OVP: Adapted Screenplay (2018)

 OVP: Best Adapted Screenplay (2018)

The Nominees Were...

Joel & Ethan Coen, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, & Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman

Nicole Holofcener & Jeff Whitty, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Barry Jenkins, If Beale Street Could Talk

Eric Roth, Bradley Cooper, & Will Fetters, A Star is Born

My Thoughts: We are finishing up the writing categories today with a dirty confession-I almost always like original screenplay more than adapted.  This is weird for me to say, because with one exception, these are not stories that are familiar to me.  I have never read any of the books that these movies are based on, and therefore they "should" be all original to me.  However, in 2018 like in many years, these feel a bit more traditional, a bit more "we've seen this before" even from filmmakers that are trying to do new things.

Case in point: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which is an anthology film, something you rarely see in film today (and honestly, it never REALLY had a heyday in film...it was always more of a television thing).  The movie is watchable, but the script feels like it's struggling to connect these stories together, many of the tales coming across as incomplete, and not in the way you'd hope for.  After all, short stories are supposed to give you a peak into a world you'd want to spend more time with, but with rare exception these tales don't do that, and I feel like the vignette appeal of the script is lost on me (and lost in general).

A Star is Born is another story that feels "seen this before," and partially that's because I have-I've seen many of the Star is Born iterations, and so I knew where this was headed.  The modern touches in this movie don't work at all-it reads as tired to have Ally going on Saturday Night Live and for us to go back to this same well of "a star must rise, a star must fall."  Honestly, even for the best parts of this movie (and there are decent things happening in A Star is Born, particularly Cooper's performance), it feels totally unnecessary, and the scriptwriters never justify its existence.  It'd have been better if Gaga had just come out with a new album and left this overdone tale to rest.

If Beale Street Could Talk is far more urgent & necessary, bringing our first real taste of James Baldwin to the big-screen (the first English-language adaptation of his work).  Barry Jenkins' followup to Moonlight gets so much right, and a lot of that is grounded in the way he approaches this script.  The story is told in a nonlinear fashion, which gives off the appeal of almost a memory, where we remember the biggest things first & then move from there.  If we're going to quibble, one could argue that the central character of Tish leaves too unknowable, which is part of the point (we're supposed to see this tale through her eyes), but it gives off the slight aura of a puzzle missing a couple of pieces, even if you can see what it would eventually turn into.

Can You Ever Forgive Me doesn't suffer from that central idea, even if it might start out that way.  How to make Lee Israel, a bitter, difficult woman who is frustrated that the world has screwed her over, into someone that feels real-to-life (she's not going to become a different person by the end of the picture), but also gives us an authentic portrait of a complicated woman...that's a tall task.  Holofcener pulls it off though (with help from her leading woman).  This is a really smart script, one with a lot of bite & a bit unrelenting in how vicious life can be if you're single at a certain age without a support structure...you both sympathize with & understand the impact of Israel's crimes by the finale of the picture.

BlacKkKlansman is also a smart script.  Spike Lee is always funny (the scenes with some of the KKK members, particularly some of the women in the group, are played for shocking humor), and though this comes with some hiccups (I didn't love the film, as I felt it was a bit too long & that some of Lee's easier sight gags toe-the-line between being repetitive & driving home a point), I enjoyed this.  I also have to admit that the OVP is structured in a way that I only pick the best of that lineup, without any thought of whether someone was over or under-rewarded at that point (i.e. I may end up giving some legends no trophies and some others 6+ statues), but as the actual Oscars don't operate in such a bubble, getting Spike Lee a competitive Oscar was a correct decision by AMPAS even if he's not going to end up my choice here.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes combine their writing categories so there is no adapted or original distinction, and the only nominee that they picked that was adapted was If Beale Street Could Talk (which lost).  BAFTA went with Spike Lee as their winner, and traded out Buster Scruggs in favor of First Man among its nominees.  The WGA went with Can You Ever Forgive Me over this lineup save one (Buster Scruggs was skipped in favor of Black Panther).  There's a lot of solid arguments for sixth place: Black Panther was a Best Picture nominee, First Man did well in tech awards which might have given it a home here...but I still wonder how close we got to Crazy Rich Asians getting this citation.  I predicted it at the time, and sometimes the writing branch gets really into adaptations of books the Academy members actually had read (given the novel's bestseller status, that was the case here).  Hard to tell (Black Panther makes more sense), but I do wonder if Crazy Rich Asians was closer than the precursors indicate.

Films I Would Have Nominated: Like I said, this was an underwhelming year for this category, but for sure First Man would've made the cut for me.  Biopics are rarely that well-concentrated, and I love the way it made a universally-recognized figure so revealed.

Oscar's Choice: Light competition and his long status as an Oscar bridesmaid made Spike Lee not just a winner, but one that I would bet took a majority of the ballots.

My Choice: Like I said, the OVP is in a bubble, so I'm not thinking about if Lee is overdue or not, and under those criteria, this is Can You Ever Forgive Me for me, the most complete tale of the bunch. Follow that with Beale Street, BlacKkKlansman, Buster Scruggs, and A Star is Born.

Those are my thoughts-what about you?  Is everyone of the mind that Spike Lee deserved this, or can I have any takers over with Nicole Holofcener?  Are we finally done with A Star is Born remakes or is that a story that will never die?  And was it Black Panther, First Man, or Crazy Rich Asians that was nipping on the heals of, let's face it, Buster Scruggs?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2018: Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2018

Past Best Adapted Screenplay Contests: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019

Raising Arizona (1987)

Film: Raising Arizona (1987)

Stars: Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, Trey Wilson, John Goodman, Sam McMurray, Frances McDormand

Director: Joel Coen

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

As you might be aware I tend to write these articles a bit in advance of when they actually go live, and so I'm writing this before today's Academy Award nominations came out.  Inevitably, people on social media have critiqued what happened this morning pronouncing the Oscars "out of touch," "obsolete," and said they have committed "unforgivable sins"...it's possible even I said something like that (though I don't feel super strongly this year about most of the nominees so I doubt I'm that excitable).  This happens every year-hyperbole goes hand-in-hand with the Oscars.  So today I thought it'd be nice to have for our review a film that is considered by many to be a modern classic, one that features a number of up-and-coming actors in early roles, and one that, well, received no Academy Award nominations, a reminder that Oscar having fickle taste is not new, and that just because he doesn't provide his stamp on a film doesn't mean it won't have legs.

(Spoilers Ahead) Raising Arizona is about a couple, Hi (Cage), a convenience store robber, and Ed (Hunter), a police officer who takes his mugshots repeatedly & falls in love with him in the process.  They find out that they cannot have children, and in their despair, they decide to steal a baby from a couple they don't think can handle all of their children.  The reward that the biological parents put up for the child result in a lot of hijinks & people trying to steal the baby (known as Nathan Jr) for money, for themselves, or for some sort of combination thereof.  In the end, the young couple know that the right thing to do is to give back the infant even if they may never have their own kids (since they'll have each other), though it's heavily implied in the end that they will raise their own family despite the odds.

Made several years after Blood Simple, Raising Arizona is during the period where the Coen Brothers were on the critical map, celebrated by cinephiles everywhere, but before Fargo, when they crossed over into more mainstream awards success (and broke out with mainstream audiences).  It is quirky, sometimes to the point where you might roll an eye or two, but as the film goes by it earns that quirk.  Holly Hunter & Nicolas Cage are both terrific in their lead roles, as newlyweds who cannot have children of their own and therefore kidnap one of a set of quintuplets whom they fall in love with deeply even if they know he can't stay there's forever.

The supporting cast is great, of course (Coen Brothers staples like Frances McDormand & John Goodman appear in key roles), but Hunter & Cage are where it's at.  This is before Hunter took on The Piano (becoming an acting icon) and Cage became something of a national punchline with his indiscriminate choice in scripts.  In the hands of less-gifted actors these roles wouldn't work-Cage would be played as a joke rather than genuinely sweet, and Hunter's crying jags would be ridiculous instead of having the requisite amount of caring to make the movie's final moments, when Hi sees a future where they'll eventually have children of their own but never stop loving Nathan Jr, work beautifully.  The film isn't perfect (the renegade biker bit feels tacked on, as does the cheap jokes about swingers), but it's yet another testament to the Coen Brothers ability to find the emotionally felt in the absurd.

OVP: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

Film: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Stars: Tim Blake Nelson, James Franco, Liam Neeson, Tom Waits, Zoe Kazan, Tyne Daly, Brendan Gleeson
Director: Joel & Ethan Coen
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Original Song-"When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings," Costume Design, Adapted Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Anthology films are such a strange affair.  In a world where television exists, and is pretty much what we exclusively associate episodic narratives with in terms of visual entertainment, it feels quaint but wholly unnecessary to have something like a Buster Scruggs coming in with its six distinct stories.  After all, we have reboots of The Twilight Zone and anthology series like Black Mirror that already fill this hole, so the Coen Brothers going after such a largely extinct cinematic genre feels at once exciting and a bit of a retread.  This is also true of the film itself.  While the movie has the distinct, unmistakable voice of the Coen Brothers, it also comes with some of the baggage of what clogged up anthology films in general: tricky messaging, uneven stories where some are clearly better than others, and a lack of proper resolution.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is cut into six segments, each starring at least one noteworthy star or important Coen Brothers player.  The title comes from the first segment, where a singing cowboy akin to Roy Rogers or Gene Autry named Buster Scruggs (Nelson) is wandering aimlessly along the countryside decked in all-white, and while he seems like a Gomer Pyle-sort of figure, he's actually incredibly violent, a quick draw whose skills should only be tested by those with a death wish.  We see him defeat in rough order three men, all-the-while keeping a sunny disposition and a hum in his voice, before he ultimately is taken down by a man-in-black with little to no resolution as to why.  It's here where the cheeky, but dismissible, Oscar-nominated song makes its appearance in the film.

This is all fun and well-acted, but it's also a harbinger of most of the stories to come in that you don't entirely get the point.  There's a lack of resolution, but more importantly a lack of crispness to the writing.  The film's unifying theme is death, with all of the tales featuring a pivotal demise driving the conclusion save the final one, where it's heavily implied the main protagonists were deceased the whole time.  Sometimes the stories are better than others; "The Gal Who Got Rattled," anchored by Zoe Kazan (if you've read this blog before you know that I'm not Kazan's biggest fan, so that I choose her over segments starring Daly, Franco, & Waits should say something), where she plays a young woman who is undone by bad timing & misfortune, is interesting and adds a dash of romance to an otherwise thoroughly unromantic film, but it's also the only story where there's a clear ending to the picture.  Ambiguity in an ending is great, and the Coen Brothers do it better than pretty much anyone this side of Woody Allen, but it's also a cop out if you just sort of present stories with none of them finding absolution.

This movie is easily watchable, and in the hands of the Coen Brothers, it's not like you're getting something bad, but it's also a movie that just sort of sits there.  With the exception of the final two installments (starring Kazan & Daly), I didn't feel like there was more to expand upon in this universe, which shouldn't be the case for a short story (where you're left wanting more) and certainly shouldn't be the case with ambiguity in the ending.  I don't mind a negative or dark finish (which all of the stories save for "All Gold Canyon" have), but I feel like these stories are incomplete, and frequently inconsistent in their narrative quality.  The film's costumes (its third Oscar nomination in addition to citations for writing and music), are also in-the-middle, with the inspired white suit of Buster Scruggs (considering his violence, a novel contradiction, enough to make us rethink our opinion of the man-in-black who overcomes him) an outlier in what is otherwise pretty routine western wear from Mary Zophres.  Overall, I feel like this is a lesser installment in the Coen Brothers filmography, a nice enough way to spend an evening but nothing particularly noteworthy.

OVP: Original Screenplay (2015)

OVP: Best Original Screenplay (2015)

The Nominees Were...

Matt Charman, Ethan Coen, & Joel Coen, Bridge of Spies
Alex Garland, Ex Machina
Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley, & Ronnie del Carmen, Inside Out
Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
Jonathan Herman, Andrea Berloff, S. Leigh Savidge, & Alan Wenkus, Straight Outta Compton

My Thoughts: In the past few years, we've actually seen a more significant increase in the number of higher-profile Best Picture contenders in the Original Screenplay field.  Long the category that had the edgier, independent fare while the adapted race housed all of the films competing for Best Picture, Original Screenplay is slowly becoming a more mixed bag of the biggest films of the year, the films going for the top prize, and then more random, independent fare.  No year is a better indication of this than 2015, where two Best Picture nominees battled it out with three critically-acclaimed films that were on the outskirts of the big race.

Inside Out was a surprise return for Pixar to the big leagues.  For a few years there, Pixar consistently would make it into fields like Original Screenplay, but then Cars 2 happened, and it felt like they needed to wander through the wilderness a bit.  Inside Out is clever and the premise is ingenious, with some sparkling wordplay for some of the side characters (and pretty much everything Sadness says).  However, I didn't love it the way that I've loved some past Pixar scripts, mostly because for a film brimming with ingenuity in its plot, the actual dialogue wasn't all that inventive and the parents are horribly underwritten (why are all of their emotions the same gender while Riley's aren't?), but overall this is a pretty solid return-to-form for the studio.

When I first saw it, I called Spotlight a writer's film, and as a result this is going to be its best showing in any of our OVP articles (unlike past year roundups, I've been pretty quiet on Spotlight throughout this series, mostly because it only won six nominations, all but one of which we have yet to profile because they were in the Big 6).  The film is very methodical, which for its script works.  While I could have done without the histrionic, expositional speeches from Mark Ruffalo's Michael Rezendes which nearly capsize the film, the intense look at journalists and their value is well-done, and a worthy nomination.  We get the sense of the process of what it took to uncover a story of this magnitude, while never feeling like we're watching a movie that's just a carbon copy of a newspaper story.

The other Best Picture movie I was less-inclined to honor, in writing in particular.  It's hard to imagine the Coen Brothers wrote Bridge of Spies, it's so staid and without passion for its characters.  Bridge of Spies, like most Spielberg films, is not a movie that necessarily has a screenplay that is its finest attribute (Spielberg is the star in pretty much every one of his films, usually for the better), but the film drags in the center, and literally has nothing to say about the female characters in the picture, and usually relies upon Thomas Newman's score to make things more intriguing.  The movie's best scene, with Austin Stowell in the plane, is not really a screenwriting centerpiece as it is an acting & editing marvel, and I can't point to a particularly compelling writing sequence in the picture, even though (thanks in part to Hanks & Rylance's natural acting ability), it doesn't feel too stilted.

The final two nominees are more representative of the Best Original Screenplay races of the past.  Ex Machina is a tiny arthouse fare film that deals with heavy subjects and incredible twists.  Its strength lies not only in the acting duet between the three leads, but also in knowing that it has to read as obvious upon rewatch, but also like we can't guess while we're watching initially, we're all too fascinated by the conversations of the picture.  Think of the claustrophobia of the script (we only escape at the beginning and end), or the devastating way that we get casual drops about how ruthless some of the characters are (the scene where Domhnall Gleeson realizes that the experiment used his porn history to manipulate him comes to mind as particularly "wow," as well as other moments late in the film that I won't reveal for fear of spoilers).  Garland's script is fascinating and tight.

The same cannot be said for the bloated Compton, which is overlong and frequently boring.  The script doesn't stray from the beaten path of a musical biopic, telling the same story of rags-to-riches artists, brought down by the hubris of men who are given too much, too fast (as well as by the cruel men around them who exploit their talent for a buck, ignoring the mess left behind).  The film handles its main characters as righteous-without-fault, the only mistakes they ever made being trusting the wrong people, and there's a serious lack of objectivity in the way the film (which was produced by several of the people being portrayed in the picture) doesn't have much honesty about the people onscreen.  The back half hour, with a dying Eazy-E, doesn't even feel like a movie anymore, just a eulogy to a man that clearly the producers miss and obviously died too young.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes combine adapted and original into one category, and as a result we ended up with just two original screenplays competing: Spotlight and Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight (the Academy thankfully spared me telling you what I thought of that particular screenplay today, so count your blessings).  BAFTA does separate out their nominations, and picked Spotlight as its victor, with The Hateful Eight coming in to replace Compton.  The WGA had a bit more ingenuity with their field, though they also went with Spotlight; here Ex Machina & Inside Out were tossed in favor of Sicario & Trainwreck (Amy Schumer coming relatively close to an Oscar nomination as a result).  I wouldn't predict Schumer in sixth, though, as Tarantino had to be close here considering Oscar's love of him and his past successes in this field.

Films I Would Have Nominated: There's no way that I wouldn't have included Clouds of Sils Maria in this field given the opportunity.  The script is inventive, smart, a calculated duet of dialogue & unspoken tension between the two leads, and the best script (original or otherwise) from 2015.  Spy is Paul Feig's funniest, and in my opinion, best film and a movie that I have watched over-and-over, and occasionally you should just honor how difficult making a comedy this hilarious is with a nomination.  Finally, I'd round out with the coming-of-a-certain-age drama I'll See You in My Dreams,  which finds ways to talk about aging & finding love past fifty without ever feeling cliched or exploitive.

Oscar’s Choice: The Best Picture race was surely a battle royale, but this was an easy win for Spotlight.  I honestly don't even know who was plausibly in second place.

My Choice: Ex Machina among these nominations is the best-it has the most compact story.  I'd follow that with Spotlight, closer than I might have indicated above, with Inside Out, Bridge of Spies, and Compton bringing up the rear.

Those are my thoughts-what about you?  Are you with pretty much every awards body that this was due to Spotlight, or does anyone want to join me over in Camp Ex Machina?  Does anyone else struggle to remember that the Coen Brothers wrote Bridge of Spies?  And why do you think that the Academy chose to skip over Tarantino's Hateful Eight (other than good taste)?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2015: Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Documentary Short, Live Action Short, Animated Short, Previously in 2015

Past Best Original Screenplay Contests: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

OVP: Picture (2007)

OVP: Best Picture (2007)

The Nominees Were...

Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, and Paul Webster, Atonement
Lianne Halfon, Mason Novick, and Russell Smith, Juno
Sydney Pollack, Jennifer Fox, and Kerry Orent, Michael Clayton
Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen, and Joel Coen, No Country for Old Men
JoAnne Seller, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Daniel Lupi, There Will Be Blood

My Thoughts: Well, we officially have come to the finale of the 2007 write-ups.  I have decided to stop pretending that these series' aren't going to take forever to write (it's twenty very long articles, and I don't want the only thing on the blog to be OVP write-ups in case you come here for something not related to a golden statue), so I'm going to not attempt to finish 2015 (our next year) not in a month that becomes a year, but instead in ten weeks, two articles each week.  It's going to be a challenge, admittedly, but I'm up for it.  In the meantime, though, we still have one more race of 2007 to get through, and it's a doozy-arguably the finest Best Picture lineup ever assembled by Oscar during my lifetime.

The only film in this bunch that didn't get a corresponding Best Director nomination was Atonement, which is a pity as Joe Wright's magnum opus is surely a director's film.  Broken into three parts and based on Ian McEwan's breathtaking novel, the picture's true center is watching how one person's decision to bend and then shatter the truth can have lifelong consequences.  The way that Wright frames Atonement is so important because it'd be easy to simply cast Briony as a villain or to assume that the world will get better for Robbie and Cecilia, but things cannot be so uncomplicated, and actions have dire ripple effects.  The movie is gorgeously shot, particularly that famed tracking shot on the beach at Dunkirk and the steamy sex scene in the library, but Wright's greatest gift in the movie is the monumental way that we see how small actions can have major consequences, and finding a way to make romantic epics seem raw and urgent again.

If nothing else has been gained from me revisiting 2007's cinematic lineup, it's that I have saved Michael Clayton in my brain.  I have written about this several times before (all past 2007 races are linked at the bottom of the article, along with every other Best Picture lineup we've covered), but when I first caught it I didn't think much of Michael Clayton, dismissing it as simply another crime procedural, except now on the big screen.  I was wrong, though, as Michael Clayton rises above the procedural, smartly sniffing out the corruption that would become all-too-apparent to the American public in following years after the financial collapse of 2008, and is anchored by two astoundingly good performances from Clooney & Swinton.  Their acting duet, along with sharp music, dialogue, and showy editing makes for a classic 70's-style thriller, in the vein of The French Connection or Z.  It's proof that being a genre snob is a bad idea, as you can still make a terrific movie in any format if the writing and acting is good enough.

This is also the case with Juno, a movie that it's impossible not to love even if you can see its limitations.  There are no bad movies in this lineup, nor mediocre ones (the first time I've been able to say that in our OVP), but Juno is the only one where there are clearly mistakes.  The film doesn't quite know what to do with Jason Bateman's character (and neither does Bateman), and Michael Cera is almost a completely blank slate, as is his romance with Juno (and Rainn Wilson's role feels cloying at best).  Still, the relationship between Juno and her parents, the way that she grows so gradually but still believably, and the twist of Jennifer Garner emerging as the audience favorite (still the best thing she's done in her career by a country mile), makes for a difficult-to-root-against movie. Flawed, but highly watchable (and rewatchable).

It's easy to get lost in There Will Be Blood's towering central performance of Daniel Day-Lewis the fact that the movie itself is quite a miracle onto itself.  So often when I think of There Will Be Blood (which is often-it's a gargantuan cinematic experience for me), I think of Day-Lewis shooting for the rafters in a way that's impossible to ignore-it's one of those performances that probably could win an Oscar in most years, not just the one it was placed within.  But the film itself still unfolds like a short story, in a series of quick vignettes which is a great trick in a picture that clocks in at 160 minutes.  The movie wouldn't work if we didn't see the slow decay of Eli Sunday, or if it didn't wander aimlessly in the vast expanse of the Texas desert.  It's a major motion picture, the kind that can only work as a movie (TV would ruin this story completely by trying to "understand" Daniel rather than just leaving him a menacing nightmare), and the best thing anyone involved has made before or since.

It's still fascinating to me that two leading contenders for the Oscars could be so similar, and so wonderful (in many ways, 2007 reminds me of the twin achievements of All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard, who were battling it out for Best Picture some 57 years previous).  No Country for Old Men also requires desolation, men of questionable integrity, and the harshness of the Texas countryside to create its mood, but while There Will Be Blood is a small story told large, No Country is a movie that hinges on its script being told as a ticking clock, counting down to inevitable destruction and doom.  The movie works because the Coen Brothers know this, never wasting a second of film on anything that isn't getting us to inevitable showdowns, a dire High Noon for the modern age.  Anchored by three terrific leading men and a supporting woman that links them all, it's a still vital and austere look at shredded humanity and what a man damned to hell becomes on his descent.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes in 2007 got awfully greedy, though understandably considering how good the year was for films, and actually nominated twelve pictures for their top prizes, a result of a strange tie in the Best Drama category, where Atonement stood atop six rather than the usual four nominees (American Gangster, Eastern Promises, The Great Debaters (a movie I never got around to-is it any good?), Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, and There Will Be Blood).  The Comedy category stayed sanely at five, though again they struck their own chord with the victor as Sweeney Todd bested Across the Universe, Charlie Wilson's War, Hairspray, and Juno.  The PGA Awards were still in a five-wide field at the time, but skipped HFPA's victorious Atonement from Oscar's lineup, instead selecting The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (No Country won), while BAFTA passed on both Juno and Michael Clayton in favor of The Lives of Others and American Gangster (Atonement won here as well).  In terms of who just missed, I think you could make a sincere argument that American Gangster or The Diving Bell and the Butterfly were in sixth place, but my gut is telling me that the latter was always more of a "odd-man out in Best Director" situation, so I'd guess it was Ridley Scott's largely forgotten epic that was a just miss.

Films I Would Have Nominated: I cannot reiterate enough because I won't say this very often in this project-this is a very good Best Picture lineup.  There are no problems here.  That being said, I still think that there are better movies to choose, specifically Zodiac and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.  The former is a fascinating look at real men & their reaction to the figurative devil in their midst (a truly great ensemble picture), and the latter a towering acting duet that shows betrayal in its rawest forms (accompanied by splendid Roger Deakins' cinematography).  Both films feel similar in energy to No Country and There Will Be Blood, so I get why Oscar didn't go there, but they're two truly excellent movies that deserved to be called Best Picture.

Oscar’s Choice: Despite Atonement doing very well in precursors, I think it was No Country besting There Will Be Blood, and I don't think it was close.  It was one of those situations similar to the previous year's Departed where AMPAS wanted to wholly embrace one of their favorites who had never won the big prizes, so the Coen Brothers got their moment-in-the-sun.

My Choice: No Country for Old Men is one of my favorite movies, and is the winner here even though my silver (There Will Be Blood) and bronze (Atonement) would make very worthy Best Picture winners (they'd have beaten anyone in the lineup the year before or after).  Follow that with Michael Clayton and then Juno and we are closing the book on 2007!

Yes, we're done with 2007, but you can still join me for a discussion of the year in the comments-AMPAS and I matched up, but I want to hear your thoughts.  Who was the best picture of 2007?  Was it American Gangster or The Diving Bell and the Butterfly in sixth place?  What will it take to finally get Paul Thomas Anderson an Oscar?  And should I check out The Great Debaters?  Share your thoughts on anything 2007-related below!

Also in 2007: Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2007

Past Best Picture Contests: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

OVP: Director (2007)

OVP: Best Director (2007)

The Nominees Were...

Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Jason Reitman, Juno
Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

My Thoughts: All right, toward the end of these write-ups, I always feel like we've hit most of these movies repeatedly, to the point where I'm curious if I have anything new to say about the pictures themselves, but I can't really skip Best Picture/Director, now can I?  At some point I might want to start with Picture and work our way backward-maybe the 10th in the series I'll give that a shot (I've already by the time you're reading this started our next installment of the series, which will be 2015).  Either way, here we have five films, only one of which won't show up in next week's finale to our 2007 OVP, and so we're going to start with him.

Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is not my favorite movie.  There are elements of the picture that I liked, but it constantly feels too gimmick-y, with a director that doesn't really understand that sympathy for a protagonist's condition doesn't always translate into likability.  The film itself surely won this nomination for the bold view it takes of the world, regularly putting us in the at times jarring viewpoint of our main character, who is confined forever in locked-in syndrome after a stroke.  It's a neat directorial choice, and works for a while, but the director uses the trick too often to underline the points of his film, and as a result sort of sells the script short.  The film is a unique experience, but that doesn't translate here to being a great one.

One could argue that Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton doesn't have the same level of specificity that Schnabel achieves, and admittedly Michael Clayton is hardly a director's film in my opinion-it's far more in the hands of its writers and actors.  The movie itself moves quickly and assuredly to its final point, though, and that's on Gilroy.  It's a testament to his ability to bring out the best in those actors, and in particular his editors, to keep this movie from going into regular pablum that you'd expect from a generic thriller.  I liked the way he uses the camera to peer around a corner or above a lobby, as if we the audience are peaking in on these characters who are trying to avoid detection.  Gilroy's filmography is still so thin it's hard to tell if this is a directorial tick or just something he brought to Michael Clayton, but it's very effective.

The Coen Brothers are obviously directors where we do know their favorite tricks, but it's still staggering to me how well No Country for Old Men stands out as a movie that completely exists on its own, and yet it's decidedly a Coen Brothers movie.  Most directors would have gotten in the way of Cormac McCarthy's haunting story by trying to put their own flourishes on it (can you imagine, say, David Fincher or Wes Anderson doing a picture like this without making it very familiar?), but the Coens only add touches here and there (think Kathy Lamkin as the hotel manager or Beth Grant's entire role), largely sticking to the tick-tick-tick of Llewelyn Moss's fate.  The way that our characters must keep moving to stay alive is how they handle the camera-steady, constant, and assured.  It's a very tight picture, one with few frills and almost entirely centered upon three men's destinies, even when we get a scene that appears outside their purview.  Brilliant work from the brothers, arguably their best (and that's saying something).

Paul Thomas Anderson, I also feel, does his strongest work with There Will Be Blood (another high compliment), though tightest the word I'd be use for Anderson's filmography.  PTA's long, sprawling movies could hardly be called tight, though that doesn't mean that it's not fitting the picture in the case of There Will Be Blood.  To tell such a story with such a gigantic performance, you need time to percolate, and you get the sense from Anderson that he is making this "The Short Stories of Daniel Plainview's Life," eventually showing what he would lead to in chapters rather than one continuous loop.  This allows us to see Eli's descent into hell (I think it's apparent from the final scenes that Daniel has always been there, waiting for his soul), and we slowly realize that it was Eli who kept slipping from grace, not Daniel who was at the bottom already.  I love the way that PTA mirrors both men's journeys, but keeps Daniel at the center so it isn't obvious that he's brought him down to his level.  Taken with The Master, it shows his strongest capability as a director may be individual character pieces (or duets), rather than the sprawling cast stories he's so well-known for creating.

Finally there's Jason Reitman, whose work in Juno is good, if admittedly I feel like I'm more getting the vision of Diablo Cody and Ellen Page than I am the director himself.  This is a result of Juno being the product of the screenwriters, so well-known for its instantly quotable dialogue, than really for any specific directorial flourishes.  We'd learn as Reitman continued in his career that this quirky style wasn't unique to just his partnership with Cody, but I do think that while Juno is a good film (some of that credit goes to the director), this is about all that he has going for him here-there's nothing specifically compelling about the way he frames the film, and really it is more a testament to his editors that they smartly created the parent-daughter dynamic that hallmarks the film, or the way that Garner's face is lit compared to Bateman's, the shifting sympathy in that relationship.  It's a good movie, but I don't know that I would have put it in Best Director as it feels pretty meh in that department.

Other Precursor Contenders: Best Director is one of those rare fields where the Globes, Guilds, and BAFTA awards all have the same number of nominees (aside from the supporting actor races, this is the only OVP category where this is the case).  This doesn't always mean uniformity though, as we see at the DGA where Sean Penn takes out Jason Reitman for his work in Into the Wild (does anyone else find it odd that Penn isn't randomly doing some Brando-esque vanity project right now considering he's already taken the plunge into directing?), with the Coen Brothers the victors.  The Globes strangely skipped the opportunity to honor Penn (they are the awards' body that is most likely to go with an actor-turned-director), but did include Tim Burton (Sweeney Todd), Joe Wright (Atonement), and Ridley Scott (American Gangster), leaving only the Coen Brothers and the winning Julian Schnabel from AMPAS's lineup.  Finally the BAFTAs also took their own approach, keeping the Coen Brothers (their champions) and PTA, but finding room then for Wright, Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum), and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarckk (The Lives of Others, and yes, the guy who also directed The Tourist).  The sixth place position points pretty solidly toward Wright, but am I crazy for thinking Greengrass may have been closer than expected?  He'd been odd-man-out the year before for United 93, so he was well-known to the Academy, and the film was so popular when it came to actual trophies that it feels like a shock nomination that would have made sense in hindsight.

Directors I Would Have Nominated: I would have made room for Wright, as I think that Atonement is a direct product of his assured camerawork and combination of beauty and tragedy.  I also would have made room for David Fincher.  I think it's quite funny that he ended up finally breaking through with AMPAS over a movie like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which throws out almost all of his trademark styles & flavors, and isn't remotely as good as a picture as Zodiac, which at once is a tale about a murderer who escaped justice, but transforms into a tale about how men will go mad trying to chase a glory that they can never attain.
Oscar's Choice: It was the Coen Brothers turn after a decade of getting close, and Oscar knew it.  In most other years something as big as There Will Be Blood probably would have been a serious contender, so I think Anderson was second place, and I do think that he will eventually get his hands on this trophy for a different picture.

My Choice: No Country for Old Men is one of my favorite movies, and it's hard to argue with consensus here.  I'd follow it relatively closely with Anderson, and then at a respectable distance Gilroy, Schnabel, and Reitman.

Those were my thoughts-how about yours?  Does anyone want to make the case for someone other than the Coen Brothers, or are we all fine with giving this to the Minnesotans?  What do you think it'll take for Paul Thomas Anderson to finally win an Oscar?  And do you think Paul Greengrass was closer than expected to a nomination here?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Also in 2007: Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2007

Past Best Director Contests: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

OVP: Adapted Screenplay (2007)

OVP: Best Adapted Screenplay (2007)

The Nominees Were...

Christopher Hampton, Atonement
Sarah Polley, Away from Her
Ronald Harwood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood

My Thoughts: It says something interesting about this race when most of the major Best Picture contenders (60% are represented here), meaning that I'm going to be potentially in for some interesting happenings in the Best Original Screenplay category.  We have dragged out 2007 quite a bit (this is a huge undertaking from an editing/writing/viewing perspective, so I need to probably just admit that these are going to always take a while).  That being said, if you've missed any of our 2007 entries, use the links at the bottom of the article to revisit some past ballots or just click here and you'll have hundreds of articles at your perusal.

What strikes me most about this list, at least at first, is that it's predominantly male, perhaps no more so than Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which is entirely filmed from the male gaze, and is undoubtedly my least favorite of these pictures.  While we've encountered all of these films already, it may not have properly sunk in that I really didn't like Diving Bell, save for the cinematography and the scenes with Max von Sydow (so excellent as an estranged father).  The film itself is too gimmick-y as it moves along, never quite deciding if it wants to be a groundbreaking peer into the world of a man robbed of his ability to communicate or a sentimental/heartstrings sort of sappy tale that we've seen many times before onscreen.  There's no doubt that the life of Jean-Dominique Bauby is fascinating, terrifying, and challenging to our thoughts of ability, but I never really got that in the writing here; the film gains from Schnabel's artistic indulgences more than from the actual script.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the only script written by a woman, though here again we see so much of the world through a man's eyes.  Away from Her is a profoundly difficult film to watch, similar to Diving Bell, but Polley's film is more of a writerly sensibility rather than all style and flourish.  I love the way she finds fascinating ways to make Gordon Pinsent's Grant second-guess his relationship with Juile Christie's Fiona, even when he knows that it's the disease at hand.  What makes Away from Her better than something like Still Alice (a very similarly-themed picture) is that here we have a thick amount of plot other than the single spectacle of watching one woman's journey to the edge of memory.  We also gain clues as to regrets from those around Grant and Fiona, wishing that the world had been easier or treated them differently.  It's a loving ode from Polley, and sharply plotted work.

No Country for Old Men is one of two works here adapted from a literary masterpiece.  Cormac McCarthy's words are hard to transcribe to the cinema, as has been evidenced many times (perhaps most famously with McCarthy himself trying to write the problematic The Counselor a few years back), but under the sparse care of the Coen Brothers, this becomes a movie that stands on its own, and perhaps even exceeds the novel.  The movie is perfectly-laid by the script, a ticking time bomb that continues clicking along even after the credits role.  Some of the lines are instantly recognizable, such as the "you can't stop what's coming" and "Friend-o" and they sing off the page.  It takes a very strong pair of screenwriters to make such a specific sentence structure work in the confines of a very real world (particularly that of a desolate Texas), but the Coen Brothers succeed.  Honestly, while Fargo may be their most unique victory, I think at the end of the day No Country's script is arguably the best thing they've written so far.

The same may well be said for Paul Thomas Anderson, who abandons so many of the indulgences that made him a writer-director to be noticed in Boogie Nights and Magnolia and delivers a straight-forward drama that borders on being a horror film.  The film, though adapted from Upton Sinclair's Oil, bares little resemblance to the book and smartly rests on Daniel Plainview.  Daniel Day-Lewis fully inhabits the terrifying speeches that Anderson has brought for him (I don't know that I'll ever get over the way he spits out the word "people"), and Anderson uses the slim cast list to his advantage, insisting on dialogue only being a weapon of necessity, rather than something frivolously tossed around.  The result is a script that is shockingly tight for a 158 minute movie.

The final nomination is for Atonement, by far the most successful adaptation of an Ian McEwan novel (does anyone else find it weird that more of McEwan's work hasn't been adapted given the success of this outing?).  The movie unfolds wonderfully, each chapter given its own identity.  I do feel that there might have been some improvement in the second section, the least of the three chapters in my humbled opinion, but some of the other monologues, particularly that given by Vanessa Redgrave in the final scene and Briony's shaky confidence while dooming Robby, are stupendous.  It's also worth noting, of course, that language is central to the theme of the film (particularly one word that shatters so many lives), and that is not lost in the erudite way that so many of the characters speak toward one another.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes combine their writing categories so there is no adapted or original distinction, though that doesn't mean that they didn't find room for an additional nominee in Charlie Wilson's War to go next to Atonement, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and the winning No Country for Old Men.  The BAFTA Awards do split their categories, and nearly went for a carbon copy of the Oscars, except they substituted The Kite Runner in over Away from Her, and gave Ronald Harwood the actual trophy.  The WGA Awards were slightly more eclectic (as they so often are), missing both Atonement and Away from Her, instead going with Sean Penn's Into the Wild (which I'm assuming was the sixth place, and what a weird The Horse's Mouth-style nomination that would have been), and Zodiac (coming in just before David Fincher became fashionable at the Oscars, though there winner was the obvious No Country for Old Men.

Films I Would Have Nominated: Four out of five here, I have to say, the Oscars got exactly right-this is a really good selection, almost certainly buoyed by the fact that 2007 had a very fine Best Picture lineup (since this category usually borrows heavily from the top race).  I would have found time, though, for one of the most under-sung films of the year, Zodiac, perhaps the best serial killer film that David Fincher has ever made.  It's a pity that Oscar couldn't have found somewhere to honor the movie a few years before Fincher became a gimme nominee at the Oscars.

Oscar's Choice: The Coen Brothers won an easy coronation, though I kind of think PTA might have had the edge on Ronald Harwood if NCFOM hadn't existed.

My Choice: While the winner is easy (NCFOM), I actually still want Atonement, even with its flaws, to outrank There Will Be Blood, perhaps because when it's on it actually rivals the Coen Brothers, something Blood never does.  In fourth is the very admirable Sarah Polley, followed by Harwood.

Those are my thoughts-what about you?  Is there anyone out there who wants to deny the Coen Brothers their Oscar here, or are we all in agreement this was dealt correctly?  Who else wishes that Sarah Polley would do another script as good as Away from Her?  And what Ian McEwan novel do you wish would be adapted next (I've already got On Chesil Beach, my favorite of his works, coming in 2017)?  Share below!

Also in 2007: Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2007

Past Best Adapted Screenplay Contests: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014