VoML Guide to the 85th Academy Awards - Part 2

Best Actor



Joaquin Phoenix in The Master





1. Joaquin Phoenix, The Master - In 2010, I'm Still Here released and with it came questions about whether Phoenix had mentally gone off the rails or if he was just acting like it.  Either way, most agreed that he would never work again.  Nobody has ever worked so hard at dynamiting their career.  Then there are the disparaging (and probably true) comments he made about the awards process which many felt would spell the end of his major award nominee days.  Seeing his name among the Oscar nominees this year is the biggest validation of his supreme talent.  Possibly the greatest working actor today, Daniel Day Lewis, went out of his way to mention him in his SAG award speech.  Joaquin Phoenix gave his most prodigious performance yet in The Master and he deserves this award.  This is his 3rd total nomination.
2. Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln - We don't get to see nearly enough of DDL as we should.  Once every couple years he gives an iconic performance, only to drop away and immerse himself in his next role.  Creating a character from scratch is hard but so too is resurrecting a national treasure, and making yourself fit perfectly inside the shadow they cast without straying outside those lines and portraying a caricature.  Should he win this award, it'll be well-deserved.  This is his 5th total nomination, he has 2 wins (Actor for My Left Foot and There Will Be Blood).
3. Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook - Cooper's most meaty role to date gets his first nomination.  Jennifer Lawrence has gotten most of the attention this awards season but Cooper was just as good.  Let's hope that David O. Russell pulled something out of Cooper that we can expect to see more of.  If so, this won't be his last Oscar shot.
4. Denzel Washington, Flight - We've come to expect certain things from Denzel; he's as solid as they get.  Denzel portrayed a heroic airliner pilot with a serious substance abuse problem.  Flight was ok, I seem to have enjoyed it more than many critics but Washington (as well as the opening 20 minutes) is the main reason to see this film.  This is his 6th total nomination, he has 2 wins (Supporting Actor for Glory, Actor for Training Day).
5. Hugh Jackman, Les Misérables - Jackman is one of the most likeable actors in the business and "Les Mis" earns him his first nomination.  The role of Jean Valjean has been played by countless actors in countless renditions of this musical; Jackman succeeded in making the role his own.

Best Actress

Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty

1. Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty - The Best Actress race comes down to Chastain and Lawrence.  While both were great, I was a bigger fan of Chastain's quietly determined performance.  Her transition from green CIA rookie to supremely confident vet was palpable.  With a number of film-elevating performances in 2011 and 2012, she deserves the recognition and probably the win.  This is her 2nd total nomination in as many years.
2. Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook - Lawrence carries all the momentum into the Academy Awards after winning the SAG award over Chastain.  She also won the Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Award but her and Chastain did not go head to head.  Lawrence's role called for a "bigger" performance which usually wins over subtle, and her chemistry with Cooper made the film as affecting as it was.  Whoever takes the Oscar will have earned it.  This is her 2nd total nomination.
3. Emmanuelle Riva, Amour - Riva's performance was heartbreaking, from the first symptom of declining health through every level of mental and physical degeneration.  It was a dignified performance and a well-earned first Academy nomination for this French actress.  She's the oldest person to be nominated for an acting Oscar.
4. Naomi Watts, The Impossible - In the wake of a catastrophic tsunami while on vacation with her family, Watts' Maria desperately searches for her husband and youngest children while striving to preserve the health of her eldest child.  The helplessness visible in her eyes as the tidal wave approaches as well as the strength she shows for her son's sake really ground the film emotionally.  This is her 2nd total nomination.
5. Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild - For a 6 year old to take on a role like that of Hushpuppy and really hold such an arresting film together is outstanding.  It's an amazing feat for her, the youngest Academy Award nominee ever.

Best Supporting Actor

Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Master

1. Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master - This is his 4th total nomination, he has 1 win (Actor for Capote).
2. Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained - This is his 2nd total nomination, he has 1 win (Supporting Actor for Inglourious Basterds).
3. Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook - This is his 7th total nomination, he has 2 wins (Supporting Actor for The Godfather Part II, Actor for Raging Bull)
4. Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln - This is his 4th total nomination, he has 1 win (Supporting Actor for The Fugitive).
5. Alan Arkin, Argo - This is his 4th total nomination, he has 1 win (Supporting Actor for Little Miss Sunshine).

Best Supporting Actress

Anne Hathaway in Les Misérables

1. Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables - This is her 2nd total nomination.
2. Amy Adams, The Master - This is her 4th total nomination.
3. Helen Hunt, The Sessions - This is her 2nd total nomination, she has 1 win (Actress for As Good as It Gets).
4. Sally Field, Lincoln - This is her 3rd total nomination, she has 2 wins (Actress for Norma Rae and Places in the Heart).
5. Jacki Weaver, Silver Linings Playbook - This is her 2nd total nomination.

Best Director

1. David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook - This is his 2nd directing nomination.
2. Ang Lee, Life of Pi - This is his 2nd directing nomination, he has 1 win (Brokeback Mountain).
3. Steven Spielberg, Lincoln - This is his 7th directing nomination, he has 2 wins (Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan).  Schindler's List also won Best Picture.
4. Michael Haneke, Amour - This is his 1st nomination.
5. Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild - This is his 1st nomination.

Who I want to win: Zero Dark Thirty, Phoenix, Chastain, Hoffman, Hathaway, Russell.

Who I think will win: Lincoln, Day-Lewis, Lawrence, Waltz, Hathaway, Spielberg.


-PSon



VoML Guide to the 85th Academy Awards - Best Picture

This is the first year that I’ve seen every single film, not only for best picture but for every major acting category, best director, and even the live action and documentary shorts. I'll say it now since I won't get a chance in the Best Picture section, The Master was the best film I saw this year.  In fact, prior to the nominations I said I would never watch the Oscars again if The Master wasn’t nominated, which of course happened, but I talked myself down from the ledge once Joaquin and PSH got their respective nominations. I never would have stopped watching. I love movies, and while I seldom agree with the Academy's decisions, it is great to watch actors be rewarded and occasionally show real emotion.

Best Picture

The Great

The last time Kathryn Bigelow was on stage at the Academy Awards, she walked away with two Oscars.  By not awarding Bigelow a Best Director nod for Zero Dark Thirty, the Academy ensured that history will not repeat itself.  It's a shame because Bigelow was the front-runner in my book.  The team behind The Hurt Locker has once again given us a tense film concerning the war on terrorism.  Combining Bigelow’s antecedent effort and the depiction of the search for and assassination of Osama Bin Laden was enough to make me extremely excited for this film.  The ensemble cast was quietly one of the best of the year.  In addition to my favorite for Best Actress, Jessica Chastain, the film stars the eternally underrated Jason Clarke (Lawless, Chicago Code), Joel Edgerton (Warrior, Animal Kingdom), Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights, Super 8), Chris Pratt (Parks and Recreation, Moneyball), Mark Strong, James Gandolfini, and Mark Duplass. Going into a film convinced that it will be your favorite film of the year often ends in disappointment, however I walked out of the film with those feelings affirmed.

More than almost any other filmmaker, David O. Russell is a director of outstanding performances.  Christian Bale and Melissa Leo won Oscars and Amy Adams earned a nomination for their work on The Fighter (my favorite film of 2011).  Silver Linings Playbook is the first film since 1981’s Red to earn nominations in all four acting categories.  Ostensibly about a man’s struggle to overcome his inner demons and regain the life he once had, Silver Linings Playbook delves into the tragedies and monotonies that cause people to lose their mental capacity and how companionship and support can play a role in getting it back.  This was a film very close to Russell's heart (his son suffers from a mood disorder); every bit of that passion made it to the screen.

This year’s resident little film that could, Beasts of the Southern Wild, is at its foundation, a coming of age story.  Hushpuppy (played by best actress nominee Quvenzhané Wallis) and her father Wink (Dwight Henry) reside in a community called "The Bathtub", located outside the levees of New Orleans.  The combination of a community threatening storm and Wink's declining health threaten to tear Hushpuppy's world apart.  As the community recovers, Hushpuppy learns about survival, comraderie, and the strength of the human spirit.  Fittingly, with little in the way of resources and a cast of inexperienced actors, director Benh Zeitlin superbly composes a virtual mythical hero's journey with his 6 year old protagonist.  Keeping up with the egregious slights, the exceptional score, which greatly contributed to the film's emotional resonance, was not nominated.

The Good

Argo provides Ben Affleck's best shot at an Oscar to date.  He did not receive a Best Director nomination, which usually means the film won't win.  Award season has been kind to Argo which should indicate it has a good shot.  While I liked it, I wasn't as enthralled with this as the three films above.  In fact, I'm a bigger fan of his previous two films, Gone Baby Gone and The Town.

Lincoln was a good film and very well may win this award but will probably be remembered more for being a Daniel Day-Lewis Best Actor vehicle.  The sheer amount of great actors at some point became a huge distraction for me.  A Steven Spielberg film used to be a very exciting event for me, but emotion inducing swells of music mostly just fill me with annoyance.

Quentin Tarantino is a masterful filmmaker.  He cannot help but make entertaining films, occasionally he makes a great film.  Visually, Django Unchained looked great, the acting was superb (everyone without the initials QT), the music was good, and the dialogue was snappy.  Chalk up another in the entertaining category. 

I read Life of Pi early in my college years, I'm not sure I was willing or ready to truly understand it.  I wanted to see the film but had no idea how they would adapt it to the screen.  I must say Ang Lee did as perfect a job as could have been done. 

The OK

I was positively terrified to see Amour.  As you can imagine, I'm not a fan of death and viewing the decay of a person's mental and physical capacities is about the worst subject matter there is.  While this was a good film, I was more invested and frankly more emotionally crushed by the short montage at the beginning of Up than I was of Amour.

For me, Les Misérables, Tom Hooper's follow up to Best Picture winner The King's Speech, didn't pack as big an emotional punch as the great films this year.  What did I like?  Hooper made a great decision by recording the actors actually singing on set, Hathaway and Jackman were outstanding, and Hooper succeeded in giving an epic feel.

More to come...

-PSon

The Other Steve McQueen

The 1981 IRA hunger strike, sex addiction, and American slave trading in the 1800s; these are the subjects of the first three feature length films by British director Steve McQueen. Don’t get him confused with the American born, 60s-70s era actor of the same name and long-time “King of Cool”. To passionate film geeks, McQueen has already done enough to escape any confusion. Both of the director’s first two films, 2008’s Hunger and 2011’s Shame, pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of making stunningly beautiful films out of grimy subject matter. He also wrote both films, as well as Twelve Years a Slave, a film set to release later this year.

The starring role in every McQueen film to date has gone to British actor Michael Fassbender, whose career has exploded in the past few years. In Hunger, Fassbender played Bobby Sands, the leader of the aforementioned IRA hunger strike, who becomes a martyr following his death by starvation. His sometimes fiery but often understated performance elevated the film from a visually entrancing work of art to a truly engrossing character study of a man. The film centers on the final 6 weeks of Sands’ life, and details the inhumane treatment (imposed by both others and self) the imprisoned endured in the pursuit of being classified as political prisoners rather than criminals. The film’s entirety is not devoted to Sands; we view the physical and psychological impact on prison staff as well as family members of those involved. In Shame we see Fassbender as Brandon, a successful advertising executive imprisoned by his own sexuality. Unable to satiate his own sexual desires, Brandon’s descent and immersion into deeper and deeper levels of deviance and perversion make it impossible for him to carry on a relationship without a moral or monetary transaction. Brandon’s sister Sissy (played by Carey Mulligan), unreliable and damaged in her own way, comes back into his life and for better or worse threatens to uproot his lifestyle. McQueen paints Brandon as a very clean individual on the surface. The film looks gorgeous; Brandon’s appearance, apartment, office, and hangouts all give off an air of perfection. Calling him a non-sadist Patrick Bateman isn’t accurate, in the end we see that Brandon is more victim than Lothario.

On the heels of the 2013 movie preview, I realized I forgot to mention Twelve Years a Slave. Being that I may be more excited for this one than any other, I decided it deserved more than a comment under the preview. Thinking further, Steve McQueen is extremely underrated for the incredible work he’s done. At this early point in his film career, he’s made 2 outstanding films. When you take the artful way he’s filmed his other feature length works in combination with the cast and subject matter of Twelve Years a Slave, it’s easy to see why I think McQueen will be acknowledged come award season. Twelve Years a Slave is an adaptation of the 1853 memoir of Solomon Northup, a black man born free in New York who was deceived, drugged, kidnapped, and subsequently sold into slavery in Washington D.C., later being transported to Louisiana where he remained a slave for 12 years. The underrated Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Northup. The film also will feature Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti, Sarah Paulson, Paul Dano, Michael K. Williams (The Wire’s Omar), Garret Dillahunt, Scoot McNairy, Alfre Woodard, Taran Killam, and Beasts of the Southern Wild’s Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry. I don’t think it is a stretch to say this film promises to be epic in nature, a distinct departure from McQueen’s works to date.

-PSon