Word: soderbergh
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...world. (For movies, you're in the corner; we Americans are in the center.) This year is a particular challenge: the nominations offer the battle of the epics (Gladiator vs. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) as well as the schizophrenic saga of the director with two movies (Steven Soderbergh, with Traffic and Erin Brockovich). Since nobody is an expert on this subject, we can blithely pass along bits of received wisdom and arcane Oscar lore so you will be better informed than your neighbor. To succeed in the Oscar sweepstakes, read the following with a scholar's acuity. Then take...
This year, Soderbergh became the first person in Academy history to receive two Best Director nominations for films that were nominated for Best Picture. Both are social-problem films: Erin Brockovich is about poisoned water (and colorful brassieres), Traffic deals with the drug trade between Mexico...
Oscar handicappers are already debating whether one Soderbergh film will cancel out the other?or reinforce it. The betting is that Traffic, as the more recent film, and far more ambitious, has a swell shot at the top spot. What's guaranteed is that Erin will get at least one award: a Best Actress statuette for Julia Roberts' showy, blowsy, smug, applause-truckling, wildly self-aggrandizing performance (which, by the way, we didn't much care for). Roberts will beat out the estimable Laura Linney, who won critics' prizes as the single mom in the indie drama You Can Count...
...Finally, Best Picture nominees! "Gladiator" (receives 12 nominations, more than any film this year)," "Traffic" (directed by Steven Soderbergh), "Erin Brockovich" (directed by Steven Soderbergh, who just made history by becoming the first director to garner two Best Director nominations and two Best Picture nods in the same year), "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (Also up for Best Foreign Film; just hoping its director, Ang Lee, hasn't learned to make acceptance speeches from Robert Benigni), "Chocolat" (the most controversial nomination; Miramax has been accused of buying a nod for a film that most critics considered a sugary nothing; the film...
...film is well made by Steven Soderbergh, who handheld his own camera and often edits in an artless, documentary style. The picture is full of strong, soberly realistic performances; its melodramatic beats are not too many and, in context, not particularly overstated. Finally, though, Traffic, for all its earnestness, does not work. It leaves one feeling restless and dissatisfied...