• Patrick Goldstein remembers 1939: “When 10 great Oscar nominees really meant 10 great nominees.” [The Big Picture]
• Nikki Finke talks to Sony honcho Amy Pascal in the wake of “The Social Network”‘s post-season stall. [Deadline]
• Marnie Hanel chats with “127 Hours” production designer Suttirat Larlarb, with sketches to boot. [Little Gold Men]
Very few of the 20 actors nominated for Oscars this year (if any) feel like egregious calls. As usual, the lead actor race is the most impressive, but the Best Supporting Actor slate isn’t too shabby, either. Each performance is masterful in its own way, and each serves its respective narrative to the fullest.
Two of the nominees this year are depictions of real life individuals and three are complete manifestations. But all five of the below actors owned their roles and then some, finding the right flow of eye-catching showmanship without dominating the narrative arc. And though some might argue, I’d say each is perfectly representative of “supporting” in the truest sense of the word.
The nominees are:
Christian Bale, “The Fighter”
John Hawkes, “Winter’s Bone”
Jeremy Renner, “The Town”
Mark Ruffalo, “The Kids Are All Right”
Geoffrey Rush, “The King’s Speech”
True to form, the Golden Globe nominations are a buffet of the good, the bad and the unconscionably hideous — with perhaps a touch more emphasis than usual on the third of those this year. I refer, of course, to those largely mortifying Comedy/Musical races, where HFPA voters solved the lack of obvious contenders this year by giving in to their randiest star-shagging urges.
Welcome to the Best Picture race, “Red,” “The Tourist” and (pauses to cross himself and say three Hail Marys) “Alice in Wonderland.” Or, you know, not. Congratulations on your double-shot of well-deserved Best Actor nominations, Mr. Depp. Or, you know, not. Sorry, Sally Hawkins, we liked you just fine in “Made in Dagenham,” but Angelina Jolie was obviously working harder in her movie. Or, you know, not.
Still, even as we strike down upon the HFPA with great vengeance and furious anger, I’m feeling pretty chipper about some things: reviled as it is by many, “Burlesque” is the kind of grandly gaudy goof-off that I’m happy to see livening up the category, while my biggest air-punch of the morning came when my actress of the year Emma Stone’s name was read out for “Easy A.”
• Calmed by the holiday spirit, this week’s Off the Carpet column took stock of the season, and gave thanks where appropriate.
• The Long Shot looked at the number of one-time rebel auteurs in this year’s Oscar race, and wondered if awards glory comes at the expense of creative edge.
• Life Without Oscar highlighted a pair of mid-90s majors, one from a filmmaker who wouldn’t go unacknowledged by the Academy for long.
• We interviewed Jeremy Renner, still basking in the glow of his first Oscar nod, and shooting for a second with “The Town.”
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.
Anne and I are in a bit of a food coma today, so the podcast was a bit all over the place. We free associate from topic to topic bringing in your questions where applicable, but there’s a lot to digest. Let’s see what’s on the docket today…
Warner Bros. has been looking for any and every opportunity to get Jeremy Renner and his well-liked supporting performance in Ben Affleck’s “The Town” out there as Oscar season begins to take hold. Yesterday he was making the press rounds just as screener copies of the film were hitting voters’ doorsteps.
The last time I saw Renner was on the C lot bus at the airport maybe a month after the Oscars put a bow on the long, rewarding haul of “The Hurt Locker.” He and that film’s co-star, Brian Geraghty, were coming back from some much-needed R&R and Renner told me at the time he was happily “unemployed.”
Of course, plenty has changed since then. He finds himself starring opposite Tom Cruise in the latest installment of a “Mission: Impossible” franchise that he may well take over, joining the giant ensemble of Marvel’s hugely ambitious cross-over film “The Avengers” and, of course, kicking up awards buzz once again for his work in “The Town.”
I’m not sure how I missed the memo, but in the past 48 hours, “The Town” apparently became an Oscar contender and nobody told me.
You may recall that when I posted my updated predictions on Sunday, I actually found room for Ben Affleck’s popular sophomore feature in the Best Adapted Screenplay category. I thought that a relatively off-center guess at the time, but now others, emboldened by strong reviews and excellent box office for the straight-ahead thriller, are going much further.
Just yesterday, both Deadline’s Pete Hammond and THR’s Gregg Kilday bestowed the “O” word upon “The Town,” with both reporters citing a wildly enthusiastic reception at the film’s Academy screening on Saturday. (I always take such screening reports with a pinch of salt — a film can play well without inspiring reverence — but I’m just passing along the message.) Kilday goes on to suggest that Affleck could benefit from the Academy’s noted fondness for heartthrob actors turned serious filmmakers.
Venice Film Festival
Many actors-turned-directors use their outings behind the camera to express something of themselves that they feel hasn’t been enabled by the filmmakers they’ve worked with thus far: personal passions or preoccupations, social or political responsibilities, alternative thespian workout plans or simply a craven desire for awards they haven’t been able to win on their day job.
Ben Affleck, however, is not drawn by any of these urges. Ben Affleck just wants to make movies. And with his sophomore feature “The Town” – a crisp, grown-up, tangily written thriller one might call “conventional” if studio entertainments this efficient weren’t so hard to come by these days – he further proves that he can make very good ones indeed.
Affleck’s directorial debut “Gone Baby Gone,” a solid Dennis Lehane adaptation with a fluffed denouement, arguably received a mite more praise than it warranted due to general surprise at the sheer professionalism on display. “The Town” is a more followed-through genre effort with fewer artsy flourishes, but is perhaps destined to be underrated instead by critics expecting Affleck to develop more of an auteur’s ambition.
I’ll get to today’s Marvel’s “Avengers” presentation later tonight, but the news worth conveying is that Mark Ruffalo and Jeremy Renner were on hand to be confirmed as Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk and Hawkeye, respectively. The announcement was made by Robert Downey Jr., who was here with Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson and director Joss Whedon, making for one hell of a photo op. Chew on that for now.
Well, we already knew Jeremy Renner had got the nod. And no surprise that many of his fellow acting nominees from this year’s Oscar race — Christoph Waltz, Mo’Nique, Carey Mulligan, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick among them — have now been granted Academy membership. (Lest you think that the invitation automatically follows a nomination, Saoirse Ronan only gets in now, two years after her nod.)
Other inclusions from Oscar’s class of 2009 include directors Lee Daniels and Juan Jose Campanella, writers Mark Boal, Geoffrey Fletcher, Neill Blomkamp, Nick Hornby and Tom McCarthy, cinematographers Barry Ackroyd and Christian Berger, musician T-Bone Burnett, editors Bob Murawski and Joe Klotz, sound designer Paul N.J. Ottosson and costumer Catherine Leterrier.
More thoughts, and the full list of 135 invitees, after the cut.
Every June, bloggers like to pick over the list of newly invited AMPAS members, seeing which recent nominees or long-serving industry stalwarts have been deemed good enough to vote for the Oscars. This year’s crop has yet to be announced, but at least one invitee has been named: Jeremy Renner. Thanks to Steve Pond for sharing this minor but happy tidbit.
The “Hurt Locker” star — still, I think, the most deserving of 2009’s Best Actor nominees — had his membership made public at Saturday’s Student Academy Awards, by AMPAS president Tom Sherak:
Introducing actor Jeremy Renner, Sherak … called him “the very talented – and now, brand new member of the Academy, Jeremy Renner.”
Beaming, Renner walked onstage and said, “Yeah, that does sound good, doesn’t it?”
Ah, Oscar lists — the gift that keeps giving. I’m not going to ape Kris’s impressive ranking of all the nominated features: we’d have the same #1, for starters, and we’re agreeing on far too many things these days. So here’s something else to play with.
I’ve had a number of emails asking me how I would rank the 10 Best Picture nominees, were I filling out the preferential ballot. I was happy to oblige, but then went a little crazy and applied the same process to all the other races. Hey, Oscar day comes but once a year: get your geek on. With that, my personal Oscar ballot, in full preferential order:
Best Picture
1. “The Hurt Locker”
2. “A Serious Man”
3. “An Education”
4. “District 9”
5. “Inglourious Basterds”
6. “Up in the Air”
7. “The Blind Side”
8. “Up”
9. “Avatar”
10. “Precious”
As we head into the big weekend of this year’s hotly anticipated Academy Awards telecast, I thought I’d toss this list up once more, broken down by film. We’ve added to it a bit since the nominees were announced.
And if you’d like to re-live the season so far, you can see how things have panned out at The Circuit.
“Avatar”
James Horner (Best Original Score)
“Bright Star”
Janet Patterson (Best Costume Design)
“Coraline”
Henry Selick (Best Animated Feature)
• Peter Knegt chats with Best Actor nominee Jeremy Renner. [indieWIRE]
• Oscar party kits, anyone? With bingo! [Oscars.org]
• “The Messenger” writers and Oscar nominees Oren Moverman and Alessandro Camon on their process. [MTV Movies Blog]
• The same old “keep your speech short” story we get every year. This time mentioning the backstage “thank you” cam. [Reuters]
• Pete Hammond chimes in from the ACE Eddie Awards, including some fiery comments from Mark Boal vis a vis Harvey Weinstein’s bold claims as of late. [Notes on a Season]
• Donna Freydkin catches up with Jeremy Renner. [USA Today]
The Best Actor category solidified pretty early on this year. I imagine the eventual line-up had slid into place as early as November, and after the Screen Actors Guild made things more official, the predictable race unfolded from there. What we have now is a typical mixture of seasoned veterans, solid industry players and newcomers to the awards season.
But things weren’t always so clear. Before a last-minute decision to release what, from afar, always appeared to be a potential awards vehicle for a respected star, things could have gone a number of ways. Sometimes jumping in late can be a boost, and sometimes it just seems like the obvious play.
The nominees are:
Jeff Bridges, “Crazy Heart”
George Clooney, “Up in the Air”
Colin Firth, “A Single Man”
Morgan Freeman, “Invictus”
Jeremy Renner, “The Hurt Locker”
• Is it really an honor just to be nominated? [CNN]
• Nathaniel Rogers notes that, despite the 10, we still ended up with a typical Oscar mixture of “a mix of message movies, epics, dramas and war films.” [The Film Experience]
• Of Apparition’s dueling period pieces, Anne Thompson wonders what went wrong for “Bright Star” and right for “The Young Victoria.” Her answer: momentum. [Thompson on Hollywood]