Oscar Race: How Crazy Are Those SAG Awards, Really?

Coco here, ready to talk about the current Oscar race and those crazy SAG awards in particular.

As you already know, the Screen Actors Guild decided to honor the best acting of 2015 in the most bizarre way possible; handing the most nominations to blacklist Hollywood drama Trumbo, and nominating a number of performances whose inclusion range from surprising to outright insane. 

Don't worry, I'm not here to defend SAG's ridiculous choices. I'm here to do what The Film Experience best at: speculate about Oscar nominations. See, the other day I saw someone on Twitter say he'd be surprised if any of this year's SAG categories are repeated 5-for-5 at the Oscars. This comment got me thinking...

Although the amount of correlation between SAG and Oscar has gone down a bit in the last couple years, the math still says that at least one of Oscar's acting categories will look identical to SAG's. The question I'm here to answer is: which one?

Lots of awards spaculation after the jump. 

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Can "Creed" Go 12 Rounds With Oscar?

In the past 48 hours I've screened The Revenant, Joy, and Creed. Since the first two are still under embargo we're not allowed to speak of them yet. I will say these non spoilers that The Revenant continues the tradition of Inaritu's love of miserable arguably suicidal men, and Joy continues in the tradition of David O. Russell sandbox like playgrounds for actors eager to play with their new parts. But...embargo!

As movie buffs well know, the original Rocky was a smash hit when it premiered in December 1976, becoming the biggest box office hit of that year, making a star of Sly Stallone, charting a #1 single ("Gonna Fly Now"), and earning an incredible 10 Oscar nominations. It eventually won Picture, Director, and Editing on the big night. And against unreal competition too: Network, Taxi Driver, Bound for Glory, and All The President's Men. The Rocky series spawned a few popular sequels but eventually exhausted its welcome as film franchises do. Creed, smartly plays like both a straight sequel (VII) and a spinoff or rebirth with Rocky Balboa passing the franchise torch to Apollo Creed's son Adonis (Michael B Jordan).

So let's talk Creed and Oscar and the ways it could well factor into the Oscar race after the jump...

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Review: "Creed"

Our newest team member Chris Feil saw the latest in a long dormant franchise early. Here's his review - Editor

Making good on his mainstream sensibilities post-Fruitvale Station, Ryan Coogler returns with Rocky reboot/sequel/spin-off Creed. Born after his legendary father Apollo's death after an affair, Adonis (Michael B. Jordan) attempts to forge his own boxing path without the Creed namesake, recruiting his father's notorious opponent and comrade Rocky Balboa. Similarly, the film tries to have it both ways, attempting to be a sideways stand-alone film while borrowing heavily on the iconography of the original. It is a bit of a left turn for cinema's current trend of cut-and-paste nostalgia, giving Coogler's film a much needed edge for a tired genre, but cursing it with enormous shoes it falls short of filling.

If Fruitvale showed us anything about Ryan Coogler's potential, it was that he could both emotionally invest the audience with a charismatic subject and that he knew how to structure a film's most intense scenes for their maximum dramatic effect. These skills make him the perfect candidate for a mainstream actioner that pulls on the heartstrings, and Creed provides a solid larger platform for him to deliver those goods. Unfortunately still present is his diminished sense of confidence and clarity of vision in extended dialogue scenes, lending to an overall flabby structure. He knows what we want as audience and how to give it to us, but here he has a tricky time transitioning between story beats.

more...

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Beauty Vs Beast: King of the Ring

JA from MNPP here, getting ready to rumble with a brand new edition of "Beauty Vs. Beast" for youse guys... we're running up the steps of the Philly Museum of Art and giving a victorious twirl (a very manly twirl, mind you) this week in honor of just having seen Rocky: The Musical.

It wasn't entirely by choice - my mother was in town and I'm always forced to see things I otherwise wouldn't (last visit it was Jersey Boys, which I'm still recovering from), and since she's a huge fan of the Sylvester Stallone's 1976 Oscar winner it seemed only right to hit up the stage version. Especially on the heels of its Tony nomination for Andy Karl as Best Actor in a Musical...

... but since we the people of The Film Experience seem to be cursed right now, Karl was a no-show at our performance. I can't say if the show would've popped more with him up there or not - his nomination makes me think so, but as it was the entire thing seemed reliant less on small things like music and character and more upon its admittedly spectacular staging. Ben Brantley nailed it - you kind of forget how bored you were for the first 3/4s when the boxing-ring rolls into the audience for the last act and shit goes bananas. It's empty calories, sure, but you walk out on a high.

That said what does come across well with the stage-version is the even-handed equinimity that Stallone & Co. treated both the the men-in-gloves with - yeah we're there with Rocky the whole time, but Apollo Creed isn't a stache-twirler. Both men have their faults and their strengths, and that's what's always made the showdown, spectacle or no, one for the ages. Apollo's established so well that by the sequel they become buddies and when evil Ivan Drago shows up in Part IV, well, not a dry eye in the house. And that brings us to today's showdown!

poll by twiigs.com

Which man will be standing in the end? Place your bets in the comments and prepare yourself for a grueling fifteen rounds over the next seven days of duel - see you back here next Monday when we'll crown the king of the ring.

PREVIOUSLY ON Last week was all about the Mean Girls, what with its ten year anniversary being heralded far and wide across the web and beyond (Tina Fey's ears musta been ringing something fierce) - so which Plastic exerted dominance over all the tables of the cafeteria? Who else? We all gave Cady a big "Boo you whore" and threw her under the bus - long live Regina George. Said Paul Outlaw:

"If Lindsay Lohan hadn't grown up to become an adult version of Regina George, Team Cady would probably be walking away with this. (Team Regina here.)"

Box Office: The Secret Grudge of 47 Wolves

Amir here, with the weekend’s box office report.

For those of us who write/read/talk/think about films year around, it’s hard to remember that the general public still goes to the theatre in late December for films that have no awards potential whatsoever. I had no idea that Keanu Reeves has a film called 47 Ronin opening, in which the well-known Japanese legend is butchered so that the Lebanese-born Canadian star of Portuguese, Irish and Hawaiian ancestry can play a half-Japanese, half-British person that never existed in the real life legend. Let’s all revel in a bit of Schadenfreude that this film failed to recoup even 1/10th of its budget. And while we’re at it, let’s do the same for Grudge Match, otherwise Sylvester Stallone will never learn that boxing films starring himself are of no interest to anyone anymore, except maybe Robert DeNiro and his wallet. This one will probably peter out somewhere slightly above half its budget, too.

TOP OF THE BOX OFFICE
01 The Hobbit 2 $29.8 (cum. $190.3)
02 Frozen $28.8 (cum. $248.3) Review | Jonathan Groff
03 Anchorman 2 $20.1 (cum. $83.6) 
04 American Hustle $19.5 (cum. $60) Ensemble | Podcast
05 NEW Wolf of Wall Street $27 (cum. $34.3) Review | Scorsese's Women
06 Saving Mr Banks $14 (cum. $37.8) Drinks w/ Emma & Colin
07 NEW  Secret Life of Walter Mitty $13 (cum. $25.5) Capsule
08 Hunger Games Pt 2 $10.2 (cum. $391.1) Review | Podcast
09 NEW 47 Ronin $9.8 *new* (cum. $20.5)
10 Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas $7.4 (cum. $43.7)   
11 NEW  Grudge Match  $7.3 (cum. $13.4) 

Weirdly enough, it’s not Grudge Match that’s bringing memories of the glorious Raging Bull to life, but The Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese’s latest film and his most controversial since The Last Temptation of Christ. Depending on whom you ask, this is either an absolute masterpiece or a bloated mess, but Paramount couldn’t care less. They’ve sold about $34m over the 5 day opening, which is better than most people expected for a nearly-NC17 film about America’s least likeable monsters. Wolf was able to crack the top 5 films of the weekend, which is more than can be said about The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, though the latter has the advantage of being an easier sell overseas. The Hobbit stayed at the very top of the table, but Frozen is the film with really impressive figures. It made the best of the family holidays and despite losing theatres, bettered its own gross from last week by 50%. I wouldn’t be surprised if it slashes Smaug next weekend.

Among the smaller releases, August: Osage County and The Lone Survivor have the highest profiles. The former’s per screen average isn’t particularly promising, but the film was never going to have the appeal of highbrow auteur fair that usually results in massive numbers for the NY/LA crowd.

PLATFORM BOX OFFICE (under 100 screens)
01 Her $.6 (cum. $1.5)
02 NEW August: Osage County $.1 
03 Lone Survivor $.09 (cum. $.1) 
04 The Great Beauty $.07 (cum. $.7) 
05 All is Lost $.06 (cum. $5.9) 

But neither film is particularly concerned with sales at this point. These are only qualifying for Oscars. The business end of the story will unravel later in January.

I took a break from cinema this weekend, after a 4 day stretch in which I caught up with 12 films to close the book on 2013. They ranged from real gems like The Missing Picture to literally unbearable films like The Great Beauty.

What did you watch?