Gurus o’ Gold

Gurus o’ Gold: Picking The Winners (Pt 1 of 2)

And now, The Gurus offer their (nearly) final word on the season. One Guru, One Vote.

And for the most part, there is strong consensus or unanimity in almost every category. If you’re looking for the swing vote in your Oscar poll, it’s probably in the 4 seriously contended categories: Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Costume, and Doc Short.

Part One
Part Two

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Gurus o’ Gold: Top 2in’ It (Pt 2 of 2)

The Gurus are now locked into their Top 2 in all Oscar award except for the 3 Shorts categories.

In these 10 categories today, the Gurus have Hugo taking 5 statues home. That would make Hugo the film with the most Oscar wins this season… though with 4 projected wins (Picture, Actor, Director, Score), some would say that The Artist was winning the war.

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Gurus o’ Gold: Top 2in’ It (Pt 1 of 2)

Who/What are the Top Two in each category of the Oscars, now just 18 short days away?

The Gurus are in lockstep on 5 of the winners-to-be right now and in 1 of those categories, there is 100% agreement on the #1 and the #2 candidate. The blurriest categories, based on these votes, are Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay.

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Gurus o’ Gold: 1st Ranking Of Oscar Nominees In All Categories (Pt 2 of 2)

As they offer 13 more Oscar categories (everything but shorts), The Gurus are predicting that The Artist will win three big prizes on Oscar night… but Hugo will dominate the evening with 5 Oscar wins. Is it likely that Best Picture, Director, and Score will stand alone?

Can The Help score Best Actress and Supporting Actress and nothing else?

These and more questions… as The Gurus turn.

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Gurus o’ Gold: 1st Ranking Of Oscar Nominees In All Categories (Pt 1 of 2)

The Gurus have their first group of post-nomination projections. (The other categories will be published tomorrow.) There is a tie at the top of one category, and two categories out of these 8 that are unanimous.

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Gurus o’ Gold: Post-Globes/Pre-Oscar Nominations

It’s all over but the nominations announcement. And then we start again.

A lot has changed in the last few months. But the battles at the tops of the charts will look pretty familiar. Perhaps the biggest change in this week’s charts – all 8 of the “top” categories – is Scorsese, who was not named by a single Guru in their Top 6 a couple of months ago and is now… well, you’ll see.

The Gurus also offer an opinion about who might have benefited from their Golden Globes appearance.

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Gurus o’ Gold: Welcome To 2012

The Gurus are back for 2012… and in this special edition, the latest Best Picture chart (the Gurus welcome some more women into the Top Ten)… and a guess at the DGA nominations that are coming tomorrow morning. Better late foresight than hindsight!

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Gurus o’ Gold: Happy Holidays

The Gurus, like the rest of Hollywood, are ready for a break. The only changes in Top 10 rank are in the bottom slots as we move on to 10 choices instead of 10. However, The Artist is now the #1 choice on all Gurus projections but one.

And there is a chart of movies that voters should be checking out over the holidays before handing in Oscar ballots. The top vote getter is Mike Shannon’s performance in Take Shelter. See it. And check out the rest of the suggestions. Ho Ho Ho!!!

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Gurus o’ Gold: Golden Globes Nominations

There’s been surprisingly little movement in the Oscar Top 10 chart this week. Hugo rises, War Horse and Extremely Loud fall a bit. But nothing dramatic.

The Gurus were busy ranking contenders in all the Golden Globes categories. And in their eyes, it looks like a very good night for…

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Gurus o’ Gold: December 6, 2011

In Best Picture, the big mover is Hugo again, now up to #4 after being at #13 less than a month ago.

Amazingly, there has been no change at the top of the Actor and Actress charts, though the field has continued to narrow and one of the superstars drops out of the #5.

Also, The Gurus take on potential Golden Globe nominations that might shock or surprise.

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Gurus o’ Gold: November 29, 2011

The Gurus start this week with three questions about the award season itself, primarily about the early awards and nominations coming out in November.

Then it’s on to Best Picture, where Hugo is the big mover, and Supporting Actress & Actor, which hasn’t changed much at the top in the last month… but for which the field keeps narrowing.

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Gurus o’ Gold: November 22, 2011

As we head into the holiday weekend, The Gurus offer their weekly Best Picture projections.

And this week, the unlikely nominations for which each guru would be thankful. And which choice is being hoped from by 5 of the 14 Gurus? Take a look.

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Gurus o’ Gold: November 15, 2011

There’s not a lot of movement in the slotting of the Best Picture chart this week, though there is incremental movement all over the place.

Directors are back… though Mr. Eastwood is no longer on the chart.

And The Gurus take on Original & Adapted Screenplay for the first time this season, with 2 comedies not on top of the BP charts landing firmly in the writing Top 10.

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Gurus o’ Gold: November 8, 2011

First, welcome our newest Guru, the esteemed journalist and writer, Mark Harris.

This week, buzz titles from two of our best working directors, J Edgar and Hugo, rolled out for the media. How will this affect Best Picture and Best Actor? Also, with The Academy announcing their short list of 15 for Best Animated Feature, The Gurus take on the category, looking for 5 potential nominees.

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Gurus o’ Gold: November 1, 2011

The Gurus are back for their weekly look at the awards races.

As they do every week, they start with Best Picture. And this week, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, and Best Director to boot.

The top of a lot of these lists will look very familiar this week. But as the next couple of weeks progress, a clearer shape to the season should emerge.

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Gurus o Gold – Post-TIFF 2011

The Gurus are back again for an early season sneak peak after the Toronto International Film Festival. Moneyball and The Help are the big risers, Ides of March is the dropper.

And in Best Actor, the chart is led by 4 very familiar leading men… and a Frenchman, while in Best Actress, 3 serious make-up performances by previous nominees meets the deep South and the deep South African.

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Gurus o’ Gold: Pre-TIFF 2011

The Gurus are back!

Last season, the pre-Toronto list turned out to predict 9 of the 10 eventual Best Picture nominees, including the eventual winner in the #2 slot. Will this season be a horse of a similar color?

Also, The Gurus offer up some potential surprises in Actor & Actress categories.

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“I’m in Locarno, my movie is premiering for 1,000 people, which is nuts. A huge-ass screening, second day of the festival, 7:30pm in the sidebar competition. It’s comparable to Un Certain Regard or Director’s Fortnight. Every movie I saw in that section was fun, brilliant movies from around the world. The main competition was like Aza Jacobs and Mia Hansen-Løve, people who have been around. And I was like, “This is crazy. What am I doing inside the bloodstream of this establishment? I’m 27. I don’t belong here.” Every person I talked to there couldn’t believe what the movie cost, and then couldn’t believe when I told them what other American movies cost. We were the cheapest movie there by 65%. The next cheapest movie cost I think three times as much as we did. And they were just like, “You can’t make movies for what you’re telling us your movie cost.” And I told them, “Well, I can, I’m here, I’m in the same section as you are, so you are wrong. People think I’m lying when I tell them my budget. And also everyone likes it. I’m having a great time and people are being very responsive. Maurice Pialat’s widow was like, “I heard your movie’s good, I want a copy of it.” I’m like, “Well this is f**kin’ crazy.” Pedro Costa saw it there and really liked it and I’m like, What am I doing? I had gone in two months from screening at BAM for a lot of friends to Pedro Costa? This is the exact sentence: “Pedro Costa saw your movie. He’s a huge Jerry Lewis fan. He wants to talk to you about your movie and also Jerry Lewis.” And I thought, “I’m out of my element. I cannot have that conversation because that’s ridiculous.” Because his retrospective was happening at Anthology when I worked at Kim’s, and his Criterion box set came out when I was working at Kim’s. He can’t want to talk to me. That’s not possible. That’s not allowed. There is no world where that makes any sense!”  Or like when you wrote me to say that David Gordon Green wrote you to say, “I’m watching The Color Wheel and then I’m going to see Tree of Life.” There is no world where this is allowed! Again, somebody whose DVDs I was putting on the shelf, as, like, a hero. And it’s just like, “Oh, I’ll watch this movie.” There’s just a very fuzzy area in the middle there and it happened very quickly and I don’t understand why.  I still have a voice-mail from Sean [Price Williams, cinematographer]. I wish he was here to talk about it, but the voice-mail is a long pause and he’s just like, “I don’t want to tell you this, because it’s gonna make you so insufferable. I hate having to tell you this, but Leos Carax watched your movie and he really loves it, and he wants to meet you when he comes to New York.” I can’t live in a world where Leos Carax knows who I am, watches my movie, likes it, and thinks, “I wanna meet that guy.”
~ It’s Alex Ross Perry’s World

“I don’t know. It’s been a lot harder than I thought it was going to be to make the films I really dream of making. I was in Italy a few years ago scouting for this very beautiful film I wanted to make with Richard Linklater. We worked really hard on the script for a couple of years and couldn’t get the money together. It was an expensive idea. It’s heartbreaking when that happens over and over again and then the movies that do get made are ones that have lots of women being beaten up or zombies being killed. It’s all fine, it’s all okay, but it’s hard. I remember when River Phoenix died, he was ahead of me on this curve. He kind of realized how hard it was to make serious movies. People like Sidney Lumet figured out how to walk that line, but it’s hard. And it requires patience. It’s a life’s work and I wonder if I’m up to the task.”
~ Weary, Wary Ethan Hawke

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