Posts Tagged ‘True Grit’

Here are our assessments on this year’s nominees for the 83rd Academy Award category of Best Director of a feature film.

Darren Aronofsky

Black Swan

Though Aronofsky has only directed a handful of films his distinct visual style and his gift of pulling great performances out of his actors are what make his films, and especially Black Swan, so remarkable.  Aronofsky makes Black Swan a terrifying nightmare by mixing genres like horror, psychological thrillers and women’s pictures to tell the story of Nina Sayer’s rapid descent into madness.  The constantly moving handheld camera and shooting the film as if from Nina’s perspective  allow the audience to identify with the ballerina so severely that watching the line between her imagination and reality fracture becomes all the more terrifying.  But while Aronofsky’s visual style can be stunning, it can also be distracting.  Audiences, and by extension Oscar voters, can either find Aronofsky’s style engrossing or a little ostentatious and silly.  Aronofsky’s direction, as well as the film itself, is fairly divisive, and he will have a tough time beating either David Fincher or Tom Hooper.

Odds of Winning: Unlikely

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Here are our assessments on this year’s nominees for the 83rd Academy Award category of Best Actor in a leading role.

Javier Bardem

Biutiful

Bardem is known for completely embodying his characters, and his turn in Biutiful as a divorced father of two dying of testicular cancer feels very lived in.  He endows Uxbal with a quiet sadness that gives the character’s desperate need to provide for his children after his death a devastating tragedy.  Bardem’s performance is so layered, so deeply felt that it doesn’t really seem like acting, which might be its greatest weakness in the Oscar race.  Unlike some of his competition, Bardem’s performance is a bit understated and it might be less memorable.  Because Bardem won an Oscar for his intensely frightening performance in 2007’s No Country for Old Men, which was much more sensational, and because his competition this year has offered showier performances, the Academy will not likely award him again soon.

Odds of Winning: Unlikely

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Here are our assessments on this year’s nominees for the 83rd Academy Award category of Best Actress in a supporting role.

Amy Adams

The Fighter

This is Adams’ third Academy Award nomination, with prior ones being for her performances in Junebug and 2008’s Doubt. She has yet to win the award but when nominated she has always had a strong chance of winning. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for her nomination this year. With recent ventures into romantic comedy (Leap Year), children’s films (Night at the Museum 2), and vehicles which present a stage more for her voice than her acting abilities (Moonlight Serenade), her nomination for The Fighter is most likely just an endorsement from the Academy and her peers to stay within the realm that seems to showcase her talents best: i.e. drama. Her role in The Fighter was not all that difficult for her nor was it exemplary of her true talent, which can’t be said about some of the other nominees.

Odds of Winning: Unlikely

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Joel and Ethan Coen ("No Country for Old Men")

The Coen brothers are planning to film a remake of 1969′s True Grit, which Paramount will work to release for late 2010, and actors Matt Damon and Josh Brolin are currently in final talks to join a cast that already includes fellow well-known actor Jeff Bridges.

Reportedly, Damon is to be cast as Bridges’ fellow lawman trying with the help of a 14-year old girl to catch a killer, to be played by Brolin. The Coen brothers claim that their completed script is more loyal to the Charles Portis novel of the same name which the original film is based from.

Source: Variety

Quick Opinion: Western fans should be very excited just from knowing the directors and short list of known cast members attached to this project. Bridges, Brolin, and Damon are all fine actors and have shown the ability to mold themselves into their parts time and again. I believe we can trust them to continue their streaks. What may be just as exciting as finding out that the Coen brothers are writing and directing is realizing that big, respected names like theirs are being attached to the western genre. Westerns have not been the most popular genre in Hollywood over recent decades, but they’re hardly dead. 2007′s 3:10 to Yuma was considered by most to be a solid effort, and had moderate box-office success by at least breaking even (cost – $50million, gross – $53million). The status of the western should get a boost from having Oscar-winning talent in the directors’ chairs, which if the genre is to make some sort of cultural revival is a darn good place to get started.