Saving Mr. Banks (no spoilers)

[Aesop]

Opens Dec. 20th

Saving Mr. Banks is Disney's heavy hitter this year, and serious Oscar bait, starring two-time winners Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson.
In fact, the flyer I picked up at the early screening I attended was the "For Your Consideration" booklet specifically targeting A.M.P.A.S. voting members for nomination voting, with nominees to be announced early next year.

The Movie
The movie is an incredible work. Produced, very like Mary Poppins itself, mostly right on the Disney lot, it is a trip back in time to 1961. For those of you too distant to note or know it, they even got the RTD busses of the era right in a fleeting glimpse, which is the level of care and dedication to this movie TWDC displays from opening frame to closing fade.

It is not, however, absolutely factual in every way or instance. As noted by no less a cinematic authority than Steven Spielberg, they have a name for a film that gets everything exactly perfectly correct in every detail, just as it really was: they call them documentaries. SMB is not a documentary.

What it is, in an homage to Walt, and his lifelong quest to get and make the Mary Poppins stories into a movie.
Tom Hanks makes an excellent Disney, creating him rather than recreating him, and doing Walt full justice throughout.

The obstacle is "P.L. Travers", aka Helen Goff, and played by Emma Thompson.
Who is absolutely as marvelous in this role as any she's ever done. By turns proper, idiosyncratic, and exasperating, she delivers a moving performance in conveying how much the Mary Poppins books aren't about children's characters, they're about family.

Mary Poppins ended up being the last movie Walt was fully in charge of at Disney. It premiered in August of '64, and his final curtain rang down in December of '66. It was nominated for a record 13 Oscars, and won 5, the most for any Disney film ever, including best music, from the Sherman Brothers, best song for "Chim Chim Cher-ee", and Best Actress for a film novice, one specifically rejected by Jack Warner for "My Fair Lady" after pioneering the role on Broadway for two years, because she "didn't have cinematic presence" - Julie Andrews.

This look behind the curtain at getting that movie made is well worth the ticket price, and more.

The Buzz
Disney is hoping, by my count, to garner as many as 14 Oscar nominations. I have no wild idea what Academy members will nominate, let alone who'll win, but I'll list the nominations Disney is hoping for, bold the nominations they deserve, and asterisk the ones I hope will win:

Best Picture
Best Director
Best Actress: Emma Thompson*
Best Supporting Actor: Tom Hanks
Best Supporting Actor: Colin Farrell
Best Original Screenplay*
Best Cinematography
Best Production Design*
Best Film Editing
Best Sound Mixing
Best Sound Editing
Best Costume Design
Best Makeup
Best Original Score*
(And in fairness, I still watch movies primarily as an audience member, and they may, in the opinion of aficiandos of the respective crafts, deserve some of the technical awards nominations as well. Not my particular expertise.)

There's also one thing I hope the Academy does: rectify the criminal slight, and nominate Paul Giamatti for a Best Supporting Actor award, if not give it to him.
The movie would be less without him, and he brings out even more from Emma Thompson in every scene they're in, without stealing a scene.

Not to see this movie would be doing yourself a disservice.
You may find it getting a bit dusty at a couple of points... or maybe that's just me.
And stay for the credits. You'll see why.

[Aesop]

bumped

[HTRN]

Two words: Politics.
Somebody on one of the Committees doesn't like him.

[skb12172]

There's also one thing I hope the Academy does: rectify the criminal slight, and nominate Paul Giamatti for a Best Supporting Actor award, if not give it to him.

I have been waiting for him to get an Oscar since 2003... I honestly have no clue why he doesn't have SEVERAL by now. The fact that he's only been nominated for "Cinderella Man" is a scandal itself.

Philip Seymour Hoffman only had to wait 'til 2006... why it's 2013 and Giamatti doesn't have an oscar yet... I really don't understand.

He certainly deserved one for The Illusionist, IMO.

Two words: Politics.
Somebody on one of the Committees doesn't like him.

Well, fuck. It's just as crooked as Figure Skating, then.

[Aesop]

Actually, not.

There are no "nominating committees".

Actors vote for the acting nominees. Provided they're AMPAS members, which weeds out the more than 90% of SAG who park cars and bus tables.
There's no secret blacklist, you simply have to pull the votes to make the top five, and then everybody in AMPAS votes in the winners from the Final Five (and sometimes fewer in the tech categories) in each category.