The Pop Pirate

Off To the Races (Part I)

So it's February, which sucks for new movies, but at least we have the movie geek's equivalent of the playoffs: the Oscar Races. Here's some of my thoughts on the key races:

Best Director: This year the Best Director race exactly mirrors the Best Picture race. This makes sense to me: if the director is ultimately responsible for the creative aspects of the film, the best film is an indication of who the best director is. So far, I've seen four of the five nominees for these categories (still looking forward to Capote). Mr. Clooney's accomplishment with Good Night, and Good Luck was impressive, especially for someone so relatively inexperienced in directing. He could be the next Redford, but the film was too flawed to merit a Best Director statue (more on that later). Another Feature Directing rookie was Paul Haggis for Crash. While this film was brilliant in many ways, the scenes were sometimes played a little too sentimentally for Oscar voters. Again, I haven't seen Capote, but Bennett Miller hasn't won very many preliminary awards, so his chances are looking slim. In my opinion, Mr. Speilburg is quite deserving of a Best Director Oscar for his work in Munich. The film's steady pace and powerfully restrained performances make up for the films few fumbles (for instance, Mr. Speilburg's speciallity: overhanded, too obvious endings), but this year there is one Director to rule them all: Ang Lee. In Brokeback Mountain, Mr. Lee's amazing balance of emotion and beauty, of pain and love, of conflict and serenity is where this movie can be most appreciated. This material in another director's hands might have ended up cheesy or over the top. But Mr. Lee reins the picture in when necessary and lets it soar when it can. I think this incredible sense of balance will win him his first Oscar.


Best Actress: This category is always tough for me to judge. Because of the apparent lack of public interest in movies with female leads (that's right, I blame the public for this), most of the Best Actress Nominees this year and historically are from limited-release arthouse-type flicks. Which don't come to Tampa. So I've only seen one of the nominated films: Walk the Line. Lucky for me, this movie seems to feature the major frontrunner. Reese Witherspoon was brilliant as June Carter Cash (see previous post), and if early awards and buzz says anything, it's that the other lovely ladies nominated in this category won't match up.

Next week: My thoughts on the Best Actor and Best Picture...

posted by Jeff @ 6:08 PM