Matt vs. the Academy

Choosing which Best Picture nominee I would have voted for is always challenging, but when there are ten contenders, as is the case for 1942, the difficulty obviously increases. As such, the possibility exists that my decision will be inadvertently influenced by a film's longevity and position in cinematic history. There's a good chance that subconscious phenomenon has occurred for this verdict, but so be it. The nominees for Best Picture of 1942 are: Kings Row The Invaders The Magnificent Ambersons Mrs. Miniver The Pied Piper The Pride of the Yankees Random Harvest The Talk of the Town Wake Island Yankee Doodle Dandy Since 1942 was the first full year in which the U.S. participated in World War II, there were understandably a great deal of pictures that dealt with war themes. Four of the Best Picture nominees use the war as a main focus, while Yankee Doodle Dandy's unabashedly patriotic style features the war towards the end of the film. Separat...

In all the post-Oscars excitement, I forgot to link to this in my last post, so here it is now: the menu from my annual Oscars party . The final nominee in the Best Picture contest of 1942 is... Random Harvest Director : Mervyn LeRoy Screenplay : Arthur Wimperis, George Froeschel, Claudine West (based on the novel by James Hilton) Starring : Ronald Colman, Greer Garson, Philip Dorn, Susan Peters, Henry Travers, Reginald Owen, Bramwell Fletcher Academy Awards : 7 nominations 0 wins Due to shell-shock from World War I, a British soldier (Colman) is now a patient in an asylum without any memory of his past life. Known now as John Smith, he escapes the asylum and befriends Paula (Garson), who immediately takes a liking to the amnesiac, taking him under her wing. After nursing him back to mental health and encouraging him to pursue his talent for writing, the two fall in love and get married. The fairy tale is destroyed, however, when Smithy is hit by a car in Liverpool a...

Another Oscars ceremony over and I managed to predict 18 of the 24 categories correctly, which equals my previous best, so I'll take it. No major surprises this year. In the end, it seems Argo comfortably took the Best Picture award after all. So since I love statistics, why don't I just list my favourite Oscar stats from this year's awards... Argo became only the fourth film to win the big prize without achieving a Best Director nomination (after Wings, Grand Hotel and Driving Miss Daisy). Ang Lee's directing win is notable for the fact that he now has two Best Director Oscars for films that did not win Best Picture (previously winning for Brokeback Mountain, which lost to Crash), a rare feat. Daniel Day-Lewis is now only the sixth performer to have three Oscar statuettes, all three of his wins for lead roles (second only to Katharine Hepburn with four Best Actress awards). Christoph Waltz achieved his second acting win from only his second nomination. And since ...

This year's Academy Awards ceremony is now less than 24 hours away, so my giddy excitement is a-brewing. While working on my predictions, I went back and forth on a number of categories, eventually contradicting some of what I wrote in the last few posts. The fact that the Best Picture winner is not at all clear (it's a tight race between Argo and Lincoln) is brilliantly exciting, especially for all those office Oscar pools, whose winners may well be decided on the last category of the night. Here are my humble predictions . From the 85th Academy Awards to the 15th, here's my take on the next Best Picture nominee from 1942... The Magnificent Ambersons Director : Orson Welles Screenplay : Orson Welles (based on the novel by Booth Tarkington) Starring : Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins, Erskine Sanford, Richard Bennett Academy Awards : 4 nominations 0 wins The wealthy Amberson family is the talk of a small...

I'd like to write at least one more post before the Oscars ceremony on Sunday, but if the past is anything to go by, I'd better write about the Best Director and Best Picture races now, just in case. As I've mentioned previously, based on precursor awards alone, it would not be unreasonable to predict Argo and Ben Affleck to take out the Oscar double. The film and its director have cleaned up at the major awards (Golden Globes, BAFTAs, Critics Choice, and both the Producers and Directors Guilds). However, there's one fatal flaw in that prediction - Affleck wasn't nominated for a Best Director Oscar. So that award is now up for grabs. Michael Haneke and Benh Zeitlin, helmers of Amour and Beasts of the Southern Wild, respectively, seem unlikely winners. Likewise, David O. Russell hasn't been talked about much in this category so his work on Silver Linings Playbook will most probably go unrewarded here. That leaves Steven Spielberg and Ang Lee, both previous Osca...

A few days ago, I offered my thoughts on the supporting performance categories at this year's Academy Awards. Today, let's look at the two leading actor categories. The Best Actor award is Daniel Day-Lewis' to lose. His performance in Lincoln has swept just about every industry and critic's award so far this season. An Oscar win this year would not only earn him a rare third acting Oscar (only five others have achieved that feat) but it would also mean he had won thrice in the leading role category, placing him second only to Katherine Hepburn, whose four awards were all for Best Actress. Hugh Jackman is perhaps his closest rival for the award, but it doesn't look good for Wolverine. Best Actress is more competitive, essentially a toss-up between Jessica Chastain for Zero Dark Thirty and Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook. Both won Golden Globes for their performances, but Lawrence won the SAG award. (Unexpectedly, Emmanuelle Riva won the BAFTA, but I...

Ben Affleck's frustration over being denied a Best Director Oscar nomination is once again alleviated (or enhanced, depending on your perspective) after his win at the BAFTAs yesterday. His film Argo also took out the Best Film, so the conundrum I discussed in my last post continues... Anyway, as this year's Academy Awards ceremony rapidly approaches, let's take a deeper look at some of the races, starting with the Supporting categories. The Supporting Actress Oscar has all but been engraved with Anne Hathaway's name on it. She has won almost all of the precursor awards for her role in Les Miserables and is a clear favourite. Lincoln's Sally Field is perhaps the only possible upset but I don't put her chances very high at all. Supporting Actor is a bit more complicated. At one time, I had my money on Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Master, who had taken a whole bunch of the critics' prizes. But Django Unchained's Christoph Waltz won the critic's ...

For the first time in a long time, I actually have some spare time, which increases the chances of more movies being reviewed for this blog. Time will tell... It also allowed me to cram in a bunch of the current awards season's movies before I missed the deadline to vote in the SAG awards. Still a few more Oscar contenders to see, but I've caught up a little bit. The most fascinating aspect of this awards season is Argo's domination of the major awards so far. Since its director, Ben Affleck, was left off the Academy's Best Director shortlist, that seemed to close the door on the film winning Best Picture, yet it has won the main gongs at the Critic's Choice, Golden Globe and Producer's Guild ceremonies. Plus, it won the SAG's Ensemble award and Affleck himself took out the Director's Guild's top prize. Quite the conundrum. More on this year's Oscars in the next couple of weeks, but for now, on to the next review, which is another nomin...

Happy New Year to all my readers! It would perhaps be a little obvious if I were to make a resolution to pick up the pace of this project, but I sincerely hope to do so in 2013. (Otherwise, it may take decades to complete!) Anyway, 2012 was a big year for other activities in my life. I started a theatre company with my wife. We produced two successful shows, our most recent even receiving a positive review from the Huffington Post. I also made my U.S. network television debut with a small role on Law & Order: SVU. Well, technically, I suppose, the debut will be when it airs on January 9th on NBC, so set your DVRs. The last film watched for Matt vs. the Academy in 2012 was another nominee from 1942's Best Picture contest... The Pride of the Yankees Director : Sam Wood Screenplay : Jo Swerling, Herman J. Mankiewicz, Paul Gallico Starring : Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, Babe Ruth, Walter Brennan, Dan Duryea, Elsa Janssen, Ludwig Stossel Academy Awards : 11 no...

As has become the norm lately, I've left the gap between posts grow so much that I now have too many things to talk about in my little preamble here. Especially considering that it's coming into awards season and there will be lots to talk about in the coming weeks. On that note, the first thing to mention is that Kat and I were lucky enough to be among the first audience to see the finished version of Les Miserables. Director Tom Hooper introduced the special screening, commenting (perhaps with hyperbole) that he had only completed the movie at 2 a.m. that morning. The film is quite simply amazing. With all the singing recorded live (rather than having actors pre-tape them, then lip-sync on set), the emotion of the incredibly dramatic songs is, at times, overpowering. This has Oscar written all over it. Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman, particularly. Two acting gigs to mention. First, I shot a guest role on an episode of Law & Order: SVU last week. I play Counselor Andy Gu...

Another long delay between posts. Così  has finished, and Australian Made Entertainment has already begun preparations for its next production, Speaking In Tongues . So busy have I been in the interim that it took a hurricane to shut down everything else I've been doing and free up enough time to watch another movie. Although, it's now taken another week to actually write about it. Fortunately, Kat and I, and our houseguest Susie, who clearly chose a horrible time to visit New York, were all safe and sound in our apartment during the storm. Even more fortunately, we never lost power, unlike many others in neighbouring counties and states, who lost that and a whole lot more. We're feeling very lucky. So, with the winds blowing and the DVD player still working, we watched the first of 1942's Best Picture nominees... The Talk of the Town Director : George Stevens Screenplay : Irwin Shaw, Sidney Buchman, Dale Van Every, Sidney Harmon Starring : Car...