Oscars 2016: Predictions and Film Excess' favorites

Tonight is the night of the 88th Academy Awards, hosted this year by Chris Rock (Top Five (2014)), back as host for his second time, following his 2005 job.
Following are the list of nominees. Note that the three short film categories are left out, since I as usual don't have any qualified opinion about them.

Red marks the person/s or film I predict will win the Oscar.
Film Excess favorite marks the person/s or film I hope will win the Oscar.

Chris Rock looks game, but will he be able to navigate the diversity-heated waters of the Hollywood elite on Oscar night? We'll have to wait and see ...

Best Visual Effects

Ex Machina
Mad Mad: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens  Film Excess favorite

Best Film Editing

The Big Short Film Excess favorite
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Spotlight
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Costume Design

Carol
Cinderella
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road Film Excess favorite
The Revenant

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

The 100 Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared Film Excess favorite
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant

Best Cinematography

Carol (Ed Lachman)
The Hateful Eight (Robert Richardson)
Mad Max: Fury Road (John Seale)
The Revenant (Emmanuel Lubezki)
Sicario (Roger Deakins) Film Excess favorite

Best Production Design

Bridge of Spies
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road Film Excess favorite
The Martian
The Revenant

Best Sound Mixing

Bridge of Spies
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens Film Excess favorite

Best Sound Editing

Mad Max: Fury Road Film Excess favorite
The Martian
The Revenant
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Original Song

Earned It - Fifty Shades of Grey
Manta Ray - Racing Extinction
Simple Song # 3 - Youth
Til It Happens to You - The Hunting Ground
Writing's on the Wall - Spectre Film Excess favorite

Best Original Score

Bridge of Spies (Thomas Newman)
Carol (Carter Burwell)
The Hateful Eight (Ennio Morricone) Film Excess favorite
Sicario (Jóhann Jóhannsson)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (John Williams) 

Best Documentary

Amy
Cartel Land
The Look of Silence Film Excess favorite
What Happened, Miss Simone?
Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom

Best Foreign Language Film

Embrace of the Serpent - Ciro Guerra, Colombia
Mustang - Deniz Gamze Ergüven, France
Son of Saul - László Nemes, Hungary
Theeb - Naji Abu Nowar, Jordan
A War - Tobias Lindholm, Denmark Film Excess favorite

Best Animated Feature

Anomalisa
Boy & the World
Inside Out Film Excess favorite
Shaun the Sheep Movie
When Marnie Was There

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Big Short (Adam McKay, Charles Randolph) Film Excess favorite
Brooklyn (Nick Hornby)
Carol (Phyllis Nagy)
The Martian (Drew Goddard)
Room (Emma Donoghue)

Best Original Screenplay

Bridge of Spies (Matt Charman, Joel & Ethan Coen)
Ex Machina (Alex Garland)
Inside Out (Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley, Ronnie Del Carmen) Film Excess favorite
Spotlight (Tom McCarthy, Josh Singer)
Straight Outta Compton (Jonathan Herman, Andrea Berloff, S. Leigh Savidge, Alan Wenkus)

Best Supporting Actress

Jennifer Jason Leigh - The Hateful Eight
Rooney Mara - Carol
Rachel McAdams - Spotlight
Alicia Vikander - The Danish Girl Film Excess favorite
Kate Winslet - Steve Jobs

Best Supporting Actor

Christian Bale - The Big Short
Tom Hardy - The Revenant
Mark Ruffalo - Spotlight
Mark Rylance - Bridge of Spies
Sylvester Stallone - Creed Film Excess favorite

Best Actress

Cate Blanchett - Carol
Brie Larson - Room
Jennifer Lawrence - Joy
Charlotte Rampling - 45 Years
Saoirse Ronan - Brooklyn Film Excess favorite

Best Actor

Bryan Cranston - Trumbo
Matt Damon - The Martian
Leonardo DiCaprio - The Revenant
Michael Fassbender - Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne - The Danish Girl Film Excess favorite

Best Director

Adam McKay - The Big Short Film Excess favorite
George Miller - Mad Max: Fury Road
Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu - The Revenant
Lenny Abrahamson - Room
Tom McCarthy - Spotlight

Best Picture

The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn Film Excess favorite
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight


Related posts:


Oscars 2015: Prognosis and Film Excess' favorites
Oscars 2014: Prognosis and Film Excess' favorites

Enjoy the Oscars!

- And remember to check in here again tomorrow to read Film Excess' brutally honest take on the eve; its winners, losers, presenters, performances and host!

Disturbia (2007) or, Good Nightia

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The lurid poster for D. J. Caruso's Disturbia trades on its theme of voyeurism

QUICK REVIEW:

Our young hero loses his father in a meaningless - and very mysterious - car accident. He then screws up and gets a house arrest sentence. He becomes obsessed with monitoring his suburban neighborhood, falls in love with the girl next door, - and sees the other neighbor commit murder!?!

Disturbia begins well, and Shia LaBeouf (Nymphomaniac (2013)) is very enthusiastic and well-playing, but the film is derailed by the innocuous teen romance, and it never manages to get our interest back. It mixes too many genres (teen romance/comedy/thriller) to shallow effect. It winds up with with an uninteresting thriller plot with David Morse (Drive Angry (2011)) as the suspicious neighbor, and it doesn't help that the climax plays out in almost complete darkness.
The obvious comparison with Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece Rear Window (1954), which Disturbia is clearly influenced by, only helps it to look even more hapless and dull.
Carl Ellsworth (Red Dawn (2012)) and Christopher Landon (Scout's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015)) wrote the screenplay, and great Connecticut filmmaker  D. J. Caruso (Eagle Eye (2008)) directed the film. Disturbia is, in short, Hollywood shite. 

Related posts:

2007 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2007 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

In lieu of a trailer for the film, not currently on Youtube, here's an interview with LaBeouf about the movie

Cost: 20 mil. $
Box office: 117.8 mil. $
= Huge hit
[Disturbia was released April 13 and runs 105 minutes. The film is based on a script written in the 1990s. Steven Spielberg suggested LaBeouf. Filming took place in Whittier and Pasadena, California January - April 2006. Disturbia opened #1 in North America with a 22.2 mil. $ opening weekend, and it, amazingly, remained #1 for 3 consecutive weekends before being yanked down by Spider-Man 3. It grossed 80.2 mil. $ (68.1 % of the total gross) in North America, and the 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were South Korea with 4 mil. $ (3.4 %) and Australia with 3.9 mil. $ (3.3 %). A lawsuit was filed in 2008 over a possible copyright clash with the 1942 short story which was the basis of Rear Window, but the claim was rejected. Disturbia is fresh at 69 % with a 6.2 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Disturbia?

Dahmer (2002) - Jacobson's flawed serial killer movie lives on strong performances

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Jeremy Renner looks at us with a reddish eye on a poster for David Jacobson's Dahmer that obviously tries to attract audiences with a clear resemblance to the poster for Ridley Scott's much larger cannibal hit movie Hannibal (2001)

QUICK REVIEW:

Dahmer presents an unchronological portrait of the notorious Milwaukee serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in a series of scenes from his disturbed life that showcase his alienation, early sexual disturbance and extreme antisocial tendencies.

Dahmer, the second feature by writer-director David Jacobson (Criminal (1994)), starts out promising with a possible metaphor in Dahmer's employment at a chocolate factory, but the scenes have no follow-up.
After watching the film one can't claim to understand the title character any better, and the film is not very informative as a biopic might have been. It seems to conclude that Dahmer's murder sprees abound in something to do with sexual perversion and intimacy issues, which make him kill, but this also remains fairly unclear.
Dahmer still retains interest due to the fine performances in it: Jeremy Renner (The Immigrant (2013)) is outstanding in the title role; Bruce Davison (Words and Pictures (2013)) is good as his father, and Artel Great (The Soloist (2009)) is charismatic and excellent as Dahmer's victim Rodney, whose experience with him provides the film its through-line. The film has its share of troubling scenes, rightly so, SPOILER of which particularly the one with the head in the father's old boxes is a kicker.

In lieu of a trailer for the film, which is not currently on Youtube, here's a 90+ minute edit of the real-life trial of Jeffrey Dahmer. Be advised that this is not only informative about Dahmer but also, naturally, highly troubling

Cost: 0.25 mil. $
Box office: 0.14 mil. $
= Huge flop
[Dahmer was released June 21 and runs 102 minutes. It was shot in LA and Milwaukee with the names of the victims changed out of respect. Renner was chosen because of his likeness to Dahmer, and his performance won him his Oscar-nominated part in The Hurt Locker (2008). Dahmer opened #55 with 16k $ in North America in 2 cinemas, topping later in 5. It was released straight-to-DVD in most other markets. Great and Renner were nominated for Independent Spirit awards for their performances in the film, which was also nominated for the John Cassavetes award at the event. Dahmer is fresh at 68 % with a 6.4 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Dahmer?

Death of a Salesman (1985), TV movie - Schlöndorff's great adaptation of Arthur Miller's masterpiece

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Dustin Hoffman as Willy Loman and John Malkovich as his son Biff on a DVD cover for Volker Schlöndorff's Death of a Salesman

QUICK REVIEW:

Farm-worker Biff returns home to visit his disappointed father, who is struggling with the bills and his sanity.

This Death of a Salesman adaptation is a CBS TV movie directed by great German filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum/Die Blechtrommel (1979)), based on playwright Arthur Miller's (A View from the Bridge (1955)) own teleplay adaptation of his legendary 1949 play of the same name.
The film presents great acting in every part: Particularly Dustin Hoffman (Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)), John Malkovich (Mulholland Falls  (1996)) and Charles Durning (Tootsie (1982)) as Willy's neighbor are eminent. Schlöndorff has staged the play with expansive, affecting colors and sets that enhance the super-reality of the stream-of-consciousness-based story. Miller's masterful script stands out as clear as lightning here as the almost unbearably intensive male tragedy that it is.
SPOILER Loman's death is, regrettably, inelegantly handled.
Still, Schlöndorff's film is a generally outstanding adaptation of one of the irrefutably best plays of all time.

Watch a student-made trailer for the film here, (an official trailer is not in Youtube currently)

Cost: 3 mil. $
Box office: Unknown 
= Unknown
[Death of a Salesman had its TV debut June 24 and runs 136 minutes. Hoffman was interested in mounting a movie adaptation with Miller's co-operation as writer-producer, and Schlöndorff was hired based on his expressionist ideas. The film came to be as the conclusion of the 1984 revival of the play on Broadway with most of the actors playing their characters again in the film. The film was made with the big screen in mind and shot in 20 days. Miller had been unhappy with the two previous adaptations of the play, but he was proud of this version. The film was shown theatrically in foreign countries and at several film festivals. You can read more of the making of the film in a New York Times article from the time of its making here. Hoffman won a Golden Globe for his acting in the film, and it also won 3 Emmys. Death of a Salesman is fresh at 100 % with an 8.4 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes, and 7,004 IMDb users have given it a 7.3 average rating.]

What do you think of Death of a Salesman?