September is well over and we are deep into OscarWatch - something that was made QUITE clear to me on Sunday, when I went to see Argo.
Argo is a stunning film. It is tense and claustrophobic, exciting and unbelievable - made even more so by the fact that it IS A TRUE STORY. I repeat: the CIA inventing a fake Star Wars ripoff, press release and terrible poster included, in order to rescue six people from being publicly beheaded in Iran, ACTUALLY HAPPENED. As with any film adaptation of historical events, I imagine things may have been spiced up a bit for the screen...although the way Ben Affleck presents it on screen feels very true to life, down to the terrible 70s mustaches and slightly grainy film quality. It's harrowing, watching the six Americans get more and more convinced that they're going to die in the Canadian Embassy, and thrilling to watch the admittedly half-assed plan take shape. At one point, Bryan Cranston as the CIA Chief refers to Plan: Argo as "The best, worst idea we've got." That hopelessness, that desperation, drips off the film - which makes the payoff even more worth it. Everything about this movie is brilliant and you should go see it, posthaste.
AwardWatch: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay (there's a book! I wanna read it.). Possibly a Best Actor nom for Affleck. Best Visual Effects. In my fantasies, John Goodman or Alan Arkin pulls a Best Supporting Actor nomination, but I don't think it's too likely.
Let's take a look at the other hardcore Oscar Bait movies I saw trailers for, and make some predictions over what awards these films will pull:
Stunning, stunning trailer. I haven't read the book yet (I KNOW), but if one was going to make a film adaptation about a boy in a boat with a tiger, I would want it to look like this. And Ang Lee has serious philosophical chops (which worked for Brokeback Mountain, not so much for Hulk), so I think we can expect cerebral and gorgeous things from this one. Plus, the word from the early release at the New York Film Festival has been largely positive.
AwardWatch: Best Cinematography for sure. Best Adapted Screenplay is also a pretty safe bet. Best Director and Best Picture, MAYBE, but it depends on how the Academy feels about another 3D feature by someone with less pull than James Cameron.
AwardWatch: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay (there's a book! I wanna read it.). Possibly a Best Actor nom for Affleck. Best Visual Effects. In my fantasies, John Goodman or Alan Arkin pulls a Best Supporting Actor nomination, but I don't think it's too likely.
Let's take a look at the other hardcore Oscar Bait movies I saw trailers for, and make some predictions over what awards these films will pull:
Life of Pi
AwardWatch: Best Cinematography for sure. Best Adapted Screenplay is also a pretty safe bet. Best Director and Best Picture, MAYBE, but it depends on how the Academy feels about another 3D feature by someone with less pull than James Cameron.
Cloud Atlas
This feels like the illegitimate lovechild of The Fountain and Tree of Life to me, which gives me conflicted feelings. I want it to be more Fountain and less bullshit - but it looks potentially overwrought, over-complicated, and unintelligible. I won't mind the skips around in time and place if the story stays streamlined, and I don't have a lot of hope for that. Looks pretty beautiful, though.
(On a related note, a Google Image search of "Cloud Atlas" brings up what looks like pictures from seventeen different movies. This is my concern: that it will not only be overly complicated, but disconnected and incomprehensible.)
AwardWatch: After last year's Tree of Life event, I don't think this one has a lot of hope for Best Picture. Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Visual Effects and probably Art Direction, Best Costumes and Best Makeup nominations are assured, and it'll probably pull some other technical awards - I can see Best Film Editing and Sound Mixing, and Sound Track if the Cloud Atlas sonata score was written for the movie.
Lincoln
It is deeply ironic that this film is being released in the same year as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Ironic and a little sad, because AL:VH might have had more pull as a summer action flick if it hadn't drawn the inevitable comparisons to Spielberg's historical beauty. Ah well.
AwardWatch: Possibly everything. Best Actor for Daniel Day Lewis for sure, Best Picture, Best Director. Best Original Screenplay? Probably. Best Costumes and Makeup, because duh, it's a historical. Best Art Direction, Cinematography, probably a Best Supporting Actor nominee in there (my bet is on Tommy Lee Jones), and Best Supporting Actress for Sally Field.
If I had to guess 10 Best Picture nominees, right here, right now, I'd guess:
ReplyDeleteAnna Karenina, Argo, Cloud Atlas, Flight, The Hobbit, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, The Master, Silver Linings Playbook
Of course, there are three things wrong with my assumptions:
1) I am taking random shots in the dark; I have not seen most of these movies, I have only seen trailers for about half, and I have seen nothing more than posters for Anna Karenina and Silver Linings Playbook (they just sound like the kind of films that get nominated).
2) There are a lot of visual spectacles here. I'd expect Cloud Atlas, Life of Pi and The Hobbit to duke it out in the technical categories, but considering all three for best picture seems kinda... incorrect.
3) It's still damn early. This time last year, I hadn't even heard of The Artist. I don't think I saw so much as a production still until Thanksgiving. Hollywood really likes to wait til the last minute for prestige pics.
I might swap out The Hobbit for Beasts of the Southern Wild, based on how allergic the Academy is to genre films, but yeah, right now I'm all conjecture - most of these are complete shots in the dark right now. But we're clearly into awards season now, and I think it's fun to watch the trailers and think about what the hopefuls are aiming for.
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