October Predictions

[Hustler]

This is so strange! WTC is so conventional. It seems like a TV movie. There is nothing interesting to comment about it. It´s unbelievable coming from Oliver Stone.

[dreaMaker]

My dear God...
I just saw World Trade Center. I was very very disappointed...
It was boring and i don't think it is going to get any nod. Razzie maybe...
And i expected soooo much.... Sniff...

[Okri]

This may or may not matter, but screener DVDs of Little Miss Sunshine have already been sent to the academy (last year's first out of the box was Junebug, I believe).

[criddic3]

I don't think either 9/11 films have a chance. World Trade Center has some great special effects but its central story of men trapped might just as well have been about a mine disaster in Wales in the 1920s. United 93 didn't offer any more insight into that horrid incident than the TV version, United 93, which didn't register much with the TV Academy.

Flight 93 was nominated by the TV Academy for Best TV Movie and it won at least one technical award. I haven't watched that one, because I didn't want to taint my view before seeing United 93, which was very well-done in my opinion.

But don't just ask me: Rottentomatoes has a 90% rating from critics. Metacritic also has it at 90. One of the best-reviewed films of the year, right behind The Departed at 93% on rottentomatoes (it also has an 87 on metacritic) as a wide-release. The Queen currently has 98% on rottentomatoes but is a limited release (81 on metacritic). It is above Flags of Our Fathers, which now stands at 75% on rottentomatoes and 82 on metacritic.

The only thing standing in the way of United 93 is the fact that it wasn't a box-office smash. Realistically, this is because of a reluctance to see a movie that basically accurately portrays events of 9/11 while the memory feels fresh to viewers.

Now none of the actors stands out particularly, but that's in large part due to the fact that several people played themselves who were not actors, and very few of the cast would even be recognized among them. No, it will not be nominated for acting, but could be for picture, director and screenplay. The structure of the film built in tension to a climax we know is coming, but we still wish we could prevent. On this score, it is better than World Trade Center, which provides somewhat more conventional but still emotionally affecting story focused on two firefighters who remain trapped under rubble while their wives agonize over their fates. The fact that their situation could have been similar in a non-9/11 story is part of the point.

These guys were doing their jobs. That's what made many on that day heroes by rallying to the cause of helping others. The men trapped is a center-point to the surrounding events, which we see not through their eyes but through their families.
The tension isn't built the same way as in United 93, but through the emotions of the families. A small but distinct difference. The focus on individuals, versus a group of people confronting different aspects of the same day, is what separates them.

Many preferred Paul Greengrass' film to Oliver Stone's, objecting to Stone's neutral tone while praising Greengrass for not over-dramatizing good versus evil in the form of the hijackers on board the plane. I think the decision by both to not politicize the events was wise. It allows us to experience the events as they are known to have happened, even if some of it is speculation and filling-in-the gaps.

Both ought to be looked upon by the Academy for their merits, and not for the films some wish they were.

[Precious Doll]

Personally, the story I’d like to see portrayed is what happened to the people in the top floors of the North Tower (like, for example, the Canter-Fitzgerald folks). That’s always been the most compelling WTC story to me.

Try and track down an English made for TV documentary titled 9/11 - The Twin Towers.

This film looks at what happened to some of the people trapped inside the buildings. Not just those on the floors above where the plane hits but in floors below that were also trapped. (There where people trapped on about the 20th floor of the first tower hit).

Aside from interviews with survivors and family members of those who perished, the film contains reinactments of what happened to these particular people. It's told in a very matter-of-fact manner and is never manipulating.

The film is both very moving and disturbing at the same time. Everyone I know who has seen the film can't stop talking about it.

[kaytodd]

I agree that WTC will not likely get any noms in major categories. Technically well done (anyone agree with me that it is a likely nominee in the art direction/set decoration category?) but none of the performances other than Maggie Gyllenhall's interested me. And, like Arkin in LMS, she was good, I liked her character, but her performance was nothing special.

Not a bad film, but I caught myself looking at my watch a few times. I was not engrossed at all.

The story of what happened to the people in the upper floors of the North Tower...that would make an intriguing film. Doomed and, eventually, they all knew it. Like United 93, you obviously cannot ask those who were there what happened but you can get a good idea from phone calls and text messages. That film will likely get made.

Subject for another thread.

[flipp525]

Strange thing is, I have yet to have seen the "World Trade Center", and I'm actually thinking that it may very well recieve a nomination; even if only on the basis that Oliver Stone has directed, for the first time in a LONG TIME, a successful, politically-muted film.

Once you see it, atomicage, I think you’ll be taking it off your shortlist. I don’t think this year’s output is so boring that there’s room for World Trade Center. In choosing not to take his usual political/conspiracy theory stance (which might’ve been more interesting, truth be told), he created a banal, virtually dead tribute picture to one of the most dramatic, unifying, and memorable events in recent history. With so much drama and potential for cinematic pathos, this is what we get?

Also, Nicholas Cage needs to take at least a one-to-two year hiatus. I’m sick of seeing him in everything.

Personally, the story I’d like to see portrayed is what happened to the people in the top floors of the North Tower (like, for example, the Canter-Fitzgerald folks). That’s always been the most compelling WTC story to me.

[atomicage]

Strange thing is, I have yet to have seen the "World Trade Center", and I'm actually thinking that it may very well recieve a nomination; even if only on the basis that Oliver Stone has directed, for the first time in a LONG TIME, a successful, politically-muted film.

Here's how I see it, as of now, for Best Picture:
TITLE (reason)

Flags of Our Fathers (Clint Eastwood is Oscar's favorite son)
Dreamgirls (So much spirit and soul just in the trailers alone)
World Trade Center (Oliver Stone, you can be touching)
The Departed (the Ol' Marty is back)
The Queen (the ultimate vehicle for Helen Mirren)

You will all probably disagree with the choices I have just made, and in fact, I probably will too by Christmas season, but nevertheless, those five are looking to be the top choices.

[Franz Ferdinand]

World Trade Center was effective for telling a story of simple bravery, also without going into unnecessary political judgments that took place after the events of 9/11 and Iraq. Well-acted by Nicholas Cage and Michael Pena, it also garnered mostly solid reviews.

It was also completely and utterly boring on a grand scale. Maggie Gyllenhaal was the only performance I'd even consider citing from WTC and I don't think even she will be making the cut.

I agree. I don´t expect any nomination for WTC.

It deserves nominations for the sound department at least. It had some truly terrifying effects in there.

[Hustler]

World Trade Center was effective for telling a story of simple bravery, also without going into unnecessary political judgments that took place after the events of 9/11 and Iraq. Well-acted by Nicholas Cage and Michael Pena, it also garnered mostly solid reviews.

It was also completely and utterly boring on a grand scale. Maggie Gyllenhaal was the only performance I'd even consider citing from WTC and I don't think even she will be making the cut.

I agree. I don´t expect any nomination for WTC.

[atomicage]

While I did not hate the entire film, I felt that "United 93" had a very slow beginning. I found myself moaning, 'get to the hijacking, get to the hijacking'. I know that's awful, considering these characters were real people, but in a film, no matter how patriotic you are, the message won't come across if the audience is asleep.

[Sonic Youth]

Time to bury the past?

Like this Princess Di movie?

[Penelope]

United 93 was among the best reviewed films of the year, gaining respect for its director Paul Greengrass. His ability to film the story without adding gratuitous heroic scenes was admirable, all the more so because it was a suspenseful story on its own.

Excuse me???? The whole final third of the movie is a gratuitous heroic scene--whole dialogue is created, which wouldn't be a bad thing, except that the dialogue itself is hopelessly bad, and the acting is atrocious.

Magilla is right: not only is United 93 no more insightful than the A&E TV movie, its supposedly "revolutionary" filmmaking style is nothing new if you've bothered to watch television in the past decade.

[Big Magilla]

I don't think either 9/11 films have a chance. World Trade Center has some great special effects but its central story of men trapped might just as well have been about a mine disaster in Wales in the 1920s. United 93 didn't offer any more insight into that horrid incident than the TV version, United 93, which didn't register much with the TV Academy.

Flags of Our Fathers is another matter. I haven't seen it yet. I may be as disappointed in it as I was in The Thin Red Line and Gangs of New York, but despite my own personal feelings about those films, they impressed enough members of AMPAS to win multiple nominations including best picture and best director. I wouldn't count the Eastwood film out quite yet. However, with the polarization of reviews it's getting, a win now seems unlikely.

Time to bury the past? I don't think so. Other major contenders such as Bobby, The Queen, The Last King of Scotland and Dreamgirls, the thinly disguised story of the Supremes, all dwell on real life situations that occured between WWII and 9/11, and where would Babel get its ideas if not from the fall of the tower from which it gets its name?

[flipp525]

World Trade Center was effective for telling a story of simple bravery, also without going into unnecessary political judgments that took place after the events of 9/11 and Iraq. Well-acted by Nicholas Cage and Michael Pena, it also garnered mostly solid reviews.

It was also completely and utterly boring on a grand scale. Maggie Gyllenhaal was the only performance I'd even consider citing from WTC and I don't think even she will be making the cut.