Whether “Argo” succeeds in snagging the best picture Oscar away from “Lincoln” at the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday or Emmanuelle Riva becomes the oldest best actress honoree by beating presumed front-runner Jennifer Lawrence, one thing will be clear: When it comes to movies, audiences were the big winners in 2012.
Many of the films widely acknowledged to be the year’s best are competing Sunday, including “Lincoln,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Silver Linings Playbook,” “Argo” and “Life of Pi.”
Related Articles
See all nine Best Picture nominees in a row on Saturday.
Compare critics' picks for the Oscars Best Picture to other "Post" readers' predictions.
As the anniversary of the meme approaches, there's a chance Oscar nominees may retire the protruding leg trend.
Films celebrate institutions more often mired in dysfunction and public malodor.
OUTLOOK | Hollywood — and these six actors in particular — reflect our national ambivalence about powerful institutions.
But 2012 also included the terrific action thriller “The Grey,” starring Liam Neeson; Steven Soderbergh’s playful and tone-perfect male-stripper comedy “Magic Mike”; Rian Johnson’s wildly inventive science-fiction thriller “Looper”; and the franchise installments “The Avengers,” “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Skyfall” — all of them exceptionally smart, good-looking and well-crafted.
By the time awards season got underway last fall, critics and industry insiders had formed a consensus: It was a great year for movies across a spectrum defined by genre exercises, sequels, mainstream comedies, micro-budgeted indies and the kind of modest-budgeted, adult-oriented dramas that many observers thought Hollywood had long since written off.
The reasons any movie year is better than another are myriad and mercurial. Last year’s bumper crop of quality is no different, although some clues can be found in new financing strategies, emerging technology and an increasingly cinema-literate audience that no longer accepts lame plots and lazy production values (two words: “John” and “Carter”).
Five years ago, Hollywood was in the midst of the same economic downturn as the rest of the country, shying away from sinking its own money into movies and instead banking on sure-fire comic book adaptations and proven series. The result was that filmmakers looked outside Hollywood for money — cobbling together international financiers or being bankrolled by a single investor, such as Megan Ellison — then brought their projects to studios to distribute and market. Last year’s “Looper,” “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Cloud Atlas” were made this way, an approach that preserved the strong artistic vision of their directors while providing the wide reach of a mainstream studio.
“I do think this year, the movies across the board were better,” says Jason Blum, founder and chief executive of Blumhouse Productions. The reason, he says, was that “every movie last year was put together at a time when money got very, very tight. And when you force a director to work within certain confines, he’s got to focus on performance, character, actors and story. And none of those things needs to be expensive.”
“I think there’s a new paradigm,” says producer Mike Medavoy, whose past films include “Rocky,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Platoon” and, more recently, “Shutter Island” and “Black Swan.” “And the paradigm is to spend less and make fewer films.” (Last year Sony Pictures announced that it would make two fewer films a year starting in 2014.) What’s more, he added, with such conspicuous budget-bloated flops as the aforementioned “John Carter,” as well as “Total Recall” and “Battleship,” burned into movie-business memories, studio executives are now painfully aware that dumbed-down spectacle is no longer enough.
The action flick scored $41.2 million over the weekend, but did it live up to 2009's "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra"?
1364925972000
Director Wayne Blair’s musical comedy-drama entertains while reminding of past racial injustices
1364523072000
Hulu and the Criterion Collection are jointly offering streams of 24 Akira Kurosawa films for free.
1363977999000
Find out which film made a Post critic write: "I stopped taking notes when the woman disintegrated into a ball of writhing snakes."
1363366093000
Filmmaker Rian Johnson has pioneered in-theater commentary.
1363360825000
Halle Berry stars in “The Call,” a taut thriller that stumbles in its final act.
1363314360000
Will Baz Luhrmann's 3-D adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic live up to the hype?
1363111740000
REVIEW | Formulaic revenge flick gets boost from stylish direction and intense leading lady Noomi Rapace.
1362781682000
Also opening: "Yossi," "Greedy Lying Bastards" and "Lore."
1362773886000
Post movie critic Ann Hornaday compiled a list of her favorite movies set in, relating to, or starring actors from Ireland.
1362765274000
Cold war thriller or food documentary? Frankenstein hunt or attempt to oust Pinochet?
1362174952000
Lesson learned: Never say “never” when it comes to horror movie sequels.
1362165240000
Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook makes the jump to Hollywood with "Stoker," the opening-night film of DC's Korean Film Festival
1362158737000One day after the Oscars, the Senate Intelligence Committee closed its investigation into contacts between the filmmakers and the CIA
1361898433000The Post MostMost-viewed stories, videos, and galleries in the past two hours
Live Q&A, 11 a.m. ET
Advice Columnist Carolyn Hax takes your questions and tackles your problems.
| 11:00 AM | CANCELLED: The Fix Live |
|---|---|
| 1:00 PM | The Latest in TV with Lisa de Moraes LIVE NOW |
Loading...
Comments