not to be overlooked, however, is Paul Dano's remarkable and revelatory performance as Eli Sunday.
The film is almost Biblically epic and intimate in scope at the same time. The sense of tension and doom that seems to infiltrate every move Plainview makes owes thanks, at least in part, to Johnny Greenwood's revolutionary score. The film is quite unlike anything that has come down the pipe in some time. It's thought-provoking and unsettling, with an ending that some consider entirely out of line with everything leading up to it, and some consider fully appropriate to what has come before (While somewhat shocking, I align with the latter camp).
I also recently watched The Apartment for the first time. This Billy Wilder film from 1960 stars Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacClaine and won the Oscar for Best Picture. It's a superb comedy-drama, defly balancing satire and pathos.
Bookwise, I've been tearing through some great reads lately.
After reading Ian McEwan's Atonement, which was my favorite 2007 read, I've set out to read the rest of McEwan's ouevre. I recently finished Saturday, which is his second most previous novel. It's a fascinating read - a character study, really, more than anything - delving into a day in the life of one man, a London neurosurgeon named Henry Perowne. The novel's Saturday in question takes place right on the cusp of the 2003 beginning of the Iraq War and follows Perowne's day in London as it begins as one of promise and devolves into one of inconvenience, stress, and eventually, danger.
I also tore through Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. I've always been intrigued by this book, but could never get around to sitting down with it. A friend lent me the movie after a conversation we had had on "Southerness" and of course I had to read the book first - so this gave me the necessary push to read it. The book itelf is nothing short of engrossing, telling the true story of a murder trial in Savannah and the stories of all of the colorful characters surrounding the trial. Savannah itself is as much of a character in the book as any living, breathing human. As soon as I finished it, I was ready to hop in my car and get to Savannah pronto to see the places, so lovingly rendered in the book, for myself. The movie was, unfortunately but not surprisingly, a huge disappointment. For me, one of the worst book to film adaptations I've seen.
Most recently, I read Henry James's novella Daisy Miller. It, too, is more of a character study than anything, and is most interesting for the fact that it was James' first real commercial and ciritcal success as a fiction writer.
Currently, I've got several books going at the same time -
Conversations with Filmmakers from Hollywood's Golden Age at the American Film Institute, compiled by George Stevens, Jr.
The United States of Arugula: The Sun-Dried, Cold-Pressed, Dark-Roasted, Extra Virgin Story of the American Food Revolution by David Kamp
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
JT
There Will Be Blood
If I had been able to see There Will Be Blood before posting my top films of 2007, it would have definitely been on the list - more than likely at number two, just under Atonement. Paul Thomas Anderson has proven himself time and again over the last decade to be a master filmmaker with such films under his belt as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love. Never before though have his writing skills, directorial brilliance, and artistic purpose been so intensely focused and honed in on telling a single story; and the results are practically earthshaking.
For a time, PT Anderson was becoming known primarily for his sprawling, multi-character, multi-story films - films much in the vein of the late, great Robert Altman, films like Nashville, Gosford Park, and Shortcuts. Anderson even served as a veritable assistant for Altman on his last film, A Prairie Home Companion. He moved away from this style with Punch-Drunk Love starring Adam Sandler and Emily Watson and proved that he could be equally as, if not more, effective in servicing a more focused narrative.
With There Will Be Blood, Anderson delivers his highest achievement to date. Very loosely adapted from Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!, There Will Be Blood tells the tale of two men; Daniel Plainview, an obsessive, self-made oilman and Eli Sunday, an obsessive, self-made frontier evangelist; both locked in an intense battle of will for the hearts, minds, and -perhaps most importantly- the pockets of the smalltown, frontier people in the small town where Plainview has set up an oil-drilling operation. The film follows Plainview more closely than Sunday, and, essentially, he is the center of the story; but his story does not fully exist without Sunday's so the two characters are irretrievably bound together.
Daniel Day-Lewis, who may be the finest living film actor of our generation, plays Plainview with such strong conviction and hot fire, that you can hardly believe your eyes. Not to be overlooked, however, is Paul Dano's remarkable and revelatory performance as Eli Sunday.
The film is almost Biblically epic and intimate in scope at the same time. The sense of tension and doom that seems to infiltrate every move Plainview makes owes thanks, at least in part, to Johnny Greenwood's revolutionary score. The film is quite unlike anything that has come down the pipe in some time. It's thought-provoking and unsettling, with an ending that some consider entirely out of line with everything leading up to it, and some consider fully appropriate to what has come before (While somewhat shocking, I align with the latter camp).
I also recently watched The Apartment for the first time. This Billy Wilder film from 1960 stars Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacClaine and won the Oscar for Best Picture. It's a superb comedy-drama, defly balancing satire and pathos.
Bookwise, I've been tearing through some great reads lately.
After reading Ian McEwan's Atonement, which was my favorite 2007 read, I've set out to read the rest of McEwan's ouevre. I recently finished Saturday, which is his second most previous novel. It's a fascinating read - a character study, really, more than anything - delving into a day in the life of one man, a London neurosurgeon named Henry Perowne. The novel's Saturday in question takes place right on the cusp of the 2003 beginning of the Iraq War and follows Perowne's day in London as it begins as one of promise and devolves into one of inconvenience, stress, and eventually, danger.
I also tore through Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. I've always been intrigued by this book, but could never get around to sitting down with it. A friend lent me the movie after a conversation we had had on "Southerness" and of course I had to read the book first - so this gave me the necessary push to read it. The book itelf is nothing short of engrossing, telling the true story of a murder trial in Savannah and the stories of all of the colorful characters surrounding the trial. Savannah itself is as much of a character in the book as any living, breathing human. As soon as I finished it, I was ready to hop in my car and get to Savannah pronto to see the places, so lovingly rendered in the book, for myself. The movie was, unfortunately but not surprisingly, a huge disappointment. For me, one of the worst book to film adaptations I've seen.
Most recently, I read Henry James's novella Daisy Miller. It, too, is more of a character study than anything, and is most interesting for the fact that it was James' first real commercial and ciritcal success as a fiction writer.
Currently, I've got several books going at the same time -
Conversations with Filmmakers from Hollywood's Golden Age at the American Film Institute, compiled by George Stevens, Jr.
The United States of Arugula: The Sun-Dried, Cold-Pressed, Dark-Roasted, Extra Virgin Story of the American Food Revolution by David Kamp
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
JT
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