The Departed


Well, time for me to create a thread for one of the movies I'll probably be pimping this year.

Before anyone jumps at me, no I do not predict this to win Picture/Director. It is possible, but very unlikely at this point. I still think the film will garner its fair share of nominations and get positive reactions from the critics. The only thing currently hurting it is the early release date. They should be releasing it 2-3 weeks later.

No, here's for the basics:

Director:


Martin Scorsese:

5 Best Director Oscar nominations
2 Best Screenplay Oscar nominations
6 DGA nominations
6 Best Director Golgen Globe nominations, 1 win

His films:

5 Best Picture Oscar nominations
6 Best Picture Golden Globe nominations
2 PGA nominations


Cast:


Leonardo DiCaprio:

2 Oscar nominations (1 lead, 1 supporting)
4 Golden Globe nominations (3 lead, 1 supporting), 1 win
1 SAG nomination (lead)

Matt Damon:

1 Oscar nomination (lead, not counting the screenplay win)
2 Golden Globe nominations (both lead)
1 SAG nomination (lead)

Jack Nicholson:

12 Oscar nominations (8 lead, 4 supporting), 3 wins (2 lead, 1 supporting)
16 Golden Globe nominations (12 lead, 4 supporting), 6 wins (5 lead, 1 supporting)
2 SAG nominations (lboth lead), 1 win

Martin Sheen:

1 Golden Globe nomination (supporting) + 7 GG TV nominations
5 SAG TV nominations

Alec Baldwin:

1 Oscar nomination (supporting)
1 Golden Globe nominations (supporting) + 3 GG TV nominations
2 SAG TV nominations


Composer:


Howard Shore:

2 Oscar nominations, 2 wins
3 Golden Globe nominations, 2 wins


Cinematographer:


Michael Ballhaus:

3 Oscar nominations
1 ASC nomination


Editor:


Thelma Schoonmaker:

5 Oscar nominations, 2 wins
5 ACE nominations, 3 wins


Costume Designer:


Sandy Powell:

7 Oscar nominations, 2 wins
1 CDG nomination



Those should be the main ones...

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The weakness obviously lies in the screenwriter, William Monahan. His only filmed script so far was Kingdom of Heaven, a movie that was not "all that" in the screenplay department. However, it does have a fairly strong cast with four previous Oscar nominees (overall 16 Oscar nominations for the cast, most Nicholson's of course). The director has a good track record with nominations (heh) as well. The early reviews are not glowing, but not any worse than Gangs of New York. It should finish with overall good reviews and its likely solid box-office will help its profile.

Scorsese is probably to big of a name and too much overdue to be left out of the race completely. He'll likely be gven a honorable nom and same for the picture. DiCaprio will almost certainly be nominated this year, I'm just unsure whether it will be for The Departed or The Blood Diamond. One thing is for sure, the one will boost the profile of the other.

Currently, this is what I predict nominations-wise at the Oscars:

Best Picture
Best Director
Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio)
Best Supporting Actor (Jack Nicholson)
Best Editing
Best Cinematography
Best Score

It should also score a PGA nom, a SAG nom for Nicholson (maybe DiCaprio) and a SAG ensemble nom. Not sure about DGA.

I'll track the film in this thread for its awards and reviews etc. (unless it is complete garbage of course, heh).

No festival play. Early October release date. Materials that are selling us a potboiler, nothing more.

If Nicholson blows everyone away, he could be in the Supporting race, but other than that The Departed looks nothing like a contender at this point, regardless of how many nominations Sandy Powell has.

Scorsese is left out of the race all the time. Prior to Gangs, correct me if I'm wrong, his last directing nomination was for Goodfellas...10 years earlier.

From far away, it sure looked like a contender, with the Oscar histories of all the participants...but as we get closer, we can start to read the writing on the wall. I really don't think The Departed is a factor this year.

Actually I'm not even convinced Nicholson is a contender. What little of his performance we saw in the trailer struck me as excruciatingly hammy. If he's like that all the way through I don't think he'll stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting nominated.

Hehe, the first reviewer at IMDb thought Infernal Affairs is a Japanese film. No wonder only 3 out of 22 people found it useful, even though it's a pretty long piece.

Hmm, I thought Matt Damon got 2 Oscar nominations. Which one am I wrong about? Nomination for Goodwill Hunting, or nomination for The Talented Mr. Ripley?

Didn't get for The Talented Mr. Ripley.

I'm not buying into the "bad buzz" just yet, I still think it's a contender. Maybe I'm saying this because I generally think the movie looks better than all the rest of the contenders, but honestly, I don't see why it should be near counted out yet. It's a running joke how due Scorsece is now, the academy isn't going to easily snub one of his Oscar movies from the show, especially since this is his "return to form," this is his return to the style of movie that made him famous, forgetting what he did in Gangs or Aviator. The cast is super of course, better than any other movie's this year, and all technical jobs involving the movie are top notch as well, as Lecter pointed out. The plotline is easy academy bait, it'll allow for showy performances, lots of big Oscar scenes, the genre has been awarded before. Also, this might be a dreaming point, but I believe that after the all serious and all indie show that was the Oscars last year, the academy might be interested in a bigger movie, a more fun movie, something a lot more audience friendly. The studio is Warner Bros., they have The Good German which could be a factor, and The Blood Diamond with Leo, but honestly I think if it came down to whether they push one of those movies or Scorsece and Jack Nicholson's The Departed, they'd probably choose the latter.

The only thing I see hurting it is the remake thing, but I think that can be surpassed. Being released in October is a non-factor. On paper, I see no reason why it should be discounted just yet, it's an Oscar bait movie by a big due director and a big cast. If the movie turns out bad, fine. Otherwise, I think it's being underestimated.

Damon might get a nomination... but not for this film.

And also the form that even though he basically perfected with movies like Goodfellas and Raging Bull couldnt even win an oscar against a movie like Ordinary People and Dances with Wolves.

But now the academy knows that, and he's due more than anyone else on earth. If he almost won with a movie like The Aviator, which is nowhere near his best that he showed in Goodfellas etc., if he comes back with the style that he's actually better at, it just gives him a bigger boost.

But Aviator was a movie about what hollywood loves the most HOLLYWOOD!!!!!! Still didnt win, the guy didnt even get a freakin split ( give best dirctor to Marty and M$B win best picture or other way around )

They arent honoring him for an irish gangsters flick. This year isnt a year with a bunch of push over films, Departed will have a damn hard time being honored and again I dont feel as though WB will be pushing this movie much. Especially with movies coming closer to Oscars that have a good chance at a nod like Good German, Blood Diamond, and even though Fountain might not look like a film the oscars would honor WB moved it to late November for a reason.

this has bad buzz? HAH!

at best it'll follow Cape Fear's route (acting nominations and nothing more)

There's the rub; it's becoming clearer and clearer that this movie is not, and perhaps never really was, Oscar bait.

Without the presence of the cast/director, I doubt this movie would have ever even been mentioned as a contender.

The Departed will be an Oscar factor only if the rest of the year turns out to be weak, I bet.

WB's marketing so far have made me think that they are not treating it as an Oscar movie.

You could very well be correct about that.

If the academy didn't "owe" Marty, I probably wouldn't be considering it a top 5 potential BP pick. Of course the director and cast help it out, as they do with most any film's chances, but it seems to take on a bit more weight than usual here.

Warner isn't positioning it as an Oscar flick. They know what they do or do not have. You don't just simply release a movie anymore and pray for Oscar gold. It's a chess game, not an instant win lottery.

<b>A dazzling "Departed"</b>

The best movie I've seen in Toronto thus far isn't even playing at the festival. Warner Bros. quietly invited a few journalists who are scheduled to interview Martin Scorsese via telephone next week to see The Departed, his remake of the 2002 Hong Kong police drama Infernal Affairs, about the cat-and-mouse games between an undercover cop (Leonardo DiCaprio) who infiltrates the mob and a mobster (Matt Damon) who infiltrates the Boston police force.

I'm not supposed to write too much about the movie yet, so I'll just say that anyone who's been waiting for Scorsese to return to form after the Oscar-baiting turgidness of The Aviator and Gangs of New York won't be disappointed. I don't know how The Departed will fare with Oscar voters: It's a cops-and-robbers genre piece, the kind of picture (The French Connection aside) Academy members tend to look down on for not being serious or weighty enough. But this is Scorsese's best and most invigorating work since the underrated Casino, if not GoodFellas, as well as his most sheerly entertaining.

DiCaprio and Damon both give career-high performances; Jack Nicholson, playing a mob kingpin, makes poetry out of his eloquently profane dialogue (his lines often reminded me of the dialogue in Deadwood); Vera Farmiga, as a psychiatrist, lives up to her hype as the Next Big Thing; and in smaller roles, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin and Martin Sheen are all aces. I had heard grumblings that the absence of The Departed from any of the big fall film festivals implied that the movie was probably a stinker. That may be the case with some other upcoming films, but <b>The Departed is class-A pulp - grave, resonant, psychologically complex and acted to the skies.</b> I can't wait to see it again.

<i>September 10, 2006 Rene Rodriguez Miami Herald Movie Critic</i>

That is quite a good review. I'm getting a really good vibe from The Departed, I recently saw an outstanding tv spot for it, and I think it has the potential to make waves in the acting categories and perhaps even director. Other than trivial accolades though, I believe personally that it will be my number one film at the end of the year.

What I like about what Im hearing about The Departed so far....

Its being treated like a regular film NOT looking for oscars - but just a kick ass film that could very well steal awards from oscar winner wanna-be's - and Im all for that. Im sick of studios flooding the last couple of months of the year with "quality" films just to get awards buzz - i'd rather a film be released that is meant to entertain and just happen to be damn good quality!

Just because Warner Bros. isn't giving this the Oscar marketing approach Miramax created doesn't mean to me that it's going to be forgotten about come Oscar season.

That's what I mean - they arent playing the Miramax style oscar game - which is refreshing and could actually help it during awards time.

Exactimundo. I've thought about it a lot tonight, and it's for just that reason that I think Universal's decision to move Children of Men to December (especially knowing now that it'll be released early fall everywhere else) might be one of the stupidest decisions of the 2006 Oscar race to date.

I had no idea it was opening in bascially every other territory before the states either, wow, thats incredibly odd.