• Darren Aronofsky and David O. Russell reveal a dislike for filming sex scenes. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Krista Smith, meanwhile, sits down with Russell to talk “The Fighter.” [Little Gold Men]
• Rebecca Keegan and Nicole Sperling write up Scott Rudin vs. Harvey Weinstein. [The Envelope]
“He no longer challenges our ideas about film,” actor Leonardo DiCaprio said of Christopher Nolan tonight, before presenting him with the Modern Master Award. “He has helped define them.”
It was a great bow on a fine evening meant to celebrate the director’s work over the last decade. The Modern Master designation is Santa Barbara’s highest honor and, despite an unexpected Oscar snub for Best Director from the Academy last Tuesday afternoon, this is certainly the year to single him out in such a light.
Pete Hammond served as moderator for the evening as he queried Nolan on his brief if dense career to date. It was shrewd to note that “Following” in 1998, a $6,000 movie that grossed $40,000 and “Inception” in 2010, a $160 million movie that grossed $800 million worldwide, only have 11 years separating them. The director’s latest “has been successful on its own terms, not on Hollywood’s,” Hammond said by way of introduction. It’s a good way to put it.
Well, if you didn’t get the message after last night’s DGA result, SAG’s Best Ensemble award just underlined it for you — the Best Picture race is over. In the 16 years that the three Guilds have co-existed, only one film has taken the big prize from the DGA, PGA and SAG and not won the Best Picture Oscar — and “Apollo 13” was handicapped by its lack of a Best Director Oscar bid. No such obstacle in this case: “The King’s Speech” has it in the bag.
So, it seems, do a couple of other folks. It was a highly predictable night, as the de facto frontrunner prevailed in each of the four individual acting categories.
Colin Firth, of course, continued his march to the Oscar podium with another impeccably wry, self-deprecating speech — “I’d like to thank security for letting me into the building,” he quipped, earning the night’s biggest laugh. With his victory, “The King’s Speech” becomes the first film to take Best Ensemble and a lead acting gong since “Chicago” eight years ago; this time, however, it won’t lose the latter on February 27.
Last night saw the presentation of the Outstanding Performance of the Year honor to “127 Hours” star James Franco at Santa Barbara fest, and it’s one of the best tributes I’ve seen here. But it didn’t start out that way.
Franco was late getting out of Los Angeles, where he was rehearsing for next month’s Oscar telecast. The result was he was a half-hour late to the Arlington Theatre and the whole program was nearly an hour late getting started. No biggie for me. I was in the Chopin Lounge drinking, probably too much (as usual). But I imagine there was some grumbling out in the audience.
Nevertheless, when Franco showed up, he nailed it. It turns out he expected to show up and accept an honor then split, failing to realize that it was a career retrospective of sorts. So he was a bit caught off guard by things. But Leonard Maltin, who served as moderator for the event, provided a great balance, and the lack of preparation on Franco’s part really added to the intrigue of the conversation.
It looks like “The King’s Speech,” which went much wider this weekend, could quietly become a $100-million grossing movie. Meanwhile, that re-expansion for “The Social Network” didn’t make much of a dent and it seems increasingly unlikely it’ll cross that mark, leaving “Black Swan,” “Inception,” “Toy Story 3,” “True Grit” and potentially “The Fighter” as the only Best Picture nominees to ultimately get there.
In more depressing news, “The Way Back” will barely make $3 million when all is said and done.
(Courtesy: Exhibitor Relations)
Even after “The King’s Speech” surprised at the Producers’ Guild Awards and took a dozen Oscar nominations, I held on to the notion that critical favorite “The Social Network,” a film more in line with the Academy’s recent choices, would emerge victorious on Oscar night.
However, Kris called it right. When the former film’s comparatively inexperienced director can beat a heavyweight field of Darren Aronofsky, Christopher Nolan and the Davids Fincher and O. Russell to the Directors’ Guild prize — and for a film that’s widely been deemed, rightly or wrongly, an actors’ showcase more than a director’s one — it’s clear the tide has turned. It pains me to say it, folks, but the stammering-royal drama is your Best Picture winner.
That said, I’m not willing to hand Hooper an accompanying Best Director Oscar just yet. Although the Academy and the Guild have parted ways in this category just six times in 64 years, their last such disagreement strikes me as a pertinent one.
Today saw Santa Barbara’s annual “It Starts with the Script” writers panel, moderated by Anne Thompson. Participating were Michael Arndt (“Toy Story 3”), Lisa Cholodenko (“The Kids Are All Right”), C. Gaby Mitchell (“Get Low”), David Seidler (“The King’s Speech”), Scott Silver (“The Fighter”) and Aaron Sorkin (“The Social Network”).
I was a little late to the event but it was an, as always, spirited discussion about the nuts and bolts of the screenwriting process.
Seidler, Silver and Sorkin were the three tasked with writing scripts (each of them original, interestingly enough, give or take a “book proposal”) detailing real individuals. Thompson asked for their various experiences with that. Silver recalled the first screening of the film for members of boxer Micky Ward’s family, and how he expected sparks might fly.
• In case you’ve just emerged from a coma, “The King’s Speech” led the Oscar nominations on Tuesday with 12 bids.
• “The King’s Speech” was also the surprise winner at the Producers’ Guild Awards, drastically shaking up the Best Picture race.
• In the wake of these developments, Kris adjusted his winner predictions accordingly.
• In a special mid-week edition of Oscar Talk, Guy and indieWIRE’s Peter Knegt joined Kris and Anne to break down the nominations.
The 26th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival kicked off a week of tributes tonight with the presentation of the American Riviera Award to “The Kids Are All Right” and “Mother and Child” star Annette Bening (with hubby Warren Beatty in tow). The award is given annually to an American actor “who has had a strong influence on American Cinema,” as the literature states.
Bening, it turns out, is a very good choice for such an honor. And in the year of an Oscar-nominated performance in Lisa Cholodenko’s “The Kids Are All Right,” it’s just the sort of stop along the circuit that could help steer the momentum away from a certain critically-favored young starlet.
Festival director Roger Durling offered a lovely introduction to Bening, one of his most heart-felt to date, before turning it over to a package featuring her work over the last three decades. The reel was cut to Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” and Robert Palmer’s “Simply Irresistible,” with a pivotal scene from Cholodenko’s film dividing the two different assemblages. And it did a great job of reminding you just how versatile Bening is, but also how many of the characters she has portrayed on screen are cut from the same frail cloth.
I nearly forgot tomorrow brings the DGA awards. I thought they were next weekend. Anyway, I guess this can be your place to offer up predictions. I’ll say this, though. I don’t think David Fincher has this in the bag. At all. Ballots were due in today, by the way, which means the Oscar nominations could have an impact. Maybe last minute voters want to spring for Christopher Nolan after he was unceremoniously snubbed by the Academy?
Fincher’s dominance in the critics awards circuit is unmistakable. But now you’re talking about 10,000 people rather than a 30-person media organization (and, in most cases, much smaller than that). “Inception” is a populist film, but so, too, is “The King’s Speech.” And I think I’m just brazen enough to predict Tom Hooper to win.
Yep, I am. I think Darren Aronofsky deserves it above all comers, but that’s unlikely. And Fincher would be my second pick. He could well win, and “The Fighter” could take the SAG ensemble prize, blowing the race wide open (for some). But no, I’m going to put my chips on a sweep for “The King’s Speech” that started with PGA, will continue tomorrow night and keep going through Sunday with an ensemble win. What about you?
[Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures]
So the 83rd Annual Academy Award nominations were finally announced this week, and I did fairly well in handicapping the nominees. Outside of Best Sound Mixing, I never missed more than one nominee in a category. Unfortunately, there were no categories where I scored 100% (apart from Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay). Oh well.
The massive overall tally for “The King’s Speech” resulted from a plethora of nominations in the crafts fields. “True Grit” and “Inception” got all but one plausible tech nomination (with one very notable exception for each, discussed below). “TRON Legacy”’s tally, on the other hand, has got to be considered a disappointment as must, to a lesser extent, those of “Black Swan” and “127 Hours.” The complete shut-out for “Shutter Island” was also somewhat of a surprise, but other branches saw fit to make Oscar nominees of some unlikely titles.
Regardless, it was nice to see many deserving crafts artists get their due. With the throat-clearing out of the way, I’ll now give short reactions to – and previews of – each below-the-line field.
This weekend completes the trio of Guild awards with the most bearing on the Best Picture race, as the Directors’ Guild of America and the Screen Actors’ Guild dish out their prizes on Saturday and Sunday, respectively.
Following the Producers’ Guild’s surprise coronation of “The King’s Speech” last week, the next two days could help level the race — most are favoring “The Social Network” to fight back with a DGA gong, but the SAG Awards are more of a wild card.
A couple of SAG categories, of course, barely require discussion. In the lead acting races, there’s no reason whatsoever to suspect that Colin Firth and Natalie Portman won’t continue their joint march to the Oscar podium on Sunday. (If Annette Bening were to pull off a shocker, she’d be the first two-time Best Actress winner in the 17-year history of the awards, which somehow makes it seem even less likely.)
The music branch’s process of nominating in the Best Original Song category changed a few years ago. Members now screen clips and view contenders as used within the context of their films. It generally means music used organically has a better shot than the usual closing credits fluff of yore.
That rule change has also, I think, altered the perception of the award on the annual Oscar telecast. Last year performances of the contenders were scrapped from the show early on, largely because they weren’t popular hits and the show is all about nailing down a viewership. Could it happen again? This year’s line-up is diverse if underwhelming, but now that I think about it, that seems to frequently be the case.
The nominees are:
“Coming Home” from “Country Strong” (Music and Lyric by Tom Douglas, Troy Verges and Hillary Lindsey)
“If I Rise” from “127 Hours” (Music by A.R. Rahman; Lyric by Dido and Rollo Armstrong)
“I See the Light” from “Tangled” (Music by Alan Menken; Lyric by Glenn Slater)
“We Belong Together” from “Toy Story 3” (Music and Lyric by Randy Newman)
• Claudia Puig writes a love letter to “Biutiful” star (and Best Actor nominee) Javier Bardem. [USA Today]
• Geoff Boucher and Rebecca Keegan note the eclectic flair of this year’s Best Original Score nominees. (More on those later). [The Envelope]
• The Coen brothers: the cartographers of cinema. [The Guardian]
For me, one of the most disappointing below-the-line Oscar snubs on Tuesday morning was that of “Black Swan” in Best Costume Design — not only because Amy Westcott’s intelligent contemporary design work was thoroughly deserving of notice (more so than “The Tempest,” on which the great Sandy Powell had something of an off-day), but because of the concern that a credit controversy, over which she had no control, might have cost her votes.
If you missed the story, fashion house Rodarte worked on the film’s stage costumes but weren’t eligible for joint awards consideration due to Guild rules — and voiced their dissatisfaction with the situation in a manner that led to some accusing Westcott of taking credit for their work.
Now, in a detailed interview with the website Clothes on Film, Westcott openly expresses her own dismay at the Rodarte tangle, and explains that theirs was a more collaborative partnership than has thus far been implied.
Thanks to reader Graysmith for pointing out this Hollywood Reporter piece, in which Tim Appelo poses the semi-annual small-beats-big argument about the Oscar nominees. To this end, he points to the Best Animated Feature category, where bijou art film “The Illusionist” beat out major money-spinners “Tangled” and “Despicable Me,” and gets this quote from understandably overjoyed Sony Pictures Classics chief Michael Barker:
The Illusionist won against those big studio pictures. Not one pundit predicted it. This is animation done the old-fashioned way, without CGI, like Disney did.
Ahem. And just so I’m not tooting my own horn, Steve Pond, Nathaniel Rogers and Sasha Stone, among others, saw it coming too. Make no mistake, Sylvain Chomet’s film was an underdog — and that narrative suits it nicely — but it didn’t exactly fall from the sky either. I’m really happy for you, Mr. Barker, and immalitchoofinish, but give us pundits some credit.
[Image: Sony Pictures Classics]