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How did ‘Man on Wire’ become the favorite in a field of superior documentary features?
It often seems that when there isn’t an obvious, populist pick in the Academy’s documentary feature category (such as “Bowling for Columbine,” “March of the Penguins” or “An Inconvenient Truth”), the field is rife for an upset. Last year a number of awards watchers were sure that either “No End in Sight” or “Sicko” would walk away the winner, while maybe five of us new the power of “Taxi to the Dark Side” would prevail. “Born Into Brothels” caught a few by surprise in a year that a great many thought would see “Super Size Me” take the gold.“Murder on a Sunday Morning” over “Children Underground,” “One Day in September” over “Buena Vista Social Club,” it seems there is always something of a surprise waiting to happen here, and I think it’s because the groupthink always takes such a vigorous hold in a category with little precursor clues as to what the actual film industry thinks of the field.
This year, it’s a foregone conclusion that the critically acclaimed “Man on Wire” will win the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. The film has nearly swept the circuit. Only “Trouble the Water” (also nominated) and Guy Maddin’s “My Winnipeg” have popped up with this critics organization or that. But I submit that, not only is “Man on Wire” quite vulnerable, but it may be the least likely of the nominated docs to win the Oscar in a little less than two weeks’ time.
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Is Amy Adams a threat after all?
Tariq Khan thinks so. Tom O’Neil reports that the Fox News pundit is predicting a major upset by the “Doubt” star, largely on the basis of what he perceives as “soft support” for frontrunner Penelope Cruz.Before you dismiss his ideas completely, it’s worth pointing out that his track record is pretty strong — he foresaw Kate Winslet’s category switch for “The Reader,” and apparently predicted all of last year’s winners correctly. Here, Khan constructs detailed arguments both against Cruz and for Adams, including this fairly astute point:
(Adams) has the largest role in this category. As I explained above, size does matter. Adams is the only one in this category with a semi-leading role. She has plenty of dialogue and good dramatic scene work, managing to more than hold her own while acting opposite Meryl Streep for much of the film. Don’t think that voters won’t take that into account. And while the much talked about brief performance by Viola Davis might have a greater impact, many will feel that it’s just too brief to deserve an Oscar. Even veteran Ruby Dee lost for her small role in “American Gangster” last year, despite winning the SAG award just a few weeks earlier. If Dee couldn’t win, there’s probably no way that Davis can.
Other factors listed in Adams’ favour include the possibility that voters may wish to convert one of “Doubt”‘s four acting nods into a win, Adams’ exceptional personal likeability and her significant box-office clout. Against Cruz, he cites her Globe and SAG losses (though I’m not sure I’d count those, given this year’s odd Winslet scenario), her limited screentime (not to mention her delayed appearance) and the Academy’s apparent indifference to “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” itself. (Not on his list, but a factor in my mind, is that Cruz looks set to have a big 2009, and may well be an even stronger contender for next year’s honours.)
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‘Basterds’ trailer
The official trailer has been unleashed — still not looking forward to it. And really, enough of the ego: “You haven’t seen war until you’ve seen it through the eyes of Quentin Tarantino.” Ugh:
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A promising start for ‘Chéri’
If it isn’t quite the unanimous chorus of approval one might have hoped for, there’s still enough praise for Stephen Frears’ latest film “Chéri,” which premiered in Berlin last night, to mark it as a potential 2009 contender in several areas — among them, Best Actress for Michelle Pfeiffer’s much-anticipated return to dramatic roles. (Thanks, of course, to the ever-diligent Nat Rogers for the heads-up.)The Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt is absolutely besotted with the film, gushing that there is “no false moment or off-key note” in the entire production:
Stephen Frears never makes the same movie twice. What he does do though is make thoroughly professional and immensely entertaining stories that pay particular attention to characters, their flaws, emotions and deepest desires. In “Cheri,” he has another dandy. Whether it will travel as far as his last film, “The Queen,” is hard to say, but with a radiant Michelle Pfeiffer as his heroine, “Cheri” could well be another breakout hit.
The chemistry between Pfeiffer and (Rupert) Friend is positively combustible. One feels the hunger in each, the rising physical passion and emotional vulnerability in two people who, if asked, would scorn love as a human weakness. The film is in English, of course, but it can’t escape a certain Frenchness: Those who would mock love are done in by love.
There is also, predictably, much praise lavished on the film’s scrumptious-looking tech credits, with top honours going to Alexandre Desplat’s “nostalgic, romantic, melancholy score.”
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2/11 Oscarweb Round-up
• The first Oscar promo pic of Hugh Jackman. [Just Jared]• David Steinberg writes up Johnny Carson’s Oscar hosting legacy. [Los Angeles Times Magazine]
• David Carr ponders the lead actress race. [The Carpetbagger]
• Tom O’Neil conveys a case for Amy Adams in “Doubt.” [Gold Derby]
• Dave Karger needs Oscar campaigns to get out of the way in order to enjoy “The Reader.” [Entertainment Weekly]
• Mark Olsen chats with “Doubt” star Philip Seymour Hoffman. [The Envelope]
• Michael Ordoña, meanwhile, gets some face time with Marisa Tomei. [The Envelope]
• Christopher Campbell goes all in for “Milk”‘s original screenplay. [Spout Blog]
• Maria Puente reports on the interior design of Oscar’s green room. [USA Today]
• Anne Thompson spotlights the magazine rack’s Oscar issues. [Thompson on Hollywood]
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Hugh Jackman finally talks his Oscar hosting gig
In the first interview I’ve come across where he talks at length about his upcoming Oscar emcee gig, Hugh Jackman talks to ABC’s OntheRedCarpet.com about memories watching Johnny Carson and Billy Crystal hosting the show, plans for a “twist” in the natural order of things and his overall philosophy on the job at hand. It’s a fascinating four-and-a-half minute video well worth a look (and listen).Here are some highlights:
It’s one of those nights where it seems the whole world takes the night off and enjoys the show. What I was most excited about was, and I don’t want to give anything away, but there’s a twist this year. I feel like I’m part of something new, part of a new initiative, a new era. It feels like [Oscarcast producers Laurence Mark and Bill Condon] are guiding me in a way that will make the show fun and quicker.
We say “host” here, but in my country we would call it an “emcee” or a “master of ceremonies.” Your job is to ensure that everyone has the best time possible and has a great night. I don’t feel the show should be about the host. My role is to keep the night flowing, fun, to keep it inclusive. I have a game plan, I have a number of stuff written and things like that but at the same time I think it’s also important as the host to be ready to go with whatever happens. I think my experience in theater is no matter what you’re doing, you want to give people that sense that anything can happen, and let’s face it, at the Oscars, anything can.
Check out the video here.
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Digging into the Oscar nominated documentary shorts
Last week I pored through the animated and live action short films that find themselves in Oscar contention this year in order to help give a leg up in your Oscar pools. Over the weekend, I decided to take a good, long look at the nominated documentary shorts, which rarely find any coverage this time of year. I can’t be the only that gets tired of taking blind stabs at who’ll win in this category, so here’s what I turned up…There are four nominees in the category, as usual. And two of the films are strikingly similar in tone and subject matter, doubly so in the face of the year’s likely Oscar sweeper, “Slumdog Millionaire.”
Megan Mylan’s “Smile Pinki” covers pro bono palate lip surgery in rural India, but it isn’t that dissimilar from any number of 60-minute infomercials you’ve come across on television. Also, Oscar.com’s brief synopsis of the film suggests more drama than actually exists. It could win for being a heart-warming affair because it really is the story of newfound hope in the social lives of young children, but I found it a bit derivative.
Irene Taylor Brodskey’s “The Final Inch,” however, is a much more intriguing look at the country, following the work of volunteers mobilizing efforts (the largest non-military army in history) to eradicate polio in the slums of India. From a cultural standpoint, it is at times quite fascinating. Some families refuse the “medical wisdom” of the West in favor of faith in their God, leaving a very simple vaccination process ignored and many young children crippled at an early age for no good reason.
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POLL: Who deserves it? — BEST ART DIRECTION
You know the drill — tell us in the sidebar poll. This is the last of the tech categories.
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Wait…Queen Latifah to sing during ‘In Memoriam’ segment?
This, I can’t go along with. I’ve been one of the biggest supporters of whatever Bill Condon and Laurence Mark can cook up, but crooning during a segment like this? And Queen Latifah of all people (who I love, mind you)? I don’t like it. Maybe it’ll work but I’m skeptical.From E!:
I can exclusively reveal that Queen has signed on to sing during the awards show’s annual “In Memoriam” montage, paying tribute to Industry leaders who passed away in the last year.
But what will she be singing?
Easy: “I’ll Be Seeing You,” a song with a long run in Hollywood. Originally from the 1938 Broadway musical Right This Way, it became popular as the theme to Liberace’s 1950s TV show, and was used in Crimes and Misdemeanors, Misery and The Notebook and during the closing credits for the last episode of Beavis and Butt-head.
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Best Actor race — shades of ’74 and ’02
The 1974 Academy Award nominees for Best Actor were Jack Nicholson in “Chinatown,” Al Pacino in “The Godfather, Part II,” Albert Finney in “Murder on the Orient Express,” Art Carney in “Harry and Tonto” and Dustin Hoffman in “Lenny.” There had been some mild surprise that Gene Hackman had been passed over for his work in “The Conversation” and Richard Dreyfuss in”The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,” but other than those minor quibbles, it was a strong field of contenders.Essentially it was a two-man race. The frontrunners were clearly Nicholson and Pacino, both nominated the previous year for their work in “The Last Detail” and “Serpico,” respectively. For his sly, slick portrayal of Los Angeles private detective JJ Gittes, Nicholson had again displayed his extraordinary range and ability to slip easily inside a character to the delight of audiences. Pacino, meanwhle, again portrayed Michael Corleone in the sequel to “The Godfather,” moving farther down the path of power, corrupting himself totally, eventually ordering the execution of his own brother.
Of the two actors, Nicholson had the inside track, having won the Golden Globe and the New York Film Critics Circle award, but there was a lot of Pacino love, too.
On Oscar night, many jaws hit the ground when the winner was television veteran Art Carney for his performance in “Harry and Tonto,” a nice little film about an old man and his cat traveling across America looking for a home. Carney was terrific in the role, no argument, but it was hardly a performance for the ages. The likely scenario, some thought, was that Nicholson and Pacino split the vote.
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2/10 Oscarweb Round-up
• At least Ron Rosenbaum kind of gets it. Though he apparently thinks he’s the only one a bit miffed at the redemption angle. Do some more Googling, Ron. [Slate]• Joining the “Reader” bash, Noah Forrest pleads with the Academy not to hand the Oscar to Kate Winslet. [Movie City News]
• Jeff Wells gets word that Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” could be in theaters by the end of the year. [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• David Poland scatters “Watchmen” gossip while apparently indicating that Warner Bros. owes him and others a look at the film a month in advance. [The Hot Blog]
• Patrick Goldstein is big on foreign film contender “The Class.” [The Big Picture]
• Brits pick the most memorable movie quotes ever. [Daily Telegraph]
• Sasha Stone talks to Oscar-nominated “Frozen River” scribe Courtney Hunt. [Awards Daily]
• Thank God Michael Bay didn’t have his way with this year’s Oscar telecast. [Rope of Silicon]
• Pete Hammond jumps on the “Mickey might win” bandwagon, becomes, like, the 10th person to draw a parallel to last year’s Best Actress race. He also points to a potential Viola Davis upset in the supporting actress category. [Notes on a Season]
• David Carr, meanwhile, comments on Rourke’s “whale of a speech” at the BAFTAs. But he rather insultingly thinks voters would be “picking the speech over the performance.” Hardly. [The Carpetbagger]
• Xan Brooks prays for a little spice and surprising variety at this year’s Oscar ceremony. [The Guardian]
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Defending the Berlin outcasts
Several days into the Berlin Festival, it remains a rather quiet affair from the outside. A couple of starry titles have been thrown to the wolves, while we’re still awaiting news of a breakout film or performance along the lines of “Happy-Go-Lucky” last year.However, tonight’s screening will bring the first word on Stephen Frears’ eagerly anticipated “Chéri,” which has been prompting awards talk since mid-2008. (Nat Rogers, for one, idly muses on the Oscar chances of the film’s stars, Michelle Pfeiffer and Kathy Bates, here.)
As for two of the films that have already been rather harshly received across the board, I was interested to hear a voice of positive dissent from one of my favourite critics, as Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek finds much to like in both Tom Tykwer’s “The International” and Lukas Moodysson’s “Mammoth.” In particular, she argues that the former, a “strange and beautifully made thriller,” may be a victim of an overt anti-Hollywood sentiment among festival critics:
The movie I saw and loved felt “Hollywood” to me only in the best sense: Tykwer obviously had some money to work with here, and he spent some of it on the kind of elaborate, elegantly constructed set pieces that few mainstream directors know how to do anymore. (Wait until you see what he does with the Guggenheim Museum.) What’s more, “The International” is a leisurely thriller, which means it’s automatically a contradiction in terms: It can be called too slick, too boring, too “unlike anything else out there” and too “just like everything else out there” all at once. Those very conflicts are exactly what make it interesting.
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Pretty brave
Most people seem to be going along with the assumption Kate Winslet has this year’s lead actress Oscar in the bag for “The Reader.” But if anyone is nipping at her heels, it has to be Meryl Streep, whose performance in “Doubt” (however off the rails it went) has been right there, waiting to upset the whole year.
In my daily Variety visit this afternoon, I came across the following Spartan advertisement for Streep’s performance. No words, no pomp, no circumstance. Just the face. Pretty brave in the face of what so many are chalking up as a sure thing. Maybe this kind of modesty is the right idea, the right level of, “Hey, that’s unique.” Or maybe not.
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CONTEST: Win a Blu-ray copy of ‘Frozen River’
We haven’t had a contest in a while but with Melissa Leo and Courtney Hunt nabbing nominations for “Frozen River” two weeks ago, and with the Blu-ray/DVD release set for tomorrow, it seems a good time to give a copy to one savvy trivia hound.
Yeah, a trivia question. I know. I’m running out of creativity these days.
Anyway, here’s the query: Melissa Leo is anything but the calculated, subdued character she plays in Hunt’s film. She’s quite the bubbly type, full of life. In order to taper some of that for the performance, Hunt suggested that Leo watch the work of what iconic actor in order to tap into something more subtle, but with every bit the pent-up emotion the character needed to exhibit?
First to answer correctly wins.
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Oh, one more reason the Academy missed the boat this year…
The Grammys saw fit to give Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard the award for best score soundtrack last night. The HFPA, as you know, gave The Boss a Golden Globe earlier this year. Did the Academy distinguish itself by snubbing these two works or just further prove that music branch to be off its rocker?
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OFF THE CARPET: Come together, right now
Anyone ready for it to all be over?For me, it hasn’t been a painful Oscar season, despite what I may have let on throughout the last five months. After all, my favorite film is and has been primed for the big win since November (well, since we said it was in November…everyone soon followed suit). And for that, I can’t be agitated, can I?
Obviously I can’t speak for the troops over on Melrose. “Slumdog Millionaire” has to be the worst thing to happen to a lot of those hard-working folks. Blood must be boiling.
And who can blame them? It really just sucks when the perfect storm conspires against you. Old timey Hollywood mixed with state of the art digital artistry just hasn’t been enough for industry filmgoers this season. The economy, the new president, the zeitgeist, it was all too much. Fox Searchlight finally moved out of its perennial role as underdog and became the schoolyard bully.
Of course, it would be nothing more than an upset if “Slumdog” failed to take the prize at this point. And really, besides a scattered few, who’s predicting that with any confidence?
