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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Sunday, October 30th, 2011 - 3 Comments »
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20W20: Best Picture Chart, Oct 30, 2011

BEST PICTURE
Date
Picture
Studio
Director
 Comment
Seen & Close to Certain
Open

Midnight in Paris
SPC
Allen
 Their first love of 2011
Nov 23 The Artist
TWC
Hazanavicius
 Their current love of 2011
Nov 18

The Descendants
FxSrch
Payne
 The love to come in 2011
We’re Waiting!!!!
Dec 28

War Horse
DW/Dis
Spielberg
 Old-fashioned… irony be damned
Dec 21

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Sony
Fincher
 Who knows what darkness lurks… the Fincher does
Dec 25

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
WB
Daldry
 Irony-Free: Epsiode Three
Nov 11

J Edgar
WB
Eastwood
 Launches this week in earnest
Dec
23

We Bought A Zoo
Fox
Crowe
 For the love of Cameron!
Dec 16

The Iron Lady
TWC
Lloyd
 Trailer reduces it to a stunt
Being Seen And Well Buzzed
Open The Help
DW/Dis
Taylor
 The light horse candidate (like to get in… the win would be shocking)
Nov
18

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Focus
Alfredson
 Couldn’t be much better at what it seeks to be
Dec 2

Shame
FxSrch
McQueen
 The serious art choice… is Oscar ready for that?
Dec 9

Young Adult
Par
Reitman
 A movie that gets better in reflection… will Academy members catch on in time?
Open

The Tree of Life
FxSrch
Malick
 Great Malick… will it stick?
Dec 23

Albert Nobbs
Road
Garcia
 A very tough, challenging film… but could catch fire
Dec 23

Tintin
Par/DW
Spielberg
 If there’s going to be a $600m ww grosser nom’ed, it’s this one
The Outsiders… At Least In This Category… At Least For Now
Nov 23

Hugo
Par
Scorsese
 Par snobbed it up at NYFF… but will it survive critics who aren’t on fest helium?
Open

Moneyball
Sony
Miller
 The 1st fall awards release… a good movie… but awards?
Open

The Ides of March
Sony
Clooney
 Just hasn’t caught fire
Nov 23

A Dangerous Method
SPC
Cronenberg
 Dry for Cronenberg… Knightley has lovers and haters… the guys are so good you take it for granted
Open

Take Shelter
SPC
Nichols
 Terrific, tough little movie. Easy for it to get lost
Dec 2

The Lady
Cohen
Besson
 There was a MAJOR recut… but is it ready for the big show?
Oct 28
 Anonymous
Sony
Emmerich
 Sony can’t find a mainstream aud for this one… if that continues, it disappears
Nov 18

Carnage
SPC
Polanski
 Harsh, claustrophic, and not funny as it was on stage. Hard to see it rising
unknown
 Rampart
Millenium
Moverman
 Kind of this year’s Rabbit Hole… will fight for Best Actor, but the rest gets tough


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3 Comments »

3 Responses to “20W20: Best Picture Chart, Oct 30, 2011”

  1. Ian Mantgani says:
    October 31, 2011 at 5:15 am

    Agree with your dead certs.

    As for the ones you’re “waiting for” – this is the same mistake Oscar pundits make every year; assuming that just because a new film is out by a previously nominated director, it has a chance at nomination. My guess: War Horse, J Edgar, We Bought a Zoo will all be disappointments, and they’re out. Iron Lady won’t be the kind of big film Oscar rewards at BP level, even if it does turn out to be good. Not so sure about the other two you list, but I’m gonna take a leap of faith and make a wild guess that Dragon Tattoo will be too poppy for Oscar and Extremely Loud will be one of those Soloist-type movies with pedigree that goes nowhere.

    As for the others on your chart… Roland Emmerich doesn’t get Oscar nominations, Anonymous is out. Neither does Besson – The Lady is out, unless it’s a career-changing masterpiece. Not many people in love with Carnage, that’s probably out. Ides of March just isn’t very good – I imagine that’s out. People who have seen Rampart say it is risible, awful, dire – OUT. Nobody likes Dangerous Method either. Albert Nobbs, I don’t know about. Young Adult and Hugo, we’ll have to see.

    So…

    The Artist, The Descendants, The Help and Midnight in Paris are in.

    Moneyball, Shame and Take Shelter are fair bets. In response to your TS comment, “little movies” don’t get lost if the Academy has an indie darling for the year (Winter’s Bone, for example… Frozen River would also have been nominated under the 10-slot list, although who knows if it would have under the weird new rules.)

    Gary Oldman will be remembered, so Tinker Tailor is in if nothing blows it out of the water in the next 2 months.

    You completely fail to mention The Tree of Life and We Need to Talk About Kevin.

  2. chris says:
    October 31, 2011 at 9:38 am

    In terms of best picture, I bet DP is right on “Tree” and “Kevin.” Not so sure about “Young Adult,” which gets worse on reflection in my book.

  3. Ian Mantgani says:
    November 1, 2011 at 4:18 am

    Dunno how the film will, or the book did, go down in the States, but “Kevin” is a bona fide phenomenon in the UK. (I think it looks like a load of crap, but at this point I’m intrigued enough to check ’em out.) Anyway, the UK voters alone might be enough to give it a nod.

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon