In Contention

Category: Daily

  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Visual Effects

    Star TrekThe field of visual effects contenders didn’t seem to need the annual bake-off reduction to know which way the wind was blowing this year.  Three films seemed to be headed for recognition from the outset, and on nomination morning, the category made for one of the least surprising collectives of the day.

    Furthermore, it has also become something of a foregone conclusion which film will ultimately take the win, and that hasn’t changed for months on end.  At the end of the day, I think few will argue with the fact that this will be the least compelling “race” of the night.  But each nominee is incredibly deserving of their invitation to the big dance and we are happy to spotlight them here.

    The nominees are:

    “Avatar” (Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R. Jones)
    “District 9”     (Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robret Habros and Matt Aitken)
    “Star Trek” (Roger Guyett, Russell Earl, Paul Kavanagh and Burt Dalton)

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  • AMC Theatres lines up its Best Picture showcase

    AMC TheatresEvery year AMC Theatres puts together a showcase of the five films nominated for Best Picture.  I’ve been very curious to see how the chain will handle matters this year, given the small matter of, well, 10 films being nominated rather than five.

    Today AMC has announced its plan.  The showcase will be divided among the back-to-back weekends of February 27 and March 6.  “Avatar” has been announced as one of the films set to play the first weekend, but fans can vote on the other four via an online poll at AMCEntertainment.com/BPS.  That poll closes at midnight Sunday night and the schedule will be revealed Monday, February 7.

    Passes for the showcases will be available at the same website on Friday, February 12.  The online price for the package is $60.00.  Some notes of interest from the press release after the jump.

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  • Bill Paxton music video, directed by James Cameron, featuring Kathryn Bigelow

    When that’s the email subject, how the hell do I NOT check it out?  I give you Martini Ranch’s “Reach” from 1988:

  • 2/5 Oscarweb Round-up

    Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter Island• Scott Bowles writes up the forthcoming Leo/Marty thriller “Shutter Island.” [USA Today]

    • Charting the piracy of this year’s Oscar nominees. [Waxy]

    • Pete Hammond gets James Cameron to puff his chest out on “Avatar”‘s box office potential, among other notes on the town. [Notes on a Season]

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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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  • Santa Barbara bound

    25th annual Santa Barbara International Film FestivalLater this afternoon I’m off to Santa Barbara for a week of light film-going, heavy tributes and plenty of events, not to mention some much-needed relaxation.

    This year’s 25th anniversary fest will be welcoming the likes of Mark Boal, Pete Docter, Geoffrey Fletcher, Alex Kurtzman, Nancy Meyers, Scott Neustadter, Jason Reitman, Quentin Tarantino, Kathryn Bigelow, Todd Phillips, Lawrence Bender, Jon Landau, Ivan Reitman, the list is endless.  Tributes for Julianne Moore, Sandra Bullock, James Cameron and many more are also in place.  It should be a grand ole’ time.

    Meanwhile, Guy will be crossing the channel to Germany for this year’s Berlin fest next week, so there will be a variety of content on the way.  I’ll be pulling in to Santa Barbara in a few hours and try to make the opening night screening of “Flying Lessons,” but for now, the floor is yours.

  • Yes…and more than one movie, actually…

    Cover of Entertainment WeeklyAlright.  It must be said.  I’m as guilty as anyone, perhaps more than most, at positioning this year’s Oscar race as a two-horse sprint to the finish between “Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker.” But slowly it’s occurred to me that this Oscar race has been boiled down so quickly because it makes for such a sexy headline.  There’s David and Goliath, there’s the exes thing, there’s plenty of meat in the idea that these two films are out in front of the pack.

    And now I see it once again with Entertainment Weekly’s cover query: “Can anything beat ‘Avatar?’”

    Has the press (again, guilty) been lazy in allowing things to be positioned as such?  Well, yes and no.  The usual indicators tell us that these are the two films in question for obvious reasons. Guild support has been rampant for both, after all.  And the list of Oscar nominations had each out in front, tied with nine nominations apiece.  But there is a crucial point that many a journalist (again, guilty) is failing to consider when calling this thing.

    This year the Best Picture category (and only the Best Picture category) will use the preferential voting system rather than the standard one-vote system to determine the winner.  In so many words, the answer becomes: Which film is the most acceptable to the group, regardless of passion pockets?

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Short Film (Animated)

    French RoastThis is one of the few times the animated short category doesn’t have an American in the bunch.  One of the big snubs, in fact, was probably Pixar’s “Partly Cloudy.” So I wouldn’t bank on any domestic bias this time around.

    The animated short films feature a wide array of creative prowess, but it almost seems unfair to have such brief exercises up against longer-form narratives. The shortest entry of the bunch is roughly six minutes long, while the longest is nearly 30. You get vastly different pros and cons when you get that mixture of pace and comedic (since most animated shorts are comedies) timing. Nevertheless, none of them stands out as outright bad, so that’s certainly a plus.

    The nominees are:

    “French Roast” (Fabrice O. Joubert)
    “Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty” (Nicky Phelan and Darragh O’Connell)
    “The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)” (Javier Recio Gracia)
    “Logorama” (Nicolas Schmerkin)
    “Wallace & Gromit in ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death’” (Nick Park)

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  • ‘Shutter Island’ Super Bowl spot

  • 2/4 Oscarweb Round-up

    (from left) Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper in All About Steve• China censors Oscar nominations announcement due to documentary short nominee. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Dave Karger and Missy Schwartz run the numbers on the Best Picture and Best Actress categories. [Oscar Watch]

    • Jeffrey Wells ponders the possibility of the home video release of “All About Steve,” starring Razzie-nominated actress Sandra Bullock, hurting her Oscar chances. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

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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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  • Annie Leibowitz shoots directors and their stars

  • Searchlight and Hilary Swank, take two?

    (from left) Hilary Swank and Sam Rockwell in Betty Anne WatersThis is one of the films I’ve had an eye on for next year’s Oscar season.  Perhaps a second try will prove better than this past year’s Searchlight/Swank outing.  The press release, in part:

    Fox Searchlight Pictures Presidents Stephen Gilula and Nancy Utley announced today that the company has acquired North American and select international rights from Omega Entertainment to the riveting true life drama BETTY ANNE WATERS. Directed by Tony Goldwyn and written by Pamela Gray, BETTY ANNE WATERS stars Hilary Swank, Sam Rockwell, Melissa Leo, Minnie Driver, Juliette Lewis and Peter Gallagher. The film was produced by Andrew Sugerman, Andrew S. Karsch and Tony Goldwyn. The film is scheduled to be released in Fall 2010.

    “Hilary Swank and Sam Rockwell, backed by an extraordinary supporting cast, deliver powerhouse performances in Tony Goldwyn’s emotionally resonant film,” said Utley and Gilula. “We are excited to be distributing this inspirational story of hope and unconditional love.”

    For more on the story (which could prove Oscar bait for Sam Rockwell as well), check out this Boston Globe piece.  If “The Blind Side” can do it…

  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Supporting Actress

    Penelope Cruz in NineThis year’s Best Supporting Actress race made for, in many ways, one of the most wide open categories of the major nominees. While three of the contenders seemed fairly locked in place, the other two slots appeared up for grabs, and there was no shortage of deserving contenders waiting to fill out the field.

    Contenders such as Samantha Morton and Julianne Moore ultimately missed despite precursor attention, paving the way for last year’s winner in the category (a SAG nominee in a film that found itself floundering by year’s end) and a young actress who found herself opposite the year’s likely lead actor Oscar winner (and landing her first Oscar nomination in the process).

    The nominees are:

    Penélope Cruz, “Nine”
    Vera Farmiga, “Up in the Air”
    Maggie Gyllenhaal, “Crazy Heart”
    Anna Kendrick, “Up in the Air”
    Mo’Nique, “Precious”

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  • Introducing the Oscar Guide

    OscarsAs of this moment we are 32 days away from this year’s Academy Awards celebration, taking place on Sunday, March 7.  That gives us 23 business days, so I’ve decided to launch a new feature here at In Contention: the Oscar Guide.

    Every week day this month we’ll be featuring one of the 24 Oscar categories in depth, beginning later this afternoon with the Best Supporting Actress field.  On Saturday, March 6, we’ll wrap the feature up with a look at the 10 Best Picture nominees and one more analysis before the big day.

    Each Oscar Guide entry will be accompanied by a sidebar poll asking you, the readership, what you think deserves to win in said category.  That worked out nicely last year.  (The supporting actress poll is already live.)  At the end of the run we’ll have a master list of what you all think the slate of winners SHOULD look like, and we’ll have fun discussing and (surely) debating each category along the way.

    So keep an eye out later today and throughout the month as we inch closer to the 82nd annual Academy Awards!

  • February winner predictions

    Jeff Bridges in Crazy HeartThese appeared at Movie City News’s Gurus o’ Gold page this morning, so you probably already saw them.  Here they are in any case, since, you know, I guess it’s about that time:

    Best Picture: “The Hurt Locker”
    Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”
    Best Actor: Jeff Bridges, “Crazy Heart”
    Best Actress: Sandra Bullock, “The Blind Side”
    Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds”
    Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique, “Precious”
    Best Adapted Screenplay: “Up in the Air”
    Best Original Screenplay: “The Hurt Locker”

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