Oscars 2012: Final Winner Predictions

I’ve only made only two changes* to my original predictions — and really, how could I ever think that War Horse would win anything? — so these are it: My selections for my office Oscar pool. And I am going to win. (At least I hope so. I didn’t win last year, and that was tragic.)

Just a head’s up: If you’re at all going by what I say for your own pool, please note that I am notoriously bad at predicting the sound categories.

Best Picture: The Artist
Best Director: The Artist 
Best Actor: Jean Dujardin
Best Actress: Viola Davis 
Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer (YAY!) 
Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer
Best Adapted Screenplay: The Descendants
Best Original Screenplay: Midnight in Paris 
Best Cinematography: The Tree of Life
Best Film Editing: Hugo*
Best Art Direction: Hugo
Best Visual Effects: Rise of the Planet of the Apes 
Best Costume Design: The Artist
Best Makeup: The Iron Lady
Best Original Score: The Artist
Best Original Song: “Man or Muppet” (The Muppets)
Best Sound Mixing: Hugo
Best Sound Editing: Hugo*
Best Foreign Language Film: A Separation
Best Animated Feature: Rango
Best Documentary Feature: Undefeated
Best Animated Short Film: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
Best Live-action Short Film: The Shore
Best Documentary Short Subject: The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom

Happy Oscar-ing!

Oscars 2012: Best Picture

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST PICTURE

1. THE DESENDANTS

2. MONEYBALL

3. THE ARTIST

5. MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

6. THE TREE OF LIFE

7. THE HELP

8. WAR HORSE

9. EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE

Missing: Drive, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, A Separation, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

Remember last year when I was foaming at the mouth over the prospect of The King’s Speech‘s win? Or how I was Darren Aronofsky’s biggest cheerleader? Nine Inch Nails was an Oscar nominee! Blue Valentine! Another Year! Jesse Eisenberg! Things to get excited about!

Sigh. Not this year. (Ok, that’s a bit of a lie: I’m SUPER-pumped about Christopher Plummer.)

Needless to say, this was an extremely hard list for me to make, because I am not excited about any of the nominated films. I enjoyed The Descendants the most — the pathos and the quirkiness of the family drama set in Hawaii is the closest to hitting the mark of my “type” of film — and I hated Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close for its exploitation of 9/11, emotional manipulation, the casting of the most obnoxious child actor — oh no, I’m sorry, Jeopardy! contestant — and for its general hackery. As for the seven in the middle, well, you could almost put them in any order, and I wouldn’t bat an eye. (Unless you put The Help at #2, and then I might slap you for pretending that amateurishly directed, deluded piece of nostalgia overflowing with white guilt is worthy of an award.)

As for Drive, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, A Separation, Harry Potter… if any one of those were nominated, I would be excited. I loved those films. Why, for example, Harry Potter was snubbed for the eighth and final time when there’s an empty tenth slot sitting there is simply incomprehensible to me. Why any of these films weren’t nominated when, say, Spielberg’s flat, No-Mans-Land of a film, War Horse, landed a spot, is pretty much inexcusable (I still love you though, Steve. That Tintin: So good!).

Everyone loves The Artist (or at least they like it a whole lot because they feel that they should), and it’s a perfectly lovely little gimmick of a film (even if that middle depressive section drags on for far too long) filled with exuberant performances, pretty costumes and the cutest little dog you ever did see (except for the one in Beginners — he was pretty freakin’ adorable too). And it’s 100% guaranteed to win tomorrow night. And that’s ok. Let’s celebrate that and cheers to 2013 — here’s hopin’ it’s an awards season to get excited about.

 

Oscars 2012: Best Directing

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST DIRECTING

1. THE TREE OF LIFE
Terrence Malick 

2. HUGO
Martin Scorcese 

3. THE ARTIST
Michel Hazanavicius  

4. THE DESCENDANTS
Alexander Payne

5. MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
Woody Allen 

Missing: Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive; David Fincher, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I am not a big enough film snob to say I enjoyed The Tree of Life, but I am enough of one to admire and appreciate the crazy-ambitious Vision (yes, that’s a capital V, folks) of Terrence Malick’s epic, messy, indulgent, beautiful, frustrating, fascinating, narrative-adverse passion project (if you need a good laugh, google “The Tree of Life synopsis” — some folks’ attempts to explicate Malick’s infuriating-mad-genius are hilarious, because they’re true: “The universe is formed… Voices ask various existential questions.” (Thank you, Wikipedia.) His pictures are always gorgeous to behold with their frequent tangents into nature, but they’re just too out there (re: pretentious) for the vast majority of voters — even his actors are confused/embittered by his methods (my grandpa spoke out about why he would never work with Malick again). He’s been nominated twice before — screenplay and directing for The Thin Red Line — but he’s unlikely to ever win.

Most unfortunately, neither Drive or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo made the cut here for their sexy-sleek direction (what have you got against these slicksters, Academy?). Woody Allen, who has bee nominated 15 times for writing (winning for Annie Hall and Hannah and her Sisters), 7 times for directing (winning for Annie Hall) and one time for acting, should keep his hopes for a win relegated to his screenplay nomination for Midnight in Paris (though the chance of a spoiler there is getting stronger…). The same goes for Alexander Payne, who impressively keeps the tone of The Descendants from veering into groan-inducing quirkiness, but it looks like Oscar will see fit to reward him for the screenplay only this time around.

The Best Directing winner is almost always tied to the Best Picture winner, with the last exception to this occurring in 2005 when Ang Lee won for Directing but not Best Picture for Brokeback Mountain. We already know that The Artist will win Best Picture (I hope I’m not spoiling my final post for y’all), and it certainly helps that Michel Hazanavicius already won the Directors Guild Award, which is an even stronger indicator of a win here — the last time both didn’t line up was in 2002 when Rob Marshall won the DGA for Chicago, but Roman Polanski nabbed the Oscar for The Pianist (despite his, um, fugitive state). All this is to say that The Artist should win this for its entirely visual storytelling, which is nicely done, though not exactly the huge risk folks are making it out to be. But then there’s Marty…

And Martin Scorcese will put up a fight, having already gotten a little feisty with his Golden Globe win. It’s hard to believe, but Scorcese only has one Oscar to his name, and he didn’t get it until 2006 for The Departed. What’s clear is that Hugo is obviously his film, with how the camera weaves in and around the bustling train station, taking loving diversions to the quirky supporting characters before swooping back into a vibrant, kinetic child-like world (in 3D, no less). And the movie-within-the-movie? Brilliant. So while chances are slim, I’m hoping for a Scorcese spoiler.

Oscars 2012: Best Animated Feature

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

1. CHICO & RITA

2. PUSS IN BOOTS

3. RANGO

4. KUNG FU PANDA 2

A CAT IN PARIS

Missing: The Adventures of Tintin

Rango‘s computer animation is the most stunning of the lot, but based on watchability, only one film was more painful than Gore Verbinski’s rambling, tongue-in-cheek chameleon western penned by in-demand screenwriter-playwright John Logan. Boasting some of the most beautifully-crafted ugliest creatures on god’s green earth, it’s also a snooze-fest despite its oddball mentality as perfectly embodied by Johnny Depp’s misfit lizard, Lars. But it’s beloved by critics and audiences alike (?), so this whacky feature is taking home the gold.

The animation is polished and fight scenes are zippy-fun — or at least, that’s what everyone else is saying. I wouldn’t know — or rather, I do know, but was not duly impressed — because I turned Kung Fu Panda 2 off after about 20 minutes. The story is so trivial and mindless with the predictable “lesson” tagged on at the end for good measure that it exemplifies exactly what is wrong with a category that has only been around since 2001: it favors box office smashes that are geared towards kids. Sure, Pixar usually shows up to legitimize its existence, but when even that powerhouse churns out a profit-pandering sequel (that would be the rightly-dissed Cars 2), you know it’s going to be a rough year.

To be fair, Puss in Boots is the same type of ‘toon-fare as Kung Fu Panda 2, but it’s much more enjoyable with a slightly-more sophisticated story (and I do mean slightly). This is your typical Dreamworks computer-animated flick, no better or worse than the rest of the Shrek movies, and it offers a completely dedicated Antonio Bandares at full-funny tilt as the badass swashbucklin’ Puss with a Spanish accent and fondness for the lady-kitties. Mindless, yes, but I had a good time watching this one.

The final two films are the two foreign, hand-drawn nominees (and a hand-drawn pic hasn’t won since 2002′s Spirited Away). A Cat in Paris is by all accounts a slight tale of a girl and her kitty, who lives a double-life as a burglar-gangster at night (I wasn’t able to see it). Chico & Rita, by far my favorite, is a romantic drama that just happens to be animated. This is the only nominee geared towards adults — yep, that’s an animated nipple you’re seeing — and while the sepia-palette is a bit dull and the old-fashioned animation lacks sharp definition, it’s an aurally vibrant love-letter to jazz. The romantic entanglements of a Cuban jazz musician and singer are set to a few old-school tunes with new ones by Bebo Valdés, a Cuban-born pianist and composer, who also happens to be the inspiration for character of Chico. It’s a romanticized portrait of Cuba, to be sure, but it’s a dazzling homage to the jazz form and the people who made it spectacular (Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk and Chano Pozo). See it for the love story, remember it for the gorgeous, invigorating music.

As much as I loved Chico & Rita, the actual Best Animated Feature this year was not even nominated. I don’t know why the Academy is so adverse to motion-capture, but the fact that it super-snubbed Spielberg’s terrifically sparky and brilliantly directed (just look at that breathless, super-kinetic chase scene mid-film!) The Adventures of Tintin is absolutely ridiculous — as is their undeserving recognition of his lazier work on War Horse. Epic fail, Academy. Epic. Fail.

Oscars 2012: Foreign Language Film

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

1. A SEPARATION

2. BULLHEAD

3. IN DARKNESS

FOOTNOTE

MONSIER LAZHAR

 

Missing: The Skin I Live In

A Separation may not win here. Let’s take a moment and let that sink in.

This is despite a tight and compelling screenplay; a superb cast headed by Peyman Maadi, Leila Hatami and Sarina Farhadi (the director’s daughter); a bevy of awards including the Golden Globe; its status as the critical favorite and Asghar Farhardi’s discerning direction that paints pictures of separations physical, emotional, societal and visual (see the still above for one of many such literal splits between his subjects). It’s an alarmingly honest and visceral portrait of a family, and country, divided.

But when you throw a Holocaust film into the mix, all bets are off. In Oscar history, twenty feature length films — including docs and foreign language –have been nominated by telling the story of the Holocaust through the victims’  perspectives. How many have won in their respective categories? Eighteen. Those are not good odds for Farhardi’s film.

It also does’t help that the Academy tends to vote for the more blatantly sentimental/manipulative films à la El Secreto de Sus Ojos, rather than the critical contenders (not that that’s really any different than the Best Picture category — hello, The King’s Speech).

In Darkness, of course, beautifully fits both of these criteria with its true story: A not-exactly on the up-and-up Pole discovers a group of Jews desperately trying to escape a Lvov ghetto by way of its sewers. A shrewd businessman (re: thief), the conniving Leopold helps them hide for a hefty fee. Along the way, though, he develops a soft spot for his captives — lovingly declaring them, “My Jews!” with a big, genuinely joyful smile come film’s end. So Agnieszka Holland’s film is a conventional one, following the well-trodden path of the Holocaust narrative and too easily eliciting emotions from us — horror and hope and suspense and fear. But the performances are fine — especially the stocky and clever Robert Wieckiewicz as Leopold — and the well-made film is ultimately gratifying in the way that Holocaust films usually are.

Still, A Separation is exceptional, and hopefully the voters recognize and reward it as the year’s standout that it is.

But I still want to talk about Michael R. Roskam’s Bullhead, which is such an odd duck of a film (it’s the Dogtooth of this year). Unapologetically dark with its foreboding score (Raf Keunen), persistently overcast skies and discomfiting silences, it is an extraordinarily literal-minded Drama (yes, with a capital ‘D’) in which a meat mobster — who, as a boy, was castrated by a rock by a heartless little bastard — pumps steroids with alarmingly equal abandon into his cattle and himself. This is like the Godfather, but switch out the horse for the bull, and the excellent Matthias Schoenaerts as Jacky is like a Flemish Tom Hardy, all muscly, moody and scary as hell. Super-uncomfortable at times, Bullhead is a tense, weird, unnerving film. And I kind of really liked it, so obviously it has no chance of winning.

As for the last two films, neither has been released in the U.S. yet. The Canadian Monsieur Lazhar promises to be the touching and tender teacher story we’ve seen so many times before, while the Israeli Footnote is a wry Jewish comedy about a scholarly competition between father and son. No one is talking seriously, if at all, about either of these two nominees winning.

Oscars 2012: Best Documentary

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST DOCUMENTARY

1. UNDEFEATED

2. PARADISE LOST 3: PURGATORY

3. HELL AND BACK AGAIN

4. IF A TREE FALLS: A STORY OF THE EARTH LIBERATION FRONT

 5. PINA

I know, I know: The Weinstein Company. Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, producer. Football.

Why would I like this?

I hate football, but I loooove a good football movie (and no, I don’t get it either). But especially when it’s Friday Night Lights meets Stand and Deliver meets The Blind Side — wait, what?  Yes, Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin’s doc, Undefeated, about inner-city high school football students in North Memphis, TN — where crumbling roofs, absentee dads and shootings are just as common as the Mannassas High School football team’s losses — actually includes an African American boy who spends a few nights a week with a rich white family so that he can get the tutoring he needs to score that college scholarship to play football (rest easy: he does). Another boy — “Money” (who wears a Wicked t-shirt and bafflingly gets away with it) — damages his knee and is devastated to be out for the season, and so, naturally, some 1%er anonymously offers to pay for his entire four-year college education.

This may sound like a great big heap of The Help-like white guilt, but seeing it is a whole other story. Hard to believe, but it all rings true as honest-to-goodness stuff. The crazy-dedicated and magnetic coach — we would all be so lucky to have a Coach Courtney whilst growing up — teaches these kids not only the game of football, but the game of life (I can’t stop the cheese! But it’s true!), and we actually see the evolution of these young men as Bill’s words affect them, deeply — and as their  actions and successes ultimately, and equally, affect him. There is just so much love and good will in this film that you can’t not root for it. And I think voters are going to act as its cheerleaders, too.

Until quite recently, before Undefeated showed up late in the game, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory was the top contender. Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s third installment of their series dedicated to uncovering the truth about the brutal slayings of three boys and setting free the West Memphis 3 actually changed course in August when the three men, 18 years after being wrongly incarcerated, were set free. This is easily the most compelling doc of the bunch (so compelling, in fact, that Peter Jackson has also been working on a documentary of his own for the past seven years, and West of Memphis is getting quite the buzz). That the Academy snubbed Berlinger and Sinofsky’s first two films may still indicate a spoiler-like win after all for the  filmmakers who dedicated nearly 15 years to these films and to justice for Damien Echols, Jesse Misskelley Jr. and Jason Baldwin. 

As for the final three:

Hell and Back Again is this year’s Restrepo or The Hurt Locker (minus that pesky fiction factor) with its story of Nathan Harris, who was hit by a sniper bullet in Afghanistan, destroying his hip/leg and quite possibly any chance of his walking again, just three days before returning home to the States. Filmmaker and journalist Danfung Dennis befriended Harris overseas and captured some stunning war footage, which he juxtaposes to powerful effect with scenes of Harris’s struggle to acclimate to civilian life. No PTSD here — Harris is a battle junkie, suffering from action withdrawal, and it’s difficult to believe, but fascinating, that he wants to go back and do it all again.

If a Tree Falls: The Story of the Earth Liberation Front, offers a militant and messy look at the so-called “eco-terroists” of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) who used guerrilla warfare (specifically arson to try to stop the exploitation and destruction of the environment (ie. loggers and the like). Following one member of the group, Daniel McGowan, Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman’s doc is intriguing at times, but ultimately a bit all over the place, with no clear message. What is clear is the parallel to the Occupy Wall Street movement  – and I’m not sure that’s a good or a bad thing for the majority of voters.

I know I should like Pina. It is, after all, the “artistic” documentary, but this cinematic tribute to the great choreographer-performer Pina Bausch who died in 2009 amidst filming is too esoteric and pretentious for the general Academy. Wim Wenders’s film is equal portions hagiography and movement: the ensemble members of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, in their reflections of their choreographer-critic-friend, are all exaggerated reverence. I wanted less talking-gushing, more dancing. Or, if there needed to be talking, let it be about Pina, for I left the theatre knowing her no better than when I entered it.

Oscars 2012: Best Actress

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST ACTRESS

1. MERYL STREEP
The Iron Lady

2. VIOLA DAVIS
The Help

3. MICHELLE WILLIAMS
My Week with Marilyn

4. GLENN CLOSE
Albert Nobbs

 5. ROONEY MARA
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Let’s cut right to the chase: it’s Streep vs Davis, and Davis currently has the edge. Now,  I don’t know why two of our best actresses are in two of the worst movies of the year, but the fact that each of these women knocks it out of the park in these ridiculous films… Well, there’s just something to be said for that (They did the same thing, together no less, in the horrible Doubt, for which they were both nominated).

Viola Davis deserves better. This woman is fierce in every single movie she’s in — and they’re nearly uniformly bad (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Eat Pray Love, Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (yep, she sure was in that), etc). But her body of work is relatively small,  so the declarations from some that it’s “her time” are just plain silly (Ask Christopher Plummer or Gary Oldman about their “time,” but don’t try to apply it here). All you need to do is watch a scene like this, and you can see why folks are clamoring for her to get that Oscar: that delicate balance of emotion as she describes her son’s death demonstrates her brilliant control and understanding of how to transform an emotionally manipulative scene into one of honest heartbreak. A masterful talent, she received the SAG Award, which is a very good indicator of an Oscar win. I just wish it was for a worthier film.

Why Meryl Streep tops my list — I know, I know, so predictable — is because yes, The Iron Lady is terrible (though not as terrible as The Help), but her talent is so transcendent that she actually makes one forget, for a short while, how mediocre-to-bad the material is (even Viola couldn’t manage this). No one needs me to say that her performance as Margaret Thatcher is impeccable, but it bears repeating that the she is the most nominated actor in history with 16 nominations and only two wins, the last of which was in 1983 (!) for Sophie’s Choice. It’s so easy to pass on Meryl because she’ll surely be nominated again, but what’s the point in that if she really is the best every year? Give her that third Oscar already!

Michelle Williams is divine as always, in what is now her characteristic lonely-heart role. Last year it was Blue Valentine, and before that, Brokeback Mountain, and now, My Week with Marilyn. The only difference this time is that she’s portraying an icon, to intoxicating perfection, and to her immense credit, essentially no one has voiced issue with her beautifully-layered performance (which, truth be told, was much more interesting than the film itself). The girl from the Creek is destined for an Oscar, but just not now.

Five-time nominee Glenn Close is certainly “due” an Oscar, but when the competition is stiff and her passion project, underwhelming, she’ll have to wait for another year and more good will. While Close is perfectly fine playing a man who looks like Glenn Close (am I the only one who found her a bit creepy?), her performance in Albert Nobbs is much too Gary Oldman-subtle for anyone to really take notice. It certainly doesn’t help that co-star Janet McTeer outshines her in her own film.

Ah, Rooney Mara, how much do you think Tilda Swinton is cursing you out for just showing up, all pierced and stoic-like in your goth gear? Not that I’m hating, mind you. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is Fincher-style sleek and sexy, and Mara is terrific in it, simultaneously bubbling with fury and vulnerably open. Her chances are so minuscule here, however, that the Academy might as well have done away with pretensions and left it at four nominees.

Oscars 2012: Best Actor

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST ACTOR

1. GEORGE CLOONEY
The Descendants 

2. JEAN DUJARDIN
The Artist 

3. DEMIAN BICHIR
A Better Life 

4. BRAD PITT
Moneyball 

 5. GARY OLDMAN
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 

Missing: Ryan Gosling, Drive; Michael Fassbender, Shame 

All of these men are excellent, and it’s a shame (yeah, I went there) that Gosling and Fassbender couldn’t be nominated as well. Truth be told, I would switch out Mr. Oldman for Mr. Method and Mr. Angelina Jolie would take a hike for Mr. Naked (I apparently respect Mr. Oldman too much to give him a nickname).

Yes, that means I’d leave in Demián Bichir, who you surely have never heard of, nor had you any clue that a little Chis Weitz film called A Better Life existed. But I have a soft spot for über-underdogs, and Bichir’s touching performance as a gardener in East L.A. struggling to put food on the table and simultaneously keep his son out of gangs and away from immigration officials is absolutely lovely. Sure, the film is sentimental and ridden with clichés of the illegal alien experience, but Bichir’s portrayal is decent and honest, and dammit, no other moment in a film this year made me more upset than when his struck was stolen (cursing, I was cursing at the screen), and if you’re a sucker for father-son narratives, the final scene, when Bichir opens up emotionally to his son, will rip your heart out. Feel free to blubber like a baby. I sure did.

No one’s denying the chameleon-like capabilities of Gary Oldman, who is unrecognizable in half the films he graces (or maybe that’s just me…). But his turn in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is so subtle that he doesn’t stand a chance against the tap-dancing Frenchman and two super-movie stars. But hey, at least he finally got a nomination, right?

Some folks actually think the big award could go to one of Hollywood’s golden boys, Brad or George. Two-time nominee Brad Pitt (12 Monkeys, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) does fully and finally shed his movie star skin to cooly slip into the role of Moneyball‘s Billy Beane, the irreverent general manager of the Oakland A’s. Pitt’s relaxed demeanor as Beane has an unsettling edge to it, his every move vibrating with just-below-the-surface fury, and critics are calling this his career-best. No disagreement from me there.

Unfortunately — or fortunately, depending how you look at it — some folks are saying the same about George Clooney for his turn as Hawaiian shirt-clad family man who’s sent into a tailspin with the discovery of his comatose wife’s infidelity. Clooney tunes down his Cary Grant-magneticism to portray an absentee father and husband who frequently and brilliantly makes a mess of things: you can actually see the paralyzing hesitation and feel his inability to trust his own intuition when he’s faced with tough choices. And while Moneyball is Pitt’s film, The Descendants is not solely Clooney’s: instinctually, he knows when to step aside and allow the rest of the stellar ensemble to shine. He may already have one Oscar (Syriana) on his mantle, but it’s about time he added to his collection. But the votes for Pitt and Clooney will probably be split, allowing for an Artist sweep…

Jean Dujardin — who’s already won the Golden Globe, BAFTA and SAG —  has pretty much had this race all sewn up since the day the nominations were announced. As the silent film star who is down on his luck, Dujardin, without a word, steals each and every scene with a flirtatious wink or a devilish raise of an eyebrow. “Utterly charming” and “delightful” are phrases overused in describing his performance, but he absolutely is that exuberant and joyful to watch. The only happy contender in a bunch of sad depressives — and don’t get me wrong, I love a good downer of a film — Dujardin stands out in the best possible way. Who can possibly hate on this man for winning?

Oscars 2012: Best Original Screenplay

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 beingmy favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange. 

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

1. A SEPARATION

2. MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

3. MARGIN CALL

4. THE ARTIST

 5. BRIDESMAIDS

Missing: Shame, Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Skin I Live In

The Artist wasn’t eligible for the WGA Award, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot (turns out, many films aren’t eligible due to a whacky set of rules). Then again, some wonder if a film sans dialogue could/should even be up for this award. And of course it should, but few are likely to vote for it for just that very reason. Writer-director Michel Hazanavicius crafted a gimmicky but solid silent film screenplay, plotting out all those winks and exaggerated hand gestures. But it’d still be a pretty shocking win — even though it is this year’s most beloved film.

Bridesmaids, this year’s The Hangover for the ladies (which, in case you’d forgotten, the Academy ignored), is a girly gross-out comedy that is ultimately a sentimental grrl-power flick. Though structurally unadventurous and not nearly as revolutionary as some claim it to be (yep, some are actually claiming it a “feminist victory“), it’s nice to be reminded that not all wedding movies have to be about landing/keeping a guy — sometimes they’re just about landing/keeping a female friend. After, y’know, a few dozen rounds of catty bitchiness. Writers Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig are two smart, funny gals, though, and I’m sure they’re pleased as punch to be invited to the party. I just wish it was for something that was actually a tiny bit revolutionary.

The single nod here for Margin Call is both baffling and yet not at all surprising. What’s terrific is that writer-director J.C. Chandor’s first feature marvelously details the fall of an investment bank loosely based on Lehman Brothers, and it actually attempts to humanize the bankers themselves. Sure these guys are obscenely rich, arrogant and in some cases clueless to the point of pride (ok, I still hate them), but there’s a quiet, genuine panic when their million-dollar world starts crashing down around them. These are not entirely the one-dimensionally-evil money grubbers that Occupy Wall Street demonizes (see last year’s doc, Inside Job if that’s what you’re looking for), and it’s probably due to this that the film was largely ignored (because there are some very fine performances, too) and why it has no real chance of winning here.

Woody Allen is up for his 14th nomination (in this category alone) for Midnight in Paris, which won the WGA Award. There’s nothing entirely novel about the screenplay (for which Allen’s taken bits and pieces and feelings from his other films), but it’s dreamy and charming and full of warm humor. All signs are pointing towards Allen for winning his third Oscar for this romantic and whimsical nostalgic ode to 1920s Paris.

If voters weren’t so afraid of/annoyed at reading screenplays while viewing them, it wouldn’t then be entirely irrational to think A Separation, Iran’s official submission for Best Foreign Language Film, has a shot at stealing Allen’s crown. A tightly structured, socially complex film about separations great and small — wife from husband, working from middle class, church from state (or not) — Asghar Farhadi’s is by far the strongest screenplay of the year. What begins as a domestic drama — a wife wishes to leave her husband so as to provide a better life for her daughter (he won’t allow it) — quickly snowballs into a moral, emotional and at times violent legal thriller, layering question upon question, then answering few before raising even more. None of the other nominees come close to the craft and complexity that Farhadi demonstrates here, and so it’s most unfortunate that recognition for his work will be relegated solely to the Best Foreign Language Film category.

Oscars 2012: Best Adapted Screenplay

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 beingmy favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange. 

 

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

1. THE DESCENDANTS

2. MONEYBALL

3. HUGO

4. TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

 5. THE IDES OF MARCH

Missing: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

This category is kind of fun if only because two playwrights are represented — unless you count Sorkin, and then it’s three (but we theatre folks don’t really claim him anymore, do we?). Unfortunately, The Ides of March is a terrible film adapted from an almost-as-terrible play, Farragut North, by Beau Willimon. Inspired by the young playwright’s days working for Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York and the former governor of Vermont, Howard Dean, Willimon’s got a knack for campaign trail politico-talk, which can be feisty and fast-paced when the  campaign managers are spinning as they go. But in 2008 when the play premiered, the allegory to the then-current presidential election was practically non-existent, and the film, with its materialization of the idealized president (who never makes an appearance in the play) and its addition of a pregnancy plot that is both highly predictable and even more highly melodramatic, has an even shakier connection to our upcoming presidential campaign. None of Ides feels urgent or relevant — it actually seems outdated, which is amusing/depressing since it felt that way four years ago. But Beau isn’t entirely to blame: George Clooney and Grant Heslov — the pair that brought us the Oscar-nominated screenplay, Good Night, and Good Luck, also had a hand in the less-than-stellar adaptation.

Our other playwright is John Logan who, truth be told, is much more of a screenwriter these days (which we can be thankful for as his Tony Award-winning Red is one of the most overproduced and underwhelming plays of late): he has two nominations already under his belt (The Aviator, Gladiator) and now an animated feature has also been added to his roster (Rango — we’ll get to that mess later). And, lord help us, but he’s in the process of adapting Jersey Boys, the musical, for the silver screen. Needless to say, the man gets work continually, so there’s got to be something to this nomination for his adaptation of Brian Selznick’s children’s book. Logan’s Hugo keeps the dialogue spare and slims down the large cast of characters to focus more on the emotional journey of the Dickens-like orphan title character. He beefed up the villainous train inspector — because every movie’s gotta have a clear antagonist, right? — and when it was later decided that the film would be shot in 3D, he found ways for the characters to move more perceptively through the space: going through tunnels and inside the automaton and even the film camera and of course, that crafty Doberman. Logan’s work, however, is too meandering and indulgent in the side characters for a lot of critics, and really, this is a director’s piece anyway and therefore Marty’s show.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is adapted from John le Carré’s novel, which was also adapted into a popular 1970s TV mini series. This is a first nomination for husband-wife screenwriting team Peter Straughan and Bridget O’Connor (who sadly passed away before the film was finished) that had the difficult task of condensing the complicated Cold War thriller into an accessible film with actual human characters. Whether you think they succeeded (I do not) probably doesn’t matter: At this point, TTSS isn’t a really a contender.

What Sorkin and crew (Steven Zaillian and Stan Chervin) have going for them is that they already have two Oscars between them, and they also had the toughest task with their adaptation of Michael Lewis’s book about an idea. These guys had to build a narrative around a bunch of statistical data — and then create some character to boot. The end result of Moneyball works, but it’s not nearly as slick as Sorkin’s The Social Network, nor did it win the WGA Award or the USC Scriptor Award.

But The Descendants did win all those writing awards, and it’s officially become the frontrunner here. Based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, it’s one of those dramedies that Alexander Payne is so famous for: Matt King, “the backup parent” of two daughters, discovers his comatose wife was having an affair all while he’s trying to decide what to do with a family trust of over 25,000 acres of pristine Hawaiian land. Writer-director Payne, who won an Oscar for his pretentious adapted screenplay of Sideways, doesn’t typically show a fondness for his rather unlikable  characters, but here, the work is surprisingly and deeply sad, with only a little of the harsh quirkiness that he usually applies so generously. At this point, Payne and his co-writers Jim Rash and Nat Faxon, are pretty much guaranteed a (deserved) win.