In Contention

Category: Daily

  • The Oscar show you didn’t see

    Lauren Bacall accepting her Oscar at the 2008 Governors' AwardsFor those of us not important/famous/rich enough to have attended last night’s honorary Oscars presentation, the Governors’ Awards — tickets began at $350, apparently — Steve Pond has a comprehensive report of the proceedings, complete with pictures and some gossipy details.

    I’ve complained before about the Academy denying us Joe Public movie fans the chance to see industry titans Lauren Bacall, Gordon Willis, Roger Corman and John Calley finally take a trip to the Oscar podium, but what’s done is done. And to go by Pond’s account, the upshot for them (if not for us) is that they got to bask in the spotlight for longer than the main ceremony would have allowed — though Calley was, unfortunately, too ill to attend.

    Indeed, despite featuring only four award presentations, the night ran for three-and-a-half hours, the length of most Oscarcasts. Still, despite some organizational hiccups, a good, relaxed time seems to have been had by all.

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  • POLL: Which of the big awaited titles do you expect to underwhelm the most?

    This weekend has already brought junket screenings of Rob Marshall’s “Nine,” so we can’t call it “unseen” anymore.  Then again, everyone has signed agreements not to discuss (even trigger happy HFPA types), so we can still safely call it “awaited.”  Screenings of “The Lovely Bones” may or may not be set prior to the big London unveiling on the 24th, while “Invictus” is expected to start rolling out next week.  “Avatar,” meanwhile, has nearly another month before we get a look.

    The question is, which one is going to miss and miss big?  Perhaps the answer is none, I don’t know, but we’re in that dangerous territory where anticipation could kill the impact and/or something might just fall on its face, much like we’ve seen over and over again in the past with countless other pretenders.  If you have an opinion, let us know in the what that is.  Come on back here with further thoughts if you wish.

  • ‘Up in the Air’ up in the air

    Sad Brad Smith

    Sad Brad Smith performing “Help Yourself,” taken by First Showing‘s Alex Billington mid-flight during a Paramount/American Airlines stunt from New York to Los Angeles this afternoon.  Us Weekly, In Touch, Perez Hilton types aboard.

  • An invitation to dinner

    In case you were wondering, these British (but American-accented) critters apparently celebrate Thanksgiving. Globalization is happening everywhere you look. Anyway, cute marketing gimmick — click the image for fun and games. More “Fantastic Mr. Fox” talk to come tomorrow, from the press junket I attended last month. You seen the film yet?

    Fantastic Mr. Fox

  • Brenda Blethyn angles for Oscar attention in ‘London River’

    Brenda Blethyn in London RiverAmid the surfeit of underdog titles vying for Oscar glory, a special prize for maximum cojones should go to the producers of indie Brit drama “London River,” who are mounting a campaign for Brenda Blethyn’s superb lead performance — despite the obstacle of the film lacking a US distributor.

    The film (which was disqualified as Algeria’s Oscar entry due to excessive English dialogue) has just begun a week-long qualifying run in L.A., and if you happen to be around, you owe it to yourself to give it a look.

    As I wrote in my June review of the film from the Edinburgh fest, it’s a quiet, humane piece dealing with the still-sensitive subject of the London terrorist attacks of July 2005. Despite this political currency, the film doesn’t draw overt attention to itself — but it affords Blethyn her finest showcase since “Secrets and Lies,” tempering the familiar rhythms of distraught-parent drama with less flattering streaks of prejudice and self-absorption.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Reflections, early predix, animated contenders

    Coraline• Kris boldly offered some early winner predictions … I (and you) followed.

    • AMPAS unveiled the official list of 20 animated feature contenders, guaranteeing five eventual nominees.

    • This week’s Off the Carpet column picked through the leading Best Supporting Actor contenders.

    • In The Long Shot, we reflected on a handful of the Academy’s better moves this past decade.

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  • Lenny Bruce is not afraid

    2012I’m in San Francisco through the weekend and, having missed the week’s “2012” press screenings, I headed on over to the Van Ness AMC to settle in for Roland Emmerich’s two and a half hours of global destruction, and as overwrought, cheesy, painstakingly contrived (“Where’s the map!?”) and downright BAD as the film is — and it is all of those things — I ate it up.

    Mainly, I salute Emmerich’s gargantuan, platinum cojones for giving us the exact…same…escape sequence not once, not twice, but THREE times.  And make it four if we want to go ahead and trace the roots of the by now standardized moment back to “Independence Day.” I kept waiting on someone to open a laptop with a countdown clock.  Oh wait, they’ve got one on the ark — we’re good.

    Staggering.  Every unconscionable drop of it.  And you know what?  Good.  I want this movie in the marketplace right now.  Sure, it’s a bastardized piece of “drama,” but squeezing damn near every 2012 theory into the mix, cranking the production up to 11 from frame one and STILL Tom McCarthy is able to keep a straight face?  This is high art on some level.  Has to be.

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  • The Great Performances: 2000

    Tom Hanks in Cast AwayMichael Douglas was robbed.

    The already Oscar-christened actor gave a career-best performance in 2000 in Curtis Hanson’s “Wonder Boys,” but he got no love from the Academy. Worse, his performance was easily among the five best of the year and won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Best Actor prize.

    That having been said, I don’t think Douglas actually deserved the Oscar in 2000.  That honor belonged to Tom Hanks in “Cast Away” for a performance that was nothing less than astounding. For two and a half hours Hanks commands the screeen, moving into silent film territory for a stretch, the actor using strictly his body and face for the performance. Anyone who has ever, and I mean ever, doubted his range needs to take a hard look at this film.

    The five nominees for Best Actor in 2000 were Hanks, Russell Crowe for “Gladiator,” Ed Harris in “Pollock,” Geoffrey Rush in “Quills” and Javier Bardem in “Before Night Falls.” For me, Douglas was the most glaring omission, followed by George Clooney’s Gable-esque work in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” which I think remains one of the actor’s very best pieces of work.

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  • ‘Crazy Heart’ poster

    A week after Patrick Goldstein rubbed some folks at Fox wrong for reporting false release information on “Crazy Heart,” he gets the poster exclusive.  Go figure.  Anyway, I love it.  Have a look below.  The trailer for the film will land Monday, by the way.

    Crazy Heart

  • British critics fall hard for ‘The White Ribbon’

    Bianca Mey and Mika Ahrens in The White RibbonAmerican audiences will have to wait until 30 December to see Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or winner “The White Ribbon,” but today marks the film’s UK release — and critically, at least, it’s off to a flying start.

    The film has received unanimously glowing notices in the four major British broadsheets, with the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw and the Telegraph’s Sukhdev Sandhu both affording it five-star reviews. This reception should position the film well for the BAFTAs, whose foreign-language category has few rules and restrictions than the Academy’s, and tend to go for titles with the greatest balance of publicity and acclaim.

    Bradshaw gushes:

    It has chilling brilliance and icy exactitude, filmed in black and white with the lustre of liquid nitrogen, and its director, Michael Haneke, achieves a new refinement of mastery and audacity. He has created a film whose superb technical finish and closure seems to me in contrast to its status as an “open” text, a work which resists clear interpretation … This is a profoundly disquieting movie, superbly acted and directed. Its sinister riddle glitters more fiercely each time I watch it.

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  • David Poland’s Oscar underdogs … where are the ladies?

    Tilda Swinton in JuliaFor those of you bored of reading the same ever-narrowing list of names in the assorted Oscar-speculation pieces across the web, David Poland’s latest column is a slight breath of fresh air.

    Decrying the fact that many pundits are making ludicrous long-shot calls like “This Is It” for Best Picture, while ignoring more deserving contenders who could use the attention, Poland provides a list of less-hyped contenders in the top categories that he feels merit consideration.

    His definition of the term “underdog” ranges from genuinely fanciful contenders (Catherine O’Hara and James Gandolfini for “Where the Wild Things Are,” “In the Loop” for Best Picture) to names still very much in the race who  have lately lost a bit of steam (Matt Damon, Jeremy Renner and Viggo Mortensen, all in the Best Actor category).

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  • ‘Cove’ misses out on IDA Awards nod

    Afghan StarA couple of things struck me as noteworthy on the list of nominees revealed yesterday by the International Documentary Association, which Kris mentioned briefly in this morning’s round-up.

    The five films nominated by the IDA for Best Documentary Feature include “Afghan Star,” “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” “Diary of a Times Square Thief,” “Food, Inc.” and “Mugabe and the White African.”

    Having admittedly only seen three of the five, I’d call that a pretty respectable list. Still, notably absent from the list is the film that many see as the prohibitive favorite for the Oscar: Louie Psihoyos’s environmental doc “The Cove.” (Certainly, when offering your own predictions earlier this week, only four of you bet on anything else.)

    In a year that has lacked a crossover documentary phenomenon on the scale of last year’s “Man on Wire,” it’s been widely presumed that “The Cove”‘s vastly sympathetic cause and high-profile champions would be enough to seal the deal, particularly when Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” failed to catch on.

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  • “If someone says ‘Drop and give me 20,’ I just can’t see it happening.”

    (Courtesy: Hulu)

  • A soupçon of Cruz in ‘Nine’

    Thanks to AwardsDaily for pointing out this tiniest of glimpses of Penélope Cruz singing and dancing her perfectly formed butt off in “Nine.”

    With such a cluttered field, I’d been leaning towards the idea of none of the actresses from the film’s formidable ensemble making the Best Supporting Actress cut, but this hints at the kind of onscreen barnstorming that is catnip to the actors’ branch.

  • 11/13 Oscarweb Round-up

    Ralph Fiennes in The Hurt Locker• Jeffrey Wells grills New York waitresses on their knowledge of the mere existence of “The Hurt Locker.” [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Oscar hopefuls “Anivl! The Story of Anvil” and “Food, Inc.” among IDA Award nominees. [Hollywood Reporter]

    • Tim Gray gets quotes making a case against The 10. [Variety]

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  • Cormac McCarthy on adaptation and ‘The Road’

    Cormac McCarthyAs much as John Hillcoat’s filmization of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” didn’t work for me, I think it remains one title that could spring a surprise or two this awards season. Though the film has some high-profile detractors including Todd McCarthy and Roger Ebert, many have been profoundly affected by the film, while its prestigious cache is beyond dispute.

    Helping the cause is that Cormac McCarthy, the estimable author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning source novel, is fully behind the film.

    Today’s online must-read is an extensive Wall Street Journal interview with McCarthy, in which he discusses his own personal investment in the novel — much of which is directly inspired by his own relationship with his son — and the decade-long relationship between Hollywood and his writing.

    McCarthy has a healthily hands-off approach to adaptations of his work, bluntly stating that once the rights have been sold, “you don’t embroil yourself in somebody else’s project.” Claiming to have had confidence in Hillcoat from the outset, he goes on to say that the filmmakers “absolutely” caught the spirit of his novel.

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  • Dear Santa…

    I’ve been a good less obnoxious than usual boy this year. And if you’re a devoted reader of our site, you might know that “Gone With the Wind” is my favorite film of all time.

    Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind

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  • indieWIRE lists the decade’s worst Oscar snubs

    Dennis Quaid in Far From HeavenThe end-of-decade reflective mood is obviously catching. In yesterday’s Long Shot column, I looked back on the last ten years of the Academy Awards, singling out some of their most inspired choices and positive developments. You responded in great numbers, rare goodwill towards the Academy dominating the comments thread for a change.

    Of course, however, we all know that it’s more fun to bury the Oscars than to praise them. So today, indieWIRE’s Peter Knegt has compiled something of a flipside to my piece, listing the 50 most egregious snubs in the past decade of Oscar nominations.

    It’s an eclectic list, Knegt’s only requirement for inclusion being that a nomination for the film or individual in question had to be at least within the realm of possibility.

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