Tagged: Oscars

Five Oscar Nomination Surprises

Seth MacFarlane and Emma Stone announce the nominees for Best Picture

Seth MacFarlane and Emma Stone announce the nominees for Best Picture

At 5:30am Los Angeles time, Oscars host Seth MacFarlane and Emma Stone announced the nominees for the 85th Academy Awards. While there were a few categories which panned out exactly as expected, the nominations did throw up more than the usual number of surprises. Here are five of the biggest…

1) Only 9 in the Best Picture

There were a few notable omissions in the Best Picture category. Moonrise Kingdom, The Master, The Sessions and, to a lesser extent, Skyfall had all been talked about as Best Picture contenders but all were notably absent from the nominees announced. What makes that even more surprising is the Academy chose only to give out nine of a possible ten nominations. So it wasn’t even that these films were simply squeezed out by other worthy pictures, rather they were deemed not worthy of a nomination.

2) Amour gets some love

It is not often that a foreign language film gets Academy recognition outside of the Best Foreign Language Film category. So it was somewhat of a surprise to see Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or winner, Amour, pick up five nominations including Best Picture and Best Director. If nothing else it means that Amour will be the shortest of short priced favourites to win the Best Foreign Language Film category.

3) Big names missing in the Best Director field

It was the Best Director nominations which contained the biggest surprises, primarily as a result of who wasn’t there. Ben Affleck, Quentin Tarantino and Kathryn Bigelow had all been talked about as serious contenders to take the award home, yet none of them managed to get a nomination. The most obvious beneficiaries of these ‘snubbings’ are the surprise – unexpected but not undeserved – nominations of Michael Haneke and Behn Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild).

4) Silver Lining Support

The surprise nominations in both the Supporting Actor and Actress categories both came from Silver Linings Playbook. Robert De Niro had only received a handful of lead up nominations, none of them major, for his role as Pat Sr. His surprise nomination means that there wasn’t room for some more fancied possible nominees, particularly Django Unchained’s Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson. Australian Jackie Weaver came from right out of left field to score a nomination in the Supporting Actress category having not received any lead up nominations, other than as part of an ensemble cast. The Golden Globes and SAG nominations had opted for Nicole Kidman (The Paperboy) or Maggie Smith (Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) to round of their fields, but neither seem any more deserving than Weaver.

5) The Dark Knight does not rise

While I don’t think anyone was realistically expecting The Dark Knight Rises to earn a best picture nomination, most would have expected it to figure somewhere (maybe in visual effect?), but instead it became the highest profile film to be completely overlooked by the Academy this year.

Review – Life of Pi (2012)

Director: Ang Lee

Starring: Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Rafe Spall

Life of PiYann Martel’s 2001 novel Life of Pi was a best seller and much loved. However the story of a young man’s spiritual journey whilst stranded in the Pacific Ocean on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger was considered by many to be unfilmable. But Ang Lee, director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain, has proven that with the right director there is no such thing as unfilmable, creating a piece of art that is both highly spiritual and visually breathtaking.

I haven’t read Yann Martel’s novel so I can’t comment on how faithful an adaptation Lee’s film is, but I don’t really think it is important. I find it frustrating when people get hung up on the similarities and differences between novels and film adaptation and about which is better. A faithful adaptation of a novel does not necessarily make a good film. It is more important that the filmmaker use the novel as inspiration for his/her own take on the story. For example, Coppola’s The Godfather is a great film. Mario Puzo’s The Godfather is a great novel. But stylistically they are quite different, with Puzo’s novel being kind of pulpy, while Coppola’s film is grand and operatic. So its faithfulness to Martel’s Life of Pi isn’t as important as the fact that Ang Lee’s Life of Pi is a very good film in its own right.

At the beginning of the film the writer tells the adult Pi that he has sought him out because he has been told he “had a story that would make me believe in God.”  It is this spiritual element which differentiates Life of Pi from Robert Zemeckis’s Cast Away and other survival stories we have seen – that and the Bengal tiger. A very spiritual man, Pi sees his journey as having a spiritual significance that goes well beyond a simple fight for survival.

Above everything else, Lee’s film looks amazing. Life of Pi is a stunning aesthetic achievement. With the use of digital technology Lee creates a heightened reality out at sea. Sometimes the sea is rough and choppy and looks very realistic, but at others it is so still and flat it is as though Pi’s boat is floating on nothing at all. This is one of the few films you should try and make sure you see in 3D. I’m not a huge fan of 3D movies, I think the vast majority of the time it is a gimmick used to inflate box office figures, but there are a handful of films which have really demonstrated the potential of the medium if used properly and Life of Pi is one of them.

Equal to the visual achievement as the film’s overall aesthetic is the believability of the tiger, Richard Parker. At the end of the day, the success or failure of the film was largely going to be determined by how successfully Lee made you believe that you were watching a boy and a tiger together on a boat. Richard Parker is created almost entirely with CGI, a wise move as it means there is a consistent look whereas had they tried to use a real tiger as much as possible, there would undoubtedly been jarring moments which would draw attention to the CGI tiger. The computer generated tiger looks brilliant though. You never doubt the reality of the beast before you. Credit should also go to Suraj Sharma, whose performance opposite a CGI tiger is pivotal in establishing the believability of the animal.

Life of Pi is a beautiful, thoughtful film which will be a definite player in the upcoming award season, particularly in the fields of visual effects, cinematography and directing.

Rating – ★★★★

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – Les Misérables (2012)

Director: Tom Hooper

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne, Amanda Seyfried, Samantha Barks, Aaron Tveit, Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen

Les MiséraLes Miserables Posterbles first appeared on stage on the West End in 1985 and in the 27 years since it has become one of the most successful musicals of all time. That said, it was still a bit of a risk for Tom Hooper to announce it as his next film project after winning an Oscar for The King’s Speech. It was always going to be a high profile event film, and let’s face it, history has shown us that when you get a big budget musical  wrong it can be really, really bad. Hooper assembled a great cast lead by Hugh Jackman – amazingly making his first movie musical despite his strong musical pedigree. But early critical reviews were mixed. Some called it a mess, others heralded it as one of the year’s best. So I was really keen to see it for myself, particularly as I saw the stage production in London earlier in the year and loved it.

The big experiment with Les Misérables, and again part of what made it a risky project,was having the actors sing live. Usually when you make a musical one of the first things you do is get the cast into a recording studio and record an album. Then a couple of months later when it is time for the shoot, the actors simply lip-synch to the mastered recording. With Les Misérables, Tom Hooper decided that he wanted his actors to sing live on each take. The major advantage of doing it this way is it frees up the actors creatively. When you record the songs in advance, the actors are forced to make many of their acting choices well before getting on set, and once on set they are restricted by the necessity of matching up with the recording. This would be far from ideal for a musical like Les Misérables  where so much of the emotional crux of the story is delivered through song. This greater level of freedom in performance for the actors has resulted in a musical which is not necessarily as brassy and robust as the stage show, but packs an incredible emotional punch.

This different approach was then complemented by the way the musical numbers have been shot. Unlike a traditional musical, Les Misérables only features one heavily choreographed number, the comical ‘Master of the House’ performed by Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter’s grotesque tavern owners. The other numbers are shot very simply, often in close-up. The beauty of this approach is you get to see characters faces, something you don’t get on stage. Les Misérables is a very tragic, very emotional story, and the impact of being able to see the faces of characters as they sing is quite powerful. Never is this more apparent than when Anne Hathaway sings ‘I Dreamed a Dream,’ shot entirely in one shot, a medium close-up.

Hugh Jackman was always the logical choice to play Jean Valjean. With his baritone voice, his award-winning musical theatre experience, broad chest and handsome features, Jackman seems born to play the part. As Valjean, he carries much of the emotional weight of the film and he does it admirably, imbuing the character with a real strength and masculinity. The film’s other clear stand out is Anne Hathaway as Fantine. She delivers one of the most gut-wrenching performances you will ever see, demonstrating her versatility in a year which also saw her playing Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises. While Jackman will be in the mix come award season, Hathaway can start deciding where she wants to put her Best Supporting Actress Oscar now.

One of the big questions in the lead up to the film was the singing ability of Russell Crowe. Everyone knew Jackman and Hathaway could sing, but the fact that Crowe used to have a band, Thirty Odd Foot of Grunt, not to mention his old Russ le Roq days, didn’t have people convinced he was the right man to tackle the demanding role of Javert. This concern was not helped by the fact that his voice was notably absent from a couple of the early trailers. As it turns out, he does alright. His voice is nowhere near as full as some of the others in the film, but you get used to it. He definitely looks the part, and still manages to give some emotional depth to the character.

Hooper’s film is a very faithful adaptation of the musical, plus the requisite new song, ‘Suddenly,’ so that they have something to submit for Award consideration. This faithfulness means that if there was anything in particular that irked you about the stage musical, it still will in the film. In my case, it is the fact that Cosette and Marius are still really boring. It also means that, as is the case with many film musicals, the critical reception will be varied. Musicals are really divisive. People tend to like them or they don’t and if you are someone who can’t get behind the concept of a musical, you’re never going to enjoy one. Even people who like movie musicals may struggle with this one as the ratio of dialogue to song is much closer to an opera than to a normal movie musical.  So with a film like this it is difficult to make a general judgement. Instead, I can only speak as a person who enjoys musicals, and who particularly loves this one. I thought it was brilliant.

Rating – ★★★★

Review by Duncan McLean

Golden Globe Nominations Announced

Only one day after we got the SAG nominations, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association have announced the nominations for the 70th Annual Golden Globe Awards. There are more categories here than there are in the SAGs as we are looking beyond just acting, so it gives us our first real taste of who will be Oscar contenders. And there are a couple of differences already between what we saw yesterday and what the HFPA announced today.

Best Motion Picture – Drama

  • Argo
  • Django Unchained
  • The Life of Pi
  • Lincoln
  • Zero Dark Thirty

One of the things which makes the Golden Globes a tricky guide for Oscar form is that films are separated into dramas and musicals/comedies. That means, in this case, Les Miserables and Silver Linings Playbook are both in a different category to most of the other films they will be battling it out with come Oscar time. While Django Unchained was notably absent in the SAG nominations, it is there for the Golden Globes and should be a major player. Again, The Master is notably absent, and after so much hype when it first hit the festival circuit it may end up falling by the wayside. That being said, the Oscars have ten nominations in the Best Picture category, and only two or maybe three of the films in the next category are a realistic chance of a Best Picture Oscar nod so The Master may sneak in. Zero Dark Thirty is creating some great buzz before it’s cinematic release, already topping a few best of 2012 lists, but I can’t help but feel that this might be the year that Tarantino gets the recognition that has eluded him thus far.

My Tip: Django Unchained

Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy

  • The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
  • Les Miserables
  • Moonrise Kingdom
  • Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
  • Silver Linings Playbook

For mine, this list involves a top three – Les Miserables, Moonrise Kingdom and Silver Linings Playbook – and then there is quite a drop off to the also-rans.

My Tip: Les Miserables

Best Director

  • Ben Affleck (Argo)
  • Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty)
  • Ang Lee (The Life of Pi)
  • Steven Spielberg (Lincoln)
  • Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained)

Unsurprisingly, the best director nominations list lines up perfectly with the best picture – drama nominations. Ben Affleck has proven himself to be one of the brightest young directorial talents going around following Gone Baby Gone and The Town with Argo, and it is great to see him getting recognition, but I can’t see him winning this category. I find it interesting that Kathryn Bigelow is establishing herself as the best director working in the war/combat genre. For mine this category will come down to Tarantino vs Bigelow. Spielberg could be a player, but I get the feeling that Lincoln is a bit too much of an ‘award bait’ picture and that might turn some voters off.

My Tip: Quentin Tarantino

Best Actor – Drama

  • Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln)
  • Richard Gere (Arbitage)
  • John Hawks (The Sessions)
  • Joaquin Phoenix (The Master)
  • Denzel Washington (Flight)

My Tip: Daniel Day-Lewis

Best Actor – Musical or Comedy

  • Jack Black (Bernie)
  • Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook)
  • Hugh Jackman (Les Miserables)
  • Ewan McGregor (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen)
  • Bill Murray (Hyde Park on Hudson)

My Tip: Hugh Jackman

Best Actress – Drama

  • Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty)
  • Marion Cotillard (Rust and Bone)
  • Helen Mirren (Hitchcock)
  • Naomi Watts (The Impossible)
  • Rachel Weisz (The Deep Blue Sea)

It is interesting that four of the five nominations for best actress at the SAG awards fall into this category. I still think it comes down to Cotillard or Chastain.

My Tip: Marion Cotillard

Best Actress – Musical or Comedy

  • Emily Blunt (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen)
  • Judi Dench (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel)
  • Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook)
  • Maggie Smith (The Quartet)
  • Meryl Streep (Hope Springs)

Jennifer Lawrence is the only one from this field who earned a SAG nomination (technically Maggie Smith did but it was for a different performance), and she’s up against a couple of Dames and the most nominated actress of all time in Meryl Streep. It would be a surprise, to say the least, if Meryl was to win here.

My Tip: Jennifer Lawrence

Best Supporting Actor

  • Alan Arkin (Argo)
  • Leonardo DiCaprio (Django Unchained)
  • Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Master)
  • Tommy Lee Jones (Lincoln)
  • Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained)

For the supporting awards the categories are not divided into dramas and musicals/comedies. This is the category where Django Unchained was most notably absent in the SAG nominations and, lo and behold, we see both DiCaprio and Waltz making their way into the field.

My Tip: Philip Seymour Hoffman

Best Supporting Actress

  • Amy Adams (The Master)
  • Sally Field (Lincoln)
  • Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables)
  • Helen Hunt (The Sessions)
  • Nicole Kidman (The Paperboy)

Amy Adams comes into the field that was nominated for SAGs at the expense of Maggie Smith.

My Tip: Anne Hathaway

Best Screenplay

  • Argo – Chris Terrio
  • Django Unchained – Quentin Tarantino
  • Lincoln – Tony Kushner
  • Silver Linings Playbook – David O. Russell
  • Zero Dark Thirty – Mark Boal

Similar to the best picture – drama field, except that David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook screenplay comes in for The Life of Pi.

My Tip: Django Unchained

Best Animated Feature

  • Brave
  • Frankenweenie
  • Hotel Transylvania
  • Rise of the Guardians
  • Wreck-it-Ralph

This is an interesting year for this category because, for once, Pixar failed to live up to expectations. Brave lacked Pixar’s usual spark and as such this category is wide open.

My Tip: Wreck-it Ralph

Best Foreign Language Film

  • Amour
  • Kon-Tiki
  • The Intouchables
  • A Royal Affair
  • Rust and Bone

The Intouchables will no doubt be the popular favourite in this category. It has been a huge box-office success and one of the feel-good movies of the year. However, the critical response has not quite been as unanimous as the popular praise so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was passed over.

My Tip: Amour

The Golden Globes will be held on 13th January 2013

SAG Nominations Announced

The Hollywood award season is fast upon us and the first major date on the road to the Oscars was 12th December for the announcement of the nominees for the Screen Actors Guild awards. The Screen Actors Guild was the union which represented actors in the American film and television industries. I say ‘was’ because earlier this year SAG membership voted to merge with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists to create SAG-AFTRA. But the SAG awards have remained and this years nominations have produced a few surprises.

Best Ensemble Cast:

  • Argo
  • The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
  • Les Miserables
  • Lincoln
  • Silver Linings Playbook

I was quite surprised to see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel score a nomination in this category. Obviously it had the names in the cast, but I didn’t find that it wowed me, and when you consider some of the casts that missed out on nominations it becomes an even more peculiar decision. Django Unchained, Zero Dark Thirty and Moonrise Kingdom have all been regular appearances on best films of 2012 lists and all boast impressive ensemble casts. It may well be the case that Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty have hit cinemas just a bit too late to gain the attention of the guild, but Moonrise Kingdom being overlooked is surprising. It was never going to happen, but I would have quite liked to see Seven Psychopaths in this category. Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken are both sensational, Colin Farrell is very good and you’ve also got Woody Allen and Tom Waits putting in nice performances.

My Tip: Les Miserables

Best Actor:

  • Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook)
  • Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln)
  • John Hawkes (The Sessions)
  • Hugh Jackman (Les Miserables)
  • Denzel Washington (Flight)

This is a really strong field, but again there is at least one surprising omissions. Where is Joaquin Phoenix? His performance as the damaged sailor Freddie Quell in The Master is very powerful. He really makes you squirm. The other name that is missing which I thought was notable was Anthony Hopkins for Hitchcock. It is not so much a case that he deserved to be there over anyone in particular, just that Hitchcock, like The Iron Lady last year, looked like classic Oscar bait.

My Tip: Daniel Day-Lewis

Best Actress:

  • Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty)
  • Marion Cotillard (Rust and Bone)
  • Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook)
  • Helen Mirren (Hitchcock)
  • Naomi Watts (The Impossible)

Beasts of the Southern Wild wasn’t made under a guild contract which meant that its impressive young star, Quvenzhane Wallis, didn’t qualify for a SAG nomination. Other than that this list looks pretty good, though it is strange to not have Meryl Street in there somewhere.

My Tip: Marion Cotillard

Best Supporting Actor:

  • Alan Arkin (Argo)
  • Javier Bardem (Skyfall)
  • Robert De Niro (Silver Linings Playbook)
  • Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Master)
  • Tommy Lee Jones (Lincoln)

I haven’t looked into it but surely this is the first time someone has received a major nomination for playing a Bond villain? This is a very strong category, probably the strongest of the five feature film categories for mine. It is great to see De Niro doing something worthwhile for the first time in years. Alan Arkin was a scene stealer in Argo and it is good to see him recognised for that. Again there are notable absences though. There is a lot of positive talk about Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance in Django Unchained, but as mentioned before he could be a victim of timing here and come into play later in the award season. Again, I think Sam Rockwell could have got a nod for Seven Psychopaths.

My Tip: Philip Seymour Hoffman

Best Supporting Actress:

  • Sally Field (Lincoln)
  • Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables)
  • Helen Hunt (The Sessions)
  • Nicole Kidman (The Paperboy)
  • Maggie Smith (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel)

Like the Best Supporting Actor category, if you just looked at the names on this list you could be forgiven for thinking it was a lead acting category. Only one of them hasn’t already won at least one Oscar. Surprising to see Kidman’s name on this list given the not overly positive critical response to The Paperboy. The only noteworthy omission in this category is Amy Adams for her role in The Master.

My Tip: Anne Hathaway

The Screen Actors Guild Awards will take place on 27th January 2013.