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The 1st Annual Edgy Award Nominations
I have now been watching the Oscars, consecutively, for the last fourteen years. I love it. Even when I end up screaming at the television and throwing chairs around the room, I love the experience. Oscar night is like the Super Bowl, the World Series and Christmas all rolled into one night. However, if there’s one thing I enjoy more than watching the biggest awards of the year, it’s choosing my own.
I’ve been picking my own personal nominees and winners since before I can remember. Obviously, these particular honors don’t get as much attention as the actual Academy Awards, but they’ve always been amusing to me. Now, my awards not only get a home, but a name, as well. Welcome to the 1st Annual Edgy Award Nominations. They include all of the usual categories that the AMPAS offer. The final presentation will also contain a few other awards that tickle my fancy. Below, the nominees are listed in alphabetical order, not preferential. Expect my decision on the final winners some time next week. Hope that everyone enjoys them.
NOTE: Even though these are the first “published” Edgy Awards, I do have a solid, written record of them going back to 1940. Therefore, I’ve included a feature of noting how many nominations and wins that each individual has received from me in the past. This gives some extra input as to my own tastes in the nominees, how they’ve surprised me or continue to impress me. The connotations refer, however to how many mentions each person has had in each individual category, aside from all the acting categories included together. Once again, enjoy!
BEST ORIGINAL SONG
“Bred and Buttered”
featured in “Winter’s Bone”
Music and Lyrics by John Hawkes (1st Nom)
“If I Rise”
featured in “127 Hours”
Music by A.R. Rahman (3rd Nom)
Lyrics by Dido and Rollo Armstrong (1st Nom)
“Shine”
featured in “Waiting for Superman”
Music and Lyrics by John Legend (1st Nom)
“We Belong Together”
featured in “Toy Story 3”
Music and Lyrics by Randy Newman (3rd Nom)
Critics Choice Awards – Postgame
Damn it, David Fincher, why weren’t you at the Critics Choice Awards last night? I really want to know. If you tell me that you’re shooting “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” fine. Yet, if you tell me that it’s because you’re annoyed with the awards season coverage, grow up. The kind of awards sweep that you are experiencing right now, you probably won’t experience again for a long time, if ever again. You should appreciate it while you have it.
All right, I’m done with my personalized whine to “The Social Network”‘s director. Let’s move on to the awards themselves. The three films that definitely had the biggest nights were “The Social Network,” “The Fighter” and “Inception.” It was kind of a mute point that after winning 28 out of 31 (90 percent) of all of this year’s critics awards, it would have been kind of unlikely for “The Social Network” to lose the Critics Choice Award for Best Picture. The film also racked up awards for Director, Adapted Screenplay and Original Score.
“The Fighter” had the biggest night in regards to acting honors, as well it should have. Both Christian Bale and Melissa Leo took home their respective supporting awards, while the entire cast was given the Best Ensemble Cast Award. Meanwhile, “Inception” quite literally swept the technical categories. The film picked up awards for Best Action Film, Cinematography, Editing, Art Direction, Sound and Visual Effects. Certainly a good night for Christopher Nolan and his collaborative team.
The lead acting awards went to Colin Firth and Natalie Portman, who can now probably be considered locks for Oscar. Natalie Portman, I am thrilled about, being that she may even win my own personal award for Best Lead Actress. Yet, Colin Firth, I’m a bit disappointed about. The performance was great, but really nothing that I would consider sweep-worthy. I’d much rather have seen him win last year for “A Single Man,” which, in my opinion, was the best male performance of the year and a career-best for the actor.
Overall, there were more things about the awards that I liked then disliked. The highlights were obviously all of “The Social Network”‘s accolades. Let the train keep on chugging. I also could not be more thrilled about both Melissa Leo and Christian Bale. Phenomenal work that deserves recognition. Please let this also be a good sign that “Inception” might possibly be able to beat out “Alice in Wonderland” for Art Direction at the Oscars. That would make me ever so delighted.
Of all the things that I didn’t like, one was definitely a whopper. I simply cannot account for “Waiting for Superman”‘s victory in Best Documentary. I’ve heard the term “Year of the Doc” thrown around over the years, but I truly believe it to be a reality for the current annual. There is a wealth of incredible documentaries to choose from this awards season, and this is what they go with. “Superman” is a good film, but it is not a phenomenal film. There are too many holes in its argument and it just doesn’t have enough of an edge. With competition like “Inside Job,” “Restrepo” and “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” I have no idea how this film won, but I’m fairly sure that we can thank Oprah for it.
Here’s a full list of the BFCA winners:
Best Picture: “The Social Network”
Best Director: David Fincher – “The Social Network”
Best Actor: Colin Firth – “The King’s Speech”
Best Actress: Natalie Portman – “Black Swan”
Best Young Actress: Hailee Steinfeld – “True Grit”
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale – “The Fighter”
Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo – “The Fighter”
Best Ensemble: “The Fighter”
Best Adapted Screenplay: “The Social Network”
Best Original Screenplay: “The King’s Speech”
Best Foreign Language Film: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”
Best Documentary Feature: “Waiting for Superman”
Best Animation: “Toy Story 3”
Best Comedy: “Easy A”
Best Picture Made for TV: “The Pacific”
Best Action Movie: “Inception”
Best Cinematography: “Inception”
Best Editing: “Inception”
Best Art Direction: “Inception”
Best Visual Effects: “Inception”
Best Sound: “Inception”
Best Makeup: “Alice in Wonderland”
Best Costume Design: “Alice in Wonderland”
Best Song: If I Rise – “127 Hours”
Best Score: “The Social Network”
As far as my predictions go, I was correct on 18 out of 25 categories. That’s about a 72 percent ratio, which I’ll take. I don’t think anyone could have predicted how well “Inception” was going to fare with the technical awards.
That’s it for the Critics Choice Awards. You can expect my predictions for the Golden Globes to come very shortly.
Producers Guild Announces….Exactly as Expected
The PGA have announced their nominees for 2010. As I said, over the weekend, these awards are basically the Producers’ union’s equivalent of the Best Picture Oscar. And while I’m very happy to see certain nominees up there, this is really showing how boring the rest of the season will be. I was really hoping that “Winter’s Bone” was going to be able to beat out “The Town,” but c’est la vie. At least the actual nominees for Best Picture are balloted by the entire Academy and not just the producers, so it should fare a better chance in a few weeks.
Here’s the full list of nominees:
Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures
“Black Swan” (Scott Franklin, Mike Medavoy, Brian Oliver)
“The Fighter” (David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman, Mark Wahlberg)
“Inception” (Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas)
“The Kids Are All Right” (Gary Gilbert, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, Celine Rattray)
“The King’s Speech” (Iain Cunning, Emile Sherman, Gareth Unwin)
“127 Hours” (Danny Boyle, Christian Colson)
“The Social Network” (Dana Brunetti, Ceán Chaffin, Michael De Luca, Scott Rudin)
“The Town” (Basil Iwanyk, Graham King)
“Toy Story 3″ (Darla K. Anderson)
“True Grit” (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Scott Rudin)
The Award for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures
“Despicable Me” (John Cohen, Janet Healy, Christopher Meledandri)
“How to Train Your Dragon” (Bonnie Arnold)
“Toy Story 3″ (Darla K. Anderson)
Outstanding Producer of Documentary Theatrical Motion Pictures
“Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Elliot Spitzer” (awaiting final credit determination)
“Earth Made of Glass” (Reid Carolin, Deborah Scranton)
“Inside Job” (Charles Ferguson, Audrey Marrs)
“Smash His Camera” (Linda Saffire, Adam Schlesinger)
“The Tillman Story” (John Battsek)
“Waiting for Superman” (Lesley Chilcott)
Milestone Award
James Cameron
David O. Selznick Award
Scott Rudin
Nice to see Scott Rudin getting the Lifetime award at the end, there. The guy has really done a lot for film in the last decade. And it looks like he might be getting a chance at a second Oscar under his belt should “The Social Network’s luck continue. Rudin won three years ago for “No Country for Old Men.”
Interesting also to see “Despicable Me” beating out both “The Illusionist” and “Tangled” for Best Animated, However, once again these are producers, so box office success is taken much more into account.
As far as my winner predictions go, I am both hoping and believing that “The Social Network” will take this down. Since it probably has both the DGA and the WGA in the bag, a win here would all but seal it for a Best Picture victory at the Oscars. If “The King’s Speech” doesn’t make a stand here, all the Golden Globes in the world aren’t going to be able to help it. I’d say that if anything were to upset “Network” it would be either “Black Swan” or “Inception.” Both films are riding huge waves, right now. They are also the two biggest box office successes in their respective areas, “Inception” being a towering Hollywood blockbuster and “Black Swan,” the independent film that just won’t stop breaking records.
Perhaps the biggest dark horse for the win is “Toy Story 3.” The film is a monster box office success, turning in mountains more than any other film this year. The PGA also has a penchant for honoring animated films. They were nominating Pixar before the Academy ever got around to it, and this was before there were ten nominees. They even gave the Zanuck award to “The Incredibles” in 2004. If “Toy Story 3” can pull off a win here, it will be a massive coup, and then every awards-related news story for the next month will be “Can an animated film win Best Picture?” and the dominos may begin to fall from there. We’ll see.
The film will for sure clean up in the Animated Feature Award. Sad, really. If it wasn’t for Pixar constantly bombarding us with amazing cinema, “How to Train Your Dragon” would have had a huge chance. Best Documentary should be a showdown between “Waiting for Superman” and “Inside Job,” but the latter definitely has the edge.
Stay tuned for the WGA nominations which should be out within the next few hours. I was reminded earlier that I completely forgot to consider “Animal Kingdom” in the Best Original Screenplay category, which has a lot of potential for showing up.
Best Original Song Contenders
I’ve been waiting for this to show up for a while. At long last, the AMPAS have released the official list of songs that are eligible to compete for the Best Original Song Oscar. It’s nearly impossible to predict this award unless you have a list to choose from.
Here is the full list:
* “Alice” from “Alice in Wonderland”
* “Forever One Love” from “Black Tulip”
* “Freedom Song” from “Black Tulip”
* “Bound to You” from “Burlesque”
* “Welcome to Burlesque” from “Burlesque”
* “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me” from “Burlesque”
* “There’s a Place for Us” from “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”
* “Coming Home” from “Country Strong”
* “Me and Tennessee” from “Country Strong”
* “Despicable Me” from “Despicable Me”
* “Prettiest Girls” from “Despicable Me”
* “Dear Laughing Doubters” from “Dinner for Schmucks”
* “Better Days” from “Eat Pray Love”
* “If You Run” from “Going the Distance”
* “Darkness before the Dawn” from “Holy Rollers”
* “Sticks & Stones” from “How to Train Your Dragon”
* “Le Gris” from “Idiots and Angels”
* “Chanson Illusionist” from “The Illusionist”
* “Never Say Never” from “The Karate Kid”
* “To the Sky” from “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole”
* “What If” from “Letters to Juliet”
* “Life during Wartime” from “Life during Wartime”
* “Made in Dagenham” from “Made in Dagenham”
* “Little One” from “Mother and Child”
* “Be the One” from “The Next Three Days”
* “If I Rise” from “127 Hours”
* “When You See Forever” from “The Perfect Game”
* “I Remain” from “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time”
* “Dream Big” from “Pure Country 2: The Gift”
* “How I Love You” from “Ramona and Beezus”
* “Darling I Do” from “Shrek Forever After”
* “Noka Oi” from “Six Days in Paradise”
* “This Is a Low” from “Tamara Drewe”
* “I See the Light” from “Tangled”
* “Rise” from “3 Billion and Counting”
* “We Belong Together” from “Toy Story 3”
* “Eclipse: All Yours” from “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”
* “Nothing” from “Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too”
* “A Better Life” from “Unbeaten”
* “Shine” from “Waiting for ‘Superman’”
* “The Reasons Why” from “Wretches & Jabberers”
After briefly viewing this list, I believe that my rough predictions would look something like this:
“You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me” from “Burlesque”
“Coming Home” from “Country Strong”
“If I Rise” from “127 Hours”
“I See the Light” from “Tangled”
“Shine” from “Waiting for ‘Superman’”
“Shine” is probably the most recognizable and publicized song on this list, so I would count it in. Plus, it has the whole cause tie-in which helped out “I Need to Wake Up” win for Guggenheim’s las big film “An Inconvenient Truth.” I would also go with “I See the Light,” as well as “If I Rise” due to the amount of pull that I’m sure Alan Menken and A.R. Rahman still have with the academy. Finally, I would pick at least one song from both “Burlesque” and “Country Strong,” because, well, they’re musicals.
Mike Fleming reports on the exact rules and regulations of how the songs are chosen at Deadline.com. Leave your thoughts or predictions, below, if you life.
15 Best Documentary Finalists
For those who don’t know how the Oscars are chosen, there are certain awards that are narrowed down to a series of finalists which are eventually narrowed down to their respective nominations. Best Make-Up Effects takes seven finalists, while Best Visual Effects has fifteen. Another award that has fifteen submissions is Best Documentary Feature. Those finalists have been listed below, and though I haven’t seen them all, I can tell you that this is an extremely crowded and competitive field.
These are the finalists:
“Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer,” Alex Gibney, director (ES Productions LLC)
“Enemies of the People,” Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath, directors (Old Street Films)
“Exit through the Gift Shop,” Banksy, director (Paranoid Pictures)
“Gasland,” Josh Fox, director (Gasland Productions, LLC)
“Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould,” Michele Hozer and Peter Raymont, directors (White Pine Pictures)
“Inside Job,” Charles Ferguson, director (Representational Pictures)
“The Lottery,” Madeleine Sackler, director (Great Curve Films)
“Precious Life,” Shlomi Eldar, director (Origami Productions)
“Quest for Honor,” Mary Ann Smothers Bruni, director (Smothers Bruni Productions)
“Restrepo,” Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger, directors (Outpost Films)
“This Way of Life,” Thomas Burstyn, director (Cloud South Films)
“The Tillman Story,” Amir Bar-Lev, director (Passion Pictures/Axis Films)
“Waiting for ‘Superman’”, Davis Guggenheim, director (Electric Kinney Films)
“Waste Land,” Lucy Walker, director (Almega Projects)
“William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe,” Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler, directors (Disturbing the Universe LLC)
For sure, the showdown for the big prize will end up being the inspirational education rally “Waiting for Superman” by Davis Guggenheim, who won previously for “An Inconvenient Truth,” and the hard-boiled assault on corrupt Wall Street bankers “Inside Job,” by Charles Ferguson, who was shamefully robbed of an Oscar for his enraging look at the Iraq War, “No End in Sight.”
“Waiting for Superman” has some heavyweights backing it up, such as Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates, however “Inside Job” has the added benefit of being extraordinarily good (as I will write in my upcoming review) which sometimes has an influence on the Academy.
My personal favorite in the category, however, would probably be “Restrepo,” the heart-wrenching story of a platoon of soldiers stationed at the most dangerous outpost in all of Afghanistan. It’s a bit too small and unknown to take home the gold, but I’m confident that it can ring in with a darkhorse nomination.
Probably the most surprising omissions from this list are “12th and Delaware” a searing look at the abortion argument by the makers of “Jesus Camp” and “A Film Unfinished,” a film piecing together never-before-seen footage of Holocaust propaganda films made by the Nazis. These are powerful subjects by great filmmakers, and they should have deserved a spot on this list.
Stay tuned for my updated Oscar Predictions which should be coming out within the next few days.
The Edge of the Frame 