Picture: Black Swan (192/14)
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos, Dogtooth (205/19)
Actress: Kim Hye-ja, Mother (253/22)
Actor: James Franco, 127 Hours (182/14)
S. Actor: Matt Damon, True Grit (142/18)
S. Actress: Lesley Manville, Another Year (172/14)
Screenplay: Debra Granik & Anne Rosellini, Winter's Bone (193/15)
Scene: Opening credits, Enter the Void (116/9)
[This is actually the first time I've seen these, as they didn't yet exist when the film premiered at Cannes 2009.]
HISTORY:
Dogtooth is Lanthimos' second feature, but his first Skandie-eligible film. (I walked out of Kinetta, which is nothing at all like Dogtooth, but am tempted to give it a second look now.)
Damon's four previous appearances were all in the lead category: 20th for Good Will Hunting (1997), 9th for The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), 15th for The Departed (2006), and 4th last year for The Informant!. Franco previously placed twice in Supporting in 2008: 13th for Pineapple Express and 15th for Milk. Manville gets her third nod for a Mike Leigh joint, having finished 16th for Topsy-Turvy (1999) and 15th in the lead category for All or Nothing (2002). Kim is new, as are Granik & Rosellini.
21 comments:
So, the predix I made with fear and trembling last night -- a SOCIAL NETWORK sweep that (especially) includes Script and Director but doesn't include Film -- is still a possibility. The chance of Director-Script sweeps by DOGTOOTH or WINTER'S BONE is now gone.
So here are the final showdowns:
FILM: DOGTOOTH / WINTER'S BONE
LEAD MALE: Eisenberg / Ramirez
LEAD FEMALE: Portman / Lawrence
SUPPORTING MALE: Bale / Hawkes
SUPPORTING FEMALE: Pappoulia / Williams
DIRECTOR: Aronofsky / Fincher
SCRIPT: Sorkin / Lanthimos & Philippou
Whew.
I'm so relieved BLACK SWAN and THE SOCIAL NETWORK stayed out of the top two for Best Picture. Even though DOGTOOTH and WINTER'S BONE are Oscar-nominated like BS and TSN, the Skandies' tendency to honor deserving underdogs is why I've been a fan for over a decade.
Pappoulia being in the top two is just icing on the cake. Here's betting her passiondex posse puts her at #1.
(adopts Horshack voice) Ooh! Ooh! I know what's going to win Best Scene! Still a shame about the credits not placing higher, though.
Dear Arnold D. Ridley:
Please excuse Vittorio Epstein from not getting what you think the best scene of the year will be. He has already said it will be Face-Mash.
Signed
Epstein's mom
Mike, the credits you linked to are only half the story. If that was all there was, it would be a good credit sequence but not "Best Scene" worthy. (In my dislike of the film, I forgot to vote for them.) Here is the entirety of the credit sequence:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL0lNGXoP8E
Mike, the credits you linked to are only half the story. If that was all there was, it would be a good credit sequence but not "Best Scene" worthy.
Hmm. I'm glad to have the whole thing (and have now embedded it above), but I don't really see what you're saying. The second half (as it turns out) seems fantastic to me in its own right, and the first half isn't in any way transformative to my mind. Didn't have a "oh, now I get it" response.
- Olivia Williams really was quite good in a rather complex role. Come to think of it, I should've given her more points.
- What's the scene runner-up? I'm guessing the money shot from 127 Hours.
- Gaspar Noe swerves, dives and propels his camera, wielding it like a magic kite, but nothing he does quite captures the jolt of the opening credits, which is probably the best title sequence in the last three or four years. And since the opening credits' awesomeness is completely severable from the movie proper, this is pretty much the quintessential clip-party scene.
- Contenders from The Social Network have to be huge favorites to take actor, director, and screenplay. Closest races appear to be Bone v. Dogtooth and Bale v. Hawkes.
Gaspar Noe swerves, dives and propels his camera, wielding it like a magic kite, but nothing he does quite captures the jolt of the opening credits,
The magic kite comparison is vivid and fitting, Ryan.
My favorite scene from ENTER THE VOID was the segment with Paz weaving a trail across the dim dressing room with her boss, transitioning from sensual bliss to postcoital disentanglement, ending fluidly in the heartbreaking phone call -- all in one take.
OK, so her acting in the phone breakdown moment was pretty weak, but the silky choreography and dream-like flow of the entire scene was spellbinding. And waaay sexier than Amy Adams in a see-through bra.
Bilge pegged it -- Winter's Bone takes Picture / Actress / Supporting Actor, while its director 'astonishingly' only finishes 7th. The Social Network tops its three known categories, while "Facesmash" gets edged by the Dogtooth scene.
Kim Hye-ja matches Hailee Steinfeld as (for now) the most-cited performance this year.
the Skandies' tendency to honor deserving underdogs
In this group, I really don't see Dogtooth and Bone as underdogs insomuch as the voting body tends to screen such fare at rates disproportionate to other groups (or the mainstream). If you take, say, the BFCA, I suspect a good percentage of them wouldn't have seen Dogtooth or even Bone. The numbers don't come out until tomorrow (fingers crossed), but I'd be surprised if fewer than 85% of Skandie voters haven't seen these titles.
Bilge pegged it -- Winter's Bone takes Picture / Actress / Supporting Actor, while its director 'astonishingly' only finishes 7th. The Social Network tops its three known categories, while "Facesmash" gets edged by the Dogtooth scene.
This is effectively the same scenario that Victor proposes (which may or may not be correct). You're just picking different things to be astonished by.
Kim Hye-ja matches Hailee Steinfeld as (for now) the most-cited performance this year.
The most cited performance overall (most cited anything, actually) appears tomorrow. It did not win. In fact it lost to a performance with five fewer votes.
- What's the scene runner-up? I'm guessing the money shot from 127 Hours.
That scene didn't even make the top 20, which was shocking to me initially. (I now have my own theory as to why that may be the case. More on that once I see where it placed in the final standings)
If nobody's that jazzed about 127, okay. But how is it that the corny-ass talkshow scene managed to place? I'm floored.
Only one other person (Ryan) voted for the arm-severing. I suspect that's because most people are less concerned than are you with "the presence of a body in a place" (quoting your review), which seems related to your tendency to praise movies that are methodical about negotiating physical space. "Snap crackle carve" is probably the scene in 127 Hours that most powerfully realizes the material's existential potential, but that doesn't necessarily make the average viewer think of it as one of the year's best scenes.
The morning show, on the other hand, while it didn't work for you, has ingenuity and the element of surprise working in its favor. We all knew Franco was gonna hack his arm off. We did not particularly expect to see him taking imaginary calls from another Aron in Loser Canyon, Utah. I was particularly impressed by how OTT they went with this, given that it's not coded as a fantasy (he goes directly from the morning show into a heartfelt address to his mom). Franco's gigantic O RLY? expressions as the host are priceless.
I think I benefit from not having seen 127 Hours in seeing Aaron/Franco do, in one scene, what it takes Ms. Portman an entire film to do, with as many mirrors and dopplegangers, in The Anchor-Kunis, himself-Ryder, the other Aaron-Hershey and his inner "I'll probably be dead by then" self-Portman. If there's a missing presence, it's The Arm, but I think that would have required a fifth character, or at least four and a half.
Nictate, you're making me question the whole movie, did Noe really mean to excite there? I probably shouldn't comment because I fell asleep, (he sticks around for the rest of the movie in a good way, I think, right?), but the scene ends on a real bummer note.
I was riveted by Paz' raw, crying, hysterical, warm & fuzzy perf enough to appreciate the film's visual technique. I hope Noe doesn't mind I enjoyed it semi-awake.
I'm not a fan of exposing male genetalia in a sex scene if it makes me work to know how real the action is.
Reasonable explanation, Mike. My fascination w the arm scene is really just that it's bravado filmmaking, what with that screech sound when he touches the tendon, and all those rapid emotions and reactions flickering across Franco's face as he does the deed. It's so fucking visceral. There's a reason people passed out.
My original hunch was that, it being a representation of something that a real guy did to his own, real arm, the AVB was reluctant to look at it formally and say, "Bad ass filmatism! Woo!" And by extension, that maybe we're all getting older, softer, and a bit more NPR-humanist without realizing it. I know I had slight ethical qualms just grooving on "Snap Crackle Carve" as a purely gonzo film moment, even though it has that appeal.
But I guess I'm projecting. Nobody else thought it was as interesting as I did, in the end.
To answer witherholly:
Yes, I think Noe meant to excite there. And also meant for the post-O afterglow to be disrupted with that phone call so jarringly.
Noe does a lot of manipulative gearshifts to amp up the visceral wallop, like the repeated bludgeoning cuts back to the car accident. I appreciated that he wanted to work the audience like a raw nerve.
Speaking of raw, I agree on Paz's performance. She delivered just what the role called for and gave the film a sympathetic centerpoint.
Nor are any of these expositions particularly erect, which just makes the scene blech for me. I stick to my guns that its use is as problematic as any element in the a film that works to pull the viewer out of the scene.
- Nictate, nice description of a strong scene in Enter the Void. Only trouble is that you reminded me of a more innocent time, a time midway through the movie when I thought it could still be good.
- I'm a terrible guesser. Obviously, the runner-up scene is "Singing w/ Grandpa" or whatever it's called from Dogtooth, a scene I voted for but somehow forgot about.
- 127 Hours. What this is is a white nature boy who is trapped in a cave and was forced to cut his arm off with a dull blade to survive. You end up hearing the crunch-crunch of the bone and the stripping of the flesh as Waz helpfully notes. His severed arm is left hanging when he is through.
The scene from this movie that finished ahead of the "money shot" involved some unfunny shtick. Since I had expected much of the movie to revolve around the nature boy's delusions/flashbacks while he was trapped, it was difficult to impress me with this kind of scene. That the talk show thing was kind of dumb didn't help.
Thanks, Ryan. Your "more innocent time" comment made me laugh.
I avoided seeing 127 HOURS altogether. Between the premise, my allergy to James Franco and Mt. Dew commercial comparisons, there was nothing to draw me in. That said, I'd agree with you on the unfunny schtick of the talk show clip. I couldn't even bear to watch the clip to the end. Annoying and self-congratulatory ("Ain't this a clever retread of a device you're now overly familiar with, folks?!").
DOGTOOTH #1 scene! Take that, Epstein's mom! Or should I say, up your nose with a rubber hose.
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