Listomania Sunday: Holiday 2011 Movie Preview

Thanksgiving is this week and this is the time of year when the movie studios release their big budget family movies and their small budget Oscar Contender movies. Here are the ones I want to see.

Young Adult 12/9 - Looking to repeat the Oscar success of Juno Screenwriter Diablo Cody and Director Jason Reitman reteam for this one. About at a divorced women (Charlize Theron) who wants to hook up with her old high school boyfriend who is currently married and has a kid. I loved Juno and can't wait to see if they can duplicate the fun and quirkiness of it. With Charlize Theron in the cast it has lots of potential. Some Oscar buzz generating all ready for Cody, Reitman, Theron, and Patton Oswalt who plays the old high school outcast.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows 12/16 - With Iron Man and The Avengers it is hard to believe that Robert Downey Jr. has any time left to make another movie. A sequel to the 2009 movie this one has Holmes going up against his archenemy Professor Moriatrty. Directed again by Guy Richie I expect the same kind of fun action movie.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 12/21- The original Swedish version blew me away. It was very dark and violent. Now the American version is coming out and I am always a little skeptical but it is directed by David Fincher who directed Seven, Fight Club, and The Social Network so I have some high hopes. Probably not going to be nominated for any awards and kind of a dark subject matter for the holidays but I am looking forward to it.

We Bought a Zoo 12/23 - A feel good family movie from Cameron Crowe about the true story of a single dad who ends up buying a zoo. Crowe has made some pretty good movies like Almost Famous but has not had a good one in a while. Hoping with Matt Damon he can find his groove.

War Horse 12/25 - It is probably the most anticipated movie of the season. War Horse is Steven Spielberg's newest movie about a horse in WWI. It looks pretty emotional and could very well be his ticket back to Oscar night.

Shakespeare in Love

After watching Shakespeare in Love I know have seen every movie that won best picture. I had seen pieces of this movie before but it was on a red eye flight from Phoenix to Boston. So between falling asleep and it being edited for content and time I didn't see the full movie. In fact after Gwenyth Paltrow won Best Actress some one said she had nude scenes and I was surprised since I it wasn't in the version I saw.  But now I have seen the official version and have now seen every movie that won best picture but my quest isn't over yet, still 12 more movies to see to see all the movies in order. 

Shakespeare in Love is a fictional telling about William Shakespeare's (Joseph Fiennes) writing of Romeo and Juliet.  As a struggling playwright he is paid in advance to write a comedy called Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter. Having writers block he begins looking for a new muse.  When he meets Viola De Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow) he falls in love and finds his muse.  Viola is a huge fan of plays and disguises herself as a man so she is able to act.  Shakespeare casts her as Romeo in his play.  The problem is that Viola was promised to marry Lord Wessex (Colin Firth).  As Shakespeare continues to write the play he uses the problems they face with their relationship as inspiration for his play.  In the end instead of writing a comedy he writes a tragedy. 

Shakespeare in Love is the last romantic comedy to win Best Picture and the third romantic movie in a row to win Best Picture (after The English Patient and Titanic).  Romantic comedies are not  my favorite type of movies so I did not have high hopes for the movie.  The movie did have it's funny parts and the romance kind of worked.  Overall the movie was not bad.  Joseph Fiennes did a good job although I think his brother Ralph Fiennes is a better actor. And Gwyneth Paltrow was good but not sure she deserved the Best Actress Award.  Also while Judi Dench had some of the funniest parts her 8 minutes of screen time should not have been enough to win Best Supporting Actress.  Actually the funniest people in the movie were Geoffrey Rush and  Ben Affleck who was dating Gwyneth Paltrow at the time. 

The biggest problem I have with Shakespeare in Love was the fact that it beat Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture and Best Screenplay.  This has to be one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history.  No one was expecting a little romantic comedy to beat a action packed war drama.  Saving Private Ryan did win 5 Academy Awards including Best Director for Steven Spielberg which is a little surprising because usually the winner of Best Director wins Best Picture.  The other movie that had surprise wins was Life is Beautiful which won Best Actor for Roberto Benigni beating Tom Hanks for Saving Private Ryan. Benigni also became one of the firs foreign language performers to win an acting award and the second person to direct himself to a Best Actor Award (Laurence Olivier was the first to do it for Hamlet in 1948).  Beningni was also the fourth person to be nominated for Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Screenplay Orson Welles, Woody Allen and Warren Beatty were the other three. Life is Beautiful also upset Saving Private Ryan for Best Score beating favorite John Williams. 

The biggest snub of the year in my opinion was The Big Lebowski did not get any nominations specifically for writing and Jeff Bridges for Best Actor.  Other snubs was Jim Carrey for The Truman Show and even though Edward Norton was nominated for American History X it should have been nominated for Best Picture. 

Random Fact: All the movies nominated for Best Picture this year had two subject matters. Three were about WWII (Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, and Life if Beautiful) and two were about Elizabethan England (Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth).  Also the first time that two people were nominated for playing the same person in two different films. Judi Dench played Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love and Cate Blanchett played Queen Elizabeth in Elizabeth (1997 was the first year that two people were nominated for playing the same person in the same film when Kate Winslet and Gloria Stewart were nominated for playing young Rose and Old Rose). 


       

Schindler's List

1993 was a good year of Steven Spielberg.  After having 7 movies nominated for Best Picture and 6 nominations for Best Director he finally won both with Schindler’s List.  In addition to that he had one of his most successful movies with Jurassic Park which in my opinion should have been nominated for Best Picture also.

Schindler’s List is about Polish Jews during the Holocaust.  The movie starts with the Jews first being round up and put in ghettos.  During this time a manufacturer Oscar Schindler(Liam Neeson) hires a Jewish  accountant Itzhak Stern(Ben Kingsley) to fix his books and hire him some staff. Itzhak helps his friends who would otherwise been killed for not having any “useful” skills and gives them fake papers so they can work at the factory.  At first Schindler doesn’t care as long as he is making money.  After he witnesses the destruction of the ghetto with senseless killing he begins to care for the workers.  He then regards them as his Jews and does everything in his power to help them.  He becomes friends with Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) the man who oversees the labor camp where his Jews are kept.  Despite hating the man he is very convincing and becomes a trusted friend of his.  When the labor camp is being shut down and the Jews are being sent to a concentration camp Schindler uses his own money and purchases as many Jews as he can and sets up special arrangement for them. He uses the excuse that they are vital to the war effort as they help him manufacture bombs (it turns out the bombs weren’t made very well).  He manages to keep the façade up long enough for the war to end and the Jews were set free.

The three hour long movie is a very powerful and moving movie.  It had twelve nominations and seven wins. Everything in this movie is so good from the acting to the directing.  Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes were nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor and Ben Kingsley should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Neither of the two nominated actors won. Liam Neeson lost to Tom Hanks in his first of two consecutive wins for Philadelphia.   Ralph Fiennes surprisingly lost to Tommy Lee Jones for The Fugitive. John Williams won for the haunting score(he also should have been nominated for the score of Jurassic Park but wasn’t).

Jane Campion became the first female to be nominated for Best Director and have a movie nominated for Best Picture for The Piano.  Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin won acting awards for the Piano. Hunter winning Best Actress and Paquin winning Best Supporting Actress.  Holly Hunter was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress for The Firm. Also that year Emma Thompson was nominated for Best Actress (The Remains of the Day) and Best Supporting Actress (In the Name of the Father) marking the first time two actresses had to compete with each other in both categories.  At age 11 Paquin became the second youngest actress to receive the supporting award Tatum O’Neal won in 1973 for Paper Moon at age 10.

Biggest snub in my opinion was Jurassic Park being left out of the big awards.  It was nominated and won 3 technical awards including Special Effects but no other awards.  But the action movie The Fugitive was nominated for Best Picture and 6  other awards and even won Best Supporting Actor for Tommy Lee Jones. Maybe it’s just me but Jurassic Park deserved that nomination over The Fugitive.  Also, I don’t think Tommy Lee Jones should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor let alone win.  Denzel Washington should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor alongside Tom Hanks for Philadelphia.

Other Random Facts
Schindler’s List is Spielberg’s first Rated R film
Besides a few scenes the movie is in Black and White making it the first black and white movie to win since 1960’s The Apartment(which is still the last FULL black and white movie to win Best Picture).
The Wrong Trousers won Best Animated Short and is the first Wallace and Gromit movie to win.
Leonardo DiCaprio got his first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.
Robert Altman was nominated for Best Director the second year in a row for a movie that was not nominated for Best Picture (The Player in 1992 and Short Cuts in 1993)