In Contention

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  • Weekly predictions update

    As you may have noticed, my long-delayed Best of 2010 feature went up earlier today, and I’ve been enjoying your generous response thus far. It does, however, come in lieu of this week’s Long Shot column: there are only so many hours in the day, and frankly, it’s getting increasingly difficult to find any fresh angle on a race that’s virtually congealing before our eyes.

    This week’s guild announcements thus far certainly haven’t moved the needle much one way or the other — but they might have closed a couple of remote avenues. Though I haven’t a column to accompany them today, I did do some minor tidying and rearranging of furniture on my predictions page.

    I find myself drifting a little closer to the consensus each week, though I’m clinging to my long-held hunch that “Winter’s Bone” will endure, and even surprise, in a couple of major categories, while many of the technical categories remain intriguingly wobbly. (Where are the Best Costume Design fillers? You just know that field is going to turn up something weird.)

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  • LIFE WITHOUT OSCAR: 2005 and 2006

    Catch up with the idea behind this series here.

    We all remember Jack Nicholson’s raised eyebrows as he said the word, “Crash” at the end of the 2005 ceremony. What has to be, objectively, one of the biggest surprises of the last twenty years in the Best Picture category is, subjectively, one of the worst catastrophes the Academy has ever produced. “Crash” is a wretched film, but let’s focus on the positive. This was the first time a Best Picture winner was a film that premiered at festivals and was picked up for distribution.

    Ang Lee became our first non-white Best Director winner, George Clooney became the first person to receive acting and directing nods in the same year for different films, no film won more than 3 Oscars for the first time in nearly sixty years and the Best Documentary winner grossed more than the Best Picture winner. No shortage of talking points then.

    2006 was the year of Scorsese, finally winning the big prizes for “The Departed.” Biopics continued to reign in the acting categories, with Forest Whitaker joining last year’s Philip Seymour Hoffman in the category of non-traditional leading men walking away with Best Actor honors.

    Jon Stewart and Ellen DeGeneres were charged with hosting duties, both more famous in the TV realm and both serviceable MCs. Again it was up to Jack Black and Will Ferrell to bring the night’s best entertainment.

    So what should you throw into your Netflix queue other than “Crash?”

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  • For your consideration: ‘Jackass 3D’

    Hey, toldja!  Check out the full FYC ad, courtesy of Cinematical, after the jump.

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  • Robert Duvall sticks his foot in it

    Sony Pictures Classics was smart enough to recognize that Robert Duvall could use his hands and feet in cement over at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, a generally political honor (much like stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame) that only happens when someone thinks it’s worth it to rally the money together.

    Well, a bubble-contending Best Actor hopeful (for “Get Low”) is a great cause.  But that shouldn’t take away from the fact that Duvall is — it goes without saying — a legend highly deserving of this kind of thing.

    Also smart, of course, was inviting folks like me (and Steve Pond, Anne Thompson, etc.).  Mission accomplished: I’m writing about it.  But it really was a lovely afternoon.  And today, it turns out, is Duvall’s 80th birthday.  The crowd of journalists and average joes (these are generally open to public observation) all joined together in a chorus singing “Happy Birthday” to the actor after the deed was done.

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  • Watching and waiting: Guy’s best and worst of 2010

    What kind of year was 2010 at the movies? You tell me. It’s virtually impossible to find one yardstick to measure 365 days of cinema for a collective audience whose interests seem ever more segregated.

    If your film interests are covered largely by the multiplex, chances are 2010 was an unusually unrewarding year for you, challenging even Hollywood’s standard quota of déjà vu — unless, of course, you’re an animation fiend, in which case there was a broad enough range of carefully crafted work to keep you happy.

    If you tend to bypass the mall on your way to the arthouse, however, there was any amount of adventurous indie and world cinema, both newly unveiled and backlogged from previous years, to chew on — if, of course, you’re privileged enough to live in a regrettably narrow radius. And if you’re an Academy voter sifting through the crop of generously campaigned prestige fare, 2010 looks rather like the usual, only a little more so.

    For me, 2010 was both immeasurably improved and somewhat complicated by the festival circuit — access to which is a luxury I shall never take for granted, but also one that inevitably skews my sense of how the film yearbook reads in the real world. When you’ve had access to most of the big-ticket winter warmers by early autumn, and when the likes of Cannes afford you a head start of many months or even years on certain international art films, things rather lose their shape.

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  • Updates to The Circuit

    We’re waiting the USC Scripter finalists announcement today, but for now, the Vancouver Film Critics Circle has announced a slate of nominees, while more importantly, the Art Directors Guild has spoken up with its picks in three categories.

  • 1/5 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Paltrow and “singer-as-Oscar-bait,” 80 years of THR, questioning Bening’s, er, overdueness

    • Larry Getlen on Gwyneth Paltrow in “Country Strong” and the “singer-as-Oscar-bait phenomenon.” [New York Post]

    • The this year’s Oscar hopefuls who got their starts as child actors. [Variety]

    • In celebrating THR’s 80th anniversary, Todd McCarthy picks the 80 greatest Hollywood moments. [Hollywood Reporter]

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  • FIRST-HALF FYC: Best Director

    With precisely three weeks to go until Oscar nomination morning, we continue to flag up worthy work from 2010’s first half, much of it lost (or, indeed, never present) amid the crush of more recent awards contenders. You know the January-to-June drill by now: beyond that, we can get as far-fetched as we like.

    I certainly did this week, as my field of Best Director suggestions betrays the extent to which foreign arthouse fare rules the quality ranks in the early months of the year, while American studios save their prize ponies for summer. For this ballot to pan out, the Academy would have to overcome their usual resistance to subtitles several times over, while making history twice by nominating two women and a documentary filmmaker. Not much to ask, is it?

    Speaking of women, by the way, it bears repeating that opening months of the year were strong ones for female filmmakers: between the likes of Debra Granik, Jessica Hausner and Mia Hansen-Løve, all of whom were closely considered, I could have cheerfully assembled a ladies-only field.

    Finally, before I get into my picks, I should add that while many (certainly the Academy itself, on recent form) see the Best Picture and Director categories as interchangeable, I don’t quite work that way — as often as they inevitably overlap, sometimes a director’s formal ambition and achievement burns a little brighter than the whole.

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  • Sony beefs up ‘Social Network’ site

    Nifty making-of stuff and more at 500millionfriends.com.

  • ‘Never Let Me Go’ tops London Evening Standard noms

    The London Evening Standard Awards, a particularly bijou set of critics’ honors reserved for British titles and talent, tend to swerve a little left of the expected — chosen as they are by a jury of six disparate, but equally opinionated, critics. So it is this year: obviously “The King’s Speech” and “Another Year” feature heavily, but the list is peppered with pleasing examples of independent thinking.

    Indeed, this jury has given a sharp reprimand to the recent BIFA Awards by including Peter Mullan’s lavishly praised indie “Neds” in their Best Film lineup, a highly diverse selection that also includes Sylvain Chomet’s animated wonder “The Illusionist” (yay), Matthew Vaughan’s divisive comic adaptation “Kick-Ass” (boo) and Clio Barnard’s performance-documentary hybrid “The Arbor.”

    Frozen out in the Oscar race, “Never Let Me Go” nonetheless had a good day here with a leading five nods, thanks largely to the jury’s regard for all three of its leads.

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  • Mo’Nique to join Sherak in announcing Oscar nominees

    Just when we thought Mo’Nique was done with the season, she’s baaaack.  The press release, in part:

    Nominations for the 83rd Academy Awards® will be announced on Tuesday, January 25, by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Tom Sherak and Oscar-winning actress and Academy member Mo’Nique.

    Sherak and Mo’Nique will unveil the nominations in 10 of the 24 categories at a 5:30 a.m. news conference at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, where hundreds of media representatives from around the world will be gathered. Nominations information for all categories will be distributed simultaneously to news media in attendance and via the Internet on the official Academy Awards website, www.oscar.com.

  • WGA gives leg up to ‘Please Give,’ ‘Phillip Morris’

    Well, we all knew the WGA would have a unique slate of nominations, given the list of ineligibilities this year (which included “Another Year,” “Blue Valentine,” “Biutiful,” “The Ghost Writer,” “The King’s Speech,” “Love & Other Drugs,” “Made in Dagenham,” “Never Let Me Go,” “The Way Back” and “Winter’s Bone,” among others).

    I was expecting to see “The Fighter” slide onto the list in the wake of that purge, as well as “The Town” (which adds to SAG and PGA recognition with this nomination).  But I didn’t think Nicole Holofcener’s “Please Give” would make the cut (though Anne mentioned it as a possibility in Friday’s Oscar Talk), and I definitely didn’t see “I Love You Phillip Morris” coming (which is one of my favorite adaptations of the year).  Interesting that it was another Roadside Attractions released that filled in for “Winter’s Bone.”

    We’ve still got the USC Scripter finalists on the way later today. (NOTE: I’ve just been notified that the Scripter finalists will be revealed tomorrow.) Tomorrow, the Art Directors Guild will announce nominees, followed by the Cinema Audio Society on Wednesday.  Check out the full list of WGA screen nominees at The Circuit.

    [Photo: Roadside Attractions]

  • Hundreds of Roosters at Gritapalooza

    I think I’ve seen it all:

  • PGA nominates the expected

    Look to your right, at Kris’s current Best Picture predictions. Now look at the list of 10 films just nominated for the Producers Guild of America’s top award. Ready for a quick game of Spot the Difference? It’ll be very quick — there are none. (Kris’s hopes yesterday for one wild-card nod were in vain.)

    The PGA could hardly have stuck any more closely to the script with this morning’s announcement, which points to a rapidly solidifying race three weeks ahead of the Oscar nominations. Still, questions remain, and I’d still bet against the Academy following this list precisely to the letter.

    Among the titles left off the PGA’s list is “Winter’s Bone,” but the microbudget no-name indie was never likely to score with these guys. Will passion votes still propel it into the Oscar Ten — and if so, among the presumed stragglers, will “127 Hours” or “The Town” make way?

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  • 1/4 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: 2010 in cinematography, ‘True Grit’ vocal ticks, Affleck on Postlethwaite

    • Jordan Raup gets into the game of recognizing the year’s best in cinematography.  (My annual “Top 10 Shots of the Year” column will hit later this month, FYI.) [The Film Stage]

    • Stephen Schaefer bemoans the broadcast realities and “cookie cutter sameness” of critics awards in the 21st century. [Boston Herald]

    • David Poland captures a great moment from Ben Affleck re: Pete Postlethwaite. [The Hot Blog]

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  • James Franco dreams big, then bigger

    Many actors eyeing early directorial projects tend to focus on something both modest and close to home, a performance-oriented piece on which to cut their teeth for more formally ambitious works in the future.

    Try telling that to James Franco. In perhaps the most unlikely heartthrob-behind-camera move since Kevin Costner announced his intention to make a three-hour post-Civil War Western with large chunks of Lakota dialogue, news has come down the wire of Franco’s intention to finally adapt and direct Cormac McCarthy’s  totemic Western novel “Blood Meridian,” a long-mooted project previously held by the likes of Ridley Scott and Todd Field, for the screen.

    But that’s not before he makes his intended big-league debut as writer-director with another little literary adaptation prospect: William Faulkner’s stream-of-consciousness classic “As I Lay Dying,” which you may or may not recall has just 15 narrators. No sweat. As fellow film writer Neil Young remarked to me on Twitter, “He might at least warm up with a 10-hour ‘Finnegan’s Wake,’ or perhaps just a couple of Pynchons.”

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘Another Year’ actress Lesley Manville

    Failing to turn on your voice recorder is any journalist’s fear when conducting a great interview.  So after spending close to a half-hour with “Another Year” star Lesley Manville some weeks back, and having felt like it was one of the more enlightening and engrossing conversations I’ve had with an actor all year, you can imagine my chagrin when I noticed, indeed, the damn recorder was off the whole time.

    In my defense, the minutes-old shock of a publicist and friend’s death that morning had not yet worn off.  But I nevertheless internally chastised myself for the rookie mistake and headed down to the Four Seasons hotel bar, looking like quite the lush, I imagine, in the pre-afternoon hours, and set about remembering and writing down as many quotes as I could.

    And there was so much I wanted to recall.  Manville’s love of director Mike Leigh’s unique process of improvisation, her development in his troupe over the last two decades, her journey of empathy for her character, you name it.  Because in “Another Year,” she offers one of the year’s finest portrayals, and one the precursor circuit has thus far shockingly failed to properly recognize.

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  • Category justice or precarious situation for Steinfeld?

    All season long the question from countless readers was, “Why do you have Hailee Steinfeld listed as a supporting actress contender?  Her character is the lead of ‘True Grit.’”  Indeed.  But I knew where Paramount was going to campaign the performance, and I expected a number of critics groups to follow that notion like sheep (and they did, save for the independently-minded Utah set).

    Of course, the possibility always existed that the Academy would vote its own way.

    The acting branch, remember, decides category placement when it comes to performance contenders.  Just two years ago they weren’t buying the supporting campaign for Kate Winslet in “The Reader,” opting instead for lead (and she ultimately won the Oscar for Best Actress).  Child performances, however, tend to struggle in the leading ranks.

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