Bono: Stories of Surrender hits Apple TV on May 30th documenting the U2 frontman’s one-man NYC stage show in 2023. Those performances took their inspiration from the legendary singer and humanitarian’s memoir. He’s enlisted some heavy hitters to assist here including director Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Blonde) and Oscar-winning cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt (Mank).
These celeb centered docs rarely make their way to serious awards consideration. Surrender should fall into that classification with 75% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 58 Metacritic. That won’t get it done unless its streamer finds mysterious ways to entice voters. My Oscar Prediction posts will continue…
Earlier this summer, I completed a blog series on a particular piece of speculative Oscar history. From 2009 to the present, there has been anywhere from 8-10 Best Pictures nominees at the Academy Awards. The number has been set at 10 for the past couple of years and fluctuated previously. Before 2009, it was a quintet of films competing for the prize. I penned 14 posts making predictions on which five pics would have made the cut if it had stayed at that smaller number. **Click on that Oscar History tab on the blog to access all of them!
Now my speculation turns to the reverse. What if the Academy had always honored 10 motion pictures? From 1944-2008, there were always five vying for attention. For a completist view, there were five for the first two Oscars (1929 and 1930). We had eight in 1931. From 1932 to 1943, it was ten.
This series will project the other five that I believe would’ve gotten in. It started with 2008 and that post can be accessed here:
We now move to 2007. And we, of course, know five movies that would make the cut. That would be the quintet of pics that got nominated. No Country for Old Men from the Coen Brothers was the night’s big winner with four victories: Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem), and Adapted Screenplay. It also nabbed four additional nominations.
Tying Country for the most mentions is Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood with 8 nods and two wins for Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis) and Cinematography.
The other three contenders all took home one Oscar. Joe Wright’s Atonement received 7 noms and was victorious for the Original Score. Jason Reitman’s Juno tallied 4 mentions and a win in Original Screenplay. Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton achieved 7 nods with Tilda Swinton taking Supporting Actress.
Moving to the five pictures that I believe would’ve joined an expanded cut, Pixar strikes again. For 2008, I picked Wall-E as an addition. For 2007, the acclaimed Ratatouille had five nominations and a win for Animated Feature. I believe that’s enough that we would’ve seen it included.
The same goes for Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Schnabel was in the mix for Best Director and it was also up in heavy hitter races Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, and Film Editing. It could’ve been #6 on the board.
After that, it gets a little tricky. There are a few films that generated a couple of important nods, but didn’t manage to break out elsewhere. Away from Her saw Julie Christie in contention for Actress plus an Adapted Screenplay mention. The Savages saw Laura Linney in Best Actress along with Original Screenplay. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford made two lists for Supporting Actor (Casey Affleck and Cinematography). Yet its reputation has grown in time. Elizabeth: The Golden Age saw Cate Blanchett in Actress and it won Costume Design. 3:10 to Yuma was up for Original Score and Sound Mixing. Ultimately I decided none of these would make the dance.
The hardest film to leave off was The Bourne Ultimatum. The third chapter in Matt Damon’s action franchise went 3 for 3 by taking both Sound races (they’ve since been combined) and Film Editing. However, I just couldn’t pull the trigger on it finding a spot among the ten.
The second toughest to leave off is La Vie en Rose for which Marion Cotillard took home Best Actress (as well as a Makeup victory). It didn’t, on the other hand, score well in precursors.
So what other three pictures get in? Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street won Art Direction and was up for Actor (Johnny Depp) and Costume Design. It also nabbed a Critics Choice nod and won the Golden Globe for Musical/Comedy (over Juno).
The Globes and Critics Choice also found room for Ridley Scott’s American Gangster. It underperformed at Oscar with two inclusions for Supporting Actress and Art Direction. Yet I suspect it might’ve just made it.
Into the Wild from Sean Penn is my final pick. It was another underwhelming performer with two spots for Supporting Actor (Hal Holbrook) and Film Editing. The Critics Choice inclusion puts it barely over some of the aforementioned hopefuls.
While she received two Golden Globe nominations in her short-lived career, the Oscars never recognized Marilyn Monroe. Could the Academy honor the performance of Ana de Armas in the biopic Blonde as the icon? Arriving in limited release on September 16th before its September 28th Netlix stream, Andrew Dominik’s pic comes with a rare NC-17 rating and a near three hour runtime. Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale, Xavier Samuel, and Julianne Nicholson costar in the adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s 2000 novel.
This is Dominik’s first feature since 2012’s Killing Them Softly (his 2007 Western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is considered by many to be a modern day classic). It premiered at Venice and early buzz is that this is a dark and rather sleazy and often enthralling exploration of the price of fame. The Rotten Tomatoes meter is at 84%.
I’m dubious that the Academy will embrace this as a BP contender. The real question is whether de Armas can make the cut. Based on initial reaction, she certainly can but it’s no guarantee… unlike, say, Cate Blanchett (Tar) or Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All at Once). Her potential inclusion is probably contingent on how competition for slots plays out in the next four months. My Oscar Predictions posts will continue…
24 hours can change the dynamic considerably at this time in the Oscar season. When I made my weekly Oscar predictions yesterday, Richard Linklater’s Last Flag Flying was ranked 8th in my Best Picture possibilities with Blade Runner 2049 outside at #13.
Yesterday, support for Flag wavered a bit with a mixed critical reaction stemming from the New York Film Festival. On the other hand, Blade has sharpened its chances with reviews coming out this morning. Denis Villeneuve’s continuation of Ridley Scott’s classic sci-fi pic from 35 years ago is drawing raves (it’s at 97% currently on Rotten Tomatoes). The word “masterpiece” has been thrown around by some critics.
Bottom line: its chances for a Best Picture nomination have risen dramatically. Just last year, Villeneuve’s Arrival scored eight nominations, including Picture and Director. That could happen here again. While I doubt any of the actors (including Ryan Gosling and the return of Harrison Ford in the role of Deckard) will hear their names called, there are other races in play. This includes Adapted Screenplay, Production Design, Editing, both Sound categories, and Visual Effects (where it will almost certainly be named).
And then there’s Cinematography. Again, a nomination for its cinematographer Roger Deakins seems virtually assured. If so, it will mark his 14th nomination. The list of films he was nominated for? The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, Kundun, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn’t There, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, No Country for Old Men, The Reader, True Grit, Skyfall, Prisoners, Unbroken and Sicario. Number of wins? 0. There’s definitely a feeling that Mr. Deakins is long overdue for his gold statue and the 14th time could be the charm.
When I made my box office prediction for 2049 earlier this week, I compared my $44.1 opening weekend estimate to Mad Max: Fury Road from two years ago. As of this morning, I’m thinking the opportunity is there for it to come close to Fury‘s 10 Oscar nominations too.
Nearly a decade ago, Casey Affleck received a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for TheAssassinationofJesseJamesbytheCowardRobertFord. It was that same year in 2007 that he starred in his brother Ben’s well-received directorial debut GoneBabyGone and appeared for the third time in OceansThirteen as part of that blockbuster trilogy.
Since then, Affleck’s career has been a mix of smaller flicks like Ain’tThemBodiesSaints and OutoftheFurnace with supporting roles in studio fare like TowerHeist and Interstellar. He also made a strange excursion into directing with the Joaquin Phoenix “documentary” I’mStillHere.
His 2016 started rather unremarkably with two pics that came and went – TheFinestHours and Triple9. Yet it was that same time early in the year that word came out from Sundance about ManchesterbytheSea, Kenneth Lonergan’s drama about grief and family. And the word was quite impressive.
At the close of 2016, Manchester stands as a serious awards contender with its star assured a nomination for Best Actor. It is likely it will come down to Affleck and Denzel Washington (Fences) for the win. The former has already picked up a number of critics prizes for his most acclaimed role thus far. He closed out the year by hosting the “Saturday Night Live” Christmas show, including a very amusing bit involving Dunkin Donuts.
The Sundance Film Festival next month will showcase Affleck’s next project – AGhostStory alongside Rooney Mara. Who knows what that will bring, but it certainly kickstarted a supremely lauded year for Affleck this year.
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