I love this shot Anne Thompson took of “Slumdog Millionaire” director Danny Boyle, way back last fall during the Telluride Film Festival and before his film took the awards season by storm. There’s a sense of mystery, the knowledge of what’s ahead still quite elusive, but it also reflects that boyish quality that hasn’t seeped out of Boyle throughout the season. Very cool photo.
• How “The Wrestler” is rescuing professional wrestling. [The Independent]
• Kim Voynar on spinning against the frontrunner. [Movie City News]
• Michael Cieply writes up the Oscarcast as a production struggling to be exciting in the wake of an under-seen slate of nominees. [New York Times]
• According to Christopher Nolan at the DGA Awards, should Heath Ledger win the Oscar, his family will accept the award on his behalf. [Entertainment Weekly]
• An Italian office worker is claiming “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” was based on a story she wrote 15 years ago and she’s not happy about it. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Nathaniel Rogers has a post-SAG podcast discussion with a few friends. The topics are too many to list here, but have a listen. [The Film Experience]
• Scorsese + Day-Lewis + Del Toro = Oscar in the very near future? [Variety]
• 10 documentaries Hollywood should make into dramatic features, including “Blessed is the Match,” similarly suggested in this space last week. [Spout Blog]
It’s a big ole’ Mickey Rourke love fest around here lately, what with my coverage of the actor’s Santa Barbara tribute yesterday and John’s appreciation earlier this afternoon. But last night they showed this clip of Rourke’s cameo in Sean Penn’s “The Pledge,” and it struck me as a particularly poignant clip, given the horse race the two are locked in for the lead actor Oscar. I also think, however brief, it might be one of the most powerfully performed scenes of Rourke’s career.
Here he is, Mickey Rourke, as directed by his 2008 Oscar rival Sean Penn in 2001’s “The Pledge”:
After screening “The Wrestler” again recently, I realized just how much I have missed the work of Mickey Rourke in movies. There are some actors that are consistently interesting, those that we enjoy watching because we just know they are going to give us something we have not seen before. Jack Nicholson does this, as does Sean Penn, Johnny Depp and Dustin Hoffman, each artist giving us something extraordinary with each new performance, and often even in failure, growing as artists.
Rourke was discussed in the 1980s as Marlon Brando was in the 1950s, the next great actor. His work in “Diner” was nothing short of spectacular, but it was his small role as Teddy the arsonist in “Body Heat” that told me Rourke was going to be something quite incredible. As a firebug saved from charges by his lawyer Ned (William Hurt), he never once raised his voice. In fact, he spoke so softly, with such gentle tones it was alarming to realize what he was. He pulled the audience in just as he pulled William Hurt to him to share his secrets.
Rourke had what the great Pauline Kael called “bite-you-on-the-nose talent” and I could not wait for his next role.
Okay, so I’m a bit slow on the uptake, but this just occurred to me today, after Ari Folman’s semi-surprising win at last night’s DGA awards. So I ask you: Why was “Waltz With Bashir” eligible for the DGA, but “WALL-E” wasn’t?
Anybody?
The other season comes to a close today, and I don’t know. The Steelers are one of my favorite teams but I love the Cardinals’ story this year, so, that’s where I’m rooting. I was going to put some money down on it but the payoff isn’t enough to reward the risk I was prepared to make. Ah well, go Cards. Enjoy the game. And give praise to The Boss.
Today is the last day of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, which I have had an absolute blast covering for the past nine days. It was a great breather after the build-up to the Oscar nominations (which exhausts us all), but I’m back in Los Angeles and ready to round out the season properly.
I didn’t catch as many films as I’d have liked, even though Santa Barbara isn’t your typical dusk-till-dawn film-watching festival. I didn’t even see the majority of the films that won prizes (collected for you from the press release after the jump), but most of what I’ve seen, I’ve commented on. There were a few I never got around to discussing, however, like the Jeremy Irons-narrated “Eye of the Leopard,” which was hardly the derivative nature doc I expected. It was, in fact, an exhilarating experience, crafted with all the knowledge of what makes fine drama. It’s also cool to hear Scar narrating a documentary about leopards.
Staying in the nature vein, the PBS documentary “Lobo: The Wolf That Changed America” wasn’t exactly a good film, but it really piqued my interest to read more about Ernest Thompson Seaton and the lessons he learned hunting wolves a century ago in New Mexico.
I briefly mentioned “The Informers” last night. It’s a mind-bender that might be terrible, but like I said, I couldn’t stop watching. And I want to see it again. And “$9.99” is a stunning accomplishment in stop-motion animation that I expect we’ll hear about throughout the year.
You know the drill. Tell us in the sidebar poll.
Sasha Stone points out a bit of sweep trivia that an Awards Daily reader passed her way. But I think it goes even deeper than a SAG/DGA/BAFTA/Globe/BFCA sweep.
To the best of my knowledge, the only film to ever FULLY dominate by winning the WGA, PGA, DGA, Golden Globe, USC Scripter and BAFTA — six of the biggest precursor awards in the circuit — is Steven Spilberg’s “Schindler’s List” in 1993. And the BFCA and SAG ensemble awards didn’t exists back then, So if “Slumdog” continues its streak by winning the WGA, BAFTA and Oscar, it will be the winningest awards film in 16 years, and really, of all time. Unless I somehow missed a beat in there, but I don’t think I did.
Now THAT’s history.
Jeff Wells and Sasha Stone have already mentioned this, but it can’t hurt to bring more attention to the matter. It seems MTV is offering one college student the chance to serve as an interviewer on the Oscar red carpet, and have narrowed it down to ten finalists. The public is now invited to vote the winner, based on these ten audition videos.
I’m not going to be unnecessarily cruel about a bunch of college kids I don’t even know, but suffice to say this guy comfortably stands out from the sea of Seacrest-Rancic-wannabes. As the video below makes quite clear, David Distenfeld is smart, genuine, reasonably funny, passionate about film and, best of all, a complete and utter awards geek. He’s one of us. Vote for him here.
… as “Waltz With Bashir” helmer Ari Folman beat James Marsh in the Documentary category at the DGA Awards. Not that it means anything really in the grand scheme of things but, y’know, interesting.
(I’d say it seals up “Bashir”‘s probable victory in the foreign-language race, but if there’s one Oscar category that’s resistant to the notion of a ‘sure thing,’ it’s that one.)
Mickey Rourke landed in Santa Barbara tonight to accept the final award of the festival, the American Riviera Award. The on-stage Q&A/career retrospective was moderated by Pete Hammond and presented a swift trip through the actor’s portfolio of impressive performances, making me want to revisit films like “Rumble Fish” and “The Pope of Greenwich Village,” or finally get around to those I’ve never seen, like “Year of the Dragon” and “Animal Factory.”
Michael Cimino’s “Dragon,” in fact, was the beginning of Rourke’s downward spiral in Hollywood, the actor said. After reading some lacerating reviews that seemed to be more interested in attacking Cimino (in the wake of the “Heaven’s Gate” disaster) rather than the film, Rourke started to become disenchanted. The seeds were actually planted when Francis Ford Coppola’s “Rumble Fish” wasn’t well-received here in the states and picked up steam with the critical reception of “Dragon.”
The conversation was a fascinating one, and really, anyone who spends more than five minutes talking to the guy is bound to hear a couple of great stories or some particularly revealing insights. Rourke touched on his beginnings at the Actors Studio in New York, where he befriended Christopher Walken and paid the bills working at a transvestite club (an experience that would come in handy when Steve Buscemi would direct him in “Animal Factory” 20 years later).
He also mentioned, as I believe he’s noted elsewhere, that he believes Adrian Lyne (who directed Rourke in “9 1/2 Weeks”) may be the most underrated actor’s director out there and that Eric Roberts remains one of the best actors he’s ever worked with. And he offered some nice sentiments for fellow Oscar nominee Michael Shannon, who co-stars with Rourke in the upcoming remake “13.”
Better late than never. What do you want, I’ve been hangin’ with the OTHER Searchlight crew all night. Exclaim or complain in the comments below if you like.
Interesting. Variety reports that BAFTA is to re-evaluate its voting process — and it appears to be a direct response to the widespread criticism that greeted this year’s nominations, which baffled pundits and industry folk alike with some questionable inclusions (Tilda Swinton, Freida Pinto, a whopping eight nods for “Changeling”) and equally baffling snubs (most notoriously, a hurtful donut for Mike Leigh’s widely acclaimed “Happy-Go-Lucky”).
To begin with, one needs to understand the eccentric, back-and-forth nature of BAFTA voting. The first round of voting produces a longlist of 15 contenders in each category — 5 of which are selected by the relevant branch (or ‘chapter’) of voters in that field (and marked as such on the ballot), with the other 10 chosen by the general BAFTA membership.
The next two rounds of voting work in a reversal of the Oscar system. The 5 nominees are determined by the general membership, while the winners are decided by the relevant ‘chapter’ voters alone — with the exception of Best Film, Best Foreign Language Film and the four acting awards, for which all members vote.
Confused? I don’t blame you. It’s a ludicrous system that has received a lot of flak in the industry (Mike Leigh himself has been a vocal critic in the past), not least because it frequently leads to some inexpertly chosen nominees. (This, for example, is how a film like “Mamma Mia!” lands a Best Score nod.) The obvious solution, then, would be to use ‘chapter’ voting to determine the nominees, right?
The BBC Four World Cinema Award is an endearingly unassuming, low-fi ceremony — so unassuming and low-fi, in fact, I’d forgotten it took place until I happened upon the TV broadcast earlier this evening. (It seems nesting on a Saturday night has the odd advantage.)
It’s a simple enough prize. UK critics elect a shortlist of the five outstanding foreign-language releases of the year, upon which a jury of industry figures convenes to choose to best of them. The award is now in its sixth year: previous winners include “Belleville Rendezvous,” “The Return,” “Downfall,” “The Death of Mr Lazarescu” and “Pan’s Labyrinth.” This year’s list, heavy on 2007 films that only received a UK release last year, went as follows:
“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” (WINNER)
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”
“Gomorrah”
“The Orphanage”
“Persepolis”
Jury head John Hurt said the verdict was unanimous. Not a very surprising, or very arguable, result — though with a list of that calibre, it’s hard to go wrong. (Only “The Orphanage,” I think, is a little out of its depth here.) By the way, can you spot what the five shortlisted films have in common? Yep, all were either snubbed or ineligible for the foreign-language Oscar. Make of that what you will.
Meanwhile, Werner Herzog picked up a lifetime achievement award and gave one of the most eloquent speeches I’ve heard all season. I know he doesn’t really have a shot in hell, but I’d sure love to see him on the Oscar stage. (EDIT: If you’re interested, you can watch the ceremony here.)
USC’s Scripter Awards ceremony is moving on up. It’s evolved form an intimate gathering to a full spread awards dinner over the years, and last night’s festivities marked the first time the Scripter winner was unveiled at the show rather than beforehand.
It gave the atmosphere a tinge of anticipation. Even with the “Slumdog” writing on the wall, the Scripter is a place where the adapted screenplay race can at least find some variety. Or at least it used to be. Like any precursor as of late, it seems the Scripter might be bent on predicting Oscar. So of course, Simon Beaufoy’s name was called (along with “Q&A” author Vikas Swarup) for “Slumdog Millionaire,” and the steamroller keeps moving.
Jamie Lee Curtis was a nice enough emcee, bringing her signature brand of dry, slightly crazy humor to the table (a slight shift from Jason Alexander last year). Earlier in the evening, Michael Chabon accepted the Literary Achivement Award (not a Lifetime Achievement Award, as last year’s introductory recipient Steven Zaillian made loudly clear). Zaillian was on hand to present the honor and Chabon’s speech was touching, funny and certainly humble. The best line: “I think it was Vladimir Nabokov who said, “Keep giving me prizes. Prizes are awesome. (Laughter spreads throughout the room.) He had the Russian accent, so…”
Chabon was also quite self-deprecating, noting that he had no creative input into the screenplays adapted from his work that seem to be met with success or at the very least production (2000’s “Wonder Boys” and the upcoming “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh”). But five years of his toiling away at an adaptation of his own “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” has not even yielded a green light, he said. “I was lucky enough to work on the second ‘Spider-Man’ film,” he said. “You know the part where Spider-Man is holding up that big wall at the end and he says, ‘Hi,’ and Mary Jane says, ‘Hi,’ and Peter says, ‘This is really heavy’? That was me.”
I believe this is what graphic designers term the “Washington-movie grid format.” Either that, or the creative well at the Universal/Working Title marketing department is running dry. It wasn’t that great the first time, guys. (EDIT: I see our friend Glenn has joined the dots too. Great minds, and all that.)
