Tag: Ang Lee

2013 Oscars: Final Predictions

I just finished watching a Katie Couric special edition of “20/20” in which they talked about everything that makes the Oscars iconic, but none of the reasons why I actually care about the awards. Hearing about Bjork’s swan dress is cute, but I’m in this for the movies.

Every year I come up with elaborate reasons why this year’s winner will mean something. For “The Artist” it was that even a silent, foreign, black and white comedy could win Best Picture and make people interested in a great form of movie history for just a little while. For “The King’s Speech” it was that the love for Old Hollywood was alive and well, even if I was pulling for the generational landmark that would’ve been a victory for “The Social Network.” And for “The Hurt Locker,” it signified a turning point in our view of the campaign in the Middle East, as well as a long denied achievement for women everywhere, which really is something to cheer about.

And yet just as I study every nominee and understand every nuance of the race, all of that is forgotten as quickly as the next year, and the only things that are left are the great movies themselves.

I think this year’s Oscars matter because above all, they will honor a lot of great movies, more than in most years. I may not think “Argo” is the best movie of the year, nor is my pick even nominated, but I think that whatever wins, it will be a victory for quality (except for “Les Miz” obviously).

Here then are my final predictions for what will take home gold on Oscar night. This year has been so exciting, so tumultuous, so long and so controversial that if I have to make one correct prediction, it’s that I will be wrong… possibly a lot.

Argo Ben Affleck

Best Picture

  • Argo
  • Lincoln
  • Silver Linings Playbook
  • Life of Pi
  • Django Unchained
  • Zero Dark Thirty
  • Amour
  • Les Miserables
  • Beasts of the Southern Wild

I don’t think I ever wanted to admit that there was going to be a sure fire winner for Best Picture, and I don’t think I ever could. The “Argo” freight train of success is still relatively fresh news. A lot has happened since it premiered at Telluride back in September, and there was a time just six weeks ago when nominations were announced that it looked to be a dead and gone afterthought. Now it has swept every major guild prize and award in sight, and it is poised to make history no matter what happens. All the comparisons that have been made to explain its victory in the context of past winners will be erased because its victory (or loss) will be completely unprecedented. Pundits will now point to it as the example.

If it wins, it will be because it is a great film, but also because it is an agreeable film that was able to weather the storm of controversy and barrier to entry better than any other.

“Lincoln” hardly seems formidable, and in fact “Life of Pi” or “Silver Linings Playbook” look even stronger with more recent wins in the bag, but it remains an even greater film in my view and is still, on paper, the predictable Oscar winner.

Brian’s Pick: Argo

Dark Horse: Lincoln, followed by Silver Linings Playbook, then Life of Pi

Should Win: Life of Pi Continue reading “2013 Oscars: Final Predictions”

85th Oscar Nominations Announced, Lincoln leads with 12

“Lincoln” leads the 2012 Oscar nominees with 12 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director Steven Spielberg and Best Actor Daniel Day-Lewis.

Emma Stone and Seth MacFarlane announced Thursday morning from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences that there would be nine nominees for Best Picture this year in the 85th Academy Awards.

Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” led the pack with 12 nominations, followed by Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi” with 11. Including “Lincoln” and “Life of Pi,” the nine nominees for Best Picture are “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Argo,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Silver Linings Playbook,” “Django Unchained,” “Amour” and “Les Miserables.”

The morning lacked a surprise, almost trolling nomination like “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” last year, but there were plenty of unexpected snubs.

In the directing category, both “Argo” and “Zero Dark Thirty” were thought to be something of front runners in the Oscar race, but both Ben Affleck and former winner Kathryn Bigelow were left out, leaving room for Michael Haneke of “Amour” and Benh Zeitlin of “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” The remaining nominees were David O. Russell, Spielberg and Lee. Both Affleck and Bigelow were just nominated for the Directors Guild Award, which has the best track record in predicting the ultimate Oscar winner.

For Best Actress, the Academy created history twice by nominating the youngest and oldest actresses in the race. Emmanuelle Riva, 85, and Quvenzhane Wallis, 9, were both nominated for “Amour” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild” alongside Jennifer Lawrence, Naomi Watts and Jessica Chastain.

The Best Supporting Actor category also made history too, nominating five former Oscar winners. Robert De Niro, Alan Arkin, Christoph Waltz, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Tommy Lee Jones have all previously won.

The remaining Best Actor nominees were Bradley Cooper, Hugh Jackman, Denzel Washington and Joaquin Phoenix, who many thought would be out of the race after he made some polarizing comments about awards season. This line-up ended up snubbing John Hawkes of “The Sessions,” who was also nominated for the Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and Critics’ Choice Award.

The only nomination for “The Sessions” came in the Best Supporting Actress race, where Helen Hunt is up against a field that includes Sally Field, Anne Hathaway, Jacki Weaver and Amy Adams.

Some of the more pleasant surprises of the morning came in the Best Original Song announcement, which nominated Adele for “Skyfall” and Oscar host MacFarlane for the song “Everybody Needs a Best Friend” from his film “Ted.”

“Cool, I get to go to the Oscars now,” MacFarlane said.

A full list of the nominees can be found on the Academy website, here.

Life of Pi

Can a movie make you believe in God? With something like that, I don’t know if any single piece of entertainment has a prayer, even a movie as jaw droppingly beautiful and inspiring as “Life of Pi.”

Ang Lee’s movie shows us how a wondrous journey through nature can be a symbolic experience, and Yann Martel’s book shows how a story with fantasy and excitement may not prove the existence of God, but will allow us to recognize him and greet him like an old friend.

“Life of Pi” instills in us the fascination with religion and spirituality that its hero Pi shares. As a young boy in India, Pi discovers Hinduism, Christianity and Islam. Some of their legends resonate with him as superhero comic book stories, exciting fables with drama, suspense and action. No one faith seems to speak to him above all, but the joy these tales bring allows him to feel the presence of a higher power throughout the world.

As a teenager, Pi (Suarj Sharma) is forced to relocate his family’s zoo to French Canada and is shipwrecked on the long sea voyage. He’s the only human survivor on a small lifeboat, but stuck along with him is Richard Parker, a playful name for a quite fierce Bengali tiger.

Their journey ashore is a long quest for survival, and the whole story seems to take place on an infinite plain of existence. The film’s 3-D allows sky to blend seamlessly with sea, the ocean’s depth stretching endlessly into the distance to create a luminous space of ethereal beauty. We see Pi’s raft resting on an untapped surface, and he seems to be a part of a naturalistic dreamscape, floating aimlessly in the cosmos of Mother Nature.

Telling this story is an adult Pi (Irrfan Kahn) to an audience of one, the book’s writer himself, Yann Martel (Rafe Spall). The writer has heard that Pi’s story will make him believe in God, and in essence, this story is an ultimate test of faith. A true believer is stripped of everything that is dear to him: his family, his home, his love and his health. Ultimately, he keeps his faith. God seemed to be there watching him the entire time.

To me, a Lutheran, this sounds an awful lot like the Book of Job. To other faiths, there may be similar stories. Martel and Lee take the symbolic story and provide it with grounded drama of visceral pleasures. There’s the tiger viciously devouring a hyena right in front of Pi’s eyes, the comedic excitement in watching Pi piss on the boat’s tarpaulin to mark his territory, the cataclysmic treachery of seeing a tanker engulfed underwater or the naturalistic tranquility of observing an ocean of meerkats in their natural habitat.

“Life of Pi’s” visual beauty alone speaks wonders. It is safe to say that “Life of Pi” is perhaps the best looking 3-D film ever made. The CGI used to create such a lifelike tiger and endless landscapes of water, sunlight, wildlife and greenery is impeccable. Different scenes fade in and out in layers over one another like characters and images floating in our memories. The evening lights of fish, lightning and insects jump out from the screen that would otherwise be specks of color on a 2-D plane. The 3-D gives us a POV that shows we’re only on the far side of a pointed pole from that wild tiger. And it immerses us in a moment that conveys the gravity of how small we look in front of that boat sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

But Lee communicates through his visual poetry what Martel could only presume with words; that tiger seems to be keeping us alive. It’s a moving, spiritual sentiment so impossible to estimate and even harder to envision on film. God will be there when we need him and leave again without warning. He appears not to be our friend but to let us know he is there. In another movie, the dangerous encounters would be set pieces, but here it seems to be nature speaking to us.

“Life of Pi” moved me deeply, both on a technical and emotional level. Few films can claim to be truly beautiful and have sincere stories in the process. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, but in the end we’re left with faith. “Life of Pi” has granted me such faith in the movies and in the world.

4 stars

Early Look: Life of Pi

There are five movies right now that seem to have the legs to go the distance and win Best Picture. “Argo” feels very modern and in love with Hollywood despite being set in the ’70s, “Silver Linings Playbook” is a warm crowd pleaser that does so much more than the average romantic comedy, “Lincoln,” with its cast, director and subject, is bound to be an iconic legacy movie, and “Les Miserables” is expected to have the theatrical spectacle from a recent Oscar favorite that the Academy will eat up.

But then there’s “Life of Pi,” a movie that feels both big and small. It’s the one movie in the bunch that has only two characters, a teenage boy and a Bengali tiger, and yet feels as though it’s an epic journey. It’s a personal love story, and yet it also has spiritual stakes. Yann Martel’s novel considers our mutual bond with nature and the belief that there is some higher power in the universe that keeps us alive and moving. That force may be called God, but in this time when religion is in fact divisive and political, I couldn’t be more excited for a movie that considers these big ideas on simple terms.

Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi” opens on November 21st for the Thanksgiving holiday, and it’s a serious contender for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, a likely sweep of the technical awards and, to make a bold claim right now, what I bet will be the Best Original Score winner.

It tells the story of a boy from India named Pi (Suraj Sharma) who travels with his family to relocate their zoo. On their voyage, their ship sinks and Pi gets trapped on a life boat with a handful of animals, including a Bengali tiger. Years later, an older Pi (Irrfan Kahn) tells his story to a version of the book’s real life author, Yann Martel (Rafe Spall).

Lee spent the last four years tinkering with the visual effects required to put a visual spin to Martel’s flowing prose, including one scene where flying fish leap from the water that alone took a full year to visualize and stage. In fact, up until last month when the movie premiered at the New York Film Festival, Lee was still putting finishing touches on at least 90 visual effects shots, according to an interview he conducted with Collider.

But Lee’s real desire with adapting the story was to advance the possibilities of 3-D, which he still says is in its infancy in live action films and needs time to develop as a medium. The idea behind Pi’s ocean journey was to create a realistic world but also something that felt as though it belonged on another plane of existence. While not trying to look like a sci-fi, the need for physical and figurative depth screams 3-D, and several critics are already claiming it advances the possibilities of the technology leaps and bounds. During an In Contention podcast, Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood called it a truly beautiful film, reaching for comparisons to films such as “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Gone With the Wind” to try and describe its unprecedented beauty.

The question remains whether it will perform commercially. The book is well known and loved (even President Obama extended his praise to Martel), but like “Cloud Atlas,” it belongs in the “unfilmable novel” category, and it remains a philosophical, even cult novel, not a tentpole adaptation.

Hopefully it does find an audience. Lee needs another hit after the disappointing “Taking Woodstock,” and “Life of Pi” could just be one of the more remarkable cinematic experiences of the year.

This is a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.

All photos courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.