Slant Oscar Predictions

For the films of 2012
flipp525
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Re: Slant Oscar Predictions

Post by flipp525 »

bizarre wrote:I think McConaughey is the only one of those four with a fighting chance. He's well-known, having a great year with a career turnaround both in visibility and quality of projects, an NYFCC winner and the campaign for Magic Mike is solely focused on him.

I've been hesitant to predict Arkin because of his recent comments about the Academy, even if he's hit every precursor.

I'm still thinking DiCaprio, Hoffman, Jones, McConaughey (my wildcard pick) + either Arkin, De Niro or Bardem.
I agree with bizarre's logic. Applying BJ's bird-in-the-hand rule on top of it, McConaughey was the first viewed performance that received Best Supporting Actor Oscar talk upon Magic Mike's release. He's also had a banner year with Killer Joe, Bernie and The Paperboy. He could very well be the fifth nominee.

He could also follow it up next year with a lead nomination for The Dallas Buyer's Club.

Also, nice work, Sabin!
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Re: Slant Oscar Predictions

Post by bizarre »

I think McConaughey is the only one of those four with a fighting chance. He's well-known, having a great year with a career turnaround both in visibility and quality of projects, an NYFCC winner and the campaign for Magic Mike is solely focused on him.

I've been hesitant to predict Arkin because of his recent comments about the Academy, even if he's hit every precursor.

I'm still thinking DiCaprio, Hoffman, Jones, McConaughey (my wildcard pick) + either Arkin, De Niro or Bardem.
Sabin
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Re: Slant Oscar Predictions

Post by Sabin »

So, we're looking at Dwight Henry, Matthew McConaughey, Eddie Redmayne, or James Spader.

Huh. Check this.

2011
Three SAG & Globe Nominees (Branagh, Hill, & Plummer), two Globe Nominees (Brooks & Mortenson), two SAG Nominees (Hammer & Nolte). They end up going with Max von Sydow, a veteran Oscar-nominated actor in a sympathetic role in a Best Picture nominee without too many other nominations. (also, for the record, I won't be drawing similarities between the kinds of roles nominated and not nominated)

2008
Three SAG & Globe Nominees (Downey, Jr., Ledger, & Hoffman), two Globe Nominees (Cruise & Fiennes), two SAG Nominees (Brolin & Patel). They end up going with Michael Shannon, an upstart character actor in a small but striking role in a faded Best Picture hopeful without too many other nominations.

2005
Three SAG & Globe Nominees (Clooney, Dillon, & Giamatti), two Globe Nominees (Ferrell & Hoskins), two SAG Nominees (Cheadle & Gyllenhaal). They end up going with William Hurt, a veteran Oscar-winning actor in a small but striking role in a faded Best Picture hopeful without too many other nominations.

2004
Three SAG & Globe Nominees (Church, Foxx, & Freeman), two Globe Nominees (Carradine & Owen), two SAG Nominees (Garner & Highmore). They end up going with Alan Alda, a veteran actor never nominated for an Oscar in a small but striking role in a Best Picture nominee with a lot of there nominations.

2003
Three SAG & Globe Nominees (Baldwin, Robbins, & Watanabe), three Globe Nominees (Finney, Macy, Sarsgaard), two SAG Nominees (Bridges & Del Toro). They end up going with Djimon Hounsou, an upstart character actor in a sympathetic role in a faded Best Picture hopeful without too many other nominations.



So, that means (which, by the way, doesn't mean anything!) that Arkin, Hoffman, & Jones are in. Either Bardem, De Niro, DiCaprio, or Waltz will join them. And then either Dwight Henry, Matthew McConaughey, Eddie Redmayne, or James Spader. For sake of winnowing it down, I'll say because Magic Mike is spoken about by nobody as a Best Picture contender, he can be discarded.
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Re: Slant Oscar Predictions

Post by FilmFan720 »

The most recent time we've had all previous nominees in a category was Best Actress 1994 (Jodie Foster, Jessica Lange, Miranda Richardson, Winona Ryder and Susan Sarandon). Foster and Lange were previous winners.

Other times it has happened:
Best Actress 1941 (Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joan Fontaine, Greer Garson, Barbara Stanwyck) -- 1 Previous Winner (Davis)
Best Actress 1944 (Ingrid Bergman, Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis, Greer Garson, Barbara Stanwyck) -- all of them previous Lead nominees -- 3 Previous Winners (Colbert, Davis, Garson)
Best Actor 1975 (Walter Matthau, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Maximilian Schell, James Whitmore) -- 2 Previous Winners (Matthau, Schell)
Best Actor 1979 (Dustin Hoffman, Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Roy Scheider, Peter Sellers) -- 1 Previous Winner (Lemmon)
Best Actor 1980 (Robert DeNiro, Robert Duvall, John Hurt, Jack Lemmon and Peter O'Toole) -- 2 Previous Winners (DeNiro, Lemmon)

It has never happened in Best Supporting Actor or Best Supporting Actress.
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Re: Slant Oscar Predictions

Post by Okri »

Best Actor 2007 had three former winners, one previous nominee and one newcomer. That's happened a few other times. You'd have to go back to the 40s, I think, to find a slate made up entirely of winners and nominees
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Re: Slant Oscar Predictions

Post by Sabin »

flipp525 wrote
I'm also finding Slant's Best Supporting Actor lineup of Arkin/DeNiro/DiCaprio/Hoffman/Jones a little hard to stomach. I think there will be a surprise nominee in this race. Someone along the lines of Dwight Henry (Beast of the Southern Wild), Ezra Miller (Perks of Being a Wallflower), James Spader (Lincoln) or Eddie Redmayne ( Les Misérables). Again, when was the last time this category yielded three past winners of the award and two past nominees without a newcomer? It just doesn't seem like a smart predictive model.
I don’t think Robert De Niro is getting nominated. He’s a lively addition to the ensemble no doubt, but he doesn’t have quite enough big moments. Arkin, Hoffman, and Jones are good. Having seen Django Unchained and considering it’s now a smash, I’m thinking that SAG voters just didn’t see it. Which doesn’t mean that Leonardo DiCaprio is particularly deserving of a nomination. But he has the baitiest role. He’ll probably get nominated over Waltz (who is fantastic, but his contribution is easy to shortchange) and Jackson (who comes in far too late into the film and the film doesn’t know what to do with him). Glad to see Javier Bardem nominated for a SAG for Skyfall, but if Django had been more widely seen, that probably wouldn’t have happened. This would be Javier Bardem’s fourth nomination.

The Original BJ wrote
I am literally going to cry if Hugh Jackman's painful vocals get a nomination over Joaquin Phoenix's phenomenal tour-de-force. I just can't fathom that this outcome might come to pass.
‘Cause he’s a dick?

My mother saw The Master before I told her she would despise it. She said she just wanted to get away from everything in that film. I’m just hoping that Trintignant gets his spot.
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flipp525
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Re: Slant Oscar Predictions

Post by flipp525 »

The Original BJ wrote:I am literally going to cry if Hugh Jackman's painful vocals get a nomination over Joaquin Phoenix's phenomenal tour-de-force. I just can't fathom that this outcome might come to pass.
Phoenix gives one of the best—if not the best—performance of the year. How could he not even be nominated?
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Re: Slant Oscar Predictions

Post by The Original BJ »

I am literally going to cry if Hugh Jackman's painful vocals get a nomination over Joaquin Phoenix's phenomenal tour-de-force. I just can't fathom that this outcome might come to pass.
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Re: Slant Oscar Predictions

Post by Sabin »

Oscar 2013 Nomination Predictions: Actor
BY R. KURT OSENLUND

Whether the reason boils down to Oscar politics or an overall lack of enthusiasm, it certainly looks like Joaquin Phoenix is about to be snubbed for his work in The Master, despite the mind-boggling excellence of his performance as Freddie Quell. From stature to facial contortions, Phoenix startlingly became someone else while tackling the film's lead role, in a manner beyond the typical transformative acting that annually courts hyperbole. Without looking all that different beyond considerable weight loss, Phoenix adopted a whole new aura as the spiritually starved WWII vet, and spoke his lines with barks and snarls that seemed uncannily natural, as if a pit bull just happened to don Phoenix's skin. The actor's now-infamous dis of the Oscar process couldn't have helped his chances, but it seems Paul Thomas Anderson's movie has, in general, lost steam, its lack of a PGA nod being the most recent evidence. The man most likely to benefit from Phoenix's misfortune is Bradley Cooper, whose turn in Silver Linings Playbook is frothy by comparison, but just the sort of crowd-pleasing lead performance Oscar loves. A likable actor, Cooper's bound to be seen as triumphant for stretching beyond Hangover territory, and with the Academy increasingly honoring flexible comic stars (think Jonah Hill and Melissa McCarthy), his nomination should in fact be an easy get.

The remaining four slots have grown particularly easy to call, as Best Actor may just be the race with the fewest question marks. Already a surefire contender this time last year, Lincoln lead Daniel Day-Lewis needn't worry about being left out January 10; in fact, he ought to be polishing his victory speech. For his heartfelt work as a real-life polio survivor in The Sessions, recent nominee John Hawkes is sure to be included too, earning kudos for headlining the rare grown-up film about sex, and suffering for his art to boot (manipulating his spine to mimic his character's physicality, the actor endured minor back injuries). One can also bet on Hugh Jackman, whose emotional performance as Jean Valjean in Les Misérables may prove a career peak—the fateful, potent merging of his screen and stage talents. Finally, Denzel Washington seems destined to round out the category, cruising toward the finish line for his compelling work in Flight, a film that arguably featured his best performance since Training Day, which, of course, won him a Best Actor trophy in 2002.

As for other performances doomed to be overlooked, there's the incredible work of Holy Motors star Denis Lavant, whose exclusion might just sting even more than Phoenix's. Widely hailed by a mess of critics but way too weird for Oscar, Lavant's onscreen evolution was virtuoso stuff, worthy of any prize on the awards-season menu. On the fringes, there's Thure Lindhardt's heartbreaking turn in Keep the Lights On, an epic saga of doomed love that announced the Danish actor as a fiery talent to watch. There's also Hope Springs star Tommy Lee Jones, who was even better in the golden-years couples comedy than he was in Spielberg's Lincoln. Additional male performances are sure to have their champions, like Richard Gere's highbrow antihero in Arbitrage, Anthony Hopkins's prosthetic-coated film legend in Hitchcock, Jean-Louis Trintignant's helpless husband in Amour, and Sean Penn's aged rocker in This Must Be the Place. But we're going to cap off our picks with a standout performance from Thomas Doret, who was convincing from minute one as the titular lead in The Kid with a Bike, a boy crushingly thrown headfirst into the angst of paternal abandonment.

Will Be Nominated: Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook; Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln; John Hawkes, The Sessions; Hugh Jackman, Les Misérables; Denzel Washington, Flight

Should Be Nominated: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln; Thomas Doret, The Kid with a Bike; Denis Lavant, Holy Motors; Thure Lindhardt, Keep the Lights On; Joaquin Phoenix, The Master
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flipp525
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Re: Slant Oscar Predictions

Post by flipp525 »

I'm also finding Slant's Best Supporting Actor lineup of Arkin/DeNiro/DiCaprio/Hoffman/Jones a little hard to stomach. I think there will be a surprise nominee in this race. Someone along the lines of Dwight Henry (Beast of the Southern Wild), Ezra Miller (Perks of Being a Wallflower), James Spader (Lincoln) or Eddie Redmayne ( Les Misérables). Again, when was the last time this category yielded three past winners of the award and two past nominees without a newcomer? It just doesn't seem like a smart predictive model.
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Re: Slant Oscar Predictions

Post by Sabin »

Maybe. Either way, it's just as ridiculous as calling this year's slate of Best Supporting Actress contenders "boasting enough fine performances to fill a 10-wide field at least." I've yet to see Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and The Paperboy, which I'm now kind of intrigued by at the prospect of a truly wacky Nicole Kidman performance.
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flipp525
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Re: Slant Oscar Predictions

Post by flipp525 »

No mention of Ann Dowd for BSA? Or is she being reserved for the discussion of Best Actress contenders (in which she has zero chances of placing)?
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Re: Slant Oscar Predictions

Post by Sabin »

Best Supporting Actress

Boasting enough fine performances to fill a 10-wide field at least, Supporting Actress is this year's most riches-packed race, and the one with the least room for disappointment. In any season, Sally Field would be a worthy winner for her work in Lincoln, a film she nearly stole with just a few searing scenes, and one she adamantly fought to be a part of. Field was Steven Spielberg's initial pick to play First Lady Mary Todd, but as the length of delayed production climbed, so too did Field's age, forcing the actress to re-audition and reconvince her director. The result was surely one of Field's signature turns, a flawless blend of authoritativeness, maternal zeal, and borderline derangement. A Field victory isn't implausible, but the two-time Oscar winner falls second to Anne Hathaway, who continues to steamroll the competition for her show-stopping work in Les Misérables. We in these parts are far from agreed on the specialness of Hathaway's performance, with some of us joining the cheerleading chorus and others thinking it devalues the efforts of actual stage stars, who spend their careers nailing one-take numbers without nearly so much hubbub. Either way, Hathaway has handily won the support of critics, audiences, and, one should think, Oscar voters, and those whose theaters filled with applause at the end of "I Dreamed a Dream" will likely agree that the song alone is poised to win her the statuette.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. There's still much to consider in this category, like Helen Hunt's frank, yet tender, portrayal of a sex surrogate in The Sessions. The third lock in the race, Hunt reminded her fans of what they'd been missing in recent years, finding a wonderful role that demanded what she seems uniquely equipped to give, like an independence tinged with unalloyed generosity, and a tendency to warm to men most desperate for grace and understanding. Naturally, the 49-year-old star's nudity in the film netted her "bravery" points, but thanks to her, the nudity was hardly the movie's most surprising element. The fourth woman with the best chances here is probably Maggie Smith, who played a racist shrew on the path to goodness in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Smith's might be the least impressive performance in the batch, as it edged very close to the realm of self-parody, but it's hard to imagine many folks begrudging her the honor, and the phenomenon of Downton Abbey can only boost her odds.

If you ask us, any one of a host of deserving ladies could step into the final spot, for acting that ranged from the madly comic to the shockingly feral. Making a memorable waist-down entrance and only growing more twisted from there, Gina Gershon played to her seedy strengths in William Friedkin's Killer Joe, portraying a white-trash vixen that marked her best character since Showgirls. In Bachelorette, Isla Fisher gave viewers a contact high by ditching all inhibitions, and in Arbitrage, Brit Marling used slivers of screen time to upstage veterans Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon. Emily Blunt brought soul and palpable history to the single mother she played in Looper, and Edith Scob proved more than just a peripheral chauffeur in Holy Motors, conveying an alternately poignant and bizarre bond with Denis Lavant's Monsieur Oscar. In Zero Dark Thirty, Jennifer Ehle made good on the buzz she built with her work in Contagion, playing Jessica Chastain's chain-smoking CIA pal with aplomb. But no discussion of remarkable 2012 performances is complete without mention of Nicole Kidman's wild transformation in The Paperboy, Lee Daniels's pulpy '60s crime flick that, for all its distracting sensationalism, burned itself in the memory. Like Mo'Nique before her, Kidman let Daniels guide her to jaw-dropping ends, emerging with a hyper-sexualized portrayal unlike anything in her—or anyone else's—filmography. With surprise nods from SAG and the Golden Globes, Kidman seems primed to steal the place once held by The Master co-star Amy Adams, an outcome that, for the Academy, would be both radical and just.

Will Be Nominated: Sally Field, Lincoln; Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables; Helen Hunt, The Sessions; Nicole Kidman, The Paperboy; Maggie Smith, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Should Be Nominated: Jennifer Ehle, Zero Dark Thirty; Sally Field, Lincoln; Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables; Helen Hunt, The Sessions; Nicole Kidman, The Paperboy
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Re: Slant Oscar Predictions

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Oscar 2013 Nomination Predictions: Adapted Screenplay
BY R. KURT OSENLUND

If not bound to have the most impressive lineup, this category may just yield the season's most deserving win, as Tony Kushner's script for Lincoln remains miles ahead of the competition, standing, like its subject, in a class by itself. This article is, indeed, intended to outline the predicted nominees, but there are certain Oscar fields whose frontrunner dominates the conversation, and the truth is, Kushner's path to the podium is even more secured than Daniel Day-Lewis's. Agog at all the tack-sharp, workplace chattiness, many viewers have employed the term "Sorkinian" when describing Lincoln's narrative, summing it up as The West Wing for the 19th century. But that analogy doesn't come close to capturing Kushner's evenhanded humanism, or his uncanny talents for pacing and characterization, which, together, keep this historical epic as nimble as it is organically populated, filled with individuals who, somehow, seem fully drawn in mere moments. Of course, there's also the whole laborious research element, which, among other things, saw Kushner whittle his translation of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals down from an initial 500-page draft.

The stage bred many of 2012's finest film adaptations. In addition to the standout work from Kushner, a playwright, there was The Deep Blue Sea, Terence Davies's take on Terence Rattigan's postwar melodrama; Killer Joe, Tracy Letts's adaptation of his own pitch-black, Southern-fried mindfuck; and Benh Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar's Beasts of the Southern Wild, an expansion of Alibar's play Juicy and Delicious. The latter is very likely to clinch a nomination here, even if the film itself can't squeeze its way into the Best Picture race. Oscar's screenplay categories habitually reserve some love for odd ducks, and as one of the year's most buzzed-about, idiosyncratic indies, Beasts surely fits the bill.

The other three Adapted Screenplay slots will likely go to knee-jerk contenders, i.e. the scripts that best correspond with probable Best Picture hopefuls. Ergo, Argo is in, despite Chris Terrio's infernal pandering to the Hollywood crowd, and the march toward a climax that isn't very climactic at all. Terrio's script—which, admittedly, isn't all that bad until envisioned by junior-slump maestro Ben Affleck—will compete alongside newfound Academy favorite David O. Russell, who made impressive genre soup out of Matthew Quick's novel, delivering a romantic comedy by way of sports flick, family saga, and mental-illness dramedy. It won't matter at all that Russell's gonzo touches largely serve as artifice, or that the film, for all its screenplay diversity, is more than a little racist. The grand performances and crowd-pleasing qualities have already eclipsed all else for most audiences, and it's unfathomable that that will change before January 10.

As for the final nomination? One could make cases for fact-based, bare-all tale The Sessions, cuddly dark horse The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, '90s teen saga The Perks of Being a Wallflower, or the long-gestating Les Misérables. But since it's based on the most wildly popular book in the bunch, a book that every article will tell you was "unfilmable" before Ang Lee came along, Life of Pi seems to have safe chances here, even if such an assumption puts little faith in the writer's branch, who should know better than to reward David Magee's horridly bookended script. A worthy work to take its place? We nominate David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, the dizzyingly faithful and uncompromising big-screen version of Don DeLillo's novel.

Will Be Nominated: Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook

Should Be Nominated: Beasts of the Southern Wild, Cosmopolis, The Deep Blue Sea, Killer Joe, Lincoln
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Re: Slant Oscar Predictions

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Oscar 2013 Nomination Predictions: Original Screenplay
BY R. KURT OSENLUND

Thanks to Mark Boal's second consecutive slam-dunk teaming with Kathryn Bigelow, the one certainty of this year's Original Screenplay field is a bit of 2010 déjà vu. Boal picked up a statuette that year for penning Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, and he's poised to do the same for his work on Zero Dark Thirty, his collaborator's high-stakes, buzz-heavy follow-up. There are ample fine points to Boal's script that fall in his favor, like the shaping of a classic hoo-ra heroine and the refusal to shy away from divisive torture scenes, which have surely provided the most popular angle for journalists covering the film. But the greatest asset should prove to be the movie's all-access fascination, which only grows as this epic manhunt soldiers toward its killshot.

Next in line as a likely candidate is Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, a pint-sized love story beautifully suited to the offbeat auteur's whimsy, and his most well-scripted effort since The Royal Tenenbaums. Currently teetering as a will-it-or-won't-it Best Picture hopeful, Moonrise Kingdom has performed surprisingly well in the precursors, landing a Golden Globe nod for Best Picture—Comedy, getting shortlisted by the AFI, and clinching a heap of Indie Spirit nominations. If there's one achievement for which the film is primed to advance, it's Anderson's markedly humane, yet still characteristically ironic, screenplay.

Only a few select scripts seem capable of filling the remaining slots, as 2012's well for great original screenplays was, in general, rather dry. The most obvious third contender is Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, a script that will probably succeed wherever this movie happens to fail, untainted by the overall polarizing response and Joaquin Phoenix's possible self-sabotage. Then there's Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, which, despite being the cine-maniacal scribe's least impressive title (it's a hoot, but slow to start and only brilliant in spurts), has been reaping the benefits of a late-in-the-game release, and may just bewitch the same voters who nominated QT's last revisionist-revenge flick, Inglourious Basterds.

Which leaves Michael Haneke's Amour, John Gatins's script for Flight, Ava DuVernay's Middle of Nowhere, and Rian Johnson's Looper, a sci-fi success whose screenplay has nabbed some largely unexpected trophies, from the Washington D.C. Film Critics, the Las Vegas Film Critics, and the National Board of Review. Historically, Middle of Nowhere is just the sort of player likely to benefit in this category, as it boasts the debut work of a budding talent backed by notable word of mouth. But it doesn't have the surge of, say, J.C. Chandor's Margin Call, which, this time last year, had netted far more early citations. For its transformative nature as an adventure-turned-legal-thriller-turned-character-study, and for its stance as a step in the right direction for big-studio dramas, Flight deserves to compete here, its wildly effective, if not wholly innovative, mix of elements a small triumph for Gatins. As for Amour, the Oscar season's biggest head-scratcher, it's very hard to imagine voters fawning over Haneke the same way critics have, as this morbid movie never lets one rise for air, and its ceaseless Oscar momentum seems puzzling and unfounded. Virtually every pundit has Amour penciled in for this lineup, but we're going to break trend and pass Haneke over, trangressing further still by plugging an FYC for Jonathan Lisecki's Gayby, a quip-happy romp that shows future gay-comedy makers how it's done.

Will Be Nominated: Django Unchained, Looper, The Master, Moonrise Kingdom, Zero Dark Thirty

Should Be Nominated: Flight, Gayby, The Master, Moonrise Kingdom, Zero Dark Thirty
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