Oscar Watch 2005 - pre-awards discussion (1 Viewer)

[Vickie_M]

Here's a list of winners for the Critics Choice Awards.

Broadcast Film Critics (Critics Choice Awards)
January 9, 2006

Best Ensemble: Crash
Best Family Film: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
Best Documentary: March of the Penguins
Best Young Actor: Freddie Highmore for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Best Young Actress: Dakota Fanning for War of the Worlds
Best Screenplay: Paul Haggis Robert Moresco for Crash
Best Supporting Actress: (tie) Amy Adams for Junebug, and Michelle Williams for Brokeback Mountain
Best Foreign Language film: Kung Fu Hustle
Best Animated Feature: Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Distinguished Award in Performing Arts: King Kong
Best Soundtrack: Walk The Line
Best Composer: John Williams for Memoirs of a Geisha
Best Song: "Hustle & Flow" Al Kapone and Terrence Howard
Best Comedy: The 40 Year-Old Virgin
Best Supporting Actor: Paul Giamatti for Cinderella Man
Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote
Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon for Walk The Line
Best Director: Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain
Best Picture: Brokeback Mountain

 

[Jose Martinez]

or as Oscarwatch.com puts it: The Chronic-what?cles Of Narnia

I just love that song/video from SNL!!!

 

[Sam Davatchi]

Or as I call it , Nanamanamania!

 

[Kristian]

The films in consideration for the Sound Editing and Makeup categories at the Oscars have been announced:

Makeup

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Cinderella Man
A History of Violence
The New World
The Libertine
Mrs. Henderson Presents
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

Sound Editing

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
King Kong
Memoirs of a Geisha
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
Walk the Line
War of the Worlds

 

[Vickie_M]

It's been announced that an Honorary Oscar will go to...

ROBERT ALTMAN!


Belatedly, thank you for those lists Kristian. The Makeup people have been watching their screeners I see. Mrs. Henderson Presents? The Libertine? A History of Violence? The New World? I'm in awe. The only one I've seen so far is AHoV, but that's only because the other 3 haven't opened in Chicago yet. Mrs H opens Friday. This is the group that gave Frida and Topsy Turvy the chance to be on the big stage.

Sound Editing is quite a bit more of what you'd expect.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

Congratulations to Robert Altman. While his films can be wildly varying in quality, when he's doing his best work there are few that come close to him. A deserving choice.

 

[Adam_S]

The ASC nominations are in, the big surprises are no Munich, no new world, but three other of the front runners made it:

Batman Begins - Wally Pfister

Brokeback Mountain - Rodrigo Prieto

Good Night and Good Luck - Robert Elswit

King Kong - Andrew Lesnie

Memoirs of a Geisha - Dion Beebe

This is a particularly huge nomination for Pfister, who has had very little professional recognition of his work. I'd love for him to get an oscar nomination. On the other hand, both Munich and New World could sneak into the Kong and Batman slots, especially if the academy groups reliably had all their screeners for quite a while, which was an especial problem with Munich.

 

[Eric Peterson]

I'm glad to see Altman get this award. The man has made some tremendous masterpieces that are not really recognized outside of the film community.

I recently watched "Nashville" & "The Long Goodbye" for the first time and both are still reverbating around in my head.

Congratulations.

 

[Ray Chuang]

Altman at his best can create some great "slice of life" films. Note that M*A*S*H, Nashville and The Player are excellent, well-liked movies. Mind you, I think he should have gotten the award at least 4-5 years ago, though.

 

[JayMAuritt]

When I walked out of the theater after watching "Raging Bull" I knew, without a doubt, that I had seen the Oscar winner for Best Actor that year...ditto when I saw "The Silence of the Lambs". And, this year, there is NO doubt in my mind that Philip Seymour Hoffman takes home the Oscar for "Capote", despite tough competition from Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix . He showed Jamie Foxx the difference between doing an impersonation and actual acting.

 

[Quentin]

Man, that is GREAT to see Pfister nominated.

 

[Jose Martinez]

Has anyone seen The White Countess by Merchant-Ivory? I can't believe this film is not up for any of the pre-Oscar awards. I just saw it today but it was shown late last year in some festivals. It is a beautiful film. Natasha Richardson is deserving of a nomination and Ralph Fiennes is even better than he was in The Constant Gardener. It's Merchant-Ivory's best film since The Remains of the Day.

 

[ChristopherBlig]

Makeup

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Cinderella Man
A History of Violence
The New World
The Libertine
Mrs. Henderson Presents
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

Sound Editing

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
King Kong
Memoirs of a Geisha
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
Walk the Line
War of the Worlds



For all these to be qualified all I can say is, WHAT, NO SIN CITY???? There's no cheating there!!!

 

[Vickie_M]

Jose, I saw it The White Countess a few weeks ago and agree with most of what you say. It's a beautiful-looking film and I'm shocked that it hasn't been in contention for things like Art Direction and Costumes, though the Art Directors Guild won't release their nominations until Tuesday. I still don't expect to see it on their list. It hasn't been on anyone else's. I don't understand why it's so off the awards season radar. I thought people loved Merchant/Ivory, and this was their last film. And it's beautiful. And good! I don't get it.

All I can figure is that Sony Pictures Classics put most of their resources into promoting Capote to the various voters, and didn't have much left over. They managed to get Amy Adams some attention for Junebug and Cillian Murphy a Golden Globe nomination for Breakfast On Pluto (my two favorite characters of the year, btw), but nothing for TWC. Such a shame.

 

[Adam_S]

The award-release arena has changed significantly in the small movie zone that Merchant Ivory was successful in ten and fifteen years ago. They just didn't do a good job promoting or selling the movie. They didn't put it in the prestige theatres in LA (instead funky/old art house theatres) and the only buzz anyone heard about the movie at all was that one of the makers died, not exactly the best thing if that's the biggest 'promotional' bit where people hear the name of your movie.

The weinstein company also dropped the ball big time. In a massively HUGE way on Mrs. Henderson Presents. Had they remained at Miramax (and had almost twice the operating capital they now have, though it would have been half of their peak from a few years ago) Mrs. Henderson Presents would probably be a frontrunner for best picture right now and people would be talking about Judy Dench upsetting Reese Witherspoon's lock for Erin Brockavich... errrr I mean Walk the Line. But apparently the Weinstein company doesn't have the cachet to get their film into the right theatres or promote the film in a big awards way, which is really unfortunate as its an absolutely charming film and far and away better than Chocolat or Cider House Rules (both of which I like, and own the latter).

Miramax was successful playing the dependent game under Buena Vista, and now the Weinstein company and Merchant Ivory and finding out that's the only game in town anymore.

 

[Seth Paxton]

I totally agree. I was very impressed with the overall dramatic arc of that film, and the ensemble of acting was great by any standard. I thought Caine was a legit S.Actor contender and Bale was hurt only by being in a very tough category even if you are in a "real" Oscar film.


I disagree with you on Chicago, that was a film I loved and do more every day.


I saw The Squid and the Whale and Brokeback today. BBMtn was strong, probably a top 5-10 for me but S&W impressed me more. I laughed plenty, it had great nuanced family problems in that Wes Anderson style (meaning goofy and yet subtext going at the same time), and they kept it shorter and tight.

Brokeback ran a little long to me, not enough dramatic tension in parts. I understand enjoying the lingering looks, but a few times I was like "why are we still watching, what's the problem?". GREAT cinematography, great directorial choices. The variety of shots from moment to moment and the unique beauty and applicable quality of each was pretty impressive.

I thought the script was only pretty good though. I greatly prefer the S&W script and its probably my favorite of the year. Linney and Daniels are outstanding too.


Great for Batman getting an ASC nod. The film production was so high there. I thought BB was far superior to King Kong myself (sorry Tino, I know you feel the opposite). The only thing I loved about KK was Kong himself, which was freaking amazing.


I think I can get Pride and Predjudice and Capote in before the GG's tomorrow night. Then Munich, Constant Gardener and Breakfast on Pluto later in the week.

 

[Ray Chuang]

It's going to be a very interesting race between Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote and Heath Ledger for Brokeback Mountain for the Best Actor Oscar, in my humble opinion. The reason is simple: both acting roles literally made the film so much better.

 

[ZacharyTait]

Golden Globe Winners!

Best Picture Drama
Brokeback Mountain

Best Actor, Drama
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote

Best Actress, Drama
Felicity Huffman, Transamerica

Best Picture, Musical/Comedy
Walk the Line

Best Actor, Musical/Comedy
Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line

Best Director
Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain

Best Original Song
"A Love That Will Never Grow Old" -- Brokeback Mountain
Music By: Gustavo Santaolalla
Lyrics By: Bernie Taupin

Best Original Score
John Williams - Memoirs Of A Geisha (Jeff Wells is going to bitch and moan about this one!)

Best Foreign Language Film
Paradise Now

Best Screenplay
Brokeback Mountain

Best Actress, Musical/Comedy
Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line

Best Supporting Actress
Rachel Weisz, Contant Gardener

Best Supporting Actor
George Clooney, Syriana

 

[Sam Davatchi]

I couldn't help but be a little sad for Spielberg not winning an award. It was also nice to see Peter Jackson just for a few seconds! Was he alone at the awards?

 

[Adam_S]

My number one Oscar prediction this year is that if Munich fails to secure major Oscar nominations (director, picture, screenplay, actor) critics will suddenly discover it's okay to like the film and within two years it'll be endlessly talked about as Spielberg's finest film (along with ad nauseum on the stupidity of the academy) and will enjoy much more critical acceptance worldwide and find itself the highest ranked Spielberg film on the 2012 Sight and Sound list (currently none of his films got more than four votes).


On the other hand, here are my predictions for best director and best picture:

Best Director:
George Clooney - Good Night and Good Luck
Paul Haggis - Crash
Ang Lee - Brokeback Mountain
Terrence Malick - The New World
Steven Spielberg - Munich
Wildcard - Bennett Miller for Capote

Best Picture:
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Crash
Good Night and Good Luck
Munich

Wildcard - Walk the Line

For a long time I thought Walk the Line a shoo-in for a nomination. BUUUUUUT I can't see many academy voters making it a top three choice. On the other hand, GNGL, is very likely to be in the top three of MANY voters, as is Brokeback especially. Walk the Line could squeak in to a nomination if Munich or Capote falls off from too few top/middling votes. But I think Brokeback, Crash, And GNGL will dominate number one votes with Munich taking a good chunk too. I don't see Capote or Walk the Line inspiring the passion of high ranking votes.

To recap for those confused:
The academy tallies nominees like so. Each person nominates five. The total number of ballots is found. Then ballots are sorted based on ONLY the number one vote on the ballot. Each film with more than 1/6 the total number of ballots is automatically given a nomination slot AND all of the ballots with that film as number-one are removed from further counting. Running totals of films that didn't get to 1/6 of the total are kept and the remaining ballots are resorted based on the number two votes, any film getting to the magic 1/6 number gets taken out, along with all its ballots and they move down to the number three slot. So if Munich takes about 550 #1 votes (about 10%) but then gets another 100 number two votes it still wouldn't make it. But then if it picks up 300 round three votes it's finally in.

The really interesting thing about this year is that there is such a clear frontrunner, with two very strong other films that they may leave comparatively few ballots for the remainder of the voting rounds.

Let's say Brokeback Mountain gets 45% of the total number one votes. Good Night and Good Luck gets 20 % of the votes.
Many of the votes for Capote (for example) may be number two and number three choices behind those two frontrunners, Capote may have comparatively few votes for those who vote for History of Violence, Munich, Crash and Walk the Line as their number one film.

Does anyone know if a second or third round vote goes to a film that already has 1/6 of the vote (and a nomination) if that vote is ignored or is the ballot added to the total and taken out of the later-round counts?

I'd love to see the nomination counts for a big year like 1993, I wonder what percentage of the academy put down Schindler's List as their number one film.



Adam