2013 Road to the Oscars

Cafe Society
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The Academy today reported a record number of nominating ballots, no doubt due to the newer electronic format. What’s interesting however is that they were also apparently bombarding members in the last week with emails to vote, and many of the members hadn’t had time to get through all the screeners. So I assume again that the most widely discussed films will be all over the ballots (which hey, may not be different from other years).

I’d been thinking lately that Gravity is the prohibitive favorite as well, but I wonder if that assumes someone saw it in the theater. It may not play nearly as well on TV, even on a bigger home theater screen.

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“I See Fire” from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug? Well, I liked it.

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Well, the Golden Globes were last night, so some thoughts.

12 Years and Gravity only won 1 each, but did the Picture/Director split as described above.

American Hustle won 3–Picture (Musical/Comedy), Amy Adams (Actress, comedy) and Supporting Actress.

Dallas Buyers Club earned awards for both Matthew McConaughey & Jared Leto (lead & supporting, respectively)

The other acting winners were Leonardo DiCaprio (Actor, comedy) for The Wolf of Wall Street and Cate Blanchett for Blue Jasmine.

The screenplay award went to Spike Jonze for Her.

I think this still comes down to a 3-way race between Slave, Hustle & Gravity. While the Steve McQueen film only went 1-for-7, the Picture win is still a powerful asset. Hustle was against some pretty strong competition, too (not always true in that category) and its win is nothing to sneeze at, though that category rarely anticipates the Oscars.

Of the last 20 years, the eventual Oscar Best Picture won the GG (drama) award 10 times but the GG (musical/comedy) award only 3 times. The Golden Globe Director went on to win the Oscar 11 times (significantly lower than the DGA winner).

It’s not uncommon for the GG Lead Actor & Actress (Musical/Comedy) winners to not get nominated for the Oscars at all. Recent performers that this happened to: Paul Giamatti, Robert Downey Jr., Colin Farrell, and Sally Hawkins. Neither Adams nor DiCaprio are SAG nominees, so their chances still are probably long (though both also extremely worthy).

The HFPA are notorious star-fuckers, so it wasn’t a surprise that U2 won for Best Song for Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. I’d say Frozen is still the one to beat.

Can Jennifer Lawrence win two acting Oscars in consecutive years? The last woman to do it was Luise Rainer in the 30s (who incidentally celebrated her 104th birthday over the weekend). It’s possible, but the odds seem long for her.

In the last 20 years, the GG Screenplay winner went on to win a writing Oscar 16 times (the odds improving because the Academy splits the nominees between Original & Adapted, which the HPFA does not), so that might prove great news for Her–though it still has to compete against American Hustle and Nebraska (two Alexander Payne films have won writing Oscars already).

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Screen Actors Guild over the weekend. Film winners:

McConaughey, Blanchett, Leto, Nyong’o.

Best Ensemble: American Hustle (not quite analogous to a “Best Picture”, but still helps with momentum)

The Broadcast Film Critics had their awards, too, and their history shows that their tastes most closely align with the Academy’s in terms of winners. Theirs?

McConaughey, Blanchett, Leto, Nyong’o.

The BFCA also did the 12 Years/Gravity split of Pic/Director. Their screenplay winners were Her (Original) and Slave (Adapted)

Also, the Producer’s Guild had their award for Best Picture. The winner was a tie: Slave & Gravity

So this is still very much a 3-horse race. All 3 are nominated in the Editing category (the one technical/craft category with the strongest tie to a Best Picture win) and all 3 are up for Director. Only Gravity does not have a screenplay nod, although it has nominations from more Academy branches than the other two (showing a wide range of support). The largest single branch in the Academy is the Acting branch, and Hustle (w/4 acting nods) and Slave (w/3) have significant support in that area.

The Director’s Guild award is announced this week. Since 1950, the Oscars & DGA have only differed in Best Director 7 times (most recently, last year with Ben Affleck, not nominated by AMPAS). And since Director matches with Picture 80% of the time, that will be a significant precursor to consider.

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I won’t be able to help feeling disappointed if Gravity or Slave wins BP. They were both fine movies, but IMO overrated. Gravity was an extraordinary technical achievement with a sustained level of tension throughout, but I found several elements to be kind of eye-rolling. Not just the liberties taken with distances in space and orbital mechanics, but especially the dead child backstory and the cavalier heroism of Clooney’s character. It was too many standard tropes.

I thought Slave had some great scenes and terrific acting, but didn’t hang together well. There was no narrative thread, just a series of events, and the director did a terrible job of showing the passage of time. As I said in the thread for the movie, if “12 Years” had not been in the title I would have thought he spent one summer as a slave. I think the movie benefits from critics feeling like they should like it because of how honestly it depicts the brutality of slavery.

I’m also annoyed that Blue Jasmine is not getting more recognition outside Cate Blanchett (although hooray for Sally Hawkins’ nomination). My personal top three for the year were BJ, American Hustle and Her. It will probably be another Oscar night of me yelling at the TV. :slight_smile:

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More Guilds weigh in.

The biggie is the Director’s Guild, and Cuaron won for Gravity. The number of times the winner of this did not go on to the Oscar (in over 60 years) you can literally count on your fingers. He is now the prohibitive favorite–which means Gravity is the favorite for Best Picture (since the two are usually tied together).

The WGA awarded Her Best Original Screenplay while awarding Adapted Screenplay (in a surprise move) to Captain Phillips. I’d say 12 Years a Slave is still the favorite to win the latter, but both categories are definitely nail-biters.

The American Society of Cinematographers gave its award to Gravity’s Emmanuel Lubezki. Although he wouldn’t get my vote this year, he’s done such magnificent work in Children of Men and Tree of Life (among other Cuaron & Malick films) without winning the Oscar that I can’t take issue if he wins.

And Frozen won 5 Annies, more than any other animated feature, including Best Film, Best Music, and Best vocal performance (Josh Gad as Olaf). It winning 2 on Oscar night seems more and more likely.

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I saw Her last night and liked it quite a lot. I couldn’t find a thread about the movie on this board and don’t want to start one, but wondering what others thought.

Gravity and Captain Phillips and Wolf of Wall Street are all tied for first for me right now as far as my favorite Best Picture films of the year. I liked American Hustle but it’s a distant fifth, with Her in between the top group and AH.

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I adored Her. It and Spring Breakers were my two favorite movies of 2013, and it’s my favorite of the BP nominations, but I liked all the movies. Her has no chance of winning, but I’m glad it’s there. It does have a chance at screenplay so that’s my favorite category right now. I’m relaxed about it all though. It’s a nice feeling.

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Yes, I loved Her too. I thought there was a thread… but maybe not. It’s funny because your list of favorites is backwards from mine: my favorites of the year were American Hustle and Blue Jasmine (which wasn’t even nominated for BP), followed by Her and then, further back, Gravity and 12 Years a Slave rounding the top 5. Actually, after seen Nebraska last weekend I might even have to put that ahead of Slave.

I haven’t seen Wolf of Wall Street yet but I have trouble believing I will like it as much.

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I’ve seen all of them except Wolf of Wall Street (going to see it tomorrow), but Her is by far my favorite of the Best Picture nominees and I’d expect it to stay that way. I don’t think it’s necessarily going to win, but I personally loved it. Almost definitely my favorite movie of the last year.

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IMHO Cuaron’s win for DGA doesn’t elevate Gravity for Best Picture. I point to Ang Lee’s Oscar for Life of Pi as the recent example - it is easy to see Gravity as the best achievement in Directing, without it being the Best Picture.

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I loved Her. Maybe my favorite of the year.

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I haven’t seen any of these except Gravity. As usual, I’ll be watching all the best picture nominees over two weekends…

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Except that Lee’s win (as richly deserved as one might think) was helped significantly by Affleck not getting a Director nomination. Is there any doubt that the Academy would’ve given Ben the Oscar for director if they could’ve (following in the footsteps of Redford, Costner, Eastwood, Gibson, etc.)? Not in my mind.

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I agree that* Gravity is classic “best director, but not best picture” material, no matter what was nominated.
I was disappointed that Blue Jasmine *didn’t get a BP nod. I think the award will probably go to American Hustle, but it’s far from a lock. (I loved the film, but I don’t think Jennifer Lawrence should get a second Oscar based on that performance – it was good, but not great.)
I thought *Before Midnight *deserved a little more lovin’ overall.
*Her *had interesting ideas and great sets/art design, but I’m surprised several posters thought it was by far their favorite film of the year. I thought it got too slow (and I’m often all for slow.)
I was a bit surprised that Robert Redford film lost steam in the awards circles (great acting), but I guess with Captain Philips and Gravity, there’s just so much (wo)man-adrift-at-sea-against-the-“elements” one year can take.

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The wife and I have now watched all but two of this year’s Best Picture nominees – Nebraska and Philomena are the two we’ve not seen yet – and we both agree that among those, Gravity would get our vote.

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Just saw Nebraska last night and thought I really really liked it, I don’t see it as a top tier candidate for Best Picture this year. Nice film though and Bruce Dern is fantastic. Wouldn’t be sad if he took home the statue.

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The only nominees for Best Picture we haven’t seen are Gravity, 12 Years a Slave and Captain Phillips. I’ve enjoyed all of the other nominees quite a bit, for different reasons of course. We took in Her, Philomena, Dallas Buyers Club and *Nebraska *in two separate double-headers two weekends ago.

I’m still going to try to see *12 Years a Slave *before the Oscars; although I haven’t seen it, everything I’ve heard and read makes me think it will win (the others have been Good Movies, but not Great Movies) – especially after its BAFTA win.

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Well, the BAFTA’s were over the weekend and they’re the last major award before the Oscars one week from Sunday. The winners: (* indicates film not Oscar-nominated in that category)

Best Picture – 12 Years a Slave
Best Director – Alfonso Cuarón, Gravity
Best Actor – Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave
Best Actress – Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Best Supporting Actor – Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips
Best Supporting Actress – Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle
Best Adapted Screenplay – Philomena, Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope
Best Original Screenplay – American Hustle, Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell
Best Cinematography – Gravity, Emmanuel Lubezki
Best Documentary – The Act of Killing
Best Animated Feature – Frozen
Best Music – Gravity, Steven Price
Best Editing – Rush*
Best Production Design – The Great Gatsby
Best Costume Design – The Great Gatsby
Best Sound – Gravity
Best Hair & Make – American Hustle*