• Steve Pond takes note of an Oscar milestone regarding Adam Shankman: the first tweeting Oscarcast producer! [The Odds]
• Tom O’Neil stirs the pot, says there might be a “Precious” backlash in the works. [Gold Derby]
• He does so in response to Lou Lumenick, who wonders whether Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey are hurting the film. [Lumenick on Film]
Q: Why Did Amelia Earhart disappear in 1937?
A: To avoid being embarrassed by the movie about her 72 years later.Q: Can three horrible fake accents equal one irredeemable movie?
A: You bet ya.Q: What’s the difference between Amelia and two hours of uninterrupted sleep?
A: The latter is uninterrupted.
From David Poland’s skewering of “Amelia” following a screening this evening. I’ll dig into the film in Friday’s Oscar Talk, but the only movie I’ve seen this year that is worse is “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li.”
As Guy points to the changing face of the typical “Oscar movie,” I’m reminded of a number of Oscar-related conversations as of late. One question keeps popping through the “What can crack the 10” debate, and that is, “What can actually win?” Of course, going into the season, the films to beat seem to be “Precious” and “Up in the Air,” based on impressive festival cred. But other titles have been popping up as possibilities, too.
“The Lovely Bones” certainly seems like an across-the-board player. And if it lands a slightly unexpected PG-13 rating (it’s looking like it might), then it could prove even more accessible (i.e., commercially successful) than one might have anticipated. The emotion of the narrative may just be gravy after that.
I get the feeling that, of the other two unseen giants, “Nine” could prove a little too “been there, done that.” But I think “Invictus,” if it delivers, could land a zeitgeisty message of healing a nation after years of political unrest that might prove irresistible to the Academy (from a McCain supporter, no less).
In truth, however, I keep coming back to “Precious,” with just the right level of art house appeal, social consideration and dramatic flare to make good on its current frontrunner status and survive the season. And this recent Lynn Hirschberg profile on director Lee Daniels in The New York Times Magazine is stuffed with insights and asides that make the bet feel safer and safer.
Quentin Tarantino is obviously quite the epistolarian. Just yesterday, I mentioned the sincerely admiring letter that he wrote to controversial “Kinatay” director Brillante Mendoza, praising the brutally violent and widely unpopular Filipino film for its daring and authenticity.
Evidently, that wasn’t the only letter QT wrote in his Cannes hotel suite. And while it’s not unexpected that he’d support a fellow provocateur like Mendoza, some might be surprised to hear that he’s equally passionate about Jane Campion’s “Bright Star,” which I flipped for earlier this week.
UK site Moviefone unearthed the following gushing note (written, like the Mendoza letter, in red ink) from Tarantino to Campion:
My favorite film of yours … I don’t like period pieces like that. I loved this!!! Never has heartache been so realistically and movingly portrayed as Abbie taking to her bed … The lovers kisses … Abbie and Ben … touching … Brilliant. I loved it!!! Love – Your fan – Quentin Tarantino.
This is turning into quite the year for John Lasseter. A little over a month ago, he and his fellow Pixar directors were honored with the career-achievement Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Now comes the news that Lasseter has been named the 2010 recipent of the Producers Guild of America’s highest career honor, the David O. Selznick Achievement Award.
Lasseter is the first animation producer to receive the award, which was last handed earlier this year to Michael Douglas. Previous recipients include Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, Roger Corman, Clint Eastwood, Jerry Bruckheimer, Dino De Laurentiis, Robert Evans, Billy Wilder … the list is long and intimidating. The award will be presented at the PGA Awards ceremony on January 24.
Congratulations, then, to Lasseter — it’s a splendid feather in his cap, and a further omen that this might be the year that Pixar finally cracks the awards-season big league. Industry goodwill for the studio really couldn’t be any higher at the moment.
Press release soundbites after the cut.
I’m always interested to see how the more hyped Hollywood contenders for Oscar glory play in Britain, largely because there are few hard-and-fast rules for determining what will take UK critics’ (and audiences’) fancy.
Last year was a case in point: audiences here shrugged off “Milk,” while “The Wrestler” became a mini-phenomenon — though neither film offers an obvious inroad for a foreign audience. And who could have predicted that “Changeling” would find safe critical haven (not to mention a slew of BAFTA nods) with the Brits, despite receiving a kicking at home?
So I was curious to see how “Up in the Air” fared with the British press following its London premiere on Sunday, given that it’s a film with quite an American outlook. However, the universality of its recession-minded story has evidently carried through, as early reviews are uniformly warm.
• Pete Hammond joins the speculation that yesterday’s Oscarcast producer announcement bodes well for a Jackman repeat. [Notes on a Season]
• Nathaniel Rogers is awed in the presence of Tilda Swinton at the New Yorker Festival. (Where, apparently, “Michael Clayton” was never mentioned. Huh.) [Tribeca Film]
• David Poland brands the Gotham Awards “meaningless” for not trying to predict the Oscars. I despair. [The Hot Blog]
This morning I highlighted a few areas where the “An Education” team might want to angle for nominations beyond the slam-dunk that is the Carey Mulligan Express. What I forgot to suggest is that the film could theoretically put itself in the hunt for Best Original Song.
You could be forgiven for thinking that the lovely, woozy torch ballad “You’ve Got Me Wrapped Around Your Little Finger” — which features prominently in the trailer, as well as twice in the film itself — is a dusty archive find from the early 1960s.
However, it’s actually a contemporary track co-written and performed especially for the film by 28 year-old British jazz-pop chanteuse Beth Rowley (who appears as a nightclub singer in the film).
Well, we were getting a bit impatient for the names to drop, but finally they have: Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic have formally been named as the producers of the 2009 Academy Awards telecast.
As was the case last year, Oscar bosses have handed the reins to a pair of newcomers. Shankman, a choreographer-turned-filmmaker (not to mention “So You Think You Can Dance” judge) best known for his direction of “Hairspray” and “A Walk to Remember,” and Mechanic, a producer and former Fox chief, seem to represent a pairing of showbiz glitter with old-school industry brass.
This kind of inside-baseball stuff isn’t really my forte, but I will venture a guess that the selection of Shankman indicates a willingness to stick to the musical-inspired, let’s-put-on-show mandate that Bill Condon and Laurence Mark set last year. (In which case Hugh Jackman might return as host after all.) And if Shankman brings the same level of slickness and sincere enthusiasm to this assignment as he did to “Hairspray,” I’m not complaining.
Press release after the cut.
I must say, I’m a little sad to hear that ace NYT journalist David Carr has retired from his position as lead writer for the Times’ seasonal Carpetbagger blog. Site colleagues excepted, he was my favorite Oscar pundit bar none, striking the tricky balance of bringing jaded wit to the silliness of awards season without stooping to easy snark, and it goes without saying that he’s one hell of a writer on any topic that takes his fancy. (Still haven’t read his memoir “Night of the Gun?” Rectify it.)
Still, the Gray Lady hardly lacks for talented scribes, and so it is that we welcome Carr’s replacement, Melena Ryzik, who will take over the blog as of December 1. From the press release:
In addition to being a general assignment culture reporter, Ms. Ryzik chronicles cultural life in New York for the UrbanEye video series, and writes the UrbanEye e-mail, a daily guide to events around town. As the Carpetbagger, she succeeds media columnist David Carr, who originated the blog but is retiring his tuxedo from the red carpet beat after four seasons. He will continue as a media columnist and a general assignment reporter.
At this morning’s press screening for “An Education,” which has its UK premiere at the London Film Festival tonight, I was impressed afresh by what a layered, deceptively gentle and generally terrific little picture it is.
Some have complained that it’s a little too soft, a little too easy — though only its overly pat denouement, for me, merits any such claims — but this is a film that knows its audience, as well as how to sneak more subversive material by them, and deserves credit for its intelligence in doing so.
I’ll admit that this morning, the thought of it actually winning Best Picture crossed my mind, albeit built on a shaky pile of ifs; either way, it strikes me as a genuine Academy film, and for a change, that isn’t meant as an insult.
Some of you may have read my defense last week of Brillante Mendoza’s grimly violent “Kinatay,” a film that provoked mass hostility at Cannes in May for portraying the rape, murder and dismemberment of a young woman in unrelenting detail. Roger Ebert declared it the worst film ever to play at the festival, and the announcement of Mendoza’s Best Director award was roundly booed in the Cannes press room.
For all that, the film does have its champions, and as it turns out, Quentin Tarantino is among them. Thanks to Ben Mortimer at ComingSoon for pointing me to this letter (itself courtesy of Letters of Note) written by Tarantino to Mendoza, congratulating the latter on his Cannes win and pretty accurately nailing why the film works. (For us, at least.) Spelling errors preserved:
Bravo on your diffcult troubling work. Your decission to never dramatize the murder, never indulge in movie suspense…. was bold, daring, and to me, the whole point of making the movie in the first place. I felt it was completely a eyewitness acount of a horroble murder. I believed everything I saw. Your point wasnt to dramatize it. It was to capture it.
The actual document is after the cut, in case you’ve always longed to see QT’s handwriting.
I’m about to head into an LFF press screening of what is possibly my most anticipated film of the year, Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon.” As if my excitement levels couldn’t be any higher, The Guardian points us to this exquisite new trailer for the film. (They’re claiming it’s a world exclusive, though Trailer Addict offers a near-identical one, embedded below.)
I sense it’s a film that will merit a full review, so I hope to cobble one together by end of play today. “Hope” being the operative word.
So this is the song that Brian May was praising to the high heavens. Okie dokie. If this were the mid-1990s, we might be looking at a nomination. But, as it is…nah.
(Courtesy: Vulture)
• Peter Knegt writes up a list of honest-to-God Oscar underdogs, but where’s Tom Hardy? [indieWIRE]
• Peter Bart and Michael Fleming go back and forth on the new Oscar paradigm. [BF Deal Memo]
• Francis Ford Coppola chimes in with cheery news: “The cinema as we know it is falling apart.” [Bloomberg]
You’d be hard pressed to disagree that Alexandre Desplat is pretty much at the top of the game in contemporary film scoring. In addition to his genius (“Birth” looks likely to remain my favorite score of the decade), his prolificity is awe-inspiring. This year alone sees the Frenchman’s name on seven features, running the gamut from “Julie & Julia” to “A Prophet” to “Fantastic Mr. Fox” to the latest “Twilight” installment.
He seems bound to figure in the awards race for one film or another (“Cheri” would be my personal pick so far), so it’s a nice — if not terribly prescient — omen that he just won Composer of the Year at the 9th annual World Soundtrack Awards yesterday, as well as score of the year for his Oscar-nominated work on “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
It’s a 2008-leaning list, with “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The Reader” also resurfacing, though a Lifetime Achievement Award for Marvin Hamlisch is clearly a nod to “The Informant!”
The awards, handed out by the World Soundtrack Academy in Ghent, Belgium, an educational organization dedicated to the art of film music, don’t carry much weight to speak of, but since we’re having a day of small awards announcements, it’s a fun list of winners to add to the pile. Full list after the cut.
Apropos of nothing really, since the article is a week old and even I have no intention of seeing “Love Happens,” but my friend Jamie — who knows, albeit not very supportively, of my longstanding admiration for Jennifer Aniston — sent me this interesting Independent piece, and I thought I’d throw it out there.
As some of you may have read before, I’ve long held the belief that Aniston is a genuinely gifted actress — and I haven’t had an awful lot of company on that one. Ben Walsh, however, joins me on that limb, saluting her consistently valiant contributions to largely unworthy films:
These cynical, quite often facile films may lack depth, subtlety and, well, imagination, but Aniston never lets anybody down. In fact, now that Meg Ryan appears to have imploded, Aniston is probably – and this is a tad bold – the most gifted American comic actress of her generation. Her comic timing is immaculate and she could muster up playful sexual chemistry with a sideboard. And while her acting range isn’t huge, she’s never less than compelling.