Another Academy Awards show is over, ending minutes ago. The top six awards were:
Best Picture: The King’s Speech Best Director: Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech Best Actress: Natalie Portman, Black Swan Best Actor: Colin Firth, The King’s Speech Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo, The Fighter Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, The Fighter
As for the show itself, several of your favorite newspapers and news sources will have articles about it tomorrow, but Entertainment Weekly already has something up. Overall, there were few surprises with the awards but the show had its moments, like Randy Newman’s acceptance speech and an appearance by Kirk Douglas. I liked that Steven Spielberg introduced the Best Picture nominees by reminding everyone of some of the great movies of the past that did not win the award (“Citizen Kane. . . Raging Bull!”). To paraphrase Director Peter Jackson, movies should not be made for winning the Oscars, they should be made for the audience. And now the awards are over and we can get back to focusing on the films.
What did you think of the 2011 Academy Awards telecast? What did you think of the hosts? Leave a comment.
Most commentators agree on predictions for the top awards at tomorrow night’s 2011 Academy Awards presentations. According to them, the Oscar goes to:
– Best Picture: The King’s Speech (with The Social Network in second); – Best Director: David Fincher for The Social Network, with Tom Hooper a close second for The King’s Speech; – Best Actress: Natalie Portman from Black Swan (with Annette Bening from The Kids Are All Right in second); – Best Actor: Colin Firth from The King’s Speech (with Jesse Eisenberg from The Social Network a distant second); – Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo for The Fighter, with Hailee Steinfeld for True Grit a close second. – Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale for The Fighter, with Geoffrey Rush for The King’s Speech a close second.
Anything outside these picks will be a big surprise, but surprises are always possible. The contested areas with close two-horse races are Best Director, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Supporting Actor Categories.
For a random sampling of predictions and other Oscar news around the Internet:
– For the three contested slots of Director/Supporting Actress/Supporting Actor, Roger Ebert opts for the non-Fighter leaders and is in the Hooper/Steinfeld/Rush category. While agreeing with the consensus on the other picks, he notes that if he were voting for Best Picture, he would opt for The Social Network even as he predicts The King’s Speech to win.
– Roger Ebert’s former TV co-host Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times goes a different route, opting for the Fincher/Leo/Bale combination. Also, he is one of the few who are still predicting The Social Network as the Best Picture, although he hedges his bets by saying it might be safer to go with The King’s Speech.
– Melenia Ryzik at The New York Times liked The Fighter and is in the Fincher/Leo/Bale category. Moviephone also liked The Fighter‘s supporting nominees and is in the Fincher/Leo/Bale category, as is Rick’s Predictions at Awards Wiz.
– Peter Hartlaub at the San Francisco Chronicle agrees, going with Fincher/Leo/Bale, although he thinks The Social Network will upset The King’s Speech.
– Gregory Ellwood at the HitFlix Blog bravely predicts a Fighter split with the Supporting Acting awards going to Steinfeld and Bale.
– Jeff Johnson over at Popdose also mixes it up a little bit, going with a Hooper/Leo/Bale combination, and The Best Picture Project agrees.
– Five critics at The Guardian UK differ among themselves, but with most saying the contested three categories will go to Fincher, Bale and . . . the country’s own Helena Bonham Carter for Best Supporting Actress (The King’s Speech)! Three of the five also pick The Social Network as Best Picture.
– For another take on the Ocars, Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street makes his predictions (Best Actor: “Colin Filth”).
– Cinematical has some interesting Oscar statistics. Did you know that the movie with the highest number of Oscars while winning 100% of nominated categories was The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) with 11 wins out of 11 nominations?
Among other big categories, the sure things seem to be Toy Story 3 for Best Animated Feature and The Social Network for Best Adapted Screenplay. The Best Documentary category seems to be a battle between Exit Through the Gift Shop and Inside Job. See Chimesfreedom’s previous post on an industry’s campaign against another Best Documentary nominee, Gasland.
Conclusion on the Big Awards? It is always tricky to predict the winners because you are not selecting the “Best” but who you think others will say is the “Best.” So Chimesfreedom will leave the predictions to others (but see related posts below for thoughts on some of the contenders). From our random sampling, it will be a big surprise if The King’s Speech does not get Best Picture or if Natalie Portman does not get Best Actress or if Colin Firth does not get Best Actor. The difference in the close races will depend on whether or not the voters completely loved The King’s Speech and how much they liked The Fighter, as The Fighter lovers are going for Fincher/Leo/Bale while The King’s Speech lovers opt for Hopper/Steinfeld/Rush.
But if predictions were always right, we would not need the awards show. So our prediction is simply that somewhere along the line, there will be a surprise or two.
There are movies like this week’s Oscar front-runner The King’s Speech (2010), where very early into the film, you know what it is and where it is going and you enjoy it from the first minutes. Then there are movies like Barney’s Version (2010), which slowly suck you into the story and then takes you in unexpected directions.
From the reviews and previews, I knew going in that the movie starred Paul Giamatti as the Barney in the title and had something to do with following his life through three marriages. IMDb describes the movie as a “picaresque and touching story” about “Barney Panofsky, a hard-drinking, cigar-smoking, foulmouthed 65-year old hockey fanatic and television producer, as he reflects on his life’s successes and (numerous) gaffes and failures.” And the movie starts off that way and I went along, because I always enjoy Giamatti. There were little surprises in the movie, some of which you discover early on, such as a police officer who thinks Giamatti committed a murder. But the real turning point in Barney’s Version, which is based on a novel by Mordecai Richler, comes nearer the end when the movie heads in a different direction in a way that happens in real life.
Like co-star Dustin Hoffman, Giamatti is always an interesting actor to watch. There are moments in many of his movies where I am blown away by his fine acting, such as in an ordinary scene in American Splendor where he is talking to one of the movie’s oddball characters in a car. Nothing special happens in the scene, but Giamatti is so comfortable in the character it blurs the line between acting and real life. Similarly, there is an emotional scene in Barney’s Version between Giamatti and Rosamund Pike, playing his third wife, that that is understated and cuts to the bone of reality. Although Giamatti was not nominated for an Oscar, he won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy for this performance.
I am not going to ruin the movie for you by saying anything more, and you should not expect a big twist ending, as the surprises are small scale. But if you are looking for a good smaller movie that is a character study after you have seen the big studio Oscar contenders, check out Barney’s Version, which is in theaters now.
What did you think of Barney’s Version? Leave a comment.
Last night, the special Jeopardy human-versus-machine match ended with Watson the computer defeating the Jeopardy human champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. In the two-game match, the winner was determined by who (or what) had the most money at the end. Watson easily won the first game and then won a closer second game to become champion. All of Watson’s money and 50% of the human competitors’ money went to charities.
Watson went on several runs where it looked invincible, but at other times it made mistakes. Certain types of questions that required a different type of thinking caused problems for Watson. For Final Jeopardy of the first game, the question asked for a U.S. city that has an airport named after a WWII hero and an airport named after a WWII battle. Watson said the U.S. city was Toronto, which is news to people in Canada.
Watson’s big advantage seemed to be its response time. Watson received the clues electronically through a different process than the humans. And it was able to time its responses perfectly so its buzzing was not too early, where it would be blocked, but still fast enough to beat the humans. Contestant Ken Jennings has noted this “big advantage” in Watson’s response time, but he was generous in concluding, “I wouldn’t call this unfair. . . precise timing just happens to be one thing computers are better at than we humans.” I still think the humans should challenge the fairness of the way the machine was able to get the questions and respond. Still, it was quite impressive how Watson could process the language and respond in the form of a question.
The previous Chimesfreedom posts on Jeopardy and Watson have featured the folk song “John Henry,” so the song of the day today is “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” by The Flaming Lips off the excellent album of the same name, and we are going to discuss the movie Westworld (1973). So press the play button at the top of this post and read on.
Westworld is about an adult amusement park where androids are supposed to help human beings fulfill their dreams and fantasies. Of course, as we all know, anything involving robots is bound to go wrong. And soon, the androids, including one that looks a lot like the King of Siam from the King and I, start really killing people.
In addition to Yul Brynner, Westworld featured James Brolin. To you kids, he’s the guy who is now married to Barbara Streisand and who is the father of Josh Brolin, who was in the True Grit remake and No Country for Old Men. Westworld was written and directed by Michael Crichton, and the 1973 movie was the first one to use digital technology. Crichton would go on to write a similarly amusement-park-out-of-control themed Jurassic Park.
According to IMDb, there is a remake of Westworld in the works with the release scheduled for next year. It appears they are still looking for a director and cast, but Russell Crowe is rumored to be in it. I’m guessing he would play the Yul Brynner tough-android part.
But with Watson showing what computers can do, maybe by the time the new Westworld is made, a real android will be able to play the Yul Brynner role. I suppose the use of Watson Junior in the movie will put Russell Crowe out of work. But it is not a bad thing that computers take our jobs. We will need the time off from work to eat our vitamins and discipline our bodies for the big dooms-day battle against the machines. Save us Yoshimi, “it’d be tragic/ if those evil robots win.”
Bonus Answers to Questions: Contestant Ken Jennings answered several questions from viewers online in an interesting and funny exchange on the Washington Post website. Check it out.
Many years ago, a newspaper published a list of the top romantic movies for Valentine’s Day, and the writer included Shane (1953) on the list. At first, the choice surprised me.
I had always thought of the movie as a great action Western. But after reading the article, I focused more on the relationship between Shane, played by Alan Ladd, and Marian Starrett, played by Jean Arthur. And I came to see that the author of the list was right.
The Unusual Love Story in “Shane”
The unrequited love between Shane and Marian is something we do not see in modern movies. The relationship is subtle, buried in hidden looks and unspoken feelings. They both are torn, as Marian still loves her husband Joe and Shane is Joe’s friend.
There are many things to love about the film Shane. It has great scenery, Jack Palance as a villain, the gunfights, and the decent man trying to change his life. But the Shane-Mariann relationship makes the movie more complex than your usual action yarn.
The Shane-Mariann relationship is so subtle that descriptions of the movie rarely mention it. I suspect that a modern movie version might feature a scene of the two having sex to make the same point made in Shane with a few words and glances.
When Clint Eastwood made Pale Rider (1985), largely based on Shane, he avoided a similar relationship in his story altogether. Instead he went for religious overtones, which was probably easier to do.
Shane’s Ending
{Spoiler ahead} The final scene of the movie is a classic scene in American film. Shane explains to Mariann’s son Joey: “There’s no living with a killing. There’s no goin’ back from one. Right or wrong, it’s a brand… a brand sticks. There’s no goin’ back. Now you run on home to your mother and tell her… tell her everything’s alright. And there aren’t any more guns in the valley.”
The wounded Shane rides off into the sunset. And Joey yells after him, pleading for him to return.
Interpreting the scene with our modern vocabulary, Joey yells the funniest line in the movie for those have picked up on the Shane-Mariann relationship: “Mother wants you. I know she does!” Although the child doe not know exactly what is going on, he has sensed some love.
Below is the trailer for Shane, although I do not understand why the trailer maker used the final scene of the movie in the trailer.
Jean Arthur & Alan Ladd
Another unusual aspect of the movie compared to modern movies is that the female lead, Jean Arthur, was more than a decade older than the male lead. Nowadays, too often producers choose older men to be romantic leads with very young women. But at the time Shane was released, Alan Ladd was 40 and Jean Arthur was 53.
Arthur had appeared in several great classic movies, including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, but she was reclusive and did not like the limelight. She had retired prior to the making of Shane, and she made an exception to return to make Shane, which was her final film and the only one where she appeared in color.
When You Say Nothing at All
If Chimesfreedom were in charge of music for Shane, we would add “When You Say Nothing at All” to the final credits. The words capture the unspoken relationship between Shane and Mariann.
The smile on your face lets me know that you need me, There’s a truth in your eyes sayin’ you’ll never leave me, The touch of your hand says you’ll catch me if ever I fall; You say it best when you say nothing at all.
The version above by Alison Krauss and Union Station appeared on Keith Whitley: A Tribute Album (1994) and on Now That I’ve Found You: A Collection (1995). A live version appeared on Alison Krauss & Union Station – Live.
“When You Say Nothing at All” was written by Keith Whitley, a singer-songwriter who died at the young age of 34 from alcohol poisoning. Although Whitley only released four albums during his career, he influenced future generations of singer-songwriters. He wrote some beautiful songs like “When You Say Nothing at All.”
And yes, contrary to the song, Shane did leave her.
What other movies feature subtle romantic relationships? What about Casablanca? Leave a comment.
.