2. Saving Mr. Banks
I have conflicted feelings on this one. On the one hand you have the story of how a former Best Picture nominee, Mary Poppins, was made. Tom Hanks has the job of portraying Walt Disney for the first time on the silver screen, a high potential role that I'm sure many an actor would have liked to sink their teeth into. Emma Thompson plays Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers, which if successful, could very well bring this former Oscar favorite back to her heights of awards glory during the 1990's. Add in Colin Farrell, Paul Giamatti, Bradley Whitford, and the irresistible sounding duo of Jason Swartzman and B.J. Novak playing the Shermann Brothers, the famous Disney songwriters who penned the iconic music to Mary Poppins, and we have some pretty sweet sugar to help the medicine go down (sorry, couldn't resist). On the other hand, this sounds a little too saccharine for its own good. The film is being produced by Disney itself, which I'm sure will guarantee nothing too controversial, like anything that might put the company's Holy Father Walt in a bad light, will appear in the film. The fact that the film is being helmed by John Lee Hancock, whose previous films include such weighty dramas as The Rookie, The Alamo, and The Blind Side (which beyond all logic and common decency did manage a Best Picture nomination), doesn't exactly assuage my fear that Saving Mr. Banks might be a little light-weight. We also saw from last year's Hitchcock that "making of" movies don't always turn into the best films. Even so, this premise is too perfect not to bet on, so for the moment Saving Mr. Banks gets the relatively high spot on the list.