MovieManifesto

It may be the Oscar obsessive in me, but I’ve always envisioned the Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Screenplay categories as rival gangs similar to the East and West Baltimore clans in “The Wire”. The Adapted Screenplay category, with its strong literary pedigree and snobbish sense of entitlement, would clearly hail from East Baltimore, where Prop Joe systematically uses his network to maintain a stranglehold on imported drugs. The Original Screenplay field, with its more inventive and daring scripts, is emblematic of the ingenuity and fearlessness with which West-siders Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell attempt to increase their market share. Continuing with my anthropomorphized, possibly delusion vision, the screenplay categories typically run in their own circles and protect their own turf, but they’re also ruthlessly competitive, with each side sneering at the other that its respective quintet of nominees exhibits the superior writing. And perhaps the two categories, in their thirst to establish their dominance, would officially decide the matter in some sort of sporting contest akin to the riveting basketball game between East and West B-more that takes place in the first season of “The Wire”.

In fact, the Academy should strongly consider instituting a single Best Screenplay award that mirrors that very basketball game. The Oscars are all about supremacy, so shouldn’t there be one screenplay to rule them all? And here’s my point: If the Academy were so inclined to take the Manifesto’s advice, the 2012 Best Adapted Screenplay field would absolutely annihilate its Original Screenplay counterparts. The East Side is simply unstoppable this year. These nominees look awfully impressive, and in the immortal words of Prop Joe, “Look the part, be the part, motherfucker”.

NOMINEES
Argo – Chris Terrio
Beasts of the Southern Wild – Lucy Alibar, Benh Zeitlin
Life of Pi – David Magee
Lincoln – Tony Kushner
Silver Linings Playbook – David O. Russell Read More

NOMINEES
Amy Adams – The Master
Sally Field – Lincoln
Anne Hathaway – Les Misérables
Helen Hunt – The Sessions
Jacki Weaver – Silver Linings Playbook Read More

I suppose it’s only fitting that, shortly after a knuckleballer won a Cy Young Award, the Oscars delivered one of the most vicious curveballs they’ve ever thrown. For the most part, my predictions were reliably mediocre; I hit on 50 of 69 picks in all, good for 72% and matching exactly my success rate from 2011. But if the Manifesto is becoming strangely predictable (let’s hope not), the same certainly cannot be said of the Academy, at least not when it comes to one key category.

But we’ll get to that. Overall, though, AMPAS provided us with yet another array of respectable, slightly uninspired nominations. As tends to be the case, the movies about which I’m maximally passionate achieved minimal success; in fact, my (tentative) favorite trio of the year combined to receive precisely zero mentions. But as always, there are plenty of laudable pictures and performances to be found in the list below, as well as a smattering of off-kilter surprises to keep us on our toes and remind us that the Oscars are the product not of mathematical science but of the whims of a free-thinking and spirited collective. And as long as the Academy continues to pay annual, careful attention to the cinematic landscape, so shall I.

On to the results. Incorrect picks are in red.

BEST PICTURE
Argo
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Les Misérables
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty
The Master Amour
Moonrise Kingdom Beasts of the Southern Wild
Django Unchained

Takeaways: As it turns out, my most prescient statement in my predictions – indicative of both the Academy’s leanings and, paradoxically, my own failings as a prognosticator – was the following: “I’ll hardly be surprised if any of Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, or Django Unchained makes the list (possibly at the expense of The Master or Moonrise Kingdom).” So, yes, I half-expected one of those films to crack the lineup. What I certainly did not expect was for all of them to show up. But for the second consecutive year in the Academy’s fancy new ballot system – which requires nominees to receive at least 5% of the first-place votes cast – nine different movies made the grade, illustrating that there’s plenty of passion to go around.

Snubbed: Looper. It never had a chance at the Oscars, but that doesn’t diminish the power and vitality of the year’s most compelling, exhilarating film.

Current favorite: Lincoln, I suppose, although if you examine the rest of the slate, Life of Pi and Silver Linings Playbook look awfully frisky. Of course, I went into this morning’s announcement fully prepared to write something about how there was no clear frontrunner for the first time in years and that instead Lincoln, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, and Les Misérables would engage in an exhausting battle over the next month and a half. But then …

BEST DIRECTOR
Michael Haneke – Amour
Steven Spielberg – Lincoln
Ben Affleck – Argo Ang Lee – Life of Pi
Kathryn Bigelow – Zero Dark Thirty David O. Russell – Silver Linings Playbook
Tom Hooper – Les Misérables Benh Zeitlin – Beasts of the Southern Wild

Takeaways: There’s a hilarious minor scene in The Great Escape when the three Americans in the prison camp convert a bushel of potatoes into a jug of moonshine; after they’re finished, each of them then tastes it and simply remarks – in escalating degrees of amazement – “Wow”. Well, that’s how I felt when staring at this year’s Oscar nominations for Best Director. I mean, WOW.

If you’re nonplussed by my astonishment, permit me a brief statistical digression. The Directors’ Guild of America has been nominating five filmmakers every year since 1970. For the past forty-two years, at least three of those five directors have also been cited by the Academy. Thus, since the DGA switched to a five-man lineup, this marks the first year ever that only two guild nominees find themselves in the running for the Oscar. What’s even more baffling is that all three who received the cold shoulder (Affleck, Bigelow, and Hooper) made movies that earned a Best Picture nomination. Yet they’re ousted in favor of a different trio of helmers (Haneke, Russell, and Zeitlin) whose films are also in the running for the top prize. Read More

There are a number of disadvantages to being a lowly blogger rather than a bona fide movie critic – I have to pay to see movies rather than being paid to see them, I lack access to studio executives, no one takes my opinions seriously, etc. – but my greatest hardship when it comes to predicting the Oscars is one of timing. Unlike actual critics, who are afforded the blessed opportunity to watch most films before they arrive in multiplexes, I’m required to wait until a local theatre has the decency to screen them. I also happen to live in the quasi-metropolis of Denver, a very nice city that isn’t exactly a thoroughfare for art-house pictures. The result is that I’m placed in the problematic position of prognosticating about the Oscar potential of a number of movies that, much to my dismay, I’ve yet to see.

Which brings me to Michael Haneke and Amour. If you’re unfamiliar with either of them, Haneke is a controversial German director whose films typically range from decidedly unpleasant to utterly nauseating. He’s a bit of a darling in Europe – five of his seven most recent movies have nabbed major awards at the aggressively haughty Cannes Film Festival – but outside of a few Best Foreign Language Film nominations, the Academy has never warmed to his chilly sensibility. Amour is his latest film, and it’s being hailed by an extraordinary number of critics as an absolute masterpiece. It’s also reputedly his most tender and inviting picture to date. Read More