{"id":62722,"date":"2012-02-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-24T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-film-professor-shares-his-oscar-picks\/"},"modified":"2012-02-24T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-24T00:00:00","slug":"uri-film-professor-shares-his-oscar-picks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2012\/02\/uri-film-professor-shares-his-oscar-picks\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 film professor shares his Oscar picks"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, R.I. — February 24, 2012 — In a year that celebrates the art of filmmaking, Tom Zorabedian, the assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the 溏心vlog免费B站 and a film professor, says The Artist<\/i> is the picture to beat at the 84th annual Academy Awards.<\/p>\n


\nIt’s not, however, the best film, nor is it the best homage to filmmaking among this year\u2019s group, he said. <\/p>\n


\nWhen making his picks for this year\u2019s Academy Awards, which will air Sunday, Feb. 26 at 8 p.m. on ABC, Zorabedian said the film that was the greatest achievement was a children\u2019s movie directed by a man known more for making pictures about \u201cthe family,\u201d rather than making movies for families — Martin Scorsese.<\/p>\n


\nScorsese\u2019s film Hugo<\/i> is among nine nominees for Best Picture and Scorsese is nominated for Best Director. The film garnered a total of 11 nominations. Hugo<\/i> is Scorsese\u2019s homage to Georges M\u00e9li\u00e8s, the filmmaker who made the landmark 1902 film, A Trip to the Moon<\/i> (remember the rocket crashing into the eye of the Man in the Moon?). <\/p>\n


\nIt is also Scorsese\u2019s first attempt at making a 3D film, an endeavor Zorabedian said the director pulled off without making it a visual gimmick.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cIt\u2019s like a hyper-reality, high-resolution film. You kind of forget it\u2019s in 3D,\u201d Zorabedian said. \u201cIt\u2019s not designed to come out of the screen at you. He really explores the spatial relationships of everything on the screen.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nIt was an ambitious project for a man whose previous films have largely focused on crime in New York City, Zorabedian said.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cIf you know Scorsese\u2019s work and you saw this film without knowing who made it, you would never know it was his film. That said, you still see things that are very much part of his style. For instance, the camera is always moving,\u201d Zorabedian explained.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nDespite the craft of Hugo, Zorabedian\u2019s favorite film was Woody Allen\u2019s Midnight in Paris<\/i>, which he called a \u201cdelight.\u201d An homage to art, literature and 1920s Paris, the film is characteristically Allen. It contains the elements of fantasy that run through many of his films as Owen Wilson<\/i> travels between modern day Paris and nights spent with Dali, Gertrude Stein and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has this notion that the nostalgia of a time is better than the reality of that time,\u201d Zorabedian said.<\/p>\n


\nZorabedian expects French nostalgia to win big at the Academy Awards, but it won\u2019t be Allen\u2019s film. He expects the big prizes to go to French director Michel Hazanavicius and his film, The Artist<\/i>, a silent picture that evokes the heyday of Hollywood silent films as they gave way to films with sound. The Artist<\/i> garnered 10 total nominations, including Hazanavicius for Best Director, Jean Dujardin for Best Actor and B\u00e9r\u00e9nice Bejo for Best Supporting Actress.<\/p>\n


\nShot in black and white and in the 4:3 aspect ratio that was commonly used in films until Cinemascope and Panavision introduced wider aspect ratios, The Artist follows the romantic story of an aging silent film star and a young starlet. While Zorabedian was impressed with the craft and acting of the film, he said it wasn\u2019t particularly a groundbreaking story.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cIt was a good film, but it was a little light,\u201d Zorabedian said. \u201cIt was a bit derivative \u2013 it has elements of Singing in the Rain<\/i> or A Star is Born<\/i> in it. It\u2019s not the only modern silent movie, either. Mel Brooks did it with Silent Movie, and his was funnier. \u2026 It is the odds-on favorite, but if there\u2019s a chance for an upset, I\u2019d say it\u2019s Hugo.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nSince the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences expanded the Best Picture field to include as many as 10 nominees, the expectation has been that more popular movies would garner nominations. District 9<\/i>, for instance, was a blockbuster that benefited from the expansion at the 2010 Academy Awards.<\/p>\n


\nThis year\u2019s field, which also includes Moneyball<\/i>, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close<\/i>, The Help<\/i>, Tree of Life<\/i>, War Horse<\/i>, The Descendents<\/i>, and Midnight in Paris<\/i>, doesn\u2019t contain any true blockbusters. <\/p>\n


\nNone of the top 10 grossing films of the year is nominated for Best Picture — The Help<\/i> was the highest grossing film among the nominees with $170 million (13th) \u2013 which was a bit of a surprise to Zorabedian. <\/p>\n


\nHe also was surprised Sarah\u2019s Key<\/i>, starring Kristen Scott Thomas, did not receive any recognition from the Academy. The film follows an American journalist (Scott Thomas) living in France, who researches the fate of a Jewish family that once occupied the apartment she and her husband are about to move into before it was dispossessed by Nazis in 1942.<\/p>\n


\nZorabedian also was surprised to see the lack of affection Academy voters had for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo<\/i>, which received great praise from critics. He was glad to see that film’s Rooney Mara, who played Lisbeth Salander<\/i>, get nominated for Best Actress, noting what a demanding role it was, both because of the film\u2019s content and because the role had recently been played by Noomi Rapace to critical acclaim in the Swedish version.<\/p>\n


\nHowever, Zorabedian said he\u2019s rooting for Viola Davis, who starred in The Help<\/i>, to take home the statue because of her Rhode Island roots. Davis, a Tony Award-winning stage actress, grew up in Central Falls and majored in theater at Rhode Island College.

\n\u201cShe\u2019s always been a good actress,\u201d Zorabedian said.<\/p>\n


\nDavis has worked on three films with George Clooney, who is nominated for Best Actor for his role in The Descendants<\/i>. Zorabedian said he thinks it\u2019s a two-person race between Clooney and Dujardin in the actor category. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cI think Clooney may win it because he\u2019s been campaigning a lot for it,\u201d Zorabedian said. \u201cI didn\u2019t respond to the film as much as some others did, but he was very good in it.\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. — February 24, 2012 — In a year that celebrates the art of filmmaking, Tom Zorabedian, the assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the 溏心vlog免费B站 and a film professor, says The Artist is the picture to beat at the 84th annual Academy Awards. It’s not, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62725,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}