In Contention

Category: Daily

  • ‘Milk’ wins WGA’s original screenplay award…

    UPDATE: Yep, done deal.  Carr reports once again:

    The final award of the night, for motion picture original screenplay, went to “Milk.” Thomas Krever, executive director of the Harvey Milk High School in New York, along with two of his students accepted the award on behalf of “Milk”” screenwriter Dustin Lance Black.

    EARLIER: That’s what it says at Variety, in any case (though not in the body of the piece it links to).  But if it’s a done deal, then that, as they say, is that.  No big surprises, not twisted turns of fate.  Just the usual.

    I still think “WALL-E” can win the Oscar over Dustin Lance Black, but I’d have been more convinced if, say, “The Wrestler” had won tonight instead.  But there we have it.

  • ‘Slumdog’ wins WGA’s adapted screenplay award…

    Anyone surprised?  David Carr reports:

    After listing the nominees – Eric Roth for “Button,” Christopher Nolan for “Dark Knight”, John Patrick Shanley for “Doubt,” Peter Morgan for “Frost/Nixon” and Simon Beaufoy for “Slumdog”, [presenter Terry George] made the unsurprising announcement that “Slumdog” had won.

    Mr. Beaufoy examined the winged sculpture thingie that the WGA gives out and pronounced it “beautiful., and there are many awards out there that are not genuinely beautiful.”

  • Hey voters — screw it, vote ‘Saya’ anyway

    We linked to Tom O’Neil’s story in the Oscarweb Round-up this morning, you know, the one reporting that Fox Searchlight is actually trying to get voters to spring for “Jai Ho” over “O…Saya” for fear of vote splitting.  The sad thing is the latter is the better track, and indeed, the best of the nominees.  So hey voters, don’t pay attention to what has to be considered a borderline insulting strategy (if you’re M.I.A.) and vote “O…Saya” anyway!

  • Predicting BAFTA, part two — main categories

    Continuing yesterday’s not-so-educated guesses at tomorrow’s BAFTA Awards, we move on the main categories. In many ways, they’re easier to predict than the frequently confounding technical categories, but that’s no reason to get complacent – as we saw last year with then-unexpected wins for Tilda Swinton and Marion Cotillard, BAFTA is more than capable of throwing a significant spanner in the works in the top races.

    By the way, be sure to tune in tomorrow, when I’ll be liveblogging the ceremony, beginning with the red carpet coverage at 11 a.m. PST (that’s 7 p.m. London time).

    BAFTA bizarrely issues a press release revealing the winners before the ceremony begins. (I told you they haven’t a clue how to organise the event.) I’ll be ignoring that, for my part – the ceremony can be dull enough without having every last drop of suspense extricated from the proceedings. But the info will be available. I leave the choice up to you.

    Moving on to the predictions…

    Best Film
    “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
    “Frost/Nixon”
    “Milk”
    “The Reader”
    “Slumdog Millionaire”

    There really is terribly little to discuss here. The truth is that “Slumdog” would likely be a BAFTA favourite even if it weren’t primed for Oscar glory – a true British success story, from a popular but largely unsung hometown filmmaker, featuring a British lead actor from a high-profile Channel 4 TV drama, it’s been a massive local box-office success, and has enjoyed nearly the same level of critical adulation here as in the States. BAFTA has celebrated homegrown product in this category for the last two years, and will do so for a third time running. If anything were to derail the Mumbai express, it would be the very British-flavoured “The Reader” … but it won’t.

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  • A year ago…

    I totally forgot to tabulate my year-in-advance prowess (or lack thereof) when the nominations landed over a week ago, but according to the old site, I guess I nailed 34 nominees correctly.  None of them particularly impressive, I guess.  Most of them we probably all saw coming.

    Speaking of year-in-advance predictions, I might as well take a moment to remind everyone that this year’s slate, as always, will be revealed the day after the Oscars (Monday, Feb. 23), as usual.  Be sure to check back for those (which will be as wrong as any year, I imagine, but hey — it’s fun).

  • POLL: Who deserves it? — BEST COSTUME DESIGN

    Who should win for the best threads of the year?  Tell us in the sidebar poll.

  • ‘Dark Knight’ snub puts it in great company

    Christian Bale in The Dark KnightWhile I, too, am tired of the carping and griping about this years Academy Award nominations, I still have not been able to wrap my head around how this group could have snubbed “The Dark Knight” and Christopher Nolan. They obviously liked the film, something akin to “Dreamgirls” two years ago, landing many nominations but lacking best film and director.

    But “The Dark Knight” is in pretty fine company in terms of great films not nominated for the big prize. I have always found it incredible that a group of people so close to the industry (working within it, actually) could miss films that we as critics and audience members know to be great films.  How does that happen? Are the Academy Awards truly elitist? Are they wrong-headed? Or are they that political and so controlled by the studio campaigning system that they really can be swayed like the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association?

    Yes I am still smarting about “The Reader,” whether it really was #5 or not, because I share Kris’s opinion of the film: sloppy, not very well put together, not particularly moving, and aside from Kate Winslet, in a SUPPORTING role, the film did not not seem to have very much going for it. Yes I have heard all those nasty rumors and theories about Holocaust films getting nominated, and until now, I have never put much stock in them, but I have to tell you, this one stunned me.

    Would I be so miffed if it was “Gran Torino” or “Revolutionary Road?” No, because with the former I would understand the Eastwood love, and with the latter I believe it should have been nominated, but “The Reader” has left me in a spin.

    Mr. Nolan, you made a great film, something the Directors Guild of America (God bless them) recognized, and legions of admirers anxiously await your next work, Batman or not. And rest assured you are in good company, here are some of the great films that the Academy chose not to nominate for Best Picture:

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  • 2/7 Oscarweb Round-up

    (from left) Laurence Mark and Bill Condon• Rochona Majumdar and Satyam Khanna discuss the “Slumdog Millionaire” controversy. [NPR]

    • Kim Voynar spotlights the Best Director category. [Movie City News]

    • David Poland spends 30 minutes with “WALL-E” writer and director Andrew Stanton. [The Hot Blog]

    • Five Oscar night surprises Mark Lisanti would like to see. [Little Gold Men]

    • Searchlight may be making a wise business decision, but they’re still abandoning the best of the nominated songs in the process. [Gold Derby]

    • Yet another “meet the Oscarcast producers” piece. [Associated Press]

  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Slumdog’ stays happy, Bale gets angry

    A slower news week, this, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t find plenty to discuss. Here’s what was on our (and your) minds:

    • In the week’s biggest precursor news, Danny Boyle won the Directors’ Guild Award. Hollywood is still reeling from the shock.

    • Oh, and “Slumdog Millionaire” nabbed the USC Scripter award too.

    • Speaking of scripters, we say “WALL-E” is taking Best Original Screenplay. Here’s why.

    • We take a detailed look at this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts.

    • The Santa Barbara fest wrapped, with a tribute to Mickey Rourke among the highlights.

    • Two London critics’ groups acquitted themselves well this week, giving long-overdue Best Picture honours to “Hunger” and “The Wrestler” respectively.

    • Does “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” have a prayer in the Best Picture race after all?

    • Sticking with “Button,” Tech Support interviewed composer extraordinaire Alexandre Desplat.

    • We finally laid eyes on an Oscar season institution: the Vanity Fair Hollywood issue.

    • We contemplated what constitutes a genuine ‘upset’ in the Best Picture category.

    • BAFTA is taking a long hard look at their own voting process.

    • Away from the awards beat, you probably didn’t know this, but Christian Bale said some bad words.

  • Title confusion — ‘The Witness’

    I’m looking over the Oscar nominated short documentaries and when I put in what I thought was going to be “The Witness — From the Balcony of Room 306,” I was greeted with the title screen “The Witness: The Last Days of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”

    So…uh…what gives?  Anyone privy?

  • “It’s a shame ‘Slumdog’ is going to come in second.”

    Kate Winslet in The ReaderYep, those would be Harvey Weinstein’s words right there. EW has an interesting piece positing the theory that “The Reader” is really the film most likely to spoil the party for “Slumdog” on Oscar night — even if the writers admit that it’s unlikely to happen. (I agree on both counts.)

    It’s a handy precis of the comeback narrative that Weinstein has forged this year — both for himself as a major Oscar campaigning force, and for the movie, which some months ago looked like an awards-season casualty after suffering tepid reviews and unwelcome behind-the-scenes controversy.

    How did he do it, given a campaigning budget that’s a mere fraction of the millions he spent back in the “Shakespeare in Love” days? The answer, the article says, lies in Weinstein’s self-professed new “low-key” strategy with an emphasis on simply screening the film, especially in certain well-targeted areas:

    Weinstein’s first salvo was to home in on the Academy’s aging Jewish population. Although he’s been trying to get all voters to see the movie, it’s no coincidence that he has screened The Reader at such Jewish cultural hot spots as the Skirball Center in Los Angeles and the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, places where one is likely to find older voters with a deep connection to films about the Holocaust. ”When I went to a screening, I was one of about four people who didn’t have blue hair,” says one Academy member and former campaign engineer. ”And I was the only WASP.”

    Weinstein also invited Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel to The Reader‘s New York premiere, and courted an endorsement from the Anti-Defamation League, a group whose mission is to call attention to anti-Semitism … Weinstein says, ”It must have been the hand of Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack, because Elie Wiesel asked to see me after the screening and he hugged me and said how much he loved the movie.” (Wiesel, through his agent, declined to comment.)

    Ahem. While there may be a lot of people (Roger Ebert among them) protesting that “The Reader” isn’t a “Holocaust movie” — and beneath the surface, it isn’t really — it doesn’t appear that Weinstein has got that particular memo. The point is that he’s marketing it as a Holocaust movie, and it seems to be working.

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  • RIP/FYC

    Heath Ledger in The Dark KnightThe New York Times put it to David Carr, a.k.a. The Carpetbagger, to write a feature in today’s paper about the tight-rope walk of campaigning for a deceased actor (Heath Ledger for “The Dark Knight”), and it’s rather clear from the quotes that no one from Warner Bros. was willing to go on the record.  The first quote in the story is ripped from his outlet’s formal review of the film six months ago, then there’s some stuff from Christopher Nolan taken from his Golden Globes acceptance speech on Ledger’s behalf.

    I participated, apparently on background, for the piece and said essentially what Sasha Stone is quoted as saying (and what I imagine any of us in the media had to offer Carr in the midst of his reporting): the trick was there was no trick.  Remind of the performance and stay out of its way.  Flowering it up with an overabundance of “for your consideration” novelty could have sunk the ship (though I’m surprised Stone hedges her bet by saying she doesn’t think Ledger is locked to win — who steals it from him?).

    Here’s a bit from Carr’s piece:

    There is a kind of institutional graciousness at work. Many Oscar campaigns are executed not because of the quality of the movie — see the campaign for “Seven Pounds” [interesting bit of editorializing] — but because A-list talent requires it. Mr. Ledger, though, has no needs on this earth; a victory will not serve as a career booster and fee raiser…

    Is it wrong for us to stare, to reminisce, to regret? Hardly. Mr. Ledger’s death, which created a huge wave of public grief, was clearly a seminal moment in popular culture. The studio needed to navigate all those currents in releasing the film and in the Oscar ritual as well.

    More here.

  • Predicting BAFTA, part one — the techs

    It’s no secret that the BAFTA awards, which unfold at London’s Royal Opera House on Sunday evening, can be one of the most contrarian and surprising events on the awards calendar – but nowhere are they more unpredictable, and occasionally inscrutable, than in their technical awards.

    Year in, year out, anybody trying to predict the BAFTAs is foiled in the tech categories, which they tend to spread far more generously than the American Academy, throwing up one (occasionally head-scratching) shocker after another. Who could foresee “Almost Famous” beating “Gladiator” to Best Sound, or “Vera Drake” getting the better of “The Aviator” in the Costume Design race?

    What few people realize is that, unlike at the Oscars, BAFTA’s tech categories (in addition to the directing and writing awards) are voted on by branch members only, rather than the entire membership – and peers can have a very different take from ours on their own craft. This makes predictions a rather thankless task, but I’m forging ahead anyway.

    (On a side note, it’s worth bearing in mind that they anticipated some tech upsets at last year’s Oscars, such the “The Bourne Ultimatum” for Best Sound and the jaw-dropping VFX win for “The Golden Compass.”)

    Best Cinematography
    “Changeling,” Tom Stern
    “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” Claudio Miranda
    “The Dark Knight,” Wally Pfister
    “The Reader,” Chris Menges and Roger Deakins
    “Slumdog Millionaire,” Anthony Dod Mantle

    (more…)

  • Oscar TV spot

    And in case you missed the nifty new “biggest movie event of the year” website, have a look here.

  • POLL: Who deserves it? — BEST MAKEUP

    Tell us in the sidebar poll.  (FYI, any poll that is decided by a margin of 10 votes or less will be posted once again after we’ve run through all the categories, to make pick up any straggler votes that might seal the deal for the winning contender.  So far that is only the case with two categories.)

  • Bale’s apology

    And that’s that.  From TMZ (via /Film):

    “The thing I really want to stress is that I have NO confusion what-so-ever. I was out of order beyond belief. I acted like a punk. I regret that and there is nobody that has heard that tape that is hit harder by it than me. I make no excuses for it, it is inexcusable.

    “In [T2] you will meet Sarah Connor. And she is in an insane asylum—why is she there? Because she is crazy. Now I play John Connor her son, and on the day that all of this happened, the scene that we were doing, I was trying to show a little of that in-the-blood craziness, and it went a little wrong… I took it way too far, and I completely mixed up fact and fiction. I’m half John Connor, I’m half Christian there.

    “I’ve not only talked with [DP Shane Hurlbut], we’ve resolved this completely. That very day we kept working for a number of hours. Listen when I’m saying I’m not coming back on that set if he’s still hired, it’s hot air. I don’t believe that. I have no intention of getting anybody fired.

    “And another thing: a lot of people think that I was a bully to this guy. That’s an insult to Shane. He is a big guy. I couldn’t have bullied that guy if I tried. He’s much bigger than me—he’s an ex-friggin football player.”

  • What about Melissa Leo?

    Yesterday, Kris pondered whether Kate Winslet’s Best Actress Oscar is quite the sure thing it appears to be on paper, or whether Meryl Streep can surf in on a tide of veteran goodwill and spoil the Brit’s party yet again.

    I’ve been saying since nomination day that I can’t imagine Winslet losing yet again, least of all for a performance in a Best Picture nominee (the first time she’s had that luxury since her non-starter nomination for “Titanic” in 1997). If she wins the BAFTA on Sunday, as almost everyone suspects she will, her campaign stays comfortably on course; if, however, Streep manages to pull off an upset, I may well change my mind.

    But allow me to play devil’s advocate for a minute. Why has the competition been reduced to two performances that are by no means necessarily the strongest in the lineup? Let’s perform a process of elimination. Streep’s performance has been polarising from the get-go, with the reverberations of Variety’s notably harsh review still being felt in the critical community. (As “Doubt” opens today in the UK, a number of critics find themselves bewildered, with the Guardian describing her work as “beyond absurdity.”)

    Of the competition, Angelina Jolie has drawn even less critical consensus than Streep, so it’s safe to say she’s out of the running. Anne Hathaway looked to be a frontrunner at one point, and barely anyone has a bad word to say about her performance, but judging from the tepid Academy reaction to her divisive film, I can’t help feeling that her ship has sailed. Kate Winslet’s performance has also been widely praised, and it’s clear that a large faction of the Academy appreciates “The Reader” — but it’s still a film with some notable detractors, and not everyone likes the way Harvey Weinstein muscled it into the race.

    And so we arrive at Melissa Leo. In many ways the odd woman out in this year’s star-heavy Best Actress race, she is arguably the one nominee whose performance — and film — have attracted the least criticism from any quarter. Critics have showered superlatives upon Leo’s raw, career-defining performance, with the venerable Roger Ebert singling her out as his favourite of the nominees.

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  • Citizen Dave

    David LettermanWe don’t get into television much around these parts.  I don’t have the heart, really, what with “24” sucking the life out of me, “Heroes” spiraling out of control and “Friday Night Lights” and “Entourage” gone for the moment.  “Lost” helps soothe the irritation, but we certainly don’t talk late night very much.

    But for a long while now, it seems David Letterman has been the only late night destination worth a damn.  I lost my patience for Conan O’Brien years ago (seriously, it’s painful to watch him struggle to keep up when he has, say, Jim Carrey on…and the old shtick doesn’t cut it anymore), while Jay Leno is and always has been the worst interviewer in the racket.  Why 10pm?  Just retire?

    Anyway, with that in mind, I thoroughly enjoyed this Chicago Tribune piece from Steve Johnson, spotlighting Letterman’s “remarkable transformation” from a goofy laugh hound to a meaningful figment of America’s social conscience.  Here’s a taste:

    Since his 2000 heart surgery, he has taken on President Bush and candidate John McCain, global warming and Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and the lack of national leadership. His first broadcast after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was an almost oracular expression of what a nation was feeling and the best thing any broadcaster found to say in that dark period.

    He even turned a post-jail visit by Paris Hilton political, in a sense, using her appearance as cultural critique, a riotous dismantling of the notion of unearned celebrity and blind adherence to promotional agendas.

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