Best Director Academy Award 2014

 

Best Director is gonna be close. This one also is going to break tradition.

I think. 

Of the “major” awards, this seems to me to be the closest to call at the top end of the nominees.

Regrettably, let’s dispense with the three directors for whom being nominated is going to have to be honor enough.

Alexander Payne and, believe it or not, Martin Scorsese will not get a sniff at this award this year. Payne’s Nebraska was too small both in scope and at the box office. Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street was too polarizing. There simply are members of the Academy who will not vote for it.

I would love to see David O. Russell win. Two years in a row, Russell directed films have scored nominations for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actress and Supporting Actor. I don’t think that’s ever been done before… but I didn’t look it up. I loved American Hustle. It was, by far, my favorite of the movies nominated this year. I loved the comedy of the film. I cared about the characters. I thought it perfectly evoked the late 70s and early 80s and I had a great time watching it. But I don’t think Russell will win.

It comes down to Alfonso Cuarón and Steve McQueen. 

Cuarón’s Gravity was a remarkable technical achievement. It was unlike any other movie on-screen this year. With the slimest of scripts and the loosest of characterizations, it can be argued that Gravity succeeds primarily because of the direction of the movie. Cuarón had a vision and it’s hard not to argue that, without that vision, Gravity wouldn’t have been the incredible success it was. The challenge for Cuarón is that the Academy doesn’t usually recognize science fiction movies. Could this be the year that it does? James Camron couldn’t score a win with Avatar. Will Cuarón with Gravity?

Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave is the most “important” of the movies nominated. It’s Oscar bait. It’s a movie that had the “everyone should see it” tag from early on in its release. By all accounts, it is a beautiful look at a difficult subject. Affecting and disturbing, 12 Years a Slave is the kind of movie that the Academy loves to reward. But McQueen is black (this would be a first in the director category) and he’s British (this has to count against him, too).

So, assuming that the Academy feels that both of these films should have recognition, how will the votes go?

My guess, Cuarón will win for director. As mentioned above, Gravity really is a stunning visual achievement and that kind of work should be and likely will be recognized with an Oscar.

ALFONSO CUARON WINS BEST DIRECTOR

Best Actress Academy Awards 2014

 

The Academy should simply change the name of Best Actress in a Leading Role to the Meryl Streep Award for Best Actress, shouldn’t they? What higher praise could there be for Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchette, Judi Dench or Amy Adams?

Will Streep win again this year for her work in August: Osage County? I don’t believe she will. Though I’ve no doubt she was spectacular – I didn’t see the film – there doesn’t seem to be a lot of support for her this year. Perhaps this is because the movie was not even a modest hit, even with that spectacular cast. No award for Meryl. She will, however, be most gracious, I am sure.

I think the Academy is also unlikely to recognize Judi Dench for Philomena for similar reasons. Though this movie was more highly regarded and Dench’s performance very well received, the praise here seems split between Dench and writer/co-star Steve Coogan.  It’s more likely to win its prize in the writing category than here.

I though Sandra Bullock was much more impressive in Gravity (review HERE) than she was in her Oscar winning performance in The Blind Side a few years back. It is possible to argue that her performance in Gravity lifts the movie from being “Finding Nemo-in space with people instead of fish” to something far more affecting and deep. Caring about her is what takes the spectacle of Gravity and makes it personal, but I don’t think it’s enough to win.

Amy Adams joins David O. Russell’s cast of regulars in truly impressive fashion in the highly nominated American Hustle (review HERE). One of the many revelations of her in this role was just how sultry and sensual she was – an attribute not seen in many of her other roles. While she more than holds her own with Christian Bale and the rest of the all-stars, I cannot escape the feeling that American Hustle is going to be Academy’s bridesmaid this year… I think Adams will be left out of the winner’s circle.

That leaves the ever talented Cate Blanchette as our winner then, and it make sense. The Academy tends to protect its own. Woody Allen has had a rough year but supplied one of his best films in it and coaxed what is by-all-accounts a nuanced performance out of his leading lady. This award may be as much about her work as it is recognizing that Allen himself won’t have many more rides like this. In a very close race, Cate Blanchette will win.

CATE BLANCHETTE IS BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

American Hustle – A Movie Review

Photo from IMDB.com

American Hustle, the new film by David O. Russell, director of last year’s awards darling Silver Linings Playbook, sounds incredible! Literally, it sounds so very good. The music is at once cheesy and cool and plays the nostalgia card early and often, evoking in anyone who lived through the late 70s and early 80s a kind of emotional resonance with the movie’s characters.

This is precisely what Russell wants.

American Hustle is a complex movie. The twists of its plot are intentionally delivered in an unclear fashion as they unfold and the movie is turny enough to require voice-overs from multiple characters – a device which can weigh a movie down and break up its pacing. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen here and the voice-overs result in the audience gaining a deeper understanding of the film’s characters. Only during these voice-overs can the audience believe what the characters are saying. At all other times, they are not to be trusted.

That’s part of the fun of American Hustle. The audience can never be sure who is hustling whom.

People expecting a more grounded version of the Oceans movies are going to be disappointed, however. Those movies were built almost entirely around their labyrinthine plots. David O. Russell’s movies are built entirely upon characters and the actors who embody them. Russell has assembled a stunning cast for this one.

If you have seen a frame from previews for American Hustle you know that Christian Bale has undertaken another ridiculous transformation to play Irving Rosenfeld, a con artist who is the hub around which the other spokes of the movie spin. Bale is such a good actor, one wonders if it was necessary for him to put on a reported 45 pounds to inhabit the Rosenfeld, but who can argue with the process when it yields such amazing results? There isn’t a trace of Bruce Wayne in Bale’s performance. He is commanding as a man suddenly in over his head who is used to holding all the cards. I believed every moment Bale was onscreen. He made each of the other cast members better and when Irving is forced face-to-face with the human cost of his latest scheme, Bale makes us feel the character’s devastation. He should be nominated for his work here.

Amy Adams should, too. It may well work against her that she is ubiquitous these days, but Adams’ role as Rosenfeld’s partner and lover Sydney Prosser is every bit as arresting as Bale’s and, while Adams didn’t have to physically alter her appearance in the film, my bet is many men (and women for that matter) will never look at her the same way again. Adams’ Prosser can manipulate. She can cry. She can smolder in a manner we’ve not come to expect from Amy Adams. It’s a great part.

In fact, Adams and Bale are so great that Bradley Cooper’s performance as unbalance FBI agent Richie DiMaso never quite emerges from their shadows. Cooper is good, but, perhaps owning to the fact that the character he’s playing is fairly reprehensible, he doesn’t stand out here the way he did in last year’s Silver Linings Playbook. He’s engaging, but Bale and Adams seem to be in another class in this one. (So does Cooper’s Silver Linings co-star Jennifer Lawrence, by-the-way. I begin to wonder if there is any role she cannot play. As a supporting actress to Bale’s leading man, she is more than up to the task)

Jeremy Renner is strong. It’s his best performance since The Hurt Locker. Louis CK shows up and is nothing like one would expect, playing against type and drawing big laughs. There is also a powerful cameo which I won’t spoil, but I will say fits right into the tenor of the movie.

The character work – the masterful performances by the entire cast – is amazing. It’s so good that, at points in the film, one can fool oneself into thinking that these people are not actors, but real individuals that the camera has caught in some of the most terrible circumstances they could imagine. It’s pretty clear that’s what Russell wants the audience to feel.

That’s why the movie feels more character than plot driven. That’s why the resolution feels less than completely satisfying. This movie is a reflection of real life – a stylized, beautifully realized, not-at-all sentimentalized, 1970’s-sized reflection of real life. If that’s a disco to which you can dance, American Hustle is a terrific partner.

American Hustle receives 4 and a half pink foam hair rollers out of a possible five.

And There Came a Look at Select Academy Awards Nominations – Predicted Winner Best Director: David O. Russell

Somehow, the director who should win this award, in my opinion, wasn’t even nominated. In fact, three directors that most Oscar watchers thought were shoe-ins for nominations were left off the ballot. Kathryn Bigelow (for Zero Dark Thirty), Tom Hooper (for Les Miserables) and most egregiously Ben Affleck (for Argo) did not hear their names called when nominations for this year’s Academy Awards were announced. Bigelow has won the award. She captured it for The Hurt Locker in 2008 in what must have been victory made all the sweeter as she triumphed over her ex-husband James Cameron who was up for Avatar. Those folks voting for Best Director nominations could have had this fact in the backs of their minds when they chose to pass her over. Tom Hooper was the toast of the television awards season the same year for his brilliant John Adams. Then in 2010, his The King’s Speech was the most highly nominated film with 12 nods. It took home Best Picture and Hooper himself was named Best Director. Again, the voters remembered and shut Hooper out this year for a nomination for Les Miserables. As surprising as this omission was, it doesn’t come close to the shock that Ben Affleck’s lack of a nomination for Argo has inspired in industry watchers. Argo has secured most of the major awards – including Best Director awards for Affleck – this season leading up to the big night. And yet, no Academy Award nomination for Affleck. It’s inexplicable.

So, with these players off the table, this category comes down to two choices, and it’s going to be close. Steven Spielberg for Lincoln and David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook.

I’m going with Russell.

That his cast (Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Jacki Weaver and Robert DeNiro) were all nominated for acting awards (a feat not seen since Warren Beatty’s Reds in 1981) says quite a lot about the direction Russell provided. So does the fact that Beatty won the 1981 Best Director statue. The Academy likes Russell, having nominated him for Best Director for 2010’s The Fighter. He’s got a great chance to win.

Silver Linings Playbook is the kind of movie that sometimes rubs me the wrong way. Billed as a complex romantic comedy and something of an independent project, it could have turned me off had Russell decided to take it in a darker direction that is implied as a possibility throughout the film. Word is that Russell, in point of fact, shot many key scenes multiple times with different shading and outcomes so that he could cut together the movie he wanted in post production. I loved the movie he came up with for its realism, its sharp characterizations and its heart.

He gets all that he can out of his actors, and their nominations are proof of this. He creates a version of Philadelphia that makes one feel like they took a trip to the city as they watched the film and the city itself – and its storied football team – become characters in their own right. Russell somehow manages to corral wacky comedian Chris Tucker into an affecting role (great choice for Tucker’s career) and keeps all the various plot elements (a ballroom dance competition, the Eagles 2008 season, mental illness and visits to therapists, book making, father and son dynamics, hopeless pursuit of lost love, etc) distinct and clear. Silver Linings Playbook is a movie that unfolds from early tension to conclude with pure joy. That’s something of an impressive arc.

Can Russell beat Spielberg, his only real competition for the Academy Award? I don’t know, but I think he deserves to!

And There Came A Look at Selected Academy Award Nominations – Movies I Don’t Think Will Win

There are three movies that I LOVED – all three of which I am looking forward to owning when they come out on Blu Ray – that are nominated for Best Picture that just aren’t going to win. I am betting on an upset this year in the Best Picture category. Though the director of the film I think will win isn’t nominated himself, I still think it will triumph over the early favorite in this category, which is complete Oscar bait, and deserves to be, but is fading as we come around the last turn towards the ceremony. Any of the three movies I am writing about could win. None will.

LES MISERABLES – I have loved this musical since the first time I saw it. So enamored was I that I delved into the unabridged source material and found that the characters more numerous, the themes more deeply explored and the story more complex. But the magic of the play – which I contend is utterly captured in the movie – is that the audience feels every emotion coursing through Jean Valjean, the protagonist whose epic, decades long journey to understanding that “to love another person is to see the face of God” is the backbone of the film. Tom Hooper (not nominated for Best Director) elicits amazing energy from the cast as they sing in the most stripped down performances in a movie musical that I have ever seen. Word was, when the film premiered, that recording actors on set singing their parts and using that as the actual vocal track had never been done before. That proved to be wrong, it has been twice done, but neither film in which the technique was attempted is particularly memorable today. Les Miserables will age well. It will be hailed a classic, and rightly so. The film moves one to sing, moves one to thought and moves one to tears. It surely earned the right to be included in the nominees this year and, if I had a stack of Blu Rays of all the Best Picture selections it would definitely be the … second… film I watched!

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK – I love a good romantic comedy, but audiences are seldom blessed with a great one. Silver Linings Playbook is a GREAT romantic comedy for many, many reasons. David O. Russell, nominated for Best Director, has assembled and lead such an incredible cast that all four of the main actors were nominated for Academy Awards (this hasn’t happened since The Cinnamon Girl’s favorite movie, Reds, in 1981!). The movie takes a potentially downer of a subject – mental illness in many, many forms – and treats it with dignity and a sweetness that was surprising. The movie felt real and the characters authentic. Russell does a terrific job inspiring his audience to root for his characters at the movie’s conclusion while maintaining an appropriate level of suspense. I honestly didn’t know how the movie was going to work out, and I cannot say that about the majority of romantic comedies I see. Finally, Silver Linings Playbook has one of my most favorite lines captured on film in this or any other year and, if it wasn’t so profane, I would make it my ringtone. When Bradley Cooper’s Pat Solitano finishes reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, he has a definite reaction to the novel’s conclusion. It’s a terrific moment in a terrific movie.

LINCOLN – It’s a Steven Spielberg movie. It stars Daniel Day-Lewis. Its screenplay was based on a Pulitzer winning biography. It’s so real that the ticking of Lincoln’s pocket watch was actually recorded from Lincoln’s actual pocket watch! It’s a brilliant film. Engaging, charming and surprisingly funny (Lincoln’s anecdote about Ethan Allen and George Washington’s portrait is one of the funniest moments in any movie I saw this year), Lincoln is corrected lauded as being so brilliant, one almost feels as if he or she has stepped back in time to the Civil War era and has caught up with a behind-the-scenes tour of the Lincoln White House.  I rank political thrillers as one of my most favorite movie genres and I didn’t know I was going to get one when I saw Lincoln. I knew it would be brilliant. I knew I would be amazed. I didn’t know how thrilling watching the president and his team work to pass the 13^th Amendment would be. Day-Lewis is some kind of time-traveling Lincoln clone. Sally Field, as I’ve mentioned before, is in her best form in years. The rest of the supporting cast is equally brilliant (and it is great to see Gloria Reuben again!). Perhaps my most favorite thing about the movie is Lincoln’s relationship with William Seward, his Secretary of State. David Strathairn,  one of my all time favorites, play Seward and he and Day-Lewis seem well suited. The friendship they suggest – forged in the crucible (Day-Lewis pun alert) of the times – undergirds the entire movie. Those who’ve had The Cinnamon Girl’s class or know their history know why Seward wasn’t present at Lincoln’s deathbed. More’s the pity that the film couldn’t have been three hours longer to spend more time on this character and this relationship. I could have watched five more reels of Lincoln and still have been asking for more.