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By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Wednesday, February 11th, 2015 - 9 Comments »
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Gurus o’ Gold: 6 Days Of Voting Left

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Rank Last Chart Best Picture AdamsEllwoodGrayHammondHowellKargerOlsenPolandPondNathanielRStoneThompsonWloszczynaWhipp Votes Total
1 1 Boyhood
 2 1 3 1 1 1 1 3 2 1 1 1 1 13 98
2 2 Birdman
 1 2 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 2 2 2 2 13 95
3 4 American Sniper
 5 3 2 3 3 4 4 2 5 5 4 5 4 13 68
4 3 The Grand Budapest Hotel
 3 4 6 6 4 3 3 5 4 4 3 3 3 13 66
5 5 The Imitation Game
 4 5 4 5 5 6 5 4 3 3 7 4 5 13 57
6 6 Selma
 8 6 5 7 6 8 6 6 6 6 5 7 6 13 35
7 7 The Theory of Everything
 6 7 7 8 7 7 7 8 7 8 6 6 7 13 26
8 8 Whiplash
 7 8 8 4 8 5 8 7 8 7 8 8 8 13 23
Rank Last Chart What Surprise Winner Wouldn\'t Surprise Me AdamsEllwoodGrayHammondHowellKargerOlsenPolandPondNathanielRStoneThompsonWloszczynaWhipp Votes Total
Bradley Cooper
Actor 		* * * * * * * 7 7
American Sniper
Picture 		* * * 3 3
Whiplash
Editing 		* * 2 2
Virunga
Documentary 		* * 2 2
One Vote Wonders
I'm Not Gonna Miss You
Song 		* 1 1
Damien Chazelle
Director 		* 1 1
Interstellar
Special Effects 		* 1 1
American Sniper
Adapted Screenplay 		* 1 1
Parvenah
Live Action Short 		* 1 1
Wes Anderson
Original Screenplay 		* 1 1
Timbuktu
Foreign Language 		* 1 1
Alejandro Inarritu
Director 		* 1 1
Whiplash
Picture 		* 1 1
Mark Ruffalo
Supporting Actor 		* 1 1
Emma Stone
Supporting Actress 		* 1 1
Birdman
Original Screenplay 		* 1 1
Ida
Cinematogaphy 		* 1 1
Everything Is Awesome
Song 		* 1 1
Leviathan
Foreign Language 		* 1 1
Benedict Cumberbatch
Actor 		* 1 1
Meryl Streep
Supporting Actress 		* 1 1
American Sniper
Editing 		* 1 1
Lost Stars
Song 		* 1 1
Finding Vivian Maier
Documentary 		* 1 1

Pre-Venice/Telluride/Toronto Best Picture Field
Post-Venice/Telluride/Toronto Best Picture Field
After New York…
Just Before Selma & American Sniper
Just After Selma & American Sniper
Gurus o’ Gold: A Week From Thanksgiving, aka Screener Time
Thanksgiving Week
The Rise of Selma
Gurus o’ Gold-n-Globes)
The Top 8 Categories Heading Into The Holiday Break
Academy Members, Please Watch…
Back From The Holidays, Polls Close Thursday
One Last Guess Before Nominations
Nomination Day
A Week After Nominations… Any Changes?
Final Voting Starts This Week

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9 Comments »

9 Responses to “Gurus o’ Gold: 6 Days Of Voting Left”

  1. EtGuild2 says:
    February 11, 2015 at 2:41 pm

    Is CITZENFOUR so ensconced as a Best Doc favorite that “Virunga” or “Vivian Maier” would be a surprise? I wouldn’t even be surprised if “Last Days in Vietnam” won.

  2. Sam says:
    February 11, 2015 at 2:48 pm

    Ditto on Cooper & Sniper

  3. Kevin says:
    February 11, 2015 at 8:27 pm

    At this point, I would almost rather see AMERICAN SNIPER win than BOYHOOD, I think.

  4. Keelay! says:
    February 12, 2015 at 5:59 am

    Damien Chazelle wasn’t even nominated for Best Director, yet someone has him as a “What Surprise Winner Wouldn’t Surprise Me” choice? I mean, I guess it would be a big surprise, but…

  5. MAGGA says:
    February 12, 2015 at 6:40 am

    Why “at this point”, Kevin? Did something happen to the quality of both movies?

  6. Kevin says:
    February 12, 2015 at 7:35 am

    I liked BOYHOOD a lot, it made my Top 10 and everything (bottom half, though), but what I meant by “at this point” is that I feel that it’s getting overhyped beyond measure in some corners.

    It’s not just a great film anymore, it’s an IMPORTANT film and everyone MUST give it every awards or they’re anti-American cinema or something.

    With AMERICAN SNIPER, the exact opposite thing happened than with BOYHOOD. I liked it a lot (though not quite enough to put it on my Top 10), but then some bloggers started dissing it non-stop and somehow, that made me root it for it more and more.

    For the record, my top picks are BIRDMAN and WHIPLASH, but I was reacting to the “What Surprise Winner Wouldn’t Surprise Me” picks by the Gurus, hence AMERICAN SNIPER for Best Picture instead of BOYHOOD.

  7. Waterbucket says:
    February 12, 2015 at 5:03 pm

    So you’d rather have a movie that you like less win over a movie that you like better. This is why campaigning for Oscars works, because people like you would no longer vote about how you feel but rather about how you feel about others’ opinions.

  8. Triple Option says:
    February 14, 2015 at 5:44 pm

    Anyone think the subject matter far outshined the actual quality of CitizenFour?

  9. leahnz says:
    February 14, 2015 at 6:07 pm

    “So you’d rather have a movie that you like less win over a movie that you like better. This is why campaigning for Oscars works, because people like you would no longer vote about how you feel but rather about how you feel about others’ opinions.”

    classic (in a good way), so this; like academia, oscar politics are nasty because the stakes are so low

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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