Two Tickets For... Our Oscars Analysis & Predictions: Best Picture & Full Predictions!

Andrew: Hello readers! All week long leading up to this Sunday's 85th Academy Awards, Sarah and I have been discussing some of the acting categories, the screenplay categories, the directing category and a couple others, but it's all been leading up to the big one - Best Picture. Remember, four years ago after many people thought Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight got snubbed in this category, the Academy made the drastic change to up the number of nominees to 10. After two years of that, with some thinking the category was too bloated, the Academy changed the rules again so that between five and 10 films could be nominated based on first place votes. Even so, a total of nine films were nominated for Best Picture last year and we have the same number in 2013. 

BEST PICTURE

The nominees for Best Picture are:

- Amour

- Argo

- Beasts of the Southern Wild

- Django Unchained

- Les Miserables

- Life of Pi

- Lincoln

- Silver Linings Playbook

- Zero Dark Thirty

A: Sarah, we saw all of the nominated films except for Amour, and we follow the awards that lead up to the Oscars relatively closely. Taking everything in to account, even though there are a whopping nine nominees, which ones do you think we can whittle it down to that actually have a chance at winning?

Two Tickets For... Our Oscars Analysis & Predictions: Best Original Screenplay, Best Adapted Screenplay & Best Director

Andrew: Hello readers! As you may or may not know, Sarah and I are celebrating the upcoming 85th Academy Awards this week by posting our analysis and predictions of various categories. Yesterday we kicked things off by covering the Best Animated Feature, Best Original Song and Best VisualEffects categories, and today we are going to discuss the two screenplay categories and the Best Director category. So without further ado… 

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

The nominees for Best Original Screenplay are:

- Zero Dark Thirty, Mark Boal

- Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino

- Flight, Mark Gatins

- Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola

- Amour, Michael Haneke

A: At first glance this appears to me to be a relatively competitive category, and one that we’re relatively familiar with since we saw all of these films except for Amour, but I personally think it comes down to two candidates for the prize. Can you guess which ones I’m thinking of?

Around The Web: "Monsters University" trailer, "Finding Nemo 2" casting news, "Argo" Blu-ray feature, & cool Oscars posters!

Andrew: Hello readers! Once again Sarah and I have rounded up some of the new, best and/or cooler things that we've seen around the worldwide web the past week to share with y'all. So let's get right to it!

THE FIRST FULL TRAILER FOR PIXAR'S MONSTERS UNIVERSITY

A: Yesterday found the online release of the first full-length trailer for Monsters University, the prequel to Pixar's 2001 hit Monsters, Inc. It's actually the international version of trailer (from Great Britain to be exact) so it's different than what we'll probably see Stateside in the near future, but take a look and we'll hit up our thoughts on it afterwards!

A: Personally I'm a little divided after watching this trailer. Sarah knows this, but Monsters, Inc. isn't one of my favorite Pixar movies, and in fact ranks in the bottom half of my personal Pixar film rankings, but the original is still funny and enjoyable enough to watch even now. But this trailer just fell flat for me. It was nice to hear Billy Crystal and John Goodman's voices in the roles of Mike Wazowski and Sully again, but you can definitely tell they've aged by a decade because they just don't sound the same. What do you think of the trailer, Sarah?

Andrew's Top Ten Films of 2012! (And Sarah's Bottom Five!)

Andrew: Hello readers! First off, Happy New Year! Secondly, ymight remember that at two separate points last year we posted articles called Sarah & Andrew’s Top Ten Lists for 2012 So Far. We posted our first at the start of July and we posted our second at the start of October (so the halfway point and three-quarters point of the year). Now that 2012 has come and gone, it’s time to reveal our final lists that includes films that we saw in the final quarter of 2012! In those last three months we saw 17 new releases in the theatre, including a bunch of Oscar contenders.

So here’s the deal – just like the last two times, we have criteria for our lists: the films included have to be films we’ve actually seen and reviewed, and they had to be films that were released in theatres for public consumption in the United States during the 2012 calendar year. This means that a movie like Zero Dark Thirty, which doesn’t get a wide release in the USA until January 11^th, would qualify because it’s been playing in cities like New York for a couple of weeks. Again, these are from among all the movies we've seen and reviewed this year, so if a movie isn't on this list, it's possible we just didn't get around to seeing it.

And one last thing: because I personally found that each of our last two Top Ten Lists were a little lengthy, we’re splitting them up into two different posts. And at the bottom of each post will be the other’s BOTTOM five of the year (the post headline kinda gave that away though, didn’t it?). So check out my personal Top Ten List for 2012 and Sarah’s Bottom Five of 2012 after the jump!

Sarah's Top Ten Films of 2012! (And Andrew's Bottom Five!)

Sarah: Hello movie lovers and Happy New Year! We are so looking forward to the new year and all the great new movies that it has to offer! I gotta say, I'm pretty excited that the world didn't end because we would have seriously missed out on some good ones. So in response to the new year, Andrew and I are going to be looking back a little and bring you each of our favorite films from 2012. There will probably be some overlap but I can guarantee that we liked some movies for very different reasons.

Like we did with our two Top Ten List of 2012 So Far, we have some criteria for these lists: the films included have to be films we’ve actually seen and reviewed, and they had to be films that were released in theatres for public consumption in the United States during the 2012 calendar year. If you don't see a movie on this list, you can check it against our Reviews page and it's possible we just didn't see it, so it didn't qualify for our list.

At the bottom of my list you'll also be able to find Andrew's Bottom Five of 2012. You'll have to check out his Top Ten list to see what my bottom five were. Okay! I'm going to do my list in the countdown method, after the jump. Here we go...

Affleck Proves He's One of Today's Best Directors With a Great Political Thriller: Our Review of "Argo" (2012)

Directed By: Ben Affleck (The Town) 

Starring: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman

Rating: R for language and some violent images

Run Time: 2 hours

Synopsis: On November 4, 1979, Iranian revolutionaries took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 52 hostages – but 6 American diplomats were able to escape and took refuge with a Canadian ambassador. As tensions reached a tipping point, C.I.A. “exfiltrator” Tony Mendez (Affleck) hatches a plan, with the help of Hollywood makeup artist John Chambers (Goodman) and producer Lester Siegel (Arkin), to fly in to Tehran, pose with the “Houseguests” as a Canadian film crew scouting locations for a sci-fi film called “Argo,” and fly out together.

REVIEW

Andrew: Hello readers! Yesterday Sarah and I caught a morning showing of Ben Affleck’s new drama, Argo, which is based on the true story of CIA “exfiltration” expert Tony Mendez’s mission to get six American embassy workers out of Tehran during the 1979 Iran hostage situation.

Argo is Affleck’s third directorial effort and his second in a row where he’s pulling double-duty behind and in front of the camera. It’s a film we’ve talked about at length now, Sarah, what with our appearance on the As Your Watch podcast where we talked about it and we previewed it a bit on Thursday, too.

It’s one that we’ve been hearing a lot of good things about including plenty of Oscar buzz. So now that we’ve seen Argo, what did you think of it, Sarah?

Sarah: I was thoroughly impressed! I thought that the storyline was good, but how Affleck execute the plot was amazing. The movie is based on a true story of a classified CIA operation and the general public didn’t know about it until President Clinton declassified it in 1997. (Editor’s note: Until then all the praise had been given to the Canadian government because if Iran knew the U.S. had successfully gotten embassy workers out from under them, the hostages would be in trouble.)

So the strength of the movie was that even though we knew how the story would end, the execution of presenting the story and keeping it as intense as it was was incredibly. Another strength of the movie was the cast. I really enjoyed this movie and can see why Oscar buzz is already surrounding it.

Our Preview of This Week's New Releases (for Friday, October 12th)

Andrew: Hello readers! It's been a busy week for us here at Two Tickets For... both from a standpoint of trying to crank out more fresh content but also balancing that with out day jobs. It's also going to be a busy weekend what with FOUR brand-spanking new wide releases hitting theatres plus Sarah starts a new job this weekend. So while we may not be able to see all of the movies we'll talk about in this post by this weekend, don't fret - we'll try to find time somewhere.

Sarah, as I just mentioned we see the release of four new films in theatres that cover a fairly broad spectrum of genres. The most prominent film coming out this weekend is the latest directorial effort from Ben Affleck, Argo, but we also have a new horror movie in Sinister, a new family comedy in Here Comes The Boom starring Kevin James, and a wackier, R-rated action/comedy in Seven Psychopaths. 

(Let's take a second right now to mention that we were fortunate enough to be invited on the As You Watch podcast the other day and we talked about all four of these movies with Nick from The Cinematic Katzenjammer, Joe from Two Dude Review and Vern from Vern's Video Vangaurd. We posted about it the other day HERE and we wrote down the different time codes for the different segments of the podcast in case you'd just like to listen to the part where we discuss these films.)

So Sarah, let's talk about the big movie this weekend, Affleck's Argo, which has been garnering a LOT of Oscar buzz already. It's based on the true story of the 1979 Iran hostage situation in which supporters of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini stormed the American embassy in Tehran and took 52 hostages. Six embassy workers were able to escape and take refuge with a Canadian ambassador but were still in danger, so CIA "extractor" Tony Mendez (played by Affleck) concocts a scheme to fly to Tehran, have the six hideaways pose a Canadian film crew for a fake sci-fi film called “Argo” and get them out alive. Sounds heavy, and the trailer makes this look amazing. What are your impressions of Argo?

Listen To Our Guest Appearance on "As Your Watch" Podcast!

Andrew: Hello readers! It's an exciting day for us here at Two Tickets For... because a week or so ago we were asked to be guests on an episode of the As You Watch podcast that is made by our good friends Nick from The Cinematic Katzenjammer, Joe from Two Dude Review and Vern from The Vern's Video Vangaurd. (We were filling in for their usual fourth member, Bubbawheat of Flights, Tights and Movie Nights.) 

As a disclaimer, the full podcast runs a robust 90 minutes, but these are the topics we discussed and the times in the podcast where they occurred if you wish to just jump to a particular section and listen to that:

• We introduced ourselves, our blog and our individual top three favorite movies of all-time (runs from the start of the podcast to the 10:45 mark)

• Discussed this week's new DVD/Blu-Ray releases: Prometheus, Rock of Ages, Little Shop of Horrors and The Raven (starts at 11:30 mark and ends at the 16:04 mark)

• Discussed this week's new theatrical releases: Here Comes The Boom, Sinister, Seven Psychopaths and a great discussion on Argo (starts at the 16:04 mark and ends at the 36:35 mark)

• In honor of both Argo and our later discussion of Woody Allen's 2005 film Match Point, all five of us gave our respective Top Three Favorite Directors Who Act In Their Own Movies, where I manage to instigate an interesting discussion on Ben Stiller and Tropic Thunder and Sarah surprises everyone with her top pick (starts at the 35:36 mark and ends at the 1:03:30 mark)

• Each week they watch and discuss one older movie (based on who won the prior week's podcast game) and this episode's was Woody Allen's Match Point (starts at the 1:03:30 mark and ends at the 1:26:30 mark)

• And we finished up with a fun trivia game where you can hear us all try to do a Christopher Walken impression (starts at 1:26:30 mark and ends the podcast - trust us, you'll want to listen to this part)

Sarah and I had an absolute BLAST recording this with the guys and they claim it was their best episode yet. Who are we to disagree?!

So please take some time if you could and follow the link below to listen to As You Watch Podcast: Episode VII guest starring us. You won't be disappointed. (Some NSFW language, but only a few words here or there, mainly during the trivia game out of frustration): 

Click Here to Listen to Two Tickets For... Guest Star on As You Watch Podcast

P.S. I will be seeing an advance showing of Sinister tonight without Sarah, so be on the lookout for my review of that tomorrow!