In Contention

Category: Daily

  • “It’s just us talking. It’s Oscar night.”

    Tom Cruise at the 74th annual Academy AwardsThere’s always a healthy amount of irritation slung about during an Oscar season regarding the 6,000-strong body of men and women charged with choosing the year’s “best” in filmmaking accomplishment.  Some say the group is out of touch, others say voters aren’t educated enough in the arenas they choose to award.  For me, I’ve always felt like the group doesn’t approach the task with the proper amount of care and sense of responsibility, a responsibility that should be taken quite seriously.

    With that in mind, and regardless of any public bias against the man speaking the words (I’ve gone into that before), this Tom Cruise monologue that opened the 2002 Oscar telecast, six months after the 9/11 World Trade Center attack, crackles with the kind of spirit I wish was always apparent out of this organization.  When moments of passion such as this are few and far between, moments which lack any real sense of dishonesty or showmanship (beyond Cruise’s skill as an orator), I feel there is something wrong with the proceedings.

    I know Bill Condon and Larry Mark are going to aim at making tonight swift and fun, but I hope it doesn’t lose a certain well-intentioned sense of sincerity and duty.  It’s a tough line to walk, and a thin one between self-righteousness and honest passion.  Cruise nailed it.

  • Two more industry awards: MPSE and VES

    We should link to these for closure, so “The Dark Knight,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “WALL-E” won big at the Motion Picture Sound Editors awards, while “Button” took four trophies from the Visual Effects Society.  “The Dark Knight” and “WALL-E” also won a few each.  Thanks to Awards Daily on both of those.

  • Who are you pulling for?

    Anyone want to come clean on soft spots for this contender or that?  Here’s just another space to get all of that off your chest.  You all know who I’m pulling for, probably to a fault.

  • Mickey’s Spirit speech

    That’s seriously the manliest near cry I’ve ever seen in my life.

  • Post your predictions!

    Alright, I figure I might as well open up a thread for everyone to really go on the record.  If you haven’t already joined our Oscar poll, go do it.  In the meantime, and maybe for those not participating in the poll especially, crank out your lists of predictions in the comments section below and we’ll see who was closest to the mark when the dust settles.

  • 2/22 Oscarweb Round-up (OSCAR DAY EDITION)

    Graham King at the 79th annual Academy Awards• David Carr tugs the heart strings with a nice write-up on “Smile Pinki” subject Pinki Kumari Sonkar. [The Carpetbagger]

    • Tom O’Neil warns of the kiss of death that the Independent Spirit Award for Best Actor has become. [Gold Derby]

    • Another tired Oscar bitch-slap piece from traditional media. [New York Times]

    • Gideon Levy tears “Waltz with Bashir” a new one. [Haaretz]

    • Kate Winslet and the “Fakebooking” craze. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Elizabeth Snead catches up with Aaron Eckhart at the Indie Spirits to get his thoughts on a potential Oscar win for “Dark Knight” co-star Heath Ledger. [The Dish Rag]

    • Speaking of the Spirits, Roger Ebert responds to the swift show, goes out of his way to praise Rourke’s “show-stopping” speech. [Chicago Sun-Times]

    • Producer Graham King re-visits his Oscar win for “The Departed” two years ago. [The Independent]

    • Anne Hathaway shows a little humility.  Probably a good thing after that cringe-worthy BFCA acceptance speech. [USA Today]

  • Who needs an Oscar…

    … when you have the gold medal from Nathaniel Rogers’ peerless Film Bitch Awards? After teasing us for far too long, Nat has finally wrapped up his nominees and revealed his rankings. Anyone with a passing acquaintance with The Film Experience of late won’t be surprised to learn that “Rachel Getting Married” has done rather well, but I’m thrilled to see justice at last for Sally Hawkins, his Best Actress winner. Take that, Academy.

    Dig in here. It’s a riot.

  • Good luck to Mickey and his lengthy locks

    Hair in the acting categories

    (Source: The Guardian)

  • More on ‘Departures’ and a potential foreign upset

    DeparturesUPDATE: Well, it seems Tom has pulled the post down.  Perhaps, as commenter Josh notes, he got his info a bit twisted.  I’ll leave this here for now but check Josh’s explanation of the process.  The waters were muddied there for a bit.

    EARLIER: Tom O’Neil writes the following over at Gold Derby:

    A few days ago Gold Derby reported exclusively that “The Class” got nominated thanks to the new procedure that permits the academy’s internal foreign-film committee to overrule voters and add as many as three titles to the five in the category. (EDITOR’S NOTE: This seems to be the misinterpreted information.) The new rule was instituted to dispel the kind of outcry that followed last year’s omission of previous Cannes winner “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days” (Romania).

    Now Gold Derby can tattle a bit more. An excellent source tells us that the committee used its prerogative fully, bumping three films nominated by normal procedure in order to add their own choices. (EDITOR’S NOTE: This, too.  It seems the added films came during the first shortlisting process.) What were the other two? We don’t know for sure, but it seems logical to assume that they were other art-house darlings beloved by film critics who’d probably raise a ruckus if they were overlooked…

    How utterly screwed up this element of the Oscar process is.  It’s already pathetic that a special committee has to be there for oversight in the event that a film is snubbed that might cause some outcry, but hey, if there’s outcry over your choices, don’t bend to the will of the people and/or the critical fraternity.  Have the balls to stand by your own shitty taste.

    Anyway, it’s more and more obvious that, as I’ve been saying, the members that tend to vote in this category simply have it out for non-traditional filmmaking, end of story.  This band-aiding of the situation is just folly and, truthfully, there needs to be an entire re-working of the category’s process from the ground up.

  • ‘The Wrestler’ wins big at the Indie Spirits

    Mickey RourkeDarren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” walked away three trophies at today’s Independent Spirit Awards, including top honors for Best Actor (Mickey Rourke) and Best Feature.

    In his greatest acceptance speech of the season, Rourke seemed fully uninhibited, almost as if he said, “Screw it, ballots are in,” and he cut loose.  The tough guy thing poked through here and there as well as a lot of humorous forgetfulness. (He thanked Searchlight honcho Peter Rice and Rice’s “boss, Jim Jimanopoulos, or something like that.”  Of course he meant Fox studio chief Jim Gianopoulos).  But mostly, it was expletive-laden (like the Spirits like), raunchy and overall, still strangely endearing.

    Rourke briefly dedicated the award to recently deceased pet chihuahua Loki, of course, in a choked-up moment that seemed to beautifully contrast with the rest of the rant.  He held the mic like a rock star might, pushing it away during the applause moments and bringing it back to his lips to finish his thoughts.  He also dedicated a solid 60 seconds to his friend Eric Roberts.  “Whatever he did 15, 20 years ago should be forgiven,” Rourke said.  “Eric Roberts is the fucking man and he deserves a second chance.  I wish there’d be one God damned filmmaker in this room that’d let him fly because the man is something else.”

    Melissa Leo’s speech in acceptance of the lead actress award — not so much.  She rambled, she seemed self-involved, overly dramatic, pompous…let’s just say it’s probably a good thing she hasn’t accepted too many awards publicly this year because I think it would have damaged her Oscar chances.  That’s just me, but it’s a hell of a performance and justly rewarded tonight.

    “Milk” won two trophies early on, James Franco taking down a win in the Best Supporting Actor category and Dustin Lance Black’s first screenplay award.  “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” also secured a pair: Best Screenplay for Woody Allen and Best Supporting Actress for Penelope Cruz.

    Tom McCarthy won the Best Director prize despite his film “The Visitor” not showing up in the Best Feature category, while Charlie Kaufman took home the Best First Feature prize for the exceptional “Synecdoche, New York,” which also won the pre-announced Robert Altman Award.

    (More, plus the full list of winners after the jump.)

    (more…)

  • You were right, I was wrong: Guy’s final predictions

    (Expanded thoughts and reasonings on yesterday’s list of predictions.)

    It’s years like 2008 when I throw my hands up and admit (albeit with great reluctance) that my family and friends have been right for the last two decades. Carla, Tom, Kim, Auntie Mavis: I give up. I am insane to care as much as I do about the Oscars. They are stupid. They don’t matter, and I really should find something more important and rewarding to care about, like, oh, needlepoint classes or professional darts championships.

    But who am I kidding? I will always care about the Oscars, even in years like this when the race is so dry, and its significance so questionable, that I take great care in not caring. In a year when so few of my personal favourites have cracked the contenders list, it has at least been interesting to sit back and watch the furore unfold over the Academy voters’ spectacularly self-sabotaging antics this year.

    I’ve been wrong about a lot of things this year (Kris scoffed at my naive suggestion back in July that “Happy-Go-Lucky” could be a Best Picture nominee, and he was right to), and right about … well … “Milk’s” nomination for Best Costume Design. (Hey, let me salvage some glory from this year’s meagre spoils.) I don’t expect to be a hell of a lot more successful with the following predictions, but you never know. It’s still been a lot of fun riding out the season with you this year – here’s to a better slate of contenders (and a lot less grousing from me) in 12 months’ time.

    BEST PICTURE
    Apart from the fact that it is the most imaginative and entertaining of this year’s feeble clutch of nominees, the reason “Slumdog Millionaire” has a stranglehold on this category is because it’s the only one of the five that has any discernible relationship to contemporary cinema. The other four all feel to varying degrees like the finely-tooled Best Picture winners of decades past, but the younger, more curious Academy members have been moving away from such self-consciously packaged ‘prestige product’ in the past few years – even if they need a lot of pointing towards what to reward in its stead.

    (more…)

  • Conan bids farewell to ‘Late Night’

    Conan O\'BrienI told myself all week to make sure I caught Conan O’Brien’s last show on Late Night yesterday, and, no big surprise, I totally forgot.  I told myself it was probably just as well since for many, many years the show fell out of favor with me.  I was a huge fan in the Andy Richter years back in my high school days, but somehow when Richter left, after maybe a year or so, Conan began to seem stale to me.  I don’t know why, I don’t know if it was growing up, whatever, but it stopped connecting.

    I’ve been revisiting the show lately, mostly in the way of reminiscence since I knew the clock was ticking.  And luckily enough, given this day and age, I was able to track down the final episode here.  I kind of thought it would be same old, hollow, etc., and to some extent, it was slightly underwhelming for a farewell show.  But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was a bit choked up watching this 15-year-old chapter of the late night comedy tour come to an end.

    I particularly liked O’Brien’s acknowledgment of late night king (in my opinion) David Letterman, who everyone know deserved “The Tonight Show” long ago.  Here’s what the exiting “Late Night” host had to say of his soon-to-be 11:30 competition:

    David Letterman invented this late night show.  He is, I believe, one of the most brilliant broadcasters for all time.  I have a terrific amount of respect for him and what he did.  He set the bar absurdly high.  Living in his shadow has been both a burden and an inspiration.

    The White Stripes performed a solemn ditty and Will Ferrell made an appearance.  Andy Richter, of course, came out for a trip down memory lane, but it’s all over now.

    O’Brien begins his stint hosting “The Tonight Show” June 1.

  • Want to win cinematography? An art direction nod helps.

    Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin ButtonI’m surprised I completely forgot about this little, some might say meaningless statistic, but with all the predictions for “Slumdog Millionaire” taking the cinematography win at tomorrow night’s Oscar ceremony, the Oscarweb seems to be in the same boat.

    You have to go back to 1999 and “American Beauty” to find a film that won the Oscar for Best Cinematography but was not even nominated in the art direction field.  Before that, 1995 and “Braveheart,” 1992 and “A River Runs Through It” and 1991 and “JFK.”

    “Mississippi Burning” (1988) and “The Killing Fields” (1984) were the only examples from the 1980s and then you see some more frequency in the new American cinema hey-day of the 1970s.  But if you stretch the timeline back to 1979, you only find six films in 20 years that managed to win the lensing trophy despite coming up short of a nod with the designers.

    The only films nominated in both categories this year are “Changeling,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “The Dark Knight.”  Most might use that as the ultimate excuse to throw their money behind “The Dark Knight,” which was revolutionary behind the camera with it’s implementation of IMAX technology and because, dang it, it looks amazing.  And God knows my fingers are crossed for Wally Pfister, but I think all of this might make a better case for Claudio Miranda and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”

    (more…)

  • Going with ‘Departures’

    Waltz with BashirI said yesterday that if I got cold feet on any of my predictions I would let you know, and less than 24 hours later, I’ve decided to take the dive on “Departures.”

    A lot of foreign film committee members really responded to this film, and it’s easy to see why.  It is “the kind of soft, safe, solid work that tends to take out the frontrunner in this category time and again,” I wrote yesterday.  “It deals with death in a really affecting way, at once eerie, humorous and, ultimately, moving.  When it threatens to pass into trite territory, it finds a way to stay fresh and alive, very human and absolutely satisfying…When you look back over the history of this category, you see a certain bias against non-traditional filmmaking,” i.e. an animated/documentary hybrid, however powerful.

    Today Pete Hammond has offered his thoughts on the matter, noting that “no animated film, no documentary and no film from Israel has ever won here so it would be three firsts. If not ‘Bashir,’ most pundits then move to the Palme d’Or winner from France, ‘The Class,’” Hammond continues, “but some voters I talked to thought it was dull. One even left after the first half. The committee at large likely did not vote this in on the first round and the academy’s executive committee put in it in the mix (they won’t confirm this but sources indicate that was the case). If you are looking for a pool winner go with Japan for the upset. That country’s film,’Departures’ is one the original foreign language committee LOVED.”  (UPDATE: Pete has now gone ahead and predicted “Departures” for the win as well.)

    Then there was that interesting bit of information from commenter Josh yesterday, who said, “‘Departures’ is also the least-screened nominee–if you didn’t see it at an AMPAS members screening, you probably didn’t see it. That’s an old strategy, restricting the pool of voters to the people who’ve gone out of their way to see your movie…The kind of voters who didn’t even nominate ‘Gomorrah’ or ‘4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days’ might well find the other nominees a bit cold, and go for a gentler movie that’s lovely, lyrical and a touch melodramatic.”

    Despite the precursor record “Waltz with Bashir” has tallied up, if you look at Academy history, it faces an uphill climb.  And beyond stylistic bias, it could be as simple as one guy at Hollywood Elsewhere put it (rather bluntly): “It’s a cartoon and it makes Israel look bad.”  There might be some painful truth there, however misinformed the opinion might be.

    In any case, there’s something in the winds here.  Maybe it’s folly, maybe it’s an attempt at injecting the race with some sort of excitement, maybe I’m falling on my sword, but I’m going to step out onto a limb and predict “Departures” to upset “Waltz with Bashir” tomorrow night.  You only live once, I guess.

    The adjustments have been made in the usual places, here, here and, of course, here.  Ditto the sidebar.

  • Congrats to the Bat on a billion bucks

    Too bad it took a re-expansion to get there, though.  But woo-hoo!

  • Supporting Actress and screenplays first?

    I’m just now stumbling across this, but Yair Raveh over at Cinemascope has apparently come across a rundown of Sunday’s show.  No real details other than the order of presented awards, which seems to list Best Supporting Actress and the screenplay fields as the first out of the gate.  Supporting categories typically announce early on, but the screenplays tend to wait until the last act.

    If the tip is legit, this would certainly be a change up.  Best Supporting Actor isn’t presented until an hour and a half later, according to Raveh, and there are nearly 40 minutes in between the two short categories, which is interesting.  Those sound categories everyone will be looking to for a barometer aren’t unveiled until the 7:30pm (PST) mark, and the In Memoriam segment looks to be the last montage before the four biggest awards of the night — again, all according to Raveh’s source.

    Who knows if it’s legit, but anyone who has worked in live TV knows how quickly things can shift.

  • Good rant

    Denis Leary

    Okay. First of all — I’d like to thank God for just taking time out of His busy schedule curing cancer and feeding the hungry and solving the crisis in Darfur with George Clooney and helping so many different wide receivers and quarterbacks to throw and catch footballs and instead making sure that I got singled out of such a wonderful group of actors like Meryl and Mary-Louise and Cate Blanchett and Angelina and Marcia Gay and Kate Winslet and just – all the Kates and the Kevins and the two name and the three name people I feel so honored just to be up here while they are all down there and I’d like to just thank the Academy and the people who hated me and treated me like such dirt and who made me stab them in the back just to get here and now you can suck it and Botox! I almost forgot Botox! And Restylin and Cosmoderm and Prestocheek and Instatit and all the other animal agents I’ve had injected into my face and stuff.

    The first stream of thoughts from a Variety exclusive Oscar acceptance rant from the one, the only, Denis Leary.

  • Judd Apatow’s ‘Funny People’

    Before we really dig into net year’s Oscar race on Monday, what about the new Judd Apatow comedy “Funny People” starring Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen.  Could the multi-hyphenate finally find some love from the writers’ branch, maybe?  Acknowledgment for Leslie Mann’s antics, maybe?  Anything outside of HFPA?