So I've run through my take on Best Picture and hinted at some of my choices for the others.  Here's a bit more detail on the major categories:

Best Director
Should win: Ang Lee
Will win: Lee or Steven Spielberg
As long as they don't win:  David O Russell

Just for his visual adaptation and making Life of Pi seem like a story that belongs in the cinema, Lee gets my vote.  Spielberg keeps his sentimental tendencies under control and has brought together a fantastic film. Michael Haneke has made cinematic something that could be stagey and created a film which is nearly tonally perfect when dealing with an extremely difficult subject. Behn Zeitlin has crafted something poetic and touching and unique.  But I can't really see what was so special in David O Russell's direction of Silver Linings Playbook (apart from that incredible sweep shot during the final dance scene which is everywhere) which merits inclusion over Paul Thomas Anderson or Quentin Tarantino.

Best Actor
Should win: Daniel Day-Lewis
Will win: Daniel Day-Lewis
As long as they don't win: Bradley Cooper
See my other blog post for some of why DDL deserves the award.  I didn't take to Joaquin Phoenix's performance at first, finding it a bit mannered, but I grew into it and the mannerisms proved to be highly effective. A fantastically wild performance that if Day-Lewis wasn't up for it, I'd be championing.  Hugh Jackman gives an effective and enthusiastic performance, and for sheer hard work alone, deserves his nod and he does what he can with the lack of characterisation in the musical.  I haven't seen Flight so can't comment on Denzel Washington.  See my other blog for my opinion on the limitations to BRADLEY COOPER and his box of quirkiness.

Best Actress
Should win: Emmanuelle Riva
Will win: Jennifer Lawrence (or maybe, just maybe Riva)
As long as they don't win: N/A
Riva's performance is heartbreaking.  She doesn't have long to create a convincing character before the first stroke but she does and judges her descent into worse and worse health perfectly.  There is no showiness. just terrible sadness.  COOPER, learn from this!  Jennifer Lawrence is pretty terrific with her part, much more convincing than her co-star, but she is clearly the better actor.  Jessica Chastain is fantastic as usual although Maya's similarities to Carrie Matheson meant I was slightly distracted during the film and it also feels like a part that it is easier to impress in than, say, Riva's in Amour.  Quvenzhane Wallis is superb, unbelievable for a girl of her age - this wasn't just child acting, it was acting, acting. Phenomenal.  I haven't seen The Impossible so can't comment on Naomi Watts.  Still cannot believe that Marion Cotillard wasn't nominated for Rust and Bone. I guess two French actresses wasn't an option.

Best Supporting Actress
Should win: Amy Adams
Will win: Anne Hathaway
As long as they don't win: N/A
I went through my paragraph on Les Miserables without mentioning Anne Hathaway because deservedly she's the first person every mentions. She is terrific, and she gives it everything.  But Amy Adams, has a truly unforgiving part, which she nails and frankly Amy Adams deserves every award she goes for probably for her whole career. There is nothing wrong with Jacki Weaver in Silver Linings, though I was surprised it was nominated as it wasn't particularly impactful.  I'm not sure about Sally Field in Lincoln.  Nothing to do with Field herself, and from all accounts, an accurate one of the emotional Mary Todd Lincoln, but it just didn't quite feel in keeping with the greater emotional control of the rest of the film - although as my mum helpfully pointed out, because of the focus is on such a short period, we only get to see a snapshot of her and a longer period biopic would have led to a very different characterisation and performance.  I haven't seen The Sessions (I will try amend that at some point!) so can't comment on Helen Hunt.

Best Supporting Actor
Should win:  Philip Seymour Hoffman
Will win: Robert de Niro
As long as they don't win: N/A
It's a sign of de Niro's class that he provides a much more a convincing performance of someone with a possible mental health condition than his co-star.  It's a nice performance and I think there will be enough sentimentality to give him the award.  But Hoffman, wow.  His turn as Lancaster Dodd is so frighteningly convincing it probably belongs in a horror movie.  He more than holds his own against Phoenix without overshadowing him, and is utterly riveting.  Alan Arkin is fun without being exceptional in a pretty wide ranging and competent cast. Tommy Lee Jones is very effective and does a great job with his role, but it's not his film.  I would be more than happy to see Christoph Waltz double up on his BAFTA.  He has a particular charisma that few other actors do, and although he is not given quite the opportunity to show off his abilities that he did in Inglourious Basterds, he gives a very memorable turn and it is one of those times you can't really imagine anyone else playing that character.  I would have liked to have seen James Spader (for Lincoln) and Samuel L Jackson (for Django) nominated, but I suspect the former's part was maybe a little too small and the latter's too controversial for them to get picked up.

Best Original Screenplay
Should win: Moonrise Kingdom
Will win: Django Unchained
As long as they don't win: n/a
Look any screenplay by Wes Anderson is likely to be on my should win list. Moonrise Kingdom was funny, charming and moving.  Django is sharp, smart and delivers a great story.  To me Amour is so much about the naturalistic performances, I'm not sure how much I noticed there was a script - though Georges' anecdotes are wonderful and poignant, as are many of the character-setting conversations.  Zero Dark Thirty is so set on being impartial reportage that it is perhaps one of the reasons the film is a little emotionless, but it is still effective at pushing through the story.

Best Adapted Screenplay
Should win: Lincoln
Will win: Argo
As long as they don't win: Everything bar Lincoln
I can't say enough good things about Tony Kushner's screenplay.  This could easily have turned Lincoln into the mythic hero President instead of the complex man who doesn't always fit this.  It could have got bogged down into detail or been so sweeping that the near impossible task ahead looks like an inevitability. Argo is the screenplay of an effective thriller, well told, but perhaps could have used a little more context about the politics and the current affairs, after the opening few minutes. Life of Pi is all about the visual achievement though the script is successful in capturing the book in spirit.  I still can't believe that Beasts was based on a play as it feels cinematic and incredibly natural.  Silver Linings Playbook's simplification of bipolar disorder means it should not be on the list, although except for that, there is some nicely written dialogue.

Well let's see tomorrow if I was right on any of those predictions....

9 Films, 1 Winner

Oscar time again, where (some of) the best (if you ignore almost everything outside America) films get a fantastically expensive celebration, whilst we admire some frocks,  hope that Seth MacFarlane is vaguely funny and that there is at least a 15 minute break between each time that I Dream a Dream gets belted out.  Hmmm, this might need a drinking game.

So, I have this year seen all 9 Best Picture nominees (it helps when they don’t pick anything so scathingly reviewed that  I can’t bring myself to go see it – see The Blind Side and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close for previous years!) and here are my thoughts – I’ve tried to avoid spoilers but may not have succeeded.

And it has to be said, I haven’t hated any either.  Les Mis didn’t really speak to me , even as it bellowed earnestly in my face, but I still enjoyed the spectacle.  Beasts of the Southern Wild and Lincoln couldn’t be much more different but are my definite favourites.  As for the other 6, I’ve tried putting them in order as to my preferences, and I can’t.  It does have to be said that Amour and Zero Dark Thirty are clearly superior films to Silver Linings Playbook or Argo but I came out of the cinema considerably happier from the latter two! Django also has the enjoyment factor but needed a bit of an edit (well the removal of Tarantino acting) and Life of Pi was just remarkable – weirdly I can’t think of a good reason why it isn’t third in my preferences, maybe otherwise it didn’t quite grab me as much as the book did, maybe my memory is being mean and not giving it the credit it deserves.

So to rescue my dad from having another half hour phone lecture on what film should win and why here is my quick reviews of each the films – for many of these from memory of films I saw a few weeks or more ago, so might be different from my immediate reaction – and also my views on some of the other major categories.

In alphabetical order….

Amour:

I know I was going to leave the other categories to later, but please, please can Emmanuelle Riva win Best Actress.  Something which takes place almost entirely in one flat and for the vast majority of the film features only 2 actors, should probably belong on stage, and should probably not be so engrossing on film.    It is the performances by Riva and by Jean-Louis Trintignant which involve you so deeply in the story, they are perfectly judged and utterly believable.  It’s a shame that Trintignant didn’t get a nomination too, for best actor, perhaps instead of BRADLEY COOPER.   The fact that it feels cinematic and more than something that should be done on stage, is down to Michael Haneke’s direction, which makes the flat feel like a full-on landscape.  The film is beautifully done, but my one slight qualm about it is that it builds up to one big event which then suddenly happens out of the blue, which given the subtlety and perfect pitch of the rest of the film, it jarred too much for me and slightly took me out of the film.  I don’t know whether Haneke is trying to provoke, or that it was just the timing didn’t work for me.  But otherwise the film is an impressive and haunting achievement.

But for a film that wasn’t so haunting….

Argo:

I remember enjoying Argo immensely.  I remember being completely gripped, particularly through the last section of the film (although I was laughing at the cars chasing the plane down the runway).  There were lots of fun performances, and the story was sharply, slickly and well told.  But I’m not sure how much it stuck with me.  I guess the films I rate the highest are the ones I’m turning over in my mind over the next few days.  Argo was one of those films that I was happily recommending to friends and colleagues as an enjoyable night out, but maybe wasn’t thinking that much about afterwards.  So it’s a well-made, well-scripted and well-edited  and exciting film but maybe not one of that much substance.  It looks like it will be walking off with the Best Picture Oscar – I’m not annoyed at this, but it’s not the film I’ll be cheering on either.

Which brings me nicely to….

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Now here is a film that stayed with me immediately and for long after.  It’s a film that feels poetic, is full of intimate moments of sadness and masses of defiance.  The central two performances are excellent – and I’m not sure how to quite articulate but what most impressed me about Quvenzhané Wallis’ performance was that this didn’t feel like a brilliant child acting performance, it felt like a brilliant performance by an actress.  This may be film about a marginalised community going through a disaster, but one of things that impressed me most was the film was devoid of any pity or self-pity.  It celebrated survival and getting through on your own terms.  It wasn’t po-faced, it dealt with serious issues without being too earnest, instead it had real visual flair and the ability to pick up and completely transport its audience.   It was a really special debut, and I can even forgive Behn Zeitlin for being younger than me and getting nominated for Best Director (I don’t approve of high achievement  by those younger than me!!!) because of his imagination and vision.

Of course for directors with a single-minded, bloody-minded vision, you can’t go much further than….

Django Unchained

Well probably only Tarantino would do this – make a bloody revenge western set in slavery, just like he did it with the Second World War.  And this was somewhat less a-historical than Inglourious Basterds.  Furiously entertaining,  bloody, bloody, bloody, and just about balancing between visceral horror and being much more entertaining than revenge violence has any right to be.  I think one of the bigger achievements was the clear tonal difference between the violence perpetuated against slaves, which is harrowing and all to convincing, and the cartoon violence inflicted by Django and Schultz, in the style you’d normally associate with Tarantino.  That’s how he just about gets away with making this a western set against something which cannot be taken lightly.  Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo di Caprio and Samuel L Jackson are all excellent – and it’s a shame someone as brilliant as Kerry Washington wasn’t given a little more to work with.  The only thing that I’d really fault the film for was its excessive length, which meant it wasn’t quite as tight as it could have been.  Not necessarily even cutting a section but shortening bits here and there, to stop the occasional meander.  And also a ban on Tarantino acting, especially with that awful attempt at an Aussie accent.

Meanwhile without their Aussie accents….

Les Miserables

I’m going to try not get too negative on Les Miserables as I did appreciate the spectacle, but with so many positive things to say the other films here, this is one of those films I enjoyed while I watched it and then started to pick apart after I left.  I think the problem is the source musical – and where you can get away with a lack of characterisation in a stage musical, to me it fundamentally let down the film. Hugh Jackman does his best, but I would have loved to know more about the early Jean Valjean, to have a more interesting and explored character transformation, so that I could really care about the character at the end.  I was more moved than I expected at the end (despite Amanda Seyfried trying to put me off) but still just didn’t care that much.  I suspect Tom Hooper and his colleagues were hamstrung by not really being able to deviate from the original as it has too many fans. This is a shame, as I think cutting back on the utterly unconvincing love story between Marius and Cosette and perhaps focusing on the ongoing battle of wills between Valjean and Jalvert, it could have been a much more engaging film.  The revolutionary bits are done well (me, a sucker for anything related to French revolutions?!! Yeah, ok….) and are well and truly epic and as an on screen achievement, I can’t fault them for effort, it’s just I need characters to care about, and apart from rooting for the success of the obviously doomed revolutionaries, there just wasn't much there for me.

Speaking of an achievement in bringing something to the screen…

Life of Pi

 I saw a critic say somewhere that perhaps the most impressive achievement by Ang Lee in his realisation of Life of Pi was that instead of thinking of the source material as a book that is impossible to bring to the screen, it seems like the most naturally filmic story in the world, perfectly made for cinema.  And to a large extent I agree with this – it is a phenomenal achievement, and despite my love for Lincoln, I really hope that Ang Lee gets his second Best Director award.  The film is absolutely stunning, and although I can accept that the tiger wasn’t real, I refuse to believe they did not actually film the whole thing at sea.  If there was a better visual achievement last year, I don’t remember it.  If it doesn’t win the relevant technical awards, I might just march on Hollywood. How far is it again? Also, the actors deserve a nod, Suraj Sharma deserves an endurance award – the fact he was able to still act convincingly at the same time is impressive, and I think Irrfan Khan judged is part perfectly – even being slightly off could have spoiled the film.  So I’m still trying to work out why I’m not quite as passionate about this film as I would expect me to – I loved the book and thought this was as good as an adaptation that you could hope for.  I think it might have been the foreknowledge of the revelation at the end and perhaps that the more fantastical elements (such as the island with the mongeese) whilst we are hearing someone tell us a story that is supposed to be real, perhaps work better on the page than the screen.  But it’s a minor quibble, and if Life of Pi was to win Best Picture, I would not begrudge the makers that one bit.

Of course I would slightly prefer it if the Best Picture went to….

Lincoln

Now to be honest, particularly given the class of Tony Kushner’s script, I was probably guaranteed to love Lincoln.  Something that plays out like The West Wing 1860s-style? Yeah, I am totally there.  It really does all begin with Kushner’s magnificent script (it better win Adapted Screenplay, or most of Edinburgh will be woken up by a lot of angry yelling), which does a great job of mixing the political and the personal, of capturing the clash of ideas and the complexity of the great task ahead, whilst still (for me at least) pushing the story forward.  I was probably as tense through the vote near the end of the film as I was during the final acts of Argo or Zero Dark Thirty.  And at the same time, it manages a brilliant character study of Lincoln himself, a complex man and a study that never drifts towards hagiography.  Of course, that element of the script is given a huge helping hand by Daniel Day-Lewis’ stunning performance.  Enough has been said about how you forget you’re not watching Lincoln himself (I totally agree), what I think is also particularly magnificent about his performance is that you have to believe such a person exists - a man who is both charismatic enough to drive these events through and brilliant enough to pick his way through the political maze – that someone so incredible could still be a real person.  And Day-Lewis really, truly does this.  There is also a terrific supporting cast, even if it was occasionally a tiny bit jarring to spot random actors in there – oh look, it’s Gale Boetticher from Breaking Bad, is that Hannah’s creepy boyfriend Adam from Girls?  But a big shout out should also go to James Spader who is clearly having a whale of a time and was massively entertaining.  As for Steven Spielberg, his direction is assured and unobtrusive, leaving the actors and script to shine, probably exactly what was called for.  My biggest fear was, after the schmaltzy disappointment of War Horse, that he would have the cheesometer turned up to 11, but in fact there is very little of that as he recognises that the emotion is in the importance of what is happening, and is in fact nicely underplayed.

Enjoyable as it is, underplayed is maybe not the first word you would use to describe…

Silver Linings Playbook

I really did enjoy Silver Linings immensely. It got to the end and I had a nice warm, fuzzy feeling, it really hit the spot.  But best picture of the year? Hmmmmm.  The way I managed to enjoy it was to pretend that BRADLEY COOPER’s character was in fact suffering from some sort of personality quirk rather than a mental illness as potentially serious as bipolar disorder.  Because there is a line where he mentions that he is now better because he is taking his medication but you could easily miss it and assume that the improvement is purely down to dancing with Jennifer Lawrence.  I also just wasn’t 100% sold by BRADLEY COOPER’s performance – he’s not bad, but he’s not exactly convincing either, there’s just not enough depth to the performance, it’s too much bells and whistles (which is why I’m insisting on putting his name in shouty caps, in case you hadn’t worked that out!).  So I can’t tell if he’s been nominated for Best Actor because people were so surprised to discover BRADLEY COOPER can do dramatic reasonably well, or if the Academy didn’t realise Tropic Thunder’s take on Oscar-picking roles as comedy.  But hey, there is still a hell of a lot to enjoy in this film, and like I said, taken as a nice film to see one evening, it’s a proper engaging, feel-good movie.  Both Jennifer Lawrence and Robert de Niro are terrific, and their characters feel fully realised and much more convincing.  Jacki Weaver is good too, if a little underused.  It zips along nicely, you sort of know where it’s going but it is also entertaining, and quite touching too.  One final thing, that has really confused me.  David O Russell’s last two have been his most conventional and probably his most uninterestingly directed.  Yet both have earned him Best Director nominations? Of the man things I will never understand when it comes to Academy choices, this is one of the biggest.  Especially when they didn’t nominate Paul Thomas Anderson.

And for my final dodgy link between pieces, speaking of this year’s not-nominated directors….

Zero Dark Thirty

It’s a week or two since I saw Zero Dark Thirty and I’m still not quite sure what I thought of it.  Much of it was impressively shot, Jessica Chastain is of course excellent, the final act is far more tense, edge-of-the-seat than it has any right to be. But. I think my issue with the film is that in trying to stay neutral and just present and report, it feels a bit disconnected and dispassionate.  I don’t need a film to tell me how or what to think or feel, but I think I engage with it a bit more if I feel it is thinking or feeling something.  There is something cold and clinical about ZDT, which means while it is a tremendous, often unnerving, piece of film making, it can also be a bit clinical. I like moral ambiguity in a film but this just didn’t quite spark off.  It is not pro-torture, in that it shows just how horrific even so-called enhanced interrogation is and yet it didn’t feel angry enough about the time wasted on these dead ends.  It doesn’t lionize the CIA agents, make them heroes or villains, just sits there in the corner watching them.  In many ways, this is a brave choice, and quite probably the right one, I just wanted to be grabbed a bit more.  Maybe the length, and the splitting of the film into chapters is what accentuates this.  It felt like watching half a series of Homeland in one go.  Not a bad way to spend an afternoon, but with that, you know you can stop any time. ZDT just felt like a bit of a marathon until we got to that final, brilliantly realised final act.  This might be a film I have to watch again until I finally make up my mind.  Until then, I will put it as a technically excellent, if detached, piece of film making.

So, if you can’t tell from above, I would prefer Beasts of the Southern Wild (it won’t) or Lincoln to win (it might sneak it), and would have no problem with Life of Pi, Amour or Django Unchained winning.  I am resigned to the fact that Argo will win, this doesn’t annoy me, but it is a little bit disappointing that something more original or substantial isn’t the favourite.  And if Les Miserables or Silver Linings walk away with it…. Well Academy, you and I are having words.

On a final note, if you’re wondering why I care so much about the Oscars when I doubt many people truly believe they are rewarding the best film of the year, it’s more because of their impact on what it means for film production – the types of films that succeed are the types of films that are more likely to get made, either because of the boost to their financial success or to the studios’ prestige. Awards shouldn’t matter, but they do.  It’s important to me that big, proper films are being made by studios as well as the blockbusters and cheap horror franchises, because the reality of the film industry is that I’m never going to get to see most smaller movies because they won’t make it to screens.  Yes, I can see a few at the Film Festival, but it’s only a fraction of what’s out there.  So the other chance I get to see films with something of an original vision, with a director in command of his art, with proper characters realised by talented actors is through the ‘Oscar’ film. It’s not an ideal system, but what we’ve got. So c’mon Academy, be bold, give the awards to the real accomplishments so that these films keep getting made.