Game of Thrones Power Rankings

Episode 3:06 – The Climb

Last week’s rankings

As Cersei famously said back in the first season, “In the game of thrones, you win or you die.” With that spirit in mind, here’s your weekly look at who’s winning and who got served.

Winning!

1. Littlefinger

Joffrey is such a sadistic little turd that, by comparison, it’s almost difficult to recognize villainy anywhere else. Sure, characters like Cersei, Jaime, Stannis, and Theon have all done some pretty repugnant things thus far, but they’ve also all taken turns as sympathetic leads for decent stretches of screen time. Littlefinger, on the other hand, hasn’t really been portrayed with any sympathy, but he also hasn’t drawn much attention to how awful he is. (Yes, he did betray Ned in Season One, but that doesn’t linger in the mind quite as much as Joffrey screaming “Bring me his head!”)

But just like Varys suddenly revealing himself as the kind of guy who keeps a pet sorcerer in a wooden box, now Littlefinger stands revealed as someone who lusts for power perhaps more than anyone else on the show. His climactic speech should have ended with a loud “Mwa-ha-ha-ha!”

Littlefinger’s betrayal of Ros not only led to her death, it also killed our best source of sexposition (how dare he!). But while Ros’s former colleagues in the best little whorehouse this side of the Wall aren’t likely to rally for vengeance, there very well may be penalties to pissing off Varys. As a great lover of slow, calculated revenge, sending his girl Friday off to her death isn’t something he’s likely to forgive.

2. Tywin Lannister

Apparently the pen is mightier than the sword-swallower.

3. Sweeping Romance

The final shot of this episode, of Jon Snow and Ygritte embracing atop the wall with the sunrise shining down on them, might have been the first unabashedly romantic moment of the series. It only took 26 episodes!

Sadly, it reminded me of the final image from the first half of Gone With the Wind. It’s a gorgeous moment that promises strength and perseverance. But it’s also the last uplifting moment of the movie before everything goes to shit for the next two hours. Given how little happened in this episode, it feels like the show-runners purposely created this moment as an intermission of sorts for the season, and as an attention-grabbing, look-how-happy-and-beautiful-everything-is ending before we spend the final four episodes watching everyone’s bad karma explode like wildfire.

4. King Joffrey’s Crossbow

Since we saw Joffrey fondling it in the season premiere, it was damned inevitable that thing would be used on someone. Optimists among you might have hoped for the tables getting turned and someone else using it on Joffrey, but seriously, there’s no place for optimism in Westeros. I expect better out of you.

5. Ygritte Bringing the Crazy

Remember the end of this scene in Wedding Crashers when the red-head (a stage-five clinger!) looks at Vince Vaughn with those incredible crazy eyes and says “Don’t ever leave me, because I’d find you”? Yeah, that’s what I was thinking about when Ygritte informed Jon Snow of her, ummm, plans should he decide to leave.

And competitive little vixen that Ygritte is, her human appendage necklace would surely dethrone Jamie Lannister’s severed hand as the most envious in all the Seven Kingdoms.

Honorable Mention: Arya Stark- When the woman who birthed a skeletal smoke monster looks distraught at the darkness within you, I’m ready to start taking your oaths of vengeance seriously. Ramsay Snow- If only because he actually said the words “I win.” It’s like he’s trolling the Power Rankings.

Dying (Literally or Figuratively)

1. Ros

Poor Ros. Just two weeks after she made the Winning Honorable Mentions list for so skillfully leaving her former profession behind her, that exact scene I was praising her for ended up getting her killed.

But what’s really fascinating here is that Ros isn’t a character in the books. She was purely created for the show, which means her death was purely created by the show’s writers. Given that her death wasn’t preordained by the text, it’s worth a bit of analysis to look at why she had to die.

We can rule out a few things right away: We already knew Joffrey was evil, and the show clearly didn’t need more shock value. It’s possible given how light on tangible events this episode was that the writers just felt they needed a moment viewers could look back on and say “Ah-ha, something did happen that episode!”

But it’s far more likely that the writers thought they needed a way of showing how evil Littlefinger was in a way that the novels didn’t quite achieve. And again, this begs a question: Did the novels simply fail at portraying Littlefinger as being totally evil, or is the show consciously making him more devious than he was in the books? If it’s the latter (and I’m assuming it is), it will be interesting to see how this manifests in the season’s remaining episodes. Five or six episodes ago, when Varys told Ros that Littlefinger saw her “as nothing more than a collection of profitable holes,” it sounded like the worst way one person could regard another. But now we know there’s an even worse way of looking at someone: as target practice.

2. Gendry

In case anyone forgot why being Melisandre’s prisoner might, you know, kind of suck, please allow Davos to remind you.

3. The Viewers During Any Theon Scene

As Andy Greenwald has been profusely pointing out for weeks, these scenes are terrible. I don’t doubt that Theon’s torture will end up holding some relevance to future events, I just don’t understand why we need to see it. The show has too many great characters lacking screen time, and so many scenes it elects not to show (such as Tyrion telling Sansa that they must marry), that it really is baffling why we’re spending so much time watching someone beg and scream.

When Ramsay Snow told Theon this week “If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention,” he might as well have been talking to us. Does that mean if I already know it won’t have a happy ending, I get to stop paying attention?

4. The Game of Thrones CGI Budget

Let’s just agree that the avalanche scene might have looked just as good thirty years ago with the late, great Ray Harryhausen creating it via stop motion.

5. Shae

I’m no expert in this subject, but being in the room while your boyfriend effectively proposes to another girl probably really sucks.

Honorable Mentions: Rabbits- When two characters nearly break out into a pissing contest regarding the best way to skin you, it just isn’t your week. Samwell Tarley- Hasn’t yet earned his Boy Scout Merit Badge for fire building. Lady Olenna and Ser Loras Tyrell- Going to bed with Lannisters never ends well, even when you don’t do it by choice. Plus, as Tyrion put it, Cersei is missing some of Loras’s favorite bits.

Littlefingering of the Week: Let this be a lesson to any hopeful entrepreneurs considering graduation from Lord Baelish’s best brothel: He’s figured out a foolproof way to turn your collection of profitable holes into an even larger collection of not so profitable holes.

Daniel Joyaux is a film and entertainment critic living in Ann Arbor. You can see more of his writing at http://thirdmanmovies.blogspot.com and follow him on Twitter @thirdmanmovies

Game of Thrones Power Rankings

Episode 3:05 – Kissed By Fire

Last week’s rankings

As Cersei famously said back in the first season, “In the game of thrones, you win or you die.” With that spirit in mind, here’s your weekly look at who’s winning and who got served.

Winning!

1. The Hot Tubs of Westeros

In a show that loves gratuitous nudity more than, oh, just about any show ever, how did it take 25 episodes to get our first hot tub? Apparently Westeros is littered with them! Dank caves, dank castles, they’re everywhere!

And thankfully, they arrived just in time. When Ygritte asked Jon Snow how long it’s been since he had a bath, I immediately started wondering how many characters ought to be asked that same question, and how terrifying their responses might be.

Anyway, now that the cat’s out of the bag and audiences know every location on the show is equipped with it’s own hidden Turkish Bath, it’ll be interesting to see how often the show, ummm, dips back into the well in this regard. If you’re gonna have sexposition, why not have it in style?

2. Jaime Lannister: Sympathetic Character

Considering the first episode of the show concluded with Jaime tossing a little kid out of a window just so he could continue incestuous relations with his twin sister, it’s perfectly reasonable to admit that you never expected to be rooting for him. But after delivering what has to be the show’s second best monologue ever (after, of course, Tyrion’s rallying-the-troops speech at the Battle of Blackwater), Jaime has firmly revealed himself to be among the show’s most fascinating characters. I predicted just last week that we were about to see new sides to Jaime, but I have to confess, I merely meant that he was about to become someone who effectively used his cunning as his chief weapon, much like his younger brother. But for Jaime to stand revealed as one of the most tortured characters on the show, someone who might actually be a (relatively) good person underneath the veneer of contempt? I definitely did not see that coming.

In a sense, Jaime is a bit like the Don Draper of Westeros: Good looking, tortured by the past and by the name people call him, a mostly good person whose sexual appetites lead him to trouble, and someone who shows his greatest depths just when we’ve stopped rooting for him.

3. Slave Vermin Names

Clearly Malcolm X never consulted Grey Worm for his thoughts on the value and luckiness associated with slave names.

4. Walls of Dead Things in Glass Tanks

Seriously, what were the odds of this being a major prop of two different shows in a six-month span? Luckily for us, Game of Thrones didn’t try to one-up The Walking Dead, because the Governor was so crazy that he just ended up being a terrible character. Although I guess that remains to be seen about the estranged Mrs. Stannis Baratheon. She’s definitely crazy, we just don’t know how crazy. Yet.

5. Tywin Lannister, Father of the Year

Hey, it’s not every day you can find spouses for two of your children in the same sitting! So what if one of the proposed spouses is the gay lover of your former son-in-law’s dead brother and the other is the underage prisoner daughter of the man your grandson had beheaded for treason. You know what they say, Cersei & Tyrion: Don’t hate the player, hate the game (of thrones).

Honorable Mentions: Beric Dondarrion- Sure, he came back from the dead, but first he got damn near sliced in half. The Hound- He won the fight, but what this guy really needs is his turn in the hot tub. Lady Olenna- Still getting all the best lines in the show, and the best figs in Kings Landing. Daenerys Stormborn- Still riding her slave-freeing high. Every country needs a Great Emancipator.

Dying (Literally or Figuratively)

1. Rickard Karstark’s Vengeance

While getting decapitated sure sucks and all, it’s a bit difficult to follow Rick’s logic here. Did he really think Robb Stark would just slap him on the wrist for killing two child hostages when Robb’s father, the honorable Ned Stark, beheaded someone in the name of justice in the third scene of the pilot episode?? For all we know, Robb’s been itching to do some beheading since the first season! I mean, does Rickard serve the Lord of the Light? Has anyone checked on this? Does he plan on coming back to life so he can literally haunt Robb instead of just figuratively doing it (as he threatened)? Was it really worth getting yourself killed just to take vengeance against two no-name kids that had a combined three minutes of screen time? It was one of the first times in the show that it felt like a character’s actions occurred simply for the sake of advancing the plot.

2. Robb Stark’s karma

One of the biggest themes of the show to date has been characters getting punished for doing the right thing. Given that, I’d say it’s an even bet that Robb doesn’t walk away unscathed from beheading his most prominent Bannerman. Though the whole “I’m not fighting for justice if I don’t serve justice” bit is both noble and poignant, The Seven Kingdoms haven’t exactly been welcoming places for those sentiments. At this point, it’s not even a question of whether the events of this episode will come back to haunt Robb, it’s only a question of how severely the haunting will manifest.

3. Sansa Stark’s Marriage Prospects

Here’s the rough plot outline for Disney’s next big screen animated musical: Should the beautiful princess marry A) the homosexual knight, B) the disfigured imp, or C) the owner of the kingdom’s finest whorehouse, who, by the way, once tried to bang her mom? Even the Real Housewives of Disney never had to deal with THAT much drama.

4. Shae & Tyrion’s Secret Union

Somehow, I bet Shae’s already suspect handmaidening abilities are about to take a significant drop in quality. And it’s too bad, because even though we never saw them bide time in a hot tub, Shae & Tyrion have been the show’s best couple thus far, not just because they have a great repartee but also because they truly love each other. Shae reminding Tyrion of this in the Season Two finale (“You have a shit memory. I am yours, and you are mine.”) was one of the show’s most touching scenes.

5. Cersei Lannister’s Daddy Issues

In an episode that had a lot of great moments, one of the best snuck up by surprise. When Tywin unveiled his plan for Cersei to marry Loras Tyrell (master of more than one kind of lance), Cersei had an unveiling of her own: her first true moment of vulnerability. For a woman who’s at least acted like she has total control over every room she’s ever been in, it was refreshing (and genuinely affecting) to hear her whimper out “no father, please don’t make me do it.” Even though Cersei came nowhere near the depth that Jaime exhibited this week, she did reveal, even fleetingly, that there might be a real person lurking under the perpetually disdainful smirk she wears just as opulently as her gowns.

Honorable Mention: Beric Dondarrion- True, he did technically die, but when you come back to life a few minutes later, the Power Rankings are not sympathetic to your plight. Take notice Beric, you’ll have to get yourself beheaded if Power Rankings glory is your true goal. Lannister cousins- Another rules footnote—even though dying normally gets you ranked, exceptions are made for characters whose names I can’t even remember. Cat Stark- If you’re one of the interwebs cognoscenti who believe every bad thing that happens to a member of the Stark family can be traced back to Catelyn’s questionable decision-making, this episode must have felt like Christmas morning.

Littlefingering of the Week:

“You know nothing Jon Snow. Except for that thing you did with your mouth. You know that quite well. More please.”

Daniel Joyaux is a film and entertainment critic living in Ann Arbor. You can see more of his writing at http://thirdmanmovies.blogspot.com and follow him on Twitter @thirdmanmovies

Episode 3:04 – And Now His Watch Is Ended

As Cersei famously said back in the first season, “In the game of thrones, you win or you die.” With that spirit in mind, here’s your weekly look at who’s winning and who got served.

Winning!

1. Daenerys Stormborn Targaryen

In a year that has already seen Detroit Pistons point guard Brandon Knight dunked on so ferociously that Twitter briefly declared him dead, Dany’s posterization of the slave lords of Astapor has to be the one to beat in 2013.

Consider her journey: She began Season One being groped by her asshole brother, and then she was given away as a sex slave to a warlord that had never even gotten a haircut. Now? She has three pet dragons that are all too happy to breathe fire on anyone that calls her names, and she has an army of 8,000 mute warriors who don’t even complain when their nipples get cut off. Screw Great Expectations, this is already Western Civilization’s greatest story of upward mobility.

2. Varys the Spider

As the wise philosopher Cersei Lannister once said, men do all of their thinking with the little worm between their legs. But Varys has no worm, which begs the question—where has his motivation been coming from? Varys has always maintained that what he does, he does for the good of the realm. But that reasoning, noble though it may be, never sounded like the whole truth. But now, we have that whole truth. Revenge.

And given how calculating we know Varys is, the revenge/origin story he regaled Tyrion with wasn’t merely for the benefit of the Half-Man, it was also for us. The sorcerer that snipped him will most likely not be the last person Varys tells great first-hand revenge stories about. Call it a sneaking feeling, if you will. Someone with that kind of taste and patience to get back at his enemies isn’t likely to only do it once. And thus Varys enters the board no longer as merely an advisor, but a major player.

If only he had one of those worm thingies between his legs, then he might really be dangerous.

3. Margaery Tyrell

A busy week for Margaery, who pushed Cersei even further towards the dark(er)(est) side, got Sansa excited for some seriously awkward double dates, and provided Joffrey with his first actual human moment of the series (predictably, he looked uncomfortable with it).

4. The Unsullied

This army of 8,000 slave warriors was traded to a foxy babe, given revenge against their sadistic former owners, and then granted their freedom, all in a matter of hours. It was a good day.

And for a show with budgetary problems that even a Lannister couldn’t pay for, an army that doesn’t require dialogue is the gift that keeps on giving. Considering they’re also wearing masks, they probably aren’t even actors at all. Those could be the show’s gaffers and key grips under that armor.

5. Podrick the Squire

While he didn’t actually appear in this episode, the legend of his cocksmanship is already working its way around Kings Landing. And his VORT (Value Over Replacement Trick) is through the roof.

Honorable Mentions: The Hound- At first things weren’t looking so good for our favorite corpse-raper, but as soon as the words “Trial by Combat” were mentioned, you just know he got wood. Tywin Lannister- He ridiculed Cersei, but sadly, no Tywin ridiculing could ever match the one he gave Tyrion a few episodes back. King Joffrey Baratheon- Just got genuinely cheered for perhaps the first time in his life. (Do you ever get the feeling Pete Campbell’s bitch face is the evolutionary King Joffrey?) Ros- “That’s former whore to you, you dickless weirdo.” Locke- Tricking people into drinking horse piss should make him all the rage at the Westeros frat parties. Lady Olenna- She’s positively out-Tyrion-ing Tyrion this season. Will we get a non-hilarious Lady Olenna scene? The Vegas bookies are laying off that one. Ramsay Snow- The show’s most effective torturer thus far, and that’s really saying something. Jorah Mormont and Ser Barristan Selmy- In an editing room somewhere, there’s almost certainly a deleted scene of these two exchanging high fives after Dany drops the whip.

Dying (Literally or Figuratively)

1. Kraznys mo Nakloz, Slave Lord of Astapor

“Wait, you speak Old Valyrian?”

“Yes, it is my native tongue.”

“Oh. So then you heard all the times I called you whore and slut?”

“Yep. I even heard you call me Sugar Tits.”

“Hmmm. This is awkward.”

“I agree. My dragon will kill you now.”

(Editor’s Note: All dialogue is approximate)

2. Jeor Mormont

In Braveheart, actor James Cosmo’s character took an arrow to the chest and kept right on fighting. And in his death scene as Jeor Mormont, getting stabbed in the back still didn’t stop him from strangling someone to death before finally going down. It must be nice to get typecast as a tough son of a bitch.

3. Jaime Lannister

Power Rankings rules dictate that characters who actually die must rank ahead of those who don’t, but even still, #3 feels too low for the King-slayer. After getting his sword hand cut off last week, Princess (that’s what Gwendoline Christie, the actress who plays Brienne, calls Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the actor who plays Jaime, when they’re on set) hits what looks pretty clearly like rock bottom this week, tricked into drinking horse piss, wallowing in the mud, beaten and taunted, all while his severed hand keeps him company around his neck.

And yet, it feels like Jaime is on the cusp of doing what his son Joffrey never could—learning from his mistakes. When he conned his captors out of raping Brienne last week, it was the first hint that maybe Jaime can weaponize words as well as his brother, and now that he won’t be able to weaponize any actual weapons, we could be seeing a lot more of that. After spending last week (and many others) trying to use wealth as a universal problem solver, Jaime might finally learn what Varys did all those years ago—letters can hold more value than purses.  Once he stops starving himself and selects some less garish neckwear, Jaime could turn into one of Westeros’ most interesting characters.

4. Theon Greyjoy

I think Theon should spend the rest of the season dressed like this.

5. The Sorcerer

Coming in at #5 when you’ve had your mouth sewn shut and been shipped across the seven kingdoms in a wooden box filled with dirt might seem like underachieving. But then you realize that really is only the fifth worst fate we saw this week. Westeros everyone! Fun for the whole family!

Honorable Mention: Lady Brienne of The Sapphire Isle- “What’s that? There aren’t any sapphires where you come from? Back to the rape line with you.” Cersei Lannister- Is everyone starting to get really excited for the emergence of Jealous Bitch Cersei? Heinous Bitch Cersei was getting a little too been there done that. The Roses of House Tyrell- No chamber pot is complete without one! Samwell Tarly- I hate to be the one to break this to you buddy, but you might just be in the wrong line of work. Sansa Stark- True, she’s no longer betrothed to Joffrey, but Loras Tyrell isn’t exactly high on the list of candidates to make young Sansa feel like a woman.

Littlefingering of the Week:

In an episode that not only saw no Littlefinger, but also (Gasp!) no nudity, we’re left with Varys’ words about our dear Lord Balish: “Littlefinger would see this country burn if he could be king of the ashes.” Yes, but then what would all the sexposition be about?

Daniel Joyaux is a film and entertainment critic living in Ann Arbor. You can see more of his writing at http://thirdmanmovies.blogspot.com and follow him on Twitter @thirdmanmovies

“Of all the arts, movies are the most powerful aid to empathy, and good ones make us into better people.”

-Roger Ebert, 2002

I first read those words in early 2006, during a particularly cold winter and a particularly cold time in my life. I had just graduated from college after a long series of changes to “the plan,” and the path to a life that I was interested in living still seemed painfully foggy. I had also just been the unwilling participant in an especially painful break-up, and was suddenly facing the prospect of weekends with no girlfriend and no college parties to go to. Though I didn’t know it yet (because I hadn’t actually seen the film yet), I was just as directionless—and just as non-waspy—as Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate. All I wanted was an adult to do something other than ask me about my future, to say something other than “plastics.”

Roger Ebert filled that void. During one of many evenings spent aimlessly wandering around Borders (RIP), I stumbled on the first volume of Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” books, and I can honestly say it changed my life.

I had always been a bit of a cinephile. Seeing Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption in theaters as a 13-year old first opened the floodgates of my movie love, and before I knew it, I was probably the only 8^th-grader in Muncie, Indiana checking out old Scorsese and Kubrick movies from the local Hollywood Video. This love of film continued through high school, when I was dazzled by late-90’s masterpieces like Being John Malkovich, Magnolia, American Beauty, and Three Kings. But college nights and weekends simply presented too many temptations and distractions, and I went through a period of several years where I just didn’t see that many films. Eventually I finished college with an English degree and the idea that I would be a rock critic, but soon realized that I just wasn’t very good at writing about the mechanics of music.

Finding Roger Ebert’s “The Great Movies” on the shelf at Borders that cold January day was the moment of clarity that I needed. I couldn’t believe how many of these films I’d never heard of, and I couldn’t wait to start watching them. As luck would have it, TCM was playing one of the movies, The Third Man, that night, and I loved it so much that I eventually named my blog after it. My journey had begun, with Roger Ebert as the best tour guide I could ever imagine.

One of Roger’s favorite quotes is from Groucho Marx, who once said “I would never want to be a part of any club that would have me as a member.” It’s a funny idea, but perhaps the reason Roger loved it so much is because it couldn’t have been farther from his ethos. Roger Ebert wanted everyone to be a part of his club. No one has ever made the discussion of art feel more inclusive, more accessible, and downright friendlier than he did. That he was able to do this without ever dumbing down himself or his subject matter is a truly remarkable achievement.

While Roger was an academic in the most flattering sense of the term (it’s difficult to fathom anyone understanding or studying film more than he did), he never came across that way in his writing. To Roger, the point was never to speak only to other cinephiles, but rather to help everyone become cinephiles.  Roger wanted the conversation to have the widest reach possible, to touch everyone. As he says in the quote at the top of this piece (taken from the introduction to “The Great Movies”), the best movies can “make us into better people.” Roger truly believed that (as do I), and that’s why he wanted everyone to have the opportunity to be so affected.

Roger’s conversational tone has been a great influence to my own writing, and reading his work over the years has taught me invaluable lessons in how to convey ideas clearly, effectively, and simply (though I still have some work to do on that last point). I clearly remember my first few weeks and months pouring over “The Great Movies,” and eventually its sequels. The anecdote from Omar Sharif that begins his Lawrence of Arabia piece—about how unlikely it was that the film would even get financed—still informs many of my ideas about the business of Hollywood. When Roger spoke of The Shawshank Redemption absorbing you to the extent that you lose the realization you’re watching a movie, I knew just what he was talking about. When he discussed the concept of real truth versus perceived truth in his JFK piece, he helped me realize that the latter can be just as important, even more so, than the former.

And reading Roger’s work might have been the first time I realized that simply stating what you like wasn’t breaking the rules. It seems obvious now. After all, isn’t stating what you like what a critic is always doing, at least to some extent? But nobody did it better than Roger, and nobody did it more passionately. Roger’s favorite movie scene was in Casablanca, when the singing Nazis are suddenly drowned out by Victor Laszlo leading the singing of the French National Anthem, La Marseillaise. For someone who believed that good movies could make us better people, it should come as no surprise that Roger was a sucker for people overcoming the odds to do the right thing.

But I’m a sucker too, and good movies have definitely made me a better person; hopefully they still are. My thoughts on mortality are inseparable from those of William Muny in Unforgiven—It’s a hell of a thing killing a man. You take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have. One of my favorite movies, Groundhog Day, is literally about learning how to become a better person, one day at a time. And The Third Man, the very first movie I ever watched on the recommendation of Roger Ebert, ends with its protagonist doing the right thing knowing it would cost him the girl, and yet he still goes after her at the end just to watch her walk away.

In recent years, I’ve found that I haven’t agreed with Roger’s taste as much as I used to. As his health continued to decline in the last few years, I felt that his taste was becoming a little less discerning, as though he was so thrilled to still be able to go to movies he just couldn’t bear to be as critical of them. But there’s an important lesson to be learned there, and it’s that no one has ever loved what he did more than Roger Ebert.

Here’s a painful truth to consider: Roger Ebert has probably seen more terrible movies than most of us have seen movies, period. When Michael Caine won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 2000 for The Cider House Rules, he famously joked in his speech about how much crap he’s made. Well, Roger Ebert saw all of that crap. He saw all of everyone’s crap. He saw every latter-day Eddie Murphy movie AND every Katherine Heigl movie. He saw four Scary Movies, but the Movie Gods mercifully saved him from a fifth with just a few days to spare. And yet there was no one more excited for the next movie he’d see than Roger Ebert. Even after a long series of health setbacks robbed his ability to speak, Roger still looked forward to being part of the conversation.

I noticed this when I encountered Roger at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. He sat two rows in front of me for a surprisingly uncrowded interview with the heads of Sony Pictures Classics. Despite the fact that a handful of major directors (Jonathan Demme, Gus Van Sant, and Atom Egoyan, to name a few) were in the room and chatting with people after the interview, I only wanted to meet Roger. I could tell he was having trouble moving, he seemed tired, and obviously he couldn’t speak, so I didn’t want to keep him. I didn’t bother him with talking about my writing, I didn’t give him a business card, and I didn’t even introduce myself. This wasn’t networking. It wasn’t about what Roger could do for me, but what he had already done for me. I simply told him that his writing has been very important to me, and I shook his hand.

But of course, that was an understatement. Roger Ebert has been so important to me that, like Bruce Springsteen, I no longer even like the formality of referring to them by their last names. I (falsely) feel like I know them too well for that. Just Roger will do nicely. And something Roger has always done is steadfastly called them “movies,” not “films.” Films sound stuffy, while movies sound enjoyable. Roger always thought movies were enjoyable. In my own writing, I’ve often struggled with this to the extent that sometimes in the same paragraph I switch back and forth between the two terms. Should they be films or movies? I’ve never really figured out an answer I’m satisfied with, but today at least, they’re movies.

When the news of Roger’s death hit Thursday afternoon, I immediately felt the need to honor him somehow in what I watched that night. Then I figured out what seemed like the perfect solution. Just a few days prior, I had checked out Gates of Heaven from the library, which was one of the 14 movies from Roger’s first volume of Great Movies that I hadn’t gotten around to seeing yet. Ostensibly it’s a documentary about Pet Cemeteries, but really it’s a film about how people deal with death, so it felt like the perfect movie to watch as I celebrated the life of Roger Ebert in my own little way.

To my surprise, I didn’t really like it. The pacing was a little too glacial, the action a little too sedate, the interviews a little too meandering. But like I always do with a movie that Roger recommends, I read his review afterwards. And even though Gates of Heaven had disappointed me, Roger’s essay about it did not. Through his words, I understood what he saw in it, why he found it so interesting, so revelatory about the human condition. Tastes will never overlap all of the time, and the goal of the critic isn’t to get people to like everything (you think) they ought to. But that doesn’t mean you can’t help them understand the things they don’t like, and maybe even appreciate them. I’ve never learned more from disagreeing with someone than I have with Roger. And on the night that Roger Ebert died, he was still teaching me.

Daniel Joyaux is a film and pop culture critic living in Ann Arbor. You can read more of his work at thirdmanmovies.blogspot.com and follow him on Twitter @thirdmanmovies.

Here we go folks, it’s Oscar time! There are 24 statues up for grabs, and since most of you probably only care about five of them, allow me to suggest how to place your bets for the other nineteen. As always, the goal is to go 20 for 24, and one of these years, it’s gonna happen. With every race, I’ve tried to include an alternate prediction, because there’s nothing quite like having my back-up logic to lean on when you disagree with my primary logic.

In years past, I’ve also included a “Who Got Screwed?” section for the major categories, but these nominations were so bizarre and so much has been written about what went wrong and why that I think it’s time to finally turn the focus on who was actually nominated.

Best Picture

Amour

Argo

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Django Unchained

Les Miserables

Life of Pi

Lincoln

Silver Linings Playbook

Zero Dark Thirty

What Should Win? People tend to delude themselves that Best Picture ought to go to the most important film of the year, but that rarely happens and it’s not even a fair request. It’s too difficult to accurately measure the importance of films which have mostly only been released a few months prior. Rather, it’s generally understood that the Best Picture Oscar isn’t a measure of importance, but some amalgamation of artistic achievement, technical achievement, and entertainment achievement (with a dash heaping of office politics thrown in). While history might prove Zero Dark Thirty to be the most important film of 2012, the dust (and the truth) needs some time to settle on that one. But Argo nails every box on the checklist, and does so without ever feeling like Oscar bait. While Lincoln drags at times, Silver Linings Playbook often feels too light-hearted, and Amour tries so damn hard not to entertain you, Argo just gets everything right.

What Will Win? I started saying by the end of October that Argo would win Best Picture, and in November I even wrote a long piece about why. I stuck with that prediction until the Oscar nominations came out and Ben Affleck was inexplicably left off of the Best Director’s ballot, seemingly crushing all hopes for a Best Picture win. (Only one time in the last 80 years has a movie won Best Picture without a Best Director nomination, Driving Miss Daisy in 1989.) But a funny thing happened on the way to the Kodak Theater: Ben Affleck’s Best Director snub has galvanized support/enthusiasm/sympathy for Argo like nothing anyone could have imagined. In the last two months, Argo has won the top prize from the Golden Globes, the Critic’s Choice Awards, the Writer’s Guild, the Director’s Guild, the Producer’s Guild, the Screen Actor’s Guild, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). For those keeping track at home, that’s everything. That’s every single Oscar precursor that “matters.” Six weeks after looking dead in the water, Argo now seems virtually unbeatable. But having said that, a Lincoln upset isn’t out of the question, and as far as underdogs go, Steven Spielberg is a pretty formidable one.

Best Director

Michael Haneke – Amour

Ang Lee – Life of Pi

David O. Russell – Silver Linings Playbook

Steven Spielberg – Lincoln

Benh Zeitlin – Beasts of the Southern Wild

Who Should Win? Ben Affleck. Oh, what’s that, he’s not nominated? Fine then, give it to Kathryn Bigelow. Wait, what? Ummm… Can I take a mulligan? Seriously though, without Affleck and Bigelow, I don’t think this race even has a “should win” anymore. While Spielberg is a perennially deserving master, I don’t find Lincoln to be among his best work. Life of Pi is a great achievement, but unfair as this may be, Ang Lee just doesn’t feel like a director that should have two Oscars (only four living directors do). David O. Russell conjures amazing performances from his actors, but Silver Linings Playbook isn’t a film that offered many technical challenges. Haneke is in the same boat as Russell, and Zeitlin will probably be wearing a tux this weekend for the first time since senior prom. So without a “right” answer, it depends what you specifically want to award. Spielberg’s career is most deserving of more recognition, Lee is probably most deserving for the film he’s actually nominated for, and Russell leads the “Guys who ought to win an Oscar at some point” sweepstakes. I’ll go with Ang Lee, because his film was the best, and careers aren’t supposed to matter (even though they absolutely do).

Who Will Win? This is the biggest WTF race the Oscars have seen in a long time, and because of that, it seems like the most obvious category for an upset. The safe bet is Steven Spielberg. Some prognosticators are going with Lee, but I don’t give him much chance for the following reason: If voters want to pick a guy who hasn’t won an Oscar, they can’t vote for Lee, and if voters don’t care about picking a guy who’s already won, they’ll probably vote for Spielberg. In other words, I feel like Lee will be the first guy that people decide not to vote for (well, after Zeitlin, who has completely redefined the concept of “happy just to be there”). But I think Russell and Haneke both have excellent chances. Actors represent the largest voting body, and they love Russell, while the always-geriatric academy might really respond to Amour. I still think this is Spielberg’s race to lose, but there’s significant upset potential, and never underestimate how much people don’t like voting for someone that’s already won twice. Unless it’s Daniel Day-Lewis.

Best Actor

Bradley Cooper – Silver Linings Playbook

Daniel Day-Lewis – Lincoln

Hugh Jackman – Les Miserables

Joaquin Phoenix – The Master

Denzel Washington – Flight

Who Should Win? Okay, don’t hate me. I promise I have nothing bad to say about Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance, which really was wonderful. But I also never felt like I was seeing a performance I would always remember. In The Master, that’s exactly what I got with Joaquin Phoenix. I say this completely devoid of hyperbole: That was one of the ten best acting performances I have seen in my life. Short of Robert De Niro channeling Jake La Motta, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a performance so raw and primal. With Method Acting, the key is becoming the character. But with Phoenix’s performance in The Master, he made me feel like that character was locked up inside of him all along, waiting to be un-caged. If only he weren’t considered mildly crazy, he might be able to get a few votes.

Who Will Win? Back in September, I saw The Master with my cousin Jordon, which prompted a conversation between us about the very early stages of the Best Actor race. At the time I thought John Hawkes would win for The Sessions (and it’s a tragic oversight that he wasn’t nominated). Lincoln was still at least a month away from even its first critics screening, but Jordon was convinced that Daniel Day-Lewis would win, because he was just too good an actor not to win an Oscar for a role like that. And I went on a tirade telling Jordon that if there was one thing I could absolutely promise, it’s that Daniel Day-Lewis had no chance of winning another Best Actor Oscar, no matter how good Lincoln was. No one had ever won Best Actor three times, and no one ever would, I said. I gave him my guarantee. Well Jordon, five months later I’m finally ready to admit I was wrong. In a few days, Daniel Day-Lewis will become the first person to win a third Best Actor Oscar. You have my guarantee.

Best Actress

Jessica Chastain – Zero Dark Thirty

Jennifer Lawrence – Silver Linings Playbook

Emmanuelle Riva – Amour

Quvenzhane Wallis – Beasts of the Southern Wild

Naomi Watts – The Impossible

Who Should Win? This is the highest quality Best Actress race I can ever remember seeing, and Chastain, Lawrence, and Riva all could have won in most any other year. Those are three monumental performances that should all be remembered by history. For the last month I’ve been struggling with whom I think is more deserving between Lawrence and Chastain, never even considering that Amour would be a game-changer when I finally saw it last week. Emmanuelle Riva was a revelation. Spotlighted by the long unbroken takes that Michael Haneke likes to use, Riva makes you lose all realization not just that you’re watching an acting performance, but that you’re even watching a dramatic film. Amour feels like a documentary at times, and it’s because Riva’s portrayal feels so real.

Who Will Win? Like Best Director, this is a category that I really think could go any of three ways, with Lawrence, Chastain, and Riva all having a great chance. Lawrence won the SAG award and is probably the front-runner, but I just have a weird feeling that Emmanuelle Riva will win. There’s going to be an upset somewhere in the major categories, and I’m betting this is where it’s going to happen.

Best Supporting Actor

Alan Arkin – Argo

Robert De Niro – Silver Linings Playbook

Philip Seymour Hoffman – The Master

Tommy Lee Jones – Lincoln

Christoph Waltz – Django Unchained

Who Should Win? Five great films, five great actors, five Oscar winners, five wonderful performances. This is a tough category that doesn’t even seem to have a favorite. Figuring out who’s most deserving requires picking lots of nits, but here goes nothing. I’ll rule out Arkin and Waltz first because their performances seem largely to be the product of great and witty dialogue. And I just can’t totally get behind De Niro because his performance is a little too reminiscent of Meet the Parents. It’s a tough call for me between Hoffman and Jones, but while Hoffman often gets overshadowed in The Master by Joaquin Phoenix, I think Jones has the single best scene in Lincoln, a scene where even the great dialogue felt as though it could only be uttered by Tommy Lee Jones.

Who Will Win? This would be a lot easier to pick if Tommy Lee Jones hadn’t made that face at the Golden Globes. If he didn’t seem so unenthused by awards season he would probably be more of a front-runner. But despite winning the SAG award (where he no-showed), Oscar voters don’t like rewarding the indifferent, so this race is wide open. I don’t think Waltz will win because his international career is just two nascent to already be awarded two Oscars, and the blahness of De Niro’s last decade may turn some voters off. (Plus he already has two Oscars, though as discussed with Spielberg and Day-Lewis, that might not matter as much as it used to.) Arkin’s role probably doesn’t have enough weight behind it compared to Hoffman and Jones. As for Hoffman, I just don’t know if enough voters will like The Master to reward it. While Jones’ indifference to awards season will probably cost him votes, I don’t think it will cost him enough to lose. And Tommy Lee Jones has been one of Hollywood’s best supporting actors for 25 years, so winning this category twice seems well-deserved.

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Adams – The Master

Sally Field – Lincoln

Anne Hathaway – Les Miserables

Helen Hunt – The Sessions

Jacki Weaver – Silver Linings Playbook

Who Should Win? This is the category this year that I can’t seem to garner much enthusiasm for, partly because it seems like a foregone conclusion and partly because none of the performances really wowed me. Field was good, but her scenes were the weakest in Lincoln and I often couldn’t wait for them to end. Weaver gave the fourth-best performance in her own movie and the nomination seemed like a stretch. Helen Hunt’s performance was physically daring, but rewarding her for The Sessions seems wrong when John Hawkes clearly gave the film’s best performance and didn’t even get a nomination. And Amy Adams gave the most traumatizing hand job in cinematic history. I guess that leaves Anne Hathaway, who dies fifteen minutes into a nearly three-hour movie, but is still the most memorable part.

Who Will Win? Some people think Sally Field can upset here, but she’s only been nominated twice before and won both times. Winning three Oscars on three nominations just ain’t gonna happen. If anyone can beat Anne Hathaway, it’s probably Amy Adams, who feels due at this point (this is her fourth nomination). But her role just isn’t showy enough, while Hathaway has the benefit of being the only person on screen during the film’s best sequence. And she nails it.

Best Original Screenplay

Amour – Michael Haneke

Django Unchained – Quentin Tarantino

Flight – John Gatins

Moonrise Kingdom – Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola

Zero Dark Thirty – Mark Boal

Prediction: While all of these screenplays have their attributes, this race has to be Boal all the way. His screenplay combines incredible research, snappy dialogue, three hours worth of high stakes and suspense, and an unforgettable main character. Despite the controversy surrounding the film and the veracity of the research, Mark Boal still won the Writer’s Guild award, and he should be recognized in a relatively weak year for this category. (Partially because the great Looper was snubbed of a nomination.) But Amour could be lurking for an upset if too many Academy members are turned off by Zero Dark Thirty.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Argo – Chris Terrio

Beasts of the Southern Wild – Lucy Alibar & Benh

Zeitlin

Life of Pi – David Magee

Lincoln – Tony Kushner

Silver Linings Playbook – David O. Russell

Prediction: While Magee, Russell, and Alibar/Zeitlin all did fine jobs, this is a two-man race between Kushner and Terrio. Having never written an adapted screenplay myself, I can’t tell you with certainty which author faced a greater challenge. Terrio took a magazine article and fleshed it out into a two-hour movie, while Kushner started with a 944-page book and had to whittle it down to 150 minutes of screen time. Even though the challenges are wildly different—one focused on addition while the other on subtraction—both authors created wonderful work out of unenviable starting points. But while Tony Kushner’s Lincoln dialogue was nothing short of stunning, the screenplay’s structure was a little suspect at times. Chris Terrio’s Argo script was perfect in both respects. Terrio beat out Kushner at the WGA Awards, and I expect the same here.

Best Animated Film

Brave – Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman

Frankenweenie – Tim Burton

ParaNorman – Chris Butler and Sam Fell

The Pirates! Band of Misfits – Peter Lord and Jeff

Newitt

Wreck-It Ralph – Rich Moore

Prediction: Usually when Pixar is in this race, the other nominees can just stay home. But Brave is atypical of Pixar (it feels more like a Disney animated princess movie, and isn’t especially original), and Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph conjures all of the creativity and magic we’re used to seeing from Pixar. Telling the story of an arcade game villain who desperately wants to be seen as the good guy, Wreck-It Ralph is the best animated film since 2010’s Toy Story 3.

Best Documentary Film

5 Broken Cameras – Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi

The Gatekeepers – Dror Moreh

How to Survive a Plague – David France

The Invisible War – Kirby Dick

Searching For Sugarman – Malik Bendjelloul

Prediction: Unfortunately I’ve only seen Searching For Sugarman, but that appears to be the front-runner, and deservedly so. The story of Rodriguez, a failed Detroit singer-songwriter from the early 1970’s who, thirty years later, discovered he has millions of fans in South Africa, Searching For Sugarman is a wonderful feel-good story that truly is stranger than fiction. But don’t count out The Gatekeepers, a film about Israeli secret service agents that won rave reviews on the festival circuit and should be opening domestically soon.

Best Foreign Language Film

Amour (Austria) – Michael Haneke

Kon-Tiki (Norway) – Joachim Ronning and Espen

Sandberg

No (Chile) – Pablo Larrain

A Royal Affair (Denmark) – Nikolaj Arcel

War Witch (Canada) – Kim Nguyen

Prediction: This category often has wonky results because it isn’t voted on by the Academy at large. Rather, it’s voted on by a small sub set of the Academy who attends special screenings of the nominated films. Because the voting body is much smaller, it’s much more prone to strange results that feel out of line with popular opinion. It also tends to be an incredibly old voting body, which is why a fantastical film like Pan’s Labyrinth was upset in this race six years ago. But Amour is probably so well regarded that it’s upset-proof, and its subject matter shouldn’t have problems appealing to older voters. But even though I know it has no chance, I’ll be rooting for Kon-Tiki, which I saw in Toronto last fall and is absolutely wonderful.

Best Cinematography

Anna Karenina – Seamus McGarvey

Django Unchained – Robert Richardson

Life of Pi – Claudio Miranda

Lincoln – Janusz Kaminski

Skyfall – Roger Deakins

Prediction: Tarantino films tend not to win any technical categories, Lincoln was likely too dark and enclosed, and Anna Karenina might not be widely enough seen among the voters. Some people are predicting Life of Pi here, but I have a hard time imagining a movie that relied so heavily on CGI being awarded for photography. Without a nomination for The Master (which really did have the year’s best cinematography), that leaves Skyfall, which is not only the most visually resplendent Bond film ever created (seriously, watch that Shanghai sequence again), it’s also the sentimental favorite to win. Cinematographer Roger Deakins has been nominated nine previous times and never won (and sometimes, as with Fargo and No Country for Old Men, he lost despite being the alleged front-runner). Who knows how many voters actually consider this stuff, but anyone that does will also be aware that Kaminski has already won twice and Richardson has won three times. Here’s hoping the tenth time will be the charm for Roger Deakins.

Best Costume Design

Anna Karenina

Les Miserables

Lincoln

Mirror Mirror

Snow White and the Huntsman

Prediction: It’s worth remembering in categories like this that even though the nominees are chosen solely by the costume designers and visual artists in the Academy, the winners are voted on by everyone. That means that most of the people voting won’t have seen Mirror Mirror or Snow White, so they’re out. And because most of the people voting do not, in fact, know a thing about costume design, the winner tends to just be the most opulent looking of the bunch. And that means that Anna Karenina should have the clear edge. I know I just said that a lot of voters might not have seen it, but as long as they at least caught the trailer, it should catch their vote.

Best Editing

Argo – William Goldenberg

Life of Pi – Tim Squyres

Lincoln – Michael Kahn

Silver Linings Playbook – Jay Cassidy and Crispin

Struthers

Zero Dark Thirty – Dylan Tichenor and William

Goldenberg

Prediction: Williams Goldenberg deserves some kind of Super Oscar for editing the two best films of the year, both of which are incredible achievements in pacing and suspense. Since that’s pretty unlikely (though not impossible; he could tie with himself!), I’ll just be happy if he wins. But for which film? Argo seems more likely, because Zero Dark Thirty is three hours long, and some people view that (unfairly, I might add) as weakness in editing.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Hitchcock

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Les Miserables

Prediction: I’m still trying to get over the fact that Cloud Atlas wasn’t nominated here, but whatever. As with Costume Design, it’s useful to remember that most of the people voting for this don’t know a thing about make-up, and therefore bigger equals better. That’s why I don’t think Les Miserables will win, because the actors mostly just look dirty. Two of the three Lord of the Rings films won this category, so The Hobbit is probably the front-runner. But I think the achievement of making Anthony Hopkins look like Hitchcock is the most impressive of the bunch, and Academy members love making nods to Hollywood with their votes.

Best Production Design

Anna Karenina

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Les Miserables

Life of Pi

Lincoln

Prediction: I’m ruling out Life of Pi for the same reason I ruled it out in cinematography—the CGI does too much of the work. And people probably disliked The Hobbit too much to vote for it. Anna Karenina, assuming enough people watched it, should have the edge for its intricate stage-like set maneuvering, easily the only most impressive part of the movie. But both Lincoln and Les Miserables have much more overall support, and either one could win here.

Best Visual Effects

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Life of Pi

Marvel’s The Avengers

Prometheus

Snow White and the Huntsman

Prediction: Say it with me kids: The whole Academy votes for this, and most of them don’t know a damn thing about visual effects. Good, now that we got that out of the way, we can scratch off every nominee that isn’t Life of Pi, because there’s no way anyone in the Academy over 55 (which is most of them) saw those other four movies.

Best Original Score

Anna Karenina – Dario Marianelli

Argo – Alexandre Desplat

Life of Pi – Mychael Danna

Lincoln – John Williams

Skyfall – Thomas Newman

Prediction: Voters are probably sick of Williams (he’s won five times), and Marianelli will likely fall prey to a film that’s just too low profile. Desplat (fifth nomination, no wins) and Newman (eleventh nomination, no wins) are both immensely talented, respected, and deserving, but I can’t help thinking Danna is the favorite. People often associate scores with how much a film emotionally resonates, and Life of Pi is probably the leader of the pack in that regard. I’d be thrilled if Desplat or Newman wins, but I don’t expect them to.

Best Original Song

“Before My Time” (Chasing Ice) – J. Ralph

“Everybody Needs a Best Friend” (Ted) – Walter

Murphy and Seth MacFarlane

“Pi’s Lullaby” (Life of Pi) – Mychael Danna and

Bombay Jayashri

“Skyfall” (Skyfall) – Adele and Paul Epworth

“Suddenly” (Les Miserables) – Claude-Michel

Schonberg, Herbert Kretzmer, and Alain Boublil

Prediction: Would you believe that a Bond movie has never won an Oscar for Best Original Song? Seems impossible, right? And of the 22 previous films, only three even received nominations in this category—“Live and Let Die” was first, followed by “Nobody Does It Better” and “For Your Eyes Only.” (How classics like “Goldfinger” and “You Only Live Twice” didn’t even get nominated should go a long way towards explaining how screwed up this category has always been.) Anyway, as much fun as it would be to see Seth MacFarlane win an Oscar while he’s hosting the show, it’s time for 007 to finally win this Oscar after fifty years in the film business. And Adele is the perfect winner, considering she’s the first British artist to record a Bond Theme since Duran Duran in 1985.

Best Sound Editing

Argo

Django Unchained

Life of Pi

Skyfall

Zero Dark Thirty

Prediction: What’s fun about the Sound categories is that no one knows a freaking thing about them, and they basically only exist to ruin your Oscar pool. I’m picking Skyfall here because everyone loves James Bond. Sadly, that’s as much logic as I can put into this one.

Best Sound Mixing

Argo

Les Miserables

Life of Pi

Lincoln

Skyfall

Prediction: Apparently people like Les Miserables for this category because the sound mixing involved combining the studio sung parts with the live acting sung parts. Sounds good to me!

Best Animated Short Film

Adam and Dog

Fresh Guacamole

Head Over Heels

Maggie Simpson in “The Longest Daycare”

Paperman

Prediction: The short film categories are nice, because they’re voted on by a small group that attends the screenings, and because they’re almost all by first-time filmmakers the votes tend to be totally devoid of politics or agendas. Presumably, people vote purely on taste, because what else is there to go on? So let’s predict taste! I’m excited, I don’t think we’ve tried this yet. I’ve seen Adam and Dog on a few sets of predictions, but I found it boring. Fresh Guacamole was weird, brief, and slight, so no. The Simpsons are always fun, but they’re played out and this is a category about originality. Paperman was sweet, but not as sweet as Head over Heels, which was beautiful and incredibly creative.

Best Documentary Short Film

Inocente

Kings Point

Mondays at Racine

Open Heart

Redemption

Prediction: I could see this going any of three ways: Inocente is about a fifteen year-old homeless immigrant trying to become an artist, King’s Point is about a retirement community, and Mondays at Racine is about a salon that helps chemotherapy patients. All are worthy, but Mondays at Racine feels like the one with the broadest appeal.

Best Live Action Short Film

Asad

Buzkashi Boys

Curfew

Death of a Shadow

Henry

Prediction: Henry and Buzkashi Boys were both on the overbearing and boring side (not good for a short film). Asad was quite good, but a little too underdeveloped and quaintly resolved. I was really impressed with the artistry and production design of Death of a Shadow, and I’ll bet we’ll hear from that filmmaker again. But I expect Curfew to win, and only partly because it has the best suicide bowling alley dance sequence of the year. I would absolutely go see a feature-length version of this film.

And that’s it! I’ll see you again next year when I guarantee that Daniel Day-Lewis will not win a fourth Oscar.

Daniel Joyaux is a film and pop culture critic living in Ann Arbor. You can read more of his work at thirdmanmovies.blogspot.com and follow him on Twitter @thirdmanmovies.

Egyptian Theater at Sundance

On the day before I took off for Park City, a friend, who had arrived a day earlier, posted an Instagram photo of his phone displaying the temperature as 5 degrees. The update read: “High temp of the day!”

It seemed so much ado about nothing. Living in Michigan for abaft a decade I figured I was well-prepared for anything Sundance could throw at me. Still, I made sure to pack long undies and extra warm socks.

As I might have expected, much like everything Hollywood does, the weather conditions were all hype. Whatever chill had struck the mountain resort town a week earlier, temps were a balmy 25 degrees when I arrived. They would remain so all week, with nary a snow flutter to worry over. Michiganders would snort in derision over the worry.

DAY ONE

The first thing you come to understand about the Sundance Film Festival is that it’s all about the shuttles. When they leave, where they go, where they stop along the way, and how much they’ll delay your ability to get to a film screening. On this count, my first two days in Park City were an exercise in frustration and self-education. I quickly learned that not only would I have to throw out my intended screening schedule on a regular basis but that scoring tickets to anything not designated as a Press and Industry screening would be near-impossible for the opening weekend. Even the press screenings required that I arrive 45 minutes to an hour in advance to secure a seat (I learned this the hard way after spending an hour in line for Kill Your Darlings only to be turned away 2 spots from the front of the line).

The second thing I came to understand about Sundance is that the parties matter. Actually, along with the deals being negotiated, brokered, and prayed for, events that allow for networking are the lifeblood of the festival. Half the people I met told me that they would only get to see a hand-full of films, opting instead to infiltrate every bar, brewpub, restaurant, gallery, and makeshift party space in Park City. I met composers, actors, producers, filmmakers, and even a few screenwriters, all on the hunt for a professional connection. The focus was on the scene …and being seen.

I also managed to meet a few festival goers along the way. The ballsier ones showed up at public screenings half an hour before showtime and started asking if anyone had extra tickets for sale. This was an especially common occurrence at premieres, where actors and directors were expected to field a Q&A after the film. Interestingly enough, it is against Sundance rules to re-sell tickets, something volunteers futilely attempted to prevent folks from doing through the only weapon at their disposal – guilt. I never saw the tactic work.

My only screening of the day ended up being a midnight showing of We Are What We Are, an American remake of a Mexican horror. Director Jim Mickle’s (Stakeland) cannibal family drama ended up being far more polished and mature than I expected, boasting some terrific camera work and a superlative cast. The film charts the coming-of-age complications of sisters Iris and Rose Parker, who are forced by their brooding zealot of a father (Hal Hartley stalwart Bill Sage) to assume their dead mother’s duties as the cannibalistic provider for the family’s ritualistic beliefs. The Parkers mostly hide in plain sight, running a trailer park, attending high school and otherwise keeping to themselves. This leads their secretive behavior to draw suspicion from Doc Barrow (Michael Parks), whose teenage daughter went missing a year earlier. As you might expect, events come to an ugly head. Mickle’s movie is a slow burn exercise in American Gothic horror that only explodes with over-the-top violence in its final act – and the final attack is, indeed, a doozy.

Better than it has any right to be, We Are What We Are approaches an otherwise lurid take with understated restraint and stylishness. It may be the most tasteful cannibal movie I’ve ever seen (pun intended).

CELEBRITY SIGHTINGS: Michael Cera (at the Marroitt), ace indie producer Christine Vachon (at a Vietnamese restaurant), Michael C. Hall (on the street in Park City).
FUN FACT OF THE DAY: Estimated number of festival attendees was 50K people

In each category below, everything is listed in order of how likely I think a nomination is, and the films in bold are what I think actually will be nominated. And thanks to Grantland, whose format I stole for this piece.

I’m weighing in on 45 potential nominations, with the goal of getting at least 40 of them right.

BEST PICTURE

The Locks

Lincoln

Zero Dark Thirty

Argo

The Near Locks

Silver Linings Playbook

Les Miserables

Life of Pi

At Least One of These

The Master

Moonrise Kingdom

Amour

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Other (Unlikely) Possibilities

Django Unchained

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

The Sessions

The Impossible

Flight

Skyfall

The Dark Knight Rises

This is the toughest category to pick, because we don’t even know how many nominees we’re getting. Starting last year, the voting changed, so now we can get anywhere from five to ten nominees, purely dependent on how the voting gets spread out. The crux is this: for a movie to get nominated, at least five percent of the ballots have to list it number one. There are close to 6,000 people in the Academy, so that means a minimum of around 300 Academy members have to think a movie was the best of the year for a nomination to occur. And that’s the key here—it doesn’t matter if every single person in the Academy thought something was in the year’s ten best, it only matters if 300 or so people thought it was the very best.

Consensus agreement suggests this was a very strong year for movies, and a lot of people assume that means we’ll get the full ten nominees. But the math doesn’t necessarily support that theory. Because there’s so much agreement about what this year’s very best films were (Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, & Argo), that’s likely to take a huge amount of the first place votes. If each of those films gets somewhere in the range of 15-25% of the first place votes, then that already leaves precious little space for the rest of the field.

Silver Linings Playbook, Les Miserables, and Life of Pi all feel pretty safely in, but after that, just about anything could happen. And one possibility is definitely that the nominations stop there. Some people are predicting that films widely liked by either younger Academy members (Django Unchained) or older Academy members (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) have a great chance to be nominated. But remember, the key isn’t how widely liked a movie is, it’s how passionately liked a movie is. Can you imagine 300 Academy members choosing either of those as the best film of the year? Perhaps you can, but I’ll be over here, respectfully disagreeing with you.

And that leaves the “art” films that gain small, yet passionate (there’s that important word again), followings. For many prognosticators, The Master has fallen out of the race and appears to be a peaked-too-early also-ran. But I think it’s just the kind of movie that will succeed in the Academy’s new voting system. Between it’s memorably amazing acting and cinematography, and its high-brow artiness, it’s easy to picture this being the type of film that a small group rallies around and puts at the top of the ballot (just like Tree of Life last year). But The Master is just one of four films that could benefit from this voting possibility, and that means they could all become victim to vote splitting. But my guess is Moonrise Kingdom comes through, while Amour and Beasts of the Southern Wild fall just short.

And as for the rest of the crowd pleasers, blame the system. Until the voting policies change again, the days of movies like The Full Monty, Seabiscuit, and The Blind Side sneaking into the Best Picture race are over.

BEST DIRECTOR

The Locks

Steven Spielberg – Lincoln

Kathryn Bigelow – Zero Dark Thirty

Ben Affleck – Argo    

The Near-Lock

Ang Lee – Life of Pi

Probably Someone From This Group

Paul Thomas Anderson – The Master

Michael Haneke – Amour

Probably Not Someone From This Group

David O. Russell – Silver Linings Playbook

Tom Hooper – Les Miserables

Quentin Tarantino – Django Unchained

Robert Zemeckis – Flight

We basically know what four of the nominees will be here, but predicting the fifth is a bit tricky. The Golden Globes nominated Tarantino, while the Director’s Guild chose Hooper. But the Oscars have a longstanding tradition of awarding the fifth slot to a “visionary” director who tends to get unfairly ignored elsewhere (what I like to call the Terrence Malick Memorial Nomination). This year, there are two obvious choices for that slot, Anderson and Haneke. It’s basically a 50/50 toss-up, but I’m giving the edge to Anderson, just because his career is a little more user-friendly than Haneke, whose films often stretch viewer patience to the limits. But it should be noted that Amour is regarded as the most accessible film of Haneke’s career, while The Master is undoubtedly the most inaccessible of Anderson’s, so Haneke taking this slot definitely wouldn’t be a shock.

BEST ACTOR

The Lock

Daniel Day Lewis – Lincoln

The Near Locks

John Hawkes – The Sessions

Denzel Washington – Flight

Pick Two

Hugh Jackman – Les Miserables

Joaquin Phoenix – The Master

Bradley Cooper – Silver Linings Playbook

Better Luck Next Year

Richard Gere – Arbitrage

Anthony Hopkins – Hitchcock

Bill Murray – Hyde Park Hudson

Jack Black – Bernie

This is an immensely difficult category for me to analyze objectively, because I thought Phoenix’s performance wasn’t just the best of the year, but among the five or ten best acting performances I’ve ever seen. And because of this I find it unfathomable that he wouldn’t make the field of five, despite any evidence to the contrary, and regardless of how many comments he makes about not caring. So I’m going with my gut, and predicting he’ll find himself a nomination, because I desperately want to believe that quality of that magnitude matters more than the politics of how this all works.

Now having said that, the safe bet is that Jackman and Cooper will be the final two nominees. But I think both are vulnerable, Jackman because a lot of people disliked Les Miserables, and Cooper because some see his performance as slight and lacking depth. Because of Jackman’s impeccable singing, I’d give him the edge. And Richard Gere is looming as a potential spoiler. He already received a Golden Globe nomination for Arbitrage, and he’s been campaigning hard. Plus he’s never gotten an Oscar nomination, which some voters may see as an oversight that’s due to be corrected.

BEST ACTRESS

The Locks

Jennifer Lawrence – Silver Linings Playbook

Jessica Chastain – Zero Dark Thirty

Someone Has To Get Left Out

Naomi Watts – The Impossible

Helen Mirren – Hitchcock

Emmanuelle Riva – Amour

Marion Cotilard – Rust and Bone

Unlikely (But You Never Know)

Judi Dench – The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Rachel Weisz – The Deep Blue Sea

Quvenzhané Wallis – Beasts of the Southern Wild

Maggie Smith – Quartet

This is already seen as such a two-(wo)man race that the other five nominees feel virtually inconsequential. And yet, arguing over the inconsequential is what I’m here for! I think Watts is basically a sure thing for her physically demanding performance, and Mirren should get in on name-recognition alone. So it’s down to Riva and Cotillard for the last slot, and both are in French subtitled films that many voters will have to talk themselves into watching. But Amour is light-hearted and beautiful, while Rust and Bone is heavy and depressing. That may be the deciding factor between which screener makes it to the DVD player and which screener stays on the coffee table. Plus Riva, at 85 years old, would be the oldest Best Actress nominee in history, and voters love a good narrative to latch on to.

While I wouldn’t rule out Dench and Weisz—two beloved actresses who consistently churn out great work—I am ruling out Wallis. I know other people are predicting she’ll make the cut, but, as Mark Harris wrote on Grantland last summer, what she does isn’t even really acting. She’s six years old, so it’s not like she’s really considering the different ways to approach a scene. And Wallis even said as much when asked about her performance. She just said that was just her up on the screen. While this certainly doesn’t take away from how good she is, it’s also distinctly non-Oscar worthy.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

The Locks

Tommy Lee Jones – Lincoln

Philip Seymour Hoffman – The Master

The Near Lock

Alan Arkin – Argo

Pick Two

Javier Bardem – Skyfall

Leonardo DiCaprio – Django Unchained

Christoph Waltz – Django Unchained

Robert De Niro – Silver Linings Playbook

Sorry Guys

Matthew McConaughey – Magic Mike

Ewan McGregor – The Impossible

Samuel L. Jackson – Django Unchained

This is a fascinating category, because of the seven legitimate contenders for a nomination, six have already won Oscars, and five of them have already won in this category. Because of this, I really like DiCaprio’s chances for a nomination, as voters might see him as the only breath of fresh air in a category filled with people who probably don’t need any more accolades.

Out of the four actors vying for the final two slots, I think De Niro is the closest thing to a longshot, because it could be argued that this is his first role in over a decade that wasn’t simple check cashing. And it might be hard for voters to talk themselves into rewarding that. I’m also operating on the assumption that Bardem is pretty close to a lock. He didn’t get a Golden Globe nomination, but he’s on SAG’s list, and voters who loved Skyfall (and apparently, they are legion) will probably feel like this is the best chance to reward that film. Plus, after 22 other Bond movies, coming up with a totally refreshing and totally creepy villain ain’t no easy task. And there’s recent history of this award going to the year’s best villain, which happened three years in a row from 2007-2009.

The real question here will be whether DiCaprio and Waltz split each other’s votes, and even if Samuel L. Jackson siphons some away from both of them. But DiCaprio is playing both a supporting role and a villain for the first time in his adult career, and that should gain not just the curiosity of the voters, but also their attention.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

The Winner Lock

Anne Hathaway  – Les Miserables

The Near Locks

Sally Field – Lincoln

Amy Adams – The Master

Probably

Helen Hunt – The Sessions

Maggie Smith – The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

The Spoiler

Nicole Kidman – The Paperboy

Possible Surprises

Ann Dowd – Compliance

Jacki Weaver – Silver Linings Playbook

Samantha Barks – Les Miserables

Kerry Washington – Django Unchained

This feels like kind of a boring category because Hathaway appears to have it in the bag, but whether or not Kidman can sneak into the field will be one of the most interesting elements of the nominations. And that’s because The Paperboy is a legitimately awful movie. To be fair, Kidman is quite good as its southern-fried sexpot, and there are (fleeting) stretches where she almost makes the movie tolerable. But getting voters to watch their screener copy given the savage reviews heaped upon the movie is no easy task, while Hunt and Smith (Kidman’s most vulnerable competitors) are both in happy feel-good movies that voters will likely love watching. And that’s why I think Kidman will sit this one out despite getting nominated by both the Golden Globes and the Screen Actor’s Guild.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

The Winner Lock

Mark Boal – Zero Dark Thirty

The Near Lock

Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola – Moonrise Kingdom

Anything Could Happen

Rian Johnson – Looper    

Quentin Tarantino – Django Unchained    

Paul Thomas Anderson – The Master

Michael Haneke – Amour

John Gatins – Flight

Zero Dark Thirty is the only sure thing here, and I can imagine virtually any scenario for the other four nominees. But ultimately I think Flight will fall short because it’s seen as more of an achievement for Denzel Washington and the special effects team, and I think Amour is more likely to get honored in other categories. Plus Tarantino and Anderson are such mainstays of this category that it’s hard to picture either of them getting left out.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

The Locks

Tony Kushner – Lincoln

Chris Terrio – Argo    

David O. Russell – Silver Linings Playbook

The Near Lock

David Magee – Life of Pi

One of These

Stephen Chbosky – The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Ben Lewin – The Sessions

Lucy Alibar & Benh Zeitlin – Beasts of the Southern Wild

We’re really only debating the last slot here. While Beasts of the Southern Wild is probably the most loved film of the likely possibilities, and I happen to think The Sessions is the most deserving, the consensus seems to be that Wallflower will claim the last slot. Stephen Chbosky adapted his own novel for the screenplay, which is probably nerve-racking, and this is likely the only category for voters to recognize the film.

Daniel Joyaux is a film and pop culture critic living in Ann Arbor. You can read more of his work at thirdmanmovies.blogspot.com and follow him on Twitter @thirdmanmovies.

Starring: Bill Murray, Laura Linney, Olivia Williams

Director: Roger Michell

Rated: R Run Time : 94 min

Grade C

Hard to imagine, but chit chat about the bedroom liaisons of our political leaders was once the sort of thing whispered around cocktails parties, but rarely aired in public like dirty laundry hung on the public line. So it was that Franklin D. Roosevelt managed to get elected four times, and steer the nation through the great twin disasters of a depression and a war, while the general public remained largely unaware of his crippling polio or his multiple extramarital affairs. Hyde Park on Hudson meanwhile, drapes all those old soggy knickers out in the breeze, along with some fresh revelations gleaned from the diary of Margaret “Daisy” Stuckley, the president’s confidante, distant relation, and apparently, his lover.

When we meet her in the film, Daisy (Laura Linney) lives a quiet, bucolic existence in a farmhouse that looks like Thomas Hart Benton painted it. She is summoned from this restful world to come visit her fifth cousin, who happens to be the leader of the free world, and who prefers to summer at his mother’s estate in upstate New York. After some polite hello’s the Prez (Bill Murray) invites Daisy to check out his stamp collection , which actually works on her, though if you are the POTUS, your hobbies are bound to be more intriguing than the average Joe’s. Soon the odd pair are willing away their afternoons taking joyrides through a lush country side coated in lavender and warm sunshine, just the spot for a discreet liaison. Sure enough, with the secret service waved to a safe distance, and Glen Miller on the radio, the sedan starts a knocking, and we are treated to the spectacle of the commander in chief getting a handjob. The movie never recovers from this bit of creepiness, and tawdry feeling pervades the remainder of the picture.

What follows is a storyline about the King and Queen of England’s unprecedented visit to Hyde Park in 1939, in an attempt to curry FDR’s favor, something nearly everyone in the film seems to be doing. No stranger to fame, Bill Murray tries mightily to slide into the role of a great man, but it’s not a comfortable fit. Murray’s Midwestern work ethic slips through FDR’s polished patrician haughtiness, and Murray’s snarky, no-bullshit comedic bluntness makes him genetically ill suited to playing a master politician.
Poor Linney fares worse; her character is such a bland dishrag that she can do little but stand around looking befuddled and wan. Olivia Williams does capture a bit of Eleanor Roosevelt’s famous brio, though she’s perhaps just a tad too lovely a face to be believed as the First Lady. Samuel West makes a good effort at stamping his imprint as George VI, or “Bertie” as made famous by Colin Firth, and he’s expertly paired with Olivia Colman as the Queen. With war looming, and the fate of the empire in doubt, the Royal Couple are busy fretting about the accommodations, and with a luncheon where they’ll be forced to eat aYank horror called “Hot Dogs”. How common!

The film works best in these lighter moments, then when delving into the shockingly dull central “romance” or in the president’s weird, extended sexual fling with his secretary Missy Lehand (Elizabeth Marvel), who tries to indoctrinate Daisy like a sister wife.
We learn about Franklin’s seduction techniques, but are offered precious little insight into his strengths as a chief executive. If there is a point to be gleaned, it is that the president conducted business in the same way he handled private affairs; by using the potency of his personality to awe, coerce and overpower.
It’s not clear how helpful this message really, is, as the movie is too caught up in mythologizing the era, to really let its seedier aspects comfortably squeeze into the scrupulously tasteful period detail. Hyde Park on Hudson tries to push modern concerns on history, and ends up getting lost in the static between them.

-Corey Hall

Nevertheless, as one of those said white males, I am loathe to give up my post. Which probably  makes me more a part of the problem than the solution, huh?

Anyway, since 2007 we’ve been joining our film reviewing brethren in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco etc.  each year to watch, vote and award those films and artists we think are deserving of being called the best of the year. What I particularly like about Detroit’s society is that while we often nominate many of the same films others are singing praises to, we have a defiantly indie streak – frequently  sprinkling in unlikely nominees and, occasionally picking one for top honors.

Last Monday the Detroit critic’s crew hunkered down in Novi to watch nearly 15 hours of films in order to picks our winners. In less than a 36 hour time period we saw The Impossible, Django Unchained, Les Misérables, Rust & Bone, Zero Dark Thirty, and The Hobbit.  Many ran between 2 1/2 and 3 hours. On top of those were piled last minute DVD screeners of documentaries, independents, and a few of the big studio releases. For cineastes like us, it was a smorgasbord of movie-watching. Of course, it helps that so many of the films were excellent.

Today, the DFCS released its list of 2012 nominees, and true to our go-against-the-grain personalities we once again made some selections that the other societies overlooked or ignored. Silver Linings Playbook led the pack with 7 nominations. Personally, I am thrilled that the society saw fit to nominate Sarah Polley’s very indie Take This Waltz in so many categories (4). It was probably my favorite film of the year.

Friday we’ll announce our final winners. Look for the announcement in the Metro Times.

NOTE: The one major film the DFCS was unable to see (which L.A. selected as Best Film of 2012) was Michael Haneke’s Amour. Otherwise, we were able to consider much of what the other societies considered.

THE DFCS NOMINEES FOR 2012 (in alphabetical order)

BEST PICTURE

• ARGO
• THE IMPOSSIBLE
• SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
• TAKE THIS WALTZ
• ZERO DARK THIRTY

BEST DIRECTOR

• BEN AFFLECK – ARGO
• JUAN ANTONIO BAYONA – THE IMPOSSIBLE
• KATHERINE BIGELOW – ZERO DARK THIRTY
• SARAH POLLEY – TAKE THIS WALTZ
• DAVID O. RUSSELL – SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

BEST ACTOR

• BRADLEY COOPER – SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
• JOHN HAWKES – THE SESSIONS
• DANIEL DAY-LEWIS – LINCOLN
• BILL MURRAY – HYDE PARK ON HUDSON
• JOAQUIN PHOENIX – THE MASTER

BEST ACTRESS

• JESSICA CHASTAIN – ZERO DARK THIRTY
• GRETA GERWIG – DAMSELS IN DISTRESS
• JENNIFER LAWRENCE – SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
• NAOMI WATTS – THE IMPOSSIBLE
• MICHELLE WILLIAMS – TAKE THIS WALTZ

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

• ROBERT DENIRO – SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
• PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN – THE MASTER
• TOMMY LEE JONES – LINCOLN
• MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY – MAGIC MIKE
• EWAN MCGREGOR – THE IMPOSSIBLE
• EZRA  MILLER – THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

• AMY ADAMS – THE MASTER
• ANN DOWD – COMPLIANCE
• SALLY FIELD – LINCOLN
• ANNE HATHAWAY – LES MISÉRABLES
• HELEN HUNT – THE SESSIONS

BEST ENSEMBLE

• ARGO
• MARVEL’S THE AVENGERS
• LINCOLN
• MOONRISE KINGDOM
• SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

BREAKTHROUGH

• STEPHEN CHBOSKY – THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER
• ZOE KAZAN – RUBY SPARKS
• REBEL WILSON – PITCH PERFECT
• BENH ZEITLIN – BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD
• CRAIG ZOBEL – COMPLIANCE

BEST SCREENPLAY

• STEPHEN CHBOSKY – THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER
• DREW GODDARD & JOSS WHEDON – THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
• TONY KUSHNER – LINCOLN
• SARAH POLLEY – TAKE THIS WALTZ
• DAVID O. RUSSELL – SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

BEST DOCUMENTARY

• THE HOUSE I LIVE IN
• THE IMPOSTER
• JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI
• THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES
• SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN