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?

The 85th Academy Awards Nominees! (How Did Our Predictions Fare?)

Andrew: Hello readers! All week we've been posting our predictions for who we think will be nominated for this year's 85th Academy Awards, and this morning the awesome duo of Emma Stone and Seth MacFarlane announced those nominees. 

So...how did our predictions fare? Listed below are all of the nominees that were announced today - nominees that are in italics are the movies that we got CORRECT. (And a reminder that we did not predict the short film categories, so those will not be posted below.)

BEST PICTURE
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty
Lincoln
Les Miserables
Life of Pi
Amour
Django Unchained
Argo

BEST DIRECTOR
David O. Russell
Ang Lee
Steven Spielberg
Michael Haneke
Benh Zeitlin

Our Preview of This Week's New Releases (for Friday, November 16th)

Andrew: Hello readers! Our weekly preview is back after a one-week hiatus, and while it's not going to be a particularly long preview, there are definitely some talking points here for us to touch on. Sarah, there are only two wide releases for this weekend - the final installment of the hugely popular Twilight series, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2, and Steven Spielberg’s Abraham Lincoln biopic, Lincoln. We'll also briefly touch on a smaller film we've been waiting for that has finally hit our neck of the woods, The Sessions, starring John Hawkes and Helen Hunt.

So let's start this off with the new Twilight movie, shall we? Sarah, can you summarize what the last film is about? Where does it pick up from where the last one left off?

Sarah: Well in the first part of Breaking Dawn, we finally get to see Kristen Stewart’s Bella and Robert Pattinson’s Edward tie the knot and the final breakdown of Taylor Lautner’s Jacob as he realizes that that Bella will never be his. While Bella and Edward are on their honeymoon, she makes the grave discovery that she is somehow pregnant...and apparently a couple of months along. This is what happens when you get are impregnated by a vampire, people!. The rest of the story follows Bella on her very painful pregnancy as the baby grows at an accelerated rate and basically sucks the life out of her. The Cullens quickly realize that the only way she is ever going to survive the birth is if she is turned to a vampire at the right moment. The movie ends with Jacob imprinting on the Edward/Bella baby and Bella opening her blood red eyes. 

I have to say I am excited to see this one; a little bit because I am ready for it to be over, a little bit because I want to see some vampires kicking butt. I am hoping to see Michael Sheen more in this one, because he plays such a good vampire as the head of the vampire police, the Volturi. It is one of the most anticipated movies of the holiday season, so I will be interested to see if it lives up to the hype.

After Such a Long Wait We Expected a Better Movie Than This: Our Review of "Lincoln" (2012)

Directed By: Steven Spielberg 

Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, David Strathairn

Rating: PG-13 for an intense scene of war violence, some images of carnage and brief strong language

Run Time: 2 hours, 29 minutes

Synopsis: During what would be the final few months of his life, President Abraham Lincoln (Day-Lewis) struggles with the politics and ethics of trying to end the Civil War and get the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution passed while avoiding the scenario of getting one result at the expense of the other.

REVIEW

Andrew: We’re posting this a little late, but Sarah and I were able to catch an advance screening of Steven Spielberg’s latest film, Lincoln, his long-awaited biopic of Honest Abe. It has a cavalcade of stars, headlined by two-time Academy Award-winer Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood) in the title role, along with supporting turns by Sally Field (The Amazing Spider-Man), Tommy Lee Jones (Hope Springs), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Looper) and a whole lot of other actors.

Sarah: Just about anyone you can think of was in this movie.

A: Pretty much! Obviously it’s a biographical film of Abraham Lincoln, but it only the last few months of his life, particularly during the final weeks prior to the House of Representatives voting to approve the 13^th Amendment. It’s a very small but important part of his life and his fight to end slavery.

So Sarah, while this was a movie that was in gestation for quite some time (Spielberg has been trying to get this movie made for years with Liam Neeson attached at one point to star as Lincoln), we haven’t been totally jazzed to see it. A lot of that had to do with the fact that we weren’t enamored with War Horse.  We’re probably in the minority about this, but when we saw the trailer for Lincoln, it gave us flashbacks to War Horse didn’t it?

Do not be fooled by the trailer for Lincoln. Most of the movie takes place in a room like this or in the House of Republicans' chambers.

The First Full-Length Trailer for "Lincoln" is Online!

Andrew: Well it’s finally here, Sarah - the first full-length trailer for Steven Spielberg’s long-awaited Abraham Lincoln biopic starring Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role. Check it out!

So what are your initial impressions?

Sarah: I’m a little concerned about it. I think that I’m afraid it will be a little too much like War Horse.

A: What do you mean by that?

S: I just mean, is it going to be another life story that doesn’t have any real point to it? Is it going to give us a new look into Abraham Lincoln’s life? What is Spielberg going to bring us that we haven’t seen or read about before?

A: I think that’s fair. My concern about it is that Spielberg could possibly make it a generic bio-pic that just happens to have a fantastic cast and a generic John Williams score. So yeah, I guess I agree with you in that particular concern. That said, if there’s a director who can make this an instant classic, it’s Spielberg. The man knows how to shoot war scenes and Daniel Day-Lewis is probably going to be the leading candidate for this year’s Best Actor Oscar.

S: The cast looks phenomenal and it’s a cast I won’t worry about overshadowing one another. I think we have some heavy-hitters that have been around the block a while as well as some younger stars like JGL, so I think the cast is going to just knock it out of the park.

A: Completely agreed. I think my expectations for Lincoln are just a little tempered because we weren’t so hot on War Horse. Hopefully we get vintage Spielberg!

Lincoln also stars Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Robert Todd Lincoln, Jared Harris as Ulysses S. Grant, and Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens. Lincoln hits theatres on November 9th. (Holy crap November 9th is gonna be an awesome weekend for movies what with Lincoln AND Skyfall coming out!)

Courtesy: YouTube, Fox Twentieth Century