The Corner Cinema

Ah, it feels like only 15 years ago that Slumdog Millionaire Jai-Hoed it’s way into our hearts on Oscar night. I don’t know about you but I’ve revisited that film time and time again since it’s historic Oscar win.

Okay, I haven’t seen as much as a clip since it won Best Picture. But there’s still Million Dollar Baby and Crash and The Departed and No Country For Old Man and-

Who am I kidding!? I haven’t seen any of those films since they won their Oscar. Best Picture winners from the 2000s weren’t exactly good for casual viewing or dare I say even fun moviegoing. Will Avatar change that tomorrow as we close out the decade’s Best Picture winners?

Many people are pitting Art vs Commerce in this battle of David vs Goliath, in the war of the (s)exes, Bigelow vs Cameron, The Hurt Locker vs Avatar. In truth, it’s Art vs Art AND Commerce. Anyone who thinks a 2 and half hour Day-Glo cosmic trip with tribal beats ISN’T art is delusional and/or a hater! And don’t hate on JC and Avatar’s 2.5 billion dollars. It’s still art, just with a shit-tonne of cash attached.

So how will tomorrow shake down? Read more…

With the Oscars only a day away, it’s hard to believe that the Razzies are even sooner. Oscar’s ugly twin sister gets the first word tonight and some of Hollywood’s biggest stars look to be dis-honored. As stated in my Razzie nomination wrap up, the highest profile movies and stars took the spotlight this year instead of some of the smaller films that actually deserved to be called the worst. So taking into account that Razzie voters love to further smear the already tarnished careers of many filmmakers and actors, let’s take a look at what is most likely to win this year. Read more…

Here at The Corner Cinema we are watching the Best Picture race with great interest and our take on how it will play out with the Academy is similar to that of most awards pundits: The Hurt Locker is in the lead, Avatar a small but fair distance behind, and Inglourious Basterds is lurking in the shadows in the hope that it’ll attract both the critic and populist vote in sufficient numbers. However speculating about what a body of voters will do with their votes can only take you so far, so after some deliberation the staff here decided to hold a separate Best Picture vote based on the ten nominees selected by the Academy. But even more than just seeing how The Corner Cinema would choose Best Picture, this also served as a test of the voting mechanism used by the Academy in deciding Best Picture: a form of preferential ranking known as Instant Runoff Voting.

Now there has been tons of blogger input on what this voting style is already so I’ll keep the explanation short and simple. Essentially you rank the ten nominees with your first choice first, your second choice second, and so on. After all the votes are in, the nominees are divided into piles based on first-choice votes. If a film has no first-choice votes then it is automatically off the table. Once all the nominees are divided up, you take nominee with the least first-choice votes off the table and then re-distribute all of its votes based on their second-choice vote (or third, fourth, etc if the high choices are no longer on the table). You wash, rinse, and repeat until one of the nominee piles is over 50% at which point you have your winner. Now when you have preferential rankings with your first choice first and so on, another form of voting comes into play as well, which is where in a ten-nominee pool your first choice receives ten points, your second choice nine points, and so on down the line. The winner here would be the nominee with the highest aggregate point total. Since we were already participating in Instant Runoff Voting, the staff felt that we should also calculate a winner based on this method as well and see if there was a difference in what film The Corner Cinema awarded Best Picture.

Since the participating membership of The Corner Cinema is miniscule compared to that of the Academy, these results may not have much bearing when taken to a far larger scale, but the potential of differing results using different voting methods is something to consider.

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Need the low-down on the Oscar race? Filling out any last minute Oscar pools? Trying to find some conclusive info on the shorts categories? If you’re looking for an abridged look at the race in all 24 categories, look no further. I will be breaking down the basics of all the categories – along with my personal take on the competition when I feel necessary. So sit back, relax, and get ready to fill out your ballot.

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Oscar blogs have been largely discussing the Foreign Language Film race as of late. It seems that many predict now that “The White Ribbon” will not take home the award, while Argentinia’s “The Secret in Their Eyes” has attracted lots of attention. Their reasoning? Argentinia’s entry is a straight-forward crime-thriller and will therefore be the Academy’s favorite. But when looked at the latest winners, it is apparent that they either like to vote for the sensitive, quiet drama (The Sea Inside, Departures), the historically important picture (The Lives of Others, The Counterfeiters) or the important social drama (Tsotsi).

So what has each of this year’s nominees going for it?

The White Ribbon has won almost everything Foreign-wise this year. It’s Haneke’s year and it’s his most accessible and historically important picture. It also seems to really click with the Americans. The cinematography nod is nice, but these additional nominations only helped “Crouching Tiger” in the last decade.

A Prophet is the only other nominee who has won any important awards this season besides “The White Ribbon”. It has its following, but are there enough fans to secure the award? I’m not predicting it, but the prizon-crime-drama definetely has its chances.

The Milk of Sorrow is Peru’s first ever nomination in this category. The topic might be a bit too special and depressing for the Academy, though.

The aforementioned The Secret in Their Eyes is a thriller that could get the Latino support. But mark my words – it’s not happening.

This comes to the only nominated film left which is also my prediction for the winner of this category: Ajami. It’s important, it’s entertaining at times and the film’s way of making is also in vogue. Voting for “Ajami” is like making a political statement. In addition, this is Israel’s third nomination in a row which shows the appreciation for this country’s filmmaking. Oh, and its entry for last year was “Waltz with Bashir” – remember that snub?

And what’s your pick? What film win the Foreign Language category?

My prediction: "Ajami" will be the surprise winner this Sunday.

Source: BoxOfficeMojo.com

The scheduling nightmare continues as we enter the second weekend in a row with no wide openers that are not rated R. In fact of the eight wide releases this month only three were not rated R. That created a hugely competitive marketplace for R-rated movies, giving them worse legs than usual, while allowing a few PG-rated films thrive. With the aforementioned two openers performing to decent, albeit not overwhelming numbers, this weekend’s Top 12 cume of $108.1 million went down another 11.4% from the previous frame. It was, however, up a solid 24% over the same weekend last year when Madea Goes to Jail led the charts in its second weekend. Read more…

When Tim Burton announced that he’d direct a new take on Lewis Carroll’s eternal classic Alice in Wonderland, the opinions were split. Burton’s fans were excited about the prospect of the director going all out in the visual style for the fairy tale adaptation. Admittedly, Carroll’s richly imaginative tale is a perfect fit for Burton’s highly visual sensibilities. Others, however, just sighed about Burton doing his whole bizarre-gothic-setting thing again and not trying anything new. At the end of the day, both parties will get just what they expect. Those who liked the idea of this project from the beginning will likely end up loving the film. Those opposing it, will receive just the product they have been expecting. This is not Burton being experimental or trying anything new. It’s the same Burton that gave us Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – no more and no less. The trailers have been quite telling about the final product. What you see is what you get.

Despite the classic Alice in Wonderland title, the film is not a straight-up adaptation of Carroll’s original 1865 novel. There have been plenty of those and Burton rightfully decided that the audiences didn’t need to see yet another faithful adaptations. Carroll’s purists might not be pleased by that, but on the other hand Burton still stays mostly true to the author’s slightly crazy vision. The movie draws upon Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland just as much as on its follow-up Through the Looking Glass, mixing characters and settings from both novels. The whole Wonderland story is nicely framed by a Victorian-era England setting with a 19-year old Alice being urged into an arranged marriage with an unappealing lord. About 15 minutes into the movie Alice falls into that well-known rabbit hole where her adventures start…but apparently it’s not her first time! After that the movie wanders on the token path of fantasy adaptations like The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. An unlikely hero (Alice) must take on the evil Red Queen (deliciously played by Helena Bonham Carter) and her big dragon-like monster, the Jabberwocky. Read more…

Source: BoxOfficeMojo.com

After the record-breaking last weekend, the Top 12 cume this weekend went down 35.6% to $121.3 million. That’s not surprising considering there was only one wide opener and we were coming off a hugely inflated President’s Day/Valentine’s Day weekend with three wide releases that all broke out. Compared to the same weekend last year when Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail was #1 the box-office was still up 1.8%. Read more…

Roman Polanski has been scrutinized for the last few months about his private life and not for his work. “The Ghost Writer” has reversed the trend with its fantastic reception at the Berlin International Film Festival, where Polanski won the Best Director award. Having seen the film, the debates about his private life will continue to fade away for a few months because “The Ghost Writer” is clearly a convincing mystery thriller.

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Like most years, the 2010 Academy Awards are shaping up to be a somewhat boring occasion due to most of the major categories being all but locked up. This year though there is at least a reasonable amount of suspense in the two Screenplay categories and for that we have the Writers Guild of America to thank. Normally the lineups for Adapted and Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards closely mirror the lineups for the WGA honors, but this particular year the WGA decided to disqualify a number of contenders for valid (Inglourious Basterds) or murky (An Education) reasons. In all, films that were declared ineligible for the WGA awards included Inglourious Basterds, Up, An Education, District 9, In the Loop, etc. All five of those films have wound up being nominated for one of the two Screenplay awards at the Oscars, making the recently declared winners of the WGA award not the front-runners they might normally be considered to be. With the WGA only going 2/5 in each category, it’s time to provide a fresh look at the two categories, taking the WGA results for whatever weight they have.

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