Early favorites

Oscar shuffle: Hugo & The Artist get the nominations, Spielberg & Drive getsnubbed

Hugo received the most nominations of any movie, with 11.
Meryl Streep is the favorite to take home the Best Actress award for her uncannyportrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady
Viola Davis could score an upset in the Best Actress category for The Help
Photo by Dale Robinette/DreamWorks II Distribution Co., LLC
Best pals George Clooney, left, and Brad Pitt are both up for Best Actor.Clooney is expected to win for The Descendents. Pitt could score an upset forMoneyball.
The Artist is the favorite for Best Picture. It received 10 Oscar nominations.

One thing we now know for certain, lest we ever harbored any doubts: The voting members of the Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences sure love them some movies.

Consider: When nominations for the 84th annual Academy Awards were announced Tuesday morning, the leaders of the pack were Hugo (11 nominations), Martin Scorsese’s exhilaratingly loving ode to the enduring allure of cinema, and The Artist (10 nominations), Michel Hazanavicius’ playfully clever comedy about a silent movie star’s bumpy transition to talkies.

Add the two acting nominations that went to My Week With Marilyn, Simon Curtis’ fanciful dramedy about Marilyn Monroe’s off-camera misadventures during the 1956 filming of The Princess and the Showgirl, and you can’t help suspecting that, this year, the voters were in a mood to celebrate their art and industry – and, yes, themselves.

There were, as always, some surprises, both pleasant and otherwise, across the board in this year’s list of Oscar nominees. Mexican-born actor Damien Bichir’s Best Actor nomination for his acclaimed portrayal of an undocumented worker in the critically lauded but relatively little-seen (by audiences, at least) A Better Life indicates that, yes, sometimes the Academy ignores the hype and gives one from the heart.

It’s reasonably safe to assume at least one Hollywood heavyweight isn’t feeling much love today.

On the other hand: The conspicuous absence of Steven Spielberg from the Best Director lineup (despite a Best Picture nod for his War Horse) and the snub of his Adventures of Tintin in the Animated Feature category indicates… Well, it may be rash to rush to judgment. (According to an old newsroom joke, the best definition for a trend: Two facts and a reporter on deadline.) But it’s reasonably safe to assume at least one Hollywood heavyweight isn’t feeling much love today.

Speaking subjectively, I’m very sorry to note the total and complete shut-outs of Win-Win, Young Adult and 50/50, three worthy 2011 releases that richly deserved recognition in a number of categories. (And before anyone says that Charlize Theron was overlooked for Best Actress because she played an unsympathetic character in Young Adult – well, d’uh, she won the Oscar for playing a freakin’ serial killer in Monster, remember?)

On the other hand, I’m happy to see an Original Screenplay nod for Margin Call, and even happier to see Undefeated (a 2011 SXSW Film Festival premiere coming soon to a theater near you) crack the final five in the Best Documentary category.

And at the risk of enraging those fervent fans of Drive – and you know who you are, so don’t be coy about it – who boldly predicted Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and, gee, I dunno, Best Catering nominations… Look, folks, it was a good movie. But it wasn’t that good. Honest.

Right now, the serious Oscar soothsayers and obsessively blogging handicappers are calling The Artist the front-runner in the Best Picture race. But from where I sit in the bleachers, The Descendants appears poised to score an upset, with Hugo trailing not so far behind. And if you doubt that an underdog could ever triumph over a designated sure thing in this category, go talk to the makers of Reds and On Golden Pond about the year that Chariots of Fire left them standing in the dust.

What follows is my overview of the top Oscar races. Take it with as many grains of salt as you care to sprinkle.

ACTOR IN LEADING ROLE

Damien Bichir, A Better Life; George Clooney, The Descendants; Jean Dujardin, The Artist; Brad Pitt, Moneyball; Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Likely Winner: George Clooney

Possible Upset: Jean Dujardin

Conspicuous by Absence: Joseph Gordon-Levitt for 50/50

ACTRESS IN LEADING ROLE

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs; Viola Davis, The Help; Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady; Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn.

Likely Winner: Meryl Streep

Possible Upset: Viola Davis

Conspicuous by Absence: Charlize Theron for Young Adult

ACTOR IN SUPPORTING ROLE

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn; Nick Nolte, Warrior; Christopher Plummer, Beginners; Max von Sydow, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close; Jonah Hill, Moneyball.

Likely Winner: Christopher Plummer

Possible Upset: Nick Nolte

Conspicuous by Absence: Albert Brooks for Drive and Ben Kingsley for Hugo

ACTRESS IN SUPPORTING ROLE

Berenice Bejo, The Artist; Jessica Chastain, The Help; Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids; Octavia Spencer, The Help; Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs.

Likely Winner: Octavia Spencer

Possible Upset: Melissa McCarthy

Conspicuous by Absence: Shailene Woodley for The Descendants

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist; Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig, Bridesmaids; J.C. Chandor, Margin Call; Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris; Asghar Farhadi, A Separation.

Likely Winner: Woody Allen

Possible Upset: Michel Hazanavicius

Conspicuous by Absence: Diablo Cody for Young Adult and Will Reiser for 50/50.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, The Descendants; John Logan, Hugo; George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon, The Ides of March; Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin and Stan Chervin, Moneyball; Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Likely Winner: The Descendants

Possible Upset: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Conspicuous by Absence: War Horse

DIRECTOR

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist; Alexander Payne, The Descendants; Martin Scorsese, Hugo; Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris; Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life.

Likely Winner: Martin Scorsese

Possible Upset: Michel Hazanavicius

Conspicuous by Absence: Steven Spielberg for War Horse

BEST PICTURE

The Artist, The Descendants, Hugo, The Help, Midnight in Paris, War Horse, Moneyball, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Tree of Life.

Likely Winner: The Artist

Possible Upset: The Descendants

Conspicuous by Absence: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The 84th Academy Awards ceremony will be presented Feb. 26 at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center, hosted by Billy Crystal. Of course, I’ll be watching.

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Movie Review

New comedy I Want Your Sex saddles an all-star cast with a dull story

Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde in I Want Your Sex.

Writer/director Gregg Araki has been making provocative movies for nearly 40 years, releasing his debut — Three Bewildered People in the Night — in 1987. Most of them have had plotlines that revolved around sex in one way or another, and for his latest — his first film in 12 years — he’s putting it right there in the title, I Want Your Sex.

Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) is an aimless twenty-something who can’t even afford the rent for his apartment with best friend, Apple (Chase Sui Wonders). Thankfully, he finds a job at the gallery of artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), who is open with her sexuality both in her artwork and in her day-to-day life. That soon includes Elliot, whom she convinces to enter into a dominant-submissive relationship with her, with sessions taking place both at work and her home.

Elliot, who’s in a going-nowhere coupling with Minerva (Charli XCX), is more than willing to participate, both because it lets him feel something he doesn’t get normally and because Erika offers a perspective on sex that’s much different from people of his generation. But as he gets in deeper with her, he starts to lose a sense of himself, going down a path in which he finds himself talking to police detectives Zem (Johnny Knoxville) and Zola (Margaret Cho).

Araki does his level best to make I Want Your Sex into a broad comedy, and early on it seems as if he might succeed. The deadpan way that sexual objects appear in the film (a penis-shaped rug in Elliot and Apple’s apartment, a vagina artwork with chewed gum as the medium) make for amusing sight gags. He also makes Elliot the bewildered other in multiple twosomes, with Minerva being the funniest, as she’s way more interested in studying than his ham-fisted attempts at sex.

It’s clear that Araki wants the film to be a commentary on the generational differences about sex, but he fumbles his own idea. It starts with an on-the-nose conversation between Erika and Elliot, and continues with the various dalliances, which seem to be more about making Elliot look and feel ridiculous than giving true insight. Their encounters certainly open his mind about what sex can be, but their one-note nature makes them repetitive and frankly boring, odd considering the acts in which the two engage.

The uninspired storytelling makes the 90-minute film drag way more than it should. Araki includes a few other characters to try to vary the tone of the film, including gallery workers Zap (Mason Gooding) and Vikktor (Daveed Diggs), but their early promise yields little results. The framing device of Elliot’s interview with the detectives never works, especially because Araki completely neuters the personalities of Cho and Knoxville for seemingly no good reason.

The cast as a whole goes to waste. Hoffman is showing the promise of his late father (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and even though he’s appealing here, the material pulls him down. Wilde just made her own provocative movie about sex (The Invite), and this one pales in comparison despite her heightened performance. Wonders, Charli XCX, and Gooding are all young stars who deserve to be showcased much better than they are in this film.

A film called I Want Your Sex is announcing itself as daring and alluring, but this film contains almost none of those qualities. Instead, it’s a slog that only occasionally has something interesting to show or say, mostly relying on the power of its actors to hold viewers’ attention — and failing at even that.

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I Want Your Sex is now playing in select theaters.