Posts Tagged ‘Sandra Bullock’

It’s that time of year again – time to predict who will win the ultimate Hollywood prize at the grandest award show in the world. The 85th Academy Awards are going to be a place where young careers get made, long careers get rewarded, and viewers get incensed that their favorites didn’t win. We’ll get ready to hear, “I’ve never even heard of that movie,” “How could she win, she didn’t even deserve to be nominated,” and of course the old favorite, “Of course that would win. The Academy doesn’t know what people actually like.”

We must keep in mind two very important things: 1) “The Academy” is not some shadowy panel of a dozen or so anonymous judges, but hundreds of well-known industry participants. 2) The winners are not meant to represent what American culutre’s favorites are. If only box office favorites were ever nominated, we’d have The Avengers going up against The Dark Knight Rises and The Hunger Games – none of which objectively deserve to be called Best Picture.

Figuring out who will win for which category takes a special sense of reasoning. So special, in fact, that all three of our writers – Dan Supanik, Marisa Carpico, and Cliff Bugle – claim to be the only one to have that sense. And yet, they disagree about who will in the six most important categories. Read on to see what the chances are of your favorites winning, and which of them will be left sitting in their seats giving disappointed claps of congratulations.

Read the rest of this entry »

Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" won Best Picture, but she was also the first woman to win Best Director

Well the Oscars are now over, so it’s time to recap how we did in predicting the winners. All in all we didn’t do too bad. But who out there guessed all of them correctly? Did you? Tell us about how you picked the winners to win, and we might seek you out for your opinions next year!

Here is how things shaped up.

Picks:

Best Picture: Avatar or The Hurt Locker

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker

Best Original Screenplay: Joel and Ethan Coen for A Serious Man

Best Leading Actor: Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart

Best Leading Actress: Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side

Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer for The Last Station

Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique for Precious

Winners:

Best Picture – The Hurt Locker

Best Director – Kathryn Bigelow   (*she is the first woman to receive this award)

Best Original Screenplay – Mark Boal for The Hurt Locker

Best Leading Actor – Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart

Best Leading Actress – Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side

Best Supporting Actor – Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds

Best Supporting Actress – Mo’Nique for Precious

View all of the winners here.

It’s been a fun Oscar season for sure, but it’s almost sad to see it all over and done with. Here at Movie-Thoughts we’ll soon switch gears to get you all ready for the upcoming summer blockbuster season, which is shaping up to be a good one. Be sure to stay tuned with all the news, reviews, and various articles we’ll be posting to keep you informed and thinking. See you around!

It's neck and neck between Sandra Bullock and Helen Mirren for the Best Leading Actress Oscar, but Bullock slightly leads thanks to awards by Critic's Choice, Golden Globes, and SAG

It’s almost time! Going through the final few categories will hopefully help you get in the mood for tomorrow night’s festivities, which are sure to be as exciting as ever. Enjoy our newest analysis!

Also See: Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Leading Actor, Best Original Screenplay

Best Actress in a Leading Role

This year’s Best Leading Actress pool is filled to the brim with deserving talent and performances, arguably more so than usual. What isn’t unusual is that it’s a tight race for who is actually going to win the gold statuette. The competition is stiff, but it would appear that the two leaders are Sandra Bullock and Helen Mirren, followed closely by Meryl Streep. Bringing up the rear is, of course, the younger two of the nominees, Carey Mulligan and Gabourey Sidibe, respectfully. Helen Mirren’s performance is said to be the most powerful, however Bullock has earned the majority of the Leading Actress awards leading up to the Academy Awards. Read the rest of this entry »

Short Take: Involving and touching, its message gets through

Director: John Lee Hancock (The Rookie)

Screenwriter: John Lee Hancock (The Alamo), Michael Lewis (book)

Cast: Sandra Bullock (Miss Congeniality), Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron, Kathy Bates (Revolutionary Road)

Length: 2h 8m

Synopsis: As a young child Michael Oher (pronounced “or”) and his brother were taken from their drug-addicted mother by Child Services. Afterword, he frog-leaped to and from several foster homes only to wind up alone on the streets. One night while walking along one of those streets the Tuohy family pulled over to him and invited him to their home. The well to do Tennessee family ended up taking Michael in and raising him through his final years of high school, where he earned good enough grades and did well enough in football to merit a high-profile status with college football coaches and recruiters from across the country. Eventually choosing Ole Miss, Michael went on to have an exceptional college football career and was selected 23^rd overall in the 2009 NFL Draft by the Baltimore Ravens. Read the rest of this entry »

Maryl Streep as Julia Child in "Julie and Julia"

An article on HollywoodReporter.com, written by Steven Zeitchik, talks about how up to this point in time in the Oscar race very few actresses have made much of an impression. Maryl Streep will likely be nominated (yet again) for her role as Julia Child in Julie and Julia, and Zeitchik claims that only two other leading actresses (Carey Mulligan and Gabourey Sidibe for An Education and Precious) have a shot at taking home the gold statuette.

One possible reason that Zeitchik postulates deals with the kinds of roles available for women in mainstream Hollywood. Independent films (such as An Education and Precious) offer many more dynamic, “serious” leading roles for women than Hollywood does (the reasons for which are up for speculation), but being in an independent flick doesn’t downgrade one’s performance in the eyes of the award voters. The Academy is not averse to giving the Best Leading Actress award to a “new face,” so-to-speak (ex. Jennifer Hudson, Marion Cotillard, etc.). Zeitchik later argues that unless you’re the likes of Angelina Jolie or Hillary Swank it’s hard for a woman to land a “serious” part in mainstream Hollywood. So shallow is the Oscar nomination pool for leading actresses, Zeitchik says, that Sandra Bullock is getting award buzz (for her role in The Blind Side).

Those who don’t think much of this year’s lack of standout performances by leading actresses chalk the issue up to the cyclical nature of each category, while some others speculate that it relates to bigger (supposed) issues like Hollywood making less award-worthy films. Zeitchik attempts to debunk such a speculation by noting that the Best Leading Actor category is overflowing with quality nomination possibilities (ex. George Clooney, Colin Firth, Jeff Bridges, Jeremy Renner, etc.).

You can read the full article here, which includes other related topics such as the possibility for three women to be nominated for Best Director, which is an unprecedented feat.

Quick Opinion: I can’t be certain that the number of quality leading roles for women in Hollywood is going down, if for no other reason than because it’s a more complex issue than one might think at first. Sure, maybe this year’s crop isn’t all that extensive, but last year saw 5 great actresses in the nomination pool, which led to hugely diverse speculation before the awards show about who was going to win. And being that Hollywood is still a big supporter of patriarchal ideology (for better or worse), there is and probably always will be plenty of quality leading roles available for men. Who’s to say, though, that there simply aren’t a lot of good scripts with great leading roles for women making the rounds around Hollywood? Script ‘X’ may have a dynamite female lead character, but if its overall story stinks then it doesn’t matter. Studios don’t typically buy works-in-progress. In any case, why would they take a chance on a lousy script just to satisfy a male/female ratio of leading roles? I’m all for equal representation of the sexes in the arts, but the film industry is a business (the biggest financial risk-takers being Hollywood studios) and if it were to adopt some brand of affirmative action to assure such equality I would speculate that the industry would suffer both financially and artistically. Simply put, you can’t tell an industry dealing in creativity what to create.