In Contention

Category: Daily

  • Keeping it low-key, Hollywood style

    As one of this year’s nearly-nominated figures recently remarked to me (and I’m sure they’ll forgive me for quoting them): “The best place to enjoy the Oscars has to be at home in PJs, wrapped up in many a duvet with a large mug of sweet tea … a look which I doubt I could have quite pulled off on the carpet.”

    It’s a philosophy I subscribe to as well — though admittedly one’s celebration options are somewhat limited when when the Oscarcast takes place in the wee small hours of the morning. However, it seems that this year, many of Hollywood’s finest could discover for themselves the low-key, home-made delights of home Oscar parties, as the economically panicked industry scales back on the famously lavish post-ceremony bashes, limiting the guest lists and dropping the accoutrements. As Variety reports:

    Balancing modesty with glitz is no easy task, but award season veterans are definitely seeing some changes this year. Saturday’s seventh annual Night Before party at the Beverly Hills hotel benefitting the Motion Picture & Television Fund is cutting out the gift bags, and it is not holding the Friday night pre-event as in years past.

    After more than a decade at Mortons (and then no party last year), Vanity Fair has moved to the Sunset Tower for its viewing and after-party. The mag says the “invitation list has been cut down considerably,” but a permit filed with the city of West Hollywood said there would be between 800 guests over the course of the evening.

    OK, so they’re not suffering that modestly. But apparently Elton John’s AIDS Foundation dinner will have no after-party, while entourages and security will be denied entry. That’s slumming it, by Hollywood standards. Seriously, though, I’m glad to see the industry taking reality into account to some extent. It’s all about the movies, after all, or it should be — so if the glossy magazines have to make do with fewer Oscar-bash celeb snaps to choose from this year, that’s no bad thing.

    Meanwhile, if any stars feel like hopping across the pond and joining me for my traditional post-ceremony breakfast — I do great blueberry pancakes — I can make some room on the guest list.

  • Bruce Springsteen’s “The Wrestler” gets a music video

  • TECH SUPPORT: Final predictions

    Tech Support at In ContentionAfter six months of Tech Support previews and interviews, the films have arrived, the nominations have been announced and the guilds, the critics and BAFTA have all announced their preferences.  Today we take a final look at the races before the envelopes are opened on Sunday.

    BEST ART DIRECTION
    After guild and BAFTA wins, I would say “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” has cemented its frontrunner status in this category. Spanning decades of the 20th Century, Donald Graham Burt’s production design was impossible not to notice and gave us gorgeous backdrops for its character’s predicaments.

    The other nominees all have the odds stacked against them, whether similar work has been seen before (Michael Carlin’s “The Duchess” and Kristi Zea’s “Revolutionary Road”), is just not showy enough (Nathan Crowley’s “The Dark Knight”) or the nominee is otherwise along for the ride (James Murakami’s “Changeling”).

    Will win: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
    Could win: “The Duchess”
    Should win: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

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  • Ang Lee takes on ‘Pi’

    Few film projects in recent years have come with as formidable a chain of prospective directors attached than Fox 2000’s adaptation of Yann Martel’s bestselling 2002 Booker Prize winner “Life of Pi.”

    First M. Night Shyamalan was on board — which, admittedly, might have been a more appealing prospect five years ago. The next name attached was a considerable step up: “Amelie” helmer Jean-Pierre Jeunet would have been a pretty natural fit for Martel’s brand of surreal whimsy. I seem to recall Alfonso Cuaron being mentioned in connection with the project at one point too. Like I said, an impressive roster.

    In the end, however, it looks like Ang Lee will ultimately accept the challenge, and I do mean ‘challenge.’ For those of you unfamiliar with the novel, it’s an allegorical fantasy about a shipwrecked Indian boy who survives by sharing a raft with a Bengal tiger, among other wild animals. It’s a tricky film premise to say the least, but Lee has proved time and again that he knows his way around delicate, potentially uncinematic literary source material. I think his visual grace and lightness of touch is just what is required here. Smart choice.

    I do love how busy Lee is keeping himself, compared to many other auteurs of his calibre. “Lust, Caution” is a fresh, searing memory still, and it was only a few months ago that we heard he was beginning work on “Taking Woodstock,” an ensemble piece centred around the eponymous music festival. With that film already wrapped and due for release in August (perhaps a title set for discussion in our upcoming 2009 Oscar preview), Lee is ready to move on, with yet another wholly different proposition for his filmography. Good on him.

  • Mickey Rourke’s pet chihuahua Loki dies

    Loky with Mickey Rourke at the 2008 Venice International Film FestivalUPDATED: Okay, here’s Rourke’s statement.  And I’m getting conflicting info on the spelling of “Loki.”  All the news outlets are using an “i” but I saw a “y” on her collar last year.  Weird.  I guess I’ll take it from the owner, who had this to say:

    Loki is deeply missed but with me in spirit. I feel very blessed that she fell asleep peacefully in my arms.

    EARLIER: Anyone who’s been on the “Wrestler” beat this year and had the chance to talk to Mickey Rourke has probably also had the chance to meet Loki, the actor’s pet chihuahua who suffered a stroke recently and has been recovering ever since.

    Sadly, the door was shut on Loki yesterday as the adorable 18-year-old K9 you probably remember from Robert Rodriguez’s “Once Upon a Time in Mexico” left this mortal coil and scurried on to a better place.  E! Online broke the news.

    Now’s as good a time as any to share a Loki story.  It was October, at the Four Seasons hotel here in Los Angeles.  I was set to interview Rourke and was waiting for him to finish up with another journalist when this creature with a bloated gut (which needed to be drained) waddled up to me, struggling to see through her cataracts-inflicted eyes.  She seemed a bit down, not sure what to do with herself without her master for a half-hour.

    In walks Rourke and before he turns the corner so I can see him, I hear his voice: “Hey porkchop!”  Loki livens up immediately and moves — as fast as she can — over to the iconic actor, who announces that he’s starving and needs to eat something before we start the interview.

    Rourke comes over to the table and sits down, preparing for yet another bombardment of queries, breaks open a baked potato and starts eating.  “I need some carbs,” he says, before finishing his portion and lifting Loki up to finish off what was left.  The meal a distant memory based on the specks of starch left on the plate, Loki walks in a couple of circles on the table before collapsing right next to my audio recorder for the duration.  And boy could she snore.

    Mickey went on to tell me how earlier in the afternoon they had lost the dog in the hotel’s pool area.  His publicist confirms that the actor was indeed quite upset.  “I was ready to burn this place down,” Rourke said jovially.  He loved that dog.

    Rest in peace, Loki.

    Mickey Rourke with Loky

  • MTV’s 2009 Oscar montage starring Josh Horowitz

  • POLL: Who deserves it? — BEST DIRECTOR

    Closing in…tell us in the sidebar poll.

  • Christian Bale vs. Peter Griffin

    Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in…

  • 2/18 Oscarweb Round-up

    Michael Shannon in Revolutionary Road• Dave Germain digs into Oscar’s history of scene-stealers, joined this year by Viola Davis and Michael Shannon. [Associated Press]

    • Erika Kinetz, meanwhile, keeps at the same old “Slumdog Millionaire” story that has grown stale over the last few weeks. [Associated Press]

    • Ryan Adams eschews the usual “top 10 list” and instead cranks out a list of the 30 films that mattered to him the most in 2008. [Awards Daily]

    • Sasha Stone, meanwhile, begins building her annual predictions chart from info scattered across the Oscarweb. [Awards Daily]

    • Noah Forrest’s last minute consideration of “Slumdog Millionaire”‘s stranglehold on the season. [Movie City News]

    • Nathaniel Rogers kicks off his annual Oscar Symposium, with Erik Lundegaard, Karina Longworth, Ed Gonzalez, Timothy Brayton and yours truly. [The Film Experience]

    • David Carr isn’t impressed by this year’s John Singleton-directed Oscar trailer. [The Carpetbagger]

    • Elizabeth Snead talks to legendary “Revolutionary Road” costumer Albert Wolsky. [The Envelope]

  • Not so very shocking

    Dave Karger has posted a list of ten potential “shockers” that he thinks could (however faintly) foreseeably shake things up on Oscar night.

    Many of them have been raised before, and are suitably fanciful. Though I’ve said before that there is a logical case to be made for Melissa Leo leapfrogging both Kate Winslet and Meryl Streep to the Best Actress award, it’s safe to say that the odds are firmly stacked against that happening. Meanwhile, while the “‘Benjamin Button’ goes 0-for-13” theory has been floated around before, it’s difficult to see how it could lose all three of the technical awards in which it is deemed a lock. So those outcomes would certainly count as shocking in some measure.

    Some of Karger’s ideas would definitely be upsets, but not necessarily “shockers.” As I’ve written before, I’m joining him on the same limb in predicting a Best Foreign Language Film win for “The Class” — but that category is so prone to upsets, it’s almost more of a surprise when things go according to plan. And I know I’m not the only one seriously considering Viola Davis in the frequently topsy-turvy Best Supporting Actress category — she’s not the favourite, sure, but it wouldn’t be a jaw-dropper of Marcia Gay Harden proportions.

    Some of Karger’s supposed “shockers,” however, wouldn’t even count as upsets to me. He lists both the possibility of “Slumdog Millionaire” making a clean sweep of nine awards, and “The Dark Knight” getting only one statuette — which are really co-dependent on each other, since the sound awards, as far as I can see, represent “TDK’s” only other shots at victory. (Cinematography, I think, sailed with the ASC.) And since “Slumdog” just nabbed the CAS award, would that be so very unexpected?

    The one on Karger’s list that really surprised me, however, was a Best Actor win for Mickey Rourke. It’s well-known by now that this is a neck-and-neck battle to the finish between two beloved performances that have evenly split the major Oscar precursors. In the latest Gurus of Gold chart, Penn leads Rourke by a single vote. I think we can honestly say by now that either result would not be a surprise at all. Now Frank Langella … that would be a shocker.

  • Again, uh…

    Following yesterday’s thrilling/indifferent/perplexing (adjust according to age) revelation that Robert Pattinson is a likely presenter at Sunday’s Academy Awards, Sasha Stone has excavated some further hints as to who to expect on stage — and it seems Beyoncé Knowles, “High School Musical” tweens Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens, as well as young “Mamma Mia!” duo Amanda Seyfried and Dominic Cooper could all be in the mix.

    Beyoncé is a bona fide megastar and has been a regular fixture at the Oscars for some years now, so that at least makes sense. But what’s with the excessive pandering to the (pre)teen demographic? Do that many of them really watch the Oscars? Maybe they do — I’m just asking.

    But isn’t the inclusion of one pretty-but-sexually-unthreatening vampire a sufficient nod to the demographic? Efron on his own could be bearable, but let’s not kid ourselves into pretending that Hudgens, Seyfried and Cooper are movie stars just yet.

    With names like these, perhaps the whole “secret presenters” thing was just a ploy to avoid scaring us off.

  • ‘Duchess,’ ‘Slumdog,’ ‘Knight’ take CDG Awards

    So, the final guild awards before the Oscars have been doled out — and “Slumdog Millionaire” maintains its unprecedented, unbroken streak, with Suttriat Larlab winning the contemporary field at the Costume Designers Guild awards.

    “The Dark Knight’s” Lindy Hemming predictably took the fantasy category while, in the only victory that has any bearing on the Oscar race, Michael O’Connor took the period gong for “The Duchess.”

    The latter strikes me as an interesting win. While the relatively unfamiliar O’Connor is a favourite for the Oscars, I didn’t necessarily expect him to triumph with the Guild, which often prefers more established names — and hasn’t shared the Academy’s recent affinity for European royalty-porn. (Neither “Marie-Antoinette” nor “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” won here.) The fact that they relented this year suggests O’Connor is looking primed for the bigger win on Sunday.

  • Penn’s performance for the ages

    Sean Penn in MilkOn a third viewing of “Milk”, one of the best films of they year and a major accomplishment for director Gus Van Sant, I was again struck, no, blown away by the brilliance, the joy, the remarkably loving work of Sean Penn as the doomed politician. Penn has been my pick for Best Actor since seeing the film last fall, and though I share the love for Mickey Rourke (and others do as well, judging by today’s sidebar poll), I still think Penn will take the Oscar on Sunday.

    This is a major performance, one destined to be discussed for decades to come from one of the greatest actors to ever grace the screen.  What sets it apart from Rourke’s work is that Penn had less from his life to draw on, and both being method actors, this is why I believe that Penn’s is the greater accomplishment. Now saying that is right away going to get the folks in Mickey’s camp thinking I am dissing his work…NOT AT ALL.  It is a brilliant performance that signals the return of a great actor.

    It all begins with words on a page. The actor reads those words and begins to create his character, perhaps after discussing it with his director, perhaps not. And from those words come magic. There are no directions as to how a character is be be portrayed in any screenplays I have ever read. The actor brings that to the table, which makes some of the great acting works all the more impressive.  Where did Johnny Depp find Captain Jack Sparrow?  Where did Heath Ledger find the Joker?  Where did Marlon Brando find Terry Malloy so long ago?  They make decisions about how they are going to say a line, or take a beat, or a pause, and mesh these things together to create, and then throw that energy out at another actor and maybe the work gets better.

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  • How not to present — or accept — an Oscar

    The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw has rounded up a morbidly fascinating collection of the all-time most awkward performances by an Oscar presenter — a remarkable study in the multitude of ways in which one can fail at reading a teleprompter and opening an envelope with any semblance of panache.

    They’re all fun in their variously excruciating ways (I love Jill Ireland’s thoroughly zombified reading of the 1973 Best Supporting Actress nominees), but I have to agree with Thomson that the most “cant-look-can’t-look-away” presentation is that of the 1972 Best Actor Oscar.

    Of course, the moment is already infamous for Marlon Brando’s choice of proxy to accept the award, but even before we get there, classic status is assured by the surreal pairing of Roger Moore and Liv Ullmann to present — and their painful lack of chemistry together. Whatever has been lined up for Sunday, it can’t go worse than this. (Check out Bradshaw’s full list here.)

  • Hammond, O’Neil debate the original screenplay race

    Everyone’s wondering lately whether “WALL-E” can pull off an upset in the original screenplay category as of late, taking down the only Best Picture nominee of the bunch in the process: Dustin Lance Black’s “Milk.”  Gold Derby’s Tom O’Neil cornered Pete Hammond recently to debate just that, as well as some discussion on the adapted screenplay category.

    “I think the original screenplay category is interesting this year because I think there are three nominees we can write off, ‘In Bruges,’ ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ and ‘Frozen River,’” Hammond says.  “Then we’ve got ‘Milk’ and ‘WALL-E.’  No animated film has ever won in the writing categories and I think the time is right because “WALL-E’ is loved in the Academy.  I think they may be receptive to putting it in the winner’s circle in some other categories and I think the screenplay is where we might see the biggest upset of the night.”

    That’s kind of what I’ve been thinking for a while now, too.  This and the lead actor race are the two most interesting categories of the evening, I think.

  • Who almost starred in the season’s Oscar nominated films?

    Linus Roache in Batman BeginsThe folks at notstarring.com have put together a list of the year’s Oscar contenders and the stars who turned down opportunities to star in them.  There is, of course, Nicolas Cage in “The Wrestler” and Russell Crowe in “Australia.”  Heath Ledger is also mentioned for the latter (somehow I didn’t know that).

    “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” given its lengthy gestation period in Hollywood, had a slew of names attached: Steven Spielberg, Spike Jonze and Ron Howard in the director’s chair, Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Rachel Weisz in front of the camera.

    Those of us who follow Batman casting decisions closely know all the names that pop up in the “Dark Knight” section, though somehow I never realized Linus Roache was going to reprise his role of Thomas Wayne in flashbacks.  I feel like that would have worked and been a nice element to tie the film more closely to “Batman Begins.”

    There are plenty others to read through, including Matt Damon and Chris Evans being considered for the roles that eventually went to Josh Brolin and James Franco respectively in “Milk.”  There’s even a beefy section on “Wanted.”  Go have a look.

  • Ballots are due…NOW!

    Any last words to the prognosticating voters who’ll be hustling their ballot to officials today?

  • THE LISTS: Top 10 pet peeves of the 2008-2009 Oscar season

    Rachel Getting Married

    The season is winding down this week.  The slow President’s Day holiday yesterday seemed to be more of a harbinger than a lull in the excitement.  This time next week, we’ll probably be over the fallout of the circuit and on to debating the contenders we’re likely to see a year from now.

    It’s a vicious, beautiful, sad, interesting circle.

    But before the 81st Annual Academy Awards telecast puts a bow on the festivities Sunday night, it seems a decent enough time to reflect.  And not to be too negative, but this became one of the most irritating seasons I’ve ever covered, both in the lack of excitement to the dichotomy that circumstance presented for me (given that my favorite film of the year has lead the field throughout).

    With that in mind, I fully expect this piece to grate the nerves of more than a few readers.  Then again, I’m sure plenty of these views are shared by a handful as well, but whatever the case, a list of pet peeves began to stack up early on in the season.  I thought it reasonable to collect them here, so feast your eyes (or roll them), this is what got under my skin this year.

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