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.

Oscars 2012: Best Supporting 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 SUPPORTING ACTOR

1. CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER
Beginners

2. NICK NOLTE
Warrior

3. KENNETH BRANAGH
My Week with Marilyn

4. MAX VON SYDOW
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

 5. JONAH HILL
Moneyball

Missing: Albert Brooks, Drive

If we want to be honest — and we do, do we not? — Nick Nolte grappled with the heaviest, most “difficult” role of the alcoholic dad trying to make amends with his estranged sons. I put the difficult in quotations, you see, because no one thinks comedy is difficult, but Drama — with a capital D, mind you — is the stuff Oscar salivates for. Truth be told so do I: Nolte’s performance, specifically the casino scene when his son played by Tom Hardy viciously chucks coins at him, and then the resulting alcoholic regression in the hotel room directly thereafter, is extraordinarily uncomfortable and heartbreaking. The latter, with Nolte’s Moby Dick-inflected drunken ramblings, was largely improvised by the two actors and is some stunning work. If it were any other year, I’d be at bat for Nick, but I’m not too worried about him: the loquacious and philosophical 71-year-old actor is is doing more and more interesting work lately. We’ll be seeing him again.

Jonah Hill, on the other hand, I don’t expect to be seeing again, nor do I understand why I’m seeing him now. I suspect he’s as surprised as we are by his nomination for his unfunny, underdeveloped baseball statistician with a fondness for the über-underdogs in Moneyball. His Peter Brand doesn’t do a whole lot besides dispassionately spout off stats, so I can understand why folks are a bit perturbed that he stole the nomination from the more deserving Albert Brooks who was scarily corrupt in this year’s most-snubbed film, Drive.

This is Kenneth Branagh‘s second acting nomination (though he’s had three additional nominations for directing, writing and a live action short), and while he has no shot in hell of winning, his Sir Laurence Olivier is a delightfully self-important and charming asshole. Branagh obviously wished he had more scenery to chew, but by god he made the most of this slight role, lip-smacking and bulldozing his way through My Week with Marilyn with a brazen flourish. It’s great fun to watch him have such great fun.

Unfortunately for Max von Sydow, he is not this year’s reigning octogenarian (and you know I have a soft spot for him, being in The Exorcist and all). It’s not his fault, of course: he plays a grief-stricken mute in the year’s most undeserved Best Picture nominee, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Director Stephen Daldry (who I normally love) gives von Sydow little more to do than mime his way (with a teary look or two) through the god-awful film.

Like von Sydow, this is only Christopher Plummer‘s second nomination (he was nominated two years ago for his brilliant performance as Leo Tolstoy), but the esteemed 81-year-old actor has performed in well over 100 films. It wasn’t until The Insider that his movie career really saw an upswing, despite his most well-known role as Captain Von Trapp in the film that he not-so-fondly refers to as The Sound of Mucus. As he points out, film wasn’t exactly his first love:

I loved the theater and I stayed in the theater most of my life and I was a bit snobbish about it. I made a lot of movies through the ’60s and ’70s which were pretty awful, but then most of the movies in the ’60s and early ’70s were pretty awful. The quality wasn’t always there, unfortunately, but the money was. And I was grateful for that because I could afford to then do what I wanted to do in the theater.

I was lucky enough to see Plummer perform Lear in Stratford years ago, and it was one of the most thrilling live performance I’ve ever seen to date. The Academy could certainly do worse than offer this regal Canadian an Oscar as a “Lifetime Achievement” of sorts; he has after all managed to snag nearly every other major award for this performance including the Golden Globe, BAFTA and SAG. But the truth of the matter is: he actually deserves it. As Hal, the widower who, 6 months after his wife passes and at age 75, comes out of the closet to finally and fully embrace life, Plummer seduces the audience with the passionate vigor of a man coming into his own even while at the same time facing his own mortality. Finding the humor and ecstasy even in the tragedy, it’s in those quiet moments of revelation he has with his son, when the camera comes in tight, exposing the intense vulnerability lurking behind the confidence. The performance may not be flashy, but it is most deserving of the recognition Plummer is sure to receive come Oscar night.