Another contest this week, a chance to win four of the year’s scores/soundtracks. But, as usual, gonna make you work for it. The discs up for grabs are (linked to their Amazon pages):
• “Get Low” Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (link)
• “Inception” Music from the Motion Picture (link)
• “127 Hours” Music from the Motion Picture (link)
• “Tangled” Original Score and Motion Picture Soundtrack (link)
Now, here’s what I want you to do…
• Scott Feinberg digs in to some exhaustive research on HFPA and SAG nominations history to help you navigate what it all means. [ScottFeinberg.com]
• Steve Pond is begging someone to step up to the plate and recognize what an amazing performance Javier Bardem gives in “Biutiful,” and in so doing, NOMINATE HIM. [The Odds]
• The top 25 hottest girls from Christmas movies. [Ranker]
I’ll give you a moment to recover from the shock. [Moment.] There, may I continue? Of the B-list critics’ awards, the Chicago Film Critics’ Association attracts more eyeballs than most, largely because it’s Roger Ebert’s stomping ground — though the list of nominees they announced this morning suggests a lot of autopilot voting with a few welcome flashes of inspiration.
“The Social Network” tops their list with eight bids, including slightly less obvious mentions for Armie Hammer and DP Jeff Cronenweth, while their matchy-matchy Picture and Director lists include such ubiquitous titles as “Black Swan,” “The King’s Speech,” “Winter’s Bone” (nice get for Debra Granik there) and, perhaps less predictably from a critics’ group, “Inception.”
Surprises are in short supply in the acting categories–though it’s nice to see some respect for Lesley Manville after a rough week on the precursor trail–and in Best Foreign Language Film, where a group of actual film critics somehow sees fit to nominate “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” alongside the likes of “Mother” and “A Prophet.”
This time of year plenty of film industry peeps, many of them voting members of the Academy and various guilds, end up going to far reaches like Mammoth and Vail and Aspen to hit the slopes and forget about all things movies for a couple of weeks. If you’re reading and that applies to you, Aspen Film has a program available to see the films you might otherwise miss this month, so it seemed right to forward their press release, in part:
Aspen Film announces today the complete program for the eagerly anticipated 20th annual Aspen Film Academy Screenings, December 22 – January 1. Open to everyone, this bountiful feast of 18 of the season’s most attention-getting films will take place at Harris Concert Hall, with one evening of screenings at the historic Wheeler Opera House on December 23. Tickets to the general public go on sale December 13 through Aspen Show Tickets at the Wheeler Opera House and www.aspenshowtix.com. The complete program is available online at www.aspenfilm.org.
Aspen Film Academy Screenings offers resort residents, visitors, and film industry professionals a unique opportunity to see the newest buzz-worthy movies vying for Oscar nominations, many of which will screen only in Los Angeles, New York, and Aspen over the holidays. (Voting members of AMPAS, BAFTA, and associated guilds should contact Aspen Film directly for more information.)
So, no excuses.
I had lunch yesterday with “The Fighter” star Amy Adams and hope to have that interview up some time over the holiday. When we said goodbye, she was off to the Warner Bros. lot for an interview taping with Conan O’Brien. I wasn’t able to watch last night but I wanted to track it down since, interestingly enough, O’Brien’s sister, Kate, played one of Mickey Ward’s sisters in the film. Here it is:
Meanwhile, Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale and David O. Russell sat down with Charlie Rose this week. Check that interview out here.
I always look forward to the official poster(s) for a given Academy Awards ceremony. I remember being giddy at the Alex Ross-crafted image (however cheesy “The Gold Knight Returns” might have been as a tagline) from a few years ago. This year we have four “inviting” you to the show. Check them out in full after the jump.
• Steve Pond calls TIME Magazine’s (somewhat dubious) selection of Mark Zuckerberg as Person of the Year “the niftiest bit of Oscar promotion anybody has gotten this year.” [The Odds]
• Sophia Savage spotlights the standout performances of 2010. [Thompson on Hollywood]
• Newly acquired Miramax strikes a sequel deal with The Weinstein Company. [Deadline]
Well, we got ourselves a surprise or two, after all. If you predicted Hilary Swank’s out-of-nowhere Best Actress nomination for “Conviction,” go out and buy yourself a congratulatory drink. (While you’re at the bar, buy a commiserative one for Nathaniel Rogers too.)
I doubt the nomination will launch her into the Academy’s five (unless story-mongers really are desperate to see another round in the Swank vs. Bening grudge match), but it does demonstrate how up for grabs that fifth slot is. Lesley Manville and Michelle Williams, the ball is still in your court.
Nothing on the list matches that nomination for sheer unexpectedness, but I suspect a fair few people didn’t see “Winter’s Bone” star John Hawkes coming in the Best Supporting Actor category — much less at the expense of the season’s nominal frontrunner, “The Social Network.” I wrote in my predictions last night that I wasn’t sure how fully SAG would warm to the film’s young, non-insider cast: while I predicted a snub for Jesse Eisenberg, it was actually Andrew Garfield who got the shaft.
There’s been an awful lot of online sniping at the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Association for having the audacity to look beyond the obvious Oscar fodder and reward deserving foreign-language performances by Kim Hye-ja and Niels Arestrup (not to mention Olivier Assayas for Best Director).
David Poland described the choices as an “overreach,” Jeff Wells resorted to his usual “dweeb” jabs, while tired accusations of “snobbery” and “contrarianism” did the rounds.
I was going to express my annoyance at this narrow take on things, but since I pretty much anticipated the issue in last week’s Long Shot column, I held back. Thankfully, Variety critic and LAFCA voter Justin Chang, responding to a comment by Scott Feinberg in a Hollywood Elsewhere thread, has neatly said everything I wanted to say on the matter.
Chang’s elegant defense after the cut.
Now that most of the major critics’ groups have had their say, tomorrow begins the second phase of the precursor season, as the Screen Actors’ Guild makes the first of this year’s industry award pronouncements.
I always feel a twinge of dread about the SAG nomination list — frequently more middle-of-the-road than the critics’ picks, though with odd flashes of peer affection for unlikely veterans and character actors, they have a way of reducing the pool of Oscar hopefuls rather aggressively. More often than not, boredom ensues: last year, 19 of the 20 SAG individual performance nominees went on to repeat at the Oscars.
Suffice to say, a snub from these guys stings more than one from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, but Marcia Gay Harden will forever remain a beacon of hope to the SAG-ignored: 10 years ago, a diss from the Guild (and indeed from virtually every other precursor, save the New York critics) didn’t stop her taking the golden boy home for “Pollock.”
Predictions after the jump.
Via press release, the Academy has whittled the Best Original Song field down to 41 eligible contenders. They can be found in the category’s Contenders section.
Nothing stands out as an egregious snub from what I can tell. Only one of the songs from “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” is on there, which I guess I didn’t expect. But the usual titles are there and nothing most are predicting has been left off, so now it’s all about deciding which entries will tickle the branch’s fancy.
What else to say? I’ll likely stick with the same five (which, there may not be five nominees at the end of the day, remember) taht I’ve had for a while, but I’m intrigued by the inclusion of a song from “The Illusionist.” Early on there was talk that maybe something from that could slip in a la “Belleville Rendez-vous.” Perhaps. You can hear a number of the entires via our “listen to” series, if you want to catch up on this or that.
[Photo: Sony Pictures Classics]
It’s heeeeeeere. Honestly, I’m not sure I even want to watch this, so I’ll leave it to you guys to comment. Click on the image below to watch it at Apple, or check out the embed after the jump.
You’ve probably heard by now that Mark Zuckerberg has been named TIME magazine’s 2010 Person of the Year, a selection that couldn’t dovetail any more neatly with “The Social Network”‘s currently roaring Oscar campaign if the film’s publicists had engineered it themselves.
After all, what’s really being acknowledged here: Zuckerberg’s own achievements over the year, or the raised public profile granted him by the success of David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s biopic? The time to laud Zuckerberg for the creation of Facebook, no longer the hippest social network on the block, was surely several years ago; this is a testament to the media influence wielded by a single movie.
In turn, the film gets to borrow a measure of the prestige and currency associated with this annual honor: how often can an Oscar contender claim to be about the reigning Person of the Year? Academy voters concerned with the capital-I Importance of their choices can hardly ask for more than that. Well done, everybody.
The year is winding down. Today, as part of the week’s on-going year-in-review specials, I’m offering up my annual “if I had a ballot” post.
In years past I’ve tended to defer to studio campaigns for category placement, but this year I figured, “Screw it.” After all, if I actually had a ballot I could call the shots. So I have.
You’re familiar with my Best Picture line-up by now. I’ve opted out of the Best Foreign Language Film and Best Documentary categories because there are a few films I’d rather have seen before making that call, but otherwise, it’s the usual Oscar fields with an ensemble category tacked on.
Feel free to post up your own selections, if you have them, in the comments section below. And remember to check back Friday as I close up shop on 2010 with my list of superlatives. For now, check out my personal ballot after the jump.
Anne and I will be welcoming Guy Lodge onto the show this week to discuss the precursor circuit so far. If you have any questions for the three of us, have at it in the comments section below. PLEASE LIMIT IT TO ONE QUESTION, and as always, steer clear of territory we’ve covered. Keep it fresh. The season is boring enough as it is, no?
I might have kept it off his face and just kept cutting to different people in the film, but anyway, passed the time for about a minute: