Another week, another outpouring of pre-Oscar award announcements.
The guilds are complete, as are the Golden Globe and the Broadcast Film Critic Awards, so what’s left? The BAFTAs, that’s what! While the BAFTAs – supposedly the ‘across the pond’ version of the Oscars – don’t always coincide with the Academy, either regarding wins or nominations, they are still very, very interesting to observe and analyze in conjunction with how the rest of the awards season is playing out. They have an odd assortment of categories – like Best British Film in addition to Best Film – and obviously cater to British productions that are either low on the Academy’s radar or off of it entirely. So even with the Academy Awards themselves less than two weeks away, there are still some notes to take and possibilities to mull over. Hitfix published a valid article on Valentine’s Day about big questions still going unanswered at this late juncture in the awards race, and the BAFTAs have done very little to settle any of those questions or provide a clearer path for any of the three Best Picture frontrunners – Gravity, American Hustle, and 12 Years a Slave – to victory on the evening of March 2nd.
As January nears its end, we find ourselves knee deep in awards season. The Golden Globes have come to pass, as have the Critics Choice Awards, each offering up their widespread wealth and giving slight indication into how the more important cinematic awards – the four guild awards and the Oscars – will eventually play out. It’s been a wild season with the field narrowing only an inch at a time day by day. What began as a funnel of big screen riches has been molded into a spreadsheet of many possibilities and only a few definite locks. In the last few days, three of the biggest events thus far in the 2013 awards season have transpired, beginning with the Oscar nominations last Thursday morning, followed by the Screen Actors Guild awards (SAG’s) on Saturday night, and culminating with the Producers Guild Awards (PGA’s) Sunday night.
Though it couldn’t quite match the box office total of last year’s November (Skyfall, Wreck-It Ralph, Breaking Dawn – Part 2), this month still marked the second time the November box office exceeded $1 billion and it’s all thanks to box office titans Thor: The Dark World and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Splitting the month in half – Thor opened on November 8th while Catching Fire bowed on November 22nd – these blockbusters kept audiences around the world riveted all month long, and the box office saw some unexpected extra power thanks to sleeper hits like The Best Man Holiday, Last Vegas, and Disney Animations’ Frozen, which set a new a record for biggest debut for a movie opening on the Thanksgiving 5-day weekend. After a hit-or-miss beginning to the Fall Season, the Holiday Movie Season has kicked things up a notch and will continue to do so as we enter the last month of the year and the final stretch of the awards season. With guaranteed blockbusters The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and Anchorman 2, plus double the Christian Bale, double the Amy Adams, the return of Jennifer Lawrence, and the latest movies from the Coen Brothers, Spike Jonze, David O. Russell, and Martin Scorsese, expect December 2013 to be the cherry on top of this incredible year of film. Here are 10 movies you’ll probably want to check out this month:
Jazz musician Max Roach strived to press political agendas when he perused the musical scene in the 1960s. His most infamous album, We Insist! – Freedom Now, is a stimulating and unsettling work discussing the horrors of slavery and the aggression of segregation laws. Through shuddering jazz riffs and dissonant, chant-like vocality from Roach’s then-wife Abbey Lincoln, the heart of We Insist! is relatively unforgiving, presenting things as they were in relation to how they are and looking for a comprehension of the now by forcing listeners to remember what came first. Unfortunately, listeners didn’t want to remember. Guilt stemming from the memories of slavery is immeasurable, and in the 1960s, during the thrust of the Civil Rights movement and just a century after the Emancipation Proclamation, Roach’s thematic thesis didn’t prove to be enjoyable or acceptable. We Insist! became blacklisted for years. It was banned during Roach’s prominence and became enshrined with infamy; a musical HUAC intended on never letting it reach the ignorant ears of the public. While it has been resurrected, it was pressured to take its time. In fact, it didn’t even become a part of iTunes’ public store until 2008.
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, “Action is character”, and nowhere is that more true than in J.C. Chandor’s startlingly silent All Is Lost. Starring Robert Redford as a nameless sailor who wakes up to find that a shipping container has damaged his boat during a voyage across the Atlantic, the film contains virtually no dialogue except for a minute of voice over that opens the film. The rest is silence. Just the tranquil noise of wind and waves or the ferocity of a perfect storm. Even with Alex Ebert’s somber score, the film still possesses a profound silence, an absence of distraction that makes it impossible to look away. What’s left on screen is Redford and Redford alone for 100 minutes. Tom Hanks had Wilson the volleyball in Cast Away. Suraj Sharma had a tiger named Richard Parker in Life of Pi. Even Sandra Bullock has George Clooney for a while in Gravity. Yet in All Is Lost, Robert Redford has no one – there’s only silence, only his thoughts, only the increasingly impossible task of repairing his ship and staying alive. There’s no talking, just acting, and the beauty of the film is how it proves that these two things are essentially interchangeable. This is as minimalist as filmmaking gets and it’s immensely gripping.
If you are you planning on being extremely sophisticated this fall, you might want to check out some of the newest celluloid masterpieces from across the ocean. It has been an incredibly good year for non-Hollywood cinema, and with the approaching of the Oscar season, no country wants to leg behind in the Foreign Language Film department. As an international student, I am always interested in seeing what my dear old Europe comes up with at the multiplex and I’m also captivated by the fresh and powerful prospective of more exotic films and filmmakers. It is a privileged time to listen to these diverse voices because the Cannes and Venice film festivals have already launched some amazing productions that are now being released in the United States or will be released as the awards season continues through December. Without further ado, here are five movies you are going to want to check out and maybe even impress your next date with.
Although Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity continues to dominate the movie world – it dropped a scant 21% this weekend with $44 million, the smallest second weekend drop of all time for a film that debuted with over $50 million – another big awards contender entered the market place and is equally worth your time and money. Captain Phillips, directed by Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum, United 93) and starring Tom Hanks, recounts the events of the 2009 hijacking of the Maersk Alabama off the cost of Somalia with startlingl potency. Supremely tense and masterfully executed, our own Mike Murphy awarded the film 
t’s with a lot of sadness that I write this post. Granted, it’s sadness mixed with excitement, but sadness all the same. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Bennett Miller is still in the process of completing his third feature film, Foxcatcher, which was originally slated for release on December 20, 2013. Great buzz circulated the film to begin with due to its true crime plot and atypical casting, plus Miller’s involvement behind the camera named it a potential Academy favorite well before a film premiere or even a teaser trailer had been released. This past Thursday, it was announced that Sony Pictures Classics has decided to postpone Foxcatcher’s release until some time in 2014, which is ironic in that the announcement coincided with the film’s teaser trailer debut. With a trailer like this, it’s hard to come to terms with the fact that we’re going to have to wait even longer before it hits theaters.
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