Buddy Bets on Tonight's Oscars

At this point, it doesn't look like snow will be an issue until tomorrow so I suspect our Oscars soiree could be swinging this evening replete with Oscar ballots, finger food and champagne.

Ellen is a most promising host, Bette Midler will perform, The Wizard of Oz will be toasted, and the race for the Awards is an interesting and tight one. I have high expectations.

Tonight will mark Meryl Streep's eighteenth nomination for Best Actress (for August: Osage County), breaking the record for any actor or actress previously held by... Meryl Streep! Streep is considered a long-shot this year, however.

Judi Dench is ahead in my readers' blog poll today (look to the left). She is my personal fave, too.  Let's see how she fares tonight for Philomena.

Here's the current odds-on predictions for major categories vs. my predictions:

Best Picture: 12 Years a Slave. I slavishly agree.
Best Director: Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity.  Check.
Actor: Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club. I'm betting: Bruce Dern, Nebraska.
Actress: Cate Blanchette, Blue Jasmine. I'm betting: Judi Dench, Philomena.
Best Supporting Actor: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club. I'll go with that.
Best Supporting Actress: Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave. I'm betting: Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle.
Best Original Screenplay: Spike Jonze, Her. I'm betting: Woody Allen, Blue Jasmine.
Best Adapted Screenplay: John Ridley, 12 Years a Slave. I'm betting: Bob Nelson, Nebraska.
Best Cinematography: Gravity. I'm betting: Nebraska.
Best Documentary Feature: The Act of Killing. I'm betting: 20 Feet from Stardom.
Best Editing: Gravity. I'll go with Philomena.

In any event, a very strong list of contenders. We'll see how things turn out when I see you at the Oscars! Review to come after the ceremony.

BEST PICTURE: “12 Years a Slave”
BEST DIRECTOR: Alfonso Cuaron, “Gravity”
BEST ACTOR: Matthew McConaughey, “Dallas Buyers Club”
BEST ACTRESS: Cate Blanchett, “Blue Jasmine”
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jared Leto, “Dallas Buyers Club”
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Lupita Nyong’o, “12 Years a Slave”
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Spike Jonze, “Her”
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: John Ridley, “12 Years a Slave”
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: “Frozen”
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: “Gravity”
BEST DOCUMENTARY: “The Act of Killing”
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: “The Great Beauty”
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: Steven Price, “Gravity”
BEST ORIGINAL SONG: “Let It Go,” “Frozen”
BEST EDITING: “Gravity”
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: “Gravity”
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: “The Great Gatsby”
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: “American Hustle”

- See more at: http://www.metro.us/boston/entertainment/movies-entertainment/2014/02/26/our-oscars-package-what-to-expect-trivia-and-our-predictions/#sthash.gGqSJp43.dpuf

BEST PICTURE: “12 Years a Slave”
BEST DIRECTOR: Alfonso Cuaron, “Gravity”
BEST ACTOR: Matthew McConaughey, “Dallas Buyers Club”
BEST ACTRESS: Cate Blanchett, “Blue Jasmine”
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jared Leto, “Dallas Buyers Club”
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Lupita Nyong’o, “12 Years a Slave”
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Spike Jonze, “Her”
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: John Ridley, “12 Years a Slave”
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: “Frozen”
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: “Gravity”
BEST DOCUMENTARY: “The Act of Killing”
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: “The Great Beauty”
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: Steven Price, “Gravity”
BEST ORIGINAL SONG: “Let It Go,” “Frozen”
BEST EDITING: “Gravity”
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: “Gravity”
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: “The Great Gatsby”
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: “American Hustle”

- See more at: http://www.metro.us/boston/entertainment/movies-entertainment/2014/02/26/our-oscars-package-what-to-expect-trivia-and-our-predictions/#sthash.gGqSJp43.dpuf

BEST PICTURE: “12 Years a Slave”
BEST DIRECTOR: Alfonso Cuaron, “Gravity”
BEST ACTOR: Matthew McConaughey, “Dallas Buyers Club”
BEST ACTRESS: Cate Blanchett, “Blue Jasmine”
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jared Leto, “Dallas Buyers Club”
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Lupita Nyong’o, “12 Years a Slave”
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Spike Jonze, “Her”
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: John Ridley, “12 Years a Slave”
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: “Frozen”
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: “Gravity”
BEST DOCUMENTARY: “The Act of Killing”
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: “The Great Beauty”
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: Steven Price, “Gravity”
BEST ORIGINAL SONG: “Let It Go,” “Frozen”
BEST EDITING: “Gravity”
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: “Gravity”
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: “The Great Gatsby”
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: “American Hustle”

- See more at: http://www.metro.us/boston/entertainment/movies-entertainment/2014/02/26/our-oscars-package-what-to-expect-trivia-and-our-predictions/#sthash.gGqSJp43.dpuf

Buddy Beaverhausen Catches Up with Oscars' Best Picture Nominees # 5: Nebraska

Alexander Payne must have a thing about old men on road trips. He directed About Schmidt (2002) with Jack Nicholson and 2013's Nebraska. Payne hails from Nebraska though the script is by Bob Nelson, Oscar-nominated for Best Original Screenplay.

The movie is up for a total of six Academy Awards. I was most impressed by the film's sumptuous, expressionistic black-and-white cinematography by Phedon Papamichael who has worked with 2014 Oscar-nom director Alexander Payne before and most recently filmed Monuments Men.  Papamichael is also nominated for his brilliant camerawork here and it is the best I've seen in years.

Although this film, even at a trim 115 minutes, overstays its welcome -- perhaps due to its slow pacing and relentless deadpan style -- it provides a stark landscape of strip malls, motels and gas stations; an almost surrealist backdrop of Americana against which the dysfunctional family of this film is highlighted.

Acting is uniformly superb, especially Bruce Dern in the central role Best Actor nominee), June Squibb (Best Supporting Actress nom), Will Forte, Bob Odenkirk, Stacy Keach and Mary Louise Wilson.

Dern, in many ways, reminded me of my stepfather in an extremely vivid, unsentimental portrayal that is the quiet powerhouse at the heart of Nebraska.

Favorite dialogue is when the receptionist, at the end of the film's Quixotic quest, asks Dern's son, David (Forte) if his father has Alzheimer's. David replies, "No, he just believes what people tell him." Says the receptionist, "That's too bad."

Dj Buddy Beaverhausen will be co-hosting an Oscar night party for friends in Bay Ridge, NYC. Ballots and champagne provided. It's an exciting year with a bumper crop of movies and performances, so it should be an exciting night that I'll be blogging about. So far, I expect I'll be voting for Dern's career-capper in Nebraska for Best Actor.

Oscars 2014: Dj Buddy Beaverhausen Takes a Spoonful of Disney

Saving Mr Banks

Saving Mr Banks is Disney Studios' big Valentine's Day card to itself. In this film, back in theaters ahead of Oscar time (it is nominated for Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score), Emma Thompson portrays P.L. Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, as an insufferably high-strung, difficult curmudgeon which, by all accounts, is what she was. The story is about her meeting Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) at his office in Hollywood for the purpose of his adapting her children's novel to the big screen, Disney style.

Mr Hanks' fatherly, benign Walt Disney bears little resemblance to most biographical reports of this man's tyrannical business style. He also physically bears little resemblance to the iconic Walt Disney tv image, despite his make-up and spirited performance.

Thompson, who was nominated for an award as Best Actress in a Drama at the most recent Golden Globes, hands in a splendid acting job, though her character is a huge pain-in-the-ass to everyone around her. She then goes through an incredible, Jeckyl and Hyde-like transformation via her working relationship with Disney and his crew, saving herself decades of psychotherapy, overcoming her grandiosity, egomania, Electra complex and all other deeply rooted Freudian issues simply by relentingly signing over the film rights to her novel.

Nonetheless, this confection, with its serio-comic style, will emotionally manipulate most viewers with moments of heartbeak and humor, disarming sweetness and flawless style. When P.L.Travers attends the Hollywood premiere of Disney's Mary Poppins, seeing her childhood reflected on-screen, Ms Thompson pulls out all the stops in a genuinely touching and cathartic piece of acting brilliance that moved me to tears.

Colin Farrell, in a beautifully modulated performance, looking all cleaned up and as dashing as ever, generally steals the film as the author's loving but hopelessly alcoholic father. The supporting cast is superb, most especially Paul Giamatti in a fictitious and unlikely role, and Kathy Baker.

Like many a Valentine, Saving Mr Banks is sweet, affectionate and beautifully embroidered. In truth, according to IMDB, Travers never forgave Walt Disney "for what she saw as vulgar and disrespectful adaptation of her 'Mary Poppins' novels." But this is the Disney version of their story with its imperative happy ending. A spoonful of sugar for a bitter pill.

Buddy Beaverhausen Catches Up with Oscars' Best Picture Nominees # 2: Gravity

Now back in select theaters since it received a Best Picture Oscar nod, Gravity, like gravity, can sometimes be a real drag. It stars 2014 Academy Award nominee Sandra Bullock along with George Clooney.

As soon as the film opens with a very long, slow tracking shot of our planet with CGI spacecraft and floating astronauts, I thought: "Houston, we've got a problem!" At the outset, the film often resembles an animated feature voiced over by its two leads. Good dialogue makes Gravity tolerable but it's much too heavy for its conceit. It wants to be Ingmar Bergman in outer space.

So lethargically paced in its first half, I was reminded of Clooney's sci-fi effort from 2002, the American remake of Solaris, which is not a good thing. Bullock's performance, however, is a strong one, considering she had to find the emotional reality of a situation largely done against green screens.

The second half of the film (less f/x-oriented) is certainly not without suspense and I was generally engaged and invested in the outcome. There are even some emotionally poignant moments largely due to Ms Bullock's acting, and the chemistry between Ms Bullock and Mr Clooney is first-class.

The story of two astronauts free falling toward the Earth, Gravity plays like a metaphor for struggling through life's obstacles. It's meant to inspire. However, if I had starred in Gravity instead of Ms Bullock, the film would have been quite different. In fact, given the sheer athleticism required of the role, my film would have to be a short subject with a running time of about 30 seconds.

As in real life, if it's not one thing, it's another. But you may find, as I did, the complications and dilemmas to be somewhat over the top. Like the serial The Perils of Pauline, Gravity does not have a plot-heavy script. Rather, it's picaresque style, so that one thing happens, then another thing, then something else, until it finally comes in for a figurative landing. Some viewers, however, might find it just a lot of space junk.

Directed, co-written, co-produced and co-edited by Alfonso Cuaron (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), this British-American co-production is being nominated for a grand total of 10 Oscars. Now, there's some serious gravitas to that!

Oscars 2014: Buddy Beaverhausen Rides a Streetcar Named Blue Jasmine

I find it perplexing that Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine, perhaps his greatest triumph since Hannah and Her Sisters, is not being nominated for this year's Oscar's Best Picture given the sum of its very controlled direction; exquisite acting; Alisa Lepseltzer's gracious, fluid editing; Javier Aguirresarobe's sumptuous cinematography and the film's storyline. I was riveted from start to finish and couldn't turn away.

This tragedy (sprinkled with comic moments) comes off like Ivana Trump takes the Streetcar Named Desire. Allen's story is that of a Manhattan socialite who falls upon hard times and moves in with her somewhat bohemian, working class sister in San Francisco.

Cate Blanchett's Jasmine (nee Jeanette) is a woman beyond the verge of a nervous breakdown in a tour de force performance. She is nominated this year for an Academy Award Best Actress nomination and deservedly. Jasmine is a self-absorbed, egocentric, pill-popping, vodka-guzzling mess in a designer dress who is anything but absolutely fabulous, yet she's like the proverbial train wreck you can't stop watching.

I actually knew this woman, in a way, so Blachette's performance seemed extremely real to me. The woman I was acquainted with was a blond golden girl, patrician Philadelphian background, who became a journalist, was featured on CNN, then had a total emotional meltdown. Her erratic, self-absorbed and high-strung behavior even got her blackballed from temp proofreading jobs where she had no qualms of telling her co-workers and supervisors she was too good for them and for her position there. In Jasmine, I saw so many similarities to this type of real-life, self-destructive ego monster.

England's Sally Hawkins is fabulous and very touching as Jasmine's sister, Ginger (the Stella role). (Actually, the women were adopted daughters of the same family.) It must be added that Cate and Sally have their American regional accents down pat.

Bobby Carnavale is this film's Stanley, reinvented as Chili, Ginger's boyfriend, hot-bodied and dramatically dynamic. And Andrew Dice Clay is a revelation in a serious and sympathetic role as  Ginger's ex-husband. The acting all around is exceptional and Alec Baldwin is particularly notable as Jasmine's cad of an billionaire ex-hubby.

The scene where Jasmine babysits her sister's two boys, having cocktails across from them at a coffee shop, starts as comedy but eventually turns dark, capturing the essence of this movie as a whole. It may be my favorite sequence in this flick.

Kudos to Woody Allen for both his Oscar-nominated directing and screenplay. My favorite line is Jasmine's: "Can you please not fight in here? I don't think I can take it. For some reason, my Xanax isn't kicking in!"