To put a cap on it, here’s the final tally of HE’s Best Films of 2013 (but only numbering twelve): (1) Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street — the year’s finest film and the most audacious Fall-of-the-Roman-Empire metaphor flick of all time; (2) Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave; (3) Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis; (4) Spike Jonze‘s Her; (5) Jean Marc Vallee‘s Dallas Buyer’s Club; (6) J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost; (7) Abdellatif Kechiche‘s Blue Is The Warmest Color; (8) David O. Russell‘s American Hustle; (9) Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity; (10) Asghar Farhadi‘s The Past; (11). Richard Linklater‘s Before Midnight; and (12) Noah Baumbach‘s Frances Ha. Add Shane Carruth‘s Upstream Color for an even 13.
It takes a while for Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil and Hollywood Reporter award-season columnist Scott Feinberg to mention Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street as a late-to-the-table but formidable Best Picture contender, which of course it is. (Isn’t it?) Feinberg is still predicting 12 Years A Slave to win and O’Neil is still betting on Gravity. Minor complaint: Feinberg’s voice sounds a little bit murky.
Earlier today (Sunday, 12.8) Deadline posted an “Oscars q & a” between Pete Hammond and Gravity star Sandra Bullock, and out of this came a curious admission by Bullock. Without making a big deal out of it and with no prompting by Hammond, Bullock said that Gravity “was supposed to be an amusement ride for the viewer.”
This strikes me as a classic “obiter dicta” bomb, or words in passing that give the game away.
We all have different reasons for deciding that a given film deserves a Best Picture Oscar, but usually they have something to do with a presumption of serious (or at least semi-serious) artful intent on some level, as a reflection or condensation of life as we know it, rendered with a certain poignance or social resonance and particularly with the viewer being touched or moved or turned around by it.
The Los Angeles Film Critics Association has given its Best Picture prize to both Gravity and Her — a little weird but okay. Obviously the soft consensus voters went for Gravity while those with more particular passions went for Her. Nebraska‘s Bruce Dern won for Best Actor. The Best Actress decision was a tie between Blue Jasmine‘s Cate Blanchett and Blue Is The Warmest Color‘s Adele Exarchopoulos. Gravity‘s Alfonso Cuaron was named Best Director. (Runner-up is Her‘s Spike Jonze.) Best Supporting Actor was/is also a tie between Spring Breakers‘ James Franco and Dallas Buyers Club‘s Jared Leto. Slave‘s Lupita Nyong’o has won the Best Supporting Actress prize. (Runner-up: Nebraska‘s June Squibb.) LAFCA’s Best Screenplay award has gone to Before Midnight‘s Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. Blue Is The Warmest Color was named Best Foreign Language Film.
12:01 pm Pacific: 12 Years A Slave has won the Boston Film Critics Society’s Best Picture award. Boston Globe critic Ty Burr is suggesting that Paramount/Allied screwed up by not screening Wolf of Wall Street for Boston critics sooner — roughly a third of the voting body missed the one last-minute Beantown screening. In the view of Boston Phoenix critic Brett Michel, “Paramount completely fucked The Wolf of Wall Street here in Boston. Because five people in the [BSFC] room today couldn’t make it to Friday’s 11th-hour screening, Marty’s film was doomed to come in second in no less than five(!) categories: best picture, director, actor (DiCaprio), screenplay (Terrence Winter) and editing.”
11:46 am Pacific: 12 Years A Slave‘s Steve McQueen has won the Boston Film Critics Society’s Best Director award. Which means Slave has the Best Picture award in the bag or…?
11:32 am Pacific: The Boston Film Critics Society has handed its Best Actor award to 12 Years A Slave‘s Chiwetel Ejiofor, and its Best Actress award to Blue Jasmine‘s Cate Blanchett. The late James Gandolfini has won the Best Supporting Actor trophy for his performance in Enough Said — a nice respectful gesture but why? JG was tender and vulnerable in Nicole Holofcener‘s film, but are you telling me he delivered a more affecting performance than Jared Leto in Dallas Buyer’s Club or Jonah Hill in The Wolf of Wall Street? Nebraska‘s June Squibb was won the BFCS award for Best Supporting Actress.
It’s time once again to apply Howard Hawks’ definition of a quality-level film to this year’s Best Picture contenders. A good movie, said Hawks, is one that has “three great scenes and no bad ones.” It shouldn’t be too much to ask that a Best Picture Oscar winner should live up to this, right?
John Wayne and Angie Dickinson conferring with Mr. Hawks on the 1959 set of Rio Bravo.
In my first Hawks criteria piece, I wrote that “great scenes are ones that you can’t forget because they’ve sunk in or hit a solid crack note of some kind. They deliver some kind of bedrock, put-it-in-the-bank observation about life or human behavior or just the way things usually are, and when they’re over you always say to yourself, ‘Wow, that worked.'” So let’s review a few Best Picture contenders and see if they cut the mustard.
Best Picture contender: The Wolf of Wall Street. Three great scenes?: Yes, but more in the realm of over-the-top bravura scenes as Wolf is a dark fantasia of corruption and venality, and not, you know, a straight-from-the-shoulder “drama” in the business of conveying fundamental human truths. The Leonardo DiCaprio-Matthew McConaughey chest-thump lunch scene. The Leo gives a pep talk to the Stratton-Oakmont troops scene (“Pick up the phone”). The Leo chats with the FBI guy (Kyle Chandler) on the yacht scene. The quaalude meltdown scene. The yacht-nearly-sinks-at-sea scene. How many is that? Wolf is one engine-rev scene after another.
I got a call earlier today from a smart movie guy, and he knows this phantom-like Oscar oddsmaker…a kind of consultant who sees everything and talks to a lot of Academy members and probably wears pricey suits but who shuns the spotlight and doesn’t give his phone number out. The guy funnels his information to…you tell me, maybe exhibitors or gambling operations or whomever. The point is that my movie pal says this guy, whom he’s known for years, has been “Nate Silver-like” and even “spookily accurate” in predicting Oscar winners. And this fucking guy (i.e., the phantom) is saying, believe it or not, that Saving Mr. Banks is going to take the Best Picture Oscar and that Emma Thompson, portrayer of P.L. Travers, is going to win for Best Actress.
Aarrrgghhhh!
I asked if I could speak to this guy and so my friend made the call right away, but the guy hasn’t responded so far. I laughed loudly and feigned shock when he dropped the bomb. “It’s the Driving Miss Daisy syndrome!,” I groaned. “Daisy, The King’s Speech, Argo…always the least offensive, most mild-mannered film with a poignant little emotional tug and the least amount of baggage. Plus it’s Hollywood factory-friendly. The sugarcoat syndrome wins out in the end and the artist goes home in frustration and the movie is a hit.”
To the surprise of at least some in the awards-handicap racket, the National Board of Review has handed its Best Film award to Spike Jonze‘s delicate and affecting Her, and awarded Jonze as Best Director. This is a very welcome thing as Her has so far been simmering at best among the Guru-roovies and the Gold Derby-ites. I’ve never felt such rapport with or respect for the National Board of Review as I do right now. Give me a few days and I’ll revert to my default position of not thinking much of this group, but for now they’re very cool.
A guy who was right in the thick of today’s New York Film Critics Circle balloting (which took almost five hours to complete) shares the following: “For four ballots the Best Picture vote was essentially a tie between American Hustle and 12 Years A Slave, and then Hustle finally won in a run-off vote against Slave. So it basically took five ballots. (N.Y. Post critic Lou Lumenick reports it actually took six ballots, although one of these was “disqualified on a technicality.”)
Inside Llewyn Davis was a contender all day long but it didn’t have the votes. At least it did better than The Wolf of Wall Street, which didn’t compete vigorously in any category.
“The Best Supporting Actress vote went on for three ballots, and was a very close match between Hustle‘s Jennifer Lawrence and 12 Years A Slave‘s Lupita N’yongo. Nebraska‘s June Squibb was in there but not very strongly.
“The Best Director voting went intially for Steve McQueen, David O’Russell, Alfonso Cuaron and the Coen brothers but McQueen and Russell were very close with the most support…and then McQueen took it on the fourth ballot.
“There was no strong challenge against Cate Blanchett for Best Actress although there was some support for Adele “whatsername” (i.e., Exarchopoulos) and Hustle‘s Amy Adams.
“Robert Redford‘s Best Actor trophy was decided on a second ballot. The bulk of the first-ballot votes went to Redford and Slave‘s Chiweitel Ejiofor. A certain level of support was also there for Oscar Isaac, Bruce Dern and Matthew McConaughey.
In an interview with HitFix/In Contention‘s Kris Tapley, dp Emmanuel Lubezski praises Gravity‘s Alfonso Curaon and To The Wonder‘s Terrence Malick as directors who “don’t use cinematography as an illustration to text,” Lubezki says. “I would say 99 percent of the directors don’t know the value or don’t know the power of visual storytelling,” he explains. “[But] for Alfonso and Terry, cinematography and visuals are not a branch, are not a part of the movie, but are the movie — as important as the actor, as important as the location, as important as the music.”
And yet any honest person who’s kept up with Malick since his return to filmmaking 15 years ago (and who has contemplated the three Malick films shot by Lubezki — The New World, The Tree of Life and Into The Wonder) would have to admit that Malick has all but destroyed his once-potent mystique because he’s placed too much emphasis on the purely visual. He doesn’t give enough consideration to script and dialogue matters, and seems to have more or less abandoned conventional narrative. This plus his now-customary prolonged fiddle-faddling in post-production has fed a growing notion that Malick is a gifted but flaky eccentric — i.e., Mr. Wackadoodle.
If I don’t fall for Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street when I see it this Friday I’ll be flabbergasted, so let’s just assume it’ll have some prominent position among HE’s revised Best Films of 2013 (features and docs, merit alone, in this order, forget award season for now), and probably among the top five: 1. Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave; 2. Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis; 3. Spike Jonze‘s Her; 4. Jean Marc Vallee‘s Dallas Buyer’s Club; 5. J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost; 6. Abdellatif Kechiche‘s Blue Is The Warmest Color; 7. Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity; 8. Asghar Farhadi‘s The Past; 9. Richard Linklater‘s Before Midnight; 10. Noah Baumbach‘s Frances Ha; 11. Morgan Neville‘s 20 Feet From Stardom; 12. Ryan Coogler‘s Fruitvale Station; 13. Steven Soderbergh‘s Behind The Candelabra; 14. Paul Greengrass‘s Captain Phillips; 15. Jeff Nichols‘ Mud; 16. Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska; 17. Nicole Holfocener‘s Enough Said; 18. Ziad Doueiri‘s The Attack; 19. Destin Daniel Cretton‘s Short Term 12; 20. Shane Carruth‘s Upstream Color; 21. Gabriela Cowperthwaite‘s Blackfish; 22. John Lee Hancock‘s Saving Mr. Banks; 23. Ron Howard‘s Rush; 24. Henry Alex Rubin‘s Disconnect; 25. Greg ‘Freddy’ Camalier‘s Muscle Shoals; 26. Dror Moreh‘s The Gatekeepers.
If The Social Network had been made three years later and released two weeks ago, it would be the hands-down favorite to win the Best Picture Oscar right now. It would be the quality alternative that the 12 Years A Slave crowd could transfer their allegiance to if they felt the tectonic plates shifting, and which the Gravity softies could respect and probably vote for at the end of the day. I watched this clip again because (a) I love it, (b) I wanted to re-assess Dakota Johnson in lieu of her forthcoming 50 Shades of Grey role, and (c) I was wondering if Justin Timberlake will ever seem quite so charismatic or play another scene as good. Luck might not be with him — you can never be sure. This might be his all-time Hollywood peak right here.
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