So, I was going to make a totally seperate thread claiming this the winner right now, but decided this thread is rich enough to just put it here. Good thread guys.

This is going to win this year. I'm watching all the competition fall by the waistside. Even if Departed is met with lukewarm reception, it would still be warmer than, say, anything else that has come out this year. And yes, they owe Marty, so if it comes down to one mildly well received movie vs another mildly well received movie, the finale is predictable. I see this one winning, and I am calling it now (along with so many others of you).

Most seem to be predicting a nomination, not an actual win. It's true that thus far it seems most movies havnt really been getting overwhelmingly positive receptions, but the two biggies ( Dreamgirls & Flags ) havnt really been screened yet ( Flags had one that supposedly went over very well ) and at the end of the day, Departed is still a gangster/crime flick.

I know I've been the biggest denouncer of all this oscar hype, but have you guys considered Vera Farmiga for Supporting Actress? The catagory is weak as hell, she just had a big 3 page feature in The New York Times about the state of actresses today with her as the centerpiece, and she won the LAFCA award for Best Actress last year for a movie no one has seen, so people know her.

Something to consider.

New York Observer

Scorsese Electrifies with Departed

Andrew Sarris Review

http://www.observer.com/20061002/200610 ... movies.asp

That atleast wont hold it back from nominations but a win could go either way really. It all depends on the competition. If Flags and/or Dreamgirls get raves - it will be hard for Departed to take the best pic honours - but Director isnt out of the question.

Yeah, if I were to call out a winner for The Deparated now it would be for Scorcese. Critics are raving about how the old Scorcese is finally back, doing what he does so well. I could see a different film winning Best Picture, but Scorcese nabbing Director.

But I think The Deparated is overall the frontrunner right now. Like I predicted already, I don't see Flags of our Fathers being nominated for Best Picture. And Dreamgirls isn't out yet (so, it could impress or falter).

PEACE, Mike.

Yes - The Departed is the only one of the three that has actually come out and passed all the tests. Jury is still out on Flags and Dreamgirls.

Sasha Stone on The Departed:



I hope this means Mav joins me in my "The Departed WON'T Be Nominated for Best Picture Club."

Is there a way around Nicholson being nominated for this one? I don't think so. Probably time to start proclaiming him a lock or at least a near-lock.

Imagine if Robert De Niro actually had ended up playing the police chief as planned, instead of Martin Sheen (De Niro dropped ut because of scheduling conflicts with The Good Shepherd)... Man, the status of the film would be even high and it'd be a lock for a Best Ensemble SAG win. De Niro, Nicholson, DiCaprio, Damon...

Also, originally Scorsese planned for Kate Winslet or Hilary Swank to play Vera Farmiga's role...

Rolling Stone Review

Peter Travers

Maybe you've heard the Internet buzz about The Departed being an old-school cop flick, unburdened by profundity. Maybe you'll think so too if you don't pay a lick of attention to what's onscreen. Or maybe you'll recognize The Departed for what it is: a new American crime classic from the legendary Martin Scorsese, whose talent shines here on its highest beams. A title card sets the scene: boston. some years ago. And we're off, watching Leonardo DiCaprio as a cop pretending to be a hood and Matt Damon as his opposite. Both are trapped in circumstances where you can't tell the good from the bad.

All the actors bring their A games to this triumphant bruiser of a film, its darkly wanton wit the only defense against complete chaos. DiCaprio and Damon give explosive, emotionally complex performances, but it must be said that Jack Nicholson reaches undreamed-of heights of decadent devilment as Irish mob kingpin Frank Costello. Whether he's wielding a gun or a dildo, buying off cops, dissing Catholic priests as pederasts, seducing children into a life of crime, letting it snow cocaine on favored hookers or chatting while elbow-deep in blood, Nicholson is electrifying. Dispassionately executing a woman on a beach, Costello notes to his henchman Mr. French (a terrific Ray Winstone), "She fell funny." But Costello is no campy Joker. Channeling James Cagney in White Heat and Paul Muni in Scarface, Nicholson leeches out the glamour to create a landmark portrait of evil.

William Monahan's stinging script, a revelation after his murky meandering in last year's Kingdom of Heaven, transfers the plot of the terrific 2002 Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs to his native Boston so he can drill down to its depraved core. Those familiar with the gangs of Beantown will see Whitey Bulger -- the Irish thug still being pursued by the FBI -- in Nicholson's sick twist of a character. This is vital, visceral filmmaking, indebted to Michael Ballhaus' vibrant cinematography and Howard Shore's evocative score, boosted by Scorsese's typically astute soundtrack choices -- a unique uniting of the Stones, John Lennon, Nas, Van Morrison, the Beach Boys and Patsy Cline. And once again, Thelma Schoonmaker turns editing into an art form. She's the wizard at Scorsese's side, getting the action to jump off the screen while setting up psychological provocations that reverb hellishly in your head.

Ignore the irrelevant fan-boy questions: Will Scorsese finally win his Oscar? Is The Departed as brilliant as GoodFellas? Is it too gory to be a blockbuster? The Departed, flawed by a few underwritten characters and some overwrought imagery (the symbolic rat), pins you to your seat.

Billy Costigan (DiCaprio) and Colin Sullivan (Damon), unknown to each other, are both trainees at the Massachusetts State Police Academy. For Billy, it's a goodbye to the Southies, the South Boston criminal element that formed him. For Colin, it's a chance to play mole for Costello, who trained him since boyhood. The drama intensifies when Billy is told that he will never wear the Statie uniform. His father figure, Capt. Queenan (Martin Sheen), wants Billy to go undercover and infiltrate Costello's crew. Billy's identity will be known only by Queenan and his flinty enforcer, Sgt. Dignam (a locked-and-loaded Mark Wahlberg gives a supporting role major dimensions). Colin, who thinks the Statie uniform makes you look "dressed to invade Poland," joins the suits led by Capt. Ellerby (the reliably superb Alec Baldwin) in the Special Investigations Unit. And so two rookies, assigned to rat out the people they work with, begin to unravel from the strain of maintaining identities antithetical to their true natures.

As in Infernal Affairs, there's a heap of coincidence. You might want to revoke the film's dramatic license when Billy and Colin both fall for Madolyn (Vera Farmiga), the shrink who treats Billy and moves in with Colin. Luckily, Farmiga (Down to the Bone) is a glorious actress, a combustible mix of smarts and sex appeal, who reveals that Madolyn is as lost and off-the-rails as the two men.

The violence? Most of it is saved for the film's final act, where it's enough to give you whiplash. Scorsese correctly refuses to go wussy on the corruption that extends from Costello's nest of vipers to the State House, whose gold dome Colin sees from the window of his chic apartment on Beacon Hill. Damon, building on his no-bull turns in Syriana and the two Bourne films, brings a coiled-spring intensity to Colin, whose double life is taking its toll (for one thing, he's often impotent). Scorsese allows telling glimpses of the child in these men. Colin dreads betrayal by Costello, the thug who filled his scrawny twelve-year-old arms with groceries and made him his slave. Billy uses drugs to numb his fear but can't find anything -- family, friend, lover, church, government -- to trust. DiCaprio does himself proud in a risky role that stabs at the heart as Billy's bravado loses the battle to his jangling nerves. Though DiCaprio and Damon share only one big scene, their climactic rooftop face-off reflects the film's bleak view of a world where nothing is held sacred.

Scorsese doesn't need gore to make his points. A scene with Billy and a vibrating cell phone matches Hitchcock for suspense. Another, deftly borrowed from The Third Man, simply involves Madolyn walking past Colin at a funeral, her impassive gaze deadlier than a speeding bullet. Issues of sin, redemption, identity and loyalty resonate in Scorsese's films, including the atypical Kundun, Age of Innocence and The Aviator. Each new film absorbs the others, creating a body of work that can stand with the greatest. Scorsese tops the list of American directors because, even when he fails, he strives passionately to make movies that matter. The Departed, a defiantly uncompromised vision of a society rotting from the inside, is one of his best. Act accordingly.

From the NY premiere of The Departed

Future SAG Ensemble Winners?

Marty with his favorite actor

This is a lock for a Best Pic nomination. And Scorcese is looking better and better for a Best Director win. The way I see it, the Academy voters will feel vindicated for not giving him a mercy oscar for GONY or Aviator and now give him one for a film he truly deserves.

He seems to have a knack for his best films losing out to an actor turned director - Raging Bull loses to Redford's Ordinary People, Goodfellas loses to Costner's Dancing with Wolves and Aviator loses to Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby. Could Eastwood steal another away from him? Let's wait and see!

My biggest concern is that Im so hyped for this film that i'll be dissapointed upon first viewing.

As far as SAG BP goes, here are the past 10 winners

Crash
Sideways
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Chicago
Gosford Park
Traffic
American Beauty
Shakespeare in Love
Full Monty
Birdcage
Apollo 13

It's a lock for Best Adapted Screenplay (nomination). Every single review praises the script.

The Hollywood Reporter

The Departed

By Kirk Honeycutt

Bottom line: Martin Scorsese makes a most welcome return to the mean streets of crime and corruption.
Thank God we have Martin Scorsese back. After a couple of films where one of the best directors ever seemed more intent on pleasing Academy voters than millions of admirers, Scorsese returns to contemporary crime fiction with a hugely satisfying bang.

"The Departed" is a robust piece of storytelling and his best film since "Casino" in 1995. Everything is rock solid: Top actors with meaty roles that let them go to the edge without toppling over that edge, a story that keeps upping the tension and emotional ante every few minutes, Michael Ballhaus' gliding camera and shadowy lighting, Kristi Zea's atmospheric sets and Thelma Schoonmaker's tight, rhythmic editing all conspire to take us into a heart of urban darkness.

Best of all, Scorsese's relaxed energy infuses the film with excitement in every frame, thus elevating a gangster story to the level of tragedy. With Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg top-billed, "The Departed" should attract a sizable audience, though men certainly will outnumber women.

The film, written by William Monahan ("Kingdom of Heaven"), derives from "Infernal Affairs," a hugely popular 2002 Hong Kong crime thriller co-directed by Alan Mak and Andrew Lau Wai Keung and written by Mak and Felix Chong. That too was a doozy of tight construction and breathtaking suspense. The story remains remarkably intact despite its transfer from cops and criminals in Hong Kong to a war between state police and a tough Irish mob in south Boston.

The genius of both films is to focus on two moles on opposite sides of the law. Each has risen to a position of authority and responsibility, making him a lethally effective spy. Only by this time, each has wearied of the constant deceptions and lies, of the loneliness and terror of being stranded in a no-man's-land between good and evil. Indeed the Chinese title, "Mo-gaan-do," refers to the lowest level of hell in Buddhism.

Mob boss Frank Costello (Nicholson) hand-picks young Colin Sullivan (Damon) at an early age to mentor then slip into the ranks of the state police. Colin swiftly rises through the ranks to a spot in the Special Investigation Unit, whose main focus is to take down Frank Costello.

Meanwhile, another police rookie, Billy Costigan (DiCaprio), is asked by two powerful men in that unit -- the caustic Sgt. Dignam (Wahlberg) and his level-headed superior Capt. Queenan (Martin Sheen) -- to live down to his reputation of a street hothead. For credibility's sake, he is very publicly busted out of the state police, does a stint in prison and gets tossed onto the streets, where he can infiltrate the Costello gang. After a recruitment by Frank's right-hand man, Mr. French (Ray Winstone), and a brutal interrogation by Frank himself, he's in.

It's only a matter of time before these parallel careers crisscross at a dangerous intersection. In a sequence that fans of the original film will quickly recognize, during an illicit transaction between Frank's gang and Chinese government agents over the sale of military parts, both cops and criminals recognize that a mole exists within their respective camps. Pressure mounts excruciatingly as each mole must find ways to communicate via cell phone during the operation. Then, afterward, each races against time to discover the identity of the other man to save himself.

One other intersection in their lives that stretches coincidence pretty thinly is psychologist Madolyn (Vera Farmiga), who specializes in both cops and criminals. Colin strikes up a flirtation with her, and before long she moves in with him. Billy, as part of his parole, is forced to see Madolyn professionally. At first he does so reluctantly, then discovers she is his sole lifeline to the normal life he desperately craves. That this highly charged relationship would also turn sexual is more than far-fetched. But Madolyn's dual relationship with these men lets each reveal vulnerabilities he is unable to show elsewhere.

Costello is a familiar piece of acting from Nicholson -- part demented caricature, part tongue-in-cheek flamboyance. But the actors surrounding Nicholson rise to the occasion so that he neither dominates the movie nor wastes away in buffoonery.

DiCaprio brings a level of emotional intensity and maturity missing so far in his adult roles. His Billy has a tough soul, but the inner core is about to crack and the fissures are becoming too evident. Damon is a walking contradiction: He looks and acts more like a cop than anyone else in the movie, yet he's a phony. Damon doesn't let us inside his character the way DiCaprio does; instead his Colin buries emotions in a place he discovered so many years ago in Frank's service.

Wahlberg is nasty and coarse as Dignam, knowing full well his partner, Sheen's Queenan, offsets his corrosiveness. Theirs is a good cop/bad cop routine -- only directed not at criminals but fellow cops.

Winstone as the emotionless killer and Alec Baldwin as the crime unit's captain are loyalists to the system who work opposite sides of the street. Farmiga -- a fine actress coming into her own in this role and in Anthony Minghella's "Breaking and Entering" -- not only provides a welcome breath of femininity but as the only character not a cop or a crook, she becomes the moral center of the film.

"The Departed" is a ferociously entertaining film.

Yay! I'm seeing it Thursday afternoon. The best part of working with Scorsese's biggest fan? Getting to see The Departed in IMAX. Who else gets to say that? Loyal, you are welcome to fly down here for any of our IMAX screenings... there should be one Friday.... or you can come Thursday, when the manager, a few others, and myself will be watching in our biggest theater... this goes for anyone else. Woooo Party.

Sasha Stone is going ga-ga over it.

oh go on and quit your job already.

I'll be in Savannah next week so no dice. But check your PM for important post Savannah info.

Well, I have to say I'm a little surprised. I was a little skeptical of the October 6 release date, but it looks like this is still going to be coming out swinging.

So excited to see it. It's the first movie I've actually been excited about seeing since like Little Miss Sunshine in early August.

Oh, I quit, but that doesn't mean I don't get benefits. I made an arrangement to assist during xmas, so I get to stay in the loop and help out with all of our "fun stuff".

Let me know how Savannah is because I'm seriously considering SCAD for college. Lemme know.

Libs, I completely agree. The buzz is pretty great on this.

Departed review on Ebert and Roeper


Kevin Smith (in for Ebert) says

Two massive thumbs up
Damon and DiCaprio give career best performances
Sublime supporting performance by Wahlberg, Baldwin, Farminga ect


Richard Roeper says

Best movie so far this year
A great film

Is Nicholson going to be lead or supporting?

If he is supprting, I'm pretty darn sure DiCaprio will get a nomination for lead.
If he is leading, Damon has a great shot for a supporting nom (unless he also goes for lead).

Anyone think Vera Farmiga could snatch a Supp. Actress nom?

Yeah.

Lorraine Bracco did for Goodfellas, I see no reason why Vera Farmiga couldn't, especially considering the category is weak so far.

*starts coutdown*

I want to see this NOW!