If I Picked the Winners: Best Picture 1956

     After spending seven weeks covering the major categories of the most recent Academy Award nominations, I thought I would mix things up a bit by going retro this week, so I picked the first Best Picture category in which I saw all of the nominees: 1956. Don't ask me why 1956 was the first year in which I saw all the Best Picture nominees, because I'm not quite sure myself. 1956 was well before my time (it is even before my parents time), and it's not like these movies are all that famous or well-regarded either. In fact, as you are about to learn in a moment (assuming you read this article all the way through), I'm not too keen on any of these movies. It would be hard for me to stand in front of you and, with a straight face, seriously argue for the merits of any one of these as "Best Picture worthy".

     Over the ten or so editions of this article that I have written, I have had to make some excruciatingly tough ranking decisions due to the high quality of the contenders. For instance, how can anyone really decide between Jack Nicholson's characteristically eccentric performance in "As Good as It Gets" and Dustin Hoffman's savant political guru in "Wag the Dog"? Or to bring up a more recent example, the decision to put Mark Ruffalo's laid back sperm-donor father ahead of Christian Bale's crack addict Dickey Eklund is one that I still have my serious doubts about. This week turned out to be just as tough as some of these previous examples, but for a much different reason. This time, the task was to try separate the miniscule differences between boring mediocrity and sub-par work. It's a much different process (and much less fun), but no easier nonetheless.

     The category does serve the purpose though of illustrating why I consistently consider the 1950's to be the worst decade in cinema history. There were some exciting things going on in the world of cinema in foreign countries, but for the American studio system, it doesn't get much uglier. At a time where the studios felt extremely threatened by the new, up-and-coming media known as television, they seem fixated on the idea that the only way to beat TV was to make everything BIG! Whether it be gimmicks such as CinemaScope, 3-D films (something that has unfortunately been resurrected), or the regrettable Smell-O-Vision (I don't know who thought that was a good idea), or simply the self-consciously over-the-top, scenery chewing madness that many actors embraced in the predictably "heavy" plots of the typical melodramatic awards fare, it is all too apparent that "subtlety" was not in the vocabulary of anyone working in Hollywood during the 1950's.

     Right on cue, the year of 1956 is a prime example of everything that was wrong with movies at this time. Each of the nominated films I am about to cover at least partially contains something symptomatic of a dying system that was grasping at straws, frantically doing whatever it could to tread water and keep its head afloat. Even outside of these five nominated films, there isn't much to speak of from the films of 1956 which I have seen. The only American film from the year that comes to mind as something praiseworthy is John Ford's "The Searchers", and even for foreign films the only thing I have seen that is of considerable merit is the Japanese film "The Burmese Harp". Hopefully, there are more films which I have yet to see that will come up big at the plate, but of what I have seen so far (and these five films especially), 1956 is a year best forgotten in the cinema history books. However reluctantly though, on to the countdown.... ?

News: R.I.P Elizabeth Taylor

     Today came the sad news of the death of movie icon Elizabeth Taylor due to complications from a heart condition. The actress, who started out in the business as a child in films such as "Lassie Come Home" and "National Velvet", went on to receive a total of five Best Actress Oscar nominations including two victories ("Butterfield 8" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf"), as well as an honorary Oscar for the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her contributions to AIDS awareness. She was also notoriously famous for her plethora of marriages and relationships (8 marriages in total I think), including her most infamous marriage to Eddie Fisher, who she had stolen away from Debbie Reynolds, only to leave him for Richard Burton not long afterwards. In the later part of her life she might have been most famous for being a close confidant of Michael Jackson, and supposedly his death took a great toll on her psyche. As an actress, I personally wouldn't put her up with the heavyweights of the previous era like Katherine Hepburn or Bette Davis (although I have not seen either of her Oscar-winning performances), but she had her moments. Out of her work that I have seen, I am more of a fan of her earlier performances, such as in the original "Father of the Bride" (a great movie) and "A Place in the Sun" (an overrated film, but her performance still stands out nonetheless). The timing of the news is a bit ironic for me, because I am currently in the middle of writing the next edition of "If I Picked the Winners", which happens to include one of her more famous films (I should post it sometime tomorrow night). I really hope this isn't the start of some curse for the articles, because if this is the case, I think I'll have to discontinue the series. Anyway, if you want to read and see (via clips) a retrospective on Ms. Taylor's career, check out this interesting piece at The Guardian by clicking here.

News: Aronofsky Leaves "The Wolverine"

     You may have heard the news yesterday, but in case you missed it, Darren Aronofsky (who most recently received his first Oscar nomination for "Black Swan") left what was to be his next directing gig, "The Wolverine", a prequel to the X-Men series that was going to study chronicle some of the character's early years in Japan. The film is going to star Hugh Jackman (the man who has brought the comic book character to life in all his on-screen appearances) and the buzz on street about the script is very positive, but for now the film has no director. The reason behind Aronofsky's departure is somewhat unclear. The official press release from Aronofsky said that he wanted to "spend more time with his family", and could not be out of the country for about a year (the film is going to be mostly shot in Japan). He is in the middle of divorce proceedings with his wife, actress Rachel Weiz, and in order to do better in the custody battle over their child it has been said that he needed to stay in the states. Today though, contrary rumors have surfaced that he split over creative differences. After "Black Swan"'s success with multiple Oscar nominations, Aronofsky was apparently feeling his oats, and demanded complete and total creative control over the film (the sort of control that Christopher Nolan has over the Batman films). According to the rumor, the studio than offered Aronofsky more money in an attempt to satisfy his ego, but money was not something that Aronofsky was interested in. After this, Fox told him walk, as they where unwilling to completely hand over the reigns of the comic book series to the independent director.

    If this is true, I find it incredibly disappointing. If one thing has been proven true time and time again in the world of cinema, it's that truly great films only occur when the person with the artistic vision is allowed to implement things the way that they see it (of course, someone with a blog called auteurfan would think that). It is true that films without much studio input where total creative freedom is given to the director can also be enormous flops, and given what must be a large budget for "The Wolverine", I can't say I am to surprised to hear that the studio is antsy about letting go of the reins, but films made by committee will always produce safe, conservative mediocre films that will make the usual blockbuster money, but won't reach the heights of culturally relevant films such as "The Dark Knight" and "Avatar". If you read the article I linked to about the sad state of the Hollywood studio system (it's under the news story, "A System in Shambles"), this news is yet another tragic example of the lethargy that has set in Tinseltown. I don't know if it will ever be fixed, but until the studios are willing to bet more on artistic talent, I'm afraid we will have to settle for the usual formulaic slop we have been getting for the last decade or so.

If I Picked the Winners: Best Actress 2010

     I finally conclude my 2010 Oscar coverage with a ranking of this year's Academy Award nominees for Best Actress. With the dearth of well-written roles for woman over the last few decades, Best Actress commonly isn't the star-studded affair it use to be when you had the likes of Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Olivia De Havilland, and Ingrid Bergman competing for the Oscar. Also, the movie's from which the Best Actress nominees come from a far more typically smaller, lesser known films than the one's their leading male counterparts are nominated for. In fact, over the last twenty years, only three Best Pictures winners have also won the Oscar for Best Actress ("The Silence of the Lambs", "Shakespeare in Love", and "Million Dollar Baby"), and seven times the winner of the category came from a film that wasn't even nominated for Best Picture. Leading up to this nominations, the buzz on the street was how robust this year's Best Actress category was. As the awards season came into clear view though, a lot of the pre-proclaimed "award worthy" performances didn't pan out, and while it still was an above-par year compared to recent award seasons, we still ended up with three nominees from movies very little people actually saw, and two from movies that were not apart of the Best Picture race.

     For my own personal nominees ballot, there are not a lot of names that jump out begging for replacing of the actual nominees with one great exception: Lesley Manville in "Another Year". Of course, as I have stated before, the likely reason for her absence from being included in Oscar's big party is category confusion. It was hard for many people to decide whether she belonged in the Best Supporting Actress category, or as a lead in the Best Actress category, and her lackluster campaign did really get a clear message across as to which category people should vote for her. Her role in the film is a genuinely tough one to categorize, but had I been able to vote, I think I would have included her as a Best Actress nominee. It really is a shame she was not included in one of the two categories though, because she gave the best performance of any female this year. The only other performance that I might have included instead of some of the other nominees is Julianne Moore in "The Kids Are All Right". While the woman who played her partner was nominated, Annette Bening (who did give the better performance in my opinion), a large part of the film was about the interaction between the two ladies, so it would have been fitting for both of them to have received nominations. Getting two lead nominations from the same film though is an extremely rare occurrence, so it was not too surprising only one of them received a Best Actress nomination. Enough speculating about the "could of"s and "should of"s, let's get on to the actual nominees.

News: A System in Shambles

     This week came the news that Universal declined to green-light the James Cameron-produced and Guillermo Del Toro-written-and-directed adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft novel "At the Mountains of Madness". The movie had a reported $150 million budget and, this is the key, was to be rated R. The R-rating pretty much guaranteed that, despite the big names attached to the film (including Tom Cruise as one of the film's stars), it would not get made. While I am not particularly a big fan of Del Toro's (I found "Pan's Labyrinth" to be extremely overrated) it saddens me to see an original passion project such as this not see the light of day. Unfortunately, it speaks to the state of a stagnant, decaying system that fails to take any gambles on original work. This is especially the case for any filmmakers interested in making a big-budget rated R film, as Gore Verbinski found out trying to adapt the excellent video game "Bioshock" into an R-rated film.

     The news of Del Toro's smashed dreams did lead to one positive creative outburst though, a fantastic article I happened to stumble across that sums up to current situation which has left us with a sea of generic PG-rated family fare and typical PG-13 crap. The author of article, Drew McWeeny, succinctly details the state of the industry and the frustrations I feel with it better than I ever could hope to, perfectly nailing the complex causes of Hollywood's bloated rotting corpse. If you're at all frustrated with the total lack of originality and overall crappy value of most movies today coming from the studios, I highly recommend you read it by clicking here. In response to the authors open ended questions that conclude the article, I don't really have any great answers either. The only thing I can say that we can do to even begin to address the sad state of cinema we found ourselves in (for major studio releases), is to take responsibility of what we see as filmgoers. This means that we can not continue to see sequels out of obligation just because we have seen the originals. If it looks like a cash ploy, it probably is, so skip it and send the studio a message we don't want more sequels. This also means taking more chances on original movies, even if it doesn't look like your typical cup of tea. If you see a movie that is not a sequel or some carbon cut-out formulaic romp, give a chance, even if you have your doubts. This may not sound like much, but it's a start, and at last you'll feel like you're backing new and adventurous cinema.

If I Picked the Winners: Best Original Screenplay 2010

     Continuing my wrap up of the 2010 Oscar season, this week I rank this year's Best Original Screenplay category. An "original" screenplay has became a rare species in Hollywood these days. 2011 will reportedly be filled with more sequels, remakes, and spin-offs than any other year in cinema history. I believe the statistic I read somewhere stated that one in every four movies will be based on some previous cinematic material, although it may have been one in five. Either way, that's way to much rehashing than we need right now at cinemas. The things is, unfortunately, even when a film is not strictly a sequel, remake, or spin-off, it more times than not follows some predictable Hollywood formula that they must keep around in their back offices. True originality is probably an abstraction that doesn't really exist, but I think they can do a little better than what we are getting right now. Anyway, I'll stop the diatribe and get back on point. The Best Original Screenplay category is often an interesting one that can typically contain more films out of left field than your average category. Many times, a challenging film well regarded by critics and cinematistas, but far from the main stream manages to squeeze in a lone Oscar nomination in this category. In the past decade or so, this includes films such as "The Royal Tenenbaums", "Memento", "Dirty Pretty Things", "The Squid and the Whale", "Lars and the Real Girl", "In Bruges", and this year, "Another Year". Overall, this year's group isn't that bad, as there aren't that many alternatives that I personally would have substituted. The one major change that I would have preferred is the inclusion of the screenplay for "Black Swan". I would put ahead of a few of the nominees that actually made it, and it seemed like it had a decent shot at the nomination, but it didn't work out in the end, so I will just have to deal with the nominees given. On to the ranking.

Top 10 of 2010 and Top 5 Anticipated of 2011

     I know it is a little late to be doing a Top 10 of the year (since these lists are typically made around the end of the year), but since I didn't have the privilege of attending any film festivals or living in a city that gets early releases on the year's biggest awards films, I decided to wait to the end of the Oscar season before making my Top 10 of 2010. Even so, there are a group of films I would have liked to have seen before making the list ("Four Lions", "Somewhere", "Buitiful", and "Exit Through the Gift Shop" to name a few), but I felt I could not let the time tick into July before making this list. Overall, if I where to grade the year in cinema that was 2010, I would give it a B-. There were definitely some good movies, but the film had its fair share of disappointments as well. Even films I liked, such as "True Grit" and "Inception", the latter of which (spoiler alert!) made my Top 10, just did not meet my lofty expectations. As a reviewer, there was no film which I would give a perfect 10 (although the number 1 film would be extremely close), and only five films that I would give a 9. Compare that to last year, where "Inglorous Basterds" would have received the mark of perfection from me, and about 13 other films would have gotten a 9, and this year was definitely somewhat of a let down. 2009 though was well above par, and to expect every year to match it in quality is a bit of unrealistic expectations on my part. This year's ten best films are still a decent list of films as you will see, and in particular, the year's best film (which will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog), will be remembered as a classic for years to come.

     Now since I have written about some of these films ad nauseum, due to their status as Oscar competitors, I have run out of new words to say about them. For that reason, for the films that I have covered in depth with reviews and summaries of their award worthiness, I will use previously written summaries to express my love for the film. So while reading this, if you get the strong sense of deja vu, don't be alarmed, you have probably read this before. For some of this year's great films that were criminally ignored by the awards season, I will be writing new summaries to try to convince you to see them if you haven't already.

     This article isn't exclusively about looking back though, as after chronicling my favorite ten film's from last year, I will peer into the future and look at my five most anticipated films of 2011. If you read a lot of film websites or trade papers, chances are that you will have heard of these films, but if your not as savvy a film-goer then you have some interesting surprises awaiting you. At this point, 2011 looks to have some decent films from some big name auteurs, but that is usually the case every year. The question is how many of these films will really deliver on their promise. Hopefully, if enough of them can live up to the hype, and throw a few good under-the-radar surprises, and 2011 will shape up to be a fine year indeed. That's enough speculation for now though (I'll leave that up to the oil markets), it's time to countdown last year's ten best films.