THE BEST PICTURE BATTLE
The Artist Vs The Descendants Vs Hugo
Well, after recovering from the Oscar nomination surprises and with the ceremony at the Kodak Theatre comming soon, it's time to look at the nominees and start thinking about the winners and the Best Picture category is one of the most exciting ones to predict this year. While last year, the battle was between The Social Network and The King's Speech, this year, we have 3 big contenders for a win (at leas!): Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist, Alexander Payne's The Descendants and Martin Scorsese's Hugo.
THE ARTIST
The Artist took home the Critics' Choice Award of Best Film, the Golden Globe of Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical, the PGA Award of Best Theatrical Feature, the DGA Award of Best Director (Michel Hazanavicius), the SAG Award of Outstanding Leading Actor in a Motion Picture (Jean Dujardin) and the BAFTA Award of Best Film, between others wins, and it was nominated for the SAG Award of Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture, making The Artist the absolute front-runner in the Best Picture Oscar race and the second movie with most Oscar nominations, right behind Hugo. It's a black&white silent movie, a risky project that could easily not work for both critics and audiences, but it became a sensation at 2011 edition of Cannes Film Festival, a commercial success and the most acclaimed movie of the year and such a cinematic triumph deserves to be honored. I can actually see The Artist as a classic in a near future, I mean, as the movie that remembered people that the silent cinema already existed and it was part of one of the most interesting parts of history. The movie is a love letter to the most magic kind of cinema!
THE DESCENDANTS
The Descendants is one of the best movies of the year, a "tiny" familiar drama that's so emotionally satisfying and honest, making it impossible to ignore. It is far from being something that was never seen, but it is good enough to be stuck on our minds. Alexander Payne did a wonderful job by directing a beautiful script and a marvelous cast, leaded by George Clooney and by the Oscar-snubed Shailene Woodley. It won the Golden Globe of Best Motion Picture - Drama, the Satellite Award of Best Motion Picture, it was the movie that received most National Board of Review awards and it got a lot of big awards nominations like the Critics' Choice Award of Best Film, the PGA Award of Best Theatrical Motion Picture, the DGA Award of Best Director (Alexander Payne), the SAG Award of Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture, the SAG Award of Outstanding Leading Actor (Clooney), the Independent Spirit Award of Best Feature or the BAFTA Award of Best Film. It's a beautiful movie that will score a lot of votes in the Best Picture category, but its competition is fearless, with The Artist taking home big precursor awards... (The snub of Woodley at the nominations may also be an indicator that the AMPAS isn't THAT INTO the movie).
HUGO
What looked like just a good children's movie directed by Martin Scorsese became one of the most raved movies of the year after being released, proving that a movie should only be judged after being seen, Hugo emmerged as the Best Picture contender a lot of Oscar folks were ignoring from their early predictions and it is the movie with most Oscar nominations of the year. A love letter to cinema, Scorsese's latest masterpiece was nominated for every Best Picture prize, but it missed a BAFTA nod in the top category, making people start wondering about if the movie's Best Picture momentum is comming to an end. Plus, the movie missed the precious SAG Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture and scored no acting nods in the Academy Awards nominations, but it won the Golden Globe of Best Director, which is a strong award and the statement that it keeps in the Best Picture race. Such a marvelous children's movie is rare and the AMPAS members may want to see a representative of their childhood taking the Oscar home: Hugo isn't an obvious winner, but if you think well, you can see him getting the support of those voters who took Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close as their favorite...
THE OTHERS...
In my opinion, the movie that has most potential to become "one of the most shocking Best Picture winners of the century" is Midnight In Paris, but I think both The Help and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close can't be ignored. Midnight is considered the front-runner in the Best Original Screenplay race and a Woody Allen comeback (only God knows how the Academy loves Woody): the movie is the kind of picture for those people with a "certain level of culture" and for... well, you know... Woody Allen fans! The Help may be seen as another contender that's unlikely to win the big prize, but it has a strong moral lesson about racial discrimination and since everybody seems to be touched by such a topic... Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close may be seen as this year's Blind Side (and it also stars Sandra Bullock), because of being able to be emotionally manipulative, but I don't judge who love this one: people like to feel something while watching a movie!
I know both The Help and ELIC missed important Oscar nods and such a fact make a possible win for them extremely unlikely, but sometimes the AMPAS likes to surprise the audiences and the critics and the nominees themselves!
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