Oscar nominations 2012
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY
Has the Academy chosen wisely? What about the glaring omissions? And who will win? Our panel of experts review the shortlist – and dare to give some predictions
The host this year, Billy Crystal, will give us some old-fashioned vaudeville schtick, but who will win what? Photograph: EPA
Flattery will get you everywhere in Hollywood. So it is that the films leading the nominations haul for this year's Oscars – to be presented on Sunday 26 February – are both love letters to movie making.
Martin Scorsese's Hugo is, essentially, about the need to preserve film history, couched in a kids' adventure that pays homage to George Méliès, the early effects pioneer. Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist is a paean to old Hollywood itself, to the silver screen, to studio moguls and to old-school Beverly Hills glamour. Academy voters in their retirement homes must be lapping it up – art telling old artists their art was important, and still is.
After a few years wringing its hands over Iraq, in documentary and feature form, the Oscars recently touched on the financial crisis and the internet but they have clearly decided – in rewarding The King's Speech over The Social Network last year – that the past is a more comfortable country. Of this year's nine best picture nominees, only three – The Descendants, Moneyball and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – could be said to be set in anything like the present. (I'm not counting the framing devices in The Tree of Life or Midnight in Paris – both are about characters retreating into the past.)
I thought we lived in a futuristic age, the era of 3D, Sony 4K, Imax, digital distribution, iPads and Netflix. But try telling that to the Oscars. Not even Andy Serkis's motion-capture performances in The Adventures of Tintin or Rise of the Planet of the Apes have been recognised, either as feats of modern acting or as game-changing special effects.
Veterans such as Scorsese, Spielberg, Woody Allen and Terrence Malick are back on top. Hell, even "negro" house servants are providing the entertainment – Help us, indeed. There's not a shred of the experimental about the Oscars this year, nothing daring, nothing new, except a counting system that leaves us with nine nominations for best picture, a move that ends up looking like someone's made a clerical mistake.
The Artist and Hugo are both excellent films that I like very much, but I don't think they can compare even with Scorsese's own work in Taxi Driver, Raging Bull or Goodfellas. What these two leading nominees do is, I suppose, remind viewers that character and story are of utmost importance amid any technological advancement, that man is more significant than machine, that time will get the better of us all, and that charm still has a currency in the digital age.
Even the host this year, Billy Crystal, will give us old-fashioned vaudeville schtick. As they tell us year after year, the Oscar show needs to halt declining ratings. Yet what teenager in Nebraska, or even South Central, is going to watch this and cheer on some unknown Frenchies?
What the Oscar nominations evidence is the entrenched lines now drawn in Hollywood between the blockbusters, franchises and multiplex fillers – movies audiences actually go to see – and the "quality" films for adults with a veneer of intelligence; though even here the two most crowd-friendly films involve the Disneyfication of the first world war and the civil rights struggle.
Obviously, the nominations bring good news for Demián Bichir, the unknown actor grouped with the best actors, and Rooney Mara, whose Lisbeth Salander is just the sort of young, internet cyberpunk you'd have thought the Academy fears. Bet she could even hack into the Pricewaterhouse Coopers computers and leak the results.
But wouldn't it be a relief if the blockbusters got better and were able to be considered come Oscar time? That would be Hollywood really waking up to some kind of new cinema. For now, things have got so bad over there that a black-and-white French pastiche by complete unknowns can come in, silently, and steal off the biggest prize, without breaking sweat.
George Clooney in The Descendants
Best actor
NOMINATIONS
Demián Bichir – A Better Life
George Clooney – The Descendants
Jean Dujardin – The Artist
Gary Oldman – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Brad Pitt – Moneyball
Philip French: For once all five nominated actors (one of them British, one Mexican, one French, two American) give substantial performances in films of some quality. Only the Mexican, Demián Bichir in A Better Life and the Frenchman, Jean Dujardin in The Artist, are unfamiliar faces. The other three – Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), George Clooney (The Descendants), Brad Pitt (Moneyball) – have been considered contenders for years. Pitt has the big advantage of being in a movie about money and baseball.
• Should win: Jean Dujardin. Will win: Brad Pitt.Sally Hawkins: George Clooney will win. I do love watching him. He has the Midas touch, everything he does turns to gold. But it would be wonderful to see Gary Oldman step up to the podium. Does it get any better than Oldman? He is so special.
• Should win: Tom Hardy for Warrior or Gary Oldman. Will win: George Clooney.
Jason Solomons: Thrilled to see Gary Oldman in here and delighted for Brad because he's great in Moneyball, perfectly cast. But Clooney's been around the Oscar block and he's admirable in The Descendants, reminded me of Jack Lemmon.
• Should win: George Clooney. Will win: George Clooney.Bidisha: Gary Oldman will win for his dry-skinned performance in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a shadowy film full of underhand men talking about men's things in a manly undertone. Beige macs never looked so mysterious. I'd like Jean Dujardin to win for his turn (and twist, and shimmy, and jazz hands) in The Artist. He can pop his eyes, sigh and glide across a sprung floor in a way that's so Valentino-meets-Beetlejuice.
• Should win: Jean Dujardin. Will win: Gary Oldman.
Mariella Frostrup: I suspect George Clooney will win best actor for The Descendants because they've failed to recognise him for better previous roles like Syriana and Up in the Air. But for me Clooney as a downbeat cuckolded husband is just too great a stretch of the imagination. My choice would be Gary Oldman, who I felt was quietly, powerfully brilliant as George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Ryan Gosling has had a spectacular year with Drive and The Ides of March, which hasn't been recognised in best actor nominations.
• Should win: Gary Oldman. Will win: George Clooney.
Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady
Best actress
NOMINATIONS
Glenn Close – Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis – The Help
Rooney Mara – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Meryl Streep – The Iron Lady
Michelle Williams – My Week with Marilyn
PF: Five American performers are in contention, three playing Europeans, and only Rooney Mara appearing in a movie generally considered of the first rank, though she's playing a role famously created by a Swede in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The Help, a mediocre tearjerker about racism in the deep south 50 years ago, has a touching performance by Viola Davis. But the real acting competition is between remarkable impersonations of 20th-century icons in second-rate pictures – Michelle Williams's convincing Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn and Meryl Streep's uncanny Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.
• Should win Meryl Streep. Will win Meryl Streep.
SH: From the list, Meryl should and will win. But then she is a goddess and has an ability to transform. But I would have loved to have seen the beautiful Olivia Colman and Tilda Swinton on that list too, and Kirsten Dunst for Melancholia.
• Should win Meryl Streep. Will win Meryl Streep.JS: Everyone who isn't called Meryl is just turning up for the party. For all her record-breaking nominations, Streep hasn't won much and her Thatcher is a towering achievement. Voters do love Viola Davis and her admirable dignity nearly rescues The Help. Michelle Williams is lovely but frankly she's no Marilyn Monroe.
• Should win Meryl Streep. Will win Meryl Streep.
B: It'll go to Meryl Streep for her pining in a belittling tribute to the niceness of Denis Thatcher. I preferred Michelle Williams for her nuanced My Week with Marilyn. Or Glenn Close as a cross-dressing butler in Albert Nobbs. Women get Oscars for doing something interesting before being brutalised and dying.
• Should win Michelle Williams. Will win Meryl Streep.
MF: The academy loves Meryl Streep and there is a huge mythology in America about Margaret Thatcher. Out of their list I think she best deserves the gong for The Iron Lady. But it will most likely go Viola Davis for The Help, to make up for the lack of black actors who've won an Oscar to date.
• Should win Meryl Streep. Will win Viola Davis. |
| The Artist |
Best film
NOMINATIONS
War Horse, The Artist, Moneyball, The Descendants, The Tree of Life, Midnight in Paris, The Help, Hugo, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
PF: An unusually interesting and varied list of nominees, though they can't be said to touch on any urgent topical interest peculiar to 2011. It is most remarkable of course for featuring Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist, a Franco-Belgian film about the coming of sound to Hollywood, that is both funny and silent, and an American film, Martin Scorsese's Hugo, set in Paris, that is funny and about the silent cinema. Both are likely to take their place as classic films about the cinema itself.
• Should win: The Artist. Will win: The Artist.SH: The Descendants will get it, but I would love The Tree of Life to win. Because it's Terrence Malick and he is a genius.
• Should win: The Tree of Life. Will win: The Descendants.
JS: Having just nine films is like admitting they couldn't find 10 good enough. Sort this category out – if you're tinkering, allow docs and foreigns in. The Tree of Life is too ethereal to be bound by such earthly matters as a film competition; lovely to see Woody back in but Midnight in Paris isn't even one of his own nine best.
• Should win: The Artist. Will win: The Artist.B: War Horse. Not since Seabiscuit came out have I been so excited about a film. War Horse features amazing equine method acting – it's as though the old nag really thinks it's going to war and is slowly developing post-traumatic stress disorder! – all coloured in a brown haze from the syrup Spielberg's poured over it. Please, turn those Hollywood horses into Pritt Stick. • Should win: The Artist. Will win: War Horse.
MF: The Artist seems to have been a critical crowd-pleaser, and it has novelty on its side as well as being beautifully realised. My guess is it will beat the other favourite, The Descendants. Forced to choose from the academy's list I would be tempted by Hugo, which showed an altogether more whimsical side to Martin Scorsese. But very importantly I much preferred The Ides of March, which could certainly stand its ground for best picture.
• Should win: Hugo. Will win The Artist.
From Hell and Back Again
A Separation. Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar Best documentary
NOMINATIONS
Hell and Back Again, If a Tree Falls: a Story of the Earth Liberation Front, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, Pina, Undefeated
{PF: All five nominated films touch on current social and political issues – errors in the American criminal justice system, environmentalism, the Afghan war, the underfunding of public education – except for Pina, Wim Wenders's
rather beautiful 3D tribute to the late German avant-garde choreographer Pina Bausch. The war film, Danfung Dennis's harrowing Hell and Back Again, about a badly injured US marine corps sergeant adjusting to stateside life, makes bold use of feature film techniques to take us into the man's experience.
• Should win: Hell and Back Again. Will win: Hell and Back Again.
SH: Pina by Wim Wenders is such a beautiful film about such a unique and beautiful artist, Pina Bausch. I loved it.
• Should win: Pina. Will win: Pina.
JS: As ever, the Academy's choices are baffling. Undefeated seems the wrong Sarah Palin doc (not Nick Broomfield's) and If a Tree Falls is surely too green for Hollywood. Every time I see scenes from Wim Wenders's Pina, I just think, wow.
• Should win: Pina. Will win: Hell and Back Again.
B: It'll probably go to Hell and Back Again, a doc about an American soldier wounded in Afghanistan returning home. Yep, it's hard when you're a dispensable trained macho killing machine and another country's dispensable trained macho killing machine gets the better of you when you fully expected to Show Them, Bigstyle. I'd like some recognition for Pina, Wim Wenders's doc about the pioneering choreographer Pina Bausch. It's exciting, accessible, vital and visually stunning and pays tribute to a woman of genius. Which is why it won't get no Oscar.
• Should win: Pina. Will win: Hell and Back Again.
MF: Hell and Back Again looks the most likely winner. But I loved If a Tree Falls for its original storyline and timely look at what inspires acts of terrorism, whether in the Middle East or middle America.
• Should win: If a Tree Falls. Will win: Hell and Back Again.
Best foreign film
NOMINATIONS
Bullhead, Footnote, In Darkness, Monsieur Lazhar, A Separation
PF: This patronising, ill-conceived award should be reconsidered or abandoned. Films submitted by 63 countries were assessed by an academy committee on the way to a short list. Some notable directors didn't get their films nominated by their national organisations; most that did didn't get on the short list. The only film of the five put to the vote that I'd heard of is Asghar Farhadi's admirable A Separation, a story of a marital break-up and the desire to get out of Iran. It's a film of considerable merit, much admired here when it opened last summer.
• Should win: A Separation. Will win: A Separation
SH: I'm disappointed not to see Troll Hunter or Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In nominated. I also liked the look of the Canadian film Monsieur Lazhar.
• Should win: Monsieur Lazhar. Will win: A Separation
JS: Good to see Joseph Cedar's Talmud comedy Footnote in here but even I think it's too Jewish to win. Poland's In Darkness has vote-winning Holocaust credentials (shoah-business, they call it) but A Separation has to be favourite, even just to soothe America and Iran's relationship.
• Should win: A Separation. Will win: In Darkness
B: A Separation should and hopefully will win. Made by Asghar Farhadi, this is a stunning masterpiece about marriage, parenthood, family, gender, class and religion, a triumph of acting, writing and direction, a naturalistic urban thriller and psychodrama and a pitch-perfect paragon of contemporary Iranian cinema. Unforgettable.
• Should win: A Separation. Will win: A Separation
MF: A Separation was really wonderful and in this category I'm hoping the Academy and I concur, unlikely though that is. The wonderful Catalan entry Black Bread should have been included in the shortlist and I'd love to have seen the hilarious Irish film The Guard nominated too. The Guard doesn't stand a chance in hell against the big guys, but it's insulting to define it as English, and in the foreign film category it could wipe out the competition. Brendan Gleeson was mesmerising and so funny.
• Should win: A Separation. Will win: A Separation
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Overlooked
PF: Sad to see no recognition for Kenneth Lonergan's intelligent, thoughtful Margaret, a flawed movie about life in a troubled, divided post-9/11 New York. Completed in 2007, long in post-production, and eventually re-edited by Martin Scorsese, it has excellent performances by Anna Paquin (she shared the London Film Critics' best actress award with Meryl Streep) as a disturbed teenager, Lonergan's wife J Smith-Cameron as her divorced mother, and some splendid writing. It will outlive many other nominees.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jan/29/oscars-2012-critics-nominations-artist
Overlooked
PF: Sad to see no recognition for Kenneth Lonergan's intelligent, thoughtful Margaret, a flawed movie about life in a troubled, divided post-9/11 New York. Completed in 2007, long in post-production, and eventually re-edited by Martin Scorsese, it has excellent performances by Anna Paquin (she shared the London Film Critics' best actress award with Meryl Streep) as a disturbed teenager, Lonergan's wife J Smith-Cameron as her divorced mother, and some splendid writing. It will outlive many other nominees.
SH: Tyrannosaur? Where is it? Paddy Considine for best director? Similarly We Need to Talk about Kevin? It is a masterpiece. Lynne Ramsay is simply remarkable and should be coming home with armfuls of little golden men. But not even a whisper of a nomination?
JS: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy should have been among best films, Tilda Swinton and Kristen Wiig among best actresses, and Michael Fassbender in there for Shame. Ryan Gosling will come again but surely Senna is the best film not to make the starting grid.
B: All the women. We Need to Talk About Kevin? Wuthering Heights? Bridesmaids? New director Angelina Jolie's excellent Bosnian war drama In the Land of Blood and Honey? Dee Rees and her brilliant, cool, powerful film about black-American lesbian life, Pariah? Kelly Reichardt's neo-western, Meek's Cutoff? Oh, and guess what, Madonna's W.E. is a thousand times better than royal borefest The King's Snooze, in which a man spends two hours overcoming a speech impediment while Helena Bonham Carter looks on. W.E. actually has proper roles for women in it – and, sorry haters, Madonna can direct. Oh, and whither Steve McQueen, director of Shame? Hollywood strongly prefers war-haunted horses to black people or women.
MF: I'm disappointed that Senna isn't included in documentary feature and stunned that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy isn't on the best film list. Clearly the Academy didn't have the stomach for Shame and Michael Fassbender's performance but I think it was brave, honest and a brilliant piece of work that will become a cult classic. It certainly deserved a nod.
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