Can Mel Gibson salvage his career and image with The Beaver?

Well, that remains to be seen, but the potential is certainly there, considering the script for The Beaver is kind of brilliant. I go over it in my Script Review of the film here, but suffice to say, Gibson has got an Oscar worthy role to play with (not to mention juicy supporting parts for supporting players Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence). The early word from screenings was very positive as well, so if audiences are willing to pay to see Mel again, this could be not just a critical hit, but a commercial one as well.

Here's an excerpt from our exclusive Script Review:

In terms of awards potential, I’d look at Best Original Screenplay as where the best possibility lies. If the movie is a hit, Best Actor is where the love should go, though don’t count out Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress (Lawrence), or even Best Director. I don’t know that it’ll be the Academy’s cup of tea, but the potential is there.
Overall, ‘The Beaver’ is one of the best scripts I’ve read in a while. It’s different, but not in an off-putting way. It’s incredibly
touching, and while some may not be thrilled with its choice of denouement, I found it perfect and apt. The premise may be a hard sell, but I can assure you, this will be worth your time. I’m very much looking forward to seeing the movie. If the script is properly executed on screen, this could easily be one of the best films of 2011.
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Go check out the latest Awards Circuit Script Review (the first of 2011 after The Social Network and Buried were two of the prominent ones featured last year) and let me know what you think!

Independent Spirit Awards Preview

My favorite awards show each year is the Independent Spirit Awards, and as always, I take it upon myself to write up this preview/predictions article to try and make some sense of what is always a unique awards show (obviously it's on the blog this year, but that's just due to time constraints and a small technical difficulty). It doesn’t usually have any bearing on Oscar, but it’s one of the hardest precursors (if you can call it that) to accurately predict, so it’s interesting to do this and then compare come Saturday night. As for how the awards themselves might go, well…let’s jump right in. ‘Winter’s Bone’ led the nominations with 7, followed by ‘The Kids Are All Right’ with 5, so keep an eye on those. 'Black Swan' picked up 4 nods, and ‘127 Hours' didn’t do shabby either, so don’t count them out. This is really a closer race than usual in a lot of categories, but there’s still some method to the prediction madness, so here we go:

Best Feature-

The nominees are 127 Hours, Black Swan, Greenberg, The Kids Are All Right, and Winter’s Bone. I think it’s safe to say that Greenberg is out of it (sadly), with 127 Hours and Black Swan looming as long shot spoilers (more so Black Swan). This brings the race down to The Kids Are All Right and Winter’s Bone, and with the latter doing well earlier this season at the Gotham Awards, I’m going to take a cue from them and say that the big prize of the night is going to go to it.

Will Win: Winter’s Bone
Might Win: The Kids Are All Right
Should Win: Black Swan
Should have been nominated: Blue Valentine

The rest after the jump...

Our annual Will Win/Should Win series continues on...

...with the second installment today, by yours truly. That one can be found here, with John Foote's one here as well.

-Let us know what you think!