Preliminary Oscar Predictions

[Reza]

It would be a crime if Amour is not nominated. All this nonsense about Les Miz and most of the other films. Amour is easily the best film of the year and deserves nods for the film, Trintignant, Riva, Haneke and the screenplay.

[bizarre]

Securing a nomination used to be considered a win in itself until the politically correct police decided otherwise. Then the even more politically correct police decided that receiving an award wasn't winning at all and declaring "the award goes to..." was the proper thing to say. They would have us believe there aren't winners anymore. So sad.

PC gone mad!!!! I hope our taxpayer dollars aren't funding this foolery.

[Big Magilla]

It must be a generational thing.

[Sonic Youth]

I stand corrected. I foolishly thought the commercial was written to influence people into thinking she actually won something. What it really was, was a public service to bring the original terminology back to what it once was. And I wish to extend my heartfelt congratulations to the 29 other winners of Golden Globe acting nominations.

But don't you have the concept of political correctness confused? I'd have figured that calling anyone who's nominated a "winner" the ultimate in political correctness, in the same vein as handing all teams and players a soccer trophy, regardless of who the champion is.

[Big Magilla]

Securing a nomination used to be considered a win in itself until the politically correct police decided otherwise. Then the even more politically correct police decided that receiving an award wasn't winning at all and declaring "the award goes to..." was the proper thing to say. They would have us believe there aren't winners anymore. So sad.

[Sonic Youth]

Sorry to put a halt to the speculation, but Helen Mirren has already won.

I just saw a TV commercial for Hitchcock, and the announcer said "Starring Helen Mirren, WINNER of a SAG award nomination for Best Actress, and WINNER of a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress!" See? She's already a winner.

So stupid...

[bizarre]

Song for Marion got terrible reviews at TIFF.

[Big Magilla]

I don't know about Song for Marion. It may go straight to DVD in the U.S. Even if it is given a theatrical release, the scenario of an elderly man caring for his dying wife may a bit too much like Amour to get the Academy to go there two years in a row even if it's a comedy. Comedies about dying have never gone over well. Kate Hudson, the critics' darling of a decade ago, probably put the last nail in her box office coffin with A Little Bit of Heaven which could earn her a Razzie nomination this year.

The British Independent Film Awards nominated Stamp, Redgrave and the screenplay but that was it. If BAFTA doesn't bite, no one else will.

[Reza]

And for all this talk of the "Old Biddy's Club" with the Oscars, has anyone noticed that Vanessa Redgrave is far from being in auto-pilot mode?

There's always next year for her in Song for Marion opposite Terence Stamp.

[Big Magilla]

But yes - never underestimate Big Magilla's predictions. He's the one, among us, who's most in tune with the Academy's mood and collective mind. Oh, his devotion to decrepit performers can verge sometimes on the grotesque, I admit it (I hope Luise Rainer will make a comeback soon just to see Big Magilla immediately procaiming her a Best Actress frontrunner), but seriously, he was right about Max Von Sydow last year and he's right about Maggie Smith this year. (He's wrong about Amour getting several nominations, of course, but that's only because he hasn't seen the movie yet - he will walk out of it after about 20 minutes).

LOL. Luise Rainer already has two undeserved Oscars. Amour will get a Best Picture nomination if there are more than five or six. Haneke, I'm still hopeful for, but at this point he and Ang Lee are probably going to be vying for the fifth slot with Spielberg, Bigelow, Affleck and Hooper more than likely filling the other four. Forget Tarantino, Russell and the two Andersons.

As for walking out a movie after the first twenty minutes, the last time I did that was in 1969 with Putney Swope. If I could sit through Zabriskie Point and I sat through Zabriskie Point, I can sit through anything.

[OscarGuy]

I'll just say that Bergman in Murder on the Orient Express was quite good and far different from the auto-pilot actresses we're generally talking about.

And for all this talk of the "Old Biddy's Club" with the Oscars, has anyone noticed that Vanessa Redgrave is far from being in auto-pilot mode?

[Uri]

When the debate about American acting vs. British is on, one of the arguments in favor of the former is that British thespians lack certain naturalism or spontaneity (good) American actors seem to have. A main reason for this I think is that when confronted with inferior material, Brits with formal training and rich theatrical background, even the best of them, tend to over compensate by relying heavily on well proven, crowd pleasing shticks. The very efficient professionalism they master colors their efforts even more tedious and fake than those with less solid acting tools. And for me, what we get in Marigold is a prime example of this. (The same can be applied to the cliché ridden writing and the uninspired directing). And I’m saying this as a huge Maggie Smith fan, as someone who’s fond of Dench, Wilkinson, Nighy, Wilton, Imrie and so on, as a sucker for English comedies of manners and of the Brits abroad genre. I AM AN OLD LADY! (Always at heart, and as of the past few weeks, chronologically so too). Yet I still found TBEMH to be lazy and self congratulatory, and in doing so, rather offensive.

[ITALIANO]

As I oten say, they seem to be on automatic pilot lately - and actresses like Maggie Smith, Judi Dench and Helen Mirren (she took some time to get in, but once they welcome you to the club, they'll never let you go) get nominated for any remotely successful movie they appear in. It's a fact, and probably voting this early doesn't help. I know that one shouldn't complain too much - this is after all a group that recently decided that Sandra Bullock was wothy of their prize - but as great as these actresses have been and definitely still can be, they can also be predictable and mannered and not as inventive as they were when they were younger. I haven't seen Hitchcock, but I refuse to believe that Mirren's turn in it is on the same level as Riva's in Amour - still it's Mirren's name we will probably hear on nominations day.

But yes - never underestimate Big Magilla's predictions. He's the one, among us, who's most in tune with the Academy's mood and collective mind. Oh, his devotion to decrepit performers can verge sometimes on the grotesque, I admit it (I hope Luise Rainer will make a comeback soon just to see Big Magilla immediately procaiming her a Best Actress frontrunner), but seriously, he was right about Max Von Sydow last year and he's right about Maggie Smith this year. (He's wrong about Amour getting several nominations, of course, but that's only because he hasn't seen the movie yet - he will walk out of it after about 20 minutes).

This is also the time of the year when I realize that movies I had carefully avoided during the year will probably get major nominations and I must try to find them. This time it's things like that Marigold movie and the new James Bond - and you wonder why I'm not much into the Oscar anymore?

Italian journalists based in America are starting to complain - after the Golden Globes nominations especially - that this year's main Oscar movies will be the most pro-American ever, that movies like Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty and Argo have all in common a totally lack of self-criticism. This may be only partly true (as it is certainly partly true of the only one I have seen, Argo), but can you please stop with all those American flags in your movies? Do you like your flag so much? Good, keep it in your house then. And those veiled Muslim women shot as if they were a sinister, menacing presence, often with the voice of the muezzin as an equally threatening background - these places are actually much less violent than the US, as you probably know even from recent happenings. If you don't realize this, if you keep promoting certain cliches - and giving prizes to them - things will never change. Of course, it's possible that I will love Lincoln, I have no idea (I have more doubts on Zero Dark Thirty, especially having seen its director's earlier "masterpiece"), but I'm talking generally, and I will always choose Terrence Malick's America over Kathryn Bigelow's more popular and accessible one.

As for the child in Beasts of the Southern Wild. I haven't seen it yet, so I don't know if she's good or dreadful, but, of course, there's no reason why a child shouldn't be nominated for an Oscar. It's a performance that we are talking about, and in cinema a performance is always the result of the collective work of at least actor, director and editor - it's like this even for adult actors. Of course, if she's as impressive as that child from Whale Rider, I'd say that she should definitely stay home on Oscar night.

[Big Magilla]

Ah, Uri, I have to smile. Your reaction to relatives' fondness for a movie you didn't particularly like reminds me so much of my reaction to relatives' fondness for films I have to bite my tongue about. "You can't go wrong with Neil Simon" is something I would expect to hear out the mouth of an old blue-haired lady from the sixties not a brother in his sixties now. I did draw the line with "The Help is a great movie", though. I kind of pissed off a few people with my response to that one. I said something like "It's a movie for old ladies."

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a movie for old ladies, actually for old people in general, and a charming one. Quite a few of them see themselves or people they know in the characters in the film. Maggie Smith's character's transformation from an old curmudgeon to an old charmer has been a stock literary character for centuries. Anyone who doesn't see it coming has never read a book or seen an old movie and Maggie Smith plays it with relish. The only bad thing is that there isn't enough of her in the movie. Either there was no screen time left to expound on her character whose arc was the most obvious of all the characters or she had to rush through the film to get back to work on Downton Abbey. But, yeah, she'll be nominated because she's Maggie Smith, just like Helen Hayes was nominated for Airport because she was Helen Hayes and Ingrid Bergman was nominated for Murder on the Orient Express because she was Ingrid Bergman. If it weren't for Anne Hathaway's momentum, just like Hayes and Bergman before her, she might win an Oscar she doesn't need and probably doesn't think she deserves any more than a lot of people here because the voters feel otherwise.

[Uri]

When my sister, who’s 55 and living in the states for over 20 years, was visiting here early this year, she specifically insisted we should see the Marigold Hotel movie. So we did, accompanied by a 60 something relative (a woman) and my very hip and sophisticated 24 yo niece. My sister and that other lady were extremely cheerful during the screening and were later rhapsodizing about it. My niece and I were agonizing throughout the film AND having to be polite and not raining on their parade afterwards. It’s really a dreadful film. If watching Judy Dench being subdued and sad only to blossom like a marigold under the Indian sun into a scooter riding free spirit or Smith mechanically recycling all her familiar shticks into a completely incoherent performance, is what you’re after Sabin, watch it. It’s the kind of film in which everything is about defining simplistic, familiar narrative targets early on only to achieve them rather arbitrarily but reassuringly at the end. The well-meaning yet featherheaded brown native will prosper once a white person is there to guide him (isn’t the notion that a low class person who has nowhere to go in the fatherland can achieve grander status abroad by being superior to those less fortunate savages the all point of good old colonialism? Just ask Ingrid Bergman). The silly, narrow minded wife of the gentle guy will comfortably be removed so he can end up with the bigger star who’s the nominal lead for no reason other than that she’s, well, the bigger star who’s the nominal lead. And yes, you can rest assured, the only one who’ll end up dead is indeed the gay one. It’s this kind of movie. You’re welcome.