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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Actor

    The 2010 Best Actor race looks to end up exactly where it started, making it the most predictable category of the evening. In fact, as of late (save for the two Oscars Sean Penn won), this has consistently been one of the easier categories to call. Generally it seems that there is a clear favorite christened before the season is over.

    Having said that, this year’s crop of nominees is truly an exceptional one. The one “surprise” of the bunch couldn’t have been more welcome, while overall it’s a nice balance of seasoned veterans, the future of screen acting and those who fall in between. So chalk that up as a big win on the Academy’s part before even casting their winner ballots.

    The nominees are:

    Javier Bardem, “Biutiful”
    Jeff Bridges, “True Grit”
    Jesse Eisenberg, “The Social Network”
    Colin Firth, “The King’s Speech”
    James Franco, “127 Hours”

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  • ‘King’s Speech’ art direction hits the wall

    By now you’ll have heard that the most celebrated set in “The King’s Speech,” that of Lionel Logue’s shabbily spartan office, was also used in a video by British gay porn producers UK Naked Men — which I’ve since discovered is called “Snookered,” and is readily available online. (Click at your own risk — decidedly NSFW/C.)

    As Kris pointed out yesterday, the folks steering “The King’s Speech” will be grateful this embarrassing news nugget wasn’t unearthed a few weeks ago, as opposed on the last day of Oscar voting. Still, I imagine a number of Academy figures are now crossing fingers in the hope that the film doesn’t emerge victorious in what appears to be a tight three-way race for Best Art Direction.

    The news spread rapidly across the internet yesterday, leaving ripples of laughter in its wake — but aside from its amusement value, the situation does raise interesting questions about how people define award-worthiness in this particular craft field, and how aware they even are of what went into the work they’re voting for.

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  • 2/23 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Leo speaks again on Adgate, hosts speak out on show, Burwell on ‘Grit’ score

    • Melissa Leo tells a different story on Adgate: She was doing what Parmount told her to do. [Daily Beast]

    • Telecast hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway in their first interview on the upcoming festivities. [Hollywood Reporter]

    • Meanwhile, Tom Sherak tells Susan Wloszczyna we’ll like the style of the show. [USA Today]

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  • Updates to The Circuit

    I’ve been a bit sluggish in getting recent guild news out there.  I think I’m already closing up shop in my mind.  Nevertheless, the Motion Picture Sound Editors and Costume Designers Guild have announced winners this week.  The latter infuriatingly keeps things a guessing game in that Oscar field.

  • Revisiting the veracity of ‘Gift Shop’

    With more pundits latching onto the possibility of “Exit Through the Gift Shop” taking an atypical (and for the Academy, potentially awkward) Oscar win on Sunday, the LA Times’s Jason Felch is raking one final comb through the question of the film’s authenticity.

    With Banksy, Thierry Guetta (aka the film’s subject, Mr. Brainwash) and Joachim Levy (a filmmaker and collaborator of Guetta’s threatening to sue Banksy for insufficiently crediting his contribution to the project) all vouching for the truth of the events depicted in the film, no concrete reason has yet surfaced not to take it at face value — but doubts persist, largely because of Banksy’s own established reputation as an artistic prankster.

    Some like to float the theory that Guetta is Banksy — one easily dashed by the former’s public records and the number of journalists who have, in confidence, interviewed the latter over the years.

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  • Pencils down

    As of this moment, all voting polls are closed, all ballots are due, all campaigning is beside the point.  The 2010 Oscar season is over, with just the pesky formality of the actual Oscar ceremony to come.

    So, any thoughts on what tides may have turned in the final moments?  There are more ballots that show up in the final week of voting than you’d think.

    I think the potential beneficiaries would be Helena Bonham Carter (not Hailee Steinfeld) and Annette Bening.  Some think an overall retaliation to the guild dominance of “The King’s Speech” could kick in, but I think that’s highly doubtful.  It would be one thing if a film they just weren’t high on won all those guilds.  It’s another thing entirely when it’s a safe pick.

    I’ll say this, though.  Here is a story (NSFW!) that I imagine some are happy didn’t pop up earlier.

  • The top 10 shots of 2010: part one

    I have to admit, I procrastinated this column quite a bit this year. It has become a favorite staple for me, and, I’m happy to see, for our readers. But something was holding me back from pulling the trigger on getting the list together this time around.

    It’s a lot of work, of course. So I’m sure that played into it. Who isn’t lazy every now and then? But part of it, I came to discover, was that there wasn’t a lot of memorable work behind the camera this year. By that I mean, while there was plenty of quality photography, single images that demanded a spot on a list like this were difficult to come by. Boiling things down to a specific collective was difficult as a result, so it took a little time.

    But I’m frankly realizing just now that I’ve written this intro before. I’m spoiled by this column’s inaugural year (2007), where it seemed easy to come up with a set of 10 images and then some. The lack of singular imagery was so considerable this time around that I’m unable, even, to come up with a brief list of also rans, which is something I generally like to do.

    Nevertheless, it should be said that great cinematography isn’t (and shouldn’t be) dependent on singular frames or visual moments, but the overall canvas and mise-en-scene delivered from beginning to end. I have a lot of fun digging into the visual vocabulary of a year in film and, to say the least, discussing that vocabulary with the craftsmen and women involved, so who can complain? I hope you enjoy.

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  • Portman and Coppola for Christian Dior

    As Nina Sayers might observe, “Ooh, look how pink! So preeeeetty.” Minor fluff, but the ad does point out just how well-matched Natalie Portman’s lissome screen presence is to Sofia Coppola’s fey visual sensibility — how has a feature collaboration between the two not happened yet? (If the male decoration looks familiar, by the way, it’s Alden Ehrenreich — the man some excitable critics briefly afflicted with “new Brando” talk after he appeared in Papa Coppola’s “Tetro” two years ago.)

  • Training continues

  • ‘The Simpsons’ sends up awards season

    Best part: the HFPA member.  Sorry to readers not in the U.S. as it’s a Hulu clip:

  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Foreign Language Film

    The race for Best Foreign Language Film has been covered diligently by Guy Lodge here at In Contention throughout the season. I confess that I failed to see most of the 65 submissions and, as usual, waited until the shortlist was unveiled before I really dug into the titles.

    This category has, of course, been mired in controversy ever since “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” became the last straw for quality films failing to register with a general committee that has, well, questionable artistic taste. The implementation of a band aid executive committee scenario hasn’t done much more than elevate the cynicism surrounding the process, however.

    The nominees are:

    “Biutiful” (Mexico)
    “Dogtooth” (Greece)
    “In a Better World” (Denmark)
    “Incendies” (Canada)
    “Outside the Law” (Algeria)

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  • Oscarcast loses montages and acting tributes

    Forgive me if this news, from the Hollywood Reporter, is a couple of days old — I’m still catching up on Oscar-related nuggets I missed while I was in Berlin. But I was so pleased by these details relating to Sunday’s telecast that I had to share them.

    I’m on the record as saying I thought last year’s show, produced by Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic, was one of the sloppiest I’d seen in my lifetime of Oscar-watching, and I know a number of others were similarly dismayed. So as far as I’m concerned, the duo steering this year’s ceremony, Bruce Cohen and Don Mischer, would benefit by doing things as differently from Team Shankman as possible — and indeed, that seems to be their MO this year.

    Their first good move came with the reinstatement of the nominated song performances — disrespectfully binned last year to make room for such gems as breakdance routine to the “Hurt Locker” score — though Cohen admits to being “disappointed” the Academy’s music branch didn’t give them a Cher number to work with.

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  • 2/22 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Nolan praises snubbed editor, the year’s best film titles, belated Oscar winners

    • Reporting from Saturday night’s ACE Eddies, Carolyn Giardina passes along Christopher Nolan’s appreciative comments of his Oscar-snubbed editor, Lee Smith. [Hollywood Reporter]

    • If there were an Oscar for film titles… [New York Times]

    • Anne Thompson chats with “The Social Network” cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth. [Thompson on Hollywood]

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  • James Franco takes on Cher

    If you’re still sore about Cher and Diane Warren being denied a place on Oscar night for their Golden Globe-winning effort “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me” — hey, is there any rule to prevent them busking on the red carpet? — at least take comfort in the knowledge that James Franco feels your pain.

    Franco’s own tuneful rendition of the power ballad appeared on his site yesterday, with the explanatory caption: “They pulled this from the Oscar show. Damn it.” Seem’s whoever’s singing it, the song just can’t catch a break.

  • Thoughts on weighting Oscar pool?

    UPDATE: I think I’ll do a 1-5 system based on difficulty of category, as decided by you in the poll below. So please vote and let us know what you think the toughest category to predict is. (Also, I screwed up and didn’t include Best Documentary Short Subject in the poll and it’s too late to change it given all the voting, so if you were going to pick doc short as the most difficult, please let me know in the comments section. I can tally up any votes spoken there. Sorry, guys.)

    Just a reminder, if you haven’t joined our annual Oscar pool at Picktainment, you can do so here.  Any advice on weighting the categories?  I’m open to the consensus.  Not sure what’s best.

    What is the most difficult category to predict this year?

      
    pollcode.com free polls

  • Tribute to Michael Kahn

    I wasn’t able to make it to the ACE Eddies this weekend, and the main reason I was bummed about that, if I’m honest, was a tribute to editing legend Michael Kahn.  The tribute reel really hit the right spot and now it’s available to watch.  Check it out below and relive the magic.

  • Best Picture, in black and white

    These hit the web last week, but I was distracted with Berlin matters. There’s no sell-by date on pretty pictures, after all. And these are particularly pretty: every year, BAFTA commissions an illustrator to design brochure artwork for each of the group’s five Best Film nominees. This year’s artist, Adam Simpson, has taken a highly stylized monochrome approach; my favorite, this solemn image for “The King’s Speech,” rather puts all the film’s own posters to shame. Full image, plus another good one, after the cut.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Heading into the home stretch

    I’m watching CNN’s report of the on-going situation in Libya as I write these comparably pointless words. The “real world” seems so unique, so foreign after having our head in the awards season clouds since September. Now, six months in, victory lane is a mere six days away. And man, it’s been a marathon.

    So let’s dive in one more time.

    The journey for “The Social Network” has been a fascinating one. And now, with wins for Best Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay and, potentially, Best Director coming, some are arguing an upset by the film in the Best Picture race is still in the cards. It would be delightful, but it would be considerably more surprising than the moment a number of pundits point to as a bellwether shocker in the Academy’s recent history: “And the Oscar goes to…‘Crash.’ Whoa.”

    Most, however, seem to agree that “The King’s Speech” has it in the bag, and I think that’s sound. The only question is, to what extent has it won over the Academy? Anywhere from three to 11 wins makes perfect sense.

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