Awards Season 2006

[Jeff]

The Broadcast Film Critics' Association and their "Critics' Choice Awards" have become the best predictor of Oscar nominations. Here are their selections.

NOMINEES FOR THE 12TH ANNUAL CRITICS' CHOICE AWARDS:
[quote]BEST PICTURE:
Babel
Blood Diamond
The Departed
Dreamgirls
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Children
Little Miss Sunshine
Notes on a Scandal
The Queen
United 93

BEST ACTOR:
Leonardo DiCaprio – “Blood Diamondâ€

[marty]

2006 winners of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle:

Best Picture: "Little Children"

Best Director: Paul Greengrass for "United 93"

Best Original Screenplay: "Brick"

Best Adapted Screenplay: "Little Children"

Best Actor: Sacha Baron Cohen for "Borat"

Best Actress: Helen Mirren for "The Queen"

Best Supporting Actor: Jackie Earle Haley for "Little Children"

Best Supporting Actress: Adriana Barraza for "Babel"

Best Foreign Language Film: "Pan's Labyrinth"

Best Documentary: "An Inconvenient Truth"

Marlon Riggs Award for courage & vision in the Bay Area film community: Stephen Salmons co-founder & artistic director San Francisco Silent Film Festival

Special Citation in honor of Arthur Lazere: "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu"

[Dylan]

Just came across this on a film music message board:

[quote]Ennio Morricone to Receive
Honorary Academy Award®

Beverly Hills, CA — Composer-conductor Ennio Morricone, who has composed more than 300 motion picture scores over a 45-year career, has been voted an Honorary Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The Award, an Oscar® statuette, will be given to Morricone at the 79th Academy Awards® presentation on February 25, 2007, “for his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music.â€

[marty]

Ennio Morricone's score for Once Upon a Time in America is quite possibly the best original musical score for a motion picture ever.

[Cinesimilitude]

Ennio Morricone's score for Once Upon a Time in America is quite possibly the best original musical score for a motion picture ever.

That could be said about over a third of his work. The man deserves a monument or something.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

2007 Golden Globe Nominations

Best Motion Picture - Drama
Babel
Bobby
The Departed
Little Children
The Queen

Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
The Devil Wears Prada
Dreamgirls
Little Miss Sunshine
Thank You for Smoking

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama
Leonardo DiCaprio for Blood Diamond
Leonardo DiCaprio for The Departed
Peter O'Toole for Venus
Will Smith for The Pursuit of Happyness
Patrick Wilson for Little Children

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama
Penélope Cruz for Volver
Judi Dench for Notes on a Scandal
Maggie Gyllenhaal for SherryBaby
Helen Mirren for The Queen
Kate Winslet for Little Children

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
Sacha Baron Cohen for Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Johnny Depp for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Aaron Eckhart for Thank You for Smoking
Chiwetel Ejiofor for Kinky Boots
Will Ferrell for Stranger Than Fiction

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
Annette Bening for Running with Scissors
Toni Collette for Little Miss Sunshine
Beyoncé Knowles for Dreamgirls
Meryl Streep for The Devil Wears Prada
Renée Zellweger for Miss Potter

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Ben Affleck for Hollywoodland
Eddie Murphy for Dreamgirls
Jack Nicholson for The Departed
Brad Pitt for Babel
Mark Wahlberg for The Departed

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Adriana Barraza for Babel
Cate Blanchett for Notes on a Scandal
Emily Blunt for The Devil Wears Prada
Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls
Rinko Kikuchi for Babel

Best Director - Motion Picture
Clint Eastwood for Flags of Our Fathers
Clint Eastwood for Letters from Iwo Jima
Stephen Frears for The Queen
Alejandro González Iñárritu for Babel
Martin Scorsese for The Departed

Best Screenplay - Motion Picture
Babel (2006): Guillermo Arriaga
The Departed (2006): William Monahan
Little Children (2006): Todd Field, Tom Perrotta
Notes on a Scandal (2006): Patrick Marber
The Queen (2006): Peter Morgan

Best Original Song - Motion Picture
Bobby (2006) ("Never Gonna Break My Faith")
Dreamgirls (2006) ("Listen")
Happy Feet (2006) ("The Song of the Heart")
Home of the Brave (2006) ("Try Not to Remember")
The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) ("A Father's Way")

Best Original Score - Motion Picture
Babel (2006): Gustavo Santaolalla
The Da Vinci Code (2006): Hans Zimmer
The Fountain (2006): Clint Mansell
Nomad (2005/II): Carlo Siliotto
The Painted Veil (2006): Alexandre Desplat

Best Foreign Language Film
Apocalypto
Laberinto del Fauno, El
Leben der Anderen, Das
Letters from Iwo Jima
Volver

Best Animated Film
Cars
Happy Feet
Monster House

[toiletduck!]

Wow... just stuck it in and broke it off in regards to United 93, eh?

-Toilet Dcuk

[domino harvey]

if LMS can't garner more than two nods at the Globes, I guess there goes its Oscar chances

[MichaelB]

That could be said about over a third of his work. The man deserves a monument or something.

Interesting to see that his latest score is for Leningrad, the new Giuseppe Tornatore - which of course was the subject of Sergio Leone's last project, so had it been completed Morricone would undoubtedly have scored that many years earlier.

(In fact, maybe he DID score it in the late 1980s and is resurrecting it now? This isn't too far-fetched when you consider that he often composed his Leone scores in advance of production!)

[rs98762001]

BOBBY as Best Film? Hmm. Did the Weinsteins buy the HFP outright?

[souvenir]

There's a Morricone retro at Film Forum next year, with some interesting, unavailable on DVD films (La Luna, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, Before the Revolution).

Re: the Globes' nominations, I believe (thankfully) Forest Whitaker was nominated instead of Patrick Wilson in the Actor in a Drama category.

[Matt]

Ahh, this thread smells lemony fresh since I expelled all that Zizek claptrap.

[exte]

According to Meta Critic...

EDITED, BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY... I'M NOT A GOLFER...

I'm guessing the top five will be the nominees for Best Picture, and Scorsese will get Best Director, and either United 93 or Letters will win Best Picture...

[domino harvey]

don't kid yourself, Dreamgirls will get the nom and the win

[Matt]

I'm guessing the top five will be the nominees for Best Picture

Peerless logic. Last year, The Best of Youth and Nobody Knows really cleaned up at the Oscars.

[Grimfarrow]

Oscar Best Foreign Film predictions:

The Lives of Others
Volver
Pan's Labyrinth
Days of Glory
Vitus

Possible other choices:
Water
Blackbook

[marty]

What about THE DEATH OF MR LAZARESCU?

[Travis]

Directors' Guild Nominations:

BILL CONDON, Dreamgirls
JONATHAN DAYTON & VALERIE FARIS, Little Miss Sunshine
STEPHEN FREARS, The Queen
ALEJANDRO GONZALEZ INARRITU, Babel
MARTIN SCORSESE, The Departed

[Jeff]

What about THE DEATH OF MR LAZARESCU?

It was released in Romania in September of 2005, and they submitted it for last year's Academy Awards, but it wasn't nominated. This year, Romania has submitted The Way I Spent the End of the World.

[Matt]

Directors' Guild Nominations:

BILL CONDON, Dreamgirls
JONATHAN DAYTON & VALERIE FARIS, Little Miss Sunshine
STEPHEN FREARS, The Queen
ALEJANDRO GONZALEZ INARRITU, Babel
MARTIN SCORSESE, The Departed

I think this list is shocking. These are directors choosing the best among them, and this is what they come up with? The guild must be overrun with hack TV directors with no taste. Enjoyable films they might be, but there is nothing, NOTHING visually striking, innovative, or memorable about either The Queen or Little Miss Sunshine. The former felt like a TV film to me and the latter was just (visually) uninspired. I can't believe they didn't recognize Cuarón's amazing work (I thought maybe he wasn't a member of the guild, but he is) and I'm surprised that Eastwood wasn't nominated either (but I didn't care for FoOF and haven't seen LfIJ.

[marty]

What did you expect, especially after Crash won the Best Picture Oscar last year? Scorsese is the only one on that list that deserves a spot but not the others.

Is voting compulsory for all directors in the Academy? If so, then that's very sad. If not, then I doubt that many talented directors would waste their time voting.

[Michael]

I'm also surprised that Cuaron is not nominated. Same thing with Almodovar and del Toro. All three are very visionary directors.

Little Miss Sunshine may not be visually striking or innovative but it's impossibly memorable. The directing of this film may be subtle but it's so wonderful in its way of melting all the elements together into a harmonious whole. Not one thing feels false. It's not something easy to achieve.

[toiletduck!]

Enjoyable films they might be, but there is nothing, NOTHING visually striking, innovative, or memorable about either The Queen or Little Miss Sunshine. The former felt like a TV film to me and the latter was just (visually) uninspired.

I've managed to avoid Little Miss Sunshine as of yet, but I'll submit my humble dissent on Frears' work. The use of stock media footage in The Queen, a tactic that usually leaves me cold at best and completely throws me out of a film at worst not only wasn't detrimental, but it actually had an emotional effect, and one that was actually much stronger than what I felt the first time I saw the footage. He also deftly fills the void of the country estate with both a cold emptiness an an oppressive choking sensation all at once. These two factors alone, not to mention the rest of the film, which I also find more than competently directed, might not deserve a win, but a nomination? No doubt in my mind.

Then again, I found the screenplay that everyone is fawning over rife with over-bearing metaphors and spoon-fed parallelisms, so, you know, grain of salt.

-Toilet Dcuk

[Matt]

What did you expect, especially after Crash won the Best Picture Oscar last year? Scorsese is the only one on that list that deserves a spot but not the others.

Is voting compulsory for all directors in the Academy? If so, then that's very sad. If not, then I doubt that many talented directors would waste their time voting.

These are the Directors Guild of America nominations, not Oscar nominations. Though many of the same people are members of the DGA and the Academy, it's not 100% overlap.

I'm also surprised that Cuaron is not nominated. Same thing with Almodovar and del Toro. All three are very visionary directors.

I'm not surprised del Toro was not nominated. I think he is still seen by many as a horror director. Almodovar, having never directed a film in the US, is not a member of the Guild and thus not eligible.

I just realized that all of these people are first-time feature film nominees. Scorsese has been nominated (and lost, of course) seven times. He's the Susan Lucci of directors. If he wins this time, this little bit of trivia will be interesting to note: "Fifty-one out of fifty-seven times since the DGA Award's inception in 1949, the DGA Award winner has won the corresponding Best Director Academy Award®."

[Michael]

Almodovar, having never directed a film in the US, is not a member of the Guild and thus not eligible.

Oh that's right. What's the matter with my brain?

I find it very comical that some of you "manage" to avoid watching Little Miss Sunshine for whatever reason it may be. I do hope that Little Miss Sunshine wins something this year, although it could be outflanked by larger films, but hopefully the Independent film community will honor it Spirit Awards this year. (Does anyone know who the host is this year at the Indie Spirit Awards?) Anyway, I thought every single character in that movie was so real and engaging. It was dark yet it made me chuckle many times throughout the movie. And I once had a VW Van that required pushing to get it started, and I remember many a cold winters day in upstate NY, running along side the damned VW with my boyfriend on the drivers side and jumping back in once we had picked up enough speed! And that joyous feeling when you realized all the running and effort was worth it because the engine had popped into gear and was running!