I haven’t really dug into the stinging Bruce Springsteen snub from eight days ago properly yet, but really, how off-the-mark could the Academy possibly be?  Not that the membership considers itself in the business of appearing relevant, but The Boss just played in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.  He’s got a new […]

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Here is a movie from a director who had gotten typed into being a success only in x-treme cinema, set in another country, often in another language, with three sets of young, inexperienced actors playing the same kids from single-digits to 20-ish, delving into the internationalism of both human aspiration and the medium of television […]

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That’s the line that grabbed me in this Susan Wloszczyna feature on Oscar producers Bill Condon and Laurence Mark.  If there’s anything that drives me up the wall, it’s the musical interjection of a speech, no matter how rambling.  This is a person’s moment and ignorant, cue-happy conductors (and presumably the producers chattering into their […]

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I’ll be doubling up on these to make sure we get them all in, so be sure to vote quickly!

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• Good riddance. [Crain’s New York] • Bob Thompson talks to “Gran Torino” star Ahney Her. [National Post] • Pete Hammond digs into the hounding of “Slumdog.” [Notes on a Season] • Amy Adams makes a splash across the pond. [The Independent] • Jeff Wells is suspicious of the “Milk” come-from-behind talk. [Hollywood Elsewhere] • […]

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There are few journalists with as sharp an understanding of the tunnel vision that affects award-season coverage as David Carr.  So it’s with a guard of irony that, in yesterday’s ruminative NYT piece, he describes this year’s race as “somehow less frivolous than it has (been) in recent years.” While he acknowledges the comparative slightness […]

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So Clint Eastwood arrived in town tonight without all the pizazz you might have expected, as I reported from this evening’s Arlington Theatre event.  But inside the place was bananas.  Every single seat in the theater was filled, many of the locals vocalizing their shock on the way down the aisles.  “I’ve never seen it […]

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He drives himself to his own tribute, eschews the big to do of a red carpet arrival, hops the metal barricade and slides into the fray minutes before anyone notices. Classic Eastwood.

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Everyone was so quick to pounce on the “Slumdog Millionaire” smear pieces of the week, yet this Sandy Cohen AP piece as been sitting there, waiting for similar obsessive circulation for 31 whole minutes. Here’s a taste: The makers of “Slumdog Millionaire” have done more for the film’s child stars than their parents ever could, […]

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Thanks to Nat Rogers at The Film Experience for pointing out a really worthwhile article in the Wall Street Journal, in which music critic Jim Fusilli takes a close look at this year’s nominees for Best Original Score. It’s not a category which tends to inspire much intelligent coverage in mainstream outlets, so it’s great […]

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Mickey Rourke (Best Actor, “The Wrestler”) Michael Shannon (Best Supporting Actor, “Revolutionary Road”) Amy Adams (Best Supporting Actress, “Doubt”) Marisa Tomei (Best Supporting Actress, “The Wrestler”) Danny Boyle (Best Director, “Slumdog Millionaire”) (also here) James Marsh (director, “Man on Wire”) Kristi Zea, Albert Wolsky (Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, “Revolutionary Road”) Chris Menges (Best […]

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It seems we really have reached consensus here. The Richard Attenborough Film Awards, a relatively new set of awards voted on by regional UK critics, haved chimed in with nearly everyone else, handing their Film of the Year and Director of the Year honours to Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire.” They stuck with the well-awarded in […]

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• Looks like Mickey Rourke isn’t going to get into the ring after all. [Associated Press] • Perhaps in response to snarky items like this? [Vulture] • Kim Voynar deconstructs the Oscar nominations a week later. [Movie City News] • In case it wasn’t obvious from the start, Joaquin Phoenix has been punkin’ y’all. [Entertainment […]

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Unfortunately, “Happy-Go-Lucky” star couldn’t make it to tonight’s presentation of the Virtuoso Awards at the Lobero Theatre due to surgery recovery, but Viola Davis, Richard Jenkins, Rosemarie DeWitt, Melissa Leo and Michael Shannon were on hand to talk their roles in five of the most critically acclaimed films of the year.  James Cromwell did the […]

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This US trailer for James Gray’s wispy throwback romance has been knocking around for a little while, but it only came to my attention now. It’s a minor-key work that admittedly isn’t flattered by the rather prosaic trailer, though it’s been lauded (like all Gray’s films) in France, and I was rather charmed by it […]

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Jeff Wells has captured some of last night’s Kristin Scott Thomas Q&A at the Santa Barbara festival, and it’s well worth a look — as I found when I interviewed her back in December, she’s immensely forthright, considered and witty in her discussion of her craft. Truly one of the best in the game. Wells […]

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As if we needed any more reasons to love David Carr, he has come out in full support of Matteo Garrone’s superb “Gomorrah,” citing its Oscar snub as “criminal”: (The Bagger) can’t get the movie out of his mind. There is a kind of moral certainty to the film – deeply corrupt, remarkably brutal – […]

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For all his marketing and campaigning genius, Harvey Weinstein’s tactics have become — well, have been — a bit thuggish. In Peter Biskind’s extraordinary book “Down and Dirty Pictures,” a stunning look at the independent film world in the late 1980s and all through the 1990s, we are made privy to many of Harvey’s tantrums, eyewitness […]

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