And if you’re interested in attending one of these discussions live, come next Monday evening as the same group assembles, along with Dr. Jeff Keuss, to discuss the nine movies that are nominated for Best Picture! Details here.

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Of the nine nominees, the Academy will give the Best Picture award to the movie  that, at one particular (but fleeting) moment, wins the most approval based on a mix of these factors:

• how much money the studio spent marketing the film;

• political trendiness;

• the popularity of the values it obviously endorses;

• audience accessibility;

• celebrity popularity;

• and absence of involvement by anyone currently inspiring Hollywood’s scowl of disapproval.

Some consideration may also be given to the actual artistry on display in the film. But all of the aspects listed above pollute the Academy’s ability to discern a film’s artistry. Thus, artistry is unlikely to be a major influence on the voting.

If voting had occurred a few weeks earlier or later, the mix of influencing factors would have been different, and a different film probably would have taken the award.

Thus, the award will be relatively meaningless in the long run, except that it will earn a great deal of money for the studio involved with the film.

In less than a year, most of the Oscar audience will have to pause and think hard to remember which film ended up winning, even though as they watch the Oscar-cast it will seem like a very, very important ceremony.

Those are my predictions.

BEST ACTOR/ACTRESS

The winner of the Best Actor and Best Actress award will go to the actor and actress who hold the most favor from Hollywood at the moment for…

A) how many admiring friends they have in the Academy;

B) how much money was behind their Oscar campaign;

C) the actor’s avoidance of scandal;

D) the showy-ness of the actor’s transformation (as opposed to subtlety);

E) the actor’s political favor (extra points for actors who either 1) represent an ethnic or sexual-orientation minority, 2) play an ethnic or sexual-orientation minority, or 3) both;)

F) the intensity of moments in which the actor was shown weeping;

G) the level of onscreen disgrace like prejudice or sexual abuse the character is made to suffer. (Graphic nudity often gives an actor an advantage here.)

Some consideration may also be given to how the actor met the challenges of the role, and how artfully he or she performed, but this is unlikely to have a major influence on the voting. All of the aspects listed above pollute the Academy’s ability to discern the true artistry of an actor’s performance.

If voting had occurred a few weeks earlier or later, this mix might have been different, and a different actor or actress probably would have taken the award.

Thus, the award will be relatively meaningless, except that it may earn the actor high-profile roles in the next few years. In less than a year, most of the Oscar audience will have to pause and think hard to remember which actor ended up winning, even though as they watch the Oscar-cast it will seem like a very, very important ceremony.

Those are my predictions.

TEN, TWENTY, THIRTY YEARS FROM NOW…

The movies from 2011 that have the most influence on filmmakers, that are most closely examined in film schools, and that are emerging as enduring works of art will probably not be the movies that won big at the Oscars. They may not even have been nominated. And they may never have been widely distributed in the U.S.

That’s because the strengths of any great work of art are slow to make themselves known, and they only make themselves known to attentive, observant viewers who visit and revisit those works. Great films rarely inspire us to cheer at the end. Rather, they inspire us to engage, to question, to explore, to wrestle, to look again… closely, and to discuss. Such strengths are rarely what earn a film box office success or Hollywood’s fleeting favor.

SO, WHY WATCH THE OSCARS? 

You could find better ways to spend the evening.

Me, I enjoy watching them sometimes, so long as the films being honored aren’t horrible. Why?

Because it is a rare pleasure to see so much prime-time television devoted to speeches full of gratitude. It often moves me to hear celebrities and unknowns alike getting up to name those in their lives who have contributed to their work. Because any film, any performance, any screenplay is a collaborative work.

Thus, I’m grateful when anybody who stands up to accept an award remembers to express thanks; remembers to express humility; remembers to observe just how fleeting and inconsequential Hollywood’s favor really is; remembers to demonstrate that it is nevertheless a beautiful thing to support and encourage and bring out the best in one another.

[UPDATE: My Facebook friend Janet predicts (bold text mine): "The Best Picture prediction this year is easy. The largest voting group in the Academy is the actors' branch. The Artist is not only a movie about actors, it is a movie in which being unemployed is the greatest calamity that can befall an actor, and in which the world is made right when an actor is once again gainfully employed. Ergo, The Artist wins best picture. There is no contest."

Janet's prediction reminds me of how I concluded my review of The Artist: The Academy Awards are the biggest annual party that Hollywood throws for itself, and The Artist is a movie that worships Hollywood — its vanity, its values, its people-pleasing, its superficiality. Looks like a done deal.]

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Do you find it difficult to sit and focus on a book for an hour?

The following excerpt is from Deep Attention, Lauren Winner’s thoughtful, thorough reflections on the new Alan Jacobs book The Pleasures of Reading in the Age of Distraction: 

One day, Jacobs was standing at his local Borders (may it rest in peace) carrying a great stack of books, including Diarmaid MacCulloch’s 800-page The Reformation, and Neal Stephenson’s 960-page Anathem. Where was he going to put them all, Jacobs wondered. “Forget this, I said to myself. I’m getting a Kindle. And I did.” The Kindle “kept me reading.” Using an e-reader, Jacobs found that his attention stayed fixed on Anathem. His hand had something to click, so he needn’t reach for his iPhone. Furthermore, unlike many other technological devices, e-readers (at least in their present incarnation) “promote linearity.” It takes so much effort to reverse the forward motion of the Kindle that the person reading doesn’t—and then he finds himself wholly absorbed in whatever novel or political exposé or sonnet cycle is right there in front of him. All this led Jacobs to conclude, contra readerly Luddites (like me), that “it’s not reasonable to think of ‘technology’ … as the enemy of reading.”

The true enemy of reading is a sibilant voice that begins telling us, around about middle school, that reading is something we do not because we enjoy it, but because it will make us somehow better. The voice tells us that reading is something we should do—we should read a book the way we take a vitamin. Jacobs’ The Pleasures of Reading is, above all, a brief for enjoyment. Jacobs reminds us that most of us learned to read by being read to as children—we learned to read in the lap of a loving parent, grandparent, or aunt. Reading thus “starts for many of us in a warm cocoon of security, accompanied by an unassailable sense of being loved.” But it is “gradually and inexorably” turned into “a site of stress.” We have to read what we are told (explicitly or implicitly) to read, and we begin to think that reading is about self-improvement, not pleasure, let alone love.

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Why were they nominated? What do these films have to offer?

I’ll also offer an alternate list of nine movies that inspired and impressed me even more than the Academy’s choices. But the central questions are these: Is the word “best” meaningless when it comes to movies? What does excellence look like? Or is it just a matter of individual taste?

You’ll be invited to share about a film that particularly inspired you this year.

Check out the program of scheduled Food for Thought readings here.

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In the new issue of Seattle Pacific University’s Response magazine, which is focused on matters of science, faith, and imagination, I recommend some of my favorite movies about the future. 

On the website for Response, I recommend even more…

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February 1 is the birthday of Anne M. Doe Overstreet.

If you’d like to do something to celebrate, pick up a copy of her book Delicate Machinery Suspended and give it to yourself or someone who loves to read slowly.

It comes highly recommended… 
Singer, songwriter, and producer Joe Henry calls it “Rich, open-hearted, clear and yet deeply rooted in mystery.”

Poet Luci Shaw says, “If you love poetry, you recognize the magic of words that sift the world into its particulates. Anne Overstreet employs the skilled chemistry that swells the words back into realities so startling and new that no object or person remains unchanged.”

And Gregory Wolfe, publisher of Image and author of Beauty Will Save the World, writes, “These poems shimmer with gossamer lightness but also possess the strength and sinews of hard-won wisdom and what Henry James called felt life.”

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Not at all. … 

Actually, I found it to be more comprehensible, in some ways, than the miniseries from the 1970s, in which Alec Guinness played Smiley.

Difficult? Sure. Challenging? In ways that remind me of old-fashioned spy film, the movies that asked audiences to lean forward and think fast, the movies that rewarded more than one viewing.

I saw the film with my longtime moviegoing friend Danny Walter, who has never read the book or seen the miniseries, and at the end he just shrugged and said, “I had no trouble. Made sense to me.”

So no, not incomprehensible. Just more difficult for some moviegoers than others.

And I loved it. Loved it.

Great casting. Beautifully shot. Supremely designed, with a style that’s alive with verticals, boxes, and textures. The editing is occasionally awkward, suggesting that a longer cut exists. (I hope so!)

I want to see a whole series with Gary Oldman as Smiley. He’s just masterful. And Benedict Cumberbatch is strong as his right-hand man.

If you were baffled by the film, well, there’s help for that.

Film critic David Bordwell has just posted a guide to navigating the labyrinth.

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Never heard of it? I’m not surprised. It was never released in the U.S. It only played a couple of festivals, if I recall correctly.

But it needs to be seen. It’s the newest film by the director of 2007′s awe-inspiring film Munyurangabo. You may remember that I was particularly excited about that film, and that I interviewed the director, Lee Isaac Chung. (The Interview: Part One, Part Two)

Lucky Life arrived before The Tree of Life, and I thought about it often when Malick’s film arrived. The films have a lot of similar things on their minds.

I wholeheartedly recommend it to you.

And now, thank God, it’s streaming for free on Hulu.

Also: If you’re interested in hearing from the filmmaker himself, here’s an essay he contributed to Filmwell.

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What I love most is an album that just keeps opening up, like a house full of secret doors, so that ten years later I’m still enjoying it like it’s brand new.

Here, for example, are ten albums from 2001 that I’m still playing frequently and finding new reasons to appreciate…

With respectful nods to: Lucinda Williams – Essence, Pedro the Lion – The Only Reason I Feel Secure, Eels – Souljacker, Suzanne Vega – Songs in Red and Gray, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – No More Shall We Part, Don Peris – Ten Silver Slide Trombones… here are the top ten:

10. Daniel Amos – Mr. Buechner’s Dream

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxdFXg46OsQ

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YXEHx_1PW8

9. Buddy and Julie Miller – Buddy and Julie Miller

www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0nJA5licno

8. Bjork – Vespertine

www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2loVEqBW5Q

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zHgN4zeNTU

7. Joe Henry – Scar

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANUvI297Eig

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uaoDLcqo9I

6. Leonard Cohen – Ten New Songs

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lscmN6oqpX0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW7oNpzBSGc

5. Radiohead – Amnesiac

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nllnCnHNmes

www.youtube.com/watch?v=J615QNYT7PU

4. Over the Rhine – Films for Radio

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCLu464SxOk

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHCWsVTcl-Q

3. Bob Dylan – Love and Theft

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4hgeSyDLqc

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvNNaAXUtHY

2. Gillian Welch – Time (The Revelator)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj3kppAkl1Q

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkd5oVVmclQ

1. Sam Phillips – Fan Dance

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpNnMSFmKtQ

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk7FL-3k5lc

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Want to respond? Visit Jeffrey on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.

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Another part of me is saying, “This looks like all kinds of fun.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N8wkVA4_8s

What do you think?

Share your response on my Facebook page.

Oh, and by the way, I still think the best Wes Anderson movie trailer is one that isn’t actually for a Wes Anderson movie:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OGAs8FGzx4

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