First 2014 Predicitons

For the films of 2014
Mister Tee
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Re: First 2014 Predicitons

Post by Mister Tee »

Sabin wrote:I guess the real question is do I need to know the difference between Mark Harris and Dave Karger?
Well, I'd say it's worth knowing the difference between a conventional-wisdom Oscar predictor like Karger and a solid writer like Harris, whose book Pictures at a Revolution most of us think is quite good, and whose more recent Five Came Back -- about the post-war careers of Capra/Ford/Wyler/Huston/Stevens -- was exceedingly well-reviewed. To me, it's like knowing the difference between the commentary here and what you get at Sasha Stone's site.

Harris is also Tony Kushner's husband, if that means anything to you.
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Re: First 2014 Predicitons

Post by Sabin »

I guess the real question is do I need to know the difference between Mark Harris and Dave Karger?
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Re: First 2014 Predicitons

Post by Mister Tee »

Sabin wrote: Forgive me, but wasn't Mark Harris one of those loyal The King's Speech Rex Reeds types who refused to let go of it throughout the Oscar season and it looked embarrassing...until he was 100% right? I could be totally wrong, but I think that was him.
I'd about bet the house you have him confused with Dave Karger, also formerly of EW. Though Harris writes about the Oscars regularly, he isn't a "new list every week" predictor: he predicts nominations and winners one time each, right before the announcements. So it's very unlikely he'd have done such a thing.

While it may be too soon to assume Imitation Game's Metacritic will stay as low as it is today (a dreary 67), it's more a stretch to say subsequent reviews are going to rocket it to King's Speech territory. Because we think of King's Speech as the film that knocked out critics' pet The Social Network (which got a stellar 95), we tend to think of it as some mediocrity -- but, in fact, it scored extremely well with critics, getting a would-have-looked-great-any-other-year 88 on Metacritic. What strikes me, looking at Imitation Game's page as it stands now, is the lack of enthusiasm -- its highest score is an 80. There may well be some higher scores to come, but you'd think someone from that initial group of responders would have put it in the 90s. King's Speech got 16 100's, some of them early on; it's hard to see Imitation Game matching that after such a slow start. I take Harris' point to be that we're lumping the film in with King's Speech because it seems the same TYPE movie, and overlooking the fact that Hooper's movie had a genuine base of excited viewers that hasn't as yet shown up for Imitation (or Theory of Everything -- and I do agree with Harris that the surface similarity between those two films suggests they could be one another's worst enemies during the awards run).

Because I was over at Metacritic, I decided to check on the recent run of best picture winners and found -- contrary to expectation -- almost all have been critics' favorites to a greater extent than I recalled (or than I'd have co-signed). Crash was the last sub-par choice (69 on Metacritic -- but would we agree that, for many, Crash was more a "No" vote on Brokeback than a huge endorsement?). Since then, the numbers read: The Departed 86, No Country for Old Men 91, Slumdog Millionaire 86, The Hurt Locker 94, The King's Speech 88, The Artist 89, Argo 86, 12 Years a Slave 97. All those films also finished within the top three at the NY Critics' voting (exception: The King's Speech -- I never found runners-up for 2010, so I can't say if it placed. But Firth did win best actor, so it may well have been in the running). All of which to say, the myth promoted on many of the Oscar sites -- that critics mean nothing, and anonymous rapturous responses at Academy screenings can negate them -- seems to be horse-pucky. The Academy votes for films it likes, but generally they're films critics like, too.

I do, though, BJ, agree with you that Cumberbatch -- very clearly loved in many industry quarters (see: Emmys) -- could take the best actor prize without his film running the table. Right this moment, I can imagine a pitched three-way battle for best actor among Cumberbatch, Redmayne and Keaton (with Cooper perhaps to join them). I only hope the televised awards don't take the juice out of the race the way they did last year.

And my take on Whiplash is exactly yours: I hear enormous enthusiasm for it in certain quarters (enthusiasm that baffles me), and would be on the lookout for it to aggress into major categories...but at the same time can't imagine it doing that while performing as poorly commercially as it has. It's already down to about $5000 per screen at under 50 theatres (Birdman, by comparison, is averaging $28,000 in the same), and isn't even close to a million in earnings. Beasts of the Southern Wild -- the most recent precedent for Sundance/best picture contender -- had nearly $13 million in grosses; I don't see how Whiplash approaches that. None of this is fatal to Simmons' supporting actor campaign -- Christopher Plummer and Jim Broadbent have shown you can win that category with miniscule earnings -- but the screenplay/director/film nominations people have been murmuring about would seem to require more broad popularity.
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Re: First 2014 Predicitons

Post by Big Magilla »

He's right in his assessment of the know-nothings' dismissal of past winners, but I'm not sure he's got his X's and Y's lined up correctly in this year's race.

The bloggers' early favorite was (is?) Unbroken, not because anyone thinks the unproven Angelina Jolie is going to turn out to be a female David Lean, but because the subject matter is Oscar friendly World War II rah-rah stuff. The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything are both warm, fuzzy Oscar friendly movies in the same vein. All are still among those most frequently cited as Oscar front-runners along with Boyhood and Birdman which are the leading critics' darlings that Academy members may not embrace as enthusiastically.

Sabin is correct that it is too early to compare the Metacritic scores of The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything to The King's Speech as the reviews are far from all in yet. By the time the nominations roll around the big X movie could be American Sniper and the big Y movie could be Into the Woods, though I'm more optimistic about the former than the latter.

One thing's for sure, though. After it's all over there will be loud hues and cries over something or another being "robbed".
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Re: First 2014 Predicitons

Post by Sabin »

Good essay, but Mark Harris is being absurd by using metacritic averages as a reason to slant The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything as pale imitations of The King's Speech. Forgive me, but wasn't Mark Harris one of those loyal The King's Speech Rex Reeds types who refused to let go of it throughout the Oscar season and it looked embarrassing...until he was 100% right? I could be totally wrong, but I think that was him. The reason I bring that up is the Metacritic scores for The King's Speech may be way stronger than The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything. That's largely because the latter two films haven't been released.

The King's Speech's critic's reviews currently stand at: Positive: 39 out of 41, Mixed: 2 out of 41, Negative: 0.

The Imitation Game's critic's reviews stand at: Positive: 6 out of 10, Mixed: 4 out of 10, Negative: 0, and The Theory of Everything's critic's reviews currently stand at Positive: 6 out of 9, Mixed: 3 out of 9, Negative: 0. Once thirty more people view each film, I'm going to say that The Imitation Game will hover around 85 and The Theory of Everything will be around 80. Maybe flop them. I haven't seen either film but that's not a convincing argument that The Imitation Game can't be the same exact kind of unexceptional Oscar hit that The King's Speech was.
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Re: First 2014 Predicitons

Post by The Original BJ »

Harris very accurately pinpoints what can be obnoxious about what might you call "How Green Was My Valley syndrome," the process by which movies get unnecessarily trashed simply because they ended up the winner over something else. In terms of my personal taste, I may prefer Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction, Fargo, and L.A. Confidential, but the ways in which Dances With Wolves, Forrest Gump, The English Patient, and Titanic -- movies which all brought me some kind of pleasure -- have just been dragged through the mud since their Oscar wins seems indicative of a film culture that reductively boils everything down to a competition, and seems to want very few different types of movies out there in the marketplace. Obviously, your personal mileage on those movies may vary, but I think we can agree that the increasingly competitive nature of the awards circus (i.e. the way a lot of folks on the Internet so quickly whip out their knives to defend their favorites, even sight-unseen favorites!) isn't always the healthiest for a film culture that should at least conceivably value some variety among the film works we deem worthy.

To this year: I'm not entirely sure I agree with Harris's comment that there's no Statement choice, that there's no win that would right a wrong. He lumps The Imitation Game in with The King's Speech -- perhaps not wrongly, I haven't seen it -- but any recognition for that movie surely would qualify as recognition in the Academy's eyes as making some kind of amends for the way Brokeback Mountain got knocked off its perch. Not saying that means it's the Best Picture winner -- as Harris cites, early reviews seem a bit lukewarm for that -- but that amends-factor definitely seems like it could be part of the back-patting narrative of a potential Best Actor run for Cumberbatch.

Harris also brings up an interesting point re: Whiplash, and that's the curious fact that it doesn't seem to be doing that well at the box office. Folks in my industry circles adore the thing, and it seems like the kind of crowd-pleasing effort that should really be exciting audiences, but a bunch of other indies out right now are raking in a lot more. At some point do we think it will start to build, or is this a sign of disconnect between, say, the young men who write about movies on the Internet, and wider audiences? (I assume a movie like this would pretty much have to be considered a box office success to make the level of Oscar run many think it will.)
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Re: First 2014 Predicitons

Post by Mister Tee »

By me, all Mark Harris columns on the Oscars are must-reading, but this one in particular I thought everyone should see:

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospect ... ure-crash/

Harris talks about a good many of the things we've dealt with in the historical threads, including the fact that current film talk is dominated by men (he specifies, younger men), and how that, despite its reflecting my taste more than generic Academy choices, creates its own limited perspective.

I agree with him that the year's output so far is failing to fall into the neat divides that the Academy's harshest critics seem to prefer. Those who assume Oscar will always choose something limp (those who, in short, ignore No Country for Old Men, The Hurt Locker and 12 Years a Slave) are trying to promote The Imitation Game into more than it appears to actually be (they have Harvey Weinstein's assistance in that goal), or else assuming a priori that Unbroken is going to come along and sweep away all competition. On the other side of the ledger, it's hard to find anything sure-to-be-robbed -- Boyhood is narratively different from mainstream films, but has struck enough of a chord emotionally that it's not out of the question as a winner (Jeff Wells has already exiled it to his "softy" bin, which shows you what an idiot he continues to be). Birdman too has its arty side, but it's also theatre-set, and, as Nathaniel at Film Experience reminds me, films with such backgrounds have often done way better than expected with the Academy (All That Jazz, The Dresser, Bullets over Broadway and Shakespeare in Love all far out-performed my presumptions). Grand Budapest Hotel has Anderson's usual idiosyncrasies, but it affectingly captures the change in mid-20th century Europe, a long-time favorite subject of Academy oldsters.

And who knows what to expect of the as-yet-unwrapped? As Harris indicates, Into the Woods being a musical removes it instantly from "cool" status, but, onstage, at least, it was a fairly dark or anyway dark-ish piece. And American Sniper or A Most Violent Year could go any number of ways. The acting races may be starting to sort themselves out a bit (I'd be willing to make minor wagers on best actress or supporting actor), but best film remains exceedingly murky.
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Re: First 2014 Predicitons

Post by anonymous1980 »

ITALIANO wrote:I don't know anything about Guardians of the Galaxy except that... IT WILL NOT BE NOMINATED AS BEST PICTURE. Not this year, not next year, not in ten years. I mean, honestly - not with that title, come on...
I think the Globes could nominate it in the Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy category.

In a few months' time, Birdman will probably be the closest thing to a Best Picture-nominated superhero movie.
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Re: First 2014 Predicitons

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Mister Tee wrote
Sabin, what has you so convinced Guardians will romp in the tech categories? Doesn't BJ's observation, that other Marvel movies (some of which have been as well-reviewed and nearly as successful) have fallen so short in that department. give you pause?
I mixed up my math a little bit. I think it's going to run the gamut of nominations in the precursor guilds, but on Oscar morning it's likely just going to end up nominated for Best Makeup, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Effects, and Best Visual Effects. It's possible it misses out on Best Sound Mixing. A nomination for Best Production Design is in the cards. So, I think it's very likely it ends up as Marvel's most nominated film to date but because of its likely heavy precursor showing before nominations the lack of recognition for Marvel films is going to get brought up quite a bit. Before Guardians of the Galaxy, I didn't care. I enjoyed a few of them but none of them struck me as anything great. I'm wholly on the Guardians of the Galaxy bandwagon. I can't imagine a lot of people on this board enjoying it but I really don't care.
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Re: First 2014 Predicitons

Post by OscarGuy »

Thanks, Peter, for that.

I enjoyed the hell out of it. A Best Picture nominee it's not. The X-Men and Captain America films were superior and Edge of Tomorrow was also better. There's plenty of more competent sci-fi and more relevant superhero films in the marketplace this year. Guardians may be fun, but it doesn't have any weighty introspection and isn't the box office behemoth of say Avatar or Star Wars, the two films most easily compared to Guardians. That it has its roots in Troma doesn't give it much of an assist.

For all its likely flaws, at least Christopher Nolan's fans see something deep and resonant in his pictures. I don't always agree (I thought Dark Knight Rises, while pretty good, paled in comparison to The Dark Knight and was a cumbersome spectacle not helped by its overburdened slate of villains), but he has enough fans to give him the benefit of the doubt. However, I've heard more raves out of Variety lately than I ever expected to. I'd take Justin Chang's reviews with a grain of salt. Matter of fact, I'd say the trades (Hollywood Reporter and Variety) have taken a turn towards bandwagoning of late. I'd like to see what Manohla Dargis thinks before I get to excited about "ecstatic" trade reviews.
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Re: First 2014 Predicitons

Post by Okri »

Whereas I think Nolan will likely miss out on a best director nomination explicitly to piss of the internets.

Okay, not really for that reason.
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Re: First 2014 Predicitons

Post by Big Magilla »

I had to look up Guardians of the Galaxy on IMDb. to figure out what you guys are talking about. I had no interest in seeing this film before and have none now. It sounds like something aimed at third graders. I suspect the majority of Academy members are of the same mind. Interstellar, on the other hand, has been high on everyone's "can't wait" list all year long. The reviews are mostly mixed to positive with the mixed more positive than negative. It will surely be nominated in the majority of the technical categories. Writing and direction depend on how high profile the film remains after the first weekend and how the still unseen big guns compare. Best Picture in a field of 9 or 10 is still more likely than not.
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Re: First 2014 Predicitons

Post by Sonic Youth »

Not with any title.

ETA: If, however, someone wants to make the argument that it could be nominated, District 9 may be the closest analogy rather than Jaws, etc.
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Re: First 2014 Predicitons

Post by ITALIANO »

I don't know anything about Guardians of the Galaxy except that... IT WILL NOT BE NOMINATED AS BEST PICTURE. Not this year, not next year, not in ten years. I mean, honestly - not with that title, come on...
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Re: First 2014 Predicitons

Post by Mister Tee »

I think we're into the annual "this summer movie got great reviews and made money/why not best picture?" debate, which always ignores one significant fact: critics grade summer movies on a major curve. Expectations are so low from (now) April to August that anything halfway amusing can get hats thrown in the air. This doesn't mean critics would give the same response if the same film were being thrown at them as an awards contender in October-December. Expecting a movie like Guardians to seriously figure in the best picture race is not understanding the separate tracks on which critics rate entertainments and "real" movies.

Citing movies like Jaws and ET is missing the point for two reasons: 1) those movies (ET, especially) got exponentially stronger reviews than Guardians of the Galaxy and 2) in that distant era, there was an assumption -- based on years of history -- that the year's highest-grossing films ought to be viewed as among the best. The Spielberg/Lucas assault on box-office records challenged that assumption (look up my long post on Spielberg's Oscar history for an account of how it happened), and the many years of summer crud that have followed have made the divorce complete. Academy voters are happy to have popular films in the mix -- they loved having Gravity, they were even content with The Help. But if they're seeking audience-endorsed films this year, they're more likely to go for Gone Girl or Interstellar, which have the guise of grown-up-ness attached; they show no inclination these days to nominate film (esp. comic book films) for financial reasons alone.

Sabin, what has you so convinced Guardians will romp in the tech categories? Doesn't BJ's observation, that other Marvel movies (some of which have been as well-reviewed and nearly as successful) have fallen so short in that department. give you pause?
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