Jake Gittes

Great as usual. It got better as it went along, with a brilliant mid-season what-the-fuck-did-I-just-watch episode, a couple of seriously powerful gut-punches and a shockingly moving final scene (personally I was in tears before I knew it).

Oh, yeah. Definitely.

I'd say there's some difference between a line taken from a book or even real life (it helps if the circumstances were unique and not general - it's hard to think of many scenarios in which "Houston, we have a problem" could be used appropriately) and a line that's two thousand years old and is pretty much a saying.

Of course, if it were up to me, three of the five BD nominees would be Derek Cianfrance, Harmony Korine and Richard Linklater.

I dunno, is it really a movie line if it's also something that Sophocles first said 2500 years ago?

I think McQueen and Cuaron are as close to locked as they get (after last year's triple failure of Affleck, Bigelow and Hooper I'm hesitant to call anyone 100% locked), I'd give the #3 spot to the Coens, and the remaining two spots are between Scorsese, DOR, Frears, Howard and Greengrass. If we see a Benh Zeitlin-like out-of-nowhere nominee this year, right now I'd place my bet on JC Chandor. And if Her really delivers - which it certainly could - I wouldn't be shocked to see Jonze get in at the last minute.

Philomena is a big Weinstein crowdpleaser. Those tend to happen pretty much by default. Frears might miss a BD nom if some unseen contenders (Scorsese, DOR) prove to be strong enough, but other than that I don't see it missing BP, Actress, or Screenplay.

http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/2014-oscar-predictions-best-supporting-actress-winfrey-nyongo-butler-12-years-a-slave/ That's some passion.

"Just look at that parking lot!" - A Serious Man "Please. Accept the mystery" - A Serious Man "Where do you think you are, in some fucking regency costume drama?! This is a government department! Not a fucking Jane fucking Austen novel!" - In the Loop "And at the end of a war you need some soldiers left, really, or else it looks like you've lost." - In the Loop "Which would be worse - to live as a monster? Or to die as a good man?" - Shutter Island "We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold." - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas "There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge" - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." - Wall Street "Did you fuck my wife?" - Raging Bull "A person doesn't change just because you find out more." - The Third Man "Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?" - The Third Man "Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." - The Third Man "You're madness, Diane. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you." - Network "I know who I am!" - Angel Heart "We want the best wines available to humanity, and we want them here, and we want them now!" - Withnail & I "If you cut off my head, what would I say... Me and my head, or me and my body? What right has my head to call itself me?" - The Tenant "He has his father's eyes" - Rosemary's Baby "He'd kill us if he got the chance." - The Conversation "Exterminate all rational thought." - Naked Lunch "Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush." - LA Confidential "We don't deal in certainty, we deal in probability." - Zero Dark Thirty "I have a love in my life. It makes me stronger than anything you can imagine." - Punch-Drunk Love "I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?" - Trainspotting "Kneel before Zod!" - Superman II "I haven't eaten since later this afternoon." - Primer "Baby, you're gonna miss that plane." - Before Sunset "I'm afraid to close my eyes... and I'm afraid to open them" - The Blair Witch Project

Another song that deserved a nom last year was 'Who Did That To You?' from Django. I thought Skyfall deserved its win, though.

I'm thinking Dench, Blanchett, Streep, Bullock and Thompson/Kidman/Adams/Bejo (probably Thompson, for now) in the 5th slot. With Dench winning. I think Winslet is dead in the water if some of the reviews I've read for Labor Day are any indication. The field is too strong even for a good performance in a mediocre movie to get in.

Would he really go out of his way to make that happen considering Django and SLP were both also his movies, and they had better chances all along anyway?

I thought I read somewhere recently that Adams is gonna campaign in lead.

Not to hijack the thread, but THE twist in Shutter Island isn't , but his final line to Ruffalo. I'm pretty sure Scorsese knew the earlier twist was totally predictable - he's definitely not stupid - and instead of earnestly trying to hide it, he had a ball with it, turning the visuals, the music, the paranoid atmosphere and most of the side characters up to 11. It was a great experience in the theater. Completely unrestrained unless when it needed to be (i.e. the very ending).

12 Years a Slave wins Audience Award in Toronto. Previously also won by Slumdog and TKS.

I'm not expecting more than 41m since PA2 only managed to do 40.7 off an identical Friday.

Sounds great. I really love it when Scorsese just goes for broke - it's why I found Shutter Island to be better than anything else he's done since 2000.

Haven't seen it. RT consensus calls it "stunning and compelling", though, so it definitely wasn't a critical misfire.

Right at this point I would go with the tide and say 12 Years a Slave is the frontrunner, but I also won't be shocked if it ends up like TSN and Brokeback Mountain in the end.

Scorsese hasn't had a misfire since I don't even know when. And of his last 5 films all four that were released in the fall got BP and BD nominations.

Someone actually thought Arkin was gonna get nominated? From what I remember Argo firmly entered the BP conversation right after its premiere, and its box office run only solidified that. It wasn't the frontrunner until January, but I think it was in the top 5 pretty much all along.

Nah. If it made $2.2m on Friday it should do over $7m for the weekend, meaning a 63% drop. Basically the same drop that RE2 and RE4 had.

Personally I prefer to think a movie is from the year it originally premiered in. That's why I also think Memento is a 2000 film (even though it was released in the US in March 2001) and Mud, Spring Breakers and The Place Beyond the Pines are, officially, 2012 films. The only exception I'm willing to make is for when a movie sat on the shelf for 2 or more years after its original premiere (a good example is Paranormal Activity, first screened in 2007 and commercially released in 2009).

I'm starting to believe that Millers could crawl to 150.

"3) The year of release will be what is listed on IMDB." Casablanca is a 1942 movie according to IMDb.