• Steve Weintraub sits down with David Fincher (who got really choosy about who he’d talk to last week — again) to discuss “The Social Network” DVD release and other projects. [Collider]
• Glenn Whipp writes up the dark tales of torment that lurk on voters’ ballots this season. [Variety]
• Watch a 1991 Alka Seltzer commercial directed by and starring Guillermo Del Toro. [/Film]
• The Academy honored legends Francis Ford Coppola, Eli Wallach, Jean-Luc Godard and Kevin Brownlow at the annual Governors Awards.
• Kris attended a Summit Entertainment holiday party, chatting with the talent in attendance.
• Disney revealed a clever plan geared toward presenting “Toy Story 3” as a legitimate Best Picture contender.
• The Weinstein Company lawyered up on the MPAA rulings on “Blue Valentine” and “The King’s Speech”
Welcome 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.
There have been toasts in honor of talent and in the way of remembrance during this busy, and heartbreaking, week on the Oscar circuit. So as always, there’s plenty to cover. Let’s dive in and see what’s on the docket today…
This weekend the Academy toasted the careers of film historian Kevin Brownlow, French auteur Jean-Luc Godard and character actor Eli Wallach with a trio of Honorary Oscar statuettes and bestowed the Irving Thalberg Award on legendary helmer Francis Ford Coppola.
I didn’t attend the ceremony, but there’s lots of coverage out there. Rather than pack it all into this morning’s round-up, I figured it best to dedicate another post.
Variety had a big spread leading up to the evening. David Cohen writes up Coppola’s life and work with quotes from longtime collaborator and editor Walter Murch, Tatiana Siegel pays tribute to Godard’s independent ways, Bob Verini dives into Eli Wallach’s wide range of roles and Caroline Frick Page makes sure Kevin Brownlow doesn’t get left out with a salute to his borderline obsessive sleuthing and restoration efforts.
Welcome 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.
AFI Fest has concluded, the first Academy Award ceremony of the year hits this weekend and we find ourselves in the thick of things. Between Galas, premieres, parties and the usual, there’s plenty to chew on, so let’s see what’s on the docket today…
• Jean-Luc Godard’s Honorary Oscar revives controversy over the director’s supposed anti-Semitism. [New York Times]
• Amy Kaufman sits down with “Love & Other Drugs” director Edward Zwick. [The Envelope]
• Edward Douglas chats up “For Colored Girls” star Thandie Newton. [Coming Soon]
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]
• James Rocchi previews the Toronto Film Festival with quotes from co-director Cameron Bailey and yours truly. [MSN Movies]
• Dave Karger writes up the festival’s top 10 Oscar contenders. [Oscar Watch]
• Regarding Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter,” Brad Brevet wonders if Warner Bros. is hiding a stinker. [Rope of Silicon]
• Jean-Luc Godard tells the Academy in a “cordial letter” that he may attend the Governor’s Awards if his schedule permits. AMPAS feels need to convey this to you via press release (because no one wants to look like a stood-up date). [Oscars.org]
• Launching a new season’s coverage, Steve Pond tries to make his September record 2-0 by predicting “The King’s Speech” for Oscar victory this year. [The Odds]
• David Poland reassesses the field and warns against getting caught up in festival euphoria. [Movie City News]
You might recall that, in the wake of auteur Jean-Luc Godard being tapped as on of the year’s Honorary Oscar recipients, the French New Wave pioneer turned up missing. Well it seems he may have been actively avoiding that phone call from AMPAS brass.
Godard’s girlfriend, Anne-Marie Mieville, spoke for him in an interview with The Australian, and she didn’t mince words:
He just told me, ‘It’s not the Oscars’…At first he thought it was going to be part of the same ceremony, then he realised it was a separate thing in November…Jean-Luc won’t go to America, he’s getting old for that kind of thing. Would you go all that way just for a bit of metal?
After deciding to give an Honorary Oscar to Jean-Luc Godard, it seems the Academy is having trouble tracking the auteur down:
The motion picture Academy has spent almost 24 frantic hours trying to reach the iconoclastic filmmaker (“Breathless”) to inform him he’s getting an honorary Oscar — and by late Wednesday they still hadn’t been able to find him.
Presumably he has no idea he’s received the honor.
So, you’d think that five competitive Oscars — three for writing, one apiece for producing and directing — would count as an elegant sufficiency of awardage for even the most revered talent in the industry.
Not so, apparently, in the case of a certain Francis Ford Coppola. In their wisdom, AMPAS brass have decided that Coppola needs a sixth statuette, this time the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for production excellence. I can only speculate that they still feel really bad about “Kramer vs. Kramer” beating “Apocalypse Now” in 1979. As well they should.
Of course, this news comes minutes after I opined in our speculation thread that honorary awards for previous Oscar champs tend to feel a little superfluous. Goes to show why I’m not an Academy member. Still, from that point of view, I must applaud the most outré of this year’s choices: Jean-Luc Godard.
Catch up with the idea behind this series here.
The Beatles weren’t the only British invasion happening around 1963 as “Tom Jones” took the big prize at the Academy Awards and British talent racked up no less than 9 of the 20 acting nominations. It also became one of the few comedies to win, slaying proud heavyweights like “Cleopatra” in the process.
Also worth mentioning is Sidney Poitier’s historic Best Actor win for “Lilies of the Field.” Normal business resumed the following year as the lavish musical, “My Fair Lady” swept the board, although Julie Andrews got a bit of sweet revenge by stealing the Best Actress award away from Audrey Hepburn, who was cast in the role Andrews made famous on stage.
Not winning an Oscar that year? You guessed it, Peter O’Toole. And maybe the biggest snub in Oscar history occured when none of the songs from “A Hard Day’s Night,” including the title number received a nomination for Best Song. Nice job Academy, it’s only The Beatles.
Sadly, this is looking like a second consecutive day of minimal film viewing — thanks to the scheduling of my morning roundtable interview with the “Blue Valentine” team of Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams and director Derek Cianfrance, I had to forgo this morning’s screening of Lee Chang-dong’s “Poetry,” of which I have rather high expectations — I hope to catch the repeat tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the interviews ran late enough to ensure I missed today’s hottest ticket: Olivier Assayas’s five-and-a-half hour “Carlos.” On the one hand, I’m obviously disappointed. On the other, 330 minutes is a pretty lavish gift of time, and it’s thanks to that that I’m able to write this very piece.
So, to every cloud a silver lining and all that — and there are a lot of clouds doing the rounds on this uncharacteristically damp and chilly day in Cannes. Perhaps the sun saw that monk-massacre movie everyone’s raving about, and couldn’t see the point in continuing.
On with the review catch-up.
Okay, so you’ve combed through the 19 films in the Competition lineup for Cannes 2010, and you still haven’t found much to get excited about? Fret not. You wouldn’t know it to read most media coverage of the festival, but the Competition is only one course at the Cannes buffet – and not necessarily the most filling.
Surrounding it are a host of alternative sidebars, both competitive and simply exhibitory, ranging from glossy out-of-competition Hollywood premieres to independent strands yielding more familiar names than the casual festival-watcher might expect. In today’s preview, I’ll pick out some potential highlights from the non-Competition hinterlands.
The ones you’ll hear the most about, of course, fall into the Out of Competition category, a refuge both for arthouse attractions that fell between the cracks in the selection process (chief among them, Olivier Assayas’s five-hour Carlos the Jackal study “Carlos”) and big-budget studio pictures seeking the prestige of a Cannes stamp without the risk of actually competing.
Here you’ll find the star-laden pair of Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” and Woody Allen’s “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” – both projects that have me worried for different reasons, but neither of which you really need me to remind you about.
I’m stilling a bit bummed from the news of director John Hughes’ sudden passing last week in New York. Even though he was years past his prime, these things come to mark the end of an era and signify an abrupt change that is, well, slightly unwelcome.
The tributes and remembrances have been coming fast and furious, of course. But my favorite take so far has come from the newly tube-bound A.O. Scott, who penned this surprisingly thoughtful dedication in The New York Times over the weekend.
In remembering the Hughes films that molded a generation, Scott goes so far as to compare the director to French New Wave titan Jean-Luc Godard for his adeptness at harnessing the attitude of the populace. As I wrote in my brief last week, “Hughes got an entire generation.”
I absolutely love this. It would appear that porn star Sasha Grey and highbrow film critic Glenn Kenny have more in common than just their mutual appearances in Steven Soderbergh’s “The Girlfriend Experience.” As this Rotten Tomatoes interview proves, Grey’s own cinematic taste is discerning, to say the least.
Asked to name her five favorite films, she rattles off a decidedly impressive — not to mention catholic — array of titles: Werner Herzog’s “Stroszek,” Catherine Breillat’s “Fat Girl,” John Cassavetes’ “A Woman Under the Influence,” John Carpenter’s “Escape from New York” and Jean-Luc Godard’s “Pierrot le Fou.”
The latter auteur is apparently something of an inspiration; Grey almost adopted the name of Godard muse Anna Karina as her stage moniker. Who knew? Here’s Grey on “Pierrot le Fou”:
To me, it’s just a very romantic story. It’s the ultimate, “let’s just drop everything and run away together” movie; the way the story was told was so unique. There’s one scene in particular where Anna Karina is on the beach, and she rolls over and she just says, “F— me.” To put that in a film in that time period — you just didn’t expect that to come out of her mouth. It’s titillating, I guess you could say.
Interesting to hear that Grey has a very different idea of what is “titillating” onscreen than what she actually practices. The lady continues to surprise.
Time is the enemy of all films as it erodes what was once exciting and original. Truly great movies are able to withstand the test of time, but I wonder if enough time has passed to take a look back at the 1990s cinema and make some decisions.
There was a major breakthrough in the decade with filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, who did not so much open the door for indies as he did kick it in and stomp on it with his “Pulp Fiction,” a gloriously acted, directed and written masterpiece about criminals in Los Angeles. When Godard spoke of making films with a guy, a girl and a gun, was this what he had in mind?
Though Tarantino has strugled to follow up his legendary 1994 effort with an equally powerful offering, there is little doubt he will, or at least could if he wanted to. (Though he keeps stopping and starting on his latest ambitious project.) After all, he is still growing as a director. And just look at Steven Spielberg, who for my money has grown artistically through the last 15 years more so than any other major filmmaker. It was as though “Schindler’s List” and the release of winning the Oscar set him free.
Anyway, for the record and argument, here are my ten best films of the 1990s:
1. “Pulp Fiction”
2. “Schindler’s List”
3. “Goodfellas”
4. “Unforgiven”
5. “Saving Private Ryan”
6. “The Sweet Hereafter”
7. “Magnolia”
8. “L.A. Confidential”
9. “The Shawshank Redemption”
10. “The Silence of the Lambs”
You?