19 February 2014
Last updated at 16:45 ET
A 'surreal' musical scene from The Act of Killing
Having won a Bafta on Sunday, Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of
Killing is now one of the frontrunners to win the Oscar for best
documentary.
The film examines the hundreds of thousands of killings carried out in 1960s Indonesia in the name of fighting communism.
What gives the documentary a surreal edge is that Oppenheimer filmed the killers re-enacting their murders in the style of their favourite American movies.
Speaking shortly before his Bafta win, the Texas-born film-maker told me how his unusual approach to making the documentary evolved.
He initially spent two years filming the accounts of every perpetrator he could find.
"I found that every single one of them was open to boastfully recounting the grisly details of the killings, usually with smiles on their faces, often in front of their wives and children or even little grandchildren.
"The question in my mind was why are they boasting - and for whom?"
Oppenheimer noticed that the killers would often take him to the scene of the killings and demonstrate their methods.
So, through an "organic" process, they came to act out their murders on camera using different movie genres. Oppenheimer describes the result as "a documentary of the imagination".
The Act of Killing focuses on Anwar Congo, one of a group of "movie theatre gangsters" who operated out of cinemas in Medan, northern Sumatra.
Congo was the 41st perpetrator that Oppenheimer interviewed. "I lingered on him because I felt his pain was close to the surface."
Congo's gang, which had a reputation for violence, was
recruited as a death squad by the army in 1965. Inspired by a mafia
movie, Congo preferred to strangle his victims with wire.
In the film he describes how he loved Elvis films and would dance across the road from the cinema to his office to carry out the killings.
"Killing is something inherently traumatic," said Oppenheimer. "Very few species kill their own, and only human beings do so with such gusto and efficiency.
"When we need to kill, we need to somehow distance ourselves. For Anwar and his fellow movie theatre gangsters in Medan, it was cinema and acting that helped them distance themselves from the act of killing.
"Identifying with Elvis allowed Anwar to feel that he wasn't really there."
For their fictional scenes in the film, Congo and his friends wrote the scripts and played both themselves and their victims.
But what was the psychological effect of shooting these scenes on Oppenheimer and his anonymous Indonesian co-director?
"It was a painful, but very meaningful, journey. There is a scene in the director's cut where Anwar shows how he may have killed a child by butchering a teddy bear.
"While I was filming that scene, I could hear that his microphone was rubbing and I called 'Cut', and Anwar noticed that I was crying.
"That was the first time in my life that I found myself crying without being aware of it.
"Maybe I'm lying to myself, but I've located that moment as the source of months of nightmares while making the film."
He said his anonymous Indonesian crew "never for a second let me forget why we were doing this, and who lit an otherwise very dark journey".
The film has been screened all over Indonesia and is also available for free download.
The global spotlight from the Oscar nomination has also brought reaction from the government, who said the country had been portrayed as "a cruel and lawless nation".
The musical waterfall scene from The Act of Killing
Oppenheimer stays in touch with Anwar Congo but feels he is unable to return to Indonesia for safety reasons.
"When Anwar saw the film he was very moved by it and said, 'Josh, this film shows what it's like to be me.'
"I know this is a big year for him in the sense that he's suddenly in the spotlight as someone who has committed atrocities. That's a frightening place to be and I've wanted to see how he's coping.
"His physical safety is fine. He hasn't been scapegoated for making the film.
"We went through a very long and painful journey together. We care for each other. I'm thinking about him all the time because I'm travelling with the film."
Oppenheimer stressed that what his film demonstrates is what happens when killers win and write their own history.
"The killers we see clearly in the film don't have to recognise that what they've done was wrong. To save themselves from the tormenting effects of guilt they maintain the lies and the victors' histories that they've told to justify their actions.
"They do so not because they're monsters, but because they're human and they know what they've done is wrong."
Anne Hathaway is the latest presenter to be announced
As in previous years, past victors are returning to present
awards at this year's Oscars ceremony. Announced so far are Anne
Hathaway, Daniel Day-Lewis and Jennifer Lawrence.
Hathaway won last year's supporting actress Oscar for her performance as Fantine in Les Miserables.
Day-Lewis made Oscars history by becoming the first to win the best actor prize three times for his title role in Lincoln.
And Lawrence took home the Oscar for her lead performance in Silver Linings Playbook. She's nominated this year for her supporting role as Rosalyn Rosenfeld in American Hustle.
The scene-stealing turn won Lawrence a Bafta on Sunday night, giving her an important pre-Oscar boost as the final ballot takes place (14-25 Feb). Click here for my assessment of how the Bafta results might impact on the Oscars.
U2 won a Golden Globe for Ordinary Love last month
UPDATE AT 1600 GMT: Singer-songwriter
Karen O will perform The Moon Song, from the Spike Jonze film Her, at
the Oscars. The lead singer of the band Yeah Yeah Yeahs previously
co-wrote original songs for the soundtrack of Jonze's 2009 film Where
the Wild Things Are.
Oscars producers have confirmed what Bono revealed at the Oscars luncheon earlier this week.
U2 will perform their song Ordinary Love, which they wrote for Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.
It's nominated for best original song alongside Happy from Despicable Me 2, Let It Go from Frozen and The Moon Song from Her.
Show producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron said the Oscars ceremony will be the first time U2 have performed the song live.
There's no shortage of music at the Oscars this year: Idina Menzel is already booked to perform Let it Go and Pharrell Williams will sing Happy.
A fifth song was originally nominated for an Oscar. But Alone Not Yet Alone was disqualified after its author emailed voters in a breach of the rules.
Glitzy gathering: the nominees for this year's Oscars in Beverly Hills on Monday
It's the ultimate class photo. This year's Oscar nominees -
more than 150 of them - gathered at a Beverly Hills hotel on Monday for
luncheon and a lecture on keeping their speeches short.
The line-up includes A-listers, directors, writers, hairstylists and other talent behind the camera.
See if you can spot Bono (who's there thanks to U2's best song nomination) and fellow song nominee Pharrell Williams (look for the hat at the back).
Actors and actresses in the photo include Barkhad Abdi, Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Sandra Bullock, Bradley Cooper, Leonardo Di Caprio, Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto, Lupita Nyong'o, and Meryl Streep.
Oscar show co-producer Craig Zadan told prospective winners to keep it tight on the big night.
"Please get to the stage quickly, really quickly,'' Zadan said. "The moment you reach the microphone, the timer begins and you will have 45 seconds to speak."
And he urged: "Words should be spoken from your heart, not from a list."
Jared Leto also fronts rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars
When I met Jared Leto last week, I asked him what feedback he'd
had from the LGBT community about his role as transgender character
Rayon in Dallas Buyers Club.
"I've had a very vocal and supportive and loving feedback from that community," he told me. "I'm really glad that I've made people proud.
"People understand that I did my best to bring to life, not a caricature or a stereotype, but a real person."
Fast-forward a week.
Leto was reportedly heckled on Tuesday at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival where he was being honoured for his breakthrough performance in 2013.
"Trans-misogyny does not deserve an award," said an unidentified woman, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
An exchange followed. "What do you mean by that?" Leto asked
.
"You don't deserve an award for portraying a trans-woman, because you're a man."
"Because I'm a man, I don't deserve to play that part?" questioned Leto. "So you would hold a role against someone who happened to be gay or lesbian - they can't play a straight part?"
Leto's response apparently got a round of applause from the audience and he later met the heckler and her friend for a "cordial conversation" for about 15 minutes.
Jared Leto as Rayon in Dallas Buyers Club
The actor and musician is up for best supporting actor Oscar
for his portrayal of HIV positive Rayon. He's picked up several awards
already.
When I asked him last week he how felt to be the frontrunner with his first Oscar nomination, he responded: "Dangerous position, right? Anything can happen.
"It's been a wonderful ride so far. I've won a Golden Globe and a SAG award and countless others that I never even knew existed.
"It's an amazing thing. I haven't made a film in six years and here I am talking about the Academy Awards. That's one the things that's so great about life, right?"
Pharrell Williams with Daft Punk at last month's Grammy Awards
Pharrell Williams is to perform his Oscar-nominated song Happy at the Oscars, organisers have announced.
The song, which Williams wrote and produced for Despicable Me 2, is nominated for original song alongside U2's Ordinary Love from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom; Let It Go, by Idina Menzel, from Frozen; and Karen O's The Moon Song from Her.
Williams was involved in two of the biggest-selling singles of 2013 - Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines and Get Lucky by Daft Punk.
The musician wore a show-stealing hat at the Grammys last month, where he had four wins, including producer of the year.
The hat even ended up with its own Twitter account (19,000 followers at the last count). But there's no word yet whether it will be making an appearance on Oscar night.
With the Oscars fewer than than four weeks away, some of this year's nominees attended the London Critics' Circle Awards on Sunday evening.
Among them was Barkhad Abdi, the Somali-born chauffeur-turned-actor who plays the pirate leader Muse in Captain Phillips.
On 16 January, when the Academy Awards shortlists were announced, Abdi tweeted three words: "Oscar nominated Actor".
He grins when I remind him. "Captain Phillips truly changed my life," he tells me. "Before, it was people I knew who would speak to me, and now it's people that don't know me!"
Up for best supporting actor, Abdi is the first Somali to get an Oscar nomination.
Having moved to Minneapolis in his teens, he's re-locating to Los Angeles where he is "hoping to get other parts".
What's remarkable is that this was Abdi's first film, and the somewhat more experienced Tom Hanks didn't get an Oscar nod.
"It was an honour working with Tom," Abdi says. "He always gets the best out of you."
'American hero'
Meanwhile, Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave was the big winner
of the night, being named film of the year, and earning two acting
prizes for Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong'o.
McQueen tells me his partner Bianca Stigter, who first brought Solomon Northup's memoir to his attention, was "very proud" of her part in bringing his story to the big screen.
"He's someone who was forgotten," says McQueen. "He's an American hero so to to put him back in the historical context where he should be, she's truly humbled by that."
'Political ripples'
Oscars: Reporter's 2014 diary
In the run-up to
the Academy Awards on 2 March, the BBC's Tim Masters meets the nominees
and looks at the stories and issues around this year's Oscar race.
THURSDAY 20 FEBRUARY 0000 GMT
A 'surreal' musical scene from The Act of Killing The film examines the hundreds of thousands of killings carried out in 1960s Indonesia in the name of fighting communism.
What gives the documentary a surreal edge is that Oppenheimer filmed the killers re-enacting their murders in the style of their favourite American movies.
Speaking shortly before his Bafta win, the Texas-born film-maker told me how his unusual approach to making the documentary evolved.
He initially spent two years filming the accounts of every perpetrator he could find.
"I found that every single one of them was open to boastfully recounting the grisly details of the killings, usually with smiles on their faces, often in front of their wives and children or even little grandchildren.
"The question in my mind was why are they boasting - and for whom?"
Oppenheimer noticed that the killers would often take him to the scene of the killings and demonstrate their methods.
So, through an "organic" process, they came to act out their murders on camera using different movie genres. Oppenheimer describes the result as "a documentary of the imagination".
The Act of Killing focuses on Anwar Congo, one of a group of "movie theatre gangsters" who operated out of cinemas in Medan, northern Sumatra.
Congo was the 41st perpetrator that Oppenheimer interviewed. "I lingered on him because I felt his pain was close to the surface."
Joshua Oppenheimer (centre) with Anwar Congo (seen centre in the vehicle) during filming
In the film he describes how he loved Elvis films and would dance across the road from the cinema to his office to carry out the killings.
"Killing is something inherently traumatic," said Oppenheimer. "Very few species kill their own, and only human beings do so with such gusto and efficiency.
"When we need to kill, we need to somehow distance ourselves. For Anwar and his fellow movie theatre gangsters in Medan, it was cinema and acting that helped them distance themselves from the act of killing.
"Identifying with Elvis allowed Anwar to feel that he wasn't really there."
For their fictional scenes in the film, Congo and his friends wrote the scripts and played both themselves and their victims.
Continue reading the main story
Joshua Oppenheimer"That was the first time in my life that I found myself crying without being aware of it”
Oppenheimer recalled how Congo
would watch the footage back and would insist on changing his hair or
costume. "Gradually these more surreal and more absurd and grotesque
dramatisations evolved."
"It was a painful, but very meaningful, journey. There is a scene in the director's cut where Anwar shows how he may have killed a child by butchering a teddy bear.
"While I was filming that scene, I could hear that his microphone was rubbing and I called 'Cut', and Anwar noticed that I was crying.
"That was the first time in my life that I found myself crying without being aware of it.
"Maybe I'm lying to myself, but I've located that moment as the source of months of nightmares while making the film."
He said his anonymous Indonesian crew "never for a second let me forget why we were doing this, and who lit an otherwise very dark journey".
The film has been screened all over Indonesia and is also available for free download.
The global spotlight from the Oscar nomination has also brought reaction from the government, who said the country had been portrayed as "a cruel and lawless nation".
The musical waterfall scene from The Act of Killing"When Anwar saw the film he was very moved by it and said, 'Josh, this film shows what it's like to be me.'
"I know this is a big year for him in the sense that he's suddenly in the spotlight as someone who has committed atrocities. That's a frightening place to be and I've wanted to see how he's coping.
"His physical safety is fine. He hasn't been scapegoated for making the film.
"We went through a very long and painful journey together. We care for each other. I'm thinking about him all the time because I'm travelling with the film."
Oppenheimer stressed that what his film demonstrates is what happens when killers win and write their own history.
"The killers we see clearly in the film don't have to recognise that what they've done was wrong. To save themselves from the tormenting effects of guilt they maintain the lies and the victors' histories that they've told to justify their actions.
"They do so not because they're monsters, but because they're human and they know what they've done is wrong."
TUESDAY 18 FEBRUARY 1600 GMT
Anne Hathaway is the latest presenter to be announced Hathaway won last year's supporting actress Oscar for her performance as Fantine in Les Miserables.
Day-Lewis made Oscars history by becoming the first to win the best actor prize three times for his title role in Lincoln.
And Lawrence took home the Oscar for her lead performance in Silver Linings Playbook. She's nominated this year for her supporting role as Rosalyn Rosenfeld in American Hustle.
The scene-stealing turn won Lawrence a Bafta on Sunday night, giving her an important pre-Oscar boost as the final ballot takes place (14-25 Feb). Click here for my assessment of how the Bafta results might impact on the Oscars.
THURSDAY 13 FEBRUARY 1000 GMT
U2 won a Golden Globe for Ordinary Love last monthOscars producers have confirmed what Bono revealed at the Oscars luncheon earlier this week.
U2 will perform their song Ordinary Love, which they wrote for Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.
It's nominated for best original song alongside Happy from Despicable Me 2, Let It Go from Frozen and The Moon Song from Her.
Show producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron said the Oscars ceremony will be the first time U2 have performed the song live.
There's no shortage of music at the Oscars this year: Idina Menzel is already booked to perform Let it Go and Pharrell Williams will sing Happy.
A fifth song was originally nominated for an Oscar. But Alone Not Yet Alone was disqualified after its author emailed voters in a breach of the rules.
TUESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 0930 GMT
Glitzy gathering: the nominees for this year's Oscars in Beverly Hills on MondayThe line-up includes A-listers, directors, writers, hairstylists and other talent behind the camera.
See if you can spot Bono (who's there thanks to U2's best song nomination) and fellow song nominee Pharrell Williams (look for the hat at the back).
Actors and actresses in the photo include Barkhad Abdi, Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Sandra Bullock, Bradley Cooper, Leonardo Di Caprio, Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto, Lupita Nyong'o, and Meryl Streep.
Oscar show co-producer Craig Zadan told prospective winners to keep it tight on the big night.
"Please get to the stage quickly, really quickly,'' Zadan said. "The moment you reach the microphone, the timer begins and you will have 45 seconds to speak."
And he urged: "Words should be spoken from your heart, not from a list."
WEDNESDAY 5 FEBRUARY - 1400 GMT
Jared Leto also fronts rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars"I've had a very vocal and supportive and loving feedback from that community," he told me. "I'm really glad that I've made people proud.
"People understand that I did my best to bring to life, not a caricature or a stereotype, but a real person."
Fast-forward a week.
Leto was reportedly heckled on Tuesday at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival where he was being honoured for his breakthrough performance in 2013.
"Trans-misogyny does not deserve an award," said an unidentified woman, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
An exchange followed. "What do you mean by that?" Leto asked
.
"You don't deserve an award for portraying a trans-woman, because you're a man."
"Because I'm a man, I don't deserve to play that part?" questioned Leto. "So you would hold a role against someone who happened to be gay or lesbian - they can't play a straight part?"
Leto's response apparently got a round of applause from the audience and he later met the heckler and her friend for a "cordial conversation" for about 15 minutes.
Jared Leto as Rayon in Dallas Buyers ClubWhen I asked him last week he how felt to be the frontrunner with his first Oscar nomination, he responded: "Dangerous position, right? Anything can happen.
"It's been a wonderful ride so far. I've won a Golden Globe and a SAG award and countless others that I never even knew existed.
"It's an amazing thing. I haven't made a film in six years and here I am talking about the Academy Awards. That's one the things that's so great about life, right?"
TUESDAY 4 FEBRUARY - 1700 GMT
Pharrell Williams with Daft Punk at last month's Grammy AwardsThe song, which Williams wrote and produced for Despicable Me 2, is nominated for original song alongside U2's Ordinary Love from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom; Let It Go, by Idina Menzel, from Frozen; and Karen O's The Moon Song from Her.
Williams was involved in two of the biggest-selling singles of 2013 - Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines and Get Lucky by Daft Punk.
The musician wore a show-stealing hat at the Grammys last month, where he had four wins, including producer of the year.
The hat even ended up with its own Twitter account (19,000 followers at the last count). But there's no word yet whether it will be making an appearance on Oscar night.
MONDAY 3 FEBRUARY - 1400 GMT
Barkhad Abdi was named supporting actor of the year by London's critics
Among them was Barkhad Abdi, the Somali-born chauffeur-turned-actor who plays the pirate leader Muse in Captain Phillips.
On 16 January, when the Academy Awards shortlists were announced, Abdi tweeted three words: "Oscar nominated Actor".
He grins when I remind him. "Captain Phillips truly changed my life," he tells me. "Before, it was people I knew who would speak to me, and now it's people that don't know me!"
Up for best supporting actor, Abdi is the first Somali to get an Oscar nomination.
Having moved to Minneapolis in his teens, he's re-locating to Los Angeles where he is "hoping to get other parts".
What's remarkable is that this was Abdi's first film, and the somewhat more experienced Tom Hanks didn't get an Oscar nod.
"It was an honour working with Tom," Abdi says. "He always gets the best out of you."
'American hero'
Steve McQueen's film picked up three awards on the night
McQueen tells me his partner Bianca Stigter, who first brought Solomon Northup's memoir to his attention, was "very proud" of her part in bringing his story to the big screen.
"He's someone who was forgotten," says McQueen. "He's an American hero so to to put him back in the historical context where he should be, she's truly humbled by that."
'Political ripples'
One of the documentaries tipped for success at this year's
Oscars is The Act of Killing, which explores the Indonesian genocide of
the 1960s.
But it does so in an unconventional manner. Unrepentant former members of Indonesian death squads re-enact some of their murders in the style of their favourite American movies.
"This was a surreal approach to the subject matter," says executive producer Andre Singer.
"It sounds like any good worthy documentary you can think of - genocide, Indonesia, 1960s and so on. You'd think 'I've heard that three million times before'.
"But you look at this material and you see these people who have done it, proud and boastful and re-enacting it - it's mind-boggling."
He tells me the success of the documentary is "causing major political ripples" in Indonesia.
One of its Indonesian co-directors remains "Anonymous" in the film's credits due to fear of reprisals.
"It will have to stay that way until the government changes," says Singer.
'Slightly surreal'
But it does so in an unconventional manner. Unrepentant former members of Indonesian death squads re-enact some of their murders in the style of their favourite American movies.
"This was a surreal approach to the subject matter," says executive producer Andre Singer.
"It sounds like any good worthy documentary you can think of - genocide, Indonesia, 1960s and so on. You'd think 'I've heard that three million times before'.
"But you look at this material and you see these people who have done it, proud and boastful and re-enacting it - it's mind-boggling."
He tells me the success of the documentary is "causing major political ripples" in Indonesia.
One of its Indonesian co-directors remains "Anonymous" in the film's credits due to fear of reprisals.
"It will have to stay that way until the government changes," says Singer.
'Slightly surreal'
Jeff Pope and his wife enjoyed star spotting at the Golden Globes
"If you go into it thinking this could win us an award then that's the quickest way of falling flat on your face. We just concentrated on writing a simple story as well as we could."
With Philomena up for Baftas and Oscars, is he able to carry on much of a normal life?
"There is something slightly surreal. When my wife and I went out to the Golden Globes we couldn't stop ourselves looking round the room and seeing all those famous faces.
"I hope we've now got it all out of our system and we'll be less awestruck when we go to the Oscars and the Baftas."
'Small step... massive leap'
Gravity's Tim Webber with his Oscar
"Every visual effects movie takes a small step forward, but this as a massive leap forward," he says, echoing astronaut Neil Armstrong's words as he stepped onto the Moon's surface in 1969.
He points out that because of Gravity's contemporary setting, the effects had to stand up to close scrutiny from space experts.
"We did a lot of research along the way because we were worried about astronauts saying 'it's nothing like that'.
"Yes, they picked a few holes in it because we had to cheat in a few places, but on whole it was well received."
Webber, who already has an Oscar in his trophy cabinet for The Dark Knight five years ago, will find out on 2 March whether he'll have a matching pair.
FRIDAY 31 JANUARY - 1230 GMT
Steve McQueen on screen during the Oscar nominations announcement
Lenny Henry thinks so. Speaking to me this week, the actor and comedian expanded on his recent comments that Britain's ethnic minorities need better access to the industry.
Asked about McQueen, Henry said: "However he does, for a black British creator to be nominated for an Oscar must signal some kind of sea change.
Henry got his own award this week from the UK Critics' Circle
"In America the minority is bigger," he went on. Hugh Muir said in the Guardian the other day that it accounts for $1.1 trillion of the national spend, and then he compared it to the £300 billion that the BAME minority have to spend in this country.
"Let's take that spend around the park and see what it can do!"
Henry attended a round table held by culture minister Ed Vaizey last week to discuss the decline in the number of black and Asian people in the creative industries, from 7.4% in 2009 to 5.4% in 2012.
Now it's been announced that Henry will deliver the Bafta television lecture on 17 March, with a particular focus on the representation of BAME groups in front of and behind the camera. The lecture will be followed by a discussion chaired by Baroness Oona King.
"There's a golden circle of writers writing for the BBC and ITV and Sky," said Henry. "They are fantastic writers and I want to work with them.
"But if we had things like Play for Today, Armchair Theatre, Screen One and Two and Channel 4 shorts it would open the door to new writers. It would mean that people could say: 'Look, I had something on television and I can be one of that inner circle now.'
"If you don't have the slots, you'll always have that small group of people making that small group of dramas. We need to elbow our way in a bit, because the talent's there."
Henry acknowledged that programmes like Holby City, EastEnders and Casualty were good places to develop new writers. "I think that's happening, but it needs to happen quicker."
THURSDAY 30 JANUARY - 1230 GMT
An update on the song Alone Yet Not Alone, from the little-seen film of the same name, which had been nominated for best original song alongside tracks from Despicable Me 2, Frozen, Her and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (see entry for Monday 27 January).The song has been disqualified after it emerged that its composer, an ex-Academy governor, contacted voters.
Oscars: Best song nomination revoked
TUESDAY 28 JANUARY - 1630 GMT
A poster at a recent exhibition at Farnsworth Museum, in Rockland, Maine
The classic, starring Judy Garland as Dorothy, was a best picture nominee at the 12th Academy Awards in 1940, but lost out to Gone With the Wind.
But it did win best original score and best song for Over the Rainbow.
"We are delighted to celebrate the birthday of one of the most beloved movies of all time at this year's Oscars," said Oscar producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron.
They have already announced that the ceremony on 2 March will also be a celebration of movie heroes.
MONDAY 27 JANUARY - 1700 GMT
On the big screen: the nine best picture nominees
As Oscars analyst Scott Feinberg observes in The Hollywood Reporter: "It has what most of the others lack - namely, gravitas, social significance and relevance to the present day, plus the support of most of the key constituencies in the Academy (actors, directors, writers, film editors, etc.)"
And he thinks that as a result of its strong showing, Academy members who have so far resisted seeing the film for fear of being too disturbed by its content will "reconsider that position".
Gravity, says Feinberg, looks like the Life of Pi of this year: an effects-laden 3D film that will have a shot at winning best picture - although only two other films in the last 58 years (The Sound of Music and Titanic) have won best picture without a screenplay nod.
The best actor race looks set to be a scorcher this year. Bookies William Hill have made Dallas Buyers Club's Matthew McConaughey the favourite to win. He's 1/2 while Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave) is 2/1.
12 Years a Slave is still expected to win best picture (and the most Oscars on the night), but the odds on American Hustle taking best picture have been trimmed.
California dreaming? The Los Angeles Times notes that films shot in California barely registered in the Oscar contest.
Only one of the nine best picture nominees was actually filmed in the state, and that was Her, the Spike Jonze sci-fi drama about a man, played by Joaquin Phoenix, who falls in love with his computer operating system, voiced by Scarlett Johansson.
The other eight nominees were shot in other states and countries, including leading contenders Gravity (UK) American Hustle (Massachusetts), Captain Phillips (Massachusetts, Malta and Morocco) and Dallas Buyers Club and 12 Years a Slave, both of which were filmed in Louisiana.
VFX protest?
Will there be protests on Oscar day? According to The Wrap,
visual effects workers are planning a demonstration in Los Angeles in
protest at foreign tax subsidies they say are destroying their industry.
The event is being billed as the "March in March" and will be tied to the Oscars.
Last year there were protests outside the Oscars by visual effects workers who were disgruntled at the state of their industry after Rhythm & Hues, the company behind the effects in Life of Pi, filed for bankruptcy.
The Wrap says the visual effects industry in California has been "decimated" as cities such Vancouver and London have begun to offer incentives that lure major projects outside of the US.
Not so alone
The event is being billed as the "March in March" and will be tied to the Oscars.
Last year there were protests outside the Oscars by visual effects workers who were disgruntled at the state of their industry after Rhythm & Hues, the company behind the effects in Life of Pi, filed for bankruptcy.
The Wrap says the visual effects industry in California has been "decimated" as cities such Vancouver and London have begun to offer incentives that lure major projects outside of the US.
Not so alone
And eyebrows were raised
when the song Alone Yet Not Alone, from the little-seen film of the
same name, was nominated for best original song alongside tracks from
Despicable Me 2, Frozen, Her and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.
The song is by Bruce Broughton (a veteran composer and governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) and Dennis Speigel and performed by Joni Eareckson Tada.
Broughton's first major film score, for the western Silverado, won him an Oscar nomination in 1986. His own website calls his latest nomination "a surprising pick, given the obscurity of this little-known, Christian Indie film".
Singer Joni Eareckson Tada told The Hollywood Reporter that she was surprised too. "I'm the least likely candidate to record a song for a movie, I'll tell you that up front, so it's amazing," she said.
"It's amazing enough that a family-friendly movie with a Christian theme is nominated in any category for an Academy Award. Besides The Blind Side, which was wonderful, it's just not the norm."
The winners will be revealed at the Oscars ceremony on Sunday 2 March at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, hosted by Ellen DeGeneres.
The song is by Bruce Broughton (a veteran composer and governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) and Dennis Speigel and performed by Joni Eareckson Tada.
Broughton's first major film score, for the western Silverado, won him an Oscar nomination in 1986. His own website calls his latest nomination "a surprising pick, given the obscurity of this little-known, Christian Indie film".
Singer Joni Eareckson Tada told The Hollywood Reporter that she was surprised too. "I'm the least likely candidate to record a song for a movie, I'll tell you that up front, so it's amazing," she said.
"It's amazing enough that a family-friendly movie with a Christian theme is nominated in any category for an Academy Award. Besides The Blind Side, which was wonderful, it's just not the norm."
The winners will be revealed at the Oscars ceremony on Sunday 2 March at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, hosted by Ellen DeGeneres.
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