In Contention

Tag: 83rd Annual Academy Awards

  • Another barrier broken?

    Amid the barrage of critical brickbats tossed at Sunday night’s Oscar show — plus the widespread dissatisfaction with certain winners — I didn’t see much mention made of this particular milestone, but it strikes me as worthy of note, particularly a year after Kathryn Bigelow’s history-making Best Director win.

    I’m happy to say that one other category is no longer an all-boys’ club: as part of the technically robust “Inception” team, Lora Hirschberg became the first woman (to my knowledge) to win an Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing.

    Hirschberg shared the award with colleagues Gary Rizzo and Ed Novick, with whom she also scored her first nod two years ago for “The Dark Knight.” (The Cinema Audio Society has been more generous to her over years: dating back to “The Horse Whisperer” in 1998, she has amassed six nominations, if no wins, from that group.)

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  • An open letter to James Franco

    Dear James,

    So you don’t think much of the Academy. That’s okay. A lot of us don’t. And after the outcome of last night’s awards — in which capping an inevitable Best Picture Oscar for the safe, stolid stylings of “The King’s Speech” with that extraneous Best Director win for a worried-looking Tom Hooper was roughly akin to dipping Wonderbread in milk for maximum squishiness — I suspect even a lot of movie buffs who don’t make a year-round sport of henpecking the Academy’s choices are on your side.

    Your antipathy towards the Academy may be rooted in different disappointments than those of the blogging majority. We know for starters that you don’t much rate “The Social Network,” the 2010 title most clearly destined to fill the blank in many a “How did _______ lose?” whine-fest between awards geeks in years hence.

    But Lord knows your own pony was even more cruelly treated by voters: when the film’s artsy death-rattle of a theme song couldn’t even beat a rushed Randy Newman Xerox of a Pixar jingle that everybody forgot he already won for in 2001, it was clear the once-so-buzzy “127 Hours” had been reduced to a phantom presence in this year’s race.

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 55 — Special Edition! — Oscars postmortem

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    The 2010-2011 film awards season has finally drawn to a close. And what a ride it was. After a weekend full of parties and awards shows, Anne and I are here on the final day of coverage this season to offer our thoughts on what was. So let’s get on with it and see what’s on the docket today…

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Sun came up

    Steven Spielberg couldn’t have put it more concisely during his presentation of the Best Picture category last night.  To paraphrase, he noted that whichever films did not happen to win Best Picture this year would join the ranks of numerous classics of the medium.

    Was it preemptive damage control?  I hope not.  Why be apologetic?  Was it lecturing?  Maybe a bit, and I think a great many needed to hear it again (unfortunately).  But it felt so incredibly inside baseball that it was probably completely unnecessary.  After all, a very popular film won Best Picture this year.  It seems silly to address a media concern (albeit one shared by plenty of cineastes).

    Ultimately, the season ended where many thought it might, going way back to the early days of September.  Some held out hope that David Fincher could take the lead in his field on respect and admiration alone, but Best Picture and Best Director will always be a better bet in lock-step.  The real post-show discussion focused on the ceremony itself, which was, mercifully, a short affair this year.  Just over three hours.  But they were three kind of excruciating hours.

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  • 2/28 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Aftermath

    • Drew McWeeney writes a lot of words explaining why he doesn’t watch the Oscars. [Motion/Captured]

    • Nikki Finke reminds who the “In Memoriam” sequence passed over. [Deadline]

    • Oscar ≠ A-List. [The Wrap]

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  • ‘King’s Speech’ wins four Oscars, including Best Picture…

    …and the sun will still rise tomorrow.  Full list of the winners at The Circuit.  We’ll be back tomorrow to put a bow on the season.  Feel free to carry over conversation from the open thread here.

  • 83rd Academy Awards open thread

    Alright, I’m ducking out of here for the night.  Feel free to use this space to discuss the show, the winners, whatever strikes you.  The red carpet starts up in about two hours.  I don’t think there will be too much strain on the server, but if things get sluggish, have patience with us.

    If you’re looking for a live stream of the Oscarcast, I’m told you can watch here and, of course, Oscar.com (if you don’t mind paying five bucks).  I imagine Justin.tv will have a page, too.  You can check the rundown of awards presentations here.

    Once again, if you haven’t joined our pool at Picktainment, do so here.  Meanwhile, my final predictions are here, Guy’s are here and Gerard’s are here.  The aggregated picks of others can be found at Awards Daily, Gold Derby and Movie City News.

    And…that should about cover it.  Enjoy the show, be safe, have fun, all of that good stuff.  The checkered flag is in sight.  Check back tomorrow for the season’s final Oscar Talk as Anne and I pick up the pieces and try to figure out what happened.

    [Photo: AMPAS]

  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Twas the week before Oscar

    • We made you wait for it this year, but finally: Kris’s Top 10 Shots of 2010, parts one and two.

    • This week’s Off the Carpet column surveyed where the season has brought us thus far, and began tying the loose ends…

    • …culminating later in Kris’s final Oscar predictions of the 2010 season.

    • Guy’s final Long Shot column of the season celebrated the season’s losers, while calling for a return to movie talk away from the subject of awards.

    • Our Oscar Guide feature stepped it up, covering Best Director, Actor, Actress, Foreign Language Film and Film Editing.

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  • Rundown of awards presentations

    From Deadline (thanks to PaulH):

    1. Art Direction (Tom Hanks)
    2. Cinematography (ditto)
    3. Supporting Actress (?)
    4. Animated Feature (Justin Timberlake, Mila Kunis)
    5. Animated Short Film (ditto)

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  • The model for this year’s acting presentations?

    I mentioned yesterday that the multi-presenter format used for the acting awards in the last two Oscar ceremonies is being scrapped this year. However, while we’re doing away with the five-way individual tributes, producer Bruce Cohen claimed they were adopting an idea from the “1970 Oscars” that would ensure every nominee gets duly celebrated.

    Looking at footage from that year’s awards, it wasn’t clear what he meant — though it seems he might have been misquoted, and actually said “1970s Oscars.”

    With that in mind, helpful reader Michael Amir Bina got in touch to inform me that this presentation format (embedding disabled, I’m afraid), from the 1979 awards, is what we should be expecting. Nothing groundbreaking, just brief rundown of each nominee’s career and achievements to date. Fine, I suppose, though it slightly steps on the notion of the Oscar being for a single performance. Meanwhile, how much telecast time will the show’s writers be able to wring from poor Hailee Steinfeld’s résumé?

    [Photo: Libero.it]

  • 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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  • Training continues

  • 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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  • 2/16 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Oscars invade Grand Central, details on Oscarcast opening number, Gurus’ final picks

    • Wes Anderson talks editing “Black Swan” with Andrew Weisblum. [Awards Campaign]

    • Oscars invade New York’s Grand Central terminal. [Oscars.org]

    • Mandi Bierly gets a few Oscarcast details on the Franco-Hathaway chemistry and the opening number. [Inside Movies]

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  • 2/11 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Franco couldn’t care less, love letter to Annette Bening, Hammond polls voters

    • James Franco: “If it’s the worst show in the history of the Oscars, who cares?”  I love this guy. [Screening Room]

    • David Poland on how the Academy is missing a golden opportunity by essentially banning Banksy from the ceremony.  Not that Banksy would even humor his suggestions, but still. [The Hot Blog]

    • Nick Davis writes a big ole’ love letter to Annette Bening.  (More on her in today’s Oscar Talk.) [Nick’s Flick Picks]

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  • Should be good. Should be great. (Should be over soon.)

  • Oscar’s class of 2010

    (Click for larger version)

  • Best Original Song performances are back

    The Academy’s Twitter feed just noted the following:

    You heard it 1st: Best Song performances are back for 83rd #Oscars! Gwyneth Paltrow set to sing…more on the way.

    To which I say: Great.  It was grossly disrespectful, I thought, to suddenly jerk them from the telecast last year (and if you heard some of the things being said of the nominees — by the telecast’s producers — behind the scenes last year, you might have been riled up a bit, too).  I think Ryan Bingham missed out on a great opportunity to reach a global audience with one of the best winners in that category in some time.

    But anyway, obviously they see having someone like Gwyneth Paltrow perform on the show (as she did recently on the CMT awards) as a ratings asset.  Ditto Mandy Moore (who will be performing “I See the Light” with Zachary Levi and Alan Menken).  A.R. Rahman will do “If I Rise” with Florence + the Machine (no Dido) and Randy Newman will be there to belt out “We Belong Together.”

    Check out the Oscar Guide to Best Original Song here.

    [Photo: Screen Gems]