In Contention

Author: Guy Lodge

  • Taking it to church

    Quinton Aaron and Sandra Bullock in The Blind SideIn the wake of last week’s semi-surprise Best Picture nomination, the New York Times has rather an interesting piece on the sly marketing strategies that propelled “The Blind Side” to phenomenon status in the first place — tactics a Hollywood marketing consultant likens to “the regional marketings approach of the 50s, 60s and 70s.”

    What I hadn’t realized is that, though the film was distributed by Warners, the film’s original production company, Alcon, maintained control over its marketing. (That Warners’ own similarly-themed Oscar baby, “Invictus,” was snubbed in favor of the same studio’s stepchild is a delicious irony.)

    The strategy therefore began as early as the casting stage. Country music superstar Tim McGraw was brought in for added appeal to Southern audiences, but more canny was the casting of several well-known college football coaches:

    Just like an old-fashioned publicity stunt, their presence helped “The Blind Side” connect with a male, sports-oriented audience that was roped in through blog reports and by screenings for college sports fans, some of them organized by the coaches themselves.

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  • ‘Up’ triumphs at Annie Awards

    UpLast year, the industry-voted Annie Awards appeared to have entered a peculiar grudge match with Pixar Studios, as eventual Oscar-winner “WALL-E” came away empty-handed, while “Kung Fu Panda” swept the board.

    Whether that curious outcome was the result of peer envy or professional preference, the Annies appear to be back on board with Pixar, as “Up” took Best Feature and Best Director honors at last night’s ceremony. (Ironic, given that in this banner year for animation, a deviation from the expected would have been arguably better-received than last year’s shocker.)

    Still, the Annie voters spread the wealth, with “Coraline” and “The Princess and the Frog” dominating the technical categories. Interestingly, “Coraline” composer Bruno Coulais beat out Oscar frontrunner Michael Giacchino — nice to see that undervalued score getting a moment in the sun.

    Finally, the many devotees of “Fantastic Mr. Fox” will be comforted that it took writing honors for Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach. Full list of feature winners after the cut.

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  • S&S slams awards “xenophobia”

    Niels Arestrup in A ProphetBeing a fairly highbrow cineastes’ mag, Sight & Sound tends to keep a safe distance from awards season — which is probably just as well, if Nick James’s grim-faced editorial on the subject is anything to go by.

    Like many British journalists, James’s analysis of the Oscar race is a little wobbly: he states that “Avatar” is a certainty to win Best Picture based on its Golden Globe success, but makes no mention of the Guild awards. More vexing, however, is his airy dismissal of this year’s cinematic crop: claiming that 2009 was “the weakest year for American cinema since the 1980s,” and that “in terms of quality US films last year, “The Hurt Locker,” “Up in the Air,” “Precious,” “Inglourious Basterds” and “Up” are literally all there is.” (He then goes on to pick holes of most of those films anyway.)

    And I thought I was negative about this year’s race. Sure, I have problems with at least half this year’s Best Picture nominees, but neither am I claiming that the category contains all the standout American films of 2009.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Oscar nomination week

    Anne Hathaway and Tom Sherak announcing the 2009 Academy Award nominations• Did you hear? The 2009 Academy Award nominations were announced. “The Hurt Locker” and “Avatar” led the pack.

    • Days before, Kathryn Bigelow nabbed the Directors’ Guild Award — the first woman ever to do so.

    • Back to the Oscars, we collected reaction statements from 44 of this year’s nominees.

    • I rounded up some of the most pleasant surprises in the nominations, as well as the most unwelcome snubs.

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  • Four producer nominees for ‘The Hurt Locker’

    Mark Boal and Kathryn BigelowGlad to see this has been sorted out. You might recall that when the Best Picture nominations were read out on Tuesday morning, “The Hurt Locker” and “The Blind Side” were both slapped with the vague “nominees to be determined” tag — a stopgap the Academy issues wen there are admin issues to be ironed out.

    “The Hurt Locker” initially fell foul of the Academy’s arbitrary (and, for my money, rather misguided) recent rule that permits a maximum of three nominated producers per film. Exceptions, however, can be made: as was the case last year, when “The Reader” was allowed four nominees, including the late Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack.

    So I’m happy that the powers that be at the Academy have been equally reasonable about “The Hurt Locker,” ruling that its quartet of producers all have a legitimate claim to a nomination.

    Should it win on the big night, then, Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier and Greg Shapiro will go up on stage to claim the statuette. (This, of course, makes both Bigelow and screenwriter Boal double nominees this year.)

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  • “I’m rooting for the ex-wives here.”

    Linda HamiltonWith the “exes” angle seemingly set to run and run in this year’s Oscar media coverage, The Guardian at least took a slightly sideways approach in their weekly podcast by roping in a third ex — “Terminator” star and James Cameron’s fourth wife Linda Hamilton — for her thoughts on the matter. (She has a new movie to promote, so it’s not as tacky as all that.)

    Regarding the Oscar race, Hamilton semi-jokingly claims to be cheering the “ex-wives’ club,” but she also offers some interesting personal perspective on the 12-year gestation of “Avatar”:

    After “Titanic,” there were quite a few things he was getting ready to do: he was was going to do the “Spider-Man” franchise, he was going to do a really great script about multiple personality disorder, “Avatar” to me was, like, the third favorite. I read it and was, like, “Hmm, yeah, uh” … and that just goes to show you that I should never be directing or making movies. I wasn’t sure that it was going to have an audience … It didn’t necessarily say anything to me, but Jim obviously saw something way beyond what was on the page.

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  • Don’t wait for the remake

    (from left) Kim Bodnia and Jakob Cedergren in Terribly HappyEnterprising young distributor Oscilloscope was obviously hoping for an Oscar nomination when they scheduled a February release for Denmark’s terrific entry, the wickedly off-kilter thriller “Terribly Happy.” It would have been sly timing, if only the Academy’s foreign-language branch hadn’t killed its hopes at the shortlist stage.

    No matter. Oscar nod or not, it remains a delight, alternately echoing the Coens, Lynch and Hitchcock while maintain a mordant streak of deadpan Scandinavian humor. (I interviewed director Henrik Ruben Genz — a former Oscar nominee in the short film race — in December.)

    The film goes on limited release tomorrow — check it out, and be ahead of the game when the rumored U.S. remake comes along. If you won’t take my word for it, at least take that of Oscilloscope founder and sometime Beastie Boy Adam Yauch:

    I love this film. It is just further proof that Danish people are clearly out of their minds.

    U.S. trailer after the cut.

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  • THE LONG SHOT: Now what?

    Jeremy Renner in The Hurt LockerA whole 31 days ahead of the 82nd Academy Awards ceremony, the race already feels like it’s winding down.

    Of the precursors, only BAFTA and the lesser guilds (sorry, WGA, but you brought irrelevance upon yourself) lie in wait to distract us from a month of wafty speculation and idle editorializing. Trust me, you’re going to get very sick of the phrase “battle of the exes” before the month is out … if you aren’t already.

    For me, a trip to the Berlinale next week couldn’t be better timed – a few days of seeing and discussing some new films, including several of this year’s hot Sundance titles, will be a welcome vacation from the ever-dwindling pool of names and titles we’ve been talking about since the fall.

    But if you’re not one of the lucky few who can make it to a festival – or if you’re as uninspired as everyone else by the new releases of the last few weeks – fresh perspective needn’t come only from fresh films. I recently had the pleasure of rewatching “The Hurt Locker” and getting happily reacquainted with it as a movie, rather than as the industry story it has grown into over the months.

    Awards season can sometimes smother the movies it celebrates, turning them into representations of competing social and artistic ideals that they were never intended to be. As the competition narrows, these definitions get progressively more binary – and the side-taking more vicious. (You only have to look at Roger Ebert’s online opposition of “Avatar” to see what the season can make us do to movies we even like.)

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  • Empire names ‘Batman and Robin’ all-time worst film

    George Clooney in Batman and RobinUK film mag Empire has polled its readers and assembled a list of the 50 worst films of all time, and the results make for fun reading, even if it would have you believe that hardly any bad films were made before the 1980s.

    Anyway, the multiple Bat-fans around these parts will no doubt relish the appearance of Joel Schumacher’s universally derided “Batman and Robin” at the top of the list — apparently winning more than three times as many votes as the runner-up.

    Empire describes it as follows: “From the neon design to the overblown script to the infamous Batnipples, it’s become a byword for franchise-killing and bad movie-making.”

    Some of the inclusions strike me as a little hyperbolic — ridiculously so, in the case of Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate,” which I actually have a lot of time for. Sometimes the legend overshadows the actual film. Check out the full list here; their top (or bottom) 10 is after the cut.

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  • 10 snubs that sting

    A scene from Inglourious BasterdsI’ve already highlighted my favorite aspects of this morning’s Oscar nominations. Still, before we move into Phase Two, I’d like to give one final respectful nod to the could-have-beens — the names that we sadly won’t be talking about anymore in the next five weeks of speculation.

    I listed my true favorites in my dream ballot over the last few days, though many of those were never in the realm of possibility. What follows are 10 contenders who were very much in the mix, and had every reason to be disappointed this morning.

    From my perspective, the race is poorer without the following:

    • Marvin Hamlisch (Best Original Score), “The Informant!”: As a previously honored veteran of the branch, I thought his foot was comfortably in the door. Was his playful score too tongue-in-cheek for the voters? I’d say the movie wasn’t well-liked enough, but these are the guys who nominated “The Village.” (Less surprising but still disappointing: the omission of “A Single Man” composer Abel Korzeniowski.)

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  • The bright side

    Abbie Cornish in Bright StarWell, I’ll start the good news selfishly, by noting that I didn’t entirely embarrass myself with my predictions: not counting the short categories (which I was too cowardly and uninformed to predict) I nailed 78/106, just two points behind Kris’s round tally of 80.

    But while I was pleased to see at least one of my out-on-a-limb guesses come good — seriously, why didn’t more people call that Art Direction nod for “The Young Victoria?” — I was better at predicting what wouldn’t get nominated.

    So, my season-long hunches that Julianne Moore would be frozen out in the supporting race, that “(500) Days of Summer” would be blanked, that “Up in the Air” would miss that crucial Film Editing nod, and so on, were all on the money. And my increasing sense that nobody really liked “Invictus” enough to put it atop their ballot proved right too.

    Now, if I only I’d known what would land in their place. You can’t have it all, I suppose.

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  • Guy’s final predictions

    Anthony Mackie in The Hurt LockerRight, there comes a point every year in predicting the Oscar nominations when you realize you’re just shuffling names to dodge commitment. I’ve reached that point, so it’s time to put myself out my misery.

    Kris has already had his say — and stolen some of my best guesses from last week in the process. Okay, I kid because I love. It’s comforting, in fact, to have his very sensible company on calls like Diane Kruger for Best Supporting Actress, or “The Road” for Best Cinematography.

    That said, however, there are still numerous areas of the ballot still driving me crazy. I discussed my uncertainties in last week’s Long Shot column, but the last few days haven’t given me any more confidence when it comes to those pesky final two Best Picture slots.

    Though logic goes against me, I can’t shake the feeling that “Invictus” will miss — how many people are putting it at the top of their ballots? However, between the likes of “The Blind Side,” “The Hangover,” “Crazy Heart,” “Star Trek” and “The Messenger,” no one title emerges as a clear spoiler.

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  • Cornish, Mulligan on cover of Vanity Fair’s Hollywood issue

    Abbie Cornish may have received less than her due this awards season, but she at least has the consolation of gracing the cover of this year’s Vanity Fair Hollywood issue — that annual measure of the screen’s hottest up-and-comers. She’s joined by surefire nominee Carey Mulligan and teen princess Kristen Stewart, so the magazine’s canny editors clearly believe Cornish is going places.

    Vanity Fair 2010 Hollywood issue cover

    Joining those three ladies (far left) on the slightly less prominent foldout pages: (left to right) Amanda Seyfried, Rebecca Hall, Mia Wasikowska, Emma Stone, Evan Rachel Wood and Anna Kendrick. More at Vanity Fair.

  • My dream ballot: part two

    Charlotte Gainsbourg in AntichristYesterday, I began my far-fetched wishlist of nominees for tomorrow’s announcement with a look at the technical categories. Today we move into the big races. And as much as I thought I had my favorites clearly mapped out in my head, a rundown of the eligible titles made for some very crowded races indeed.

    Once again, I’ve mostly played by the Academy’s own criteria, considering only U.S. releases from 2009 — hence the slight discrepancy with my Top 10 from December. But where certain titles seemingly never made it through the administrative red tape guarding Oscar eligibility, I’ve intervened on their behalf. (Films as good as “Summer Hours” can’t go unmentioned, after all.)

    Check out my picks after the cut, and share your own last-minute thoughts and hopes in the comments. My final predictions are coming shortly.

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  • ‘Transformers,’ ‘Lost’ lead Razzie nods

    Transformers: Revenge of the FallenI don’t really have much time for the Razzie Awards, since I think they’re a pretty lazy execution of a great idea. By all means single out the year’s artistic underachievers for censure, but why pick such easy targets as Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers?

    If I ran the Razzies, I’d use them to reprimand the really embarrassing projects that fell way short of expectations and/or potential. Pound for pound, is “All About Steve” really a worse film than “Amelia,” which escaped humiliation by virtue of its prestige? Call it schadenfreude if you will, but I’d take more pleasure in the Razzies if they aimed a little higher.

    Anyway, for those of you who enjoy them, this year’s noms are after the cut. The most obvious talking point is the Worst Actress mention for Sandra Bullock. No, Streepoholics, it doesn’t damage her Oscar chances.

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  • Grammys for Giacchino

    UpAs the music world celebrated the general awesomeness that is Taylor Swift last night, Oscar-minded Hollywood couldn’t resist infringing on the proceedings slightly. When Jeff Bridges even crops up at the Grammy Awards (to introduce a Les Paul tribute), you just know that he’s this year’s chosen one.

    Bridges at least acquitted himself with dignity, something that sadly couldn’t be said for another Oscar hopeful, Quentin Tarantino, who came dressed (to steal blatantly from Joe Reid) as “Retired in Miami Elvis” and pimped his movie in a hopped-up intro to a Lil’ Wayne performance. To be fair, however, he was present as a nominee, though “Inglourious Basterds” lost the Best Compilation Soundtrack award to “Slumdog Millionaire.”

    Yes, last year’s Oscar champ isn’t done winning awards yet, as “Jai Ho” also beat Bruce Springsteen and Karen O to the Best Film/TV Song award.

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  • My dream ballot: part one

    Where the Wild Things AreAs I did last year, I’m preparing for Tuesday’s announcement of the Oscar nominations by running through my own favorites in each category — following on from the ideal ballots posted by Kris and Chad in the past few weeks.

    “Preparing” isn’t quite the word: it implies a link between the processes of predicting and wishing, whereas I’m quite aware that most of my choices have scant chance of cropping up on Tuesday morning. But a guy can dream, can’t he?

    Today I’m running through the technical races, while tomorrow I’ll get to the big ones. For the most part, I’m sticking to the same format and rules for nominations as the Oscars, with a few select exceptions.

    Where some worthy 2009 U.S. releases are mysteriously absent from the Academy’s eligibility list, I’m not letting that stop me from giving them their due. Similarly, I’m happy to overrule some of the more inexplicable disqualifications of the arcane music branch.

    My technical ballot after the cut.

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  • ‘Winter’s Bone’ takes Sundance gold

    Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's BoneTalk about a good day for female filmmakers. Hours before Kathryn Bigelow’s history-making triumph at the DGA Awards, Debra Granik took the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance (in the U.S. Dramatic strand) for her critically lauded sophomore feature “Winter’s Bone.” Granik and co-writer Anne Rosselini also took screenwriting honors for the film.

    The film is one I had highlighted last month as a title to watch, so I’m glad to see it living up to expectations. I’m an admirer of Granik’s 2004 debut “Down to the Bone,” which put Vera Farmiga on the map — hopefully, “Winter’s Bone” can similarly boost the fortunes of young Jennifer Lawrence, who so excelled in “The Burning Plain” earlier this year.

    Granik’s film stars Lawrence as a resilient teenager searching for her missing father in the Ozark Mountains. Comparisons have already been made to Courtney Hunt’s “Frozen River,” which took the same award at Sundance two years ago.

    The corresponding Grand Jury Prize winner in the documentary category was Sebastien Junger and Tim Hetherington’s debut effort “Restrepo,” a chronicle of one year in the lives of the Second Platoon in Afghanistan’s deadly Korengal Valley.

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