In Contention

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  • THE LONG SHOT: Follow the leader

    [Updated Oscar predictions here.]

    Hey, have you heard of this movie called “The Social Network?” You should probably check it out. It’s about Facebook and stuff and it’s supposed to be really good. So good, in fact, that it’s managed to tame the single most argumentative species in the animal kigdom, The Lesser Spotted Film Critic, into silent agreement. Of the 12 American critics’ groups to dish out awards so far, 11 have given their top honor to the film. (“Winter’s Bone,” you say? Get with the program, San Diego.)

    The enthusiasm for the film, of course, extends beyond the sometimes soundproof critics’ chamber, as less distinguished media collectives like the HFPA and the BFCA have voiced their approval – while this morning, give or take a Supporting Actor snub, the film passed its first industry award test with two key Screen Actors’ Guild bids. Expect the Directors’, Producers’, Writers’ and Editors’ Guilds to follow suit in the New Year.

    So, we can basically tie a ribbon around Oscar’s neck and hand him over to Scott Rudin and David Fincher now, can’t we? After all, against all its on-paper disadvantages, “The Hurt Locker” was in a similar position this time last year, and it didn’t budge, did it? (Indeed, it didn’t even unite the critics’ groups to this extent – of the 12 awarding bodies I mentioned above, only five selected Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq actioner last year.) Scarcely anyone has a word to say against the film, so let’s sit back and let the sweep wash over us, right?

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  • Hitting the slopes?

    This time of year plenty of film industry peeps, many of them voting members of the Academy and various guilds, end up going to far reaches like Mammoth and Vail and Aspen to hit the slopes and forget about all things movies for a couple of weeks.  If you’re reading and that applies to you, Aspen Film has a program available to see the films you might otherwise miss this month, so it seemed right to forward their press release, in part:

    Aspen Film announces today the complete program for the eagerly anticipated 20th annual Aspen Film Academy Screenings, December 22 – January 1. Open to everyone, this bountiful feast of 18 of the season’s most attention-getting films will take place at Harris Concert Hall, with one evening of screenings at the historic Wheeler Opera House on December 23. Tickets to the general public go on sale December 13 through Aspen Show Tickets at the Wheeler Opera House and www.aspenshowtix.com. The complete program is available online at www.aspenfilm.org.

    Aspen Film Academy Screenings offers resort residents, visitors, and film industry professionals a unique opportunity to see the newest buzz-worthy movies vying for Oscar nominations, many of which will screen only in Los Angeles, New York, and Aspen over the holidays. (Voting members of AMPAS, BAFTA, and associated guilds should contact Aspen Film directly for more information.)

    So, no excuses.

  • Adams does Conan, Wahlberg/Bale/Russell on Charlie Rose

    I had lunch yesterday with “The Fighter” star Amy Adams and hope to have that interview up some time over the holiday.  When we said goodbye, she was off to the Warner Bros. lot for an interview taping with Conan O’Brien.  I wasn’t able to watch last night but I wanted to track it down since, interestingly enough, O’Brien’s sister, Kate, played one of Mickey Ward’s sisters in the film.  Here it is:

    Meanwhile, Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale and David O. Russell sat down with Charlie Rose this week. Check that interview out here.

  • 83rd Oscarcast posters revealed

    I always look forward to the official poster(s) for a given Academy Awards ceremony.  I remember being giddy at the Alex Ross-crafted image (however cheesy “The Gold Knight Returns” might have been as a tagline) from a few years ago.  This year we have four “inviting” you to the show.  Check them out in full after the jump.

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The look of ‘Inception’

    Christopher Nolan has become known for making the Batman films look, and consequently feel, “real.”  His latest film, “Inception,” despite being a visual treat, also seemed a far cry from the CGI spectacles that normally dominate the blockbuster circuit.  It was very well-received by critics and certainly audiences alike and is currently enjoying a solid run on the awards circuit, having earned multiple nominations from both the BFCA and the HFPA.

    Speaking to cinematographer Wally Pfister, production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas (who earned the LAFCA award) and special effects supervisor Chris Corbould, it becomes clear that Nolan’s style is as infectious on the crew as it is on the public.  They delight in revealing how they collaborated with Nolan – and each other – to make “Inception” look so real.  The short answer: “Because it is.”

    Corbould, having worked with Nolan on “The Dark Knight” and “Batman Begins,” was on the fast track when Nolan approached him in 2009 to talk about the new film  “I heard from him on a Wednesday,” he recalls, “and after reading the script and hearing the pitch, I had signed the contract on the Saturday or Sunday.”

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  • 12/16 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: TIME mag as a cog in the PR wheel, Miramax strikes deal with Weinsetin, 2010

    • Steve Pond calls TIME Magazine’s (somewhat dubious) selection of Mark Zuckerberg as Person of the Year “the niftiest bit of Oscar promotion anybody has gotten this year.” [The Odds]

    • Sophia Savage spotlights the standout performances of 2010. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • Newly acquired Miramax strikes a sequel deal with The Weinstein Company. [Deadline]

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  • ‘Fighter’ and ‘King’s Speech’ lead SAG nominations

    Well, we got ourselves a surprise or two, after all. If you predicted Hilary Swank’s out-of-nowhere Best Actress nomination for “Conviction,” go out and buy yourself a congratulatory drink. (While you’re at the bar, buy a commiserative one for Nathaniel Rogers too.)

    I doubt the nomination will launch her into the Academy’s five (unless story-mongers really are desperate to see another round in the Swank vs. Bening grudge match), but it does demonstrate how up for grabs that fifth slot is. Lesley Manville and Michelle Williams, the ball is still in your court.

    Nothing on the list matches that nomination for sheer unexpectedness, but I suspect a fair few people didn’t see “Winter’s Bone” star John Hawkes coming in the Best Supporting Actor category — much less at the expense of the season’s nominal frontrunner, “The Social Network.” I wrote in my predictions last night that I wasn’t sure how fully SAG would warm to the film’s young, non-insider cast: while I predicted a snub for Jesse Eisenberg, it was actually Andrew Garfield who got the shaft.

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  • Defending LAFCA

    There’s been an awful lot of online sniping at the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Association for having the audacity to look beyond the obvious Oscar fodder and reward deserving foreign-language performances by Kim Hye-ja and Niels Arestrup (not to mention Olivier Assayas for Best Director).

    David Poland described the choices as an “overreach,” Jeff Wells resorted to his usual “dweeb” jabs, while tired accusations of “snobbery” and “contrarianism” did the rounds.

    I was going to express my annoyance at this narrow take on things, but since I pretty much anticipated the issue in last week’s Long Shot column, I held back. Thankfully, Variety critic and LAFCA voter Justin Chang, responding to a comment by Scott Feinberg in a Hollywood Elsewhere thread, has neatly said everything I wanted to say on the matter.

    Chang’s elegant defense after the cut.

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  • Make your SAG predictions

    Now that most of the major critics’ groups have had their say, tomorrow begins the second phase of the precursor season, as the Screen Actors’ Guild makes the first of this year’s industry award pronouncements.

    I always feel a twinge of dread about the SAG nomination list — frequently more middle-of-the-road than the critics’ picks, though with odd flashes of peer affection for unlikely veterans and character actors, they have a way of reducing the pool of Oscar hopefuls rather aggressively. More often than not, boredom ensues: last year, 19 of the 20 SAG individual performance nominees went on to repeat at the Oscars.

    Suffice to say, a snub from these guys stings more than one from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, but Marcia Gay Harden will forever remain a beacon of hope to the SAG-ignored: 10 years ago, a diss from the Guild (and indeed from virtually every other precursor, save the New York critics) didn’t stop her taking the golden boy home for “Pollock.”

    Predictions after the jump.

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  • Set your DVR

  • 41 original songs up for consideration

    Via press release, the Academy has whittled the Best Original Song field down to 41 eligible contenders.  They can be found in the category’s Contenders section.

    Nothing stands out as an egregious snub from what I can tell.  Only one of the songs from “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” is on there, which I guess I didn’t expect.  But the usual titles are there and nothing most are predicting has been left off, so now it’s all about deciding which entries will tickle the branch’s fancy.

    What else to say?  I’ll likely stick with the same five (which, there may not be five nominees at the end of the day, remember) taht I’ve had for a while, but I’m intrigued by the inclusion of a song from “The Illusionist.” Early on there was talk that maybe something from that could slip in a la “Belleville Rendez-vous.”  Perhaps.  You can hear a number of the entires via our “listen to” series, if you want to catch up on this or that.

    [Photo: Sony Pictures Classics]

  • ‘The Tree of Life’ trailer

    It’s heeeeeeere. Honestly, I’m not sure I even want to watch this, so I’ll leave it to you guys to comment. Click on the image below to watch it at Apple, or check out the embed after the jump.

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  • TIME fuels the ‘Social Network’ fire

    You’ve probably heard by now that Mark Zuckerberg has been named TIME magazine’s 2010 Person of the Year, a selection that couldn’t dovetail any more neatly with “The Social Network”‘s currently roaring Oscar campaign if the film’s publicists had engineered it themselves.

    After all, what’s really being acknowledged here: Zuckerberg’s own achievements over the year, or the raised public profile granted him by the success of David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s biopic? The time to laud Zuckerberg for the creation of Facebook, no longer the hippest social network on the block, was surely several years ago; this is a testament to the media influence wielded by a single movie.

    In turn, the film gets to borrow a measure of the prestige and currency associated with this annual honor: how often can an Oscar contender claim to be about the reigning Person of the Year? Academy voters concerned with the capital-I Importance of their choices can hardly ask for more than that. Well done, everybody.

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  • If I had a ballot

    The year is winding down.  Today, as part of the week’s on-going year-in-review specials, I’m offering up my annual “if I had a ballot” post.

    In years past I’ve tended to defer to studio campaigns for category placement, but this year I figured, “Screw it.”  After all, if I actually had a ballot I could call the shots.  So I have.

    You’re familiar with my Best Picture line-up by now.  I’ve opted out of the Best Foreign Language Film and Best Documentary categories because there are a few films I’d rather have seen before making that call, but otherwise, it’s the usual Oscar fields with an ensemble category tacked on.

    Feel free to post up your own selections, if you have them, in the comments section below.  And remember to check back Friday as I close up shop on 2010 with my list of superlatives.  For now, check out my personal ballot after the jump.

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  • Taking questions for Oscar Talk

    Anne and I will be welcoming Guy Lodge onto the show this week to discuss the precursor circuit so far.  If you have any questions for the three of us, have at it in the comments section below.  PLEASE LIMIT IT TO ONE QUESTION, and as always, steer clear of territory we’ve covered.  Keep it fresh.  The season is boring enough as it is, no?

  • Not you

    I might have kept it off his face and just kept cutting to different people in the film, but anyway, passed the time for about a minute:

  • 12/15 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Nudie ‘TRON,’ the Scotts eye westerns, Dorff talks Coppola’s ‘Somewhere’

    • Behind the scenes of “How Do You Know.” [Making Of]

    • Anne Thompson talks to “The Company Men” director John Wells. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • The western shows further signs of life under Ridley Scott and Scott Cooper’s helm. [Deadline]

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  • First Berlinale selections revealed, ‘True Grit’ to open fest

    Of all the festivals I attended this year, Berlin was perhaps the one with the most covert significance. At the time, it seemed critics were foraging for scraps amid a dismal competition lineup and a confusingly scattered selection of sidebars — and yet so many of the films I caught there (and some that I didn’t) are still with me at the year’s end.

    Prizewinners like “The Ghost Writer” and “How I Ended This Summer” continue to grow in stature in Europe, Sundance follow-ons like “Winter’s Bone,” “The Kids Are All Right” and “Exit Through the Gift Shop” are in the thick of the Oscar conversation, and you probably all know by now how I feel about the 2010 Berlinale’s most buried world premiere, “The Illusionist.”

    In other words, there’s little way of telling what treasure might be gleaned from the festival lineup until you’re actually there. That said, although that tantalizing, briefly-floated possibility of the Berlinale snagging “Tree of Life” didn’t pan out, this morning’s freshly unveiled list of the fest’s first eight official selections offers smaller notes of intrigue.

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