It’s Oscar Time! By Paula & Terry Erdmann

Life of Pi Co-Star

This year, nine movies are nominated for Best Picture: Amour; Argo; Beasts of the Southern Wild; Django Unchained; Les Misérables; Life of Pi; Lincoln; Silver Linings Playbook; and Zero Dark Thirty. Why nine? Well, in 2009, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences broadened its top category from five candidates per year to ten, in order to give popular box office behemoths—which typically don’t garner recognition at awards time—the opportunity to compete with the critical favorites that do. Two years later, the Academy recognized that if there were only, say, eight or so pictures of extraordinary merit in a given year, they shouldn’t feel obligated to search for ten. Other categories (best actor, best director, etc.) still remain at five nominees apiece.

Which film will take home the most Oscars? With Daniel Day-Lewis’s electric performance as the sixteenth president, and Steven Spielberg’s as-always impeccable directing, Lincoln initially seemed a shoo-in as movie of the year. The film received nominations in twelve categories, including best picture, lead actor, supporting actor, supporting actress, and director. But at the recent Golden Globes Award ceremony, although Day-Lewis won as expected, Spielberg and the picture itself went home statue-less—a development that may indicate which way the wind isn’t blowing.

What beat Lincoln? Was it that amazing visual feast Life of Pi (nominated for eleven Oscars) or the cinematic version of the Broadway musical Les Misérables (eight Oscar nods)? Surprisingly, neither. The Best Pic Golden Globe went to the suspense thriller Argo, while the Globes’ award for Best Director went to Ben Affleck, who starred in, produced and directed Argo. There’s a bit of irony there, seeing as you won’t find Affleck’s name on Oscar’s list of contenders for Best Director.

Of course, with nine Best Picture Oscar nominees and only five director slots, someone was bound to be slighted. Joining Affleck on the Academy’s “Liked your movie, but…” club is Zero Dark Thirty helmer Kathryn Bigelow, and Les Mis director Tom Hooper. Spielberg’s Oscar rivals for the directing prize are Ang Lee (Life of Pi), Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild), Michael Haneke (Amour), and David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook).

As for us, your lowly local critics, we like but don’t love Lincoln. The film left us feeling intellectually stimulated, but strangely untouched on an emotional level. And we didn’t particularly like Le Mis, with its powerful performances that were all but done in by the director’s decision to shoot close-ups so tight that we felt we were being sucked into the actors’ facial pores.

Of the nine Best Picture nominees, we adored two.

Life of Pi has a story that dances lightly around a panoply of philosophical and religious plot points without pushing us into making choices. Featuring a remarkable “performance” by a Bengal tiger that doesn’t exist, we happily proclaim this one of the most visually beautiful films of all time. And yes, it moved us. We give our Best Director nod to Ang Lee.

In retrospect, however, we probably enjoyed Argo the most. This story about sneaking Americans out of Iran as part of a movie crew—the facts of which were classified “Top Secret” by the Pentagon for years—is edge-of-your-seat entertainment. With dashes of humor and a marvelous insider nudge-in-the-ribs about Hollywood filmmaking, Argo reminds us what going to the movies is supposed to be about—two hours of breathtaking entertainment that doesn’t even allow you to think about going to the bathroom.

            Paula and Terry each have long impressive-sounding resumes implying that they are battle-scarred veterans of life within the Hollywood studios. They’re now happily relaxed into Jacksonville.