PGA's popcorn movie pick is 'Skyfall'

The Producers Guild of America announced its ten nominees for Best Picture, and it's a very inclusive list. Both of the indie darlings, Moonrise Kingdom and Beasts of the Southern Wild, were among the nominees. The much-accoladed Argo, Les Miserables, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook and Zero Dark Thirty (of course) made the list, and Life of Pi slipped in, probably because of its literary pedigree and great cinematography. Also in the mix is Django Unchained, the violent,
challenging film that is a little bit like this year's version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Finally, the PGA recognized Skyfall. This year there have been a couple other great popcorn movies: The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers. But in the end, it was the one that released latest in the year--and was freshest in voters' minds--that garnered a nomination. Of all the popcorn movies, this is the one that appealed most to adults, including older males, that likely represent a sizeable amount of the PGA's members.

The PGA awards are best known for being extremely accurate predictors of the Oscar Best Picture winner. This year there is a deep selection of great movies, and there's no clear frontrunner. The latest word in the blogosphere is that Lincoln has a lead, but I sincerely hope another of the ones on my top movie list, such as Zero Dark Thirty, Silver Linings, Argo, or Les Misérables gets recognized instead. While Zero Dark Thirty and Les Misérables are my two favorites from this year, I think Les Misérables will eventually encounter some blowback from the singing choice. Many trained musicians have commented on social networks that the vocals make them cringe--especially those from, no surprise, Russell Crowe playing Javert. However, even its detractors acknowledge it's still a must-see, but I wonder if that may affect the Academy's voters. Will the musicians in the bunch be happy to recognize a film that relies heavily on music, or will they not be able to get past how the actors sound to a trained ear? With just under two months before the Oscar ceremony, this year's race is one of the most exciting in recent years. 

 

Nominations for Independent Spirit Awards heat up award season

Now that the Gotham Awards have come and gone, it's time to look at the Independent Spirit Award nominations, which were announced yesterday. Of course, what's great about the Spirit Awards is that they tend to reward movies that won't have a big play in the Oscar race. However, many of the nominees for the Spirit Awards have also been angling for statuettes at the Oscars.

Of the five nominees for Best Feature, both Moonrise Kingdom and Silver Linings Playbook received four other nominations for five in total, making them the most-nominated features. When it comes to the Oscars, Silver Linings Playbook is a shoo-in for the Best Picture category, while Moonrise is an outlier. Beasts of the Southern Wild grabbed four nominations, as did Keep the Lights On. However, at least according to the odds posted by GoldDerby, Beasts has a better chance for receiving the coveted Best Picture nomination come Oscar time. Rounding out the group is Bernie, which received only one other nomination, for the performance of Jack Black.

Safety Not Guaranteed, an indie comedy that parlayed word-of-mouth into a $4 million theatrical box office, received two nominations, for Best First Screenplay and Best First Feature. Whether they win or not, it seems like the screenwriters already have launched their career. Today, Variety reported that the movie's director/producer Colin Trevorrow and writer/producer Derek Connolly have been hired to write Disney's remake of the sci-fi picture Flight of the Navigator. Trevorrow may also direct. They also sold yet another project to Disney that Trevorrow is attached to direct, but it sounds like Flight of the Navigator will be up to bat first.

So while the Spirit nominations reinforce the Oscar prospects for Silver Linings Playbook, Moonrise Kingdom, and Beasts of the Southern Wild, their biggest impact may be to recognize the work of independent filmmakers and give others the exposure they need to start plying their craft at major studios.

DGA nominees hint at who will receive Oscar nods

By Sarah Sluis

Yesterday, the Directors Guild of America announced its five nominees for Best Director. As opposed to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), Writers Guild (WGA), and Producers Guild (PGA), the DGA awards have a track record of predicting the winner of the Oscar for Best Director. Since the Best Director victor frequently helms the Best Picture, one can reasonably assume that among these five films, we have our Best Picture winner, and probably at least five of the nominees.

DGA nominees:
Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris
David Fincher for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist
Alexander Payne for The Descendants
Martin Scorsese for Hugo

The biggest shut-outs are War Horse and The Help. The DGA has already honored Steven Spielberg three times: for The Color Purple in 1985, Saving Private Ryan in 1998, and with a (preemptive, perhaps) Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. Maybe they just want some new blood in the running. Spielberg has more Oscar-worthy projects in development, like a biopic of Lincoln, and War Horse was a wee sentimental.

The Help received its biggest support from the SAG, which makes sense. Director Tate Taylor has an acting background himself, meaning he has plenty of connections within the guild. It's only amplified by the large ensemble of actors who appeared in the movie. The Help will definitely receive a Best Picture nod, and certainly a few acting ones as well, but the new director slot went to Hazanavicius instead of him.

When it comes to who actually wins the award, history matters. Both Allen and Scorsese have been honored by the DGA, both for an individual film and with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Will Hugo or Midnight in Paris merit an additional honor? As a newbie, I doubt Hazanavicius will win. I think it comes down to Payne or Fincher, neither of whom has won before. Both have great track records and each of their films exemplify the work the helmers are known for. Payne specializes in the mix between comedy and drama, with sad-sack heroes that somehow endear themselves to the audience. Fincher is probably the most technically brilliant directors out there. None of the dark films he specializes in look like they use extensive special effects, but they do, and YouTube videos like this and this sold me on the kind of detailed planning and creative control Fincher exercises. I'm betting on Payne or Fincher.

On January 28, in less than three weeks, the DGA will announce the winner of their award--and make the outcome of the Oscars a little bit easier to divine.

Breaking down the Producers Guild nominees

By Sarah Sluis

Last year, the Producers Guild of America crowned The Hurt Locker as the top film of 2009. The PGA has correctly predicted the majority of Oscar Best Picture winners, making its nominee list a much-regarded crystal ball for the eventual Academy nominees and winners. The PGA nominates ten films, just like the Oscars, but at least a couple of movies seem unlikely to receive nods from both the PGA and the Academy.

The best film nominees:
127 Hours
Black Swan
Inception
The Fighter
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech
The Social Network
The Town
Toy Story 3
True Grit

Possible Omission #1: The Town. For me, this movie wasn't anything special. Spike Lee's 2006 movie Inside Man was a much more surprising, fun bank robbery movie, and it didn't get any love in awards season. The Town had some thrilling bank robbery scenes, but its Boston atmosphere didn't totally draw me and the romance felt like star-director Ben Affleck grabbing at air.

Possible Omission #2: Toy Story 3. Though this film has showed up on one top ten list after another, it's most likely that the movie will end up with a nomination in the animated category, where I hope it has tough competition from the DreamWorks Animation stunner How to Train Your Dragon.

Possible Omission #3: 127 Hours. Within the blogosphere, this movie's been taking the biggest beating, with many ruling it out because it failed to catch fire at the box office. Also, some Academy viewers were reportedly "afraid" to see the amputation scene, leading James Franco to film a video with his grandma, who wore a sweatshirt reading "I Kept My Eyes Open for 127 Hours."

What films could fill possibly end up in the Academy top ten? My votes are going to Winter's Bone and Blue Valentine. Winter's Bone is more likely to receive an acting nomination than a Best Picture one, but the movie is so affecting, I can't imagine Oscar voters not responding. Blue Valentine is much tougher to watch (and that's taking Winter's Bone's gory closing scene into account), and features a much younger, blue-collar couple--the opposite of a typical Academy voter. The seven remaining films seem highly probable nominees to me: Inception's the blockbuster everyone can get behind, The Kids Are All Right is the small indie that could, and most of the other specialty film nominees have risen into the top ten: True Grit, Black Swan, The King's Speech, and The Fighter are all earning millions of dollars a week, a pretty big change from last year, when only Up in the Air was achieving that mixture of critical and commercial success at the end-of-the-year box office. The Academy Award nominations are only three weeks away, on Jan. 25, and these nominations from the PGA have solidified the majors. Now it's up to the Academy to make some last minute substitutions in the game.

Voting for 'Best Picture' just got more complicated

By Sarah Sluis

Oscar pools are already going to be completely upended this year, since ten films will be competing for Best Picture. Now Academy voters are going to have to think even more strategically about their own choices. The Academy has adopted a preferential voting system, which is often used when there are a large number of candidates in an election. It requires one film to receive a majority of votes to win.

If a film doesn't receive a majority in the first round, the #2 choices of the losing (#10-ranked) film are counted as a #1 choice. This continues, with a new loser designated each round, until there is a film with over 50% of the ballots. This process was used to choose Best Picture until 1945, a nod to the Academy's old method of nominating 10, not 5, films for Best Picture. What could make this process interesting is if there were a distinct "minority group" that made the same 1-2 choice. While they wouldn't win, all of their redistributed votes could sway the Best Picture race one way. The political equivalent is if a minority ethnic group wants to elect one of their own. They vote for their leader, but as their #2 choice they pick a competing politician who is sympathetic to their interests. If Academy voters are grouped by age, affinity for independent/WWII and the Holocaust/costume drama/epic/musical, it's possible that distinctive ranking patterns will emerge. Too bad the exact voting breakdowns won't be revealed.

The easy scenario:

• Over 50% of members declare a film their #1. It receives Best Picture. Phew.

A more complicated scenario:

• Let's say there are three front runners. Altogether, 92% of Academy voters pick one of these films as
  
  their #1, but none of them will have a majority vote. Only 8% of the
  
  votes will be redistributed, which would only be enough to push a film
  
  that's already in the mid-40's to over 50%. That means that the #3 film, which almost a third of Academy voters picked as their #1, will instead get redistributed according to its #2s. People will definitely be speculating about genres and types of films, and what kind of person would pick, say, a sci-fi film like Avatar as their #1 choice and the musical Nine as their second choice.

Until we know what films have been nominated, these kinds of speculations are endless. But I think it's reasonable to speculate that there will be two to four front runners, and having one of those front runners eliminated and redistributed according to the voters' #2 choices could dramatically change the outcome of Best Picture.

DGA nominations foreshadowing Oscar nods?

By Sarah Sluis

Oscar detectives have a new lead: the Directors Guild and the Producers Guild announced their

nominations for Best Picture. They matched, five for five. Both guilds nominated The Dark Knight, Frost/Nixon, Slumdog Millionaire, Milk, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for their top films. My editor Kevin Lally, for one, thinks they're right on, and that these films represent the likely Academy selections this year. But will Oscar voters agree?

Those in the Academy still have four days to cast their ballot for the nominees--January 12th. Will they be influenced by the recognition these five films have already received, and add a dark horse (Slumdog Millionaire) to their nominations? Will those reluctant to cast a ballot for a comic book film change their mind?

The DGA is known for correctly predicting the Best Director award, and the Risky Business Blog points out that the demographics, and tastes, of the DGA closely align with that of the Academy, making the rest of their nominations (including Best Picture) harbingers of the Academy's top five. From a budget/release pattern perspective, the five films are preternaturally balanced: two are big-budgeted, wide releases, one (Slumdog) has followed a specialty-to-moderate release pattern, with Milk coming up just behind. Frost/Nixon, with the smallest theatrical release, is holding up last place. Not having seen it myself, its small scope (what better place to watch a film about a TV interview than a TV, right?) makes it seem like the kind of film that will receive heavy DVD rentals after generating some awards publicity.

Aside from The Dark Knight, all five of these films have a historical and/or lifespan focus--perhaps appealing to older voters? While I appreciate grand and historical films as much as the next person, the 70's era settings of Milk and Frost/Nixon relive events many Academy voters were there to experience. This is also why Doubt, set the year after JFK's assassination (1964), might still have a chance.

The Academy will release its nominations in two weeks--until then, we'll continue to speculate.

Spirit Awards in a downbeat mood

By Sarah Sluis

The Independent Spirit Awards announced their nominees this morning.  Unlike last year, which was swept by crossover blockbuster Juno both in terms of nominations and awards, three films tied for most
nominations, with Rachel Getting Married, Ballast, and Frozen River each receiving six nominations, including the Best Feature nod.

The two other Best Feature nominees, Wendy and Lucy and The Wrestler, have only been seen on the festival circuit.(Could these movies' late releases have impacted the volume of their nominations?)  Wendy and Lucy will play at NYC's Film Forum December 10th-23rd, and The Wrestler, angling for a Best Actor nomination for Mickey Rourke, will release on December 19th.  While narrowing down the top five Independent films can be a trial each year, The Visitor and Milk, each nominated in other categories besides Best Feature, could easily have held their own among the top features, at least if FJI's Executive Editor Kevin Lally had anything to do the selections.

Of the five nominees for Best Feature, I can only speak to Rachel Getting Married and Wendy and Lucy (at least until I see The Wrestler next week).  Depending on your taste, "meandering" can either compliment or insult Rachel Getting Married and its long musical and dance sequences.  The quiet spiral of despair and destitution of Wendy and Lucy can be painful to watch, though director Kelly Reichardt wisely gives the audience moments to rest.  Frozen River, the story of two trapped women smuggling immigrants to make ends meet, boasts a "grasp of time, place and state of mind and economy [that] is firm and unforgettable."  Ballast also focuses on a rural landscape where "poverty seems to be endemic, drug dealing rampant, and possibilities extremely limited."  Indeed, of the five films, Rachel Getting Married is the black sheep, its addict a product of an upper-middle-class, suburban home, and the
general mood far from hopeless.

While not nominated for Best Feature, I particularly liked Chop Shop, which received nominations for Best Director and Best Cinematography.  There's nothing worse than an earnest low-budget film marred by terrible image quality, but Chop Shop plays like a collection of photographs, its depiction of an urban slum a bleaker and more static version of Slumdog Millionaire's.

The full list of nominations for the Independent Spirit Awards can be found here, but the awards ceremony won't take place for almost three months-- February 21st.