2011 Oscar Best Picture Nominations - The Best Collection Ever?

The 2011 Academy Awards Best Picture nominees were announced on January 25, 2011 and make up perhaps the best collection of films ever assembled. The list is even more impressive where you consider that this year the field of movies was expanded to 10. The following are the films nominated.

The King's Speech
Expertly directed with a perfect cast, The King's Speech is probably the best movie of the year. Colin Firth gives a performance even more remarkable than last year's A Single Man as he plays King George VI (Bertie), the mild mannered, reserved "spare" to the throne who suffers from a dreadful stammer. The movie begins with Bertie's disastrous and almost incoherent 1925 speech at Wembley and ends with a still hesitant but nevertheless eloquent speech declaring war on Germany in 1939. In between, the movie chronicles the speech therapy that Bertie received from the Australian Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush.). This is an immensely enjoyable and engaging film on all emotional levels as a story of human beings, royal or not, dealing with and overcoming hardships.

The Social Network
Based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, The Social Network follows Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg as he creates Facebook, the game-changing social network that has transformed how people interact on the Internet. A movie about the founding of Facebook could have been a very long, tedious film targeted to a very niche audience. But writer Aaron Sorkin fashioned a story that is witty, fast-paced, thrilling and never boring. Director David Fincher (Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) takes you on a frenetically paced ride into the world behind Facebook, with fascinating revelations and disclosures along the way. The Social Network is expert storytelling with beautiful cinematography and a brilliant lead performance by Jesse Eisenberg.

Blank Swan
Black Swan is the story of Nina Sayars (Natalie Portman) a professional ballerina struggling to come of age when she fulfils her lifelong dream of landing the lead part of her company's latest production, Swan Lake. The thrill of this accomplishment is tarnished by the fact that she is unable to deal with her overbearing mother (Barbara Hershey), questionably ethical director (Vincent Cassel), taking over the throne of the former star lead (Winona Ryder) and competing with free spirited newcomer (Mila Kunis). The performances in this film are not to be believed. Natalie Portman is amazing. Her performance was nerve wrecking, and she actually makes us feel the horror rising in her character as she discovers that she is slowly moving from the good to the evil side in an effort to hold onto everything she has ever worked for. Black Swan is a dark and surreal ride that takes us down some surprising turns and, like the ballerinas, keeps us constantly on our toes.

The Fighter
A candid and powerful portrayal of a dysfunctional family and how the fighter copes with these issues to achieve success. The movie starts rather unspectacularly but soon builds into a strong, compelling dramatic story about two incredibly strong characters, one of whom is sick, who stick with each other and help each other overcome their personal obstacles. The nature of the family dynamics and how they affect the main characters are presented believably. Instead of being corny or contrived, the story is presented in a straightforward manner that lays out the issues. Mark Wahlberg and Melissa Leo are outstanding, but this movie is a showcase for Christian Bale whose performance is remarkable bordering on incredible. Mr. Bale portrays a character who by any reasonable standard should be detested yet by the end of movie is worthy of admiration. The Fighter is a true knockout.

Inception
Dom Cobb (Leonardo Di Caprio) leads a highly skilled team, specializing in stealing secrets from people's minds by entering their dreams. When they are hired by a mysterious businessman, Cobb finally has a shot at redemption, but not before achieving the near impossible. Rather than stealing an idea, they must do the complete opposite: Inception. Planting the seed of an idea. The plot of this movie is very pleasingly intricate with a twist-and-turn, keep-you-on-the-edge-of-your-seat type feel. Christopher Nolan has given us a smart film that is appealing to the eyes as well as the brain. The visuals are used in a way that makes things feel like an amazing dream. The story is interesting, and the actors all do a great job. Leonardo DiCaprio as usual is fantastic. Others like Michael Kane and Ellen Page also are great.

The Kids Are Alright
Stuffed with humor, power and insight, this film helps to remind us what a family is really all about. It's also a cautionary tale: Passionate sex, by its self, does not automatically make for a good relationship. Strong feelings can overpower our better judgment. Being dishonest with those we love causes a lot of suffering, but it can be a forgivable offense. A long-term relationship is a big investment - emotionally, financially and spiritually and it should not be easily discarded when something substantial goes wrong. Same-sex couples can have the exact same problems opposite-sex couples do.
"The Kids Are All Right" proves Hollywood can make an enjoyable film about gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or transgendered people without it having to be violent, depressing or insulting. One of the great movies of 2010.

127 Hours
127 Hours is about Aron Ralston struggling to get out of a situation he was stuck in for 127 hours. Aron is an ordinary guy working as an engineer in Intel. One day he decides to get away for a weekend to Utah for mountaineering without letting anyone know about it. He packs up his bag and off he goes on his bike. Later, while mountain climbing, he is involved in an accident where a very large bolder gets dislodged and drops on his right forearm pinning him. This movie details Aron's next 5 days alone as he tries to dislodge his arm from the boulder and save his life. Even though his eventual outcome is known world-wide, the gritty direction, gorgeous cinematography and flat-out brilliant performance by James Franco keep the viewer on the edge of their seat.

Toy Story 3
One of the year's most engaging, laugh out loud funny and deeply moving movies. It unashamedly goes for the heartstrings in the final act as Andy leaves home to go to his freshman year at a US college. And that's what this film is all about, the loss of childhood and what that means to a young man as he comes of age. Toy Story 3 is a true comedy classic full of slapstick, crazy chases and... as usual for a Pixar movie... a brilliant plot. The script sizzles and the acting (by the usual humans - you know them all by now) is universally outstanding. Randy Newman has made the franchise his own with his bittersweet and mostly beautiful music. Perhaps the highlight in this installment is Buzz Lightyear's fantastic Spanish rendition of "You've got a friend."

True Grit
True Grit is an outstanding movie that stands alongside other great westerns such as Unforgiven and Tombstone. A remake, this movie follows more closely the book than it does the John Wayne original film. The story is far richer, and the characters are given greater depth. Jeff Bridges does an excellent job filling the very big shoes of John Wayne in his famous portrayal of Rooster Cogburn. Matt Damon plays Texas Ranger LaBeouf, and is perfect. Barry Pepper plays Lucky Ned Pepper and even looks a little like Robert Duvall from the original movie. But the real star of the film, and the person around whom the story revolves is Mattie Ross, who is played with Oscar-worthy depth and skill by the unknown actress Hailee Steinfeld. Expect to see much more from her after this movie.

Winter's Bone
Jennifer Lawrence delivers an unforgettable performance as Ree Dolly, a 17-year-old living in the Ozark who cares for her mentally disabled mother and two younger siblings. Ree's rural existence is threatened by a legal framework which threatens to repossess her home and woodland if her criminal father Jessup fails to appear for a court date. Determined to track down her crystal-meth-producing dad in order to save her family, Ree is forced to request the assistance of cold hearted relatives who treat her with more than passing contempt. Adapting the story from Daniel Woodrell's novel, co-writer/director Debra Granik takes full advantage of the harsh Missouri landscape in order to examine the cruel mindset of some of the meanest people you'll ever encounter. Winter's Bone is a film that turns over a rock of backwoods American reality and studies the beautiful and ugly things that crawl there.

Film News: A Close Race for Best Picture Award

Over the last year, we've seen a number of films released that have broken box office records, set new heights for action onscreen and found new ways of captivating the audience. Film makers have broken the boundaries of what was previously not possible and writers have kept the upper hand by creating storylines that truly have been impossible to guess.

Recent months have seen the release of mindbender Inception, the captivating The Kings Speech, and the underdog smash hit that was The Social Network. All three films excelled in their respective genres, with Christopher Nolan intelligently pulling us into a dream within a dream within a dream, Jesse Eisenberg portraying antihero Mark Zuckerberg, which won the praise of critics and audiences and Colin Firth's depiction of the 'reluctant king' George VI overcoming his battle with stammering, which won the hearts of audiences far and wide.

A fierce battle has already begun between these three films for the most prestigious prize this year, the Best Picture award. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts recently released its list of nominees for the forthcoming BAFTA awards next month with all three appearing on their nominations for Best Film. The trio of films have also swept the board across different categories also, with Colin Firth and Jesse Eisenberg both being nominated for Best Actor and Christopher Nolan, Tom Hooper and David Fincher all being nominated for the Best Director Category. It also looks set to be another successful year for British actors, actresses and filmmakers, with many being nominated in the highest categories for their roles in this year's most popular films.

Many have high hopes for Britain to lead the way this year at the BAFTA and Academy Award ceremonies. This won't be the first time Colin Firth has been nominated, but it will definitely bring a boost to his profile should he win an award. The same can be said for Jesse Eisenberg, as a new face to the movie sphere, winning an award for best actor will definitely increase his credibility amongst the casting directors in Hollywood.

It looks set to be a difficult decision for the judging panel to decide who should win these prestigious awards, as all three films have been produced with the highest of quality in mind and film reviewers and audiences alike have definitely noticed this. The Social Network saw a major boost to audience figures due to word of mouth promotion, whilst Inception was billed by film studios as 2010's 'must see film of the year'. The Kings Speech has benefitted from the enormous praise it's received from the various industry figures admiring its style and content and of course, its lead actor. It's hard to say who will be the clear leader this year, as the Golden Globes has already shown.

Film news insiders predict that this could be an indication that this year, the judges will have to make a lot of incredibly tough decisions to make what they believe to be the best movie of 2010 win.

Andrew Joyce lives, eats and breathes film.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Joyce

Oscar Predictions 2011: Which Movie Will Win the Best Picture Award?

The question of the year in the movie industry: Who will win the Best Picture award? Who will take another Academy Award home as winner and who will just spend the night applauding others? As no one knows for sure yet, let's take a look at the list of the Best Picture Nominees and try to come up with some system to make predictions.

Best Picture Nominees for the 83rd Academy Awards:

Black Swan -- director: Darren Aronofsky; writers: Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz; stars: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassel;

The Fighter -- director: David O. Russell; writers: Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale and Amy Adams

Inception -- Director: Christopher Nolan; Writer: Christopher Nolan; Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ellen Page

The Kids Are All Right -- director: Lisa Cholodenko; writers: Lisa Cholodenko, Stuart Blumberg; stars: Annette Bening, Julianne Moore vand Mark Ruffalo

The King's Speech -- director: Tom Hooper; writer: David Seidler; stars: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter

127 Hours -- director: Danny Boyle; writers: Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy, stars: James Franco, Amber Tamblyn and Kate Mara

The Social Network -- director: David Fincher; writers: Aaron Sorkin, Ben Mezrich; stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake

Toy Story 3 -- director: Lee Unkrich; writers: John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, stars: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and Joan Cusack

True Grit -- directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen; writers: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen; stars: Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Hailee Steinfeld

Winter's Bone -- director: Debra Granik; writers: Debra Granik, Anne Rosellini, stars: Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes and Garret Dillahunt

Hm, now that's a list of some pretty good movies, how are these guys in Academy Awards supposed to decide, who is better? Whom they should give the Oscar statue? Oh the tension... Maybe we can help out by comparing them -- how they were created, how they did in theaters and awards? Maybe we can develop some kind of system for determining the most likely winners...

You can see that most of them have really big names in cast and crew. Thought celebrity pressure can come from any of these movies; it's not clear how to evaluate one or another star's influence for popularity of the movie. Also, one should not forget that we all have our favorites, which is not good for making objective predictions. So we have to take some other, measurable and comparable things into account when deciding.

First thing we could look at is a) how much was invested in creating these movies b) how much they earned from them. In short -- were they successful and the effort worth the money?

List no. 1: 'Budget size vs. success'
Black Swan -- budget: 13,000,000; earnings: 83,250,375; ROI: 5.4The Kids Are All Right -- budget: 4,000,000; earnings: 20,803,237; ROI: 4.2The King's Speech -- budget: 15,000,000; earnings: 57,313,881; ROI: 2.8True Grit -- budget: 38,000,000; earnings: 137,963,519; ROI: 2.6Winter's Bone -- budget: 2,000,000; earnings: 6,271,086; ROI: 2.1The Fighter -- budget: 25,000,000; earnings: 72,680,740; ROI: 1.9The Social Network -- budget: 40,000,000; earnings: 95,408,473; ROI: 1.4Toy Story 3 -- budget: 200,000,000; earnings: 415,004,880; ROI: 1.1Inception -- budget: 160,000,000; earnings: 292,568,851; ROI: 0.8127 Hours -- budget: 18,000,000; earnings: 11,296,805; ROI: -0.4

What we get here is a very simple list of the Best Picture nominees according to return on investment [ROI] made in making them. The biggest return taking the first place, when going down to the smallest in the bottom. Basically, it shows how much money oscar nominees made in US from premier till January, divided by their estimated budget ($ numbers from IMDB and boxofficemojo.com). Conclusion - big budget is not everything you need for a blockbuster - "Black Swan" and "The Kids Are All Right" budgets were more than 10 times smaller compared to Inception, but they managed to make around 4 - 5 times more from one dollar invested. The biggest loser so far "127 Hours", which haven't managed to earn enough to cover costs yet. I didn't rank them according to gross earnings, as popular opinion and sales can easily be manipulated by increasing spending on advertising, ROI shows a lot more in this case.

Secondly, we could consider how have these movies done in professional competitions?

List no. 2: 'What do the pros think?"
The Social Network -- nominations: 55; Wins: 49; Oscar nom.:8; Total: 112The King's Speech -- nominations: 73; Wins: 16; Oscar nom.: 12; Total: 101Black Swan -- nominations: 71; Wins: 21; Oscar nom.: 5; Total: 97Inception -- nominations: 57; Wins: 27; Oscar nom.: 8; Total: 92True Grit -- nominations: 55; Wins: 12; Oscar nom.: 10; Total: 77127 Hours -- nominations: 55; Wins: 4; Oscar nom.: 6; Total: 65Winter's Bone -- nominations: 42; Wins: 19; Oscar nom.: 4; Total: 65The Fighter -- nominations: 32; Wins: 23; Oscar nom.: 7; Total: 62The Kids Are All Right -- nominations: 51; Wins: 3; Oscar nom.: 4; Total: 58Toy Story 3 -- nominations: 18; Wins: 18; Oscar nom.: 5; Total: 41

Here I added up all nominations with wins to see which movies were noticed the most in different awards. Here "The Social Network" takes lead, with "The King's Speech" and "Black Swan" still in top three before the big spenders "Inception" and others. Hmm do we see a trend here already?

Thirdly, it's very important to compare how viewers and critics evaluate these movies:

List no. 3: 'A, B, C... or F?'
Toy Story 3 -- IMDB: 8.7; metacritics.com: 92; average: 9.0The Social Network -- IMDB: 8.2; metacritics.com: 95; average: 8.9The King's Speech -- IMDB: 8.5; metacritics.com: 88; average: 8.7Winter's Bone -- IMDB: 7.5; metacritics.com: 90; average: 8.3Black Swan -- IMDB: 8.6; metacritics.com: 79; average: 8.3127 Hours -- IMDB: 8.2; metacritics.com: 82; average: 8.2Inception -- IMDB: 9.0; metacritics.com: 74; average: 8.2True Grit -- IMDB: 8.2; metacritics.com: 80; average: 8.1The Fighter -- IMDB: 8.2; metacritics.com: 79; average: 8.1The Kids Are All Right -- IMDB: 7.4; metacritics.com: 86; average: 8.0

I ranked these movies according to IMDB and metacritic.com rankings average. "Toy story 3" does very well here, by both viewers in IMDB and critics in metacritic.com. Some of the previous leaders spatter across the list giving an interesting perspective for possible Oscar evening winners.

And finally, to get the result we need to sum up all previous scores - from 1 to 10, the smallest score being the best:

List no. 4: 'The Grande Finale'
The King's Speech 8 Black Swan 9 The Social Network 10 Winter's Bone 16 True Grit 17 Toy Story 3 19 Inception 20 The Kids Are All Right 21 127 Hours 22 The Fighter 23

So here you go! Top 3 most possible Oscar winners according to our little calculation are: leader "The King's Speech", followed by "Black Swan" and "The Social Network". I guess this not a big surprise as "The King's Speech" already boast 16 wins in such awards as Golden Globes, British Independent Films and others. Let's not forget 12 Oscar nominations, which is a great accomplishment by itself.

Why The King's Speech Is Favorite to Win the Oscar for Best Picture

The King's Speech is the ultimate Oscar bait movie. It has all the ingredients, World War II, a King, a disability and a story about overcoming the odds. A combination of these got the mediocre movie The Reader nominated in 2008, in a fairly weak category. This year, even with the nominations for Best Picture expanded to 10, there are many more films that would have proved worthy nominees. In terms of box office success, 2010 might not have been the best year for studios, but there were many films of the highest quality, something which was lacking in the previous years.

Coming back to the point, The King's Speech is a wonderfully acted drama, that features an insanely brilliant cast of British and Australian actors, featuring Oscar nominees Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter and Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush. There is no need to dwell on the story, as the title gives a major part of it away.

Technically speaking, the acting is great, the sets are wonderful and the script is perfect. The direction by Tom Hooper could be better, but he is still a rookie at his job, having directed only a handful of movies with most of his work being on the smaller screen.

The reason I predict The King's Speech to win the Academy Award for Best Picture is that it has a heart and is a feel-good story all the way. The people who made Slumdog Millionaire claimed that to be a feel-good story. Compared to that, The King's Speech is a much better choice and given the fact that Slumdog Millionaire managed to scoop up 8 Oscars including Best Picture, there is no reason why The King's Speech shouldn't do it as well.

The King's Speech may have been slow through the awards season, with a majority of the accolades going to Colin Firth and the screenplay of the film, but has been trailblazing its way through the guild awards, which makes it the heavyweight to beat come 27th February.

Shazman John is an avid movie fan who divides his time between his job as a content writer and watching movies at home. A hobby of his is watching and predicting film awards, something he has gotten very good at.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Shazman_Peter_John