BRAVO!!! Well said

Flags of Our Fathers is my most anticipated Oscar type film, obviously, as the combination of the great Eastwood, Spielberg, and Haggis should deliver a good film, at the very least. Notice, as there has not been a frame of film seen, I didn't use the word "frontrunner". What a story, though. Could you imagine Eastwood and Spielberg as producers onstage accepting an Oscar for a picture they made? That would be historic, and even moreso if they decided to bring up Haggis with them!

Marty might finally get his due, even though it's a remake of a foreign film that isn't very old, but this might be a case where it's not a deal breaker. With a cast of Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Whalberg, Martin Sheen, and Alec Baldwin, not only does it sound great, but it should be the most appealing movie to the mainstream audience that Marty has ever done. I expect a very strong box office, represented by both old and young moviegoers!

Fincher has Zodiac, and I have tremendous anticipation for this!

De niro has The Good Shepherd, with himself, Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, and the return to the bigscreen for the first time in 8 long years of the one and only Joe Pesci! A De niro vrs. Marty scenerio could happen, as could an Eastwood vrs. Marty rematch.

If Marty delivers, I think it's his year.

Last April, I did a detailed early Oscar preview, so maybe I'll do that again next month. Stay tuned!!!

The cool thing would be Scorsese getting Director and then Eastwood and Spielberg winning Picture.

I would love to see a film like For Your Consideration get an Oscar nomination for BP.

The world would implode

Can you guess which script is being discussed?

... This is a marvelous, moving, horrifying, gut-wrenching script ... It will be very hard to watch. It will leave many viewers in tears ...

... The story has an almost dreamlike quality to it (perhaps nightmarish might be more appropriate a description in places) ...

... one can never really tell if a character who seems to be a mainstay is in fact here for the duration or if, moments later, he will disappear in a spray of blood, intestines, and loose body parts. If the intention is to heighten the frightening uncertainty of combat he does it exceptionally well...

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS script review:

http://scriptzone.forumculture.net/ftop ... REVIEW.htm

I doubt that both Eastwood and Scorsese will both make it to the party this year. But it would make the Oscars more interesting if it happened.

"For the less experienced viewer, the images which the script specifies in this sequence are, to be blunt, graphic to the point where Saving Private Ryan looks like a walk in the park. "

I hate hyperbole.

Has no one mentioned Bobby? It was recently plugged in for November 22, an obviously historical date.

Bobby could really be this year's Crash, if it's as good as I hope (at least to 75% of the critics, but we already know that a movie can be a little more divisive and still win BP)... and I don't get the joke about Emilio Estevez, really - I mean, Paul Haggis was making Walker the Texas Ranger a few years ago..


Also, I wouldn't rule out "smaller" films like Running With Scissors and Little Miss Sunshine...

The cast for Bobby:

Anthony Hopkins
Demi Moore
Sharon Stone
Elijah Wood
Emilio Estevez
Nick Cannon
Joy Bryant
Spencer Garrett
Joshua Jackson
Lindsay Lohan
William H. Macy
Martin Sheen
Freddy Rodriguez
Christian Slater
Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Brian Geraghty
Helen Hunt
David Krumholtz
Shia LaBeouf
Kip Pardue
Orlando Seale
Jacob Vargas
Harry Belafonte
Laurence Fishburne III
Heather Graham


this can ressurect/reignite a lot of careers if done well...

I'm no fan of The Good Shepherd on paper, DiNiro (strike me down now O Lord!) or this project in general (I hate Pesci too), but the reasons for The Good Shepherd are as good as any and better than most if you play the numbers.

1. As you mentioned, the cast, including several Oscar winners and the potentially white hot Matt Damon ( + The Departed, + Bourne in 2007)

2. Hollywood "Legend" Actor/Director

3. 3 Nom (and one of those a win) Oscar Screenwriter, Eric Roth (Munich, Insider, Forrest Gump)

4. Major studio who can get Oscar noms (Universal)

5. Released on 22 Dec 2006 in the USA... almost always is a film released in that week timeframe nominated for Best Picture (or has a really, really strong chance)... last year this was Munich.

6. Semi-biopic, historical, drama = Good Oscar theme

7. High technical possibility, including 5 nom/2 win Cinematographer Robert Richardson, 6 nom/1 win music by James Horner, 1 time nominee editor Tariq Anwar, 3 noms for the production design team, 3 noms/1 win for the costumer, etc. etc. etc.

The chances, at this point, that The Good Shepherd gets an Original Screenplay nod is high at the moment assuming that getting a Screenplay nomination in the original category is not a particularly astounding feet due to the few amount of worthy candidates.

The Good Sheperd needs to be a little better than "good" to be a player, and approaching "good/great" to be a nominee, it has *so* much going for it at this moment. I think it's a bigger competitor than The Departed. I think it may be the biggest competitor by the numbers out there. Flags of Our Fathers is huge, but is lacking in the cast dept. and is likely not to score any of the two big acting awards (maybe a supporting) due to it being (if I'm looking at it right) such an ensemble piece.

I think it's pretty sure that 2 of these 3 films will be nominated for Best Picture:

The Good Shepherd
Flags of Our Fathers
The Departed

It does seem like this year's Oscar race won't be dominated by indies again, so I guess that's different, at least.

There's a second script review by Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeff Wells of Flags of our Fathers, which basically underscores the review above. Cinematical's Martha Fischer observes that: "While Wells says that the draft is good - a possible Oscar front-runner, even - he's less impressed than he was by the tight Enemies script, calling the Flags draft "a sad, compassionate, sometimes horrifically violent piece that's essentially plotless and impressionistic and assembled like a kind of time-tripping poem." Whoa. The fact that that sounds like potentially one of the best war movies I've ever seen simply confirms what Wells figured out: it's basically an art house film, wrapped in big studio money and with a big-name cast."

Here's the Wells piece:

Regarding Fathers

There isn't anyone out there who doesn't expect Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers (DreamWorks/Paramount) to rank as a probable Best Picture contender later this year, but it won't be screened for another four or five months or so why not chill and write about something else?

Then I figured, "Naaah." I knew I could at least get an idea of how this World War II tone poem will play if I would just focus and sit down and read a March 2005 draft of Paul Haggis's script that's been sitting on my desktop for the last month or two. So I did that last night, and I have to say, in all candor...

I'm not saying it's not a likely Oscar favorite, or that it doesn't have the earmarks, in fact, of a presumptive front-runner. But all I can really say for sure, having slept on Haggis's 119-page script, is that I'm genuinely impressed, but at the same time I'm wondering how much broad-based appeal the film will turn out to have.

Put bluntly, the script reads like Saving Private Ryan's artier, more glum-faced brother. It has a lot of the same battle carnage and then some, a bit of the old- WWII-veteran-looking-back vibe and minus the manipulative Spielberg tearjerk factor but also with less of a narrative through-line.

Fathers is a sad, compassionate, sometimes horrifically violent piece that's essentially plotless and impressionistic and assembled like a kind of time-tripping poem -- a script made from slices of memory and pieces of bodies and heartfelt hugs and salutes from family members and politicians back home, and delivered with a lot of back-and-forth cutting.

So it's basically a montage thing that's obviously more of an art film than a campfire tale, and that means that the sector that says "give us a good story and enough with the arty pretensions" is going to be thinking "hmmmm" as they leave the screening room.

Unless, of course, there's more to Eastwood's film than can be gleamed from Haggis's script, in which case fine and I can't wait.

Flags of Our Fathers is about the loneliness and apartness of young soldiers living in two worlds -- the godawful battle-of-Iwo-Jima world where everything is ferocious and pure and absolute, and the confusing, lost-in-the-shuffle world of back home, where almost everything feels off and incomplete.

There are many, many characters in Flags but it's basically about three of the six young Marines who raised the American flag on a pole atop Mt. Surabachi during the Iwo Jima fighting in early 1945, resulting in a photo that was sent around the world and came to symbolize the valor of U.S. soldiers.

Three of the flag-raisers died in battle soon after, but the three survivors -- John Bradley (Ryan Phillipe), Ira Hayes (Adam Beach) and Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) -- were sent home to take bows and raise funds and build morale on a big public relations tour arranged by the military.

And the film -- the script, I mean -- is primarily about their vague feelings of alienation from their admirers and even, to some extent, their families. And vice versa.

Heroes, a narrator says at the end, are something we need and create for ourselves. But the soldiers don't get it or want it. They only feel for each other. They may have fought for their country, but they died for their friends.

Fathers will be what it will be, and if it's not a big Oscar thing at the end of the day, it'll certainly settle in with a lot of us as a mature, respectable meditation piece with its head and heart in the right place, and Eastwood and Haggis with another big feather in their caps.

And maybe Adam Beach, who has the meatiest role, with a Best Supporting Actor nomination...who knows? Ira Hayes, portrayed by Tony Curtis in a 1961 Delbert Mann film called The Outsider, is an emotionally unruly Native American who is far less able to deal with the guilt of being called a war hero than the other two, and it eventually takes him down.

As ridiculously early as this may sound to the tut-tutters out there, the early front-runner status for Fathers comes from four headwind factors:

(1) It's been directed by Eastwood, a two-time Best Picture Oscar winner (Million Dollar Baby , Unforgiven) who's made plenty of genre-type films but when he's in his pared down poetic mode, look out. Especially now that's reached a kind of Bunuelian master stage in his career.

(2) The writing hand of Haggis, arguably the hottest and most Oscar-awarded screenwriter around these days, having just won the Original Screenplay Oscar for Crash after his Million Dollar Baby screenplay was Oscar-nominated in the Best Adapted category the year before.

(3) The whoa-he's-directing-two-movies-about-the-same-subject factor, which is about Eastwood shooting a second Iwo Jima film, called Red Sun, Black Sand, that takes the perspective of Japanese soldiers during the conflict, and particularly that of a Japanese general to be played by Ken Watanabe. This is roughly the DGA equivalent of a top-drawer actor gaining 40 pounds or playing a handicapped person in an Oscar-bait performance. The sheer effort -- the audacity -- of making two Iwo Jima movies and releasing them both this year (within three or four months of each other) means attention will certainly be paid.

(4) The "I love you, Dad" or "I miss you, Dad" emotional factor among all the 40ish and 50ish baby-boomer Academy members whose fathers either served in World War II or were part of that generation, and have either passed or are not far from this. The Academy declined to give the Best Picture Oscar to a half-great World War II film when they blew off Saving Private Ryan. Even if it's not unanimously adored, Flags of Our Fathers will probably be the last ambitious and high-pedigree film to be made about that conflict, and support will come from that. World WWII stories are fading out along with the men who fought it, so Flags is most likely going to be the last big hurrah.

And all in all, Fathers is a hell of a three-course meal and a very ambitious film (especially coupled with the currently rolling Japanese variant) for a 75 year-old director to grapple with. I love Eastwoood's energy and ambition, but let's see what happens as far as industry acclaim and awards and all that.

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/archives ... _fathe.php

August 2006 is a tough time for films like this, especially when it's likely to get buried by 2 or three other historical epics. I wouldn't rule out acting from this film, but this is a real tough one to see down the line.

I wouldn't call it "this year's Crash" because by saying "this year's Crash" I immediately think that you are saying "a small film that will create controversy and win nominations and votes with a passionate core of followers". I don't think Bobby fits that bill.


Assuming that everything turns out for Sony like they want it to (quality wise): Running with Scissors is probably dead in the water for Best Picture at the Oscars or anything major maybe other than Actress (depending on the pull of Benning) and Comedy noms at the Globes. It's getting released in mid-September, it's a comedyish, and Sony would be much more likely to push Marie-Antoinette (Oct 13) and The Da Vinci Code. There also might be Stranger than Fiction, but who knows how that will turn out.

Little Miss Sunshine... Comedy/Drama, July 28th release date. Fox Searchlight... probably not looking too good for this one.

Negative or positive, you can't really trust Wells

It's actually being released on November 22nd, so... (and doesn't it have the Weinstein Co. behind it?) But yeah, the Crash comparison was mainly because of the big cast composed by many actors that really need this movie to work to give a new turn to their careers...

Yeah, I'm sorry, I got my wires crossed. Too many windows open.

Weinstein Co. means nothing at this point. They been able to snag an actress award but the jury is still out on whether they can really break into the market with anything like this and whether or not the Academy likes the Weinsteins at this particular moment.

Sorry to say but I find most of those arguments too generalised to be meaningful. They could just as easily apply to any half-serious studio pic with a previous Oscar winner or nominee amongst the talent. Every year studios turn out these kind of December releases in the hope of Oscar attention and every year most of them crash and burn. And of course releasing in December is as much a marketing ploy as anything. It's certainly no guarantee of quality. At this incredibly early point in the game I think the three most important factors in judging potential nominees are who the writer is, whose directing it and the films theme. If we examine those:

Theme: Apart from IMDB's bald description of it being a history of the CIA seen through one persons eyes there doesn't seem to be any info about its theme. Without that it's impossible to judge whether it really is an Academy kind of movie.

Director: DeNiro may well be the best actor of his generation but he's no 'legendary' director and has no track record in that department with the Academy so there's really nothing to be gained by trumpeting his involvement.

Writer: Script by Eric Roth, winner of an Oscar 16 years ago for writing Forrest Gump . Hmm. That's something of a signifier I guess, still not much though. Are there any script reviews of The Good Shepherd online?


The lack of star names didn't prevent the cast of Brokeback Mountain from getting nominated and it won't hurt Flags of our Fathers either.


Sometimes his instincts are right (he was the first to call Million Dollar Baby as the BP winner in a Dec '04 column), sometimes wrong. But in that he's no different than any other pundit. Personally I find ol' Jeff quite readable. He has passion for his subject which is always a good thing.

Editing a bit:

I know you are a bit on Flags of our Fathers (you are coming off as a bit rabid), and that's okay, but to ignore all that Good Shepherd has going for it at the moment is in my view a bit misguided. If you go by the numbers, Good Shepherd is a big Oscar-bait film, it has the pedigree, and it has a good chance of getting the recognition it needs and a STUDIO that is capable of getting mediocre product nominated.

Which all assumes it's mediocre/good. I mean, it *could* be really great, and Flags could completely miss the mark. *shrug*.


This is not the argument. Whether it's a ploy or not is irrelevant, these types of films typically garner attention with the Academy. I see no difference in this and Flags of Our Fathers as far a pedigree goes, they are both insanely strong. If you want to argue that Flags or Departed is more of a "sure thing" then fine, but Good Shepherd is still way up there.


Which Good Shepherd fits all of that pretty well. The director is well known, even if his films aren't the most acclaimed. There is a history of actors turned directors with success at the Oscars (Redford, Costner, Gibson and of course Eastwood). Whether or not he will *win* is irrelevant. With the producers he has and the cast members, cinematographers, etc. he shouldn't have to impossible of a task delivering something at least on the level of (for example) Bennet Miller or Paul Haggis from 2005.

Keep in mind, Flags of Our Fathers will not be the ONLY nominee, it's merely one of five.


Don't forget, nominated last year for Munich and The Insider. He's in "the system" he has awareness among his writers.


I disagree, but this is a guess on its quality, which I'm not expecting to be tremendous given the people whom Eastwood has chosen. Even if the film is nominated, I expect it to do so with very little attention in the acting categories. Given that BP often has a little bit of a correlation with BP nominees sometimes, I think that Good Shepherd potentially has more of a chance for Actor/Actress/Supportings/etc.


Predicting Million Dollar Baby as the winner in 2004 is kind of empty. We all thought it would be The Aviator (with usually a groan because more people liked Million because they were passionate about it and Sideways would never win) but it wasn't too incredibly daring at the time. If you said November or October, that would have been more impressive.

By the way, my list of potential-players-but-who-knows-it-could-go-either-way are:

United 93 and World Trade Center. Probably more realistic for the later, but it will be interesting to see how the 9/11 films do and how they could potentially fit in to this year's Oscar season.

Marie-Antoinette. Sofia Coppola's third film. Its success probably relies less on Coppola, who's proven herself a good director than Kirsten Dunst. Dunst is like Witherspoon, she has it in there to do that *one* performance but she hasn't got close to anything resembling a Best Actress nomination in awhile. Marie-Antoinette could be one of this year's indies if it works all around.

Across the Universe. A long shot. With Frida and Titus under her belt, one hopes that someday Julie Taymor can break through.

The Black Dahlia. One of my faves: De Palma in a film with Johansson, Swank, Hartnett and Eckhart. 1940's Hollywood bio-pic.

A Good Year. Ridley Scott + Russell Crowe in a movie about wine. Hmmmmm... (Nov 10th).

The Painted Veil. Naomi Watts + Edward Norton + Liev Schreiber in a film by John Curran (We Don't Live here Anymore). Is a period piece I think. Has romance, disease, spiritual quest, all that shizz. (Nov 17th)

Pursuit of Happyness. One of about 1,000 movies directed by a woman this year (see also The Holiday opening in December with Winslett, Diaz and Jude Law). This is the big Will Smith drama movie. The theme: "A struggling salesman (Will Smith) takes custody of his son (Jaden Smith) as he's poised to begin a life-changing professional endeavor. " Oscarbait! Opens in Dec.

Hasn't De Palma "lost it" a while ago?

Nice try andaroo, but my assessment of The Good Shepherd is in no way affected by my opinion of Flags. If more solid evidence painting TGS as a serious contender emerges later in the year I'll be more than happy to acknowledge it.



I agree.



Isn't it? You were the one who mentioned the December release date of The Good Shepherd as a factor in its status as frontrunner. I'm just pointing out how little weight you can place in that (and Crash opened in - what was it- May or something?!!)



To briefly restate my argument; 1) we don't know what the theme of The Good Shepherd is and until we do it's unwise to assert that a movie about the history of the CIA somehow automatically lines up with the Academy's tastes. 2) DeNiro is not an Oscar bait director and 3) only Eric Roth as an Academy award winning/nominated screenwriter can really be taken as a signifier of anything. Doesn't mean The Good Shepherd won't become a contender just means that right now, for me at least, the evidence isn't there.

Andaroo, I'm not playing the game of 'knocking one film in order to praise the other' (even if you think that) and really have no opinion about Flags beyond feeling that it's a safe frontrunner for nominations based on the 3 factors mentioned above.



Are you being obtuse or do you genuinely not understand? We don't know what the theme is - but if you do then please, point me in the direction of a script review or some other source that explains this. DeNiro has had no success with the Academy and what on earth does being 'well known' have to do with anything? Are you saying that regardless of the quality of his direction he'll be nominated simply because he's a famous actor? Unless it's an extremely weak year for directors that isn't very likely.



Yes, I do realise that.



Obviously Eastwood's direction of actors and their Oscar wins speaks for itself, so I won't waste my time debating this.



How can it be 'kind of empty' when his reasoning was spot on?!! The moment the first screenings of Baby were held in early November and word started spreading about the sensational critical reaction the whole race changed. Wells knew that Baby's emotional wallop would put it over the top in the Academy's judgement against cold, distant Aviator. When he said as much on December 8th (just a month after the first press screening) he was simply saying out loud what many people were already privately thinking. From December through to the DGA award the Scorsese fans were, in that memorable phrase, 'not waving but drowning' and after the DGA they were simply deluded (and vitriolic with it).

I'm going to try to diffuse this a bit. Quite frankly, this is the wrong way for you and I to set off on this board, so let's pull it back a little.


You've provided no "solid evidence" of Flags as a serious contendor other than the same sort of Oscar indicators that I am trying to convince you that exist for The Good Shepherd. You've provided opinions and quotes and stats, and I can definately do the same easily with The Good Shepherd. Do I think you are wrong in your assessment of Flags? No, although you seem rather passionate about it (that's the way I read it).

I personally don't care if you acknowledge it or not, because I don't care about TGS, I'm just trying to see if there is something in the equasion I have overlooked, and you have not convinced me that I have overlooked anything.

This has A LOT to do with our differences in how we pick an actual "frontrunner" for a nomination (quotes because, there are multiples this year).


Crash is one nominee. Munich opened in the same timeframe (Christmas), The Aviator (big contendor) opened in the timeframe, ROTK opened in the timeframe, on and on and on. The Christmas timeframe is seen as PRIME real-estate for releasing Oscar-bait films, and it makes sense as well. This is a well known indicator. Key word: indicator. Keep in mind, we are not talking about set in stone nominations or WHO WILL WIN.


I have no problem articulating the theme with The Good Sheperd any more than I do with Dreamgirls or what we know of The Departed. If you want to read more about it, the film is partially based off the life of this man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Jesus_Angleton

I especially like this on the wikipedia page: "During the years in development hell, Roth's script earned the informal honour of being 'Hollywood's best unproduced script'."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_S ... %28film%29


I feel you are putting too much emphasis on the single aspect of the piece as you previously stated when I provided multiple pieces which add up to a great pedigree.

If you will read again, I say that ALL these films that we are talking about depend on a certain level of quality. the Good Shepherd, like The Departed, Dreamgirls, Flags, etc. HAS to be a least considered "good" in order to be in the running for the top 5. I does NOT have to be an art film to be nominated and the film (it is possible) can be nominated WITHOUT him (as we forgot last year).

When I say that DeNiro has to deliver a quality product and then challenging that, which is fine. I question whether Scorese can do The Departed as well, but I trust that with his previous material, with his connections and with the people involved in this, they can definately deliver something that's passible for a Best Director nomination.

In my view, and the view of MANY others, being "well known" and popular has very much to do with how the Oscars are played. It often is a popularity contest and not a true validation of artistic merit. The "Hollywood" pull exists. He has friends. The studio has contacts. It's a big picture. It has a great chance of getting votes for non-artistic reasons. Was Clooney hurt last year by his celebrity. Would Good Night have been as fortunate to get the publicity and distribution and word of mouth without being "the George Clooney movie". Personally, in my opinion, no.

Again, it's not one thing with this film (like Scorsese and The Departed... well... the Departed has more, but Scorese is the pull), it's the whole package and picture you have to consider with this film.


You are very quick to give Eastwood's film a pass on unknown factors and damning me for doing the same. As you say DeNiro has little experience directing, I can say that Paul Walker and Jesse Bradford have little experience acting in what I call quality roles. Can Eastwood pull it off? Maybe! Eastwood has directed many films I don't personally think are very good.

Please keep in mind, I am not saying DeNiro will be nominated instead of Eastwood. I'm not saying he will be nominated at all! I just think the studio will definately put him in there and The Good Shepherd is a *big* player at this stage in the Oscar forcast.

As for Jeffrey Wells, I'm glad someone reads his stuff, but I never will. I'm not impressed, and with him, I never will be.

The Prestige has an outside shot, I actually think it'll be that one incredibly well recieved movie that ends up getting snubbed of a nod ( ala Eternal Sunshine ) BUT it is coming out in October, so it'll be fresh in everyones mind.

Nolan
Bale
Jackman
Caine
Johansson

I really dont think Nolan can do any wrong.