MTV Movie Awards Nominations

MOVIE OF THE YEAR

• 12 Years a Slave
• American Hustle
• The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
• The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
• The Wolf of Wall Street

BEST MALE PERFORMANCE

• Bradley Cooper, American Hustle
• Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street
• Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave
• Josh Hutcherson, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
• Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club 

BEST FEMALE PERFORMANCE

• Amy Adams, American Hustle
• Jennifer Aniston, We're the Miller
• Sandra Bullock, Gravity
• Jennifer Lawrence, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
• Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave

Costume Designers Guild Winners

COSTUME DESIGN (Period Film): 12 Years a Slave- Patricia Norris
COSTUME DESIGN (Contemporary Film): Blue Jasmine- Suzy Benzinger
COSTUME DESIGN (Fantasy Film): The Hunger Games: Catching Fire- Trish Summerville

Final 'Hail Mary' FYC Pleas

The nomination voting polls close for the 87th Academy Award on Wednesday, January 8th.  If Academy members are anything like me then this time of year is filled with endless anxiety and frustration.  Fears of being hopelessly behind just as the lull of the new year wants to push me forward.  Did I see everything I wanted to or needed to?  What did I miss?  How can I process all the hours of cinemas I've crammed in the past few weeks into a cohesive whole celebrating the very best of the past film year?  It's all a little too much.  If Academy members have this feeling, I'm understand, I sympathize...I'm here to help.  Here are some of my favorites, my last minutes pleas of the 2013 cinematic year that I hope you consider.  Heck, even if you haven't seen some of them, but are unsure of what to fill your ballots with, just go ahead a trust me.

BEST ACTRESS: Julie Delpy, Before Midnight
The leading actress category is pretty full and full of Oscar vets of varying degrees of worthiness, but one name that should have a higher profile is Delpy, the brittle heart and anguishing soul of Before Midnight.  She was worthy the last go around as well in Before Sunset, so perhaps more than little guilt over that upset could be remedied by nominating her here.  She brings such a volcanic display of passion, intelligence and anger to the third chapter of the Before series, but there's a consummate craft that modulates the performance and furthermore the film.  Delpy already earned Indie Spirit and Globe nominations for her effort, so this isn't totally out of the realm of feasibility, so plop the screener in, acknowledge these great films, or just check it off to rid thyselves of past sins.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Enough Said- Nicole Holofcener
It's a shame that Holofcener has never been nominated for writing before since her style is so specific and witty and almost elementary in what makes up good writing.  She came close, perhaps, a few years ago when her script for Please Give earned a WGA nomination, but the Academy has never bitten.  Sure, there's a bit of a Woody Allen thing that centers her films, as all her films take the perspective of a white and neurotic middle class woman grappling with white middle class issues, but Allen has been out of touch for years (decades?) and the Academy still bites when he's done something decent.  Holofcener, on the other hand, has always brought a brittle, perceptive economy to her films and Enough Said is one of her strongest, a deft, funny, utterly relatable human drama about real grown-ups.  Deceptively simple perhaps to a fault (and it's true that sometimes the filmmaking itself is somewhat pedestrian), but urgent, heartfelt, tender and real.

BEST PICTURE: Frances Ha
How about this-- any Oscar voter currently stumped, why not just vote for Noah Baumbach's joyous and scrumptious comedy of manners in every category.  I mean if The King's Speech was beloved enough to merit sound nominations, there really is no ceiling for the besotted ones.  And nothing in 2013 was deserving of unanimous praise than this witty, generous Greta Gerwig-headlined gift.  I've gushed time and time again about the may joys of the film and while I'm not silly enough to think for a second that this plea won't fall on deaf ears, I encourage each and all to find this gorgeous amalgam of vintage Woody Allen, French New Wave cinema and very contemporary hipster-dom and discover for themselves.  We can all dance around the streets to the tune of Bowie afterward.

BEST DIRECTOR: Spike Jonze, Her
Moving along from straight up fantasy to a very real contender that hopefully doesn't get shafted.  Hey Academy, remember, you once dug Spike Jonze-- you even nominated him for his feature directorial debut Being John Malkovich all the way back in 1999, so this isn't even that crazy to ask of you to acknowledge the pristine polish, magic and artistry he brought to Her.  While he's surely going to nominated for writing the screenplay to the boy meets operation system romantic dramedy, it's the direction of the film that's the real selling point-- all that fantastic, subtle, playful and evocative flourishes to a totally feasible, yet soft world building of a near future Los Angeles should not go unnoticed.  And while you're at it, please remind your production designer and director of photography friends that Her is worthy of slots there as well.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire- Trish Summerville
Summerville already proved her laurels with her chic and stylish designs for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, becoming David Fincher's go-to costumer (she'll re-team with him on Gone Girl), but her Catching Fire costumes were eye-catching and alluring in contrasting the grimy and poor cloth in the districts to the opulent, whatsits all around the Capitol.  The budget clearly rose in the second chapter, and the film is a richer, bolder, more colorful thing because of it, but the artistry on display-- especially from Summerville-- was definitely Oscar worthy.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: In a World...- Lake Bell
This probably won't happen and that's cool, however In a World... kind of got a bum rap.  Bell won the Screenwriting Prize at Sundance last winter and the film made but a minor splash when it premiered last summer, but the film is so sneaky and smart and deserved a lot more than it got.  Using the conceit of voice over artists as a microcosm of the film industry as a whole, Bell displayed such wit and insight in gender politics while maintaining an steely, amusing grip of the film as a whole.  It's a comedy, and a damn good one, but there's more to it.  Plus, if you're gonna ignore Holofcener, there should be a few female writers nominated this year-- 2013 was a great year for female actors and filmmakers, you just had to (as this film makes implicitly clear) really search for them.

BEST ACTOR: Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis
Likely one of the actors teetering on the dreaded sixth or seventh slots of a very crowded Best Actor race, but there's still a chance (right?) that Isaac's glorious chamber piece of a performance in the Coen Brothers' folk rock odyssey that right can prevail in the end.  In truth Isaac plays a difficult character-- a brooding failure of a folk singer trying to break through right on the cusp of when Bob Dylan was about to start a revolution.  He's not always likable in that cookie-cutter way we like our leading men to be, but the film goads us swiftly into rooting for him.  It helps that his voice is a thing of wonder and Isaac portrays Llewyn Davis as an uniquely charismatic, endlessly talented loser.  Plus, really, just think how cool the actors branch will look in history for nominating it?  Seriously, your grandchildren are judging you.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: The Spectacular Now- Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber
A certain amount of leeway can be forgiven for the lack of awardage for The Spectacular Now-- it's a movie about teenagers that all but touts its after-school-like programming as a badge of honor, but the fresh and invigorating adaptation of Tim Tharp's novel is perceptive and alive and allows for its actors to do great work in such a rare way, it would be shame for it be unacknowledged.  Perhaps it feels too-lived in and the film is likely too-little seen, but that's no excuse.  Neustadter & Weber were on the cusp of a nomination five years ago for the original screenplay (500) Days of Summer that never came to fruition, but their work on The Spectacular Now is better and bigger (by being smaller) that it's all the more deserving. 

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Spring Breakers- Benoît Debie
I understand that Spring Breakers probably wasn't really your thing.  I'm okay with that, it wasn't really my thing either.  In fact, I didn't even particularly care for Harmony Korine's brash, the kids-are-not-alright neon nightmare.  However, separating tremendous technical achievements from the overall quality of a film is another matter and one that the Academy membership should appreciate as well.  Debie, the rigorous and exhausting talent who's lensed films like Enter the Void, The Runaways and Irreversible is a undisputed talent.  The fever dream shots make give the film the nightmare-dreamlike setting that it needed but didn't deserve.  His contributions were utterly fantastic and awards worthy.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: The World's End- Simon Pegg & Edgar Wright
Yeah, the pub carousing turned apocalyptic comedy probably isn't something that was ever on your radar, I understand that.  But the witty, inventive and intelligently sharp screenplay for The World's End handles so many neat parlor tricks that it was easy to forget that the film is actually quite moving.  All of the sci-fi/frat house comedy that's packed on the surface doesn't take away the quietly sobering grace notes of human connection and growing pains that face a group of high school friends now faced with the hobbles of grown-up existence.  Have a pint and get a sense of humor.

Okay, I was pretty rough on you, but heed my advise.

A "Frozen" Box Office

2...1...2...3...2...1.  No we're not suffering from binary Tourettes-- that's the box office ranking trajectory of Disney's seemingly unstoppable Frozen, which in it's sixth week of national release tops the box office chart.  After a big opening in November, the animated film rebounded over the holidays, nearly stealing the thunder away from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.  Surprising, especially in the blink-and-it's-gone normal track record for current films, Frozen rang supreme for the first weekend of the 2014.  The film, which is just a hop skip away from the $300 million mark, unseated the only new film in the marketplace-- Paranormal Activity: The Mark Ones-- and gave all the new and shiny Christmas toys a run for its money.

1. Frozen- $20.7 / -27% / $297.8 total
2. Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones- $18.2 (NEW)
3. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug- $16.2 / -44% / $229.6 total
4. The Wolf of Wall Street- $13.4 / -27% / $63.2 total
5. American Hustle- $13.2 / -29% / $88.7 total
6. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues- $11.1 / -43% / $109.1 total
7. Saving Mr. Banks- $9.0 / -32% / $59.3 total
8. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty- $8.2 / -35% / $45.6 total
9. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire- $7.4 / -26% / $407.4 total
10. Grudge Match- $5.4 / -23% / $24.9 total
11. 47 Ronin- $5.4 / -49% / $32.6 total
12. Walking with Dinosaurs- $3.7 / -48% / $31.3 total
13. Tyler Perry's A Medea Christmas- $3.1 / -54% / $50.4 total
14. Philomena- $1.5 / -12% / $19.6 total
15. Inside Llewyn Davis- $1.1 / -5% / $6.9 total
16. Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom- $1.1 / -50% / $6.9 total
17. Her- $0.7 / +11% / $2.9 total
18. Nebraska- $0.6 / -9% / $7.0 total
19. Believe- $0.5 / -71% / $5.9 total
20. The Book Thief- $0.5 / -11% / $19.1 total
21. Gravity- $0.5 / -1% / $255.6 total
22. Thor: The Dark World- $0.4 / -23% / $203.4 total
23. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2- $0.4 / -6% / $117.6 total
24. 12 Years a Slave- $0.3 / -12% / $38.4 total

LIMITED RELEASES

• August: Osage County- $0.1 / -21% / $0.4 total
• Lone Survivor- $0.08 / -8% / $0.3 total
• The Past- $0.04 / +17% / 0.1 total
• The Invisible Woman- $0.03 / -5% / $0.1 total

In other news, Martin Scorsese's controversy-laden The Wolf of Wall Street appears to be not quite in as much trouble as first predicted after a troubling post-Christmas decrease and a reported "C" rating from CinemaScore.  The film, which Musings and Stuff has plenty to write about (even though the Internet has pretty much exhausted the entire subject) is coming together nicely, and may even be a hit when all is said and done-- that the film cost a reported $100 million is a hard pill to swallow however.  David O. Russell's American Hustle, by contrast, traded spots with Wolf from the previous week, but his ABSCAM con job cost a far more manage $40 million and thus is already in more sturdy shape.  Neither is Saving Mr. Banks nor The Secret Life of Walter Mitty in quite the trouble previously predicted either-- awards may not be in the cards per se (though Emma Thompson is assured a Best Actress nomination at this point), but those are in decent shape as well.  Banks even has a chance to clear $100 million, while Mitty will perform better abroad, as most Ben Stiller films do.

In just a click of a heel, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire will top Iron Man 3 as the top selling movie of 2013 as well as become the highest grossing film in the franchise.  This is interesting on a few levels, but mostly due to the fun (sad) fact as pointed out by The Film Experience, as it will become the first movie since The Sound of Music all the way back in 1965 to be a years top seller exclusively headlined by a member of the fairer sex.  Jennifer Lawrence, with an Oscar already and a third nomination just around the corner surely isn't lacking for prizes, but that's deserving of something-- perhaps a tea party with Julie Andrews at the very least.

What did you see this weekend?

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire opens with a moment of reflection.  Earthy huntress Katniss Everdeen (again played with a wily grace by Jennifer Lawrence), the lethally clever co-victor of the teenage bloodbath of the last chapter, is seemingly lost, fragile and scarred.  Staring into a meadow with the demons of her past in a state of unease and terror.  The moment doesn't stick very long, but Lawrence, who has become a major movie star and won an Oscar in between the first two cycles of her massively successful YA franchise, manages to shade the smallest morsels of subtext and longing throughout the assembly line busy work of the sequel (there are basics that need to be covered and quickly), igniting the film with a conscience it doesn't necessarily earn nor deserve.  That the second installment of Suzanne Collins' bestselling trilogy rests solely on her mighty shoulders would be an understatement; Lawrence infuses a soul amidst the corporate branding and provides a reason to care.

Not that the film around her isn't arresting in it of itself.  Francis Lawrence (Water For Elephants, I Am Legend) inherits the reins to the franchise from first chapter director Gary Ross and the second film is overall more polished, brisk and shapely, even as it runs its charted course that's largely the same of the first film.  Clearly the budget has raised-- the special effects are a bit flashier, the make-up and hairstyling effects a bit more garish and the overall design of the picture is a bit more fluid and more fittingly epic in stature as for sure, the stakes have been raised.  Even within its by-design packaging, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire ups the ante in an entertaining, if hardly surprising way-- the screenplay by Simon Beaufoy and Michael Arndt manages to be looser, funnier and meatier all at once, breathing glimmers of life, if not exactly insight, from the more stridently structured first outing.  Yet, and this isn't exactly a denouncement of the film as a whole, but a matter of fact-- Catching Fire is but a mere stepping stone to the next installment, the forthcoming two-part (oh brother) finale.  As such the generously plotted two-and-one-half-hour film can only be as good as its "to be continued" conclusion.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

"Chins up...smiles on."

The first glimpse of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire has arrived.  It made its grand entrance in at the MTV Movie Awards.  Whatcha think?