In Contention

Category: Daily

  • Peter Berg’s Hulu Super Bowl ad

  • Sidebar clean-up, predix, etc.

    Since I’ve been hoofing it in Santa Barbara since the day of the Oscar nominations, I haven’t had a moment to clean up the predictions sidebar with new pics and the usual asterisks to signify my predictions.  Well, it’s done now.  All the pics represent my predictions in the various categories, all subject to change, of course.

    I don’t anticipate writing any lengthy “Off the Carpet” columns unless something really shakes the race up, but it all seems to be falling into place, no?  Then again, when you get comfortable with the season, that’s when it surprises you.

  • ‘Sugar’ trailer

    I’ve already expressed my admiration for “Sugar,” the wonderful new baseball-oriented social drama from “Half Nelson” creators Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden. So has Kris. This trailer possibly makes the film look a little broader and more conventional than it really is, but I can assure you it’s going to be one of the year’s finest. (Thanks to Nick for the tip.)

  • What does it all mean?

    Kate Winslet in The Reader“Pictures at a Revolution,” Mark Harris’s smart, keen-eyed study of the cultural implications of the 1967 Best Picture race, is without a doubt one of the best books ever written on the subject of the Academy Awards. So it’s hardly surprising that Harris, in a piece for yesterday’s Observer, has provided the most intelligent take on this year’s awards race to date.

    What’s particularly interesting is that, while he just wrote an entire volume on the countercultural meaning of a Best Picture race in a pivotal year in Hollywood history, he’s quick to avoid such a unified reading of this years nominees — effectively and wittily debunking several trends that many Oscar-watchers have attempted to glean from the crop:

    1) The Academy has a new, more global outlook, represented by the 10 nominations given to Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. Alternatively, the Academy suddenly has a new, more insularly American outlook, as evidenced by the fact that 17 of the 20 acting nominees are from the US, the most since the early 1990s.

    2) The “gay mafia” in the Academy, outraged by the passage of the anti-gay marriage amendment Proposition 8 in California, powered the gay-rights drama Milk into the race with eight nominations. However, it will never win, because the Academy is hopelessly homophobic, as we all are presumed to have learned when Brokeback Mountain lost to Crash.

    3) In a time of great economic uncertainty for the major studios, Hollywood reasserted its authority by bestowing 13 nominations on the high-grossing, high-budget product of two conglomerates, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. But the Academy simultaneously renounced any interest in supporting studios or representing popular taste by snubbing Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster The Dark Knight, excluding it from consideration for best picture, director or screenplay.

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  • “You can’t rely on anyone these days. You gotta do everything yourself.”

    Oscar advertisement for The Dark Knight

  • ‘Skin’ takes the Santa Barbara Audience Award…but where are the buyers?

    SkinOne of the films I caught during the recent Santa Barbara International Film Festival but neglected to mention was Anthony Fabian’s “Skin,” the true-life story of Sandra Laing, a black girl born to white parents in Apartheid era South Africa.

    The film has been bouncing around the festival circuit — Toronto, Rio de Janeiro, AFI — but despite landing buyers in a few foreign markets, American distributors have shied away.

    “Skin” boasts solid performances from Sophie Okonedo and Sam Neill.  It’s quite accessible and is the kind of thing you’d expect a dependent to pick up without blinking.  I wasn’t blown away by the film or anything, but it’s certainly marketable.  So what gives?

    Well Fabian’s film somewhat surprisingly took the Audience Award in Santa Barbara over the weekend, it’s first gong so far.  I expected something like “C’est pas moi, je le jurre!” to win the award, or one of the Asian dazzlers, like “Suspect X,” each of them audience favorites during the fest.  But “Skin” made its stand.

    Maybe those domestic buyers will come calling now.

  • Calm before the storm

    I love this shot Anne Thompson took of “Slumdog Millionaire” director Danny Boyle, way back last fall during the Telluride Film Festival and before his film took the awards season by storm.  There’s a sense of mystery, the knowledge of what’s ahead still quite elusive, but it also reflects that boyish quality that hasn’t seeped out of Boyle throughout the season.  Very cool photo.

    Danny Boyle

  • “Bing!”

    Forgive the subtitles…it adds to the international flavor of the site, though:

  • 2/2 Oscarweb Round-up

    Martin Scorsese• How “The Wrestler” is rescuing professional wrestling. [The Independent]

    • Kim Voynar on spinning against the frontrunner. [Movie City News]

    • Michael Cieply writes up the Oscarcast as a production struggling to be exciting in the wake of an under-seen slate of nominees. [New York Times]

    • According to Christopher Nolan at the DGA Awards, should Heath Ledger win the Oscar, his family will accept the award on his behalf. [Entertainment Weekly]

    • An Italian office worker is claiming “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” was based on a story she wrote 15 years ago and she’s not happy about it. [The Hollywood Reporter]

    • Nathaniel Rogers has a post-SAG podcast discussion with a few friends.  The topics are too many to list here, but have a listen. [The Film Experience]

    • Scorsese + Day-Lewis + Del Toro = Oscar in the very near future? [Variety]

    • 10 documentaries Hollywood should make into dramatic features, including “Blessed is the Match,” similarly suggested in this space last week. [Spout Blog]

  • Rourke, as directed by Penn

    It’s a big ole’ Mickey Rourke love fest around here lately, what with my coverage of the actor’s Santa Barbara tribute yesterday and John’s appreciation earlier this afternoon.  But last night they showed this clip of Rourke’s cameo in Sean Penn’s “The Pledge,” and it struck me as a particularly poignant clip, given the horse race the two are locked in for the lead actor Oscar.  I also think, however brief, it might be one of the most powerfully performed scenes of Rourke’s career.

    Here he is, Mickey Rourke, as directed by his 2008 Oscar rival Sean Penn in 2001’s “The Pledge”:

  • On Mickey

    Mickey RourkeAfter screening “The Wrestler” again recently, I realized just how much I have missed the work of Mickey Rourke in movies. There are some actors that are consistently interesting, those that we enjoy watching because we just know they are going to give us something we have not seen before. Jack Nicholson does this, as does Sean Penn, Johnny Depp and Dustin Hoffman, each artist giving us something extraordinary with each new performance, and often even in failure, growing as artists.

    Rourke was discussed in the 1980s as Marlon Brando was in the 1950s, the next great actor. His work in “Diner” was nothing short of spectacular, but it was his small role as Teddy the arsonist in “Body Heat” that told me Rourke was going to be something quite incredible. As a firebug saved from charges by his lawyer Ned (William Hurt), he never once raised his voice.  In fact, he spoke so softly, with such gentle tones it was alarming to realize what he was. He pulled the audience in just as he pulled William Hurt to him to share his secrets.

    Rourke had what the great Pauline Kael called “bite-you-on-the-nose talent” and I could not wait for his next role.

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  • Here’s a question…

    Okay, so I’m a bit slow on the uptake, but this just occurred to me today, after Ari Folman’s semi-surprising win at last night’s DGA awards. So I ask you: Why was “Waltz With Bashir” eligible for the DGA, but “WALL-E” wasn’t?

    Anybody?

  • SANTA BARBARA: That’s a wrap

    David Fincher at the 24th Annual Santa Barbara International Film FestivalToday is the last day of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, which I have had an absolute blast covering for the past nine days.  It was a great breather after the build-up to the Oscar nominations (which exhausts us all), but I’m back in Los Angeles and ready to round out the season properly.

    I didn’t catch as many films as I’d have liked, even though Santa Barbara isn’t your typical dusk-till-dawn film-watching festival.  I didn’t even see the majority of the films that won prizes (collected for you from the press release after the jump), but most of what I’ve seen, I’ve commented on.  There were a few I never got around to discussing, however, like the Jeremy Irons-narrated “Eye of the Leopard,” which was hardly the derivative nature doc I expected.  It was, in fact, an exhilarating experience, crafted with all the knowledge of what makes fine drama.  It’s also cool to hear Scar narrating a documentary about leopards.

    Staying in the nature vein, the PBS documentary “Lobo: The Wolf That Changed America” wasn’t exactly a good film, but it really piqued my interest to read more about Ernest Thompson Seaton and the lessons he learned hunting wolves a century ago in New Mexico.

    I briefly mentioned “The Informers” last night.  It’s a mind-bender that might be terrible, but like I said, I couldn’t stop watching.  And I want to see it again.  And “$9.99” is a stunning accomplishment in stop-motion animation that I expect we’ll hear about throughout the year.

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  • POLL: Who deserves it? — BEST MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)

    You know the drill.  Tell us in the sidebar poll.

  • More history than that

    Sasha Stone points out a bit of sweep trivia that an Awards Daily reader passed her way.  But I think it goes even deeper than a SAG/DGA/BAFTA/Globe/BFCA sweep.

    To the best of my knowledge, the only film to ever FULLY dominate by winning the WGA, PGA, DGA, Golden Globe, USC Scripter and BAFTA  — six of the biggest precursor awards in the circuit — is Steven Spilberg’s “Schindler’s List” in 1993.  And the BFCA and SAG ensemble awards didn’t exists back then, So if “Slumdog” continues its streak by winning the WGA, BAFTA and Oscar, it will be the winningest awards film in 16 years, and really, of all time.  Unless I somehow missed a beat in there, but I don’t think I did.

    Now THAT’s history.

  • Let the right one in

    Jeff Wells and Sasha Stone have already mentioned this, but it can’t hurt to bring more attention to the matter. It seems MTV is offering one college student the chance to serve as an interviewer on the Oscar red carpet, and have narrowed it down to ten finalists. The public is now invited to vote the winner, based on these ten audition videos.

    I’m not going to be unnecessarily cruel about a bunch of college kids I don’t even know, but suffice to say this guy comfortably stands out from the sea of Seacrest-Rancic-wannabes. As the video below makes quite clear, David Distenfeld is smart, genuine, reasonably funny, passionate about film and, best of all, a complete and utter awards geek. He’s one of us. Vote for him here.

  • Wow, ‘Man on Wire’ lost something…

    … as “Waltz With Bashir” helmer Ari Folman beat James Marsh in the Documentary category at the DGA Awards. Not that it means anything really in the grand scheme of things but, y’know, interesting.

    (I’d say it seals up “Bashir”‘s probable victory in the foreign-language race, but if there’s one Oscar category that’s resistant to the notion of a ‘sure thing,’ it’s that one.)

  • SANTA BARBARA: Mickey Rourke puts a bow on the fest

    Mickey Rourke at the 24th Annual Santa Barbara International Film FestivalMickey Rourke landed in Santa Barbara tonight to accept the final award of the festival, the American Riviera Award.  The on-stage Q&A/career retrospective was moderated by Pete Hammond and presented a swift trip through the actor’s portfolio of impressive performances, making me want to revisit films like “Rumble Fish” and “The Pope of Greenwich Village,” or finally get around to those I’ve never seen, like “Year of the Dragon” and “Animal Factory.”

    Michael Cimino’s “Dragon,” in fact, was the beginning of Rourke’s downward spiral in Hollywood, the actor said.  After reading some lacerating reviews that seemed to be more interested in attacking Cimino (in the wake of the “Heaven’s Gate” disaster) rather than the film, Rourke started to become disenchanted.  The seeds were actually planted when Francis Ford Coppola’s “Rumble Fish” wasn’t well-received here in the states and picked up steam with the critical reception of “Dragon.”

    The conversation was a fascinating one, and really, anyone who spends more than five minutes talking to the guy is bound to hear a couple of great stories or some particularly revealing insights.  Rourke touched on his beginnings at the Actors Studio in New York, where he befriended Christopher Walken and paid the bills working at a transvestite club (an experience that would come in handy when Steve Buscemi would direct him in “Animal Factory” 20 years later).

    He also mentioned, as I believe he’s noted elsewhere, that he believes Adrian Lyne (who directed Rourke in “9 1/2 Weeks”) may be the most underrated actor’s director out there and that Eric Roberts remains one of the best actors he’s ever worked with.  And he offered some nice sentiments for fellow Oscar nominee Michael Shannon, who co-stars with Rourke in the upcoming remake “13.”

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