In Contention

Tag: First-Half FYC

  • FIRST-HALF FYC: Best Picture

    For the past eight weeks, I’ve been spotlighting nomination-worthy names,  in all major Ocar categories, from the first half of the US release calendar. Today, we close out the series with an alternative January-to-June Best Picture 10, though it comes a week after ballots closed — timing was never my strong suit.

    A look at this category on the Oscar side of things proves why I felt this series of columns necessary in the first place. Of the films currently being mooted for a place on the Academy’s Best Picture list, only two — “Toy Story 3” and “Winter’s Bone” — were released prior to July 2010. If the latter does wind up making the cut, it raises hope that small-scale indies can override voters’ perilously short memories. If it doesn’t, well, we must just accept that the first six months of the year contained no Oscar-worthy adult drama. Or, you know, not.

    There’s no doubting nine of the films on my list below are wild long-shots to show up in Tuesday’s nomination announcement — indeed, several of the titles aren’t present on the Academy’s list of eligible productions.

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  • FIRST-HALF FYC: Below-the-line standouts

    For the penultimate installment in our reflection on the most Oscar-worthy achievements from the largely forgotten first half of 2010’s release calendar, I’m backtracking away from the major categories to the place I should perhaps have started: the technical sphere.

    Had I thought to start this column 20-odd weeks in advance of nomination day, I could have given each craft category the attention it deserves — though if I’m being honest, picking five outstanding Best Sound Editing contenders from the year’s first six months wouldn’t be the easiest of tasks.

    As it stands, I’ve arrived at an admittedly drastic compromise: singling out five individual technical contributions, across the range of categories, that made a particularly strong impression. With such a doubly curtailed brief, the list of painfully excised honorable mentions inevitably runs very long indeed, so I’ll jump straight in with a few of them.

    As much as “Shutter Island” didn’t work for me as a whole, it delivered considerable rewards as a craft showcase: I was particularly tempted to include Dante Ferretti’s art direction, which will likely find its way to Oscar recognition without my help.

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  • FIRST-HALF FYC: Best Director

    With precisely three weeks to go until Oscar nomination morning, we continue to flag up worthy work from 2010’s first half, much of it lost (or, indeed, never present) amid the crush of more recent awards contenders. You know the January-to-June drill by now: beyond that, we can get as far-fetched as we like.

    I certainly did this week, as my field of Best Director suggestions betrays the extent to which foreign arthouse fare rules the quality ranks in the early months of the year, while American studios save their prize ponies for summer. For this ballot to pan out, the Academy would have to overcome their usual resistance to subtitles several times over, while making history twice by nominating two women and a documentary filmmaker. Not much to ask, is it?

    Speaking of women, by the way, it bears repeating that opening months of the year were strong ones for female filmmakers: between the likes of Debra Granik, Jessica Hausner and Mia Hansen-Løve, all of whom were closely considered, I could have cheerfully assembled a ladies-only field.

    Finally, before I get into my picks, I should add that while many (certainly the Academy itself, on recent form) see the Best Picture and Director categories as interchangeable, I don’t quite work that way — as often as they inevitably overlap, sometimes a director’s formal ambition and achievement burns a little brighter than the whole.

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  • FIRST-HALF FYC: Best Actress

    The fifth column in our new seasonal series — if you haven’t got the drill by now, we’re rounding up the most Oscar-worthy work from the oft-overlooked first half of the year — wraps up the performance categories with by far the most competitive race of all. Conventional wisdom has it that Best Actress is the most crowded field of this year’s awards derby, and as I looked over the January-to-June release schedule, I realized that’s just as true of the early birds.

    Where I admit I had embroider a little to make up five-strong fields in one or two other categories, this week’s task found me scratching my head over who to leave out. Many of the year’s most lavishly acclaimed performances jostled for position: Kim Hye-ja may have taken the Los Angeles critics’ honors, but as much as I love the demented commitment of her performance in “Mother,” I was surprised to find myself leaving her on the sidelines. Tilda Swinton is on near-peak form in “I Am Love,” and yet she too finds herself in the honorable mention category.

    I was all prepared to court controversy by citing Julianne Moore’s exemplary work in Atom Egoyan’s otherwise negligible “Chloe,” but there just wasn’t room to be that playful; in a regular year, “Father of My Children” star Chiara Caselli would easily have figured in at the halfway mark. Others might make cases for Noomi Rapace or Giovanna Mezzogiorno, and I’m still hamstrung by not having had access to “Everyone Else.” The bottom line is: there was a lot to sift through before arriving at the five names below. May future years also be this good to the ladies.

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  • FIRST-HALF FYC: Best Actor

    After a sidestep into the writing races last week, we return to the performance categories in our rundown of notable work from the first half of the year’s release slate. And so we land upon the category that perhaps needs this feature most of all: where the Best Actress conversation still includes some names from the January-to-June window, no leading men from early 2010 are to be found even on the fringes of the awards race.

    Of course, when you consider the options, it’s not hard to see why: all the strongest performances came in films that nobody saw, films that the Academy wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, or both. In four of my five selections below, moreover, the actor is operating at a rather higher level than the film around him — and yet it’s here where I think some of the whole year’s most adventurous work in the category is to be found.

    I wish it wasn’t quite such a bleak set of films to be celebrating in this of all weeks, but that’s just how it worked out. I’m sure at least one omission will confound some readers, as, I imagine, will one inclusion — but therein lies the fun. Check out my picks after the cut and contribute yours in the comments. Remember: first half.

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  • FIRST HALF FYC: Best Screenplay (Original and Adapted)

    For the third episode in our new Oscar-season feature, we take a recess from the acting races and look instead to the screenplays that roped the actors in to begin with. If you’re new to the feature (or even if you aren’t), the game is simple: railing against awards voters’ usual bias towards late-year releases, we’re highlighting a ballot’s worth of notable contenders in each major category, from films released in the first half of the year.

    I’ve been doing the categories on a one-by-one basis, but today I’m doubling down and covering both the Original and Adapted Screenplay races. This is partly in order to squeeze in everything I want to cover before Oscar nomination morning, but also partly because one of the categories proved less than rewarding on its own: starting with the adaptations and finding the pickings so slim, I decided that a beefier post was to be created from twinning the categories.

    That’s not to dismiss the films and screenplays I’ve selected, even the least of which offer substantial points of interest — and for which I still have more affection than some of the bigger names being  tossed into the Oscar ring. Indeed, the films in this list that don’t entirely click for me are no less (and often more) intriguing than those that do.

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  • FIRST-HALF FYC: Best Supporting Actor

    Only two weeks into my new feature and I’m already a day late — apologies. My laptop (now cured, at least until its next mood swing) will graciously accept the blame.

    If you missed last week’s introductory instalment, the game is a simple one. In the run-up to nomination day, I’m picking five outstanding contenders in each major category in films from the first half of the 2010 release schedule: a period repeatedly neglected by voters in favor of newer, shinier delights. We started with Best Supporting Actress — during which I learned that a lot of you really don’t like Taylor Swift, but you still all saw “Valentine’s Day” — and this week we fill in the male half of the equation.

    Keen as I am on all five performances I dredged up from the January-to-June wilderness, I was somewhat disappointed to note a very similar template forming to last week’s list: one French breakthrough talent, one blockbuster high point, even one star from a particular film. All accidental, I assure you… but to think I complain about “slot” mentality in the Oscar-analysis game.

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  • FIRST-HALF FYC: Best Supporting Actress

    It’s an Oscar complaint as unfailingly annual as telecast overlength and foreign-language category blunders: with the season so geared towards the glut of prestige titles released in the year’s final quarter, standout contenders from the mist-shrouded months of spring and the previous winter have to fight that much harder to be heard – that is, if anyone is listening at all.

    Year after year, numerous early-seen gems slip through the cracks as critics and voters alike rush to crown never, shinier attractions. With that in mind, welcome to First-Half FYC: a new weekly feature at InContention, wherein I’ll shine a light on the worthiest Oscar possibilities (or impossibilities) from the first six months of the 2010 release calendar.

    Each week, a different major category will be covered with alternative ballot of five potential nominees – some serious, others playful, some widely celebrated, others largely buried. All, however, are films or individuals that would breathe some fresh air into their respective races.

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