In Contention

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  • Emma Stone for Best Actress: making it look ‘Easy’

    Jeff Wells, high on Anne Hathaway’s work in “Love and Other Drugs,” recently wrote a piece bemoaning the lack of awards consideration usually granted to romantic comedy performances: “[There is a] belief,” he complains, “that to qualify for an acting award you have to solemnly suffer and pour your heart out in a somewhat doleful and non-pizazzy way.”

    Of course, this is a casual generalization. In the past decade, several women have broken through in the Best Actress for broad comedy (romantic and otherwise) vehicles, including Ellen Page, Diane Keaton, Judi Dench and Meryl Streep — twice. (Or more, depending on your take on “Doubt.”) Should “Love and Other Drugs,” with its big-name pedigree and dramatic overtones, take off with the smart adult audiences it’s being pitched to, a nomination for Hathaway is perfectly feasible.

    Unadulterated comic fluff, however, is another matter. While veterans like Streep and Keaton are given passes for lightweight fare, you have to go back to Renée Zellweger (“Bridget Jones Diary,” 2001) to find an example of a younger actress earning a nod for a purely comic film without Best Picture clout. In 2007, Amy Adams rode a wave of early buzz for “Enchanted,” but fell victim to the Academy’s faulty sense of humor. Still, she got further than, say, Reese Witherspoon in “Legally Blonde” or Jennifer Garner in “13 Going on 30” — both performances worthy of consideration that never got off the starting blocks due to their flighty commercial vehicles.

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  • Did Halle Berry just enter the Best Actress race?

    I feel like I’ve been hearing about Geoffrey Sax’s “Frankie & Alice” for over a year now.  The film was on our early charts last year as one of a million possibilities, but it never nailed down distribution.  This year I just kind of forgot about it, but here’s a press release landing this afternoon making sure we’re aware that Freestyle Releasing will be opening the film on December 17 for an Academy qualifying run.

    Now, this might mean there is awards potential for Halle Berry’s performance in the true story of Frankie Murdoch, a woman suffering with multiple personality disorder in early 1970s Los Angeles (the release tells me).  Or it might mean, simply, being in that discussion is worth a few more dollars at the box office, which would be seen as a win for an indie.  I can’t say.  I haven’t seen the film.  And this is a fiercely competitive lead actress line-up as it is.  But hey, there’s always room for one more…as long as you’ve got the goods.  (Of course, I wrote something similarly titled about Michelle Monaghan last year, so you never know.)

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  • Godard to skip the Governors Awards

    First it was announced that legendary French auteur Jean-Luc Godard would be one of this year’s Honorary Oscar recipients at November’s Governors Awards.  Then the Academy was having a hard time finding him.  Then Godard’s girlfriend conveyed the sentiment that Godard might think the ceremony beneath him.  Now, the official news drops that — as if we didn’t see it coming — he’ll wait for the FedEx guy to bring it round.  Via AMPAS press release:

    The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today that, following a two-month-long cordial exchange of correspondence with Academy president Tom Sherak, Jean-Luc Godard has regretfully notified Sherak that he will not be able to attend the November 13th Governors Awards and receive his Honorary Award in person.

    “He reiterated his thanks for the award,” reported Sherak, “and also sent his good wishes to the other individuals being honored the same night – Kevin Brownlow, Francis Ford Coppola and Eli Wallach – who he refers to as ‘the three other musketeers.’”

    The November 13 dinner ceremony, which is being produced by Sid Ganis and Don Mischer, will pay tribute to Godard through film clips and commentary by his admirers. The award will be accepted on Godard’s behalf by the Academy and following the event, the Academy will arrange for the Oscar® statuette to be delivered to him in Switzerland.

    [Photo: mardecortesbaja]

  • Gibney talks Spitzer

    One of the items linked in this morning’s round-up was this David Carr interview with Alex Gibney, director of “Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer.”  Here’s a video excerpt:

  • Lynch picks Bergman, Kubrick, Tati, Hitchcock and Wilder for AFI Fest sidebar

    In case you didn’t know, director David Lynch was tapped as this year’s Guest Artistic Director at AFI Fest.  Part of his duties: to choose a special sidebar program at the festival.  Here’s the news, from the press release:

    AFI FEST 2010 presented by Audi announced today the five feature films selected by its first-ever Guest Artistic Director, David Lynch, for his special sidebar program at the festival. As part of the program, the festival will screen Lynch’s first feature film, ERASERHEAD, which was made while Lynch was a Fellow at AFI’s Center For Advanced Film Studies, now known as the AFI Conservatory. Lynch graduated from AFI in 1970.

    Lynch’s selections are: HOUR OF THE WOLF (DIR Ingmar Bergman), LOLITA (DIR Stanley Kubrick), MON ONCLE (DIR Jacques Tati), REAR WINDOW (DIR Alfred Hitchcock) and SUNSET BLVD (DIR Billy Wilder).

    “I picked these particular films because they are the ones that have inspired me most. I think each is a masterpiece,” said Lynch. “If people have already seen them, they are certainly worth being seen again. And if people haven’t seen them, here is an opportunity to see what I consider cinema at its best.”

    [Photo: Nerve]

  • OFF THE CARPET: Leading men in the spotlight

    About a year ago I took to examining the 2009 Best Actor race.  The frontrunners for five slots seemed to be, in order, George Clooney, Colin Firth, Jeremy Renner, Morgan Freeman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Viggo Mortensen and Robert De Niro.

    A day later press members received their first invites to “Crazy Heart” screenings and were notified that the film would be released in 2009.  Jeff Bridges hit the ground running and never let off the gas until he was past the finish line.

    A year earlier we were looking at a pair of politico-biopic portrayals, either one of which would make a handsome winner: Frank Langella and Sean Penn.  But we were fairly sure the latter would be on his way to the podium one more time.

    But soon after, Mickey Rourke’s festival buzz caught serious fire and forged an atmosphere of doubt.  The season’s narrative seemed to be changing, and yet the early buzz carried through and brought Penn his Oscar.

    So that’s two drastically different directions – in as many years – that a lead actor race can take.  Given the mid-October fulcrum shared here, let’s consider our perspective on the Best Actor category right now.

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  • DreamWorks’ ‘Megamind’ brings out the best in Will Ferrell

    Was I just in a really good mood Saturday night or did DreamWorks’ “Megamind” send me out of the theater with a legitimate smile on my face?  The 3D never gets in the way, the concept is sound and crisp, the voice talent is top notch and it doesn’t feel like everyone’s just going through the motions (probably because Will Ferrell was passionate about the story, which he had a hand in conceiving).

    Most importantly, it was a damn good time at the movies.

    I’m fairly high on animation in general this year.  Pixar’s “Toy Story 3,” of course, is one of the year’s best, as is DreamWorks’ own “How to Train Your Dragon.” Disney’s “Tangled” manages to stay fresh and progressive within the familiarity of the studio’s classic fairytale offerings and Sylvain Chomet’s “The Illusionist” is as touching as they come (with the year’s best score to boot — though a recently filed lawsuit over the copyright of the title could keep the film off the books this year).

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  • Listen to Jónsi’s ‘Sticks & Stones’ from ‘How to Train Your Dragon’

    As we did last year, we’re going to bring you as many of the Best Original Song contenders as we can this season in these “listen to” posts.  I’m going to aim for two or three per week, all leading up to the Best Original Song Tech Support column on December 9.  By then, we should have a clearer idea of the category.

    We kick things off with “Sticks & Stones,” a closing credits track from DreamWorks Animation’s “How to Train Your Dragon” by Sigur Rós front man Jónsi Birgisson.  As we know, the Academy’s music branch views the original song contenders in the context of the films these days, so tunes that play over the closing credits have their work cut out for them.

    Sometimes, if the credits are part of the story (i.e. “WALL-E” or “Waiting for Superman”), a song will have a fighting chance.  That will be tough for Jónsi’s track, which just plays over a traditional credit roll (albeit accompanied by handsome storybook sketches of the film’s winged serpents).

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  • We are here

    Stumbled across this at Thompson on Holllywood, via filmmaker David Fu, a moving assemblage of motion picture history cut to Carl Sagan’s reading of “You Are Here” from his 1994 book “The Pale Blue Dot” (and set to Mogwai’s “Stop Coming to My House.”)

  • 10/25 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Desplat honored, Watts and Plame on ‘Game,’ animated feature hopefuls reach 14

    • Colin Firth talks royalty and “The King’s Speech.” [Awards Campaign]

    • Alexandre Desplat named composer of the year. [Variety]

    • Scott Kraft chats with “Fair Game” star Naomi Watts and subject Valerie Plame. [Los Angeles Times]

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  • LONDON: ‘Brighton’ hits the rocks

    The success of the London Film Festival’s annual Surprise Film screening isn’t exactly dependent on the surprise element: more often than not, the film’s identity can be pinpointed in advance simply by asking yourself which title you most expected to find in the festival lineup, and then didn’t.

    But even if pretty much everyone sitting in the Leicester Square theater three years ago knew they were about to see “No Country for Old Men,” that didn’t stop the keen applause, peppered with whoops of approval, when the title finally flashed on screen. Ditto the equally predictable-but-welcome selection of “The Wrestler” the following year. It’s a bit like actually getting what you asked for on Christmas morning: the unwrapping is a mere formality, but the result satisfies nonetheless.

    Festival director Sandra Hebron did pull a genuine surprise last year, when the consensus expectation of “Where the Wild Things Are” was dashed by the PSA-style opening of Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story.” Still, by last night, Twitter-abetted speculation had narrowed so conclusively around Rowan Joffe’s “Brighton Rock” — it being the most conspicuously absent Britfilm at a British festival, after all — that anything else would have been a jaw-dropper. (To Hebron’s evident vexation, it was the first title shouted out when she played her annual “guess-the-movie” game with the audience.)

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  • Boyle, Beaufoy on pushing the boundaries of cinema

    I sat down earlier this afternoon with “127 Hours” star James Franco, director Danny Boyle and writer Simon Beaufoy.  I’ll have proper written pieces up surrounding each in the coming days but there was something I wanted to share now.

    Firstly, it’s always a joy to talk cinema with Boyle.  He’s a truly excitable character who projects a brand of passion impossible to counterfeit and is just a good guy on top of it.  (Check out my interview with the director from the 2008-2010 season — “8 things I’ve learned from my career in features” — here.)

    Anyway, he got fired up when we began discussing the hallucination sequences of the film, how to convey something that’s intrinsically so personal in a creative but organic way.  Off he went on a tangent, soon joined by Beaufoy, that I found inspiring as a fan and as a writer.  Maybe you will, too.  Have a listen after the jump.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Bone’ boost, category debate, LFF coverage

    (A day later than usual — apologies. Friday night got in the way.)

    • The Gotham Awards served up the first nominations of the season, with indie darling “Winter’s Bone” sitting pretty.

    • With “The Kids Are All Right” and “Another Year” prodding the discussion, this week’s Long Shot column ruminated on a perennial gripe of Oscar pundits: category fraud.

    • News of a high-profile Scorsese-DiCaprio retrospective launching an Oscar campaign for the film re-opened the debate over the merits of “Shutter Island.”

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  • CINEJABBER: For Your Consideration, ‘Die Hard,’ Best Picture

    Catch up with the idea behind these weekend posts here.

    Jeffrey Wells reminded me last weekend of Movieline’s latest restoration effort, i.e. providing scans of back issues and therefore keeping the magazines of the 1990s available and adding a bit of history to the newly designed outlet.  It also reminded me of an idea I had at Variety three years ago when I was writing the trade’s Oscar blog, Red Carpet District.

    Something people don’t know is that there is a small closet of a room (or at least it was a closet at the old digs across the street from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, not sure about the new tower down the street) full of handsomely bound back issues of Variety.  You’re talking decades of the print publication at your fingertips.

    But while it’s fun to go back and read old industry stories and news items, the best part is to grab a latter year volume, say something from December-January or February, and get a load of the for your consideration ads.

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  • ‘Rabbit Hole’ trailer

    I quite liked John Cameron Mitchell’s “Rabbit Hole,” a smooth adaptation of a stage work with quality performances. So I’m happy to see an understated trailer playing very much into what the film is as opposed to selling it as something it isn’t. Check it out via Apple by clicking the image below or watch an embed after the jump.

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  • LONDON: ‘The King’s Speech, ‘Neds’ and the Brit pack

    Unlike, say, the Venice fest – where the jury’s failure to reward any of the (lousy) Italian films in competition is cause for a media strop — the London Film Festival has often seemed somewhat embarrassed by the homegrown portion of its programme, perhaps granting a big red-carpet date to the odd bit of tony Oscar bait while shoving newer and/or independent British filmmakers into shadowy side slots.

    This year, however, the festival appears to be wearing its flag quite contentedly. This week’s lavish gala screenings have included such big-draw Britpics as “Another Year” and “The King’s Speech” – but rather less predictably, Peter Mullan’s hard bit of Scottish urban realism “Neds” was afforded similar treatment, while tonight’s hot ticket is local TV comedian Richard Ayoade’s Toronto-acclaimed (and Weinstein-acquired) debut “Submarine.” With Joanna Hogg’s bare-bones sophomore feature “Archipelago” also premiering tonight – and unexpectedly shortlisted for the fest’s Best Film award – programmers seem bent on drawing attention to the multitude of approaches in contemporary UK cinema.

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  • Malick’s ‘Tree of Life’ gets a release date?

    Oh the drama of Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life.” At some point I just shut down and dutifully conveyed all of the pointless back-and-forth nuggets, because really, this kind of hype and spectatorship is just unhealthy for a film sight-unseen.

    But now you can mark your calendars, because according to a Box Office Mojo scheduling update, Fox Searchlight (which recently acquired the film) will be releasing the film on May 27, 2011.  If you’re keeping score at home, that’s just five days after the 2011 Cannes International Film Festival closes up shop, so I suppose it’s fair to still hold out hope for a bow at that festival.

    However, there is still the scuttlebutt regarding Malick’s history with the Berlinale, so it could pop up there first.  The film was slated by EuropaCorp for a February bow in France, but that seems unlikely to me now.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Costume Design — Volume II

    Glitz and glamor.  Period prestige.  Newbie talent and old favorites.  How is the race for Best Costume Design shaping up this year?

    In my opinion, Jenny Beavan is leading the way at this point in time. Beavan earned six nominations in the 1980s and 1990s for her work on Merchant-Ivory films, winning for “A Room With a View.” But after “Anna and the King” and “Gosford Park,” she has been out of the running for almost a decade. That said, there must have been occasions (notably “Sherlock Holmes” last year) where she must have been very close. This year, she designed the threads for leading contender “The King’s Speech.” Recreating British royalty of the 1930s seems almost certain to result in Beavan’s return to the final five.

    Another eight-time nominee (albeit one with two wins) is Colleen Atwood. Atwood again teams up with director Tim Burton this year on “Alice in Wonderland.” The work was crazy fantasy. The branch doesn’t always go for that but they do frequently go for Atwood. That fact, combined with the film’s massive box office haul, leads me to believe Ms. Atwood is looking at nod #9 this year.

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