Best Screenplay 2008

What were the best original and adapted screenplays of 2008?

Frozen River (Courtney Hunt)
2
4%
Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh)
2
4%
In Bruges (Martin McDonagh)
6
11%
Milk (Dustin Lance Black)
10
18%
WALL-E (Andrew Stanon, Jim Reardon, Pete Doctor)
11
20%
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Eric Roth, Robin Swicord)
8
15%
Doubt (John Patrick Stanley)
3
5%
Frost/Nixon (Peter Morgan)
4
7%
The Reader (David Hare)
2
4%
Slumdog Millionaire (Simon Beaufoy)
7
13%
 
Total votes: 55

Mister Tee
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Re: Best Screenplay 2008

Post by Mister Tee »

What's that bad smell? Oh...it's the nominees for adapted screenplay.

My winner in that category is Tell No One -- and, yes, I know: it's ineligible. But it's so superior to any of the nominees that defying the rules in almost an imperative.

It's not like I have any clearly superior qualified substitutes -- though I would say, if a Kate Winslet film had to be nominated here, I'd have gone for Revolutionary Road (not that I'd go to the wall for that effort, either).

I've heard many people speak admiringly of The Reader in book form, so maybe it was better before it was Daldry-ized. The last scene, with Lena Olin, suggests a more insightful work, and maybe that work does exist on the page. But the film is softcore porn crossed with Nazism, and gets no consideration.

I actually like some of Doubt, but mostly it's the atmosphere and the acting, none of which are reflected in the script, which I think is far shallower than its author (and the Pulitzer committee) appear to believe.

Frost/Nixon is a marginally better play, but fairly blandly conceived. A perfect Ron Howard project.

It's easy to see why audiences swooned over the struggle-through-degradation-to-win-your-dreams structure of Slumdog Millionaire. It seemed to have a context (the evolution of modern India, from rural hovels to industrial skyscrapers), and a wish-fulfilling romance alongside. I have to credit it for its ability to work an audience (and Danny Boyle for masking its basic fraudulence). But I can't vote for it.

If I were compelled to cast a vote, I guess it'd be by default for Benjamin Button, which at least has some ambition. But it's way too drawn out and slow moving, despite scattered high points. If David Fincher hadn't directed with such imagination, I'd have found it interminable.

For the first time in this set of polls, I'm going to abstain.
mlrg
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Re: Best Screenplay 2008

Post by mlrg »

In Bruges and Benjamin Button
Big Magilla
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Best Screenplay 2008

Post by Big Magilla »

For original, I agree with the Academy's choice of Milk, but I'd be fine with anything other than the shrill, annoying Happy-Go-Lucky.

For adapted I'm OK with anything other than Frost/Nixon which was more a straight transition of the play than an adaptation, besides which the actual Frost/Nixon interviews were more compelling. I kind of lean, though, toward The Curious Case of Benjamin Button which marvelously expands on F. Scott Fitzgerald's long ago story to the point where it's almost an original in ironic counterpoint to original winner Milk which is ripped from news stories to the point of being essentially adapted.
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