After entering the 21st century, the rise of independent films has become one of the important phenomena of the awards season, especially the small-scale independent films, not only the depth of thought, but also the story structure, shooting techniques, narrative methods and other aspects have shown excellent completion, which has truly changed the pattern of the awards season every year. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

In the past few years, starting with "American Beauty", "Never Compromise", "Drug/Substance Network", "Memory Fragments", "Mulholland Drive", "Far from Heaven", "About Schmidt", "Lost in Translation", "21 Grams", "City of God", "Female Devil", "Crash", "Brokeback Mountain", "Fahrenheit 911", "Hard Candy", "Kinsey/Sex/Professor", "Hail Mary" and so on are all independent films, which have become the most important force in the awards season. Every year, there are five to six productions with an Oscar-like appearance.

This year, however, there has been a rare downturn for independent films.

Generally speaking, independent films will be the first to appear at major film festivals, accumulating enough popularity and word-of-mouth to take advantage of the awards season craze in December, stepping on the deadline of the Oscar registration time, and almost all the works that choose to be released in December are large companies. In other words, after the halfway point of November, the top independent works should have appeared, but the current trend is really not optimistic.

Among the independent works that have appeared so far, the only dark horse comes from the Fox searchlight, "Little Sunshine Beauty".

In the field of independent films, Fox Searchlight and Focus Pictures have been battling for the lead spot, and after last year's "Brokeback Mountain" batter, Focus Pictures seems to be a little ill-prepared this year. The production rights of the work "Little Sunshine Beauty" are in the hands of Focus Pictures, but after many discussions, Focus Pictures still gave up the investment, because the script was too bland, so Fox Searchlight took over, because the script was repeatedly despised and not recognized, Fox Searchlight only spent $250,000 to buy the adaptation rights.

"Little Sunshine Beauty" chose to debut at the Los Angeles Film Festival in July, and then held a small-scale screening, but in the wave of summer files, this work hardly received any attention, so the crew began the pace of global exploration, and the three major European film festivals are not for anyone to enter, so the crew chose other small film festivals, almost all over Europe and Asia, after entering November, the reputation of the work finally began to ferment, and successively won the Gotham Independent Film Award, the British Independent Film Award, After being nominated for the Independent Spirit Award, it stood out in one fell swoop and became the most watched independent work of the awards season so far; Subsequently, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Association also gave nominations successively, which made "Little Sunshine Beauty" unique for a while.

It must be admitted that the quality of the finished product of "Sunshine Little Beauty" is really good, and the disturbances of a family are connected by road trips, everyone has their own problems and troubles, everyone has their own flaws and shortcomings, but everyone needs a person to rely on each other, support them through difficulties, maybe the problem needs to be solved by themselves after all, at least not lonely. That kind of trivial little detail touches the depths of the heart, bringing a touch of warmth and reflection, which is really commendable.

Many people compare "Little Sunshine Beauty" to "Lost in Tokyo" and "A Cup of Wine Life", and believe that this small-scale work will be the biggest highlight of this year's awards season.

However, it is unknown how much potential there is for the explosiveness and staying power of independent works, and whether "Little Sunshine Beauty" can continue the strong situation of independent films in the past few years. Judging from the current situation, "Little Sunshine Beauty" is difficult to support alone, other independent works cannot form an effective group advantage at all, and the brilliance of a work cannot cover up the overall downturn of independent films, which is not good news-

"Brokeback Mountain" and "Fruit Hard Candy" lost to "Crash", and "Crash" only gained two small gold figures. The bitter fruit of this terrible situation is finally being felt, and it is clear that last year's seemingly insignificant "theft gate", and the entire awards season chaos that it caused, is now quietly affecting the course of the entire industry, in a way that no one understands. Maybe it's the opposite, maybe it's a causal cycle, no one knows what impact the overall decline in the quality of independent films this year will have on the future, but at least it's certain that this year is undoubtedly good news for the big six studios.

Especially Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. has shown good momentum in the awards season after planting a big heel this summer, missing the east corner and reaping the mulberry elm. The excellent word-of-mouth of "The Departed" has sprung up, grabbing a lot of attention as a commercial film, and sounding the clarion call for Warner Bros. to show its ambitions during the awards season; "Blood Diamond", which will premiere in early December, received rave reviews at the internal preview screening, and director Edward-Zwick, who directed "The Burning Years" and "The Last Samurai", once again contributed to the award.

"Blood Diamond" is also a commercial production, costing $100 million, and the entire crew arrived in Africa to complete the filming in person, and it is also the third production in Africa in just one year - the first two are "The Road of Fury" and "The Last Dictatorship". The overall completion of the work is very gratifying, the core excavation is highly recognized, and the most important thing is that Leonardo DiCaprio, who played the leading role, received a lot of praise, and in the internal preview screening, many professional film critics thought that this was an Oscar-level performance, which really made Warner Bros. overjoyed.

Although "Blood Diamond" still has to wait for the release to be tested, Warner Bros. has already sniffed out the opportunity, "The Departed" and "Blood Diamond" both have super high levels of completion, and Leonardo has completed excellent performances - they can focus on the PR actor award, maybe this year is the time for Leonardo to realize his dream, and of course, Martin. At that time, whether to promote "The Departed" or "Blood Diamond" has become a happy worry for Warner Bros.

This is just the beginning.

The real highlight of this year's awards season is Clint Eastwood, and after completing "Million Dollar Baby", Clint threw himself into the shooting of a new work - a magnificent work reflecting World War II, Clint ambitiously set two works, "Letter from Iwo Jima" and "Flags of the Fathers", both of which will focus on the same battle, but shoot from the perspective of the United States and Japan, which is an unprecedented feat. In this way, Clint hopes to show all aspects of the war in all aspects, and then dig deeper meanings.

In fact, before the release of "Flags of the Fathers", Warner Bros. had been slightly worried about who should they support in the second showdown between Clint and Martin? No one will forget, two years ago at the Oscars, Clint defeated Martin to win the second Oscar in his life, Martin's lost and depressed back became one of the most important portrayals of the night, this year, these two big directors are facing each other again, aside from the trend of the awards season, Warner Bros.'s internal resource tilt is bound to make a judgment, which is really a difficult choice, especially after the release of "The Departed", Martin's call for winning the award unexpectedly began to rise, More uncertainty has been added.

"Banner of the Fathers" was released two weeks later than "The Departed", but surprisingly, the film's reputation was far from satisfactory, and the feedback from professional film critics generally felt that the completion of the work was unsatisfactory or even disappointing, which really caught Warner Bros. off guard.

As the most favored director at the Oscars in the past two decades, Clint has surpassed Steven Spielberg's influence, and Warner Bros. has high hopes for Clint. "Flags of the Fathers" was originally planned, "Flags of the Fathers" will be released this year, and "Letter from Iwo Jima" will compete in next year's awards season, and for the second year in a row, it will be a strong contender for Best Picture - for Warner Bros., Best Picture is their only goal; But now, the plan has been disrupted, the reputation of "Banner of the Fathers" is far less than expected, and the difficulty of hitting the best picture is really too great, and Warner Bros. immediately panicked.

Subsequently, Warner Bros. began to ask for more professional opinions closely, and everyone was not optimistic about the "banner of the fathers", not only the best picture, but even the nominations for the best screenplay, best director, best editing and other small links, the hope was gradually declining, and the situation was very bad.

This will not only affect Warner Bros., but also their work with Clint. Warner Bros. immediately decided to advance the release of "Letter from Iwo Jima" by a full year, and set the schedule for December 20 in a hurry.

Despite a slight surprise, Warner Bros. is still the most championship-looking company in this year's awards season. After entering December, there will be other works to be debuted one after another, but the overall overall strength of Warner Bros. is far ahead, "Departed", "Blood Diamond", "Banner of the Fathers", and "Letter from Iwo Jima" will work together to impact this year's Oscars.

This situation reflects the weakness of this year's awards season, which has reached its lowest point since 2000, and even last year's small year has been more lively. In this downturn, the "Fury Road" that swept thousands of troops this summer is still the only topic, which is both fortunate and unfortunate, with the advancement of time, the "Fury Road" impact on North America 600 million footsteps are gradually approaching, and the call for awards season has begun to rise quietly!