My beginnings following the Oscar season date back to an arbitrary subscription to Entertainment Weekly in the mid-1990s and the odds making fun of it all. The Oscar issues were always a fave, so that’s why I tend to perk up a bit when they’re revealed each year. For 2010, we get dueling covers separately featuring host (and Best Actor hopeful for “127 Hours”) James Franco and “Black Swan” star Natalie Portman. Check it out:
This is a fantastic little guide to the race over at Entertainment Weekly, but if they really want to step it up, give me the same tool across the 80-year Academy history. Let me compare, contrast. That would be a hell of a research instrument, for those of us sick enough to take prognostication WAY too freakin’ seriously.
(via Awards Daily)
I think I have a few Entertainment Weekly Oscar special issues dating back to, oh, 1995 or so. I used to relish in the odds, the Oscar articles cooked up by the magazine’s staff, and, obviously, Dave Karger’s work throughout. Yeah, I’m a bit jaded on the circuit now, but once upon a time, I was excited to see who’d get the Oscar cover.
Ah, who am I fooling? I still get very curious. For the eventual post-nominations cover, that is. For a couple of years, it seemed that designation was a harbinger. Then “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” was featured in 2000 and things didn’t go that film’s way for Oscar.
This year, I thought it would be one of two films on the early race issue, the two films I think are duking it out for Best Picture. And sure enough, one of them got it: “Up in the Air.” We’ll see who gets the post-nod cover.
EW’s Pop Watch blog has more of the early scoop. The issue hits stands Friday and will include Karger’s predictions. Click here for a slightly bigger version.
The crowning jewel of the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con, by far, has been the Entertainment Weekly-sponsored “Visionaries” panel yesterday evening, featuring filmmakers Peter Jackson and James Cameron. So many real-world, in-the-trenches, eye-on-the-future topics were discussed that it became tedious to sit and transcribe the proceedings, so after a while I just committed myself to as many video clips as I could grab. Though I was tweeting as much as possible. Ditto Jeff Wells, who passed along some nice quotes throughout.
The two talked about everything from motion-capture technology to balancing the duties of screenwriter with that of producer and director, and really, anything in between. It was the most enlightening panel Comic-Con could have hoped for, and even the attendee questions were brighter than usual.
Line of the evening: “It’s not a good idea to ask a woman if she wants to have another baby when she’s crowning,” which was Cameron’s response to a query about his next project.
Much of the discussion was dedicated to the idea that these two guys constantly push the envelope, not only of what is possible in cinema, but of what a studio is willing to fund. Cameron in particular displayed his usual maverick side when questions like this came about, at one point saying that Warner Bros. needed to “grow a pair of balls” regarding an eventual 3D release of the “Lord of the Rings” franchise.
I was bummed I had to miss yesterday’s Entertainment Weekly-sponsored women’s showcase here at Comic-Con, but luckily the mag has video snippets available for viewing now. No embed feature, though, which is unfortuate, but go give them a look anyway. Panelists included Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana, Elizabeth Mitchell and Eliza Dushku.
It’s interesting to note that, in addition to citations for the respective casts of “The Dark Knight” and “Sex and the City: The Movie,” only five film actors made EW’s recently unveiled list of the 25 Entertainers of the Year. (Six if you count their #2 pick, Tina Fey — which I don’t.)
Perhaps it chimes in with the widespread feeling that 2008 isn’t a vintage year for cinema, perhaps the worlds of TV and music simply had more to offer, or perhaps I’m simply over-analysing. It’s curious to see arguably the year’s two most overexposed stars, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, absent from the list — make of that what you will.
Nevertheless, the list was topped by a movie star: Robert Downey, Jr. Even with the bumping of “The Soloist” from the 2008 slate, it’s difficult to deny what a great year he’s had — between “Iron Man” and “Tropic Thunder,” he really found his popular touch, and even the most elitist critic had a kind word for him. Whether or not that unlikely Oscar campaign for the latter film takes flight, he has, as EW aptly puts it, “pulled off one of the smartest second acts in showbiz history.”
Other names present on the list include Meryl Streep, James Franco and Elizabeth Banks — but the most surprising and delightful inclusion is Richard Jenkins. I can’t imagine that the humble 61 year-old character actor ever thought he’d appear on a list alongside the likes of Leona Lewis and The Jonas Brothers, but good for him. It’s an appropriate recognition for a year that saw him supplement a career performance in “The Visitor” with cunning appearances in two mainstream crowdpleasers. Here’s EW’s take:
Richard Jenkins has had a colorful career, but he never seemed like an actor who’d get interrupted during dinner. After growing up in De Kalb, Ill., he became one of those ubiquitous character actors whom only a few know by name: the gay federal agent in Flirting With Disaster, the psychiatrist in There’s Something About Mary, the deceased patriarch in HBO’s Six Feet Under, and on and on. This year, Jenkins played Will Ferrell’s stepdad in Step Brothers and a gym manager in Burn After Reading. Though Jenkins has worked with just about every big-name filmmaker and actor in Hollywood, The Visitor writer-director Tom McCarthy was still considered brave for elevating him to leading man. ”There was never a question about whether he could do this,” he says. ”Richard has proven himself.’
Indeed he has. That Best Actor nomination for “The Visitor” looks more and more likely to me.
From Thompson on Hollywood:
Entertainment Weekly wants Hollywood to rewrite Oscar history by giving the film industry a chance to revise the Oscar history books. It’s called “Recall the Gold.”
On October 6, EW is inviting more than 7,000 Hollywood insiders to participate in an extensive survey to re-vote on past Oscar races. EW wants to test which movies truly stand the test of time. With the benefit of hindsight, did the right films and performances win over the past 25 years? To look at 2003, will Robert Begnini still beat Tom Hanks? Will Shakespeare in Love still beat Saving Private Ryan? Will Gwenyth Paltrow still beat Cate Blanchett?
Alright, let me stop it right here and get this out of the way: a nice diversion, nothing else. Not to poo-poo the experiment, because it’s a fun idea, but the buzz and manipulation of a given Oscar season is in the same league as the manipulation that comes from loud fans and film-goers who think this film deserved to win over that and scream about it for years after the fact. Nothing like this can happen in a vacuum, so let’s not consider an “Oscar revote” anything more than it actually is.
And when you see that EW editor Sean Smith’s idea was inspired by the “Brokeback Mountain” loss to “Crash,” it becomes a little more irritating, in my book. Let it go, folks.
More:
Monday EW is mailing out their official “Recall The Gold” ballot inviting the industry to vote in six major categories for five given years spaced five years apart–2003, 1998, 1993, 1988, and 1983–five, ten, fifteen, twenty and twenty-five years ago…
“We built it from scratch,” says Smith. EW reporters and editors scrolled through their rollidexes. They added everyone who had ever been nominated or won an Oscar, and crew members of films that grossed over $100 million. They looked at the news reports of Hollywood people who had been added to the Oscar ranks in recent years. They culled creative directories for execs, producers, publicists, editors, costume designers, art directors, directors, cinematographers, writers, animators, sound mixers, composers–all the categories covered by the Academy.
EW made one HUGE change. They invited top film (not TV) agents, who are not permitted to belong to the Academy, to join the list of Oscar revoters. And Smith thinks his list may skew slightly younger than the Academy’s. “We’re not trying to duplicate the Academy,” he says. “What do people working in the film industry think about these Oscar-winning movies now?”
So, they added more people with agendas to the voting pool. Nice. Click the ballot image above for a larger image. And read the rest of Thompson’s story here.