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I wish more people understood this simple fact!
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The Americans
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Drive poster by Oliver Shilling
Supporting Actors: The Overlooked and Underrated (part 1 of 5)
With the Academy Awards for the 2011 film year in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to take a look at one of the event’s most consistently fascinating categories: Best Supporting Actor.
The most interesting story in the category this year isn’t who got nominated, it’s who didn’t. More specifically, Albert Brooks was completely robbed of a nomination for his performance as film producer turned lethal gangster Bernie Rose in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive.
As much as I’d like to say I was surprised by this, considering both the quality of performance and Brooks’ slew of nominations from other critical circles, in light of the Academy’s history of overlooking outstanding supporting performances, I simply can’t.
Following is a chronological look at a number of performances richly deserving of a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination.
In some cases, the performances are in films that are very narrow-mindedly considered “not Oscar material” or not even deemed worthy of any kind of critical attention at all, ignoring the basic fact that great acting is where you find it.
In some cases, the performances are overshadowed by attention focused on another performance in the film or another aspect of the film as a whole.
In other cases, much like Albert Brooks in Drive, it’s a matter of pure inexcusable neglect, sometimes of jaw-dropping magnitude.
For further viewing enjoyment, where applicable I’ve also included a list of other outstanding feature film performances by the listed actor that are definitely worth seeking out.
Drive poster - the car has a scorpion tale - by Joel Amat Güell
Drive by Grzegorz Domaradzki
Academy Mistakes: ‘The Piano’ for Best Original Score
Throughout the first half of February, the Sound On Sight staff will take a look at the Academy Awards.
Ask any film score buff and he or she will attest that the Academy has always had a contentious history with film composers. Over the last few years, the AMPAS has made a few publicly egregious snubs: Johnny Greenwood for There Will be Blood and Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard for The Dark Knight come to mind. Barring their questionable nominating practice, the Academy has developed patterns of complacent and downright unimaginative selections. Whether it is nominating John Williams for everything (this year saw him nab nods for both War Horse and The Adventures of Tin Tin), or snubbing great scores to difficult films without the benefit of a more prestigious composer (Cliff Martinez this year for Drive), or overindulging international composers (Gustavo Santaolalla winning a second time for Babel, A.R. Rahman winning for Slumdog Millionaire). Largely, if the Academy does take the effort to award a fine composer, it’s for some of their weakest or safest work (Elliot Goldenthal for Frida).
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Acting and directing categories during awards seasons are always the hardest to determine. Who to choose and what for film is a constant battle, not to mention who deserves to be nominated.
Between the veteran nominees (Clooney, Streep, Scorcese) to newbies in the awards season (Fassbender, Refn and Oldman (!)), let’s see who deserves a BAFTA…
Click here to see part one of this article
Leading actor
Nominees:
- Brad Pitt (Moneyball)
- Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)
- George Clooney (The Descendants)
- Jean Dujardin (The Artist)
- Michael Fassbender (Shame)
The winner is: Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)
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Check out the Mondo poster for ‘Drive’
Nicolas Winding Refn‘s Drive, was recently named the best film of 2011 by the Sound On Sight staff. It seems the folks over at the Alamo Drafthouse agree named it their favourite. With the film now released on Blu-ray, Ken Taylor of Mondo has created a slick new poster for the film.
The poster goes on sale today a random time. Find out when by following @MondoNews.
It’s a 24 x 36 inch screenprint, edition of 445 and will likely cost about $50.
Funky poster for #Drive by Russell Ford
The Nominations Are In: Here Are The Biggest Snubs and Ricky D’s Oscar Predictions
Its that time of the year again in when everyone prepares their Oscar predictions, because let’s be honest – the best part of the Oscars is placing your bets on who’ll win and hopefully walking away from a long and usually boring ceremony with some extra cash in your pocket. This morning the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominations for the 84th Academy Awards with no major surprises but instead, a long list of snubs. Martin Scorsese’s Hugo is the surprise leader of the 2012 Academy Award nominations with 11 nods, including Best Picture and Best Director. The Artist followed with 10 nominations. Here are my predictions of who I feel will take home gold come Sunday February 26, as well as those films and talent who I believe were snubbed.
MOVIE POSTERS FROM AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE
A while back we posted an article titled Alternate Universe Movie Posters, a collection of some really amazing alternate movie posters including one for a Halloween film starring Kim Novak and Robert Mitchum. Recently Peter Stults was inspired by those poster designs and decided to move forward with the theme by creating images for what movies would look like if they were made in a different slice of time? Here is just a few of his designs. Head over to his website to see the rest. Enjoy!
