Best Director
Steven Spielberg - Lincoln
David O. Russell - Silver Linings Playbook
Ang Lee - Life of Pi
Benh Zeitlin - Beasts of the Southern Wild
Michael Haneke - Amour
Best Adapted Screenplay
Argo - Chris Terrio
Beasts of the Southern Wild - Lucy Altibar & Benh Zeitlin
Life of Pi - David Magee
Lincoln - Tony Kushner
Silver Linings Playbook - David O. Russell
Best Original Screenplay
Amour - Michael Haneke
Django Unchained - Quentin Tarantino
Moonrise Kingdom - Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola
Zero Dark Thirty - Mark Boal
Flight - John Gatins
Best Director
This years nominees for Best Director are for the most part very well-known names in the movie-industry. Steven Spielberg, one feels, has been around since the real Abraham Lincoln was the President of the U.S., and both Michael Haneke and Ang Lee have been household names for a long time. David O. Russell has also been producing and directing since the 90´s, but before his critically acclaimed The Fighter (Oscar-nominated in 2011) he´s probably best known for Three Kings (1999).
Benh Zeitlin however, has never directed a feature film before, and his Beasts of the Southern Wild is an outsider for this years 85th annual Academy Awards.
What do I think? Speaking of the directors, I´ll say that for me Ang Lee, Spielberg and Zeitlin are the favorites. I had high hopes for Amour, but I was left disappointed overall by the movie. It had its moments, but this was not Haneke´s best work (however, Emmanuelle Riva made the movie one to watch anyway). The story has potential, but to me too much emphasis was put on making half the scenes twice as long as they needed to be for the point to be made.
Lincoln is, to me, a more challenging film to direct then Amour, and Spielberg does an excellent job. Where Haneke relies on the challenges of capturing the audience with scenes from within one apartment, Spielberg has the disadvantage/advantage of a much more varied scenery in telling his story. Some of the scenes are beautiful, as one of the scenes showing Lincoln riding a horse through the battlefields in the aftermath of the civil war. Ang Lee did a brilliant job making Life of Pi, and even though I wasn´t completely sold on the movie itself, the directing was masterful. That CGI-tiger was cute as hell! The scenes with rough weather was also made very believable for the most part.
When it comes to Zeitlin´s Beasts of the Southern Wild, it´s impossible not to give the guy credit for directing a film with the cast he did. We´re talking about actors of very little or no experience at all, and they all did an amazing job. A lot has been said about 9-year old Quvenzhané Wallis, (and I´ll get back to that when I´ll discuss other categories in a later post), but I really enjoyed the other cast-members as well. A lot of great scenes, and a very beautiful movie, despite a few aspects that I didn´t really love (giant hogs...). David O. Russell did a great job on Silver Linings Playbook as well, though I feel this is more the kind of movie that can win for Screenplay, not director.
Trailers for the movies:
Amour
Lincoln
Life of Pi
Silver Linings Playbook
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Best Adapted Screenplay
The five nominees for Best adapted screenplay are all strong contenders, with Silver Linings Playbook, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Life of Pi and Lincoln all seeming like movies that could win. David O. Russell wrote the screenplay for Silver Linings Playbook, a movie I´ve watched three times already, and I think he does a brilliant job with the timing of the humour in the movie. To me this movie and Beasts of the Southern Wild, co-written by the director Bein Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar, stands out as the two "roses" of the bunch.
Life of Pi is wonderfully adapted to screenplay by David Magee, and let´s face it... making that story "filmable" was never going to be an easy thing to do. But if Ang Lee managed to do it (and he did), the assist for that goal should definitely go to David Magee. Now for the two movies based on real life events, Argo (written by Chris Terrio) and Lincoln (written by Tony Kushner). While the former is a sharp, to-the-point screenplay on the plan to save hostages life in a very hostile Iran in the 70s, the latter takes on the period of Lincoln´s presidency related to the abolishment of slavery. I think Argo might be a favorite here, and I personally wouldn´t cringe if Argo or Silver Linings Playbook won the award. I´d say Argo and Beasts of the Southern Wild might be the two nominees I probably think will win it, though.
Argo
Best Original Screenplay
As I´ve said earlier, Amour (Michael Haneke wrote the screenplay as well) didn´t really impress me much. I won´t say that maybe it was due to high expectations. It just wasn´t a great movie, I thought. The theme of the movie is interesting, but I didn´t feel the story was that great... and at times, not very believable either. Flight, written by John Gatins, gave us a Denzel Washington doing what he does best. Act his ass off. And he was great. Again. It also brought us another memorable performance by the ridicilously cool John Goodman. The story is also intriguing, and it has it´s twists and turns (cue Family Guy scene with Stewie talking about Brian´s novel). The opening 30 minutes is actually amazing. I loved it. I truly did. It´s an outsider, but I do think it will fall short of one of the movies I consider the favorite nominees, namely Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino) and Zero Dark Thirty (Mark Boal).
Django Unchained is about as Tarantino as you can get. The dialogue, the scenery, the characters. I´ll never forget the scene where the blood of a man gunned down on a horse hits those white flowers. It reminded me of the fighting-scene in the snow in Kill Bill Vol. 1. And it is beautiful. Zero Dark Thirty has received a lot of criticism for it´s torture scenes, but the screenplay is nevertheless still probably one of the better of the nominees. Still, I´d go Django Unchained in this category.
The last nominee, Moonrise Kingdom written by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola, is a cute movie, and very classic Wes Anderson. However, I find the movie in its whole a bit... too much Anderson. It all gets a bit... meeh. Had the Oscars gone all Golden Globe and put the movie as a "Comedy or Musical", then maybe, but I wouldn´t hold this screenplay over any of the other nominees.. Don´t get me wrong. I did enjoy the movie, but I still think Wes Anderson tries a little bit to much to create cheesy, funny shit. And too much cheese is never good. Never.
Moonrise Kingdom
Flight
Django Unchained
Zero Dark Thirty
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