Sujith Kumar S/o Prankumar
Courtesy of Focus Features
With the 81st Annual Academy Awards just a few days away (Feb 22), The UrbanWire gazes deep into our crystal ball to see which of the 5 Best Picture nominees may emerge victorious.
Ready?
Frost/Nixon
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Reader
Overview
Frost/Nixon is a historical drama adapted from the play by Peter Morgan (The Queen, The Last Queen of Scotland). It’s a dramatisation of actual 1977 television interviews between broadcaster David Frost (Michael Sheen – Blood Diamond, The Queen) and then-president Richard Nixon (Frank Langella – Superman Returns, Lolita).
Among the 5 Oscar nominations in its bag are Best Actor (Langella), Best Director (Ronald Howard – Cinderella Man, The Da Vinci Code) and Best Picture.
Story
The movie centres on the Frost-Nixon interviews in 1977. Disgraced former president Richard Nixon is coaxed by talk show host David Frost to come out of hiding and take part in a series of televised interviews, in hopes of reestablishing the former in politics, and the latter as a credible, serious journalist.
The premise is so straightfoward it needs no further description.
Sauce
The actors remained in character off-camera.
Other directors in consideration for the making of the film were Martin Scorsese (The Departed, The Aviator), Mile Nichols (Charlie Wilson’s War, Closer) and Sam Mandes (Jarhead, Road to Perdition).
UrbanWire’s prediction
Not a chance. The movie simply isn’t groundbreaking enough and there’ve been other Nixon-themed movies such as 1976’s All the President’s Men and 1995’s Nixon and 2004’s The Assassination of Richard Nixon. But then again the Academy has voted pretty strangely in the past…such as Crash’s “shock [Best Picture] win” (as branded by international media) at the 2006 Academy Awards.
Overview
Based on actual history, Milk is a biopic by critically-acclaimed American director/screenwriter, Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Psycho). It garnered 8 Oscar nominations including Best Actor (Sean Penn – Mystic River, The Interpreter), Best Director (Van Sant) and Best Picture.
Story
Milk is a true story based on 1970s gay activist and politician Harvey Milk, from his 40th birthday to his assassination. The film is centered on Milk’s will recordings 9 days before he was shot, and uses flashbacks and actual archival footage to dramatise the action. It starts with police action against gay bars and their patrons in the 1950s and 1960s, and then shifts to the actual announcement of his death by then president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (and current Senior Senator of California), Dianne Feinstein.
The story follows Milk (Penn) as he makes history by becoming the first openly-gay person elected to office when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He does this with his considerably younger lover Scott Smith (James Franco – Knocked Up, Spiderman) as his campaign manager.
Having moved from San Francisco’s gay district of Castro in 1972, the New Yorker realises that the gay community needs a voice and he effectively strengthens the Gay Pride movement. He sees politics as an effective way in achieving this.
After a long and hard battle, he finally wins. However, he soon hits a snag in the form of Supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin – American Gangster, Hollow Man), a conservative, who feels resentful against the attention given to him. White resigns from the board after losing a proposition to repeal gay rights legislation, but changes his mind and asks Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber – Home Room, Legally Blonde) to overturn the earlier decision, who declined following lobbying by Milk. Enraged, he enters San Francisco City Hall on Nov 27, 1978, and shoots the mayor and Milk.
Sauce
The film, which has been in developmental hell, starting from 1991.
Thousands of extras agreed to take part in the movie for free.
The apartment that was featured in the movie is the actual place where Milk lived, and the shop in the movie was where Milk worked.
UrbanWire’s prediction
Though this movie’s the bomb, (with Penn giving a stunningly nuanced and respectable performance as Milk) it may not win because there simply wasn’t much fanfare surrounding it. Personally we think The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a great dose of escapism and deserves to win, but after analysing the other films, The UrbanWire selects Milk as the possible winner of the Best Picture award because of these and more:
(a)the progressive, left-leaning Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the home of the Oscars) may be feeling resentful against the recent success of Proposition 8 which removed the right of gay couples to marry in California, and hence use this as a chance to affirm their support for the gay community.
(b)a common sentiment among members of the Academy is that the 2005 Ang Lee gay-themed film, Brokeback Mountain, was robbed of its win (Crash, which explored racial tensions, won)
(c)Americans are riding on a wave of nationalism after the election of President Barack Hussein Obama.
(d) the acting was simply top-drawer.
Courtesy of Fox Searchlight
Overview
Slumdog Millionaire is yet another feel-good, rags-to-riches tale. It is an adaptation of the 2005 Vikras Swarup novel, Q and A. The film, directed by Danny Boyle (Sunshine, Trainspotting) and co-directed by Loveleen Tandan (casting director for Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair), has grossed the highest amount of Oscar nominations for a non-American production (it’s British) in a decade: a total of 10, including Best Writing – Adapted Screenplay (Simon Beaufoy – Burn Up, Yasmin), Best Director (Boyle), Best Picture.
Story
Jamal Malik (British actor Dev Patel) is an uneducated 18-year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai who experiences the biggest day of his life on India’s version of the popular game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Because he makes it far in the game (he reaches the last question), he raises suspicions of the host (Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor) and the police, who accuse him of cheating.
Malik then explains how he knew the answers, and the movie flashbacks to various scenes in his life.
As expected of Bollywood-style films, the movie ends with a song-and-dance number.
Sauce
About 20 percent of the movie is in Hindi.
Demonstrations were conducted by slum dwellers who took umbrage at the word “Slumdog”.
UrbanWire’s prediction
Perhaps it’d win for Best Original Score, but not for Best Picture. It just isn’t as nuanced as the rest.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Courtesy of Paramount Pictures
Overview
Adapted from a 1921 short story by deceased American writer Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button leads year’s Oscars table, with 13 nominations including Best Actor (Brad Pitt – Babel, Mr & Mrs Smith, Troy), Best Director (David Fincher – Fight Club, Zodiac) and Best Picture. It has made more than US$156.5 million (S$233.7 million) so far.
The film stars hunky kid-bearer and one-half of media phenomenon “Bradgelina” – Pitt, and co-stars Oscar-winning Australian sheila Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth, Lord of the Rings).
Story
The story starts with a dying Daisy (Blanchett) asking her daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond – Inland Empire, Surveillance) to read out entries from Benjamin’s Button’s diary. As she reads, the film takes us to what happened at those junctures in time.
Button is born in post-war New Orleans on Nov 11, 1918, with the characteristics of an 86-year-old man. Understandably, the mother dies and the father dumps him in a nursing home, where he is found by Queenie (Taraji Penda Henson – Baby Boy, Hustle and Flow) and Tizzy (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali – NYPD Blue, CSI), who work there.
Curiously, as the years go by, Button grows physically younger. He meets many people and makes startling discoveries, but ultimately arrives where he left off. Ironically, he becomes too young to live.
The story concludes with a shot of the raging Hurricane Katrina. It is a tale of love, hurt, joy, sadness and the effects of time.
Sauce
The film has been in development from at least since 1994, and Steven Spielberg (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skill, Munich) and Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon, Cinderella Man, The Da Vinci Code) were once attached to the directorial spot.
John Travolta and Tom Cruise (egad!) was considered for the lead role, but, thankfully, turned it down. Hey, don’t judge us – The UrbanWire’s sure you’d agree that Pitt’s just way hotter!
UrbanWire’s prediction
This film has a high chance of winning.
But because of the weight of the other contenders who all talk about social/historical issues, the film’s cultural depth is compromised due to its fictional nature. Also, ironically because of the sheer amount of nominations, it may lose out on the Best Picture accolade by Academy members who feel that the other movies deserve a chance.
Overview
The Reader is a British film adaptation of a 1995 German novel by Bernhard Schlink. It has 5 nominations for the Oscars, including Best Actress (Kate Winslet – The Holiday, Titanic), Best Director (Stephen Daldry – Billy Elliot, The Hours) and Best Picture.
Story
It is 1995 Berlin, and a teenage Michael Berg (played by baby-faced 19-year-old German actor David Kross) prepares breakfast with an older woman, Hanna Smith (Winslet) with whom he had a one-night stand.
Soon after he sends off Hanna, he is diagnosed with scarlet fever and rests for three months. He visits her upon recovering and the two strike up an affair. Suddenly, after her promotion, Hanna leaves without warning.
The movie then cuts to an adult Michael (Ralph Fiennes – Harry Potter, Maid in Manhattan), who attends a legal seminar at Heidelberg University in 1966. Here, he witnesses a trial of former female SS guards – one of them turns out to be Hanna – blamed with allowing the deaths of some 300 Jewish women during the 1944 Auschwitz evacuation.
A key witness to the case was Ilana Mather (Romanian-born German actress Alexandra Maria Lara), who wrote a memoir of the incident. Unlike the other defendants, Hanna does not deny that Auschwitz was an extermination camp. However, she denies writing a report on the barn fire, and caves in when asked to furnish a sample of her handwriting.
But interestingly, Michael finds out that Hanna is illiterate, and he doesn’t know what to do.
While the other defendants escape with shorter terms, Hanna is slapped with a life sentence. Michael marries and has a daughter, but divorces. He soon begins reading into a tape recorder his notes from the period of his affair with Hanna, and sends the tapes to her. After learning to read, Hanna writes back, to which he replies with more tapes.
The day before her release, Hanna hangs herself, and leaves Michael a tin and some cash. Michael then meets an older Ilana (Swedish actress Lena Olin – Casanova, Chocolat) and tells her about the affair, the truth about Hanna’s illiteracy, and suggests the money be donated to a Jewish organisation dedicating to promoting adult literacy.
Sauce
Nicole Kidman and Juliette Binoche were considered to play Hanna – the former actually signed on, but withdrew due to pregnancy commitments.
Production had to take a break to allow Kross to turn 18 so that the nude scenes could be shot.
UrbanWire’s prediction
Yawn.
We’ll answer this with a question (annoying, we know): Have you even heard of the movie?
And gosh, we’re bored of Winslet. Titanic’s over.
‘Nuff said.