Road to the Oscars, Part 7
2010’s Best Picture Winner — The Hurt Locker
For Your Consideration, Vol. 3:
The Big 10, Part 2
The Town
If The Dark Knight had been without the Caped Crusader and the Batman’s endless rogue gallery, it might have looked something like The Town, Ben Affleck’s follow up to his directorial debut in 2007 with Gone Baby Gone. Another crime drama, The Town follows bank robbers in Charlestown, Massachusetts prepping for their last job, while the FBI is hot on their trail. With strong performances from the entire cast, including The Hurt Locker’s Jeremy Renner, Mad Men star Jon Hamm, Vicky Christina Barcelona’s Rebecca Hall, Gossip Girl’s Blake Lively, and Affleck in his best role in since Dogma, The Town pulls no punches in a genre that’s dominated by the likes of Heat and The Dark Knight. The most shocking thing about The Town is that it proves that Ben Affleck is more than a one hit wonder director and this guy has some major talent behind the camera as well as in front of it. Affleck’s seen a lot of flak in the last ten years for his selected acting roles, but his skills as a director shouldn’t be questioned. Like The Fighter, The Town tells a great story very well, and even though it looks like the category for Best Director might be already filled with vets like David Fincher and Christopher Nolan don’t count Ben Affleck out just yet.
True Grit
Another set of directors that we’d be foolish to count out of the race this soon are the Coen Brothers. Joel and Ethan Coen are no strangers to the Oscars. Once condemned to brilliant cult classics like The Big Lebowski, Miller’s Crossing, and O Brother Where Art Thou?, each respective entry into the sibling’s oeuvre now receives recognition by audiences, critics, and voters alike. The Coen’s adaptation of No Country for No Men, snagged the big awards in 2007, including Best Director(s) and Best Picture, and now the duo are looking for their pseudo-remake of the John Wayne western, True Grit, to do the same.
With Jeff Bridges hoping that playing Rooster Cogburn will win him an Oscar like it did with Wayne, True Grit will be a major player in the upcoming Oscar race. Yes, the film features gorgeous cinematography from the legendary Roger Deakins, a script with razor-sharp dialogue, and powerful performances by veterans Bridges, Josh Brolin, Matt Damon, and Barry Pepper, but the star of the show, and the most important reason to see this movie is 14-year-old new-comer Hailee Steinfeld. Steinfeld is a scene-stealing phenom, and acts circles around the rest of the cast; a lock for an Acting Oscar nod and a possible, show-stopping, surprise winner.
127 Hours
But Steinfeld won’t be the other challenger to take on the so-called locks of the season. A win for James Franco would everyone to the floor. Director Danny Boyle had come a long way since 28 Days Later and Trainspotting, but with Slumdog Millionaire, the Best Picture winner that bested David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in ’08, Boyle was stamped on the map of energetic, frenetic directors. While 127 Hours may not sneak some other films for the win, it’d be foolish to ignore the work done here to retell Aron Ralston’s unbelievable survival story. While A. R. Rahman delivers a cool, techie score, Boyle’s vision for the film is one of a kind for a biopic, and Jon Harris’ adrenaline-fueled editing may just sneak into the category at the Oscars, but it’s James Franco’s cocky, smart, and charismatic portrayal of Ralston that locks him into the Best Actor category. A normally comedic actor who commands the screen by himself for 85% of a movie with his dramatic, compelling performance is Oscar bait and rightfully so. Franco’s always been a great actor, but his performance is a career high and I think will be enough to take 127 Hours into the Best Picture category even though it’ll face some incredibly stiff, if not impossible to beat, competition.
The Social Network
Let’s make one thing clear: The Social Network is the clear front-runner. It’s been cleaning up at the critic awards and is snagging nominations from the big guilds. With a rapid-fire, intelligent script from Aaron Sorkin and an incredible cast to lead the way, this is David Fincher’s year to claim the top prize and snag a Best Directing Oscar.
I hope that Aaron Sorkin is prepping his Oscar speech right now, because the screenplay is stellar. Sorkin is known for several things, like creating Sports Night and the Emmy-award-winning political juggernaut, The West Wing, and writing A Few Good Men. A lot of people think that repeatable and witty dialogue equates to “good screenwriting”, but that line of thinking can ignore all of the work that went into crafting the structure of the story and every moment that is realized on screen by the director. When it comes to dialogue I agree that wit is important, but great dialogue comes out of what’s inferred by the character as opposed to an obvious, on-the-nose statement that sounds unnatural. Sorkin is a master of dialogue. Nothing spoken ever sounds forced and almost everything that Mark Zuckerberg says in the film is meant to hide and deflect from his real problems. If you only listen to what is spoken, then you’ll miss all of the details in the subtext. But best of all, the script is hilarious, which enhances this drama and easily makes the story more engrossing than a would-be Zuckerberg biopic that just trudged around seriously.
One thing that I love about Sorkin is that he never writes stupid, pointless characters. I despise stupid characters. Call me pretentious, but I could watch intelligent characters talk to each other all day, every day for the rest of my life and be completely content. I like oblivious, tragically ignorant, and naive characters, but nothing irks me more than imbecilic characters spouting idiotic things to each other on screen. Truly, my kind of script is one that is witty, powerful, engrossing, hilarious, and intelligent; The Social Network possesses every one of those qualities. I can’t discount David Fincher’s best directorial attempt one bit, and the guy can just have Sorkin write his Oscar speech, too, but as a writer myself, it’s impossible to ignore what was done with The Social Network. With beautiful cinematography, a killer score by Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Book of Eli composer Atticus Ross, an amazing cast, and an interesting story, The Social Network is the one to beat.
Inception
When it comes down to splitting hairs over which movie was the best of the year, I will always side with ambitious filmmaking over the same old dramatic fair. Now, before anyone throws up their arms in frustration, I absolutely loved The Social Network, and the movie has the best chance at taking home the Picture Oscar, but it didn’t exceed at anything other than being a fantastically made film. Inception is the only film that could ever top The Social Network, because, like Sorkin’s script for Network, the screenplay is phenomenal.
I want to talk to the screenwriters out there for just a second. You know that idea that you’ve been chiseling away at for years; the story that plagues your thoughts? The plot that’s so intricate that it only makes sense to you? The one that you’ve been tweaking and rewriting since it first popped into your head? As a writer, there have been a handful of stories that I’ve come up with over the last 6 years or so, which I’ve been hammering away at since.
In my mind, the twists and turns are perfect, but the stopgap has always been the execution of the idea. How do I properly convey these ideas to an audience without losing them? Am I being pretentious in my presumptions, and is this a dream-project that’ll never see the light of day? I know I’m going to need to grab the hand of the audience and never let go, because if I do, they’ll get swept up in the world I’ve tried to create, and it’ll fail. The critics won’t call it intricate, they’ll call it confusing or complicated. It won’t be deep, it’ll be muddled. These are fears you have as a writer when you’re trying to do something completely different; when you attempt to break out of box where “they” say originality has been dead for ages. Watching Inception is like viewing one of those ideas perfectly realized. For lack of a better expression, it sails uncharted territory. Inception is my personal favorite movie of the year, and I sincerely hope that it beats The Social Network for the Oscar. Will it? I guess everyone will have to tune in on Oscar night to find out.
Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World
The final and longest shot pick on my list is Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World. Scott Pilgrim. It’s also the eleventh film on my top ten list, because I think the movie deserves some kind of recognition. The film was a bomb financially, but was loved by critics and die-hard fans. Never has there been a movie that encapsulated the video game subculture quite like Scott Pilgrim does. The film is seamless in its concept, design and realization, but its niche story and distance from the mainstream will keep it away from the big prize. Nonetheless, how cool would it be to have a film geek icon like Wright represented with a slot in the top ten? I’d be blown away, but it’s nigh impossible for that kind of a shakeup to occur; not when all attention has been thrown to front-runner The Social Network and the myriad of films vying for second place. If Scott Pilgrim does get some love from the Academy, look for nods in the design categories and maybe editing. But, hey, if long-shots like The Blind Side and genre films like District 9 can snag Best Picture Oscar nominations, then all hope is not lost. If there’s anything that’s consistent throughout the award season, it’s that come Oscar night there will be surprises that will through the rule-book out of the window and history will be made. That’s why we watch the Oscars.
