Remember when Variety was outed for yanking that negative review of “Iron Cross” because the film purchased a $400,000 phase one Oscar campaign from the trade? Well, they’ve quietly slipped it back online.
UPDATE: And now it turns out the film’s director, Joshua Newton, has grown balls big enough to consider a lawsuit against Variety for publishing the review. Have filmmakers just lost their freaking MIND this season?
Welcome to the first of two (and the only two) categories that have me pulling my hair out. The cinematography race is a strange breed this year. There isn’t the usual one or two “pretty” films that turn the Academy on at large, nothing with sweeping vistas and postcard composition, all the stuff that allows voters to stop being analytical and vote for mere aesthetic.
Meanwhile, the precursor circuit has done little to clear things up. The critical favorite is over-rewarded and probably under-seen. Conventional wisdom favors a gritty film that isn’t the membership’s bag in this field, while the tech giant might be too much too soon. Meanwhile, the “prettiest” film is probably the least likely to win.
The nominees are:
“Avatar” (Mauro Fiore)
“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (Bruno Delbonnel)
“The Hurt Locker” (Barry Ackroyd)
“Inglourious Basterds” (Robert Richardson)
“The White Ribbon” (Christian Berger)
• Elvis Mitchell bemoans the fact that the 10 didn’t leave room for a comedy. [CNN]
• John Horn reminds that the “Oscar boost” isn’t all that prevalent for the films that need it the most: documentaries and foreign language films. [Los Angeles Times]
• James Cameron says he’d have been just fine with the aborted “Avatar” spoof. It still wouldn’t have made the bit any funnier. [E! Online]
In this morning’s round-up we mentioned the forthcoming lawsuit against Mark Boal and “The Hurt Locker” that claims the film’s central character, Staff Sergeant William James, is in fact the embodiment of a real soldier named Jeffrey Sarver. Boal followed Sarver and his team around in the summer of 2004 to observe this new facet of modern warfare, and the result was a Playboy piece titled “The Man in the Bomb Suit,” which ran in the September 2005 issue.
The takedown of this film is quite hilarious. First it’s not an accurate depiction of what happened in those trenches. Now it’s so close to reality that a craven soldier wants his cut. Only in an Oscar season.
Anyway, I never actually read Boal’s piece, so I thought I’d do some digging in the Playboy archives to turn it up. The publication actually republished it online recently (smart move) and as I dug in this morning, I was transported. As a guy who fancied a career as a magazine journalist once upon a time, I relished in the world Boal painted. He’s a solid journalist who knows how to put you right smack dab in the middle of the environment he’s describing.
This year’s Best Director category has stirred a media frenzy for featuring, along with Best Picture, a face-to-face duel frequently dubbed “the battle of the exes.” Unfortunately the desire to tout that headline has clouded the discussion of the films, their merits and the actual accomplishments of those at the helm. But who cares about that stuff?
Seriously, though, this could be a milestone occasion for two of the filmmakers in question, a return to glory for two other former awards season players and is already the second notch on an exciting young filmmaker’s belt as he continues to make his mark on the industry. Not a bad cross-section.
The nominees are:
“Avatar” (James Cameron)
“The Hurt Locker” (Kathryn Bigelow)
“Inglourious Basterds” (Quentin Tarantino)
“Precious” (Lee Daniels)
“Up in the Air” (Jason Reitman)
• Claude Brodesser-Akner reports that a Sacha Baron Cohen Oscarcast sketch has been nixed to spare James Cameron’s feelings. It was a dumb idea anyway. [Vulture]
• Steven Zeitchik on what I’ve been saying until I’m blue in the face: Meryl Streep’s silence has done her no favors during phase two, while Team Bullock continues to steamroll. [The Envelope]
• Steve Pond tells us what happens to the ballots now that the deadline has come and gone. [The Odds]
No, I’m not talking about the news that Martin Short and Neil Patrick Harris will be opening the show with a song and dance, but this nugget from Bloody Disgusting:
While the Academy continues to fail to recognize horror in their prestigious festivities (has it really been 19 years since Silence of the Lambs?), Bloody Disgusting has been tipped off that the 82nd Annual Academy Awards…will feature a segment dedicated solely to our beloved genre. No word on what exactly will happen – at least it won’t feature a singing and dancing Hugh Jackman (I’m still embarrassed for him) – but it will be either an homage via clips or song about horror…If they’re going to work our way into our hearts, we need to see more than District 9 and Inglourious Basterds getting love…
Hm. Thoughts?
I’ll just let the press release speak for itself, in part:
Beverly Hills, CA — The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today that, should “The Hurt Locker” be announced as the recipient of the Best Picture award at Sunday’s ceremonies, only three of the picture’s producers will be present for the celebration. The fourth of the film’s credited producers, Nicolas Chartier, has been denied attendance at the 82nd Academy Awards® as a penalty for violating Academy campaigning standards.
Chartier had recently disseminated an email to certain Academy voters and other film industry figures in which he solicited votes for his own picture and disparaged one of the other contending films. Academy rules prohibit “casting a negative or derogatory light on a competing film.” The executive committee of the Academy’s Producers Branch, at a special session late Monday, ruled that the ethical lapse merited the revocation of Chartier’s invitation to the Awards.
The group stopped short of recommending that the Academy governors rescind Chartier’s nomination. If “The Hurt Locker” were to be selected as Best Picture, Chartier would receive his Oscar® statuette at some point subsequent to the March 7 ceremonies.
Over at The Big Picture, Patrick Goldstein spent some time revisiting the three “bona fide” war films to win the Oscar for Best Picture (in the last 40 years): “Patton,” “The Deer Hunter” and “Platoon.” He notes that each of those films, when adjusted for inflation, grossed over $300 million, $280 million and $160 million respectively. We all know where “The Hurt Locker”‘s tally sits.
What he took away from another look was that each film captures modern day ambivalence toward war, which really, the best of war cinema does. Which reminds me, I caught “Black Hawk Down” again on cable earlier this week (a brilliant film), and certainly the point is driven home there, though in more camouflaged strokes. When Tom Sizemore sarcastically quips, “Just get it over with,” in response to a young soldier screaming, “They’re going to get us killed,” any notion that the film uses high octane tropes to drum up a sense of “duty” or American flag-waving quickly flies out the window.
But I digress. All of that is kind of inherent in the drive to make a war film, unless you’re talking about a golden age period that saw the likes of John Wayne (who Goldstein reminds “ducked out of the fighting himself”) standing up, larger than life, to the identity-less enemies of a nation.
I’ve received a lot of emails lately asking where people can see the Oscar-nominated. Generally my answer is, get to a theater. They have been released by Magnolia Pictures and Shorts International in select (domestic) markets. But if that doesn’t work for some, never fear. It looks like you can pop open the Pringles and watch them in your skivvies.
The press release, in part:
New York, Mar. 2 – The Academy Award Nominated Short Films are often difficult for film fans to find. Now, for the first time ever, “The Oscar® Nominated Short Films 2010” will be available via cable’s Movies On Demand (MOD), presented by Shorts International and Magnolia Pictures. The nation’s leading MOD distributor, iN DEMAND L.L.C., will make the films available to U. S. digital cable audiences through Movies On Demand (MOD) starting March 3rd in both standard and high definition. Nominees in both the Live Action and Animated categories will be available on Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Bright House Networks systems around the country.
Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, and Bright House Networks will host the films within MOD in an “Award Nominees” category. Comcast customers will find the films within MOD and its “Top Picks” category under the subcategory “Oscar Nominees.” Comcast will also be presenting the top live action short film titles from 2009. The cost for these programs varies from $2.99 to $5.99.
For three straight years the Academy Award for Best Costume Design has gone to a film that received no other Oscars. In each case, the films could be considered “period porn,” as it were, lavish productions with massive thread ensembles. “Most Costume Design” would be a more applicable moniker for the award, given how the Academy traditionally sees things.
Of course, the unfortunate thing is that, lost in all this awardage is the fact that so many of these period pieces are buttressed by preexisting wardrobe collections, while truly creative and, in some cases, innovative work goes under-appreciated. I expect we’re in for more of the same this year.
The nominees are:
“Bright Star” (Janet Patterson)
“Coco Before Chanel” (Catherine Leterrier)
“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” (Monique Prudhomme)
“Nine” (Colleen Atwood)
“The Young Victoria” (Sandy Powell)
• Pete Hammond says the Best Actress race is close, pats himself on the back for the fact that one of the countless early ideas he threw at the wall actually stuck. [Notes on a Season]
• Rachel Abramowitz notes Carey Mulligan’s rise to stardom via Julian Fellowes, well, via an assistant friend of an assistant to a casting director who knew Fellowes’s wife. You follow? [24 Frames]
• The 20 best Oscar night dresses of the last 20 years. [Entertainment Weekly]
This year, one of the biggest trip hazards for those filling out their office Oscar pool sheets is the Best Cinematography awards. A race with four potential victors (sorry, “Harry Potter” fans) and wildly mixed signals from the precursors, there’s less consensus over this one than any of the feature categories.
We’ll put the debate to you when we cover the category in our Oscar Guide series on Thursday. Vanity Fair’s Claire Walla, however, seems to think she has it sussed out, declaring Mauro Fiore’s work on “Avatar” without peer in the race, given that it “completely redefined what it means to make an image.” To this end, she discusses with Fiore the challenges of lighting a film produced mostly by technologies with which the DP was uninvolved:
“The most difficult part is marrying those two images,” Fiore said of working with a physical set that exists in a virtual world. For a scene that takes place outside a research laboratory on one of Pandora’s floating mountains, for example, the physical set consisted of two structures and scattered Pandoran shrubbery. The entire backdrop—including the light source—was represented on set only by a green screen. Fiore thus had to light the characters and structures on set according to where the sun would be had the characters actually been on Pandora and not on a soundstage in New Zealand … “It was tricky because every scene involved some sort of interactive light,” he added.
You might recall Kris and Anne disagreeing in last week’s Oscar Talk over the relative merits of this oddball nominee in the Best Documentary Short race. If you were wondering what they were on about, here’s an idea. (Thanks to The Auteurs for the tip.)
… “Navi” is Hebrew for “A Prophet.” Presumably, you all did, and I’m just behind the curve. What can it all mean?
Although it’s important not to place too much weight or emphasis on a single television show, it was fairly shocking to see that Jay put so little effort in tonight into winning America back. Outside of a few potshots at NBC, he never took the time to address any of the issues that have been making headlines since early January. Nor did he do the classy thing and thank Conan O’Brien for his (admittedly brief and largely forgettable) contributions to the institution that is the Tonight Show. Nor did he make a spirited appeal to his audience, promising that he still has a passion for comedy and for the program and will work tirelessly to return the show to its past glories. Instead, he totally phoned it in this evening on every conceivable level, leaving media critics and audiences alike to wonder whether or not Leno has anything even resembling a competitive spirit left, or if the trials and tribulations of the last year have simply caused permanent and irreparable damage to his spirit and psyche.
From Mark Graham’s postmortem at Vulture.