Dead Good Alfonso: Cuarón wins DGA Award

Alfonso Cuarón took a giant leap towards Best Director Oscar glory after winning the Directors Guild of America award on Sunday. And what I wrote there was funny because Gravity is a film about space and a man said ‘giant leap’ in space once.

Until the Academy took a rather peculiar turn last year and totally blanked Affleck the elder like a gang of high school bitchwads, the DGAs had correctly predicted the last nine Best Director Oscar winners. So we must now assume that Cuarón’s slender Central American nose has edged just inches in front of Steve McQueen’s conk in the race.

Alfonso Cuarón receiving the DGA award from Ben Affleck for ‘Gravity’ (Credit: Reuters/Gus Ruelas)

Further furthermore more, 11 of the last 12 DGA winning films have gone on to pick up the Best Picture Academy Award – only Ang Lee’s tragic Brokeback Mountain failure preventing a distinguished dozen after Crash inexplicably trounced it.

So Gravity is, I don’t know, rising up in to the stratosphere, I guess, leaving, I suppose, 12 Years a Slave looking like a mere ant, ok, down on Earth, right?

Nomination Appreciation and Guildy Pleasures

And here you were, thinking – and, presumably, hoping – that I’d literally fallen off the face off the earth. The Oscar nominations were announced way back last Thursday and yet not a peep from this ne’er-do-well. Well, when I tell you that I was simply biding my time until a couple of other significant awards were announced (those being the SAGs and PGA) then I’m certain that you’ll understand that there is every chance that what I said is genuinely the case.

But it’s a sincere truthdom that the quantity of excited yelps garnered from this quarter during the last five day period is matched only by those ejaculated when England play Test cricket……except in Australia. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the Oscars race is now finally a go……and that England were a bunch of old toss in the Ashes. Both of which sentiments go utterly without saying.

Prepare to be bowled over by this latest (non-cricket related) news:

Oscar nominations

Last year’s complete nut house of a nominations announcement was always going to be a difficult act to follow; but there were enough surprises on Thursday to prevent one from snoozing off to Chris Hemsworth’s monosyllabic, antipodean tones. You can find the full list (it goes on and on and then on some more) at the bottom of this here post.

Boat-based suspense festival Captain Phillips was at the centre of the most glaring omissions. While it clambered like a gang of grizzled Somali bandits aboard the good-ship ‘Best Picture nomination’, Tom Hanks, Paul Greengrass and Barry Ackroyd all got, for the thinly veiled want of a better expression, mugged off in the respective Director (Alexander Payne and Marty were preferred), Actor (a case of thanks, but no T Hanks. Brilliant) and Cinematography categories.

Guess Who’s Coming to the Nominations Luncheon: Predictions for 86th Academy Awards nominations

How does that old saying go again? Aha, that’s right…The Oscar nominations are like my lunch…They’re happening at about 1.30 this afternoon and I’m salivating just thinking about them.

If you remember anything about this time last year, it won’t be the horsemeat scandal; it’ll be my 100% Oscar nomination predictions. I can say that, of course, in the full comfort that: a) you’ll be far too busy/lazy/stupid to go back and verify the claim; and b) your memory cells will have been eroded sufficiently over the last 12 months by the consumption of burgers and burgers full of reformed horse bollock to remember.

So without aneigh further ado (splendid, just just splendid), here are some big shouts for this darn year’s Academy Awards nominations…

For Your Consideration: American Hustle

American Hustle (2013)

Hot off the heels of two very hot Oscar favourites in three years, comes red-hot David O. Russell’s hot new Academy-fancied flick American Hustle. Now that’s really hot.

David O. Russell’s American Hustle (MAN, that’s satisfying to say) is a film utterly clad in veneer. It’s very much a haircuts, nail varnish, dodgy accents, more hair, heaving cleavage, aviators, even more hair kind of a movie.

Set in 1970s New Jersey, Christian Bale’s be-toupéed Irving Rosenfeld is a flabby career-conman, making decent wedge from knocked-off paintings and trifling lending scams; juggling his be-bouffanted, haphazard handful of a trophy wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) and be-frizzied soul-mate and partner-in-crime Sydney (Amy Adams). When be-permed, ambitious undercover cop Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) busts Irving and Sydney, he offers them the chance to secure their freedom by bagging him bigger fish in the form of senators, governors and be-pompadoured family man and mayor of Atlantic City Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner).

But despite all the facade and the follicle topiary, you’d be a fool (a fool I say) to labour under the misapprehension that American Hustle hasn’t got depth; it’s got it in volumes.

For Your Consideration: 12 Years a Slave

12 Years a Slave (2013)

Now five years a director, Steve McQueen’s third feature 12 Years a Slave is the former Turner-winning artist’s most ambitious one yet – and that’s no mean feat considering it follows his bleakly graphic Bobby Sands picture Hunger and the seedy sex-fiend festival Shame.

Like the holocaust and, apparently, Spider-Man, the incarceration into slavery of the black race in 19th century North America is one of such despicability and resonating outrage that it bears perpetual retelling and retelling again. And although ‘Spidey Senses’™ and ‘Kirsten Dunst in a sodden low cut top‘™ would seem somewhat out of place in 12 Years a Slave’s narrative, Steve McQueen instead brings the full weight of history with all the unmentionable veracity and heft the subject and film requires.

Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) begins the film a ‘freeman’ living with his family in 1840s New York State, until he is kidnapped by two white chancers and sold into slavery. The subsequent 12 years (I know, what a coincidence, eh?) is a relentless fight for Northup’s physical and mental survival, under the oppression of slave owners ranging from the relatively kindly Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch) to the near enough psychotic Epps (Michael Fassbender).

It is always slightly tricky to review a film which is so universally well revered as 12 Years a Slave. It leaves one resorting to hole picking in order to find something new or insightful to proffer. But finding fault with McQueen’s work is rarely an easy task, and this is two and a quarter hours of film making from the very highest order.

5 things we learnt about the Oscars race from the PGA, DGA, WGA and Bafta nominations

With little over a week until this year’s hot Oscar picks are shoved down our desperate and welcoming throats, its precursor awards continue to throw in their two-penneth worth and, with it, a glimpse into how the Academy may choose to lower its cinematic sword of relative power. The PGA, WGA, DGA and (frankly showing off with five initials) Bafta have raised their respective heads above the awards parapet and announced nominations aplenty.

The Producers Guild of America is on a hot streak of a magnitude only the WWE’s The Undertaker can fathom – and he’s a dead man, for heaven’s sake. It has correctly predicted the last six Best Picture Oscar winners and its nominations are a perpetually good guide for the five to ten films that the Academy will put up for the big one.

Last year was less than edifying for the other award-smiths however. Both the Directors Guild and Bafta popped a directing award on Ben Affleck’s mantelpiece, leaving Ang Lee’s Oscar with only the other he won seven years earlier to play with. The Writer’s Guild agreed with the Academy that Chris Terrio’s Argo adapted screenplay was best, but ignored Quentin Tarantino’s overrated Oscar winning Django original screenplay in favour of the utterly dreary one submitted by Mark Boal for Zero Dark Thirty.

You could find the full list of nominations for the PGA, DGA, WGA and Bafta by slamming your left mouse clickeroony on the respective links. Or you could read my well sage thoughts below. It’s a no-brainer…

…i.e. read the stuff below. Obvs.

1. There’s still hope for Marty, Woody and Spike…

Martin Scorsese directing Joanna Lumley and Leonardo diCaprio in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (Credit: Steve Sands/Bauer Griffin)

After being more or less snubbed entirely by the the Golden Globes (ok, so it got a Best Picture nomination, but so did The Tourist), Scorsese’s stock has gone through the roof, with directing nods from the DGA and Bafta for The Wolf of Wall Street.

Woody Allen and Spike Jonze have each received a similar boost by their inclusion in a very fruity WGA original screenplay list for Blue Jasmine and Her respectively, and all three see their pictures included in the PGA’s 10-strong shortlist.

2. …but a death knell for Llewyn Davis, Cecil Gaines and Philomena

It’s funny the way that some films gather substantial award word of mouth in the summer, only to run aground come the business end of the year. Surprisingly, this year’s candidate is the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, which missed out on the PGA shortlist together with the critically-slammed schmaltz-festival The Butler.

Stephen Frears’s splendid British underdog Philomena also missed out. And although it was included in the Bafta’s Best Film category, everybody knows that Bafta sticks with its own. Isn’t that right, Idris?

Idris?

3. The animation category is taking solid shape…

The Croods, Frozen, Monsters University and Despicable Me 2 are all nominated for Best Animated Motion Picture at the PGAs and also appear in this year’s Annies shortlist. That bodes well for all four, with the latter three also being nominated for a Bafta. That said, 2012’s Bafta list also included Tintin and Arthur Christmas, once again proving that the Brits are about as trustworthy as Amy Adams’s plummy English accent in American Hustle.

4. …whereas Best Documentary Feature is still wide open

‘The Act of Killing’

The critically adored bizarro-doc about Indonesian executioners The Act of Killing is a very strong frontrunner (like the Linford Christie of factual films) for this year’s category – being nominated for the PGA and Bafta and having built ahead of steam that seems impossible to stop (like the Va’aiga Tuigamala of factual films).

But it’s otherwise difficult to pin down its try-hard but ultimately unsuccessful competitors (like the Nigel Shorts of factual films). The Armstrong Lie, Blackfish, Tim’s Vermeer (all Bafta), Life According to Sam, Which Way Is The Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington (both PGA) all have nominations and feature on the Oscar longlist.

5. There’s a film called Lone Survivor. Apparently.

Yea, it sounds dead ace. Marky Mark, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster are a quartet of SEALs, yeah. And they’ve got to hunt down this Taliban kingpin, right? And…well that’s all I know, because nobody’s ever heard of the thing (a statement I make in full acknowledgement of the 6 million viewed trailer below).

Thank you, WGA. Thank you for adding Lone Survivor to your list of other wacky historical nominations like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Win Win, I Love You Philip Morris and Bend it Like Beckham. And again, thank you.