Saturday, March 01, 2014

Oscar 2013: Predictions, Preferences



All feature-film categories now complete!

Look how distressed Sandra Bullock is, trying to glance into her crystal ball, straining to quantify how many Oscars her movie Gravity will win tomorrow.  I'm sporting the same look on my face as I publicly prognosticate winners for the first time since Jennifer Lawrence was in the Brownies.  But why not take a stab at it?  I've been spouting off on every other angle of the Academy Awards this year: diagnosing the narrowing field of "top" competitors for The Advocate; debunking popular myths about the Oscars and their biases in The Washington Post; and discussing some favorites among this year's nominees and some formative Oscar moments with Der Spiegel, though if Sie kein Deutsche sprechen, you won't be able to read it.  What I have not done anywhere, in any language, is forecast who is winning or fess up to my own choices.  So many of my favorite people are sticking their necks out.  So, as Charles Busch belts out in Die, Mommie, Die! - widely regarded as a near-miss for a Best Picture nod in 2003 - "Why not me?"

Best Visual Effects
Gravity will stomp all over its competitors, making it the sixth Best Picture nominee in a row to cop the prize (after Benjamin Button, Avatar, Inception, Hugo, and Life of Pi, just so you don't have to look it up).  You may take this streak as proof of the Academy's growth over the years—since even within my lifetime as an Oscar queen "effects movies" were often persona non grata in Best Picture—or all you may see is an industry increasingly compelled toward digital extravaganzas. Either way, Gravity would probably mop the floor even with the five past winners I just named, much less with the competitors it has to vanquish here... which in a way is too bad, because there's a lot to say for the invigorating spectacles and sleek execution of several sequences in Star Trek and Iron Man 3.  I was less taken with the effects work in The Lone Ranger (yes, even as regards that train crash), and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was one of a handful of Oscar nominees I missed in theaters. Will: Gravity  Should: Gravity  Hey, Where's The Great Gatsby, which owes the bulk of its locations, color schemes, camera movements, and memorably debauched extras to digital intervention

Best Makeup and Hairstyling
From an impressively strong field we slide over to an annoyingly weak one. Dallas Buyers Club will probably win on default, since voters tend to gravitate to Best Picture nominees unless there's a stirring reason not to.  Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa is many things, but not that.  (Actually, Bad Grandpa on its best day is only a couple of things, which disappointed me, since I thought the first Jackass movie was a hoot.  Especially seeing it in a Detroit shopping mall, with people flashing laser sights on the screen midfilm.)  The Lone Ranger has the more-is-more thing nailed down, and a lot of graphically arresting cosmetics have been lovingly applied to actors like Barry Pepper and Helena Bonham Carter.  Still, AMPAS has recently rejected some ostentatious contenders who would have been shoo-ins in the Rick Baker era (The Time Machine, Norbit, Hellboy II) when a more broadly admired film presents itself as an option (Frida, La Vie en rose, and Benjamin Button in those cases).  I think it might have been nice if more of the Buyers Club's subscribers had looked visibly ill.  I would love to see a bruising throwdown between those who insist that Johnny Depp's bird-stapled-to-his-head "Native American" is the year's most horrifying faux-archetype and those who proffer Jared Leto's eyebrowless transwoman for the same distinction.  But failing that battle, and following the canny publicizing of Dallas's breathtakingly low budget, Adruitha Lee and Robin Mathews ought to get own their chance to say "All right, all right, all right!" or possibly even speak about Neptune. Will: Dallas Buyers Club  Should: Lone Ranger  Hey, Where's American Hustle, obviously, but also the lightly greyed hair of Llewyn Davis and the wax-museum quality of so many of his acquaintances.  Also, Cate Blanchett's Park Avenue blonde tresses in Blue Jasmine, which are turning into dark roots before her eyes, or ours at least.

Best Supporting Actor
On the subject of Dallas Buyers Club, I thought the movie was fantastic and Jared Leto pretty good the first time I saw them.  Upon revisiting a week or so ago, Dallas betrayed more stress marks, and Leto—by now vaulted from Casting Stunt That Paid Off to Prohibitive Favorite for the Oscar—still seems ...pretty good, without quite explaining what Rayon's doing in this script.  There are some pearl-clutching gestures and other frou-fra in the performance that make it seem stale, conceived more for an audience than from a character who's been built feet up, as they say in American Hustle.  And speaking of Hustle, Bradley Cooper has a large enough part in that movie that he's drawn fire for being a lead falsely slumming in this category.  Yet there are lots of ways to confront the question of who's really "supporting" in a film.  Leto's scenes are more limited, but every single one is handed to the character to be charismatic, or tragic, or funny, or all three, just like Angelina Jolie's and Jennifer Hudson's scenes were in their Oscar-winning vehicles. The movie arguably supports him more than the reverse. Cooper is on screen bunches but, like most of his Hustle castmates, acts an over-the-top character in a strong way and still doesn't seem like he's showboating, or depriving his co-stars of the cues they need to enrich their work.  He and Abdi are the Bests in Show in their movies without ever looking like they realize it.  Fassbender, like Leto, is cleverly playing a thesis that's been posited in the script in place of a real character: in one case, the AIDS patient with a wavering commitment to living, in the other, a slave-owner as one-man multiplex of grimy perversions.  Hill is ...uh, very good in 21 Jump Street and Moneyball.  I have no idea who he's playing in Wolf of Wall Street, no matter how hard he's working to keep the badminton birdie from landing. Will: Leto  Should: Cooper  Hey, Where's James Gandolfini, who didn't need an iota of gratuitous sentiment to merit a nod for his middle-aged romantic, so tentative yet brave, so relaxed yet staunchly principled.  Plus the usual surfeit of guys who got no promotion (Ben Mendelsohn in Place Beyond the Pines, David Oyelowo in The Butler) or who indulged in the sin of acting in non-American films (Yiftach Klein in Fill the Void, Peter Kazungu in Paradise: Love).

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Thursday, January 16, 2014

Oscar Nomination Predictions 2013

I'm demented with fever and fatigue, so forgive the lack of commentary, but here are my best guesses and, in some cases, my willfully reckless counter-intuitions regarding tomorrow's Oscar nominations:

Picture: 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Inside Llewyn Davis, Nebraska, Saving Mr. Banks, The Wolf of Wall Street
runners-up: Philomena, Her

Director: Coens (Llewyn), Cuaron (Gravity), Greengrass (Captain), McQueen (12 Years), Russell (Hustle)
runners-up: Payne, Scorsese, Vallée, Jonze

Actress: Adams (Hustle), Blanchett (Jasmine), Bullock (Gravity), Dench (Philomena), Thompson (Banks)
runners-up: Streep, Exarchopoulos
toyed with: dropping Bullock for Streep, but couldn't commit

Actor: Dern (Nebraska), DiCaprio (Wolf), Ejiofor (12 Years), Isaac (Llewyn), McConaughey (Dallas)
runners-up: Hanks, Redford
toyed with: being less optimistic about Isaac, but I can't help it
how 'bout that: Bale (Hustle)

Supporting Actress: Hawkins (Jasmine), Lawrence (Hustle), Nyong'o (12 Years), Squibb (Nebraska), Winfrey (Butler)
runners-up: Roberts

Supporting Actor: Abdi (Captain), Brühl (Rush), Cooper (Hustle), Fassbender (12 Years), Leto (Dallas)
runners-up: Gandolfini, Hill, Forte
toyed with: promoting my beloved Gandolfini, but I don't want to jinx it

Original Screenplay: American Hustle, Dallas Buyers Club, Her, Inside Llewyn Davis, Nebraska
runners-up: Blue Jasmine, Enough Said

Adapted Screenplay: 12 Years a Slave, Before Midnight, Blue Is the Warmest Color, Captain Phillips, Philomena
runners-up: August: Osage County, The Wolf of Wall Street

Foreign Film: The Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium), The Grandmaster (Hong Kong), The Great Beauty (Italy), The Hunt (Denmark), Omar (Palestine)
runners-up: The Notebook, Two Lives, The Missing Picture, Iron Picker

Animated Feature: The Croods, Despicable Me 2, Ernest & Celestine, Frozen, The Wind Rises
runners-up: Monsters University

Documentary: Blackfish, Dirty Wars, God Loves Uganda, The Square, Stories We Tell
runners-up: Which Way..., The Act of Killing, 20 Feet from Stardom, Tim's Vermeer
how 'bout that: Cutie and the Boxer

Cinematography: 12 Years a Slave !!!, The Grandmaster, Gravity, Inside Llewyn Davis, Prisoners
runners-up: Nebraska, The Great Beauty, Captain Phillips, The Great Gatsby

Film Editing: American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Gravity, Rush, The Wolf of Wall Street
runners-up: 12 Years a Slave
toyed with: including the obvious front-runner, but I suspect Slave will stumble in a few races
how 'bout that: Dallas Buyers Club

Production Design: 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, Gravity, The Great Gatsby, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
runners-up: The Invisible Woman, The Grandmaster, Inside Llewyn Davis
how 'bout that: Her

Costume Design: 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, The Great Gatsby, The Invisible Woman, Saving Mr. Banks
runners-up: The Lone Ranger, The Grandmaster, The Great Beauty, Inside Llewyn Davis

Makeup & Hairstyling: American Hustle !!!, Dallas Buyers Club, The Lone Ranger
runners-up: Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, The Great Gatsby

Original Score: 12 Years a Slave, All Is Lost, The Book Thief, Gravity, Saving Mr. Banks
runners-up: Captain Phillips, Philomena, The Great Gatsby, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
how 'bout that: Her

Original Song: "Let It Go" (Frozen), "The Moon Song" (Her), "Ordinary Love" (Mandela), "So You Know What It's Like" (Short Term 12), "Young and Beautiful" (Gatsby)
runners-up: "Amen" (All Is Lost), "In the Middle of the Night" (Butler), "Sweeter Than Fiction" (One Chance), "Last Mile Home" (Osage), "My Lord Sunshine (Sunrise)" (12 Years), "Atlas" (Hunger Games), "Stay Alive" (Mitty), "Rise Up" (Epic)
how 'bout that: "Alone Yet Not Alone" (Alone), "Happy" (Despicable)

Sound Mixing: 12 Years a Slave, Captain Phillips, Gravity, The Great Gatsby, Rush
runners-up: Frozen, Inside Llewyn Davis, All Is Lost, World War Z, The Wolf of Wall Street, Iron Man 3, The Hobbit
how 'bout that: Lone Survivor

Sound Editing: All is Lost, Captain Phillips, Gravity, Lone Survivor, Rush
runners-up: World War Z, Iron Man 3, The Hobbit, 12 Years a Slave, The Great Gatsby

Visual Effects: Gravity, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Iron Man 3, Pacific Rim, Star Trek Into Darkness
runners-up: The Lone Ranger, Oblivion, World War Z

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Tuesday, January 14, 2014

My "Team Experience Awards" Ballot

The Oscar nominations drop this Thursday morning, and people are almost as excited about those as they are about the Team Experience Awards, for which all the regular contributors to Nathaniel R's cinephiliac smorgasbord The Film Experience have been polled for their ranked favorites in 18 categories. The industrious and debonair Amir Soltani, whose tastes I can never pigeonhole and whose recommendations I always take seriously, has crunched all the numbers into a winner's list, which ought to go live on Tuesday night. But we've also been invited (read: encouraged) to post our individual ballots on our own sites.

I'm sort of going to do that. Bear in mind what many of you will already know: awards ballots are often unreliable as pure indicators of a voter's taste, distorted either by lingering indecisions, bothersome omissions in viewing, or a tactic of suppressing total outliers in favor of promoting your favorite underdogs among more probable contenders. I suppressed my urge to vote the latter way, even when a Best Picture vote for Southwest is a strategic waste that a Bling Ring or Touch of Sin might have parlayed to better advantage. Still, I'm noodling a bit with my finalized acting ballots and with my actual Top Ten of 2013 (though maybe you noticed that Top Tens for 2012 are now posted??).  So, in those cases and a couple others I have decided to post my drafted longlists of contenders, keeping you in slightly longer suspense about my definitive favorites.

I'm under contract to post a series of Best of 2013 features for another site, so I can't get lost in my usual wormhole of unfulfilled promises, if that's any consolation. None of this is to say that I'm perfectly confident I didn't blow something major in one of the other categories. In fact, I'm sure I'd have generated different rankings and even different films on different days. But this is more or less what I submitted, culled from the best lists I could find of films that opened commercially in the U.S. during 2013. Thanks to Amir for some clarifications as far as release dates, and to Mike D'Angelo for his wonderfully comprehensive index of movies that played commercially in New York City.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
1. At Berkeley
2. The Act of Killing
3. The Missing Picture
4. Brave Miss World
5. Leviathan
(with apologies to close sixth-placer Let the Fire Burn)

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
1. Gravity
2. The Great Gatsby
3. World War Z
4. Post Tenebras Lux
5. Man of Steel
(with Oblivion the only other film I seriously weighed)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
(an alphabetical longlist)
-. Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips
-. F. Murray Abraham, Inside Llewyn Davis
-. Alec Baldwin, Blue Jasmine
-. Alfredo Castro, No
-. David Dastmalchian, Prisoners
-. James Franco, Spring Breakers
-. James Gandolfini, Enough Said
-. Sean Gilder, The Selfish Giant
-. John Henshaw, The Angels' Share
-. Peter Kazungu, Paradise: Love
-. Stacy Keach, Nebraska
-. Yiftach Klein, Fill the Void
-. Fran Kranz, Much Ado About Nothing
-. Lance LeGault, Prince Avalanche
-. Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
-. Joseph Lorenz, Paradise: Hope
-. Louis CK, American Hustle
-. Ben Mendelsohn, The Place Beyond the Pines
-. David Oyelowo, Lee Daniels' The Butler
-. Gary Skjoldmose Porter, A Hijacking
-. Keith Stanfield, Short Term 12

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Sunday, January 12, 2014

Live-Blogging the 2013 Golden Globes

10:00 Good night, everybody!  Fey and Poehler called their ceremony "the beautiful mess they hoped it would be."  It didn't feel that beautiful to me, and I'm curious if it's quite what they wanted; they sure do make themselves scarce as the ceremonies wear on.  On top of what I just wrote, I'm most happy for Alfonso Cuarón, Spike Jonze, Amy Adams, and the Frozen filmmakers. And, sight unseen, for Cranston, Wright, Moss, and Poehler.

9:59 A barely-awake Johnny Depp did what needed to be done and bestowed upon 12 Years a Slave its rightful prize.  I know I just said how much I love another nominee and how much I like a third one (Philomena and Rush feel like non-entities, especially the latter, and not only in awards terms.) Still, Slave feels to me like their unambiguous superior, even if you're treating creative achievement separately from thematic and contextual importance.  I'm delighted for the team who got to accept the top prize, and thank goodness for Onstage MVP Sarah Paulson, feeding a nervous McQueen some necessary names, particularly Sean Bobbitt's and Dede Gardner's.

But I mentioned Atonement before, and as befell that so-called front-runner after the Globes, I'm worried that 12 Years comes out of the evening feeling like a loser even though it won.  Oh, well. Makes the Oscar predicting game more interesting, I guess!  And the prize will still sit on the right mantel.

9:56  BEST PICTURE (DRAMA)
I'm Rooting For: 12 Years a Slave, but Gravity is nearly as superb. Captain Phillips, while not on the same level as those two, is an easy contender to feel good about.
I'm Predicting: 12 Years a Slave, in an Atonement-esque situation of taking the top prize even after looking quite weak all night.

9:53 Anyway (sorry, for the see-sawing), I really liked Dallas Buyers Club and haven't felt too persuaded by any of the recent takedowns and ideological critiques of its standpoint and historical revisionism.  But McConaughey and Leto have made it harder tonight to feel settled in my affection for the film, through their discomfiting representations of the movie and of themselves. Again, they weren't awful, exactly. But they whiffed on the opportunity to be more ambassadorial for the film, or to reassure anyone who feels uneasy with their involvements and perspectives, or the politics of the film. Didn't help that neither said "AIDS," "HIV," or anything less euphemistic than "all the Rayons"; I'm sure they spoke from the heart, but they seemed a little trapped in the kinds of cautious euphemisms and silences that their characters explicitly suffered under.

9:52 Okay, so Blanchett.  I mean, don't get me wrong, she was totally poised and everything, and took inspiration from the HFPA and blended Comedy and Drama in a barely distinguishable combo.  That was cool, but also made me a little dizzy; I might have preferred a speech that was more obviously silly or sincere.  Anyway, it was definitely a post-vodka, late-in-the-evening toss-off.  We have more to look forward to from future speeches.  But she did say that Dianne Wiest was her all-time inspiration as an actress, and that is Everything.  Please, newspaper editors, make that your headline.

9:50 Matthew McConaughey's speech isn't landing that well, partly because of McConaughey'isms, and partly because he's pitching it a little too hard.  And he's sounding a little... unreconstructed.  The 12 Years a Slave table is having an awfully hard time not looking dismayed by their total shutout so far.

9:48 BEST ACTOR (DRAMA)
I'm Rooting For: McConaughey, but much like Wilson Phillips, you won't see me cry (cry... cry...) if Ejiofor or maybe Redford pops up there.
I'm Predicting: And I'm thinking Redford might. I was thinking that even before 12 Years started striking out all night.

9:46 Cate extemporizes quite well. Pretty well.  Honestly, it gets a little weird at times.  But hold on, before I can say more.

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Tuesday, August 20, 2013

The Fifties for 2013: Best Ensemble

One more acting category before we proceed to other pastures.  Please note that Spectacular Now would have been a potent contender for me if I had seen it by the time we started this feature.

Nick's Picks


ClipFill the Void — Frances HaIn the Fog — No

Joe's Picks


ByzantiumFrances HaThe Place Beyond the PinesShort Term 12The Spectacular Now


JOE: To begin with, not to bypass Greta Gerwig's significant contributions to her film, but can we talk about making difficult on-paper characters work? That's what I think Mickey Sumner and Michael Zegen do as, respectively, borderline unbearable and horrible-at-times friend Sophie and idle hipster shithead Benji. It helps that, for once, Noah Baumbach isn't out for blood at all times. Still, I think so much about those characters and the ability of the audience to find them at odd angles comes from the performers' dedication to allowing the audience to laugh at them while not entirely dismissing them. I'd love a supercut of all the times Benji and Frances bat the word "undateable" back at each other, for example. Each time, it means something a bit different. Anyway, the great performances don't stop there, and whether it's Adam Driver doing his Adam Driver thing (blunt and sexy and Wrong For You) or Grace Gummer doing her Grace Gummer thing (all the brittleness that her mom and sister shrug off their shoulders resting comfortably atop hers) or Charlotte D'Amboise looking at Frances and wondering how (or if) she's going to tell this girl what's good for her. Whose Frances supporting performance tickled your fancy the most?



NICK: You mentioned most of my favorite players in Frances Ha, a movie of which I have fond but not total recall. D'Amboise is a treat every second she's up there. Otherwise, bits and players run together a little for me, while I principally recall a mood and a milieu. The great ensemble work is responsible for that, particularly in scenes like the bad dinner party where Frances is being a doofus and Grace Gummer is sucking lemons about having invited this nut to live with her, even temporarily. Am I crazy for thinking I was on Sumner's side of her fights with Gerwig more often than the reverse? We might have related to the movie differently, or I might just be mistaken, but it's a tribute to the whole ensemble, Gerwig included, that it evokes so many points of view and so many possible takes on multiple, colorful characters that you don't dislike even if you're not too eager to meet them in real life.

I've already said a fair bit about Clip, with its gutsy Serbian youngsters playing dissolutes, brats, aggressors, self-exploiters, and risk-addicts, and about Fill the Void, whose characters are the diametric opposite of everything I just said about Clip while still negotiating a complex web of tensions. I don't think even these films would rival Frances Ha for my winner in this category, if I were picking a winner. My fifth pick was No, just in over War Witch and Place Beyond the Pines. Even though I know you liked the film, you didn't list it here. Not that impressed?

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Saturday, August 17, 2013

The Fifties for 2013: Best Supporting Actor

Joe's Picks


Keith Carradine, Ain't Them Bodies SaintsEmory Cohen, The Place Beyond the PinesJohn Gallagher, Jr., Short Term 12Ben Foster, Ain't Them Bodies SaintsPeter Sarsgaard, Blue Jasmine

Nick's Picks


James Franco, Spring BreakersJohn Henshaw, The Angels' SharePeter Kazungu, Paradise: LoveYiftach Klein, Fill the VoidBen Mendelsohn, The Place Beyond the Pines



JOE: Nick, I came sooooo close to putting Ben Mendelsohn on my own list. For a movie I had a decent number of issues with, the uniformly strong cast went a long way toward keeping things on the right track for me, while Cianfrance worked his themes out. Of course I was highly tempted to once again throw my beloved Dane DeHaan some recognition, but ultimately, my surprise at Cohen's layered surliness won the day. Such a recognizable character for someone so closed off, and the friendship/bully axis he works with DeHaan unlocked a good deal of that movie for me.

I ultimately—and perhaps unfairly—disqualified Franco from my field because I was so disillusioned at how Spring Breakers became so enamored of him and promptly ignored the women whose story I thought we were following. He's certainly the performance from the first half of the year that people are still talking about. Buzz justified, I guess you'd say?



NICK: Weirdly, I wouldn't say that.  I actually don't like Franco's performance as used in the film.  Where you see it as pulling focus from the girls (and I don't disagree), I hate how it locks down the preternaturally mobile and expressive camera into a series of Behold the Master close-ups and medium shots.  As a formal element, Alien is my least favorite thing in Spring Breakers.  But as much as I associate Franco with cockiness and am therefore tempted to blame him for showboating, I think the performance itself is a pretty sensational act of self-transformation and witty repackaging.  He almost lost his slot to an opposite performance—Alec Baldwin's small and utterly unshowy part in Blue Jasmine, playing to me the most plausible human being in the film—and he'll probably fall out later.

Say more about why Cohen isn't "overdoing it," which is the same critique Franco's vulnerable to, and one I've heard lobbied against Pines in general and Cohen in particular.  Then I promise I'll reply about Mendelsohn!

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Friday, August 16, 2013

The Fifties for 2013: Best Supporting Actress

Longtime readers know that every year, once I reach the point when I have seen 50 commercial releases in the U.S. market, I post a feature called The Fifties, where I celebrate the best achievements in typical film-awards categories from these early months of the year.  Most of these movies and performances are destined to be forgotten at year's end, either because no one can remember past Halloween or because the kinds of films that get released in winter, spring, and summer rarely translate into critics' prizes or Oscar fodder.

In recent years, my buddy Joe Reid—who gives great Twitter and who writes for Tribeca and The AV Club and his own blog and just about everywhere else—has appropriated the tradition of The Fifties, and this turns out to be an especially beautiful thing.  Partly because he tends to hit the 50 threshold around the same time I do; this year, without trying, we even hit it on the same day.  Partly because we love movies and gushing about movies in many of the same ways, but we don't always see the same movies.  Our overlap at this point is almost exactly 50%.  In terms of our departures, Joe saw lots of new Sundance and Tribeca titles, does a better job keeping up with what The Kids Are Watching, and has access to press screenings that enable him to peek further than I can into what's coming in the months ahead.  I saw some 2013 micro-releases at last year's Chicago and Toronto festivals, am more of an early-year bloodhound for Cannes, Berlin, and Venice hits that are finally bowing in U.S. cinemas, and I see a lot of short-run arthouse stuff that Joe also likes but sometimes can't fit into the crowded schedule of films and TV he already has to cover.  He makes sure I catch up with Chronicle and 21 Jump Street and keep an eye out for Short Term 12 and What Richard Did.  I natter at him about Paradise: Love and The Turin Horse and let him know that Lovelace isn't all that.  But we both struggle with Upstream Color and Place Beyond the Pines, we both show up at Tyler Perry joints, and we both agree that The Heat is the best mall-purchased present anybody gave us this summer.

We also only agree about half the time about movies we do share in common, and we can't find many patterns in when we do or don't, or why.

So for this year's Fifties, Joe and I will both name our picks in each category and then have a back-and-forth about our selections, our conspicuous omissions, our differences of opinion, and what we're looking forward to in the coming months.  We have enough overlap that our choices are worth collating, but we also diverge enough in our habits that you're essentially getting a supersized sense of what's been out there so far.  We'll start with Best Supporting Actress, a category I had atypical trouble filling out; in fact, I already wish I'd recast somehow in the troubling fifth spot.

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