CP All-Time Oscar Draft - Rd 7 - Jagger Rd 8 - Octo, Proto (Stumpy, WURL)
Time to get this started!
Here are your categories:
Best Picture -
Best Actor -
Best Actress -
Best Supporting Actor -
Best Supporting Actress -
Best Director -
Best Original Song -
Best Foreign Film -
It's An Honor Just To Be Nominated -
What we are looking for are individual performances. Please designate what category you are drafting from, what year they won, and what movie.
Multiple winners can be selected, but once one trophy is selected, you cannot select that same trophy. Someone like Tom Hanks can be chosen twice in the same category. You have to make sure you're specific to which winning role you are selecting.
You can only pick the person once per team. Ie - you can pick "actress A" in best actress, but you will be unable to pick "actress A" in supporting/directing/songwriting/"honor". But the next team can take any other winning/nominated performance by "actress A" other than the one you have chosen, once as well.
"It's An Honor Just To Be Nominated" - Any Actor or Actress performance nominated, but didn't take home the hardware.
This is tough: I never realized how many of my favorite movies didn't win academy awards. I'm also going to try to avoid picking any movies that I picked in the previous movie draft.
Anyway, with the first overall pick, I'm selecting Peter Jackson, 2003, Best Director, for Lord of the Rings, Return of the King. While I wouldn't count this as the best film ever, it is, in my opinion, one of the greatest acheivements in filmmaking, and Peter Jackson deserves more credit than anyone else for making that happen. Even though the award was officially for Return of the King, it was really for the entire trilogy. He and his two writing partners took an unwieldy and difficult novel, crafted it into a trilogy of films that exceeds the vision of the book. They made hard decisions in throwing out some popular characters and story arcs and preserved the best elements, and weave together the different arcs in a manner very different from the books. The decision to start Return of the King with Smeagol's backstory, for example, was a brilliant idea that gives Smeagol's story arc much greater weight in this movie than it otherwise would have had.
Though the movie obviously required a great deal of special effects, Jackson also insisted on using traditional methods whenever possible, insisting on filming on location rather than green-screening whenever they could, and having elaborate miniatures made rather than simply relying on computer models. Even the diminutive hobbits were done with stand-ins and camera trickery such as forced perspective whenever possible.
Jackson has a great sense of how to construct the story and shots in such a way of always helping the viewer figure out how everything works together, and nowhere in the trilogy is this more evident than in Return of the King, where Jackson's narrative follows a dozen characters scattered amongst four different locations and story arcs. And there are scenes in this movie such as the lighting of the watchtowers that bring tears to my eyes simply because they're such beautiful sequences. (Although, I'm an admitted wuss and tear up at all sorts of crap that wouldn't move most people.)
He's also very good about knowing when to let the music and sound and effects fade away and focus in tight on an actor's face; given the large cast it's difficult to develop all the characters fully, but Jackson does a great job of developing them by putting new characters in contrast with more established ones. As me, the most interesting characters are the three rulers - John Noble as Denethor, Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, and Bernard Hill as Theoden - and even though these three characters have very little screen time together, he's able to find the commonalities and contrasts between them to develop all of them more fully.
He did a brilliant balancing job throughout: balancing traditional film-making techniques with advanced CGI; balancing fidelity to the original work and the demands of die-hard fans with the needs of the movie format and a typical theater audience; balancing the needs of the movie as the end of a massive 11 hour trilogy with making a movie that can also be watched on its own and weighed on its own merits; balancing a war and adventure story with the characters that drive the story. Yup, I feel pretty good about this choice as a first overall pick; I know LoTR has its share of detractors, but Jackson's work on it deserved to be mentioned among the very best of the best in terms of feats of filmmaking.
Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight - Best Supporting Actor - 2009
I didn't expect to take a more receint winner, but I couldn't help myself with Heath.
As per wikipedia:
In his penultimate film performance, Ledger plays the Joker in The Dark Knight, directed by Christopher Nolan, the sequel to the 2005 film Batman Begins, first released, in Australia, on 16 July 2008, nearly six months after his death. While still working on the film, in London, Ledger told Sarah Lyall, in their interview published in the New York Times on 4 November 2007, that he viewed The Dark Knight's Joker as a "psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenicclown with zero empathy."[65] To prepare for the role, Ledger told Empire, "I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked myself away, formed a little diary and experimented with voices — it was important to try to find a somewhat iconic voice and laugh. I ended up landing more in the realm of a psychopath — someone with very little to no conscience towards his acts"; after reiterating his view of the character as "just an absolute sociopath, a cold-blooded, mass-murdering clown," he added that Nolan had given him "free rein" to create the role, which he found "fun, because there are no real boundaries to what the Joker would say or do. Nothing intimidates him, and everything is a big joke."[66][67][68] For his work in The Dark Knight, Ledger won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, his family accepting it on his behalf, as well as numerous other posthumous awards including the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor, which Christopher Nolan accepted for him.
Ah, I figured I had no shot at grabbing Ledger to go along with my Movie Draft pick.
That's an absolute no-brainer of a pick! (and I mean that as complimentary )
For my first pick, I'm proud to be able to select in the BEST ACTOR category, Daniel Day-Lewis' portrayal of Daniel Plainview.
The Best Actor Oscar for 2007!
There were a few other choices here, but I really feel that this is one of the 2 or 3 greatest film acting performances of all time. Day-Lewis forces you to watch him, he's that good. His strange anonymity allows one to totally buy into the character without the actors personality or physical quirks butting in. The film is over 2 and a half hours long and it flies by, despite a story somewhat void of action. I didn't have a mirror, but I'm pretty sure that when the credits began to roll, my mouth was wide open, jaw dropped. Incredible stuff!
__________________ I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love." - John Steinbeck
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For Best Actor I am proud to select from Forrest Gump - Tom Hanks.
The Academy Award winner for Best Actor Tom Hanks, this unlikely story of a slow-witted but good-hearted man somehow at the center of the pivotal events of the 20th century is a funny and heartwarming epic. Hanks plays the title character, a shy Southern boy in love with his childhood best friend (Robin Wright) who finds that his ability to run fast takes him places. As an All-Star football player he meets John F. Kennedy; as a soldier in Vietnam he's a war hero; and as a world champion Ping-Pong player he's hailed by Richard Nixon. Becoming a successful shrimp-boat captain, he still yearns for the love of his life, who takes a quite different and much sadder path in life. The visual effects incorporating Hanks into existing newsreel footage is both funny and impressive, but the heart of the film lies in its sweet love story and in the triumphant performance of Hanks as an unassuming soul who savors the most from his life and times.
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DFF, you are a son-of-a-gun.
Definitely gets my vote for performance of all time.
Luck of the draw...errrr...interwebs randomizer.
If this had been picked before my turn, I would've likely saved this category for last. I really like a couple of performances that probably are low on most lists.
__________________ I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love." - John Steinbeck
OK... I'm going to AK MattyC since it's been well over 12 hrs.
With my first pick, after the anger/sadness of missing out on Daniel Plainview has worn off, I am very proud to be able to select in the Best Actor category, Robert De Niro's magnum opus... A timeless performance from what can arguably be considered the great American movie...
1980's Best Actor: Robert De Niro as Jack LaMotta in Raging Bull!
There aren't really any words, just witness (NSFW):
Last edited by liamenator; 02-25-2009 at 03:03 PM.
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OK, I'm decidedly not fond of musicals, or Disney, so the Best Original Song category was going to be tough for me, so I'm taking it first since there's only one that I can really get behind.
Ahhh sorry team I didnt even realize this draft was happening yet and wouldnt you know it Superflyer took my first pick right before i was supposed to. I will take in the Best Actor category Russell Crowe in Gladiator
Frances McDormand as Marge Olmstead-Gunderson, the pregnant chief of police in Brainerd, Minnesota, investigating the murder of three people near her city. Throughout the film, Marge demonstrates great competence and ability in her police-work, and comes across as very polite, likable, and intelligent. In real life, McDormand has been married to Joel Coen since 1984, and has starred in several of the brothers' films.
__________________
"It's red all over!!!!"
Last edited by Jagger; 02-26-2009 at 09:30 AM.
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Great pick, Jagger. That one jumped out at me as one of the best when I was scanning the list of actress winners. She's slightly typecast, but she really is an excellent actress and can make some seemingly rote characters very watchable.
CP All-Time Oscar Draft - Rd 7 - Jagger Rd 8 - Octo, Proto (Stumpy, WURL)
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