Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator” was kicking up some Oscar buzz before it bowed at Toronto this year. Lukewarm reactions and a March release sealed the deal that it wasn’t going to figure in the awards season. But it was picked up by Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions and could be groomed for a run later this year. The trailer has been released via Yahoo! Movies. Have a look by clicking the image below or watch an embed after the jump.
• Steve Pond offers up some random observations of the Oscar nominations announcement. [The Odds]
• James Franco weighs in on Ricky Gervais’s hosting job at the Golden Globes. [MTV Movies Blog]
• “Unusual number of Oscar nominees feature severed extremities, oral sex.” [The Race]
Unless you really haven’t been paying attention, you’ll have noticed by now that a few people have taken issue with the history lesson given by “The King’s Speech.” Or more specifically, with the one not given: that George VI supported British PM Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement towards Adolf Hitler, while his brother Edward VIII was an outright Nazi sympathizer, none of which is acknowledged in the film.
Writing for The New Republic, Isaac Chotner took the film to task both for “grossly misrepresenting real events and people” and for shortselling its own dramatic potential through these omissions, while none other than Christopher Hitchens raised the same issue in a recent Slate essay, damning the film as “a major desecration of the historical record.”
Whatever my own issues with the film, its historical filleting hasn’t been high on the list. As much as I think the gray political alliances of the Royal Family would make for a far richer narrative, the bottom line is that screenwriter David Seidler was more interested in George VI’s personal struggles — as a dramatist, it’s his right to frame the story as he wishes, free of the obligation to furnish the audience with every historical detail.
From last night’s “Daily Show.” He refused to skip poetry class at Yale to be available for interviews in New York. Love this guy:
ABC’s promo pics of Franco and co-host Anne Hathaway after the jump.
Amid the assorted geeky stat-studies I made in the wake of yesterday’s Oscar nominations, I noticed that it hasn’t been a vintage year for first-time nominees in the acting categories. Of the 20 actors selected, 12 are repeat nominees — the highest number since 2002. But among the eight thesps making their Oscar debut are some very gratifying choices indeed.
The unusually robust Best Supporting Actor category is particularly pleasing in that regard. It’s always cheering when a long-serving character actor identified by most moviegoers as “oh, that guy” finally gets the spotlight, so amid the range of reactions to yesterday’s news, I haven’t heard a single person who isn’t happy for John Hawkes — an actor who deserved more individual plaudits than he got for his 2005 lead turn in “Me and You and Everyone We Know.”
And Christian Bale’s high-end choices and hard-graft technique placed him on many an Oscar-watcher’s “overdue” list, so I’m glad he finally got the nod for what I regard as his finest hour.
You might recall last year’s Oscar Guide, a daily assessment of each of Oscar’s 24 categories leading up to the big night. Accompanying each post (which details each nominee and offers up predictions and preferences) is a poll asking for your own personal choice for the category of the day. The idea is at the end, we’ll have an In Contention readers’ ballot and, hopefully, we’ll have shed as much light on each race as possible along the way.
As of right now, we’re 33 days away from the 83rd annual Academy Awards. That leaves 23 business days to handle the first 23 categories. On Saturday, February 26, the eve of the Oscars, we’ll finish up with the Best Picture category and then Sunday the 27th, we’ll put up your ballot.
Things will get started later today with the Best Supporting Actress race. That poll is already up and running, so feel free to go ahead and chalk up your choice in the left sidebar if you like. Check back later for the first entry in the series.
• Facebook on the film’s eight-nomination haul: “We’re over it, thanks. Trying to build the future here.” [Hollywood Reporter]
• A.J. Schnack attempts to unravel the myths behind the “Waiting for Superman” snub. [All These Wonderful Things]
• Patrick Goldstein notes the (anticipated) lack of color in this year’s acting categories. [The Big Picture]
Chad passed this along. I actually hadn’t seen it in a while. I wonder if Nolan’s support system blew their stack a la this crowd:
(UPDATE: Dave Karger reached out and noted that his picks for the screenplay fields were actually in the newsstand issue of Entertainment weekly, and that he got 10/10. He is noted below, fine, but come on — is it so hard to put it online?)
I did some poking around in the usual corners to see how the pundits fared in predicting this year’s nominees. Not everyone predicted everything. In fact, I think the only ones to predict all 24 categories, from what I can tell, were Nathaniel Rogers, Anne Thompson and myself. And I’m happy to report I was tops in that range (nailing 92 of 120 nominees). Anne got 91 correct and Nathaniel got 90.
I’m sure someone out there did better than me, so don’t mistake that for gloating. I’m just happy I was right on “Salt” in Best Sound Mixing and “The Way Back” in Best Makeup. The little things.
Anyway, speaking of Nathaniel, he did VERY well in the general eight categories that everyone predicts, correctly guessing 40 of 45 nominees. As did Dave Karger (see note above). But we all have to bow to Steve Pond in this arena, who missed just three nominees for an impressive 42/45 score. Bravo.
Would you believe that the only person in our T-shirt giveaway to correctly predict the three stated categories AND nail the tie-breaker was the first person to even enter?
That is, until the 93rd entry.
Lots of people got the two acting fields right, but were tripped up on score. There was just about every combination of picks under the sun in over 100 entries. So congrats to Yih and David for getting it all correct. The bummer is, I should have asked for a tally along with that tie-breaker question, because I have no idea how to sort this out. Ideas?
Meanwhile, if the winners could drop me a line with your mailing address, we’ll definitely get something for you both.
Even when they aren’t being read out with gale-force enthusiasm by Mo’Nique, the Oscar nominations tend to attack you with breathless speed that you need at least half an hour to decide how you feel about them at all. As usual, this morning’s announcement found me bouncing from one split-second reaction to another: Yay! No! What? That? Why? Who’s missing? What did she say? That? No! Did I call that? Yay!
As Kate Winslet would say in such situations: “Gather.” And now that I’ve stepped back, gathered and taken into account that no Oscar nomination slate in history has been without its disappointments, I can honestly say that I’m more happy than not with the list in front of me.
Some of the day’s biggest surprises didn’t elicit much of an emotional reaction from me. My eyebrows rose as high as anyone’s over Christopher Nolan’s latest failure to secure a Best Director nomination — is he the first man in Oscar history to fall three times at this hurdle after being DGA-nominated? — though I always said he couldn’t be regarded as a sure thing.
Did you hear? The Oscar nominations were announced this morning. And there was a lot to chew on. (And boy can we be grateful for that.)
With a full slate of contenders in front of us, it seemed only right to go ahead and offer up the latest set of winner predictions. They are indicated by asterisk in the sidebar and are listed out in full after the jump.
After roughly a week of falling into the logic (and blaring rhetoric) suggesting “The Social Network” would turn its critics run into Oscar gold, I’m back to my instincts (and, judging by its nomination haul, the will of the Academy) with a bet on “The King’s Speech.” Not only that, but I think we could see a mini-sweep for the film, as a couple of potentially formidable competitors were ousted from the nominations in a few craft fields.
Of course, things could change. But I’m sensing a momentum shift, and it’s frankly one we could have expected was around the corner.
Alright, you know the drill. Special Edition coming later this morning, so hit us with your urgent queries regarding this morning’s big announcement and we’ll address as many as we can.
On the face of it, the nominees for the 83rd annual Academy Awards seemed fairly unremarkable. Aside from the deafening nature of not hearing Christopher Nolan’s name in the line-up for Best Director (the only true shock of the major categories), everything seemed to be within the expected parameters (even Javier Bardem sliding in, which seemed, increasingly, like a very real possibility these last few weeks).
But then I got to looking through the craft category nominations and the real interesting beats started to surface. First and foremost, “The King’s Speech” led the field with a whopping 12 nominations, even scoring in the Best Sound Mixing category. That’s major, to say the least. And enough, along with the PGA win, to consider it the frontrunner to win the Oscar for Best Picture.
“True Grit” wasn’t far behind with 10 nominations, including a bid for the Coen brothers in Best Director after all. Hailee Steinfeld stayed in Best Supporting Actress and Bridges was chalked up, but again, let me go back to the more intriguing crafts fields.
Alright folks, AMPAS president Tom Sherak and actress Mo’Nique will be announcing the major category nominations in, oh, 20 minutes or so. The full list will be available at Oscar.com immediately after (though sometimes during) that announcement.
I’ll leave this space for your instant reactions and will post up my own extended thoughts shortly thereafter. Anne and I will be doing a four-way Oscar Talk with Peter Knegt and Guy Lodge later this morning, and Guy will circle back later in the afternoon with his extended thoughts on the announcement. But, for now, here’s your playground. Check out a live stream of the announcement (which begins at 5:30am PT, 8:30 am PT) after the jump. More to come shortly.
Just so it’s on the record. I wavered back and forth in Best Visual Effects, but I’ve finally landed on “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” scoring one for the underdogs. My final forecast here.
We’re just a handful of ticks on the clock before the Academy unveils its list of nominees for this year’s Oscars. And I’m up way too early. But for today’s round-up, it seemed like a good idea to point you to all the final predictions popping up from pundits across the web, so here’s what the “experts” are thinking…
• Dave Karger [Entertainment Weekly]
• Tom O’Neil [Gold Derby]
• Nathaniel Rogers [The Film Experience]
I’ve made one (and only one, lest I get carried away) change to my final predictions, FYI. I think I’m going to switch my final foreign language pick from Algeria’s “Outside the Law” to — wait for it — Greece’s “Dogtooth.” My former line-up didn’t include one of the (perceived, as nothing is official) executive committee saves, and that would be a first (in the admittedly short history of the executive committee’s existence).
Additionally, colleague Steve Pond reminded me that the final nominations selection committee tends to have more in common with the executive committee than the general committee (which narrows the field and later picks the winners). Voting on the category took place after a series of screenings this weekend, so it’s all rather fresh. So I wonder about the scrutiny Algeria’s entry has undergone vis a vis historical accuracy.
The Swedish hopeful is highly unlikely to make the cut, from the way I hear it, while no one has really seen the Japanese entry in order to gauge. So I’ll join Pond, as well as Guy, in picking an out-there selection for the fifth spot (not that it’ll have a chance in hell at winning). Hopefully last minute jitters won’t get the better of me.
My final (for real, this time) picks are here.
[Photo: Kino International]