Odd Man Out - Which director will it be

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Post by rolotomasi99 »

OscarGuy wrote:I wonder if instead of Slumdog Millionaire, Rachel Getting Married could be the audience pleaser that ends up nominated for Best Picture.

Rachel Getting Married, from all accounts, seems to be the kind of movie that comes out of nowhere to claim prizes.
that is exactly what i have been thinking recently. i originally thought the film would be nominated only for lead actress; then i thought maybe screenplay as well; then i heard about supporting actress; then just this week i read a deluge of simply ecstatic reviews which made me think best picture and director nominations could be added to those three other nominations.

it certainly sounds like a crowd pleaser, and one the critics actually praise as art rather than just entertainment.
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Post by OscarGuy »

I wonder if instead of Slumdog Millionaire, Rachel Getting Married could be the audience pleaser that ends up nominated for Best Picture.

One of the problems with picking Slumdog so early is that it seems almost defeating. Whenever we start talking about sure things and crowd pleasers, we always seem to pick movies that end up crashing at some point. The comparison to LMS and Juno was more about how early/late the film came onto people's radars. By Slumdog being on radar so early, doesn't it automatically defeat that assertion?

Rachel Getting Married, from all accounts, seems to be the kind of movie that comes out of nowhere to claim prizes.
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Post by rolotomasi99 »

Sonic Youth wrote:And that's why I think the Juno and Little Miss Sunshine comparisons are bogus and were probably thought up by a festival-fatigued critic who needed a point of comparison before his article's deadline, came up with that one and now it's become a blogosphere meme. What does it mean to be the Oscar's Juno or LMS? Me, I always thought it meant a lighthearted change of pace, fleet and light in tone and narrative and not leaving you emotionally overtaxed when its over, a television audience-friendly corrective to all those big cinematic statements that keep getting nominated every year. That's not what Slumdog appears to be. It looks to be a highly ambitious film, thematically and stylistically, and although it allegedly leaves the audience elated by the end, it's in that old-fashioned-movie way. It's not happiness all the way through, quite the opposite. It has to work its way to get there. It has to earn that elation at the end.

:D

i completely agree with that part of your post sonic youth. so many people on this board kept comparing SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE to films like JUNO and LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE when arguing for its best picture possibilities. they seemed to think SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE fit into that mold of the happy, sweet, simple film that almost always is able to worm its way in among the more artistic and/or dramatic films.

i felt this was a bad comparison since SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE seemed to be a little more hard hitting then that since much of it takes place in the slums (focusing on "scars and shit" as one review said). while danny boyle created a very stylistically tame film with MILLIONS, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE sounded far too edgy in its filmmaking techniques (another review comparing it to CITY OF GOD) to appeal to those older and more conservative voters who back sweet but cinematically lame films like FINDING NEVERLAND, SEABISCUIT, JUNO, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, etc.

where we might disagree, though, is will it be able to muster support from those who backed a film like CITY OF GOD but feel SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is not dramatically strong enough for them to support?

i think my (rapidly diminishing) uncertainty about SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE stems from my (admittedly shaky) understanding of the academy voting system. to nominate a film for best picture (as in many categories) you have five slots for five films, but not all slots have equal value. you have to put your five nominees in a hierarchal value. so the film you put in the first slot is basically the one film you "really" want to see nominated, and the four others (in descending order) are films you want to see nominated but accept might not make it. if i am misinformed about this process please correct me.

so assuming that is the way people vote, you can easily put people into voting blocks. i am certainly not saying people who put THERE WILL BE BLOOD in the top of their list did not also nominate JUNO, but for JUNO to have been nominated for best picture enough members of the academy had to have put it on the top of their list. which is why i say there are the JUNO voters (and the appropriate films from each year that match) and the THERE WILL BE BLOOD voters (ditto). yes, a person can love both films (and both "types" of films); but they can only pick one film to be on the top of their ballot, and it is being on that top spot that gets a film nominated for best picture.

my question is, using past nominations as a template for voting blocks (an imperfect system, i admit) how will each group break off in their voting pattern.

will SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE truly be embraced by the JUNO crowd, or will they go for something more beautifully romantic like THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (which i think will receive support from the ATONEMENT crowd), or will they back the cute and amazing WALL-E?

who would back a film like FROST/NIXON or DOUBT? probably the same crowd you nominated CAPOTE and MICHAEL CLAYTON. they are probably older voters who like quality filmmaking, but nothing too stylistically crazy.

MILK i think will be embraced by the THERE WILL BE BLOOD fans. people who want to see cinema pushed in new directions, but still tell a dramatically solid story.

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD could also find support from the ATONEMENT crowd, though it may face competition from THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON. however, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD may be too cold and cynical for the JUNO types who may prefer THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON's magical qualities.

i know people get annoyed with me for relying on conjecture and inference too heavily when making predictions. while i certainly appreciate there are those who like to wait until they have actually seen all the films before they start predicting, to me that is not nearly as fun. i love to predict in four segments -- spring, summer, fall, and winter. i make my predictions based on my knowledge of the talent involved in certain movies, their subject matter, and the voting patterns of the academy from previous years. my spring predictions hardly every resemble my final winter predictions, but it is fun to laugh and compare what i thought i knew at the beginning of the year and what i felt sure about right before nominations were actually announced.

i do not feel it is unfair to SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE to wonder about its chances with the academy. i also do not think my predicting SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE being left out of best picture is in any way a comment on its quality as a film. i just wonder which type of academy voter will put SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE at the top of their ballot. i have no doubt many voters will have it somewhere in their five slots, but enough people have to put it as number one for it to actually be nominated (again, correct me if that is not right). which voting block of the academy will do that?




Edited By rolotomasi99 on 1224172590
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Post by FilmFan720 »

I bought into the Slumdog buzz a while ago too...if it goes over well with audiences, I think it is more likely than many of the "sure bets" out there (I'm not buying into Benjamin Button until the reviews start coming out).
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Post by Mister Tee »

Sonic, please be back. You've been much missed.

And, you know -- I hope I was excluded from the "you guys", since I've been the one advocating for Slumdog for weeks now.
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Post by FilmFan720 »

Sonic Youth wrote:Shit, Slumdog needs a bailout. And you guys need some proper guidence.
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Post by Sabin »

At least for now, those reviews up above clinch it, and a lot more strongly than predictions for "Australia" or "Doubt" or "Milk" or "Revolutionary Road" or "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" or "Frost/Nixon", NONE OF WHICH HAVE A SINGLE REVIEW TO THEIR NAME YET.

I'm predicting 'Slumdog' so I welcome the support (just as I did 'Little Miss Sunshine' and 'Juno' last year) but 'Milk' has been seen and received enthusiastic notices. Doubt it's stronger than 'Paranoid Park' but we can attest to its strength.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

Shit, Slumdog needs a bailout. And you guys need some proper guidence.

Of course you're all underrating Slumdog's chances. Most of you never thought to look at the proper sources. And why not? You've heard so little about it, so how would you know you'd have to look for the word-of-mouth? And all we have to go on in this thread is a great review from Variety and three subpar reviews from three other sources. Doesn't look very promising, just another reasonably reviewed movie no one will remember by the end of the year. Except... look at two of those reviews. They say "overrated", "overbuzzed" and "When will the backlash begin?" But doesn't that have a double meaning? What sort of movies are overrated, overbuzzed and in need of a backlash but the ones that are highly rated, highly buzzed and heavily forelashed in the first place? Shouldn't that be a clue?

And while you may have heard in the abstract that Slumdog Millionaire received positive buzz from Toronto and Telluride, it doesn't look as if you have any conception of how powerful the buzz was. So, here are some reviews you appear to have missed out on, beginning with two Pulitzer winners:

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal:

On that count the 35th annual [Telluride] festival was a great success -- scores of fascinating features, documentaries and shorts, along with tributes to three people who richly deserve them: the actress Jean Simmons, the Swedish filmmaker Jan Troell and the American director David Fincher. Festival regulars ask no more, even though, in their heart of hearts, they may hope for surprise and excitement. Last year those hopes were rewarded by "Juno," and the year before by "The Last King of Scotland" and "The Lives of Others." This year's schedule gave no hint of potential bombshells, but, again, that was perfectly OK, given the quality of the program as a whole. Then along came "Slumdog Millionaire."

The film's director, Danny Boyle, and the screen writer, Simon Beaufoy, are both English, and they've both done fine work in the past. Mr. Boyle's films include the gritty "Trainspotting," the exuberant "Millions" and the elegant zombie epic "28 Days Later." Mr. Beaufoy wrote the deathless, as well as bottomless, "The Full Monty." Yet "Slumdog Millionaire," which is set in Mumbai and was adapted from Vikas Swarup's novel "Q & A," takes us to a level that tops the Rockies for heightened experience. An amalgam of "Oliver Twist," "The Three Musketeers" and Bollywood extravagance, it's the saga -- mainly in English, plus some subtitled Hindi -- of a wretchedly poor Muslim boy, played as a young man by Dev Patel, who pulls himself up by his brains instead of his bootstraps, and gets a shot at becoming a millionaire on a wondrously garish Indian TV quiz show.

"Slumdog Millionaire" will open commercially later this fall, so I'll confine myself to only a few effusions now, with more to come. There's never been anything like this densely detailed phantasmagoria -- groundbreaking in substance, damned near earth-shaking in style. Mr. Boyle and his colleagues, including his Indian co-director, Loveleen Tandan, have pulled off a soaring, crowd-pleasing fantasy that's a tale of unswerving love, a searing depiction of poverty and injustice and a marvelous evocation of multinational media madness. When I spoke to the director after the first screening here -- actually the first public screening anywhere -- I said his film was a great example of what the late Carol Reed once advised: Find the right container, and you can fill it with whatever you wish. "Yes," Danny Boyle replied, "and I also try to follow David Lean's advice to declare your ambitions in the first five minutes." The ambitions declared at the beginning of "Slumdog Millionaire" are huge. By the end they're completely fulfilled.


http://online.wsj.com/article....ews_wsj

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Roger Ebert:

TORONTO -- Danny Boyle's "Slumdog Millionaire" hits the ground and never stops running. After its first press screening early Saturday morning, it became a leading contender for the all-important Audience Award, which is the closest thing the Toronto International Film Festival has to a top prize. And an Oscar best picture nomination is a definite possibility.

The film uses dazzling cinematography, editing, music and headlong momentum to explode with narrative force, wrapping in a poignant romance at the same time. For Danny Boyle, it is a personal triumph. If you have seem some of his earlier films ("Shallow Grave," "Trainspotting," "28 Days Later," the lovable "Millions") you know he's a natural. Here he combines the suspense of a game show with the vision and energy of a "City of God" and never stops sprinting.


http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps....STIVALS

---------------------------------

Roger Friedman (look, I'm not saying I like all these people, but it's representative of what's being chatted about):

Believe it or not, a famous game show figures in another potential Oscar film for 2009.

Danny Boyle's stunning India-based film, Slumdog Millionaire, was written by Simon Beaufoy, the man who brought us The Full Monty.

Slumdog is so sensational that the audience was hooting and hollering Bravo Sunday night at its Toronto premiere. Beaufoy has constructed a beautiful story, using the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? as a story hook.

The mesmerizing plot tracks the coming of age of two Bombay brothers as they lose their parents and fend for themselves in that city's slums. In some ways, Slumdog echoes Fernando Merielles' City of God in its depiction of orphans surviving againt the odds.

But Boyle, whose father served in India in the British Army, adds a twist as one of the brothers, now grown, goes on TV hoping to attract the attention of a lost childhood love from the Bombay slums. While playing the game, the young man is arrested and interrogated (the perfect Irfan Khan is the cop). The script cuts back and forth between the interrogation and the story of Jamal's life.

There are no stars other than Khan in Slumdog, but a cast of incredibly talented young people including newcomers Dev Patel and the shining beauty Freida Pinto. Neither of these kids has made a movie before or been to the United States. All of that is about to change. Handled properly, Slumdog could be the surprise of this film season. It's ebullient and moving, while at the same time quite thrilling.


http://foxnews.proteus.com/content....tPage=0

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Steven Rea, Philadephia Inquirer:

You hope for it to happen, and then, finally, it does: a movie that rocks you to the core, inspires, delights, shocks, compels, surprises. That's what Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire did Saturday morning: two separate rounds of applause at the end. The film, to be released by Fox Searchlight in November, tells the story of an Indian street urchin who grows up and gets on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? - and improbably keeps answering the questions correctly.

Like a Bollywood Dickens tale, directed by Brit Boyle with the same flash and panache he brought to Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, Slumdog is a love story, a look at a culture of vast wealth and brutal poverty. . . Oscars, here they come.


http://www.philly.com/inquire....it.html

------------------------------

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly:

Speaking of grabbing attention and charming the birds out of trees, I do love Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle's winning, spinning, beguiling Dickens-meets-Bollywood saga set amid the glitter and squalor of rich and poor India: A poor street kid survives the dizzying streets of Mumbai to become a contestant on India's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. The movie features romance, gang danger, and a tumult of color and music, and I left with a happy grin and an urge to get the soundtrack album as soon as I can.


http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2008/09/zombies-con-men.html

---------------------------------

The illiterate David Poland:


But back to Slumdog Millionaire.

Wow.

Dumping this film… or simply acknowledging that they don't know how to market it… or don't get it… will stand for a long time as one of the great embarrassments of Warner Bros' history.

Just a great movie movie.

The story is basic… classic. Our central character has won big on India's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, in spite of not appearing to have the education to pull it off. He is interrogated as to how he cheated, because they are convinced that he did. And as he explains how he answered each of the questions, his story unfolds… starting with childhood.

And what a tale of survival it is. I don't want to give away details, but a significant portion of the film is about kids, followed by their teen selves, and then as young adults. The stories of the luck and trouble and joy and horror they go through are so theatrical, yet never veer into storybook fantasy.

It's an amazing journey into adulthood, almost Wizard of Oz, but you know how they say, truth is odder than fiction. This fiction feels like the oddest of truths. And that is a great tribute to Simon Beaufoy and Danny Boyle, the writer and director.

Boyle is at his absolute best here. You can go back to Trainspotting and Shallow Grave to see the origins of the skills he brings to bare here, but unlike those, this never feels like a young director trying to show off. There is a rugged self-assurance in creating some amazing images, pushing the editing (via editor Chris Dickens), and mostly, telling the tale in a remarkably efficient and entertaining way.

The casting – you'll recognize no one but the great Irfan Khan – is spectacular. All three age groups are dead on and completely compelling. The boys fit the evolving story of their personalities. And we hope that Freida Pinto can get over her debilitating ugliness some day.

But mostly, it is a romp through some of the most disturbing terrain on the planet. It is, in many ways, an Indian version of City of God with a lot of Dickens and Dumas to boot. It's funny. It's scary. It's romantic. It's horrible. It's violent. And did I mention… it's very funny.

If this weren't a film set in India, it would be explosively commercial. But instead, it should just be a well-sold, modest hit for Searchlight, standing up honorably for telling a story that is richer than it absolutely has to be. We are all richer for it.

It's interesting that it is getting Oscar buzz in Toronto. Perhaps people are deluding themselves because the fest has been so sparse. But perhaps not. I do think for this film to get there, a domestic gross of over $50 million is absolutely mandatory… and I don't know that $50m is possible. But it should be. So maybe living in hope isn't so bad. Just as Slumdog Millionaire.



http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotb....rm.html

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And here's one more example of a critic not thoroughly won over by the movie, but acknowledges he's in a minority.

'Slumdog' artful, if extreme
By Michael Phillips Tribune critic
September 8, 2008

TORONTO—The payoffs of a major film festival are many. Here's one: You come out of a movie you liked, and 10 seconds later you're arguing with a guy for whom "like" was not enough.

"Come on! It's a really good movie!"! Baz Bamigboye of the London Daily Mail was telling me—ordering me, in fact—as we exited the packed Saturday press screening of "Slumdog Millionaire," a slick, dazzlingly crafted crowd-pleaser from British director Danny Boyle. Shot largely in the slums and tumult of Mumbai, it's the first widely acknowledged popular success of the 33rd Toronto International Film Festival, which continues through Saturday.


Certainly "Slumdog Millionaire" sticks. Boyle's previous films include "Trainspotting," "Millions" and "Sunshine," and this, I suspect, will be his biggest hit to date.


http://www.chicagotribune.com/feature....2.story

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Not to mention all the stories about SD showing in packed screening rooms filled to beyond capacity, and the TIFF Audience Award the cherry.

Are there reasons why Slumdog Millionaire might not be nominated? Of course, aren't there reasons for every contender? The most compelling is the foreign language barrier. Slumdog's world has the disadvantage of being populated with a buncha brown people speaking Subtitlese, and that's a barrier, sure. If it doesn't get nominated, that will be the primary reason why. But it's a barrier that's been overcome before. And that's why I think the Juno and Little Miss Sunshine comparisons are bogus and were probably thought up by a festival-fatigued critic who needed a point of comparison before his article's deadline, came up with that one and now it's become a blogosphere meme. What does it mean to be the Oscar's Juno or LMS? Me, I always thought it meant a lighthearted change of pace, fleet and light in tone and narrative and not leaving you emotionally overtaxed when its over, a television audience-friendly corrective to all those big cinematic statements that keep getting nominated every year. That's not what Slumdog appears to be. It looks to be a highly ambitious film, thematically and stylistically, and although it allegedly leaves the audience elated by the end, it's in that old-fashioned-movie way. It's not happiness all the way through, quite the opposite. It has to work its way to get there. It has to earn that elation at the end. Nah, the more apt comparison is other foreign language films like "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" and "Letters From Iwo Jima" and "Life is Beautiful", "Spirited Away" in a sense, like that. "Slumdog Millionaire" has the potential to join that pantheon and it's off to a fine start.

And you can say "Yes, but there are BIG BIG BIG differences between SD and CTHD, LFIJ and LIB", and you can then bulletpoint all the infinitesimal differences that seem big in your mind but really don't make a damn bit of difference, and belaboring a false premise that I'm trying to draw an exact comparison. Of course there are differences, there's no such thing as an exact analogy. (Although taken as a whole, "Slumdog" actually fits nicely: festival kudos and prizes, rapturous reviews before the big release, respected and internationally known filmmaker... check, check and check.) But those look-high-look-low-for-them differences are no reason to keep "Slumdog" off the final five of anyone's predictions. At least for now, those reviews up above clinch it, and a lot more strongly than predictions for "Australia" or "Doubt" or "Milk" or "Revolutionary Road" or "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" or "Frost/Nixon", NONE OF WHICH HAVE A SINGLE REVIEW TO THEIR NAME YET. (Except for "Frost/Nixon" which just recieved its first reviews today... sorry, Ron. Hang it up, already.) But we're so reluctant to give up our predictions for "Australia", "Doubt", "Milk", "Revolutionary Road", "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" or (until today) "Frost/Nixon", because that doesn't fit in with our preconceived Oscar narrative. Sight unseen, these films make perfect sense for a Best Picture slot - it's called 'fitting a profile', right? - and we won't be convinced otherwise until it's finally screened for the critics and released to general audiences, no matter what else may come down the pike to disrupt that narrative we've got playing inside our heads. So, okay. Let's stubbornly wait for further developments before we annoint Slumdog the "lock" status. They're just festivals, they're just reviews, they're just audience reactions, and it's a long way until the critics awards. Anything can happen until then. But do me a favor. Take one more look at those reviews up above. Those are the reviews Best Film nominations are made from. And you know very well that if it were "Doubt", "Benjamin Button", "Revolutionary Road", etc. that the critics were writing about, you'd have no hesitation putting it in your Best Picture nominations and tying it down so it doesn't move for the rest of the year.

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Post by Big Magilla »

I'd settle for more honesty in government starting with the evening news showing the flag draped coffins and and returning soldiers with missing limbs. A little more sober reality might hasten the peace but the prosperity I'm not so sure about.

Rebuilding the economy is going to be a slow process. McCain was right when he told those Michigan auto workers "your jobs are gone and they're not coming back". What kinds of jobs are going to be created to put people back to work so they can afford to buy the houses that are sitting empty so that new houses can be built, real estate agents and banks can make money and people can afford new furnishings and a new car car to go with their new house? And how long is it going to take, a year, a decade?
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Post by rolotomasi99 »

well, you two are a bunch of debbie downers. :)

the economic downturn is bad, but at least it means obama will definitely win. once he is in office he will use his magical powers of persuasion to get the republicans and democrats to put aside their differences and do what is right for this country. we have eight years of peace and prosperity to look forward to. at least, that is what his supporters tell me.

cheer up you two gloomy guses. obama has come to save us!
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Post by Mister Tee »

Big Magilla wrote:Not bored, not bothered, just not all that hyped up about this year's race. Maybe it has to do with the lack of films that interest me this year. Maybe it has to do with the Presidential race and the sinking economy with its massive job layoffs and foreclosures affecting so many people I know causing so much real life tension that the Oscar race seems more trivial than usual.
I think I know what you're feeling, Magilla. I'm reminded of 1992 -- another year where I followed the presidential race obsessively, and where cinematic output was nothing special. A week or so after the election, a Newsweek came out with Spike's Malcolm X on the cover, and it occurred to me it was the first time all year I'd felt the Oscar race was worthy of being a primary topic.

The odd man out situation IS interesting, from a historical standpoint, and within yearly predictions. But it doesn't make much sense to try to scope out candidates before you know which films are even in the race.
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Post by Big Magilla »

Not bored, not bothered, just not all that hyped up about this year's race. Maybe it has to do with the lack of films that interest me this year. Maybe it has to do with the Presidential race and the sinking economy with its massive job layoffs and foreclosures affecting so many people I know causing so much real life tension that the Oscar race seems more trivial than usual.
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Post by rolotomasi99 »

The Original BJ wrote:
Mister Tee wrote:
FilmFan720 wrote:Can I also say that there is little point in debating the odd man out director slot (s) until we actually know what some of the contenders are.

Bingo.

Absolutely agreed. With all due respect, I can't quite understand how anyone could be confident about 4 out of 5 of their Best Picture predictions at the beginning of October, and struggling with the last slot, or the odd man out director. It all just seems so up in the air at this point.
i started this thread out of boredom not confidence. it is the calm before the storm as the oscar contenders start rolling out.

MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA and BLINDNESS are the first films i remember people considering oscar bait to be released so far. MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA i figured was going to be a failure. spike lee should stick to what he knows -- new york.

BLINDNESS we had a hint was a failure from cannes, but i was really hoping they were going to clean it up. the reviews are just horrible though. along with MILK, CHANGELING, and REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, i was really looking forward to this film.

i have always had a fascination with the odd-man-out phenomenon. how can it be that nine-out-of-ten-times there is always one film among the five best picture nominees which did not receive a director nomination. it just seems funny. the directors branch is pretty small, yet they almost always coincidentally pick four of the best picture nominees. no other category has those kinds of odds. there are ten screenplay nominees so they have twice as much of a chance of picking the five best picture nominees, and of course the actors have twenty nominations.

we all just assume it is going to happen every year, yet we never wonder how it happens. i assume it is just a coincidence; but every once in a while i think maybe the directors know which films are going to be nominated for best picture and decide which one should be left out of the director nominations. silly, i know, but it just strikes me as strange how almost consistently one film gets left out.

sorry if this thread bores or bothers anyone. i just finding the odd-man-out phenomenon interesting.
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Post by Okri »

dreaMaker wrote:If Daldry get nominated for Best Director, will he be the only director in history with 3 nominations for his 3 first films?
Yes. Right now, Warren Beatty, Stephen Daldry, and Mike Nichols have all received nominations for their first two films.
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Post by The Original BJ »

Mister Tee wrote:
FilmFan720 wrote:Can I also say that there is little point in debating the odd man out director slot (s) until we actually know what some of the contenders are.

Bingo.
Absolutely agreed. With all due respect, I can't quite understand how anyone could be confident about 4 out of 5 of their Best Picture predictions at the beginning of October, and struggling with the last slot, or the odd man out director. It all just seems so up in the air at this point.
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