Handily coinciding with its two male stars’ big news this week, the second trailer for Nancy Meyers’ romcom mostly overlaps with the first, with a few added flourishes.
Despite having never liked a Meyers confection before, something about this one is working for me. Steve Pond has a mole who says the film is “absolutely terrific,” though of course that means little. Either way, mature audiences are going to turn out in droves for this.
Well, I guess Martin was available after all. And he’s going to have company.
The Academy has announced this year’s Oscar emcee, and as expected, it’s a pair: Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, stars of “It’s Complicated” and one person removed from the suggestion our own Guy Lodge made last month. Lodge proposed Tina Fey alongside Martin. Academy producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic opted instead for Fey’s “30 Rock” co-star Alec Baldwin.
The quoted portion of the press release:
“We think the team of Steve and Alec are the perfect pair of hosts for the Oscars,” said Shankman and Mechanic. “Steve will bring the experience of having hosted the show in the past and Alec will be a completely fresh personality for this event.”
“I am happy to co-host the Oscars with my enemy Alec Baldwin,” said Martin.
“I don’t play the banjo but I’m thrilled to be hosting the Oscars – it’s the opportunity of a lifetime,” said Baldwin.
And that’s that. Thoughts? I find myself completely thrilled.
Tom O’Neil has pooled the thoughts of 16 awards-watchers on which 10 films will make the Best Picture cut, and the results make for ominously predictable reading.
All 16 agree that “The Hurt Locker” and “Invictus” are in (I guess it’s just me holding out on the latter then), while there’s near-consensus on the likes of “Precious,” “Up in the Air,” “Up” … you get the idea. Yawn. At this rate, the switch to 10 nominees looks to sap any excitement from this stage of the race whatsoever.
More interesting, then, is to venture further down the list to see what the pundits’ more out-on-a-limb picks are. One would like to think at least one of the slots has to be filled with something slightly less expected — otherwise what’s the point? So I turned my attention to the films receiving a solitary vote from one of O’Neil’s posse.
Those hoping for a foreign-language contender in the mix (no, “Inglourious Basterds” does not count) might want to look away, as not a single punter has one on their list, while things look similarly grim for documentaries.
It’s been interesting to note that many of the conversations concerning the Oscar race that I’ve had with people lately revolves around category placement for a number of the year’s contenders. It was a topic Anne and I addressed directly in Friday’s Oscar Talk, in fact.
There tends to be dueling ideologies on this, as well as what makes a performance a lead and what makes it supporting. But purely from a marketing standpoint, it’s understandable that sometimes studios might play the landscape of the picture for an array of acting shots on goal rather than perhaps be true to the realities (that are, again, subjective) of the role within the narrative.
We mentioned the anticipated classification of Marion Cotillard and Vera Farmiga in the lead actress category for “Nine” and “Up in the Air” respectively in the podcast, but as Pete Hammond points out in a recent Notes on a Season item, the category musical chairs are taking place elsewhere, too.
Coincidentally enough, the same day that Kris spotlighted the Best Actress race, the category has been on my mind too — as a thought hit me that could factor in what is potentially one of the tightest duels of the season.
Almost every Oscar prognosticator on record has already boiled the Best Actress contest down to Carey Mulligan versus Meryl Streep, and until the precursors arrive to shed some light on the matter, there’s almost nothing in it on paper.
Advantage Mulligan for being in a probable Best Picture nominee. Advantage Streep for playing a prominent real-life figure. Advantage Mulligan for being this year’s hottest ingenue. Advantage Streep for being, well, Meryl Streep. And on it goes, back and forth.
But if there’s one area where Mulligan holds a clear advantage over Streep, it’s with the so-called “BAFTA block” … the British contingent of voters who seemingly make their presence felt more in the Academy voting by the year. (Recent BAFTA-led surges for “The Reader,” Marion Cotillard and Tilda Swinton are a case in point.)
A while back, certain folks were (rather unfairly) dredging up the routine annual complaint about the supposed scarcity of viable Best Actress contenders. Dave Karger, however, has located the real weak spot of this year’s awards race, and it concerns the opposite sex for a change: where, he asks, are the Best Supporting Actor standouts?
Pound for pound, I tend to find Best Supporting Actor the least compelling of the acting races, a haven for affectionately regarded stalwarts in bit parts that are frequently less than challenging. The last two years have raised the bar considerably, but recent wins for Morgan Freeman, Alan Arkin and Michael Caine are typical of the laziness with which the Academy often treats the category.
Even by the category’s usual standards, however, this year’s pickings look unusually lean, as Karger narrows the serious contenders so far to a scant three.
I realized yesterday I hadn’t updated my own Oscar predictions since July, so a spring-clean was in order. I should really wait for the end of Toronto, but I’m off on vacation on Saturday, so there’s no time like the present.
Needless to say, a lot can change in two months — particularly when those two months include the start of the festival season. Back in July, “Shutter Island” was still a fall release, Colin Firth wasn’t even on my radar and I still expected “Up in the Air” to be a minor-key adaptation of a minor-key novel. It was a more innocent time.
As always, if you want sensible, well-reasoned, informed predictions, you’re better off looking to your right.
There are so many things wrong with this Digital Spy piece about the Best Actress race, it’s difficult to know where to begin. Article writer Marcell Minaya seems to have filched gossip columnist Roger Friedman’s recent (largely baseless) statement that the category is bereft of contenders, and disguised it as Academy insider talk:
The Oscars executives have allegedly been struggling to form a list of best actress nominees.
An Oscar insider said: “It’s only just dawning that there’s a distinct lack of potentials in the best actress category. It’s been a pretty lacklustre year for movies in general but it seems that no one wrote any decent lead roles for women … There are many to choose from when it comes to supporting actresses but very few in the lead.”
Looks frothy. Of course. But the way Alec Baldwin delivers the line “I like it” at the beginning kind of cracks me up. Added ammunition for Meryl’s forthcoming lead actress nomination for “Julie & Julia”: