What Comes Next?

The 2013 Oscar season is in the history books and it's time to move on.  But the lure and obsessing continues.  An Oscar nomination (and even better, a statue) can mean huge things for both budding and established talent.  How do you follow that up?  Here's a look at the 2013 winners and what they have in store for us.

BEST ACTOR

McConaughey in Interstellar

"Alright, alright, alright," Matthew McConaughey's personal hero may be himself ten years in the future, but he's without question in the prime of his (comeback) career now.  With an Oscar win for his performance in Dallas Buyers Club and a potential Emmy on the way for his work on the just ended, zeigeist-y HBO series True Detective (which nearly broke the internet with its conclusion this past weekend), the once Kate Hudson-cohort will next be on screen in Christopher Nolan's eagerly awaited Interstellar.  The plot details are still tight-lipped (as Nolan does), but McConaughey co-stars alongside Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck and nearly half of SAG in the film due in theaters this November.  Beyond that, there's the rumored Magic Mike 2 and more chasing.  Leonardo DiCaprio scored some of the best reviews of his life in The Wolf of Wall Street (which McConaughey, incidentally, had a small role in) and constant "give him an Oscar" memes after losing his fourth acting bid, but he's taking his time it appears-- he has The Ballad of Richard Jewell in development which might re-team the actor with Wolf co-conspirator Jonah Hill in the true story of a security guard falsely vilified after discovering a bomb at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta; that film appears a few year away at the least but Captain Phillips scribe Billy Ray was recently signed to write the screenplay.  BAFTA winner Chiwetel Ejiofor is currently filmming Z for Zachariah, a science fiction drama based on the novel by Robert C. O'Brien alongside Wolf of Wall Street's Margot Robbie and Chris Pine, directed by Craig Zobel (Compliance) and has signed on for John Hillcoat's Triple Nine alongside Oscar-winner Kate Winslet and Fruitvale Station star Michael B. Jordan.  Bruce Dern, now a two-time Oscar nominee will follow his Cannes-winning turn in Nebraska with a role in the thriller Cut Bank opposite Liam Hemsworth, John Malkovich and Billy Bob Thornton, while the always light on his feet Christian Bale will follow his surprise American Hustle nod portraying Moses in Ridley Scott's biblical epic Exodus, due in theaters this Christmas.  Bale is also set for Knight of Cups, Terrence Malick's latest something-something as well as the still Untitled Terrence Malick Project, however we'll believe it when we see it.

Oscar Nominations

PICTURE
12 Years a Slave
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
Her
Nebraska
Philomena
The Wolf of Wall Street

DIRECTOR
Alfonso Cuarón, Gravity
Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave
Alexander Payne, Nebraska
David O. Russell, American Hustle
Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street

ACTOR
Christian Bale, American Husle
Bruce Dern, Nebraska
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street
Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave
Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club

ACTRESS
Amy Adams, American Hustle
Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Sandra Bullock, Gravity
Judi Dench, Philomena
Meryl Streep, August: Osage County

SUPPORTING ACTOR
Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips
Bradley Cooper, American Hustle
Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave
Jonah Hill, The Wolf of Wall Street
Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine
Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle
Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave
Julia Roberts, August: Osage County
June Squibb, Nebraska    

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
American Hustle- Eric Singer & David O. Russell
Blue Jasmine- Woody Allen
Dallas Buyers Club- Craig Borten & Melisa Wallack 
Her- Spike Jonze
Nebraska- Bob Nelson

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
12 Years a Slave- John Ridley
Before Midnight- Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke
Captain Phillips- Billy Ray
Philomena- Steve Coogan & Jeff Pope
The Wolf of Wall Street- Terence Winter

ANIMATED FEATURE
The Croods
Despicable Me 2
Ernest & Celestine
Frozen
The Wind Rises

DOCUMENTARY
20 Feet From Stardom
The Act of Killing
Cutie & the Boxer
Dirty Wars
The Square

FOREIGN FILM
The Broken Circle Breakdown
The Great Beauty
The Hunt
The Missing Picture
Omar

CINEMATOGRAPHY
The Grandmaster- Philippe Le Sourd
Gravity- Emmanuel Lubezki
Inside Llewyn Davis- Bruno Delbonnel
Nebraska- Phedon Papamichael
Prisoners- Roger Deakins

COSTUME DESIGN
12 Years a Slave- Patricia Norris
American Hustle- Michael Wilkinson
The Grandmaster- William Chang Suk Ping
The Great Gatsby- Catherine Martin
The Invisible Woman- Michael O'Connor 

FILM EDITING
12 Years a Slave- Joe Walker
American Hustle- Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers & Alan Baumgarten
Captain Phillips- Christopher Rouse
Dallas Buyers Club- John Mac McMurphy & Martin Pensa
Gravity- Alfonso Cuarón & Mark Sanger

PRODUCTION DESIGN
12 Years a Slave- Adam Stockhausen & Alice Baker
American Hustle- Judy Becker & Heather Loeffler
Gravity- Andy Nicholson & Joanne Woollard
The Great Gatsby- Catherine Martin & Beverley Dunn
Her- K.K. Barrett & Gene Serdena

ORIGINAL SCORE
The Book Thief- John Williams
Gravity- Steven Price
Her- William Butler & Owen Pallett
Philomena- Alexandre Desplat
Saving Mr. Banks- Thomas Newman

ORIGINAL SONG
"Alone Yet Not Alone," Alone Yet Not Alone
"Happy," Despicable Me 2
"Let it Go," Frozen
"The Moon Song," Her
"Ordinary Love," Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom 

LIVE ACTION SHORT
Aquel No Era Yo
Avant Que De Tout Perdre
Helium
Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?
The Voorman Problem 

DOCUMENTARY SHORT
CaveDigger
Facing Fear
Karma Has No Walls
The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life
Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall

ANIMATED SHORT
Feral
Get a Horse!
Mr. Hublot
Possessions
Room on the Broom 

SOUND MIXING
Captain Phillips
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Inside Llewyn Davis
Lone Survivor

SOUND EDITING
All is Lost
Captain Phillips
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Lone Survivor   

MAKE-UP & HAIRSTYLING
Dallas Buyers Club
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
The Lone Ranger

VISUAL EFFECTS
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Iron Man 3
The Lone Ranger
Star Trek Into Darkness    
        

The Greatest Art Heist in History...

...yet some of the most boring art work in contemporary one-sheets.

85th Academy Award Winners

PICTURE: Argo
DIRECTOR: Ang Lee, Life of Pi
ACTOR: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
ACTRESS: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Django Unchained- Quentin Tarantino
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Argo- Chris Terrio
ANIMATED FEATURE: Brave
DOCUMENTARY: Searching for Sugar Man
FOREIGN FILM: Amour
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Life of Pi- Claudio Miranda
COSTUME DESIGN: Anna Karenina- Jacqueline Durran
FILM EDITING: Argo- William Goldenberg
ORIGINAL SCORE: Life of Pi- Michael Danna
ORIGINAL SONG: "Skyfall," Skyfall
ANIMATED SHORT FILM: Paperman
DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM: Inocente
LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM: Curfew
SOUND MIXING: Les Miserables
SOUND EDITING: (tie) Zero Dark Thirty; Skyfall
MAKE-UP & HAIRSTYLING: Les Miserables
VISUAL EFFECTS: Life of Pi

HOW DID I DO: I scored 18 out of 24 categories missing Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Animated Feature, Documentary Short and Sound Editing.  I was, perhaps, a bit stubborn on my own biases for at least of a few of these, but soak in for a decent showing considering the competitiveness of this manic year.  No one, for sure, could see a tie coming in Sound Editing, and there was a more generous supply of spreading the wealth than I first envisioned as eight of the nine Best Picture nominees took home prizes (the lone standout is unfortunately one of best films of the year in Beasts of the Southern Wild.)

HOW DID YOU DO?

Best Visual Effects

The semi-finalists for the Best Visual Effects Academy Award have been announced.  Five of these ten titles will be nominated when the announcements are made January 10th.

• The Amazing Spider-Man
• Cloud Atlas
• The Dark Knight Rises
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
• John Carter
• Life of Pi
• Marvel's The Avengers
• Prometheus
• Skyfall
• Snow White & the Huntsman

The lists of titles snubbed include: The Hunger Games, The Impossible, Total Recall, Looper.

Interesting to note that The Dark Knight Rises and Skyfall would be somewhat anomalous in that both use more practical visual effects (stunts and mis en scene tricks) than CGI, prominent in the remaining films, which might make both films vulnerable in the end.  Life of Pi looks like the only one of the ten with a Best Picture chance, which might bode well not just for a nomination, but the eventual win-- the past three years the Visual Effects winner was a Best Picture nominee (Hugo, Inception and Avatar.)

Cloud Atlas, the box office dud from the Wachowski Bros. and Tom Twyker may still be an Oscar nominee.

Only four these films were not presented in 3-D (Cloud Atlas, The Dark Knight Rises, Skyfall and Snow White and the Huntsman.)

Two of these films, Cloud Atlas and John Carter were two of the costliest bombs of the 2012, so it will be interesting to see if either can gain any traction in the one category that typically favors blockbusters.

Each film will present a clip reel and panel for members of the Visual Effects branch of Academy shortly before the nominations are announced.

War Horse and the Dreadful Fate of the Early Oscar Frontrunner

With the first footage of Steven Spielberg's War Horse newly arrived, and one has to admit it look massive and impressive in what will surely be a finely detailed piece of big filmmaking, one thought arises, and it may come out cynical, but it's honest: How will this fare come end of the year awards time.  Surely a film like this, with it's pedigree, it's scope with its WWI setting and emotional musical cues, and it's director, the major reason it was made to begin with was for a couple of Oscar statutes.  Perhaps Spielberg will have yet another banner, much like the mammoth one he had in 1993, where he managed to successfully meld his fun pop filmmaking sensibilities with that of the mature artist he had always tried to be.  That year he opened the summer blockbuster Jurassic Park (which had been the biggest and most technically awe-inspiring of at least that summer) and the winter scorcher Schindler's List.  That year his films won an impressive ten Oscars (seven for Schindler's including two for himself; and three awards for Jurassic Park.)  This year again he has two very different films coming out-- War Horse, based on the acclaimed novel by Michael Morpurgo, which already spawned a successful and acclaimed play (that coincidentally won the Tony Award this year-- has a film and play based on the same source won both Tony and Oscar in the same year before?) as well as the 3-D fantasy The Adventure of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.

Suffice it to say that at the halfway point of 2011 where nothing has really stood out as an awards magnet, this is the first glimpse of a film we've seen that has the probability of doing anything.  On that alone, and with all of the other awards friends components will already, fairly or not, peg War Horse the movie to beat.  Which has gotten me thinking about how dreadful a spot that can be, even Spielberg knows the sting of the feeling of film that crazy heat going on months before it arrived, only to have its hopes diminished when the awards start actually get handed out-- in 2005 his return to serious, sober adult dramas, Munich was greeted with muted praise despite unconditional love sight unseen.  It managed a Best Picture nomination, but momentum was lost before the darn thing even opened.  The very same thing happened the year after, when Dreamgirls was the early frontrunner (and perhaps an apologia to coveted Oscar-loving gay crowd that witnessed the dismal Brokeback Mountain loss the year before), only for the film to fail to receive the top honor, despite critical praise and a more than decent showing at the box office.  The very next year, Atonement for a time, was considered the classiest choice for the prize, but again was shut out, perhaps because it peaked too early.  The list goes on-- Up in the Air allegedly had the Oscar sealed after it debuted at the fall film festivals, only to have its momentum shifted to The Hurt Locker and Avatar as the season played out.  It's almost an unfortunate slot to be in, the pre-ordained winner.

Good luck, War Horse!

The End of Summer

For all comprehensive purposes, the summer movie season is pretty much over.  Sure there's still a few big Hollywood leftovers.  Dinner for Schmucks, despite terrible reviews will likely perform well on the charms of Paul Rudd and Steve Carrell; Scott Pilgrim vs. the World will appeal to the nerds; Eat, Pray, Love is for the ladies, while The Expendables is there for the male baby boomers.  But really, we're headed in the final stretch; the dog days of a summer movie season that now regularly starts a month and a half before the actual calendar change.  What has been learned.  Surprisingly, this year has felt like the revenge of the moviegoer, and for that I'm fairly proud.  Many of the superfluous, franchise bait excess has been discarded by smart discerning film fans.  Why didn't Iron Man 2 exceed the gross the original?  Because it wasn't as good, pure and simple; and while I balk at anyone who would regard a film that grossed north of $300 million a failure, it most certainly felt uneventful.

The same could be said for forgettable depository nonsense like Robin Hood, Prince of Persia, Sex & the City 2, The A-Team, Shrek Forever After, The Sorcerer's Apprentice and The Last Airbender.  Whew!  Fortunately for smart discerning moviegoers, hope did eventually come in a wonderful two-week period in July when two very different films with two very audiences opened to respectable numbers and glowing reviews.  The films I speak of are Inception and The Kids Are All Right.  What both films represent in a summer movie season of regret and longing is that specific, intelligent films do exist in the proverbial waste land of noise and pandering to the desirable younger male demographic.  They represent, in a clear way, that pop entertainment can be just that, but also carefully shaded with bits of substance for those who crave it.  It's important to note, I think, that Inception, courtesy of the most consistent big budget pop filmmaker of the moment, was a product of Warner Bros., and The Kids Are All Right an independently financed Sundance hit, with the fortunate nurturing of Focus Features, proving a upswing in the recent trend of smaller scaled films having trouble breaking out of the major cities.  Big will always have it's place in the summer time, but small needs a place too.

Other lessons learned from this season at the movies, aside from Christopher Nolan's pure awesomeness and sperm donor comedies can be heartfelt and smart, were:

• 80s nostalgia works, except when it doesn't (The Karate Kid was a big success because it appealed to those who grow up with the original, as well as their kids; plus Will Smith's son likely inherited a few of his genes; however The A-Team stalled because all it had going for it was the hardcore fan base, and really how big can that be?)

• Tom Cruise needs to get Paul Thomas Anderson to write him another part; as evident by Knight & Day's blase reception.  Give up the action star model for a while, and delve into character work-- you might regain your reputation, and possibly get that Oscar!

• Pixar is still the king of everything, evidenced by the singular beauty of Toy Story 3, which just might be the best third act in Hollywood history.  I said it, hyperbole be mad! 

• Jerry Bruckheimer may have totally lost it altogether, based on Prince of Persia and The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

• 3-D works, except when it doesn't!  Nobody really complained about those high admission prices for Toy Story 3 or Despicable Me, because the product was good, but really how long will it be until the idea of 3-D is almost totally rejected if Hollywood keeps offering shoddy, and hideously ugly products like Shrek Forever After and The Last Airbender.  Remember, 3-D isn't exactly a new filmmaking device, it's been around for decades, and has died before!

• Angelina Jolie is the new Tom Cruise.  Since her Salt was originally scripted for Cruise, I suggest that every film Cruise is offered should eventually be played by Jolie... 

Of course, now the subject goes from popcorn to sincerity, as we move towards the second half of 2010, and the real ugliness starts to come.  As Oscar bait films come out left and right, toppling one another in buzz, or hype and fancy packages.  Thinking of the first half of the year so far, we have a few legitimate Oscar contenders in Inception, The Kids Are All Right and Toy Story 3.  Robert Duvall performance in Get Low has received kind words in the best actor category, while actress in shaping to be one of the strongest in a while with The Kids' Annette Bening and Julianne Moore in the mix, as well as Winter's Bone's Jennifer Lawrence, assuming the conversation continues on both films.  Toy Story 3, How to Train Your Dragon and Despicable Me should stick it around for animated feature, while Inception will likely lead in technical nominations.  And if the critics remember all the way back in February, many of them were kind to Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer and Martin Scorcese's Shutter Island.  Meanwhile, spring indies Please Give and Greenberg might have a small hope in the original screenplay category if a few things fumble in the wintery months.

I'm getting ahead of myself...I'll stop and regroup.

Best Costume Design

And the nominees are:


Across the Universe- Albert Wolsky
Atonement- Jacqueline Durran
Elizabeth: The Golden Age- Alexandra Byrne
Sweeney Todd- Colleen Atwood
La Vie en Rose- Marit Allen


As with a lot of the technical categories Oscar usually goes with the most rather than the best, so by that logic Elizabeth: The Golden Age likely has the advantage. My heart will go with Across the Universe just because it's the only excuse to claim the film an Academy Award winner. The late Allen received her first nomination (she was recently snubbed for her simple and perfect designs for Brokeback Mountain) and Atwood for her redundant but inspired Sweeney Todd designs round out. I think however Atonement, with the already iconic green dress will reign supreme.