Riding the Oscar Dark Horses

2011 represents a landmark year for film making and arguably had the most impressive line-up of good to great films since 2007, which featured such mammoths as No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. While 2011 may not contain two films that are clearly “top tier” quality like either one of the aforementioned 2007 classics, it does contain many films fighting to stand out amongst that “next tier.” Here are three categories in which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should consider these three dark horse nominees.

Best Director

During many years, the winner of this award would act as nothing more than a precursor for Best Picture. With the slate of films released in 2011, this is a category in which there could be much conflict. Nicolas Winding Refn represents a newcomer to the awards ceremony, who released one of the most gripping films of the year with Drive and brought out a film that featured two brilliant performances from Ryan Gosling and Albert Brooks and one of the more beautifully shot sequences of the entire year.

Best Supporting Actor

This award has secretly become one of the more competitive during the ceremony. Many of the year’s best performances whether supporting or leading have been delivered by winners of this award. The most recent example of this would be Christoph Waltz’s performance in Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 film Inglorious Basterds. Supporters of Motion Capture technology believe this is the year that the technology should get its rightful due from the Academy. Enter Andy Serkis, “The Godfather of Motion-Capture,” who delivered one of the most compelling performances of the year through the eyes of the ape known as Caesar. Serkis’s work showed incredible range despite his character receiving little to know dialog. The last largely silent character to bring such a visceral reaction from audiences would have been an animated robot known as WALL-E.

Best Picture

In critical circles, there is one film that seems to gain a large portion of critical acclaim, even earning the top slot for 2011 by review aggregator site Metacritic. This acclaim comes despite its reputation of being a film that’s both polarizing and inaccessible to many. The Terrence Malick film The Tree of Life was the 2011 Cannes Film Festival Palme D’or Winner, and it arguably represents one of the most challenging pieces of filmmaking since Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Throughout the film, Malick boldly explores the history and existential questions from the inception of the universe up until present day through the perspective of a 1950s Texan family. However, the challenge that Malick places upon the audience may be the challenge this film faces of taking home the Oscar come February.


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