Oscar Noms and Predictions

It seems that things have changed this year during award season as the Academy Award nominations were announced before the Golden Globes were handed out. Usually, the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards are the indicators over which films and actors will get nominated for the nude, golden man named Oscar. Once again, I will predict the winners and moan over who got snubbed by the Academy.

Best Supporting Actress:
Amy Adams - The Master
Sally Field - Lincoln
Anne Hathaway - Les Miserables
Helen Hunt - The Sessions
Jacki Weaver - Silver Linings Playbook

Predicted Winner: Anne Hathaway may win for her performance in Les Miserables since she has won almost every award in the past month, as well as praise for her role as Fantine.

Personal Favorites: Sally Field could be a surprise winner since she gave a praise-worthy performance as Mary Todd Lincoln, yet she already has two Oscars under her belt. Also, I think Amy Adams should win for her surprisingly provocative and audacious performance as Peggy Dodd in The Master; under her sugary exterior is a woman who lusts for power.

Best Supporting Actor:
Alan Arkin - Argo
Robert De Niro - Silver Linings Playbook
Philip Seymour Hoffman - The Master
Tommy Lee Jones - Lincoln
Christoph Waltz- Django Unchained

Predicted Winner: This is a difficult choice since every actor already has an Oscar and each of them have given excellent performances this past year. Waltz was funny and flamboyant in Django Unchained, yet he's been sweeping the awards this past month, with the exception of the Critics' Choice Award. Hoffman received praise at the Venice Film Festival and Critics' Choice Award emulating Orson Welles in The Master. De Niro's role as an OCD bookie in Silver Linings Playbook was the first great performance he has given in the last fifteen years. Jones gave a dignified and subtle performance as Thaddeus Stevens in Lincoln. As for Alan Arkin, he managed to bring the laughs amidst the suspenseful Argo as a characture to every major Hollywood producer.

Small Rant: Despite the great performances given this past year in the Supporting Actor category, it would have been nice to see Javier Bardem get a nod for his role as Silvo in Skyfall, or Dwight Henry as the ailing father to Hushpuppy in Beasts of the Southern Wild.  

Best Actress:
Jessica Chastain - Zero Dark Thirty
Jennifer Lawrence - Silver Linigns Playbook
Emmanuelle Riva- Amour
Quvenzhane Wallis - Beasts of the Southern Wild
Naomi Watts - The Impossible

Predicted Winner: It is neck to neck between Chastain and Lawarence as they both gave stand out performances. Jennifer Lawrence emulated Gena Rowlands with a twist of sexiness as Tiffany in Silver Linings Playbook. However, Jessica Chastain's performance as Maya in Zero Dark Thirty is nothing short of a triumph as you feel her determination and weariness over the ten year hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Say what you will about the film praising torture, it is a raw look at the insanity that is the War on Terror.

Best Actor:
Bradley Cooper - Silver Linings Playbook
Daniel-Day Lewis - Lincoln
Hugh Jackman - Les Miserables
Joaquin Phoenix -The Master
Denzel Washington- Flight

Predicted Winner: Daniel Day Lewis has this category under his thumb since he has received Best Actor awards from the Golden Globes and Critics' Choice Awards leading to the conclusion that he could get Oscar number three for his triumphant role as Honest Abe. However, Joaquin Phoenix's role as Freddie Quell is provocative and wild in The Master, as he portrays a boozed and sex-crazed WWII veteran drifting aimlessly around the country. Either way, I would be surprised if any of the other nominees would beat Day-Lewis or Phoenix. When will there be another tie? It's been 45 years, Academy, spread the gold around!

Best Director:
Michael Haneke - Amour
Ang Lee - Life of Pi
David O. Russell- Silver Linings Playbook
Stephen Spielberg - Lincoln
Benh Zietlin - Beasts of the Southern Wild

This category is the crowning stool in the septic tank! I am pulling my hair out and scratching my head over the idiocy of the Academy snubbing Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow for Best Director nominations, and I'm not alone if you consider Ben Affleck's acceptance speech for Best Director at the Critics' Choice  Awards. The only director I'm rooting for in this category is Benh Zietlin for his brilliant directorial debut, Beasts of the Southern Wild. However, the Academy likes to play safe and will probably honor Spielberg for Best Director for the third time since Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List, despite the fact that it is not his best film.

Best Picture:
Amour
Argo
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Django Unchained
Les Miserables
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty

Best Picture: Argo or Zero Dark Thirty. Both were snubbed in the Best Director category, yet both films were the best films of the previous year. I would be hard pressed to see either one of these films getting passed over. If that's the case, the Oscars can, in the words of Alan Arkin, "Argo screw themselves!"    
          

Silver Linings Playbook

Leonard Cohen once wrote, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” In his new film, Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell focuses on the process of finding the light through the eyes of two people living on the edges of sanity. Pat is a former history teacher, recently discharged from a mental institution and living with his football fanatic father and mother. His mood swings and pining over his ex-wife are subdued when he comes across someone as equally unhinged as him. Enter Tiffany, a young widow who finds solace in sex and dancing and manages to strike a roller-coaster of a friendship with Pat. There unhinged emotions and attitude are a match made in Freudian heaven as they express their mental wounds through dancing and non-filtered dialogue.

David O. Russell is no stranger to looking at dysfunctional families if you look at his previous work; from the incestuous Spanking the Monkey, the existential I (Heart) Huckabees, and the Oedipal boxing match that is The Fighter. In Silver Linings Playbook, he combines the raw, mentally straining look at working-class families in a similar manner that John Cassavetes did with A Woman Under the Influence. Russell’s dialogue, based on Matthew Quick’s novel, is raw, funny, and poignant and is expressed by a brilliant cast.

Bradley Cooper gives an incredible performance as Pat as his emotions bob and weave through every breath of dialogue and idiosyncratic movement, which is a sigh of relief after the slew of unbearable films he has worked on in the past three years. Jennifer Lawrence is a hybrid of Audrey Hepburn and Gena Rowlands as she delivers an unforgettable performance as Tiffany. Only 22, she has managed to deliver a slew of amazing performances from Winter’s Bone to The Hunger Games. Robert De Niro gives his best performance in almost twenty years as Pat’s father, a Philadelphia Eagles fan who tries to bond with his son.

In addition to the leading actors, the supporting cast was equally superb. John Ortiz (Jack Goes Boating) is funny and charming as Pat’s heartfelt friend who confides in Pat over the frustration of his marriage. Chris Tucker gives an unforgettable performance as Danny, Pat’s friend from the mental institution, who adds the humor amidst the bleakness in Pat’s life. Despite the film ending as an atypical romantic-comedy, it is the performances by Cooper, Lawrence, and De Niro that make Silver Linings Playbook a pleasure to watch.                

Three out of Four Stars 

Zero Dark Thirty

Four out of Four Stars

On May 2^nd, 2011, President Obama and the CIA confirmed that Osama bin Laden was successfully terminated during Operation Geronimo, the raid orchestrated by Seal Team Six.  The CIA’s ceaseless attempts at tracking down Bin Laden and the raid on his Abbottabad compound is captured by Kathryn Bigelow in her latest film, Zero Dark Thirty. Based on the research conducted by screenwriter/journalist, Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty follows Maya (Jessica Chastain), a CIA operative and her decade long search for the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks.

 Despite the recent controversy the film has received by Senator John McCain and others over the dramatization of CIA’s use of torture to obtain information, it is necessary to see both sides of the ethical coin. As Neil Gaiman once wrote, “There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right.” The names of those involved in capturing Bin Laden are changed to protect their anonymity, despite the recent succession of books and first-hand accounts of Operation Geronimo.

Zero Dark Thirty is a film set in three acts: the CIA’s actions after 9/11, Maya’s obsession into tracking down Bin Laden despite the shadow of doubt by her superiors, and the raid on Bin Laden’s compound. Boal’s script and Bigelow’s vérité-styled camera leave you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end. Bigelow and Boal collaborated together on The Hurt Locker four years earlier by focusing on man’s obsession with war. In Zero Dark Thirty, Bigelow and Boal show war through the eyes of those behind the desk and on the front lines.

Jessica Chastain’s performance as Maya is astonishing as she gives a voice to the unknown operative involved in taking down Bin Laden. In the past two years, Chastain has delivered a succession of outstanding performances; from the lovable Celia Foote in The Help to the ethereal mother in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. Her performance in Zero Dark Thirty is intense and bold as it matches up with Jodie Foster’s performance in The Silence of the Lambs; it is, by far, the best performance of the year.

Zero Dark Thirty is not a guts-for-glory film like Rambo, or an anti-war tissue-grabber like Platoon; it is a neutral, yet suspenseful, view of global terrorism. The last thirty minutes of the film leaves you glued to the screen, but it’s the close-up on Chastain’s face that symbolizes the weariness of war and the uncertainty over the end of the War on Terror.