Monday, January 21, 2008

Alarm Call

Yep, I keep working the Björk angle. As Variety is reporting (I, of course, heard via Nathaniel), Jonny Greenwood's There Will Be Blood score has been disqualified for Oscar contention because, according to AMPAS, it incorporates too much music by other composers, and also too many of Greenwood's pre-existing compositions. Keep reading the Variety article, and you learn that Into the Wild has also been barred for having such a song-driven score. I guess we're not meant to worry about that bogus Babel win last year, or David Hirschfelder's nomination for Shine (just a wee bit of non-Hirschfelderiana in that score...), or the Godfather paradox that even Variety can't help but mention. What this really means is, I get a free pass to change my predix, which I wanted to change anyway, because Oscar probably wouldn't have gone for Greenwood's avant-gardism anyway. So:

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
ALL NEON LIKE The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Cave & Ellis); Atonement (Marianelli); Eastern Promises (Shore); The Kite Runner (Iglesias); Lust, Caution (Desplat)
UNRAVEL (aka IT'S NOT UP TO YOU, aka FROSTI, aka disqualified scores) Enchanted (Menken); Into the Wild (Brook, King, and Vedder); There Will Be Blood (Greenwood)
POSSIBLY MAYBE Grace Is Gone (Eastwood); Michael Clayton (Howard)
IT'S OH SO QUIET Beowulf (Silvestri); Ratatouille (Giacchino)

While I'm at it, since I totally, completely can't help it, here's one more change that I've just got to make, since ModFab's predictions reminded me that I forgot about American Gangster's screenplay as a possibility. So:

BEST ORIGINAL
SCREENPLAY

ALL NEON LIKE American Gangster (Zaillian); Juno (Cody); Lars and the Real Girl (Oliver); Michael Clayton (Gilroy); Ratatouille (Bird, Capobianco, Pinkava)
POSSIBLY MAYBE The Savages (Jenkins); Eastern Promises (Knight); Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Masterson); 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Mungiu)
IT'S OH SO QUIET Knocked Up (Apatow); Waitress (Shelley); Once (Carney); I'm Not There (Haynes)

I've emended both of these categories in the long prediction post and updated the explanatory logic as necessary. Surely, this is it? Will more rules be broken or categories thrown into disrepute? Will it turn out at midnight tonight that Cate Blanchett or Tilda Swinton really is genderless, and thus must be disqualified from all acting categories? Is Marion Cotillard really Edith Piaf? She did "die" suspiciously young...

Did Christopher Rouse (you say "Rouse," I hear "ruse"!) employ too many of the same editing techniques in The Bourne Ultimatum as he did in The Bourne Supremacy, thus disbarring himself from contention? You never know with the Academy till the last frigging minute. And even then, you still don't know.

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3 Comments:

Blogger Dr. S said...

I heart your Bjork. And I wanted to say it that way, too.

I've just realized that just because it's five hours later here doesn't mean I'll find out the nominees five hours earlier. Sigh.

3:33 AM, January 22, 2008  
Blogger NicksFlickPicks said...

@Dr. S, semi-privately: Do you remember that the first time we ever actually talked, around HS's seminar table, was when I cut into your conversation with ZA about the 1999 Oscar nominees that had just been announced that morning? You were all, "I'm not so sure I'm excited about these selections," i.e., The Cider House Rules and The Green Mile, and I was like, That girl is hott!

3:36 AM, January 22, 2008  
Blogger Dr. S said...

Rraaoowr, baby. I can remember it even without remembering: I remember being pissed off that morning that I had to miss the announcements because I was teaching at 8:40. I remember being pissed off because I didn't want to *see* those movies, and I always tried (still do, though I'm not so good at it since 2004, given Geographical Challenges) to see all the best picture nominees at least.

I heart you for remembering this, and also for giving me two ts. I think that you and I should get to sit near each other at the Oscars, too, though I know I'd have some competition.

6:14 PM, January 22, 2008  

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