comment #1

MickTravis says ...

I think if anybody gets bumped off the list it'll be Scott. Smooth as "Gangster" is, it does absolutely nothing -- zero -- that hasn't already been done better. Repeatedly.

McCandless burned his money, so not having a map seems like a natural next-step to free falling.

Speaking of which, the destruction of money -- whether it's in "The Killing" or "Charley Varrick" or any modern movie -- is a motif that drives me absolutely crazy. The only exception I have to that personality quirk is "Broadway Danny Rose," but other than that I can't stand it.

comment #2

JaySmire says ...

Broadway Danny Rose is one of the most underappreciated films of the 1980's. I love everything about that film!

Is it me or did Wells forget to mention the Coen Brother's in his DGA noms piece. Is there a way they could "not" get nominated?

I think this year is shaping up to be too good to have crappy noms. This is the first year in many I feel there's room for six.

comment #3

gruver1 says ...

Wells to Travis: I went to see "American Gangster" again in Harvard Square a few nights ago -- my third time -- and man, is that film is solid and full-bodied and sharply tuned! What a rich and throbbing canvas, tense and absorbing every beat and step of the way. I believed every last minute of it. What a great feast of early 1970s New York.

comment #4

Alan Cerny says ...

Thing is, I feel that Penn's film allows for room to think that McCandless was an idiot for not having a map and planning ahead. I left INTO THE WILD thinking that Penn's message was, "It's a wonderful world out there to see and explore, but it doesn't mean a damn thing if you can't share it with people." I never thought Penn was trying to make a martyr out of the guy. He left a lot of upset people behind.

comment #5

gruver1 says ...

Wells to Jay Smire: The Coen Brothers will almost certainly win the Best Director Oscar for "No Country for Old Men"...90% chance, I'd say. They'll be nominated for dead sure. I was responding only to what Poland wrote in that one graph.

comment #6

MickTravis says ...

I respected but didn't really get into it -- I liked Crowe, but felt the film glorified Washington's character.

Preferences aside, in terms of the list being discussed, I just think Scott is the one most likely to be axed. I think voters will, months after the fact, remember it as just *another* 2+ hour crime movie. But that could just be me.

comment #7

JD says ...

It is my feeling (and I know I'm not alone) that American Gangster is second-tier Ridley Scott. It doesn't help that Blade Runner -- his one, hands-down masterpiece -- was re-released at the same time.

Also, if the director's guild has any credibility whatsoever, they have to include David Fincher for Zodiac. If it hadn't been released so early in the year, it seems like it could very well be the Ridley Scott Black Hawk Down Oscar nomination this year (ie. not necessarily the kind of film that gets nominations typically, but a directorial effort of such ambition and achievement that it simply cannot be ignored).

comment #8

Mr. Muckle says ...

Well Jeff, here's the deal. No matter how completely you give yourself over to civilization's values in order to survive, you're not going to survive anyway. Instead, there's a good chance you'll perish with a shriveled soul that knows about nothing but the ways and manipulations of money and the various suffocating worldviews that trouble us all the livelong life and die with us anyway.

When you come out of the cinema back into the lights, the experience you just had belongs to you, and you don't let anyone dissuade you from your evaluation of it, do you? How much more then, after dying, will the values you embraced accrue to you while the opinions of others won't mean squat. Just so, no one else can say what the dead shall have gained by living.

Besides, civilization is only an ATTEMPT at creating order. Actually, it is and always will be chaos. The wise see this and have little to do with it.

comment #9

JaySmire says ...

Every year one director who should get a nomination either from the DGA or Academy gets left off. Who is it this year? I say Burton gets robbed in both camps.

comment #10

MAGGA says ...

I did not lift an eyebrow watching American ganster. Nothing surprised or impressed me, I simple felt like I was re-watching something that was not quite memorable enough for me to place where I had seen it. To my surprise the end credits said that the cop became a defence attorney and defended the guy he spent all those years chasing. The movie gave me no reason to believe he would do that, but that part of history would have made a better story in my view.

comment #11

p.Vice says ...

Anderson
Coens
Schnabel
Lumet
Penn

It would be great to see Fincher in there but considering that A) he's got the above competition, and B) the movie is on track for zilcho nominations, it ain't gonna happen.

comment #12

insidah says ...

Juno a best pic candidate? Why, oh why? God, why? Freaks and Geeks - the unaired episode in which lead chick gets preggers.

comment #13

Craig Kennedy says ...

I'm with Mick and JD on Gangster. It was ok, but too slick by half. But then that's Ridley in a nutshell.

A more interesting Oscar question isn't which directors will be left out, it's which directors get nominated without a BP nom. I'm voting for There Will Be Blood.

comment #14

Sean says ...

I enjoyed 'Juno', but if that gets nominated for Best Picture, they have to go back and nominate 'Napoleon Dynamite' too. That way, the Oscars can just merge with the MTV Movie Awards, which is what Juno *should* win.

Most years, 'Little Miss Sunshine' would be the movie that should've been nominated, but because it got nominated last year, and managed to convince a lot of otherwise sensible people that it could win, now we're seeing 'Juno' as a possible nomination. Any one of us could name ten movies which would be more legitimate nominations than 'Juno' (I would argue that even 'Superbad' is more appropriate).

comment #15

Silverscreenvideos says ...

I'm Not There will take its Cate Blanchett nomination and that's that. The directors won't go on a limb for this.

American Gangster is solid film making but it's not Scott's best and the film is just a cut below the rest of what's out there. It's tempting to compare it to last year's The Departed (same general crime theme and actor/directorial level) but it's a very good movie, not a year's best.

Anderson should make it, the Coens will make it, Lumet will make the Director's awards if not the Oscars, I'm guessing Tim Burton will get a nod as much to show up the yahoos who are shunning the movie as anything else, and the fifth probably goes to Schnabel.