BEST PICTURE: The Artist is a lock, because audiences are crazy for this film’s simulation of nostalgia. (It has all the blissful reverie with half the calories, and unlike those other terrible foreign films you don’t have to read any subtitles!) The Descendants will get in, ditto Hugo and Moneyball. I’m sure about those four. Midnight In Paris probably gets in because it’s Woody Allen’s first actual entertaining film in god knows how long. The Oscars have a lengthy track record of confusing “long and pretentious” with “good” so I figure The Tree of Life makes it into this category. That’s six. Let’s round it out with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Help, which people like for reasons which are sadly not a mystery. I really don’t think there’ll be enough films getting votes to have ten BP nominees this year. Unless the Academy really loved fucking War Horse more than anybody else who saw it who wasn’t a film critic (seriously, I have never seen such a divide between critical opinion and popular opinion as with respect to War Horse. ATTENTION CRITICS: Armond White fucking loved stupid old War Horse. This should have been a big old hint.)
RESULTS: The Artist, The Descendants, Moneyball, Hugo, Midnight In Paris, The Tree of Life, The Help, War Horse and Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close? The FUCK? Jesus Christ, Academy, that movie was shit and people did not like it and critics mostly didn’t either. I don’t get you, Academy.
BEST DIRECTOR: Whoever directed The Artist, because it is so precious and it is such an achievement! Alexander Payne for The Descendants, because it is honestly good and Payne deserves a nomination. Woody Allen, because it’s been a while since he got a nomination and the Academy is mostly made of old people who want things to be like they were when they were kids. Martin Scorcese for Hugo, so he can do what he typically does: not win. (And unlike many Scorcese nominations, this time the not-winning will be richly deserved. Hugo isn’t bad, but it sure isn’t the achievement people are making it out to be.) And probably Terrance Malick for The Tree of Life, because wank wank wank wank wank wank wank. David Fincher deserves a nomination for Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but that shit is not gonna happen, I don’t think.
RESULTS: The Artist guy, Payne, Allen, Scorcese, Malick. This one was easy to predict. At a certain point you get cynical and, as a result, correct about things Oscar.
BEST ACTOR: Clooney for The Descendants and Pitt for Moneyball are both locks, because they are Hollywood royalty and both nominations would be deserved. Jean Dujardin for The Artist, which I am reliably informed will make you believe in miracles again and also cure gout. Michael Fassbender for Shame in the “this is very serious and we must nominate somebody in this movie for being fierce and honest and reminding us that going to the movies should be like going to the dentist” category. That leaves one slot, and it could go to Leo for J. Edgar despite the fact that the movie was terrible and everyone agreed it was terrible, mostly because Clint Eastwood commands that kind of loyalty amongst the people who vote for awards. (Hey, remember how a perfectly average film like Invictus got multiple acting nominations?) However, I’ll bet on a longshot: Brendan Gleeson for The Guard. Because why not. (Gary Oldman for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is also quite possible and more plausible than Gleeson, really, but fuck it.)
RESULTS: Clooney, Dujardin, Pitt, Oldman, and Demian Bichir from A Better Life, which trends off the SAGs. No Fassbender? Huh. I guess 2012 is a feely-goody year for Oscar.
BEST ACTRESS: Viola Davis for The Help, because racism is bad. Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady, because everybody loves Meryl Streep (and not undeservedly), even when she is in a bad movie, and isn’t it time she had another Oscar already, even if we all missed like four or five much better oportunities to give her one (I’m looking at you, LAST YEAR WHEN SANDRA BULLOCK WON). Glenn Close for Albert Nobbs, because she dressed up like a man in a very unconvincing and boring movie, and that must have been a lot of work. Tilda Swinton for We Need To Talk About Kevin because she is this year’s female entry in the Michael Fassbender category mentioned above. Again, one slot left, and it’ll go to a young actress because look at all these acclaimed older actresses, what good are they? So either Michelle Williams for My Week With Marilyn (which is a bad movie, but Michelle Williams has been in so many good ones that she deserves a pass) or Rooney Mara for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but if I had to pick I’d go with Williams because Hollywood isn’t ready for edgy movies about girls with nose rings and stuff in the Academy Awards.
RESULTS: Close, Streep, Williams, Mara, Davis. My comment about Swinton being this year’s lady Fassbender was correct, but in the wrong way.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christopher Plummer for Beginners is a lock and should win because he is old and has had a damn brilliant career, and I am rooting for my fellow Torontonian. Kenneth Branagh is widely considered to be a lock for My Week With Marilyn, as is Albert Brooks for Drive, and can you believe none of these guys has ever won an Oscar? That is crazy. Let’s see, who else? Jonah Hill for Moneyball? Could happen. And I’m gonna go into left field and predict that Ryan Gosling gets a nom here for Crazy Stupid Love, because Ryan Gosling had an incredible year but he’s not going to win anything.
RESULTS: Plummer, Branagh, Hill, Nick Nolte for Warrior (which was a good performance in a good movie, but come on) and Max von Sydow for Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, and all nominations of this sort should from now on be referred to as Ghost. As in “I can’t believe they nominated the shitty 9/11 movie for Best Picture, that’s so Ghost.“
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Whatsername who was in The Artist and OH GOD do I ever hate that movie so much. I want to punch everybody involved in the making of The Artist in the face. I am owed that, dammit. Also Jessica Chastain and Octavia Spencer for The Help, because racism is bad. Shailene Woodley has some mojo for The Descendants, so why not. Finally, let’s finish with Janet McTeer in Albert Nobbs, who is getting a lot of praise for dressing up like a man in a boring, boring movie.
RESULTS: Berenice Bejo for The Artist, McTeer, Chastain, Spencer, and Melissa McCarthy for Bridesmaids, which almost but not quite makes up for all of the other shitty nominations this year.
THE ACTUAL BEST FILMS OF 2011 WERE, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER: The Muppets, 50/50, Win-Win, A Better Life, Attack the Block, Crazy Stupid Love, The Guard, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Fright Night, Moneyball, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Captain America: The First Avenger, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Young Adult.
NUMBER OF NOMINATIONS IN THE “BIG SIX” CATEGORIES THOSE FILMS WILL GET: Not a lot of them
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What. No First Class? I thought that was streets ahead of Captain America. (You knew this one was coming).
There was a remake of Fright Night? Why?
Just saw Captain America; great film, I kinda liked First Class better too (Magneto Was Right!)
Fright Night? Really? I request an explanation, MGK. While I haven’t seen The artist, I’ve heard good things, so I am also curious about your disdain for it.
[…] be my last chance to make some predictions for what’s going to get Academy Award nominations. I’ll just use mgk’s template. I’m posting this at the last possible minute, so most people who read it are going to find […]
If someone were to take the Artist and record terrible, schlocky dialogue over top the whole movie for the characters, would that improve it?
My personal favorite movie this year was Take Shelter – and I have to say, it’s going to be an absolute travesty when Michael Shannon doesn’t get a nomination for Best Actor. His performance in that is INCREDIBLE – he’s simply magnetic, restrained, intense, subtle, powerful. Just a marvelous performance.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy…Martha Marcy May Marlene
There’s a joke here, but I’m too tired to think of it.
ATTENTION CRITICS: Armond White fucking loved stupid old War Horse. This should have been a big old hint.
I was curious about this, so I Googled the review. It is entitled “Tintin and War Horse: Spielberg’s game-changers” and the one sentence that jumped out at me was, “This may to [sic] be key to why many critics under-appreciate Spielberg…”
I can’t even… just go read it. Seriously.
I feel gypped on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
It’s an amazing goddamn movie and, as near as I can tell (and I was paying attention, because I have a number of british friends and they were all ‘You must see this. How can we convince you to see it? Do you want us to lie about how big a role Benedict Cumberbatch has? We’re prepared to do that!’) its wide release was cancelled at the last minute so theaters could squeeze in more showings of such STELLAR December releases as Chipwrecked. It played for a couple weeks in New York and LA and that was it. None of the local art houses had it, even.
I sometimes feel bad for pirating things. I pirated TTSS and do not feel bad about it and will not look back.
Gary Oldman, by the way, deserves an Oscar for no other reason than that the movie was basically the platonic example of how to give a tense, understated performance. He won’t get one. But he deserves one.
My favorite performance of the year is Michael Parks in Red State, personally.
…A lot of your ‘should have’ nominations are awfully generic films.
The Muppets still is not released in the UK until mid-February. This makes me sad.
Captain America deserves a price , it was friggin excellent ! First class is horrenduously overrated ( so is Magneto & his (not quite yet) bald headed boyfriend !)
I would never believe Drive would get a Best Picture nomination, but that is a fantastic movie. I would heartily recommend everyone go see it at least once, though I would not blame you at all if you decided you didn’t want to see it again, because some of the violence gets REALLY hard to watch. It’s intentional, but still.
As for MGK’s disdain for the Artist, obviously I can’t speak for him (especially on his own blog), but I thought it was an enjoyable movie that was just good. Not great, not amazing, just good. Which easily curdles into rage when you realize that better movies will have their nominations stolen because Hollywood loves, loves, LOVES anything that makes movies seem magical and amazing and life changing, and the Artist shoots for all 3 of those, since the plot boils down to “Talkies ruin this film star’s life, but this sweet young woman becomes a huge star, and she loves him, and that’s the redeeming power of cinema!” Or as a smarter man than me put it on Twitter (I’m afraid I can’t remember who it is off the top of my head), “The Artist is Bizarro Sunset Boulevard.”
You, MGK, are a specie-ist. No mention of Rise of the Planet of the Apes? For shame! 🙂
It’s a horror film that is A) actually pretty scary and B) is completely entertaining in all ways. It succeeds in its genre the way a lot of Oscar-nominated films never, ever do. Fright Night would have made my top 10 list for 2011, had I made one.
I totally forgot that (along with Crazy Stupid Love, which was wonderful). Added.
“all nominations of this sort should from now on be referred to as Ghost. As in ‘I can’t believe they nominated the shitty 9/11 movie for Best Picture, that’s so Ghost.'”
We already have a word for that. Three, in fact. “Dances With Wolves.”
I had no idea that Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo of “OSS 117” fame were in “The Artist,” but you just sold a couple extra tickets.
Fright Night has David Tennant in eyeliner, so all arguments against it are invalid.
And I agree about Captain America— what made the film for me was all the retro-futuristic 1940s art direction stuff. It’s clear that the designers had enormous amounts of fun with this, and so I did too. Plus there was a production number with a kick line of chorus girls.
I was all set to write a post complaining about things in X-Men: First Class, but then I realized it was stuff that film critics wouldn’t care about. I’d ask, “Why would Moira bother trying to shoot Magneto instead of, say, clubbing him with a stick?” Hey, people don’t think clearly in the heat of battle, and besides it led to the really great tragic twist of Xavier getting shot. “How does Darwin, of all people, die to Havok’s power?” It doesn’t matter exactly how all this crazy powers stuff works. “Xavier said in X-Men that he met Magneto when he was 17 and they made Cerebro together, what about that?” But this version is more realistic. And anyways, the original movie was 10 years ago, it’s a completely new cast, the new director should be allowed to have their own version of that sort of thing. “Why is Emma Frost an adult here but a teen in Wolverine’s movie?” Again, continuity like that wouldn’t matter to critics.
The movie was stuck in this weird niche where it screwed up continuity enough to annoy comics fans, but was still full of too much weird geeky stuff to be treated as “serious”.
Also, Fright Night had a kick-ass ending song.
I agree mostly with Tales to Enrage’s thoughts on The Artist, but I’m very curious why MGK wishes it would die in a fire.
And it’s nice to see there are other people who love Fright Night, Muppets, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
Hm, I also very much liked the Artist. De gustibus non est disputandum, I guess. But it’s aimed squarely at a lot of the things I like. I watch lots of silent movies anyway; I studied early cinema in college; I enjoyed all the homages; the direction and set and acting were all pitch-perfect playful recreations; and the movie had a nice sense of fun about it. YMMV.
It’s actually really easy to see the OSS:117 similarities: movies that lovingly capture a particular ethos and poke some fun at it (although the OSS movies were sillier). Tricky to do, for a black & white silent, since it requires a mastery of different cinematographic techniques than are now used, different lighting, etc. (Easy to screw this up, so that’s another vote for the director).
I view the film’s lightness as a plus, not a problem. Maybe that’s it: I’m happy with a well-executed fun movie that believes in its own material. I’ll generally take that over a poorly-executed movie that heavy-handedly aims at more deep, dark, serious themes. This was clearly made by someone who’s really into early cinema. Still, I can see that someone who’s less into silent films might find The Artist less rewarding.
And really, MGK, mocking it for being easier on mass audiences because there are no subtitles? It’s a silent movie, for God’s sakes. That’s not exactly conventional multiplex-bait.
Dilettante, that argument could be used to say that the remake of Psycho was a technically accurate remake of Psycho. I don’t know if competent copying is something movie-goers are supposed to give credit for.
Is there an Oscar category for Best Brendan Gleeson? There should be.
This was a year when most of the great films were very “indie” (and I haven’t seen a lot of them). Only War Horse seems like a crossover hit. The “mainstream” movies that got nominated are mostly pabulum, and even the entertaining big-budget Hollywood movies this year were a bit of a shrug (not that I didn’t enjoy Captain America, Mission Impossible, Muppets, and Tintin, but none of them made me bounce out of the theater on a cloud. This coming year looks a LOT better in that regard.
Kind of weird that the big crossover winner is likely to be a silent film, and that there’s another serious contender that’s also about silent films.
“Martin Scorcese for Hugo, so he can do what he typically does: not win.”
Actually, he very well might win in honor of all the times he didn’t win (e.g. Al Pacino, Scent of a Woman).
Did I miss the blog post where MGK explained why he hates The Artist? :\
Unfortunately, I barely got to see any movies this pat year. Of the few I did see, Harry Potter and Captain America were definitely the best.
For everyone wondering why MGK hates the Artist…you people are fans of sequential storytelling, right? I mean, that’s why we come here….
He starts off just commenting about how he’s heard how great it is…then he mentions how he’s heard it’s the greatest movie evah!..then he’s heard that it is the miracle of miraculous miracles….and then he’s heard so much about how Thomas Edison invented movies so that The Artist could be made that his mind has snapped and he now wishes to kill a pretty French girl.
It’s the story of one man’s descent into madness…he should get an Oscar for it!
(and At least Muppets got a nom.)
Dances With Wolves is a good movie. It just didn’t deserve to beat Goodfellas. But the nomination was perfectly acceptable.
Also, Ghost was a year earlier and therefore first.
A silent film? Are they going to nominate a series of Egyptian Heiroglyphs or something next year?
Honestly EL&IC is the weirdest nominee I’ve ever seen. Even Crash got some good reviews.
The biggest travesty, though- well, Drive got snubbed so there’s that, but the BIG one is that the brilliant “Star Spangled Man” number from Captain America didn’t get a Best Song nomination, because the Best Song category is so terminally fucked. Granted, “Man or a Muppet” is arguably better, but read about how they nominate songs sometime. It’s absurd.
@ Murc: “I feel gypped on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.”
The internets has declared a moratorium on that word.
Yes, yes, but what about the Best Animated Feature category? It’s a year where the Pixar film not only isn’t a lock to win, it’s not even nominated! Madness!
(And deservedly so. Cars 2 was a less-good sequel to what was Pixar’s worst movie prior to that sequel.)
But, seriously: Puss in Boots, Academy Award Nominee(TM)? Sigh.
Feh, regardless of whether or not racism is bad (and it is) Octavia Spencer deserved that nomination and the win as well. She was awesome.
If “man or muppet” does not win, there will be hell to pay.
If Man or Muppet is not performed live at the Oscars… I cna’t be responsible for my actions.
Muppets was a good movie but the completely unnecessary human love story taking up half the movie keeps it from having any chance of being a great one. Also, I can live with the voices being off (though I really wish Frank Oz had stayed) but the songs weren’t very good.
Captain America is a movie that I appreciate more in hindsight. I think I went into it expecting too much after being caught off guard by Thor and First Class.
Speaking of First Class, it was easily to best comic movie I’ve seen since the last Batman movie.
“Honestly EL&IC is the weirdest nominee I’ve ever seen. Even Crash got some good reviews.”
EL&IC got some strong reviews. James Berardinelli put it on his Top 10 list for 2011.
1. It’s interesting that The Artist arrives ten years after Amelie, the last French film with a similar sort of vibe.
2. I suppose The Artist is punching above its weight because it’s black and white and silent. How many ‘just good’ films would still be as good black and white and silent?
3. I’m glad that Madonna’s song from W.E., which won a Golden Globe, wasn’t nominated, but songs from the Muppets and Rio *did*.
Apparently, Madonna’s song wasn’t eligible because it appears too late in the closing credits. Still. I like that she’s going to be beaten by a cartoon bird or felt.
Just based on the movies I actually saw, it must have a worse year for film than I realized.
Take Fright Night, for example. David Tennant is great and Colin Farrell is interesting as a vampire who acts like a fairly average guy most of the time, but when I finally got around to renting the remake, it mostly just made me wish I could turn it off and watch the old one with Roddy McDowall and William Ragsdale again instead.
I guess this is where taste being subjective kicks in.
I had mixed feelings about Crazy Stupid Love. There were some really funny parts, but I didn’t enjoy the parts about teaching Steve Carrell how to pick up women as much as I thought I would.
If those were two of the best movies of 2011, maybe it’s okay that I didn’t see that many new movies last year.
I would personally bump a couple of films off of your ‘Best of 2011’ List (only the ones I have actually seen, though).
‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ in favour of ‘Margin Call’, because the latter a) works better as its own story and b) explains the 2008 financial crisis better than any documentary ever could.
‘Young Adult’ in favour of ‘Hanna’, because if you need to nominate a movie with an unsettling protagonist, it should at least be one who realizes their flaws and improves their character by the end.
And ‘Moneyball’ in favour of ‘The Tree of Life’, because in my opinion a film which explores the nature of life and makes its point with minimal speech deserves more respect than a film which is essentially about statistics (although I’m admittedly not a big sports fan, so it’s possible that the romance is lost on me).
And having seen ‘The Artist’ just last night, I will say that while it is overhyped and not without flaws, it is not nearly as bad as you claim. If nothing else, it deserves respect for the performers, who convey an impressive emotional range with minimal dialogue.
TWO original song nominees and neither one is “Star Spangled Man”?!?? That is the biggest BS of this whole Oscar slate IMHO.
Also ATTACK THE BLOCK!! Easily my favourite film of 2011. Were you tempted at all to include “Source Code” in your preferred list?
[…] I tried this last year, and with the Academy Award nominations coming out on Thursday, it’s time to give it another go. Once again, I’m using mgk’s template. […]