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?

Chastain's Strong Performance Leads the Way in Bigelow's "Hurt Locker" Follow-Up: Our Review of "Zero Dark Thirty" (2012)

Directed By: Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) 

Starring: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Mark Strong, Kyle Chandler

Rating: R for strong violence including brutal disturbing images, and for language

Run Time: 2 hours, 37 minutes

Synopsis: Maya (Chastain) is a fresh agent in the CIA assigned to the task force in Pakistan charged with finding Osama bin Laden. Through various means and over many years, Maya must find and cultivate leads, all while fighting her higher ups, world politics and the loss of co-workers to the war on terror.

REVIEW

Andrew: Hello readers! Sarah and I visited New York City for Christmas Eve, and while we were there we took the opportunity to find a showing of Kathryn Bigelow’s latest film – Zero Dark Thirty, an in-depth look at the ten year manhunt for Osama bin Laden following the attacks on September 11, 2011.

It’s Bigelow’s first directorial effort since 2008’s The Hurt Locker, which won the Best Picture Oscar and earned Bigelow the Oscar for Best Director, a first for a female director.

Sarah: Can I say, first, that this movie has an absolutely huge cast?

A: Heck yes it does, led by Jessica Chastain (Lawless) as a CIA operative named Maya, as well as Chastain’s Lawless co-star Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler (Super 8), Jennifer Ehle (The King’s Speech), Mark Strong (John Carter) James Gandolfini (Killing Them Softly), Joel Edgerton (Warrior) and Chris Pratt (Moneyball).

This is one we’ve been looking forward to for some time now. The subject matter is obviously pretty interesting and I was personally curious to see how Bigelow’s follow-up to The Hurt Locker would be. So now that we’ve seen Zero Dark Thirty, what did you think of it, Sarah?

Kyle Chandler (left) plays the CIA's Islamabad Station Chief, and Jason Clarke plays Dan, a CIA operative
whose specialty is getting information out of their detainees. 

A Six Pack Of... Movies We're Still Looking Forward To In 2012

Andrew: Hello readers! Sorry that we've been a little quiet the past few days, been a little busy with the day-jobs. We wanted to break that silence with a new Six-Pack, and it dawned on us today that the year 2012 is going to be OVER in just 7 weeks, but there are still a LOT of movies that will be coming out between now and then that we're very excited to see! So we put the two together, and now, for you reading enjoyment, A Six-Pack Of Movies We're Still Looking Forward To In 2012!

1.) HYDE PARK ON HUDSON (December 7^th)

Sarah: I'm going to do this by date and the first movie that I am going to start with is Hyde Park on Hudson. This movie is about the love affair between Franklin Roosevelt and his distant cousin, Margaret Suckley. The story centers around a weekend spent in upstate New York when the King and Queen of England came to visit. Starring Bill Murray as FDR, Laura Linney as Margaret, along with Olivia Williams, Olivia Colman and Samuel West, this is one that I have been really looking forward to ever since I saw the first trailer for it. I love period piece movies so this, of course, was right up my alley. We haven't really had a lot of movies where FDR has been the star so it will be interesting to see a different side of a famous President. I am excited to see how Linney and Murray play off each other. The one concern that I have it that it could be a bit of a snoozer, but I'm really hoping that's not the case!

Official Trailer for Hyde Park on Hudson