In the early going, the sight unseen favourite, the numero uno pick for the Best Picture Oscar has to be, going away, Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, adapted from the play (and the book with the same name) by acclaimed children’s writer Michael Morpurgo. Set for release Christmas Day, even the most cynical film critic will not discount the prospect of Spielberg’s War Horse walking off with all the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Oscar hardware late in the evening of Sunday, February 26, 2012.
Winner of multiple film festival prizes, including the Critics Grand Prize for director Jeff Nichols at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, as well as the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2011, Take Shelter is currently playing in exclusive engagement at Leonard Schein’s Fifth Avenue Festival Cinemas. In one of her eight outstanding performances this year, winner of multiple Hollywood actress awards, newcomer Jessica Chastain is being touted as a potential Best Supporting Actress contender, while co-star Michael Shannon (who starred in Nichols’ first film, Shotgun Stories, bringing Shannon to prominence) looks to garner a potential Best Actor nomination.
As we’ve written previously, who’da thunk that a nostaglic silent film starring unknown French actors would emerge as the consensus sentimental early favourite for the 2012 Best Picture Oscar? Slated to open American Thanksgiving weekend, on Wednesday, November 23rd, The Artist has wowed audiences (and critics) wherever it’s played, not the least of whom were the appreciative Vancouver International Film Festival audience who laughed and cried throughout last Thursday’s screening of the film, giving The Artist the loudest and most sustained applause of any film screening at the 30th annual Vancouver International Film Festival.
A tough, pull no punches, dazzlingly intense slog, Paddy Considine’s début directorial effort has garnered wide praise for its film craft, and even wider recognition for its stars, Peter Mullan as Joseph, a man living in an urban wasteland of terraced housing, whose fuse is so short it will blow your stress levels, and Olivia Colman, as charity shop worker Hannah, who Joseph considers to be middle-class do-gooder, with her gentle demeanour, who in reality has a ringside seat to violence directed at her by her husband (Eddie Marsan). Tyrannosaur has been picked up for distribution by Strand Releasing, making it difficult to tell whether or not Considine’s film will make it back to Vancouver. With blogger Jeffrey Wells on side, here’s hoping.
The next picture, and the final entry for today, is probably a picture that isn’t even on your Oscar radar at this point, the surefire Best Picture Oscar nominee, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Director Stephen Daldry’s apparently first-rate adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2005 novel (which spent 65 weeks on the New York Times’ bestseller list), the film (and book) tracks the life of Oskar Schell, the nine-year-old son of a man killed in the World Trade Center bombing who searches the city for a lock that fits a black key his father left behind. Reportedly with Oscar worthy performances from Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, with a potential Oscar nod for Daldry.
