Oscar 2012: Best Actor

This year’s Best Actor Oscar race is similar to the Best Actress contenders. There are two main contenders neck-and-neck at the front, with a possible spoiler, a veteran dark horse, and a surprise nominee. In other words, as with Best Actress, we’re looking at a nail-biter down to the finish line, making this first time in years where there is no clear winner or obvious choice.

Here are the nominees for this year’s Best Actor Oscar.

Demián Bichir for A Better Life

For him: A shock nominee, many feel that he took a spot that may have been meant for a bigger star (cf. Leonardo DiCaprio in J. Edgar). His little-seen art-house film, for those who have actually seen it, is beloved by a small but vocal group of voters and word is that those who’ve seen his performance declare his work to be the best, hands-down. He received a surprise SAG nomination as well, indicating popularity and support amongst his actor peers.

Against him: Very few people saw this film, which is streaming on Netflix after an unremarkable theatrical run. SAG nod aside, he received no other recognition this season. The film, about the immigrant experience in America, is topical and challenging, and may be a bit too political for more conservative voters’ taste. He also represents the lone nomination for his film and at least three of his nominees are front-and-center in Best Picture nominees. For Bichir, the nomination is the reward.

George Clooney for The Descendants

For him: I’ve referred to him as “Mr. Popular” more than once, and indeed he has support from critics, audiences and the Academy alike. He’s won the Golden Globe, Critics Choice and National Board of Review honours this year for his role. Clooney has career-best notices and he’s in a Best Picture nominee with broad-based support. He’s proven his versatility by having received seven career Oscar nominations (to date) in the fields of writing, directing and acting. He’s even nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for his well-received directorial effort The Ides of March. Somehow he’s straddled the gossip pages and the critics’ notices, winning respectability while also gracing magazine covers. Although he has a Supporting Actor prize already, for a leading man of his stature, it’s only fitting that he one day win the Leading Actor award as well. Is it time?

Against him: He’s already got an Oscar. It may be too much, too soon, and it’s not like he won’t have any other chances later on in his career. He’s got to watch his back as there’s a great challenge in the form of exciting newcomer (on this side of the pond) Jean Dujardin and his good friend Brad Pitt, both of whom are nominated and are leads in Best Picture nominees. Perhaps Clooney will one day be recognized for directing or writing, instead?

Jean Dujardin in The Artist

For him: Not initially the frontrunner, this charming Gaelic superstar – who’s as big as Clooney and Pitt in France – added to his Cannes Film Festival award by sweeping the Golden Globe, SAG and BAFTA prizes within the last month. He faces an acting challenge that no one else in the category takes on in that the role is a silent one. Dujardin didn’t even speak much English a year ago, and yet he learned it in a crash course and has been hitting the American talk show circuit to promote the film tirelessly, even hosting Saturday Night Live. That, folks, is dedication. The mighty Harvey Weinstein’s TWC is behind the campaign and they get results. He could win his award a la Roberto Benigni’s surprising victory for Life is Beautiful.

Against him: The Benigni comparison is a double-edged sword, as it is one of the more derided and criticized Oscar wins in the last twenty years. Dujardin has not yet signed on for any roles in Hollywood, which might make Academy members who are prone to cronyism a bit cagey about choosing a foreigner for the prize. (Then again, that didn’t stop them from choosing all-foreign winners in 2007.) Since the role is silent, they may also wait until they see him in a speaking role before rewarding him. Some Academy members may be resistant to seeing a high-concept silent movie.

Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

For him: One of the most revered film veterans, a one-time experimental and still-edgy British actor, Oldman has switched effortlessly between independent films such as Withnail and I and big Hollywood blockbusters like Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the Harry Potter franchise. It’s been widely noted that this is only his first career Oscar nomination and that might lead some to vote for him as a de facto career award.

Against him: He was MIA from all of the precursor award shortlists and needed at least one major win to make a stronger case for him here. He was the frontrunner for BAFTA, his one solid shot all season at a major acting prize, but he still lost when Dujardin and The Artist cleared the board there. With so many of his fellow nominees in Best Picture nominees, it’ll be tough to make a case for his win. He’ll be back.

Brad Pitt in Moneyball

For him: Like Clooney, he’s insanely popular, a global superstar with few peers. He’s also a multiple nominee this year, as he’s credited as a producer on Best Picture finalist Moneyball. Won the notoriously tony New York Film Critics and National Society of Film Critics best actor awards, indicating that they fully support his artistic choices. And with his role in The Tree of Life, he’s the only nominee in this category to appear in two Best Picture nominees, speaking to the adventurousness of his roles and its artistic payoff. It may be irresistible to Academy voters to give him a statue, as longtime spouse Angelina Jolie has one as well.

Against him: He may be too much of a tabloid favourite to get Hollywood’s most glittering prize. With Clooney and Dujardin winning the lion’s share of awards in the last month of the season, and both their films still playing in theatres, Pitt might have lost some momentum for Moneyball. It’s a talky role, with lots of long monologues, but doesn’t have the big emotional breakdown or typical “Oscar clips” that his main competition has. Perhaps like Robert Redford, to whom he has often been compared, he’ll win for producing or directing one day, instead?

The lowdown

I mentioned that the race was a parallel to Best Actress. In terms of the winners’ chances, here’s how I break them down:

Jean Dujardin = Viola Davis – the likely winner, a mid-career character actor in a Best Picture nominee
George Clooney = Meryl Streep – the megawatt star who was the early frontrunner, but will be recognized again in the future
Brad Pitt = Michelle Williams – the spoiler who could sneak through if the two leaders cancel each other out
Gary Oldman = Glenn Close – respected veteran who could have won had his / her film received more support (coincidentally, both films have three nods apiece)
Damien Bichir = Rooney Mara – surprise nominee and out-of-left-field shock winner if this happens, and neither name slips off the tongue easily

I’m forecasting a win for Dujardin, but won’t be surprised if Natalie Portman reads out “George Clooney” instead.

The Oscar will go to: Jean Dujardin for The Artist.

For more Oscar-related coverage on this blog, click here.

Oscar 2012: BAFTA Nominations

Think that the Oscar campaigning only occurs in L.A. and New York? There’s usually one trans-Atlantic trip required in the season and that’s to London for the annual British Academy of Film and Television, or BAFTA, Awards.

Long thought of as an afterthought to the more prestigious Oscars, the BAFTAs took on new life once they moved their awards ceremony to late February starting in 2001, and with the truncated Oscar schedule in 2004, they moved it up to a scant two weeks before the actual Oscar ceremony. The effect was felt immediately, as the BAFTAs became an important, if not always accurate, indicator of how the Academy might vote and may influence last-minute voters. Most interestingly, the BAFTAs correctly forecast in the last few years some surprise Oscar winners, including Marion Cotillard, Tilda Swinton and Cate Blanchett, and allowed them to pull away from the pack of other frontrunners. This is why the BAFTAs have, in the last decade, proven to be an influential, if not always reliable indicator of who wins the Academy Awards.

The BAFTAs tend to favour homegrown product. This is why films that did not receive much love from the Academy, such as Girl with a Pearl Earring and Cold Mountain, tend to fare better at these awards. Having said that, there is often a strong overlap between what the Academy eventually nominates and the BAFTAs.

You can access the full list of nominees on the BAFTA website and on the Hollywood Reporter’s list.  Here are some of the major nominees:

11 nominations including Best Film

Best Film: The Artist, The Descendants, Drive, The Help, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best British Film: My Week with Marilyn, Senna, Shame, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist), Nicholas Winding Refn (Drive), Martin Scorsese (Hugo), Tomas Alfredson (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin)

Best Actor: George Clooney (The Descendants), Jean Dujardin (The Artist), Michael Fassbender (Shame), Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), Brad Pitt (Moneyball)

Best Actress: Berenice Bejo (The Artist), Viola Davis (The Help), Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady), Tilda Swinton (We Need to Talk About Kevin), Michelle Williams (My Week with Marilyn)

Best Supporting Actor: Kenneth Branagh (My Week with Marilyn), Jim Broadbent (The Iron Lady), Jonah Hill (Moneyball), Phillip Seymour Hoffman (The Ides of March), Christopher Plummer (Beginners)

Best Supporting Actress: Jessica Chastain (The Help), Judi Dench (My Week with Marilyn), Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids), Carey Mulligan (Drive), Octavia Spencer (The Help)

Best Original Screenplay: The Artist, Bridesmaids, The Guard, The Iron Lady, Midnight in Paris

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Descendants, The Help, The Ides of March, Moneyball, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

The Brits are talking about Kevin

Overall, the nominations haven’t substantively changed the status quo, as the likes of The Artist (with a leading 12 nominations), The Descendants and Moneyball still put them front-and-center in the Oscar race. However, it did give certain British films an opportunity to earn more love than they might have at the Academy. Chief among these are three films starring Best Actress nominees that bagged multiple citations: My Week with Marilyn, We Need to Talk About Kevin, and The Iron Lady. None of these are in the conversation for the Best Picture Oscar, but their presence indicates that these projects are indeed strong female-centered vehicles. It should also be noted that the BAFTAs also tend to honour their own, and each major category often produces a left-field nominee who just happens to be British. This year, they include names that haven’t figured into this year’s Oscar race yet, such as Judi Dench, Lynne Ramsay, and Abi Morgan for her otherwise much-criticized script for The Iron Lady. Similar beneficiaries include Senna, The Guard and Coriolanus.

Oscar 2012: National Society of Film Critics Awards

Always with a reputation for being headstrong, the National Society of Film Critics (or the “NSFC”) isn’t really “national” in the sense that they represent a broad cross-section of American cineastes. Rather, the group has a heavy overlap with the New York Film Critics and thus their choices tend to match in their annual awards-giving. They are unapologetically tony and, if there was ever a group that was accused of being snobbish in its choices, this is it.

Best Film: Melancholia

One quirk this group has is that since they have access to every film ever released in the United States, their choices can become head-scratching and extremely obscure. Past winners of their acting prizes include Sylvie, Marilia Pera, Per Oscarsson, Emily Lloyd, Alison Steadman, Yolande Moreau and last year’s winner, Giovanna Mezzogiorno. They tend to favour character actors rather than going with the consensus. Having said that, they have also been innovative enough to recognize emerging talent such as Emily Watson, Chloe Sevigny, Amy Adams and Javier Bardem, each of which earned Oscar nominations on the strength of their victories with the NSFC.

Best Actor: Pitt

This year’s winners are:

Best Film: Melancholia
Best Director: Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life)
Best Actor: Brad Pitt (Moneyball)
Best Actress: Kirsten Dunst (Melancholia)
Best Supporting Actor: Albert Brooks (Drive)
Best Supporting Actress: Jessica Chastain (The Tree of Life, Take Shelter, The Help)
Best Screenplay: A Separation
Best Foreign Film: A Separation
Best Cinematography: The Tree of Life

Best Supporting Actress: Chastain

The status quo appears to be the same with Brooks and Chastain, who are both on romp, nearly sweeping their categories in the run-up to Oscar nominations. The Tree of Life now seems guaranteed for nominations in cinematography and directing, although it might still be too divisive to earn a spot in Best Picture. Pitt gains further strength in the lead actor race, which should now put him head-to-head with good buddy George Clooney. And I had previously indicated that A Separation might earn a writing nomination in addition to foreign language film. Its screenplay victory here, combined with the same prize from the LA Film Critics, means it’s no fluke. So many critics and festival audiences mentioned that the film starts off as one thing but is an entirely different creature, and said that the twists and turns were what made the film so memorable. This win here, despite the lack of a Writers’ Guild of America nomination (its writer is not a member of the WGA), plants it firmly in that category and the sheer critical momentum might propel it to a surprise Best Picture nomination.

Oscar 2012: L.A. Film Critics Association Awards & Boston Film Critics Awards

In continuing Academy Awards-season film-critics-prize-giving coverage, here are the winners announced by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the Boston Society of Film Critics:

Los Angeles Film Critics Association

Scorsese's Hugo

Best Film: The Descendants (runner-up: The Tree of Life)
Best Director: Terrence Malick for The Tree of Life (runner-up: Martin Scorsese for Hugo)
Best Actor: Michael Fassbender for Shame, A Dangerous Method, Jane Eyre and X-Men: First Class (runner-up: Michael Shannon for Take Shelter)
Best Actress: Yoon Jeong-Hee for Poetry (runner-up: Kirsten Dunst for Melancholia)
Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer for Beginners (runner-up: Oswalt Patton for Young Adult)
Best Supporting Actress: Jessica Chastain for The Help, The Tree of Life, Coriolanus, Take Shelter, The Debt and Texas Killing Field (runner-up: Janet McTeer for Albert Nobbs)
Best Screenplay: A Separation (runner-up: The Descendants)
Best Documentary: Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Best Animation: Rango (runner-up: The Adventures of Tintin)
Best Cinematography: The Tree of Life
Best Production Design: Hugo (runner-up: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)
Best Music: Hanna (runner-up: Drive)

Boston Society of Film Critics 

Best Film: The Artist (runners-up: Hugo and Margaret)
Best Director: Martin Scorsese for Hugo (runner-up: Michal Hazanavicius for The Artist)
Best Actor: Brad Pitt for Moneyball (runners-up: George Clooney for The Descendants and Michael Fassbender for Shame)
Best Actress: Michelle Williams for My Week with Marilyn (runner-up: Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady)
Best Supporting Actor: Albert Brooks for Drive
Best Supporting Actress: Melissa McCarthy for Bridesmaids(!!) (runner-up: Jeannie Berlin for Margaret)
Best Screenplay: Moneyball
Best Ensemble: Carnage (Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz)
Best New Filmmaker: Sean Durkin for MarthaMarcy May Marlene 
Best Animation: Rango
Best Foreign Film: Incendies (runners-up: A Separation and Poetry)
Best Documentary: Project Nim (runner-up: Bill Cunningham New York)
Best Cinematography: The Tree of Life (runner-up: Hugo)
Best Music: (tie) Drive and The Artist
Best Editing: The Clock (runner-up: Hugo)

Supporting Actor: Brooks

Martin Scorsese didn’t set out to make a critical darling when he embarked on Hugo, he just wanted to bring a children’s story to life. Boston has always been appreciative of his efforts, and they were in the first group to cite his work for The Departed, which won him his richly-deserved (and so far only) Oscar in 2006. Across-the-board wins and runner-up citations from both groups in the film, director and technical categories, combined with the big wins at the National Board of Review, will likely forecast a number of nominations for the commercially-underwhelming Hugo.

Supporting Actress: McCarthy!

The Tree of Life picked up more momentum and is making its case for a Best Picture nomination, even if it is extremely divisive, with wins for Malick and Chastain. In other words, major nominations, critical citations and appearances on “best-of” year-end lists is rolling it towards an invitation to the big dance. If nothing else, it will win the Oscar for Best Cinematography. Whatever you think of the film itself and director Terrence Malick’s artistic choices – whether you regard it as a profound meditation on the circle of life or think it’s just a hot mess – it was a great-looking picture. Unless he’s somehow disqualified, director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki should start writing his speech now.

We need to consider Moneyball as more than just a box office hit with a good-looking movie star front-and-centre in it. Pitt’s win in Boston, paired with his victory in New York, makes him the distinct frontrunner in Best Actor. The fact that the film has also racked up another screenplay nomination, combined with excellent reviews, makes it a very likely Best Picture nominee, alongside Hugo and The Artist, which appears to be on a roll with its latest win in Boston.

The Descendants hasn’t been doing the same business that director Alexander Payne has had with his previous work, Sideways, but the win in LA gives it leverage in the Best Picture race. Look for the film to land nominations in major categories. The only caveat I will give was that prior to Sideways, Payne’s previous film About Schmidt blew away the LA group’s solar plexus and named it Best Film, but it was left out of the Oscars save for two acting nominations.

Body of work: Fassbender is LA's choice

Fassbender, at last, picks up a major critics’ citation in the Best Actor field. The momentum right now is for Shame, which has garnered attention for its controversial subject matter and NC-17 rating. It appears that the Academy may be privy to more unorthodox choices, even with the formerly dreaded NC-17, given Michelle Williams’s nomination for the similarly-rated Blue Valentine last year. It’s also apparent that they are honouring him for a body of work, and looking at his range in roles this year it wasn’t difficult to justify it. He’s played Sigmund Freud, Mr. Rochester and Magneto all in one year! His ability to move between classic literature, a known historical figure and a fanboy favourite means he’s got wide support. Look for him to lock in for a nomination, but for Shame, the film with the mojo at the moment.

Speaking of Williams, she needed a major boost from a major critics group and she got it. Winning at Boston, on top of her win this week in Washington, is a great shot in the arm for her campaign. The film has received somewhat mixed-to-positive reviews, but universal praise has centered on her performance in particular.

Oscar 2012: New York Film Critics Circle Awards

It’s that time right after Thanksgiving and before Christmas when magazines and other media outlets start naming their “best of the year” selections. That also extends to film critics groups, and their opinions on which films and performances were the most worthy of attention all year. It is also, for less sophisticated or mainstream audiences not privy to artier fare, an opportunity to see what the tastemakers consider the greatest.

Award-winner prognostication is not an exact science, nor is it really an art. It’s more inexact alchemy concocted in a crystal ball and subject to the votes of a group of about 5,000 film industry professionals and the marketing and PR departments hired to influence their choices. In presidential election terms, consider this part of the annual Oscar race the equivalent of the New Hampshire primaries: they may not decide the final outcome, but they at least identify the major players and alert those not named that they have to get their name out there and step up the campaign.

I love awards shows and I love watching and handicapping the races, which produce inevitably and alternatively sensible and baffling choices (I’m still angry that Crash won Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain, but let’s debate that another time).

Today, the New York Film Critics Circle (the “NYFCC”) announced their winners. In this piece, I will attempt to analyze the winners and determine if they should clear off the final weekend of February so that they can be in L.A. and, more precisely, at the Kodak Theater.

Best Film: The Artist

Best Film and Best Director: The Artist by Michael Hazanavicius

This silent comedy opened to rave reviews at the Cannes Film Festival and immediately picked up a distribution with The Weinstein Company for the United States. Famed for his impeccable choices in Oscar vehicles, Harvey Weinstein undoubtedly has great plans for making this crowd-pleaser one of the Best Picture nominees, if not the outright winner. Perhaps the big win here might forecast the biggest win of all. Considering that the film also received the most nominations at the Independent Spirit Awards, the film has become, as of this moment (always a key operating term in the next few months as momentum is continually gauged), the movie to beat. What’s strange, however, is that NYFCC did not choose its star, Cannes prize winner Jean Dujardin, for Best Actor, which went to …

Best Actor: Brad Pitt in Moneyball and The Tree of Life

There’s an old story circulating somewhere on the Internet (that’s why you should take it with a pinch of salt) that the NYFCC allegedly chose Cameron Diaz as Best Actress of 1998 for There’s Something About Mary just because the group wanted to invite Diaz to their awards banquet to pick up her prize. That story is an insult not only to the group, but also to Diaz’s expert comic skill (she is, in my opinion, still one of the most underrated actors to this day: Being John Malkovich, anyone?). Does this explain why Brad Pitt was chosen as Best Actor? Again: insulting to both the group and the actor, so let's not go there, and move on.

Never quite a critics’ darling, Pitt’s big win here with the toniest of film critics’ groups is a sign that he’s finally recognized by the pundits and not just audiences as a serious actor. It helps that his role in the crowd-pleasing Moneyball includes plenty of big speeches and wordplay in a Best Picture frontrunner. Actors like big showy speeches and he’s got that in spades in Moneyball, which means he’ll have a wealth of scenes to choose from as his Oscar clip. It also helps that by contrasting this with a dramatic but less verbal role in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, he demonstrates how easily he shifts between more commercial fare and artier offerings. When it comes to getting an Oscar nomination, unless he splits his own ballot (actors cannot be nominated against themselves in any one category and shared-film nominations are not allowed), he’ll likely get called for at least a nomination with Moneyball.

Best Actress: Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady

Best Actress: Streep

With her winning turn as Margaret Thatcher, Streep becomes the most-decorated female actor in NYFCC history. There has been much buzz about her potentially winning a third Oscar, but be reminded that such buzz has been brewing in ebbs and flows since Reagan was still president. Affecting a British accent for the first time since that era, this much-anticipated film will now open at year’s end with more fanfare and the tantalizing possibility of at least a nomination for its star. That being said, remember that Streep’s been tapped as a sure-fire winner in the past decade for Julie & Julia, Doubt, The Devil Wears Prada and Adaptation, not counting her other extraordinary performances in A Cry in the Dark, Ironweed, The Bridges of Madison County, etc. Streep will likely lock in another nomination – which would make this the seventeenth(!!) in her stellar career – but forecasting a win is something to seriously consider in about two months’ time.

Cinematically Inclined: The Tree of Life

The Blogger had a near-religious experience this morning. He attended an advanced screening of Terrence Malick’s long-awaited new film, The Tree of Life. Shrouded and filmed in secrecy, very little of the film’s story has been given away during filming and even the reviews from Cannes, mostly glowing and a few dissenting, were cryptic in their relations of details.

The Tree of Life centres on a childhood, a family, a specific time and place. There is a disciplinarian father (Brad Pitt, in unquestionably his most vanity-free and accomplished performance), who is continually frustrated by life and tries to warn his children of the evils in the world, without fostering premature bitterness in them. Despite the fact that he is no superman, he can see the beauty of life in such things as his faith and classical music. This is a film where the sounds of Berlioz and Toscanini caress the aural senses. The mother (embodied by a masterful Jessica Chastain) exudes forgiveness and compassion, but doesn’t indulge her brood. There is no conventional “plot”, as everything is told in a non-linear fashion. Where Pitt’s performance is filled with words, hers is full of feeling, as Chastain interprets the role like a silent-film actress. Sean Penn plays the now-aging middle child, who is our narrative guide and tie to the present. There are no heroes or villains here, only some damaged, everyday people.

The film opens with a quote from the Book of Job. Malick structures his film like a symphony, with several movements, and each “section” identified not by title cards but by visual cues, all part of a larger thematic work. The family sustains a devastating loss at the beginning of the film, and shows how the memory of that pain has never fully gone away, echoing across the decades. At one point, in a telephone conversation with his elderly father, the son says “no, I haven’t forgotten. I think of him every day.” There has never been a release of the paralyzing grief and shattering pain that has mortally wounded each and every family member. 

Malick juxtaposes the human suffering with images from nature and geography. There is a long section taking us through a long series of natural phenomenon that is achingly beautiful to behold, and even goes as far back as the age of the dinosaurs (the visual effects here are magnificent). Although it may sound absurd on paper, Malick intends us to understand the scope of the family’s grief against the grander scale of the cosmos. He also throws the film’s Biblical overtones into sharp relief, with both Creationist and Evolutionist theories sharing the same film. Yes, there’s also a gargantuan tree, one that anchors the film thematically and visually. Perhaps no other film in the last decade has dared to set human suffering against the cosmos, with the exception of Darren Aronofsky’s underrated masterpiece The Fountain. You could show this drama in 3-D Imax and it would look just as spectacular as Avatar or the next Pirates sequel.