Tag: Quvenzhane Wallis

Oscars 2013: It's Anyone's Race

Last year when the Oscar nominations were announced, I couldn’t stop myself from yelling at the TV when “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” got nominated for Best Picture.

This year, there were a lot of snubs and a lot of surprises, but I held my tongue.

That’s because last year, I was more or less certain going in that not only would “The Artist” be nominated, it would probably win. The news was what else would share its spotlight in history, not the actual awards.

2012 is different. I didn’t know for sure what would be nominated, and noting how many predictions I got wrong, I can safely say I still don’t know what might win. In ANY category. We still have a real race on our hands.

No, we didn’t see a real surprise nominee like “Skyfall,” “The Master” or something completely out of left field like “The Intouchables” or “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” to round out a top 10, but you tell me who’s going to win Best Picture.

“Lincoln” got 12 nominations, which is a lot. That’s as many as “Ben-Hur” got. But is the movie so universally loved that it can make a clean sweep? It’s hardly Spielberg’s best movie, even if it is his best in a decade, but some people have viewed it as homework.

I have more questions about “Life of Pi’s” chances. “Life of Pi” got 11 nominations, none of them from acting, but it did get a surprise Adapted Screenplay nod and Best Director nod. “Life of Pi” did well at the box office, but how big was this movie’s Oscar campaign? Not as big as “Silver Linings Playbook,” and certainly not as big as “Lincoln.” This movie is practically under the radar, a movie that was probably in the five or six slot for nomination is now looking like the front runner.

As early as yesterday, I would’ve said “Argo” or “Zero Dark Thirty” would be the front runners to win. “Argo” is the most well-liked movie of the year. Very few people have a bad word to say about it, and just about everyone has seen it, both of which are things that none of the other nominees can claim. “Zero Dark Thirty” has a lot of controversy behind it, but it is by far the critical darling of the year. Now however, neither Ben Affleck nor former winner Kathryn Bigelow have been nominated for Best Director. Movies have won Best Picture without winning Best Director before, but only three times in the 85 year history has a movie won Best Picture without even being nominated, those being in 1927, 1931 and 1989 when “Driving Miss Daisy” had a surprise victory.

“Silver Linings” isn’t that weak either. With Jacki Weaver getting in, it’s the first movie since “Reds” to be nominated in every acting category. That gives it eight nominations, which is nothing to scoff at.

Could “Amour” or “Beasts of the Southern Wild” pull off a surprise win? Michael Haneke was on a short list for possible director nominees, but almost no one had first-timer Benh Zeitlin on their lists. Both movies are riding the waves of having the youngest and oldest Best Actress nominees of all time in Quvenzhane Wallis and Emmanuelle Riva.

Even “Django Unchained” doesn’t look too weak. I predicted it would get seven nominations, but it’s got five, and Christoph Waltz taking Leo’s or even Javier Bardem’s spot says something.

That’s already a lot to mull over, but can you honestly make a prediction in any of the other races?

Daniel Day-Lewis seems perfectly plausible to win Best Actor. He’s playing Abraham Lincoln for God sakes. But he would be making history as the only actor to have won three Oscars. Are we prepared to call Daniel Day-Lewis the BEST actor of all time if he wins? Perhaps Joaquin Phoenix is stronger than we think, or maybe “Silver Linings” can ride an acting wave for an Oscar for Bradley Cooper.

Best Actress? Who knows. Jennifer Lawrence is the real movie star of the bunch, but Wallis can light up a room, Jessica Chastain is being called a female powerhouse in “Zero Dark Thirty,” Riva has the support of an older branch who remembers her in French New Wave classics, and Naomi Watts has the British voting block in her largely tearjerker of a movie.

Maybe Robert De Niro will end up being the three time Oscar winner, not Day-Lewis. But consider that everyone else in the Best Supporting category has already won. That’s just unprecedented.

The only conceivable prediction thus far is Anne Hathaway in “Les Miserables.” She steals the show in her three minute song, and there’s no telling that she’s one of the biggest movie stars right now who arguably deserves one. But just how good are Sally Field, Helen Hunt and Amy Adams in their movies? This is not a weak category, as I previously assumed.

No, I’m not quite ready to make any prediction. And that’s a good thing. For years the Academy has been trying desperately to get more people to actually watch the Oscars, be it through trendy hosts, more Best Picture nominees, an earlier schedule and a different presentation format. But now the Oscars have added one element that the show hasn’t had in years: surprise.

Correction: In a previous version, it was incorrectly stated that “Lincoln” received the most nominations of all time, tied with “Ben-Hur,” “Titanic” and “LOTR: The Return of the King.” In actuality, 14 nominations is the record held by “All About Eve” and “Titanic.” The record for most wins is 11.

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.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

The lovely independent film “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is set in the near future when the polar ice caps have begun to melt, the Earth is being slowly flooded and the civilized world has constructed giant levees to stave off inevitable destruction.

Many of these adults will know what it is to survive nature and the struggle of living with it. But like the film’s young hero, Hushpuppy, generations will be born with no memory of a world without water everywhere. For them, every move they’ve ever made has and will have an impact on the natural world around them.

Benh Zeitlin’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is a wondrous, poetic, beautiful film about all the things humans can do when we stop acting like people afraid of nature and start living like brave beasts that become one with the world. It’s about color, light and discovery. It’s about being loved by the world, loving it back and understanding how to truly live. It’s about facing the other beasts of the world, and doing it head on.

Doing this with such strength, conviction and attitude is Hushpuppy, played by the young, first time actress Quvenzhanè Wallis. Wallis was only 5 at the time of filming, now 8. Boy does she have the spark. Standing scrawny, but tall with a commanding pout, she owns the screen. She’s capable of it because her character believes so strongly that her actions and responsibilities have consequences on the entire universe. Hushpuppy bonds with the world, and Wallis bonds as deeply with us.

She lives on a newly formed island in the Deep South known only as The Bathtub. The ragged shacks, dirty streets and wild vegetation remind us of the images immediately after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. But politics and history are the furthest thing from this film’s mind. This community is full of life and beauty.

The camera bobbles around like an excitable child, looking up at the natural world with a short attention span to all the colors, light and details exploding from the frame. It’s as if we’re sharing Hushpuppy’s innocent perspective. We can only pin down a few specifics of what we see, but this place is home.

Contrast that with the pallid white and blue lighting of the “civilized world.” Never has such a place looked so foreign, and never has a little girl looked so lost in a cute powder blue dress. Hushpuppy and her father Wink (another first time actor, Dwight Henry) end up in the hospital after a horrible storm has nearly drowned The Bathtub. Wink has been coughing blood, and in a desperate attempt to find dry ground so he can recover, ends up blowing up a levee wall.

The heartbreaking beauty of “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is that, in her naïve innocence, Hushpuppy feels responsible for her father’s illness. She was angry at him, and his sickness seemed to send the rest of the planet into imbalance. For her, everything is connected, and she can’t let the world fall into ruin any more than she can allow her father to die.

Hushpuppy observes death and life with practical metaphors. Her childlike pronunciation achieves a poetry of its own that’s typically absent from gritty indies such as this. To her, being put on life support means being plugged into a wall. Or before there were people, all the beasts in the “Iced Age” were strong and didn’t act like “pussies.” Wallis grants the movie such authenticity by just acting her age.

And “Beasts’s” authenticity is its greatest gift. It views a futuristic, post-apocalyptic world of sorts, and yet it maintains a rustic, at home flavor that feels wondrous and fantastical. Zeitlin has the film’s tone in the right place. There are some gruesome images of poverty and the violence of Mother Nature, but it doesn’t drown the audience in depression or inundate us with parables and winning spirits. Like the tough-love fire in Wink’s eye as he yells at Hushpuppy to eat her crab not with a knife but with her bare hands, the movie has a hard-knock pluck that inspires and moves us in every moment.

It forces us to use our bodies and our hearts, not our tools of logic, to appreciate its charms. “Beasts of the Southern Wild” will demand some patience and strength to appreciate its vivid, visceral charms. But those who embrace their wild side will discover a whole new, beautiful world.

4 stars