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?

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...

Tarantino's New Revenge Flick is Bloody Good Fun: Our Review of "Django Unchained" (2012)

Directed By: Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds) 

Starring: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson

Rating: R for strong graphic violence throughout, a vicious fight, language and some nudity

Run Time: 2 hours, 45 minutes

Synopsis: A bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz (Waltz) tracks down a frees a slave named Django (Foxx) to help him hunt down the Brittle Brothers. Once that's done, Schultz agrees to make Django his full-time partner and to help him free his wife from the clutches of the evil plantation owner, Calvin Candie (DiCaprio).

REVIEW

Andrew: Hello readers! Last night Sarah and I braved a snow storm to hit up the local AMC and catch Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, Django Unchained, starring Jamie Foxx (Horrible Bosses), Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds), Leonardo DiCaprio (Inception) and Samuel L. Jackson (The Avengers).

The film is about a slave named Django who is bought by a bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz, who needs Django to help track down a few bounties. After finding that Django is quite good at bounty hunting, Schultz agrees to free Django, make him his full partner and help track down Django’s wife, Broomhilda, who has been sold to an evil plantation owner named Calvin Candie, played by DiCaprio.

It’s been making a bit of waves because of it’s liberal use of the N-word, because of Tarantino’s revisionist take on American slavery, and because of Tarantino’s classic stylized violence. That said, we’ve been looking forward to this film for quite some time and now that we’ve seen it, what did you think, Sarah?

Sarah: Well just from what I’ve seen of Tarantino’s filmography, which is pretty much just the two Kill Bill films and the first half of Reservoir Dogs, it seems like this one is pretty on par with the way he likes to do filmmaking. He seems to like his cameos in his own movies, doesn’t he?

But I really liked this movie! I LOVED Christoph Waltz. I’ve only ever seen him in Water for Elephants, which didn’t impress me, but I really liked him here.

Christoph Waltz (left), who won an Oscar for his role as Hans Landa in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, scores another fantastic role as the bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz. Might another Oscar be in his future?

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

New International Trailer for "Django Unchained"!

Andrew: Hey hey look! There's a new international trailer for Quentin Tarantino's upcoming film Django Unchained and it has some new footage that the first trailer didn't have! Nice! Check it out below!

Official International Trailer for Django Unchained

Django Unchained stars Jamie Foxx, Christop Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kelly Washington and Don Johnson. It comes out this December.

Our apologies for being a little slow with the content this week. Been a busy week with our regular day-jobs, but we promise that tomorrow we'll have a regular weekly preview, along with some new reviews this upcoming weekend. We're looking forward to it and we hope you are, too!

Trailer courtesy: Yahoo!

First Trailer for Tarantino's "Django Unchained" Is Here!

Andrew: I'm going to post this as fast as I can because this trailer has been posted and taken down a number of times already today by the Weinstein Company, but here's the first official trailer for Quentin Tarantino's highly-anticipated new film Django Unchained starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio. I would explain what the premise of the movie is, but the trailer does quite a good job of that by itself. So check it out!







Django Unchained comes out this winter and also stars Kerry Washington (TV's Scandal) and Don Johnson. Let us know what you think of the trailer!

Courtesy: YouTube