ZERO DARK THIRTY

 
“The Greatest Manhunt in History” is an apt tagline for ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ which for months was referred to as “the untitled hunt for Osama Bin Laden movie”.  Kathryn Bigelow’s first film since 2009’s Best Picture winner ‘The Hurt Locker’ is a detailed account of the decade long hunt for Osama Bin Laden and the intelligence and strategy that led to his killing.  Bigelow again teams up with writer Mark Boal (Academy Award winning writer ‘The Hurt Locker’) who displays a vivid picture of the rigorous process to locate Bin Laden.

Unfortunately due to the relatively late release date of the film (wide January 11^th) and the extremely early release date of Oscar nominations this year (January 10^th) I wasn’t able to see ‘ZD30’ until after seeing what it had been nominated for.  Had I seen it previous to nominations however I would have thought it would garner more attention.  Yes it was nominated for Best Picture, yes Boal is again nominated for his screenplay, and yes Jessica Chastain, who plays the CIA operative behind the investigation into Bin Laden’s whereabouts, has a great chance at winning Best Actress but the film was snubbed in some key categories.  The most glaring omission was no Best Director nomination for Bigelow.  Bigelow is coming off a Best Director win for her previous film and does a great job walking a fine line between painstaking honesty and torture propaganda in ‘ZD30’.  Also the film was only nominated for two tech categories: Film Editing and Sound Editing.  The film could have and quite frankly should have gotten nominations in both Cinematography (in place ‘Anna Karenina’, a total joke nom) and Sound Mixing.

So why the lack of love for ‘ZD30’?  Primarily it has to do with timing; the nominations came out on January 10^th and the film wasn’t release wide until January 11^th.  Of course most Oscar voters have the ability to catch early screenings or go to the limited releases in NY or LA but many Oscar voters won’t go to extra trouble to see films unless there is buzz.  ‘ZD30’ just didn’t have the buzz going and even after its wide release it’s still not talked about heavily in Oscar circles.  The other aspect that hurts the film in my opinion is its lack of emotional pull.  Although Jeremy Renner’s protagonist in ‘The Hurt Locker’ is emotionally detached the audience still has a reason to root for him, maybe it’s the hope he can overcome, change, become “normal”.  ‘ZD30’ doesn’t have that, sure you want Maya (Chastain) to succeed and find Bin Laden but the film plays more as a documentary than a drama.

We’ll see what happens on Oscar night but short of Chastain being a serious player in the Best Actress category, ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ might fail the mission to bring home any statues.

SAG WINNERS

The SAG Awards took place last night and the winners can be found at the following wiki link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_Screen_Actors_Guild_Awards

‘Argo’ again surprised many and took home the most coveted prize, Best Cast – Motion Picture.  ‘Argo’ now is looking like the mainstay as spoiler to compete with ‘Lincoln’ for Best Picture.  Jessica Chastain seemed she would be playing the role of frontrunner for Best Actress after her countless critic’s wins and her Globe win for Best Actress a couple weeks ago but Jennifer Lawrence ended up taking the SAG prize for her role in ‘Silver Linings Playbook’, making the Oscar for Best Actress the most intriguing race we have at the moment.  The rest of the night went as planned with wins for Day-Lewis, Lee Jones, and Hathaway along with the usual winners in the TV categories (although Bryan Cranston was a much deserved mini upset over Damian Lewis for Best Actor Drama Series).

Director’s Guild Awards are up next on February 2^nd, then the BAFTAs on February 10^th, and the Independent Spirit Awards on Oscar eve February 23^rd.

JANUARY WRAP-UP/AWARDS UPDATE

Couple of quick updates, for anyone that hasn’t taken a look at the Oscar nominations they have been out for a couple of weeks now:

http://oscar.go.com/nominees

This year is a bit different in the fact that nominations came out before the Golden Globes which may explain some disparity between the Globe winners and the films that garnered the most Academy nominations.  Usually the Globes are a decent barometer for some of the major Oscar races, this year may be harder to predict because films like ‘Argo’, winner of Best Picture and Director at the Globes, failed to earn as much attention from the Academy.

Globe winners: http://www.goldenglobes.org/2012/12/nominations-2013/

The Academy did surprise some with the amount of support ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ and ‘Amour’ received.  Usually there is an indie darling or two in the mix at the Oscars but usually with one or two nominations whereas ‘Beasts’ and ‘Amour’ combined for 9 nominations.

The next big award show, that will hopefully clear up the awfully cloudy Oscar picture, is the Screen Actors Guild Awards.  The SAG awards take place Sunday January 27^th at 8pm EST.  Hopefully the winners will help cement some of the acting categories on Oscar night, or as we saw at the Globes, make everything that much harder to determine.  Beyond SAG there are additional guild awards (Writer’s, Director’s, ect), the BAFTAs, and the Independent Spirit Awards leading up to Oscar night.

I will continue coverage on the races and what the upcoming award shows mean to predicting Oscar outcomes.  I was able to catch ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ last weekend and should have a full review on Kathryn Bigelow’s Bin Laden film shortly; it will most likely be my last full review of the season.