Team FYC: Tye Sheridan for Best Actor

In this series we sound off (individually) on their favorite fringe contenders. Here's Philippe Ostiguy on Tye Sheridan in "Mud"

It is no secret that, while the Academy rarely misses an opportunity to reward a young actress’ breakout, it likes to keep the boys running a while longer – in fact, over the past twelve years, female acting nominees have been on average a full eight years younger than their male counterparts. Little Tye Sheridan, then, has virtually no chance of catching voters’ eyes, especially in a field as crowded as this year’s Best Actor category, and with a film that peaked in buzz back in May.

But boy, does he deserve a chance. Previously only seen as The Tree of Life’s youngest, quietest sibling, the seventeen year old gives in Mud a performance of the highest class, one played with evident maturity that nevertheless remains candid and childlike (Sheridan was fifteen at the time of filming). Though it was sold as the story of a runaway criminal, likely to bank on Matthew McConaughey’s involvement, Mud is above all the tale of Ellis’ coming-of-age, as his naïve idealism is confronted with a reality much harsher than he had anticipated. Having lived a sheltered childhood and bumpy family life, Ellis is all too happy to find a role model in McConaughey’s Mud, with his grand talks of love, freedom and independence, and all too unprepared for the kind of letdown his trust sets him up for. Though the veteran gives a first-rate turn as the titular character, it is Sheridan’s much less showy portrayal that gives the film all of its heart. His Ellis is earnest and hopeful, out of his depth but determined to hold it together. The way Sheridan grounds the entire film with his restraint and soul brings to mind Jennifer Lawrence’s breakout as Ree Dolly in Winter’s Bone, albeit with a greener, tenderer character. Ellis’ tenderness is in fact his biggest strength: when he finally lashes out in disappointment, eyes red and voice cracking, he rips your heart out.

For reminding us adulthood is not a prerequisite for complex, layered and relatable characters, Mud should mark Tye Sheridan’s first Academy Award nomination. But hey: if that doesn’t pan out, he’ll still have David Gordon Green’s acclaimed Joe, David Fincher’s star-studded Dark Places and the central role in the dark indie Grass Stains, all due next year, to cheer him up.

Related Post
Critics Choice Balloting: Eligible Performances for "Best Young Actor/Actress" 

previous FYCs
Original Screenplay In a World... | Production Design The Conjuring | Supporting Actor Keith Stanfield | Score Nebraska | Costume Design Lawrence Anyways | Foreign Film Neighboring Sounds | Supporting Actress Cameron Diaz | Picture The Spectacular Now | Make-Up Warm Bodies | Sound Mixing World War Z | Director Edgar Wright | Supporting Actor Ulysses the Cat

Team FYC: The Conjuring for Best Production Design

In this FYC series series, our contributors are highlighting their favorite fringe contenders this awards season. Here's Dancin' Dan on The Conjuring...

Let's face it: The Academy doesn't, as a rule, like horror films. Even when they're done well. But James Wan's The Conjuring is one we hope they'll honor, especially in the below-the-line categories. The technical elements are all exceptionally well-done, but the production design in particular is damn near flawless. For starters, take a look at that Annabelle doll. Creepy, right? But also totally believable as a toy that a girl might have loved as a child in the 40s or 50s and kept with her as a young adult in the 60s.

The whole film is stuffed with smart design like that. Production Designer Julie Berghoff, Art Director Geoffrey S. Grimsman, and Set Decorator Sophie Neufdorfer built the Perron house used in the film from the ground up and filled it with period-appropriate appliances, photos, and toys that felt used and loved - and, perhaps most importantly, that don't look "scary".

The smartest thing The Conjuring does is to not look like a modern horror movie - all dark and tinted blue or gray, with every set and prop looking like it's on the verge of decay. The Perron house looks old because, simply, it's an old house, and the Perrons bought it knowing it was a bit of a fixer-upper. The items in the basement look old and rotting because they've been blocked off for decades. The family's personal items look new, or at least new-ish, as would fit a middle-class family in 1971. The attention to period detail is all over the movie, and it gives the movie a homespun quality that always works in its favor.

There are a lot of reasons why The Conjuring works as well as it does: strong, surprisingly nuanced performances from Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, and Lili Taylor; the genuinely unsettling score; the almost old-fashioned cinematography - but for me the MVP is all the little details around the edges of the frame, constantly lending a sense of reality to the film. The art direction of The Conjuring is effectively scary when it needs to be (the spiral mirror reflecting on Vera Farmiga's face, that monstrous wardrobe, the Warrens' room of occult objects), but mostly it serves to remind you that these were real people this happened to - a family that could have had a normal life if things had just worked out a little differently. And that's where the true horror lies.

Team FYC: 'Nebraska' For Best Original Score

In this series TFE contributors sound off on their favorite fringe contenders. Here's Anne Marie on Mark Orton and the Tin Horns.

Alexander Payne's latest film Nebraska is getting much-deserved acting kudos. Bruce Dern has undoubtedly given a career-topping performance as the muddled and melancholy Woody. However, an unacknowledged but equally fine character is the folk score by Mark Orton. Orton reunited with his band the Tin Horns to play the music for his first feature film score. They mix traditional bluegrass elements like guitar and fiddle with surprises including a dobro and a xylophone. The effect is full Americana with a lot of quirkiness and a little sadness--giving voice to the unvoiced themes in the film.

Like Deborah, I ask that the Academy think small this year. We have the usualy heavy-hitters filling film scores with sound and fury, and soon the Coen Brothers will be releasing that other folk film that's sure to turn attention away from Nebraska. However, Mark Orton's score stands alone.  Like other characters in the film, the score hints at deeper meanings but never falls into the easy cliches and chords of melodrama. With deceptively simple orchestrations and a powerful musical thread throughout, Mark Orton has crafted a beautiful score that feels both familiar and unique.

Team FYC: Keith Stanfield, Best Supporting Actor

In this series Film Experience contributors sound off (individually) on their favorite fringe awards contenders. Here's Matthew Eng on Keith Stanfield from "Short Term 12" (who was recently Spirit nominated)

Chief among the achievements of Destin Cretton’s Short Term 12 is an early, two-minute scene in which Keith Stanfield’s Marcus, a sullen, soft-voiced, 18-year-old intake on the verge of being released from the film’s titular foster care facility, shares a self-penned rap with Mason (John Gallagher Jr.), one of the center’s supervisors. What unfolds remains, still, the single most heartbreaking moment I’ve seen onscreen this year, as Marcus launches into an unforgiving tirade against the abusive mother who raised him, that soon transitions into a harrowing lament about the unwavering, angering pain of being born into a broken life.

Look into my eyes so you know what it’s like
To live a life not knowing what a normal life’s like”

It's unshakable, shattering stuff, further enhanced by the beautifully-felt efforts of Stanfield, who wrote the rap himself and whose striking, breakout turn remains one of the year's most egregiously undersung performances. It’s easy to imagine all the ways in which the “Young Actor Playing a Troubled Youth in a Social Drama”-model could potentially go wrong: sometimes, steadfast commitment to the “troubled” aspect threatens to render the character one-note; other times, it’s as if the performer has chosen to play the shameless summoner of unmitigated audience sympathy, rather than an actual character. Instead of falling into either of these traps, Stanfield commits whole-heartedly to unveiling each and every complicated layer of Marcus without ever seeming bent on becoming something akin to the underdog worth rooting for. Stanfield is brilliant at navigating and detailing the character’s rocky emotional landscape and prickly persona, whether he’s snapping at Rami Malek’s “new guy” Nate over a dim comment about “underprivileged kids,” rushing to hostile extremes with Kevin Rodriguez’s antagonistic Luis, or allowing his lanky frame to buckle under the weight of suppressed emotional anguish during an impromptu haircut. Marcus’ surly toughness, deep-concealed heartache, and quiet introversion may be his foremost traits, but it’s to Stanfield’s credit that we also get to glimpse a softer, breezier, and funnier side of Marcus, as when he playfully converses with his housemates or cheekily exposes two counselors’ semi-secret relationship via rap.

That Cretton ultimately leads Marcus to something of a narrative dead-end is an unfortunate outcome, albeit one that in no way diminishes the impact of Stanfield’s concentrated and compelling work throughout Short Term 12. He fully and frequently grounds the movie, rooting it in remarkable truthfulness and bold emotionality, helping us locate the beautiful, gently-beating heart that sits firmly at its center.

Previously on Team FYC

Team FYC: Neighboring Sounds for Best Foreign Language Film

In this series Team Experience sounds off (individually) on their favorite fringe awards contenders. Here's Amir Soltani on Neighboring Sounds.

Since the Academy wisely overhauled its nominating process for the foreign language film award and Dogtooth nabbed that delightfully shocking nomination, pundits tend not to take any film's chances too lightly in this category. Still, a nod for Brazil's intense and quietly powerful submission would come as a major surprise. That's partly because the film ran the festival circuit last year and its buzz has been more of a hum for a few months now so it's hard to imagine the executive committee coming to its rescue. It's a real shame because Neighboring Sounds isn't just the best of the submitted films; it is quite possibly the year's best film, period.

Sounds opens with a series of black and white still photos attuned to a rousing score that provide more social context for the story in 57 seconds than most films do in 90 minutes. Kleber Mendoca Filho - on his first try at helm - paints an increasingly unsettling portrait of an affluent neighborhood in the Brazilian city of Recife that wants to remain oblivious to the poverty and corruption that engulfs it. The greatest accomplishment of the film, and its rich but anti-climactic finale, is that it creates a sense of inescapable unease in the audience, not entirely unlike what the neighborhood residents deal with routinely.

Neighboring Sounds subverts our expectations at every turn, playing games with the laguange of cinema - both in the construction of its images and, as the title suggests, sounds - to shape our understanding of characters and the film's geopolitical space. It is the rare film that builds energy through completely inconspicuous means. It is not the guns and criminals that escalate violence; it's a meditative dip in the waterfall or a casual conversation between neighbors on a rooftop. The underlying sense of discomfort is a result of the film's "guilty until proven innocent" approach toward all its characters. By the film's end, the mistrust between the neighborhood's residents has slowly creeped in on us and become impossible to shake off. This is a masterclass in crafting a suspenseful piece, given by a man whose assured control of his film betrays no sign of his inexperience. Here's hoping Academy voters take notice.

Previously on Team FYC