Oscar Predictions Round 3: Best Picture

You can see a full list of predictions in all categories here. 

Best Picture

1. Argo (dir. Affleck)

2. Les Misérables (dir. Hooper)

3. Lincoln (dir. Spielberg)

4. Silver Linings Playbook (dir. Russell)

5. Life of Pi (dir. Lee)

6. The Master (dir. P.T. Anderson)

7. Zero Dark Thirty (dir. Bigelow)

8. Amour (dir. Haneke)

If there are more than eight nominees...

9. Beasts of the Southern Wild (dir. Zeitlin)

10. Hitchcock (dir. Gervasi)

For those of us who like to obsess about the Oscars year around – if you’re reading this, consider yourself obsessed! - 2012 is a treasure. It is years like this, where nothing is yet solidified until late October, that make predicting the race fun. This could all change if one film starts to steamroll through the season, but at this moment at least, on the cusp of the year’s penultimate month, everything’s still up in the air.

Part of that is because of the Academy’s decision to change the number of nominees from ten to anywhere between five and ten. Much as I miss the 5-nominee days, this definitely adds an element of suspense to it. To put things in perspective, when I did my first ever set of predictions back in October of 2010, I guessed 8 of the 10 nominees correctly. If there were ten nominees this year, chances are I could repeat that feat, but as it stands, I can’t even guess how many films there are gonna be, let alone which ones exactly.

Last year at this point, the silent Gallic thespians were a clear favourite and the question was only whether any film could stop them from taking the gold. The year before, it was clear at the end of October that we would have a two-horse race between zeitgeist (The Social Network) and bait (The King’s Speech). The year before, we had a David vs. Goliath narrative between The Hurt Locker and Avatar. The point is that, around this time of year, we know roughly what the outcome is going to be. This year we don’t know anything and there’s no narrative set. And it’s a lot more fun. 

Interview: Ben Lewin on Portraying Sex and Getting the Right Cast

I realize that my coverage of The Sessions has been more extensive than any other film I've written about on the blog, but it's because Fox Searchlight was kind enough to arrange these interviews and events for me during TIFF. My final piece on the film is this interview with writer/director Ben Lewin. As you may remember I already posted my very favourable review of the film and an interview with one of the film's stars and one of my favourite actors, William H. Macy. 
Head over to The Film Experience and join in the conversation!

Short Take: Frances Ha

Grade: A

*A shorter version of this review was posted on The Film Experience during TIFF12.

Noah Baumbach’s exquisite Frances Ha was the brightest light of TIFF12. His previous films had never done anything for me, but this is his most refined work, and the funniest by a country mile. Developed by himself and Greta Gerwig after the couple worked together on Greenberg, the film is about the 27-year-old Frances (Gerwig) who has yet to find her direction in her professional or personal life. She shares an apartment with her friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner) and works part time for a dance company, hoping to join on a permanent basis.

The film opens with rapid-fire banter between the two friends and despite it being genuinely hilarious, it immediately worries the audience that it might be too self-conscious.  But the tone changes after Sophie, during a particularly well-constructed sequence on the New York subway, informs Frances of her intention to leave their apartment and move in with a boyfriend. Confronted with the prospect of loneliness and the lack of financial means to pay for the rent on her own, Frances is launched into a series of misfired attempts at detaching herself from Sophie and refocusing her life.

Oscar Predictions Round 2: Crafts Categories

You can see a full list of predictions in all categories here.

Since the last time I updated the technical categories, there have been a few new releases and the mist has cleared on several titles. Skyfall has entered the race with a big bang. It seems destined to be a hit at the box office and the critical response has been strong enough to keep it in the conversation. The Academy is notoriously anti-Bond, but with the big names behind the film this time around, one wonders if they’ll be able to resist. Roger Deakins, for instance, looks very likely to be disappointed on Oscar night for the umpteenth time.

The Impossible was released at TIFF and unlike what I expected, most of the chatter in the technical areas surrounds the Make-up, not the Visual Effects or Sound. But who knows. I’m still keeping it in those categories and leaving it off Make-up because Hitchcock, Fox Searchlight’s late addition to the season seems poised for a nomination there. I’m personally not taken with Sir Anthony Hopkins’s visage in the trailer – it’s not Hitchcock; it’s Hopkins playing Hitchcock - but I’ll reserve judgement until I see the whole picture.

Lincoln was released at NYFF and the response has been overwhelmingly positive, making it clear that Spielberg’s newest will not be one of the inevitable year-end flops. That’s not to say that his critical flops don’t get nominated for a whole bunch of Oscars anyway, but Lincoln apparently means business. Cinematography, Editing, Score, Production Design and Costume Design are the film’s safest bets, but watch out for it in the Sound categories as well.

There have been five other additions to these races during the festival season: The Master, which features typically lush work from P.T. Anderson’s team and is very likely to score in at least a couple of categories, chief among them Cinematography; Anna Karenina, which was met with extremely divisive reactions and will be lucky to score anything outside Costume, Production Design and Score; Looper, which I’d assumed to be a shoo-in in the Make-up category for achieving the unachievable by transforming Joseph Gordon Levitt into Bruce Willis. I have yet to see the film but everything points to a mild misfire in that department and given the Academy’s genre bias, it’ll have a steep hill to climb; Life of Pi, which is being touted as a visionary look into the future of filmmaking, changing the language of cinema, and whatever else Avatar did just two years ago; and finally, Cloud Atlas, which looks like a player only in tech categories and nowhere else, though having renamed the category to Make-up and Hairstyling just this year, Tom Hanks’s hair in the above picture tells us that’s one race we can surely count the film out.

Best Cinematography

1. Claudio Miranda (Life of Pi)

2. Mihai Malaimare Jr. (The Master)

3. Janusz Kaminski (Lincoln)

4. Danny Cohen (Les Misérables)

5. Roger Deakins (Skyfall)

Alternative: Robert Richardson (Django Unchained)

Oscar Horrors: Dogtooth

Over at The Film Experience, I've joined in on Oscar Horrors, Nathaniel's group series on horror films that have been nominated for Oscars. My first contribution is Dogtooth, which was nominated for a the Best Foreign Language Film award two years ago in what remains one of the Academy's most shocking decisions. There's more to come later in October when I take you back to the 80s for the nominated visual effects of a major blockbuster, but for now, have a read on why Dogtooth is one of my favourite nominations in recent years. You may also remember how highly I ranked the film back in 2010. It's a decision I don't regret in retrospect.

Review: Argo

Grade: B

After months of expectation, I've finally watched Argo. I say finally not because the film’s been out for a long while - barely a week, though I did have the opportunity to see it at TIFF and missed out - but because, as you probably know, I’ve been anxious to see it for a very, very long time. This is partly because of Affleck’s two previous films, his growing stature as a capable director of adult dramas, and constant chatter about Argo being one of the frontrunners for this year’s Oscar race since its Telluride-Toronto premiere. But more importantly, as I’ve detailed here, I was dreading the film as an Iranian.

For the progressives in my generation, the attack on the American embassy remains one of the darkest, most indefensible moments of our history. Hearing about these events being prepared for a silver screen treatment in a major Hollywood film - no matter how smart and sensitive the talent behind it - automatically made me suspicious that the potential portrayal of some Americans as patriotic heroes and others as victims would inevitably lead to the vilification of Iranians. Irrespective of my personal and political opinion on the matter – the attack on the embassy is an absolute travesty; there’s no way around it – this is just one of those things I wish no one would ever care enough to make a film about. But alas, there is a film, and a very high-profile one at that. Having now watched it though, I’m equally surprised, disappointed and relieved about how politically toothless it is. Not that Argo is a bad film. It isn’t, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it takes the complicated story of one of the most defining chapters in the relationship between the U.S. and the Middle East and uses it as backdrop for a thriller – a superbly crafted, intensely exciting thriller – that doesn’t explore the rich world of potential at its disposal. 

Review: The Sessions

Grade: B

*This review was originally posted at The Film Experience as part of my TIFF12 coverage.

It's hard to think that a film about a man living in an iron lung could be labelled “the feel good movie of the festival.” But The Sessions beats the odds. For director Ben Lewin, who himself struggled with polio as a child, and his stellar cast, sex, disability, Catholicism and humour blend together to shape the unlikeliest of crowd pleasers.
The Sessions centres on Mark O’Brien (John Hawkes), a poet who fell victim to polio in his childhood and lost all his muscle strength from the neck down. His body retains its sensitivity, hence the narratively critical ability to achieve erections, but is unable to move and requires an iron lung to breathe. At the age of 38 and faced with the prospect that his days might be numbered before he ever gets to “meet” a woman, O’Brien decides to lose his virginity; and to do that, he’ll have to overcome two obstacles: an overwhelming sense of anxiety caused by his physical disability, and a fear of being sinful resulted from his devout belief in the Catholic church.

The second obstacle is easier for him to clear as he consults Father Brendan (a hilarious and poignant William H. Macy), an unconventionally forgiving priest who tells O’Brien that in his heart he knows Jesus will give him a pass. With that green light, O’Brien goes on to find Cheryl Cohen Greene (a top-form Helen Hunt), a sex therapist who is willing to take him through the mechanics of sex in six sessions.

Oscar Predictions Round 2: Director, Writers

You can see a full list of predictions in all categories here. 

Best Director 

1. Ben Affleck (Argo)

2. Steven Spielberg (Lincoln)

3. Tom Hooper (Les Misérables)

4. Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master)

5. Michael Haneke (Amour)

Alternative: Ang Lee (Life of Pi)

I’m starting to feel that the Toronto hit Silver Linings Playbook will end up being this year’s The Help despite Russell’s recognizable name, meaning that multiple acting nominations and possibly Screenplay and Best Picture are in the cards, but it will be an actors’ film, not a director’s. Haneke and Anderson will quite likely battle for the auteur spots with Ang Lee, but the top three look like sure bets at this point, unless Les Misérables is a major flop.
What about the fringe possibilities though? Can Sacha Gervasi be a real contender now that his film is firmly in the race? How about the directors’ branch getting behind a likely critical favourite like Benh Zeitlin? What if Bigelow’s or Tarantino’s film finds support? They’re both former Oscar winners after all.

On Julianne Moore's Performance in Boogie Nights

"If the definition of an ensemble cast entails that the characters get roughly the same screen time and have equal importance in driving the narrative, then Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson’s greatest film to date) is the epitome of an ensemble film. Its cast has no shortage of strong performances, memorable characters or silver screen stars. Yet, it is Julianne Moore’s Amber “the foxiest bitch in the world” Waves who still manages to steal the show, for her presence on the screen is so radiant, so lively, that I can only see the others as they relate to her; and in her absence she’s constantly lingering in my mind. Moore’s performance is an unimpeachable example of nuance in expressivity. Her character is the emotional anchor for everybody else in the film. She’s the mother that Wahlberg and Graham never had, the one and only woman for Reynolds, the ultimate object of desire for everyone who sees her on tape, the one everybody goes to when they want something done. Yet, inside her there’s something badly and irrevocably broken. Moore makes a fine line of this grave emotional chasm. The beauty of her performance is the subtlety she brings to the role even though she’s wearing her heart on her sleeve. Not that she is any less impressive in the extremes, like her deadpan delivery of “This is a giant cock” or her sobbing scene after the court rules against her in a custody battle. But it’s the more delicate moments that make this one of my favourite performances of all time."

*Julianne Moore's performance in Boogie Nights was voted the best of the nineties in Andrew's 90s Showdown. As a contributor to his series, I selected the performance as the number one of the decade in my original top ten list and wrote the blurb above during the voting. I'm happy to see I'm not at all alone in my admiration for her work.

Short Take: At Any Price

Grade: B

*A shorter version of this review was posted at The Film Experience during TIFF12.

At Any Price is Ramin Bahrani's first film to feature no immigrant characters, and perhaps subsequently, use Hollywood stars instead of amateurs. It’s an interesting change for a director whose films have come to be known for their intimacy and real life feel. At Any Price tells the story of a crumbling farming empire owned by Henry Whipple (Dennis Quaid). Whipple, who's inherited the farms from his father, is failing to convince his two sons to enter the family business. His elder son has left America  and gone on an adventure in the mountains of Argentina. 

It is his second son, Dean (Zac Efron), an aspiring race car driver, whom we see more of as he gradually begins to confront his father over years of repressed emotions. Bahrani, whose previous features dug deep into the realization of the American dream, here looks at how that dream is falling apart. The crushing "expand or die" mentality of modern America is constantly contrasted with a nostalgic, some might say sentimental, view of a not-so-distant past when life was, to put it simply, easier, or more innocent. 

Oscar Predictions Round 2: Foreigners, Documentarians and Animators

You can see an index of all predicted categories here.

Best Foreign Language Film

1. Intouchables (France)

2. Amour (Austria)

3. A Royal Affair (Denmark)

4. Lore (Australia)

5. Our Children (Belgium)

Alternative: War Witch (Canada)

Michael Haneke’s Amour was the presumed frontrunner in this category before the French, having lost his Gallic flavoured film to Austria, opted for their international feel-good sensation ahead of Jacques Audiard critically acclaimed Rust & Bone.  The Intouchables (whatever the hell does that mean, by the way? Is it even a word?) is the type of well-made, well-intentioned, but toothless film that gives the impression of being important without actually being compelling at all and these films score really well here. I will be very, very surprised if it misses the cut.

This year’s submissions are uncharacteristically stacked with critical hits, so some major titles are bound to slip through the cracks. At the moment, I’m feeling Spain’s whimsical Blancanieves, Germany’s separation-era character study Barbara, and Romania’s Mungiu-directed Beyond the Hills will the biggest names to miss. 

Short Take: The Place Beyond the Pines

Grade: A-

* A shorter version of this review was originally posted at The Film Experience during TIFF12.

Derek Cianfrance's follow-up to his marriage drama Blue Valentine is a three-part genre piece about a stunt motorcycle rider (Ryan Gosling) who enters a life of crime when he realizes that a short fling in the past with Romina (Eva Mendes) has resulted in a son. When a young cop (Bradley Cooper) gets involved with his case, his criminal activities take an abrupt turn.

Fans of Cianfrance's previous film and also those who were expecting "Drive redux" based on the minimal promotional material available are in for a surprise, though in my case the surprise was a very happy one. This robust story of complex morality and corruption is told with sensitivity and gravitas. It is intermittently a white-knuckle action film that keeps you squirming on the edge of your seat and a dense drama of Shakespearean gravity that explores father-son relationships. Think of it as a crime thriller with the emotional punch of Blue Valentine.

The Key to Winning an Oscar?

"You can't let yourself go free when you're speaking a foreign language... You're speaking a language that doesn't mean anything to you... You haven't had a life experience with it. Some of the words, many of words, they just have alphabetic meanings, rather than life experience meanings. Sometimes I've said lines that I didn't know what they meant. But I'm good at that. In No Country For Old Men I did that, also. And they gave me an Oscar. They thought I was doing my method acting of being blank because of the violence and cruelty of my character, but really, I didn't know what I was saying. That's the key to playing a psycho killer: to not know what you're saying."

- Javier Bardem (video link)

touché

Is it bad?

As opposed to good?

Persian Treasures: The House is Black

Welcome to the first episode of my new series: Persian Treasures. (The background on the series is explained here) When I first proposed the series, my friend Andrew (Encore’s World of Film and TV) was quick to mention that while he appreciates the idea, he’s not sure if he’s seen any of these films or is even able to seek them out once he finds out about them here. I’m certain he’s not alone. To be honest, the reason I write so little about Iranian cinema despite my desire is that same concern. What interests me about blogging is the conversation, and if I’m going to be talking to myself, well, where’s the fun in that? So to make this easier for him and all of you out there, for the first episode I’ve chosen a short film that’s available in its entirety on YouTube. It may have been wiser to start the series on a happier note, but really, easy access is NOT the only reason I’ve chosen this film. It also happens to be one of my favourite films of all time and it even found quite some love on the newest edition of the Sight & Sound list of the greatest films ever made.

The film in question is The House is Black (خانه سیاه است, Khaaneh Siaah Ast) directed by famous Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad in 1962. House is notable not only for being the only film in her resume, but because the ever-controversial, iconoclast poet was at the height of her fame when the film came out. Forough, who is famous for the implicit sexuality and the openly critical feminism of her poems, had just finished her fourth and penultimate collection, and was faced with public criticism and negative pressure in a society where Islam and its problematic views on women were not only dominant, but intensifying rapidly as the country was moving toward the Islamic Revolution. Forough had always swum against the current, but The House is Black was a change in direction.