In Contention

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  • WGA awards on the way

    WGA awardThe Writers Guild of America awards are tonight, and they couldn’t feel less relevant given the slew of ineligibilities this season. The nominees are here if you need a refresher.

    If I were to take a stab, I’d call it for “Up in the Air” and “The Hurt Locker,” coincidentally my same picks for the Oscars.  Although the original screenplay race can’t be considered foreshadowing here, given that Quentin Tarantino isn’t eligible, but Mark Boal is gaining traction by the minute as Harvey’s megaphone has chafed members a bit this week.

    Other Oscar nominees that weren’t eligible with the guild include Nick Hornby for “An Education,” Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell for “District 9” and the guys behind “In the Loop.” Oren Moverman and Alessandro Camon, ironically enough, were eligible for “The Messenger” at the guild and were snubbed, yet they made it in with the Academy.

    If you have any thoughts you’d like to offer up, rifle them off here.

  • Berlinale prizes for ‘Honey,’ Polanski

    Roman PolanskiWell, I warned you I wasn’t keeping up with the Competition films at Berlin. I’d love to give you some first-hand perspective on the winners that have just been named by Werner Herzog and his jury, but the truth is, I haven’t seen a number of them.

    That includes the top prizewinner, Semih Kaplanogu’s “Honey,” a Turkish tale of a six year-old boy who falls into muteness following the disappearance of his beekeeper father. It was kindly regarded at the festival, though I didn’t encounter any critics insisting it was a must-see, either. (I heard more critical buzz around two runner-up winners, Romania’s “If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle” and Russia’s “How I Ended This Summer.”)

    The jury’s one concession to the mainstream was a Best Director award for Roman Polanski, whose thriller “The Ghost Writer” opened in the U.S. yesterday to warm reviews. I suppose some might view this as controversy-mongering — and they’d probably be right — but Polanski’s film was one of the few in Competition that genuinely exceeded expectations.

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  • What might have been

    Sacha Baron CohenI agree with Anne Thompson in yesterday’s edition of Oscar Talk when she cautiously says that the hosting is one of the few things she’s not worried about in the upcoming Academy Awards ceremony. Steve Martin — tried, tested and funny on two previous hosting dates — is the definition of a safe pair of hands, while the gig seems a natural fit for Alec Baldwin’s newfound national treasure status.

    At the very least, seeing how the duo dynamic works out, after many years (my entire Oscar-watching lifetime, at least) of individual hosts, will be interesting. But show producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic gave us a more intriguing what-if scenario when they revealed their far riskier initial pick for the gig:

    The always-candid Shankman revealed that when he and Mechanic first met for lunch, they immediately agreed that the person who should host the show would be none other than Sacha Baron Cohen.

    Shankman said, just as quickly as they told the Academy of their idea, “the Academy swatted it down. They thought it was too big of a wild card.”

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Top shots, Berlin coverage and more

    Paranormal Activity• You asked for it, you eventually got it: our annual list of the Top 10 shots of the year, part one and part two.

    • In our ongoing Oscar Guide series, we dug into the supporting actor, foreign language film, art direction, makeup and sound editing races.

    • Guy’s Berlinale coverage continued, with “The Illusionist,” “The Kids Are All Right” and “Winter’s Bone” among the highlights.

    • We interviewed “The Cove” director Louie Psihoyos, as well as the creative minds behind “Coraline,” Neil Gaiman and Henry Selick.

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  • Jason Reitman guest-programs the New Beverly

    Jason Reitman at the 2010 Golden Globe AwardsGranted, this is pretty LA-centric, but beginning tonight, “Up in the Air” director Jason Reitman will be guest-programming three days of screenings at the Quentin Tarantino-owned New Beverly theater.  Tonight’s double feature is “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” at 7:30 (also showing tomorrow at 3:20 and 7:30) and “Election” at 9:30 (also showing tomorrow at 5:25 and 9:30).

    Sunday, February 21 brings “Shampoo” at 6:30 (also Monday at 7:30) and “Boogie Nights” at 8:45 (also Monday at 9:45).  I’ll probably check out the former, as, believe it or not, I’ve never seen it.

    The festivities conclude Tuesday, February 23 with “Breaking Away” at 7:30 and “Bottle Rocket” at 9:45, the only screenings of each.  Again, I may go check out the former, because I’ve never seen it.

    For more info, check out the New Beverly’s official website.  Meanwhile, for further reading, Anthony Breznican recently sat down with Reitman and father Ivan at USA Today.

  • INTERVIEW: Geoffrey Fletcher

    Geoffrey FletcherIn a dimly lit backstage area of Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theatre, “Precious” screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher says his Oscar nomination is still setting in. “When I see in print somewhere that I’ve been nominated, it’s still a bit of a shock,” he says.

    And of course it would be. Two years ago Fletcher was standing in line in New York City outside a comic book shop waiting to get Quentin Tarantino’s autograph on his special edition “Reservoir Dogs” DVD. Now he finds himself sharing the circuit with Tarantino, both of them nominees for their work writing two of the most popular films of the Oscar season.

    “Every day throughout the season has been a learning experience, and a wonderful one, because the journey was pretty long,” he says. “But to get here, even though you wonder how it might feel to have a film out, maybe even one that gets some attention, nothing really can prepare you for it. But there’s some good to that, too, because each learning experience helps anyone who’s creative.”

    He still remembers clearly the first time he screened the film in Midtown Manhattan, long before Sundance or buyer interest, and seemingly a whole lifetime before the film awards madness that eventually took hold.

    “I was crazy about this project and I was so close to it that I felt like I was having a child and handing it to others,” he says. “People around me, primarily strangers, were a huge part of the experience. They seemed completely engaged and they reacted very vividly. I could hear them as well, I could see them and hear them reacting. On the way home I felt so alive.”

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 22 — “All the noise, noise, noise, noise!”

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk, a weekly kudocast between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood.

    Every week inches us closer to the end of the loudest Oscar season of all time. Today Anne and I sit down and discuss the noise of the week, adding our own noise (we went on a bit long this week):

    • Anne was in attendance at Monday’s nominees luncheon so she offers some first-person perspective on the goings-on.

    • Speaking on the clutter, the glut of festive gatherings and contender pitching has hit a fever pitch, so we wax on about that a bit.

    • Harvey Weinstein got his druthers this week as any and everyone desperate for something to write about has picked up on his proclamation that “Inglourious Basterds” will win Best Picture.

    • The original song performances were nixed from the telecast this week, which leads us into a discussion of trepidation over how things will play out on March 7.

    • Finally, we talk through a number of the below-the-line races before addressing the foreign language and documentary short categories at some length.

    Have a listen below, with Jeff Bridges leading the way with a little ditty. And as always, you can subscribe to Oscar Talk via iTunes here.

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    Subscribe to Oscar Talk

  • FRIDAY FORECAST: ‘Shutter’ to sink?

    (from left) Ben Kingsley and Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter Island*All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.

    It’s been a long time coming but “Shutter Island” finally hits screens this weekend, with no competition in sight. That’s right, Scorsese gets the weekend all to himself and his genre exercise, which is opening on just under 3,000 screens. The man is viewed as something of a deity, particularly on sites like this, and his fanbase clearly spans over more than one generation. At age 60, his career took a turn towards the populist and there seems to be no looking back. “Shutter Island” should be able to straddle the line between snobs and laymen, men and women and teens and adults. Sounds like a winning combination.

    “The Departed” opened to $31 million in 2006 and is Scorsese’s highest grossing film, along with the reason he has an Oscar on his mantle. Picking up a lifetime achievement gong at the Golden Globes last month is just another reason why his profile has never been higher across the country. His last attempt at this type of film was 1991’s “Cape Fear,” which opened with $18.5 million en route to a $143.6 million finish, and that’s certainly not out of reach here, although I’d say it’s unlikely. I’ll say $33 million for the weekend and then it’ll need strong word of mouth to hit $100 million.

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Makeup

    Toni Servillo in Il DivoThe Academy’s makeup category is one of two fields that calls for a whittling down of the contenders via a “bake-off.” Reels of the work from the seven finalists are screened, so an impressive assemblage is all you need. The work on the whole isn’t really being considered, so this can yield surprises in the field.

    This year there were a couple of surprises to say the least. A little known foreign film pushed through while a costume drama that isn’t entirely memorable for its makeup (though perhaps is well-respected for hairstyling) also popped up. Meanwhile, the presumed frontrunner for the win — “District 9” — was snubbed outright, the general feeling being that CGI enhancement was its downfall.

    The nominees are:

    “Il Divo” (Aldo Signoretti and Vittorio Sodano)
    “Star Trek” (Barney Burman, Mindy Hall and Joel Harlow)
    “The Young Victoria” (Jon Henry Gordon and Jenny Shircore)

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  • 2/19 Oscarweb Round-up

    Logorama• Steve Pond talks to Ludovic Houplain, director of animated short nominee “Logorama,” which is looking more and more likely to pull an upset over Nick Park and Aardman. [The Odds]

    • The 15 best Oscarcast moments. [Entertainment Weekly]

    • Melena Ryzik reports from the New York celebration of “Food Inc.” [The Carpetbagger]

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  • Seconded

    From Telegraph critic (and Berlinale buddy par excellence) Tim Robey’s neat festival roundup:

    Maybe they’ll bestow a specially bonkers Golden Bear to mark the occasion [of their 60th anniversary] – for instance, to the one film I walked out of, the Japanese hopeful, Caterpillar, in which a mute war veteran with no arms or legs gets frisky with his unduly appalled wife. As a friend quipped, once we’d snuck out of this mangily shot and edited exercise in Lars von Trierian erotic masochism, “Spare us the whole paraplegic Kama Sutra, already.” Then again, Werner Herzog is presiding over this year’s jury, so all bets are off.

    That friend, I’m pleased to say, is me. (And I somehow share his fear that the jury will disagree with us tomorrow. I say that in lieu of any predictions.) Tim also joins me in the, shall we say, select club of “Gentlemen Broncos” fans. Read the rest here.

  • ‘A Prophet,’ ‘Fish Tank’ lead London Critics’ awards

    Best British Actor winner Colin Firth at the London Film Critics' Circle awardsThe BAFTA Awards take place on Sunday, but last night the UK’s premier critics’ body had their say at the London Film Critics’ Circle Awards. And what we learned is what the London Film Festival, Sight & Sound and even the BAFTA longlists already taught us: the Brits really, really like “A Prophet.”

    Busting out of the foreign-language ghetto, Jacques Audiard’s Oscar-nominated prison gang saga took the night’s top award, Film of the Year. That was its lone award of the night, however — Kathryn Bigelow continued her steamroll through every directing honor in sight, while they democratically handed what would have been a rather superfluous foreign-language prize to “Let the Right One In.”

    The night’s biggest winner, meanwhile, was another of my pet films: “Fish Tank” took four awards in the British categories, including Best British Film and acting honors for Katie Jarvis and Michael Fassbender. Following Bigelow, Andrea Arnold made it an all-female affair in the directing categories.

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  • ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’ trailer

    Banksy’s irresistible foray into documentary-making gathered nothing but goodwill at Sundance, and Berlin followed suit. It lands in the UK in two weeks’ time. This cute trailer emerged a month ago, but check it out if you haven’t already.

  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The crafts of ‘Star Trek’

    Eric Bana in Star TrekOne of the year’s biggest blockbusters redefined a franchise and even made it palatable to those unfamiliar with or uninterested in its vibrant history. The film, of course, was “Star Trek,” and as below-the-line craftsmanship goes, it was one of the most impressive efforts of the year.

    Director J.J. Abrams’s mandate was “to renew and refresh, give it back some life,” makeup designer Mindy Hall says. “I had never seen any of the movies, but I grew up watching the series. If we were going to use any reference, it was going to come from that. But I didn’t want my perspective to be too crowded by looking at the archive stuff.”

    With a background in watercolors and ceramics, Hall one day happened upon a documentary on the making of Arthur Penn’s 1970 film “Little Big Man,” which aged Dustin Hoffman nearly 100 hundred years.

    A light bulb went off for the young artist. All she knew was that she wanted to do that, to bring that illusion to life.

    Hall worked in tandem with costume designer Michael Kaplan on the film. A lot of their references were more fashion related, she says. They flipped through European design books and placed a certain emphasis on emulating on the clean and slick look of science-fiction films of the 1950s and 1960s.  “We weren’t trying to do period,” she says. “We were just trying to get the flavor of it.”

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  • ‘China’s Unnatural Disaster’ the real David of the Oscar race?

    This press release just landed in the inbox, so I thought I’d pass it along free of commentary:

    DAVID AND GOLIATH AT THE 2010 OSCAR AWARDS
    “China’s Unnatural Disaster” faces governmental opposition

    New York, NY- China’s Unnatural Disaster: the Tears of Sichuan Province, the latest documentary by Jon Alpert and Matt O’Neill, has been facing fierce opposition by the Chinese government as it makes its run for the Oscars this year. Since production began in 2008, China has fought the film at every opportunity and shows no signs of slowing as the Academy Awards draw near.

    China’s Unnatural Disaster is an investigation into the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that destroyed many poorly-constructed schools, killing an estimated 10,000 children. The film follows the bereaved parents as they seek answers from the government and are ignored and intimidated. The Chinese Government implemented a well-coordinated campaign to censor and suppress any inquiry into the tragedy. In addition to jailing and threatening local filmmakers and journalists, the government attempted to stop Alpert and O’Neill.

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  • BERLIN: Competition blues

    Jack Yao and Amber Kuo in Au Revoir, TaipeiLooking over my Berlinale coverage so far, the thing that surprises me is what a benevolent mood I seem to be in for much of it. By focusing principally on the titles that have impressed (or at least engaged) me, I’ve rather given the impression of a festival packed with delights.

    As good a time as I am having in the German capital, however, I’m afraid that’s not exactly the case. All around the festival center can be heard the collected grumblings of critics wondering what on earth is going to win the Golden Bear on Saturday — and not for richness of pickings, either.

    The festival’s Forum and Panorama strands have served up a number of strong entries, including consensus critical hits like “The Illusionist” and “Kawasaki Rose.” And the out-of-competition Sundance repeats have sustained their buzz from last month’s wintry festival: “Winter’s Bone,” in particular, is the title I’ve heard more in conversations with fellow critics than any other, and scarcely anyone has a bad word for “Exit Through the Gift Shop” or “The Kids Are All Right.”

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Foreign Language Film

    The Milk of SorrowThe foreign Language film category has been marred in controversy for the last few years. When films like “4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days” and “Persepolis” were unceremoniously nixed from the field a few years ago, a special new “executive committee” was established to have final say on the fallen, hopefully saving the committee (which has to see all the titles to vote) some embarrassment.

    Still, there is an inherent bias throughout the votership here. Violence rarely plays well, and they are loathe to be accepting of non-traditional filmmaking. One need only look back one year to 2008’s “Departures” upset for evidence. For thee reasons, the category always seems ready to surprise.

    The nominees are:

    “Ajami” (Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani)
    “The Milk of Sorrow (La Teta Asustada)” (Claudia Llosa)
    “A Prophet (Un Prophète)” (Jacques Audiard)
    “The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos)” (Juan José Campanella)
    “The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band)” (Michael Haneke)

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  • Actors pick their favorite performances of the decade

    (Courtesy: New York Times Magazine)