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Monday, February 11, 2013

The FAC: The Close Races/The Brits Have Spoken/Oscar Matters/Riva and Arkin/ No and Gatekeepers News

Good Monday to All...

 THE FAC: THE CLOSE RACES

 I'm taking a look on this Monday at the Oscar categories that look to be closely contested at least at this point with two weeks to go and the Oscar voting actually ongoing.  In addition to the weekly look at Best Picture I have included a review of these categories: Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Animated Feature, Film Editing, Original Score and Production Design.  I also take a quick look at the "Shorts" categories...

 All films are listed in their current position with their last reported position on The FAC in parenthesis.  Also, for this post, I limited the Oscar predictors that I referenced.  One hasn't updated predictions since Jan.3 and another is only listing the nominees alphabetically.  Consequently, neither of them is particularly useful in gauging where the races are at this point.
The FAC reviews the Oscar predictions of the following to arrive at its "predictions":

Sasha Stone/Awards Daily
Scott Feinberg/The Feinberg Forecast-The Hollywood Reporter
Kristopher Tapley/InContention-HitFix
Anne Thompson/Thompson on Hollywood-IndieWire
Peter Knegt/IndieWire
Brad Brevet/Rope of Silicon
Clayton Davis/Awards Circuit
Nathaniel Rogers/Film Experience
Alex Carlson/Film Misery

Telluride #39 films are indicated in Bold.

BEST PICTURE



1) Argo (1)
2) Lincoln (2)
3) Silver Linings Playbook (3)
4) Life of Pi (4)
5) Les Miserables (5)
6) Amour (7)
7) Zero Dark Thirty (6)
8) Beasts of the Southern Wild (8)
9) Django Unchained (9)

Comment:  The "Argo" wave got wider in the last week and may well increase by next week as I crunched these numbers prior to the weekend's announcement of "Argo" wins for Adapted Screenplay at the USC Scripter awards and BAFTA wins for Best Picture, Director and Editing.  Look at the BAFTA story below for a link to complete details.

The reality now is that "Argo" has become the favorite once again...and by an increasingly comfortable margin.  I think the questions now are...who wins the Oscar for Direction since it can't be Affleck.  Spielberg?  Russell?  Lee?

Other questions...Does "Argo" win any of the categories it IS nominated for?  Editing seems pretty likely now (despite the fact that I have included it as a "close" category for this post).  

Among its other nominations Adapted Screenplay looks to be a possibility and that's interesting because when I put this piece together, it looked like a lock as recently as Friday for Tony Kushner and Lincoln.  Now, with the Scripter award in Chris Terrio's pocket AND David O. Russell's win for this category at Sunday's BAFTAs..it may be much more wide open.  It'll be entertaining to see where the WGA comes down on this on Sunday.

Maybe "Argo" has a shot at Original Score...but Sound editing and Mixing as well as Alan Arkin's Best Supporting Actor chances seem to be too long to overcome even with the freight train that "Argo" is becoming.

So you could have a night where the Best Picture winner walks away with that single Oscar...really.  It could happen.  And that is very rare indeed.  Or maybe 2.  Editing is the most likely second Oscar with Adapted Screenplay and then Score in that order.  The Sound Mixing and Editing would be next with Arkin the least likely.

BEST ACTRESS


1) Jennifer Lawrence/Silver Linings (1)
2) Emanuelle Riva/Amour (2)
3) Jessica Chastain/Zero Dark Thirty (3)
4) Quvenzhane Wallis/Beasts (4)
5) Naomi Watts/The Impossible (5)

Comment: No real movement in this category this week but again, this came prior to Riva's BAFTA win.  Frankly, I feel that the 85 year old actress is gaining some traction and expect this race to look closer next week.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR


1) Tommy Lee Jones/Lincoln (1)
2) Philip Seymour Hoffman/The Master (2)
3) Robert DeNiro/Silver Linings (4)
4) Christoph Waltz/Django (3)
5) Alan Arkin/Argo (5)

Comment: This is till a fairy competitive category and it will be fascinating to see if Waltz gets a bump after his BAFTA win last night.  DeNiro had a little boost this week.  It's a real race between the top four.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

1) Wreck It Ralph (3)
2) Brave (1)
3) Frankenweenie (2)
4) ParaNorman (4)
5) Pirates: Band of Misfits

Comment:  Big move by "Ralph" to the top after winning the Annie for Best Feature.  But it's still very, very close among the top three and "Brave" may benefit from its BAFTA win.

BEST FILM EDITING

1) Argo (1)
2) Zero Dark Thirty (2)
3) Life of Pi (4)
4) Lincoln (3)
5) Silver Linings Playbook (5)

Comment:  This race has been tight, but became less so over the past few weeks as "Argo" now has opened a substantial lead among our Oscar prognosticators.  Increasingly this looks like a win for William Goldenberg working solo as opposed to the Oscar he'd have to share with Dylan Tichenor should "Zero Dark Thirty" win this category.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

1) Life of Pi (1)
2) Lincoln (2)
3) Argo (4)
4) Anna Karenina (3)
5) Skyfall (5)

Comment: "Pi's" lead is smallish and "Lincoln" and "Argo" appear to be real challengers with "Argo's" Alexander Desplat moving up this past couple of weeks.

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

1) Anna Karenina (1)
2) Lincoln (2)
3) Life of Pi (4)
4) Les Miserables (3)
5) The Hobbit (5)

Comment:  A close category has stopped being that over the past month as "Anna Karenina" has moved into a dominating position.

SHORTS...

First, a disclaimer...of the nine people/websites that I check to form the basis of The FAC only 3 are currently predicting for these "Shorts" categories...so...grain of salt...

     +ANIMATED SHORT

1) Paperman
2) Maggie Simpson: The Longest Daycare
3) Adam and Dog
4) Head Over Heels
5) Fresh Guacamole

Comment:  "Paperman" was a late addition to the Animated Shorts presentation from Serge Bromberg at this year's SHOW and is delightful.

     +LIVE ACTION SHORT

1) Asad 
2) Buzkashi Boys
3) Curfew
4) Death of a Shadow
5) Henry

Comment: "Asad" was also a TFF #39 film.

     +DOCUMENTARY

1) Inocente
2) Open Heart
3) King's Point
4) Mondays at Racine
5) Redemption


THE BRITS HAVE SPOKEN


The British Academy of Film and Television Arts announced their winners yesterday.  "Argo" won Best Picture, Best Director and Editing.  "Les Miserables" led all films with 4 wins.  Emanuelle Riva and Christoph Waltz both probably got boosts in their Oscar campaigns with their wins.  Here's the complete list of BAFTA winners from Entertainment Weekly:

Best Film Argo
Best Director Ben Affleck, Argo
Best Actor Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
Best Actress Emmanuelle Riva, Amour
Best Supporting Actor Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained
Best Supporting Actress Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables
Best Original Screenplay Django Unchained
Best Adapted Screenplay Silver Linings Playbook
Best British Film Skyfall
Best Film Not in the English Language Amour
Best Animated Film Brave
Best Documentary Searching for Sugar Man
Best Editing William Goldenberg, Argo
Best Costume Design Jacqueline Durran, Anna Karenina
Best Cinematography Claudio Miranda, Life of Pi
Best Original Music Thomas Newman, Skyfall
Best Make-Up & Hair Lisa Wescott, Les Misérables
Best Visual Effects Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer, Donald R. Elliott, Life of Pi
Best Production Design Eve Stewart, Anna Lynch-Robinson, Les Misérables
Best Sound Simon Hayes, Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson, Jonathan Allen, Lee Walpole, John Warhurst, Les Misérables
Best British Debut Bart Layton and Dimitri Doganis, The Imposter
Orange Rising Star Award Juno Temple
Best Animated Short The Making of Longbird
Best Live-Action Short Swimmer


And so, why does this matter?  The Brits have a small, but significant number of members in the Academy and the conventional wisdom is that they really will vote.  SO the BAFTAs can, perhaps, give us an inkling of which way the wind is blowing for a significant voting bloc.


OSCAR MATTERS


     +OSCAR TALK with Kris Tapley and Anne Thompson



     +THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTERS


     +FEINBERG FORECAST



RIVA AND ARKIN

Interviews with two "seasoned" Oscar nominees from different sources.  First The Guardian talks to BAFTA Best Actress winner Emanuelle Riva here:


And Pete Hammond of Deadline.com talks to Arkin here:



NO AND GATEKEEPERS NEWS


"No" the Chilean film from Pablo Larrain that is Oscar nominated is kicking up some dust back in its home country as reported by The New York Times here:


And Dror Moreh's Oscar nominated Documentary "The Gatekeepers" wins an award at the Berlin Film Festival this week:



More on Thursday...

Follow me on Twitter @Gort2.

"Like" Michael's Telluride Film Blog/The Film Awards Clearinghouse on Facebook.


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