ZDT is still my #1 American film for 2012. People have no idea how hard it is for Boal to make a script out of what is clearly a lot of government documents (forget the outcry of them getting access, some of those documents are usually 95% unreadable) and Bigelow to direct something that rigid. It is a remarkable achievement.
Lincoln is nowhere near my favorite Spielberg directing turn because to me it is such a writer’s movie. But I love film classicism and I can see why something like Cahiers du Cinema with their whole journal’s existence loving classicism like Ford, Ophuls, Welles, etc. were drawn to it too.
Amour is not my favorite Haneke either but long-time coming. I’ll just imagine he got this for Cache or The White Ribbon.
Lee would be out and yeah, I know he won but he was clearly the safe, most inoffensive choice. People were already put off by the Lincoln hype and Haneke and Zeitlin had no shot. DOR I thought had a shot but Harvey over-campaigned hard on that film.
If they were going with out of the box, I would’ve wanted Paul Thomas Anderson but then again, my choices for best ‘direction’ included Bigelow, Andrew Dominik, Soderbergh, PTA, and Leos Carax. Clearly the Academy and me were just not seeing eye to eye last year.
I’m glad I saw your post; I keep checking for the 2000 Oscar podcast, one of my favorite years that I’ve written about before.
I agree. And that’s always a good way to look at the Oscars–to break it down by company. Zeitlin should not have been nominated. Yes, it’s amazing how he got performances out of non-actors and did what he did on a shoestring budget, but it was wannabe Malick and in such a competitive year he should have be an also-ran. Of course, Harvey was going to get a horse in. And when Jacki Weaver hit, as well as the other three actors, it wasn’t a surprise when Russell was the first director announced. And Haneke has the cred, the foreign auteur with a strong pedigree, two Palme awards.
Of course, Bigelow would make any lineup and would be my winner. I wonder if she should’ve waited to unveil the film at Cannes and possibly competed for the win…but I shouldn’t argue, she became a two-time NYFCC winner and won several big critics honors. I think Spielberg’s and Lee’s direction of their films was significantly weaker. Spielberg let Lincoln run away from him, and definitely lost focus, the film could have been shaped better in the editing room. The real auteur of that film is Daniel Day-Lewis. And Lee’s film, as much as I appreciate his past work, now after seeing Life of Pi many times, it has the technical direction (there are some wonderful moments) but it doesn’t have a great execution of the director’s philosophy, the director’s overall vision and how it was achieved. The religion and God moments are told rather than shown, I feel, and there are tone balance issues. It doesn’t grab me until the boat sinks. I’ve now seen ZDT many many times (it’s been featured on Starz), and Bigelow’s direction still captures me.
I feel like Benh Zeitlin was helped by Fox Searchlight not having any other film on its slate so they went hard for Beasts. He was the shock nod, ‘welcome to the club’ nominee that frankly just did not belong with the competition. His whole nod and the movie was toothless by the end that it just came off, ‘Oh twenty something Sundance Lab’d the hell out of a live-action C-grade Miyazaki film. How cute! Less threatening that Bigelow and more humbled than Affleck’. To me he just sticks out as the WTF nominee that year. Haneke had momentum happening and his movie was less trying than other, DOR had Harvey, Lee was a lock (although I wish someone dug up his treatment of animals on the Life of Pi set much like all the crap came out about the other nominees), and Spielberg was a lock. Affleck and Bigelow probably split votes because same kind of movie that I noticed people had an either or choice-making plus Fox Searchlight having only one serious horse.
Well, the Academy has usually given a foreign director a nomination, so Haneke wasn’t that big of a shock. For me, I would exchange any one of the five for Bigelow to be there.
There is a difference between taking shortcuts, relying too heavily on music or effects or an actor to tell the story, and what she did. Bigelow’s film showed such a great command of cinematic technique, editing, and direction. I was such in awe of so many sequences and how they came together.
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ZDT is still my #1 American film for 2012. People have no idea how hard it is for Boal to make a script out of what is clearly a lot of government documents (forget the outcry of them getting access, some of those documents are usually 95% unreadable) and Bigelow to direct something that rigid. It is a remarkable achievement.
Lincoln is nowhere near my favorite Spielberg directing turn because to me it is such a writer’s movie. But I love film classicism and I can see why something like Cahiers du Cinema with their whole journal’s existence loving classicism like Ford, Ophuls, Welles, etc. were drawn to it too.
Amour is not my favorite Haneke either but long-time coming. I’ll just imagine he got this for Cache or The White Ribbon.
Lee would be out and yeah, I know he won but he was clearly the safe, most inoffensive choice. People were already put off by the Lincoln hype and Haneke and Zeitlin had no shot. DOR I thought had a shot but Harvey over-campaigned hard on that film.
If they were going with out of the box, I would’ve wanted Paul Thomas Anderson but then again, my choices for best ‘direction’ included Bigelow, Andrew Dominik, Soderbergh, PTA, and Leos Carax. Clearly the Academy and me were just not seeing eye to eye last year.
I’m glad I saw your post; I keep checking for the 2000 Oscar podcast, one of my favorite years that I’ve written about before.
I agree. And that’s always a good way to look at the Oscars–to break it down by company. Zeitlin should not have been nominated. Yes, it’s amazing how he got performances out of non-actors and did what he did on a shoestring budget, but it was wannabe Malick and in such a competitive year he should have be an also-ran. Of course, Harvey was going to get a horse in. And when Jacki Weaver hit, as well as the other three actors, it wasn’t a surprise when Russell was the first director announced. And Haneke has the cred, the foreign auteur with a strong pedigree, two Palme awards.
Of course, Bigelow would make any lineup and would be my winner. I wonder if she should’ve waited to unveil the film at Cannes and possibly competed for the win…but I shouldn’t argue, she became a two-time NYFCC winner and won several big critics honors. I think Spielberg’s and Lee’s direction of their films was significantly weaker. Spielberg let Lincoln run away from him, and definitely lost focus, the film could have been shaped better in the editing room. The real auteur of that film is Daniel Day-Lewis. And Lee’s film, as much as I appreciate his past work, now after seeing Life of Pi many times, it has the technical direction (there are some wonderful moments) but it doesn’t have a great execution of the director’s philosophy, the director’s overall vision and how it was achieved. The religion and God moments are told rather than shown, I feel, and there are tone balance issues. It doesn’t grab me until the boat sinks. I’ve now seen ZDT many many times (it’s been featured on Starz), and Bigelow’s direction still captures me.
I feel like Benh Zeitlin was helped by Fox Searchlight not having any other film on its slate so they went hard for Beasts. He was the shock nod, ‘welcome to the club’ nominee that frankly just did not belong with the competition. His whole nod and the movie was toothless by the end that it just came off, ‘Oh twenty something Sundance Lab’d the hell out of a live-action C-grade Miyazaki film. How cute! Less threatening that Bigelow and more humbled than Affleck’. To me he just sticks out as the WTF nominee that year. Haneke had momentum happening and his movie was less trying than other, DOR had Harvey, Lee was a lock (although I wish someone dug up his treatment of animals on the Life of Pi set much like all the crap came out about the other nominees), and Spielberg was a lock. Affleck and Bigelow probably split votes because same kind of movie that I noticed people had an either or choice-making plus Fox Searchlight having only one serious horse.
Well, the Academy has usually given a foreign director a nomination, so Haneke wasn’t that big of a shock. For me, I would exchange any one of the five for Bigelow to be there.
There is a difference between taking shortcuts, relying too heavily on music or effects or an actor to tell the story, and what she did. Bigelow’s film showed such a great command of cinematic technique, editing, and direction. I was such in awe of so many sequences and how they came together.