I liked last night’s episode well enough but it couldn’t touch his 1996 stab. I blame the cast and writers more than anything, but as usual, Carrey put his heart into each bit, especially this one (which was kind of weak but mostly saved by his effort):
Tag: Jim Carrey
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Jim Carrey on the rise?
I’ve been pulling for Jim Carrey the whole way, I tell you. I was a massive fan in the 90s, starting with “the white guy on ‘In Living Color’” days, through the silly comedies critics loathed and the eventual Oscar-baiting (some of it actually worthy).The last decade has seen ups and downs for the actor. Things started nicely with box office smashes like “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “Bruce Almighty,” but things really wore thin on “Fun with Dick and Jane” and “Yes Man,” to say nothing of the abysmal “The Number 23.”
There was the peculiar pre-break-up breakdown earlier this year to cause concern, but then there are the career-topping performances in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and this 2010’s “I Love You Phillip Morris” to consider as well. The latter, I think, might be his best work to date.
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OSCAR TALK: Ep. 47 — The guilds so far, Steinfeld as lead vs. supporting, Scripter finalists, goings-on on the circuit, looking ahead to 2011
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.
2010 is finally in the rear view mirror. But the season isn’t over yet — not by a long shot. As we enter the new year, and the busiest frame of the circuit (awards-wise), we have tons to chew on today. Let’s see what’s on the docket…
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Carrey speaks out against homophobic bullying
I admit I haven’t yet got round to seeing the fact-inspired, gay-themed comedy “I Love You, Phillip Morris,” despite it having opened in the UK way back in the youthful glory days of March. (US audiences still have to wait another three weeks.) Reaction from my fellow Brit critics was politely tepid, and I largely forgot about the film until Kris’s highly enthusiastic response re-piqued my interest last month.Whether “Phillip Morris” — in which Jim Carrey plays a closeted con man who falls for his prison cellmate — works or not, its long-delayed (the film bowed at Sundance 2009, remember) US presence is welcome.
In addition to following “The Kids Are All Right” in edging homosexual romance into the mainstream, the film’s publicity run also employs Carrey’s to drive home social messages that, however obvious to most of us, still bear repeating.
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OFF THE CARPET: Leading men in the spotlight
About a year ago I took to examining the 2009 Best Actor race. The frontrunners for five slots seemed to be, in order, George Clooney, Colin Firth, Jeremy Renner, Morgan Freeman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Viggo Mortensen and Robert De Niro.A day later press members received their first invites to “Crazy Heart” screenings and were notified that the film would be released in 2009. Jeff Bridges hit the ground running and never let off the gas until he was past the finish line.
A year earlier we were looking at a pair of politico-biopic portrayals, either one of which would make a handsome winner: Frank Langella and Sean Penn. But we were fairly sure the latter would be on his way to the podium one more time.
But soon after, Mickey Rourke’s festival buzz caught serious fire and forged an atmosphere of doubt. The season’s narrative seemed to be changing, and yet the early buzz carried through and brought Penn his Oscar.
So that’s two drastically different directions – in as many years – that a lead actor race can take. Given the mid-October fulcrum shared here, let’s consider our perspective on the Best Actor category right now.
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WEEKLY WRAP: Supporting ladies gather, London opens, Hardy goes to Gotham
• Off the Carpet picked out the likeliest runners in a highly malleable Best Supporting Actress race.• We checked in on the Best Animated Feature race, where it seems we may be looking at a three-nominee field after all.
• Away from the awards beat, the week’s big news was the casting of Tom Hardy in Christopher Nolan’s next Batman venture.
• The Academy formally revealed the list of 65 contenders for Best Foreign Language Film.
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Carrey kills in ‘I Love You Phillip Morris’
I really can’t sing the praises of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa’s “I Love You Phillip Morris” enough. It’s a shame the elusive film, which has been sitting on a shelf waiting for a release for some time, has taken this long to see the light of day, because it’s a delightful romp with genuine dramatic hues. And it probably features Jim Carrey’s finest performance to date.The thing about Carrey — who I’ve admired through thick and through thin — is that there has always been something self-aware about his work. I think he has been magnificent in everything from “The Truman Show” to “Man on the Moon” to, certainly, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” And the latter is where he seemed to finally be settling into a groove as a thespian more than a performer.
Nevertheless, in virtually all of his dramatic performances to date (especially his work in the ill-received “The Majestic”), he seemed to be watching himself with a third eye, which inevitably held him back. In “I Love You Phillip Morris,” all of that is gone. He’s never felt so organic and believable as a character and he legitimately deserves to be a part of this year’s awards discussion.
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9/22 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Carrey’s Oscar potential, ‘Inception’ with a joystick, demanding to see ‘Beaver’
• Sasha Stone ponders Oscar possibilities for Jim Carrey in “I Love You Phillip Morris” as the hate-mongering right looks to block the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. [Awards Daily]• Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy reunite to celebrate 25 years of “The Breakfast Club.” Come on, Emilio. Too cool for school? (See what I did there?) [People]
• Christopher Nolan briefly mentions that he’d like to develop “Inception” as a video game (and if you have a film-related news feed then you’ve already seen plenty of webmasters climbing over themselves to re-report this). [Variety]
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Is Jim Carrey okay?
I asked that, sincerely, via Twitter yesterday after seeing Tweet after Tweet packed with sentiments such as:ETERNITY IS NOT A MEASURE OF TIME!IT’S THE DEPTH OF THIS MOMENT!HEAVEN IS HERE,NOW!FIND IT!FEEL IT!BOING BOING, EVERYBODY!BOING BOING!!! ;^)
Obviously a number of Carrey’s projects have crashed and burned as of late, most recently the indefinitely stalled release of “I Love You Phillip Morris,” but the guy also broke up with his lady, Jenny McCarthy (confession: all-time favorite Hollywood couple). On the whole, he just seems to be having some weird public breakdown.
Well, in sizing up Carrey’s career crossroads in a recent Moviefone column, Anne Thompson pegs the star’s professional conundrum thusly…
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The Great Performances: 2004
In Alexander Payne’s “Sideways,” Paul Giamatti gave the best performance by an actor in 2004, so said the New York Film Critics Circle, and how right they were. So why, why, why was the actor denied an Oscar nomination? Granted, it was a strong year, but his work was at the top of that heap and that snub was one of the biggest shocks of the year.Here was a man giving perhaps the finest performance in a comedic film since Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie.” His co-stars go were recognized, save for the equally deserving Sandra Oh, but the leading man, around whose performance the film stands, is snubbed. All I can remember saying is: “Wow.”
Certainly Jamie Foxx deserved the attention he received for “Ray” and Leonardo DiCaprio was astonishing in “The Aviator,” even though he drew some criticism for before too youthful in the role. Rubbish, I thought. He was superb, inhabiting Howard Hughes as he must have been in those days, brash, cocky, wealthy and willing to do anything that interested him.
Clint Eastwood was terrific in “Million Dollar Baby,” while Jim Carrey gave a wonderful performance in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” — a marvelous piece of acting, in fact. Equally fine, and dark, was Kevin Bacon as a pedophile struggling to start anew in “The Woodsman,” which was one of the most daring American films in a long time.
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12/8 Oscarweb Round-up
• Reed Johnson sits down with “Invictus” director Clint Eastwood and star Morgan Freeman. [Los Angeles Times]• Eric D. Snider digs into the different perspectives on what makes a decade’s end. [Eric D. Snider]
• Noah Forrest stumps for some low-lying contenders that need the help. [Movie City News]
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The Great Performances: 1999
1999 was a strange year. And it’s hard to believe a full decade has slipped past since. There were some great award-winning performances, to be sure, but there seemed to be just as many not nominated that certainly should have been.Ten years later, I remain stunned that Reese Witherspoon was not nominated for her brilliant work in “Election” as a pathologically ambitious, grasping social climber student doing anything it takes to head up the student council in Alexander Payne’s astute and black comedy.
Witherspoon won the National Society of Film Critics award for Best Actress, besting eventual Oscar, LAFCA and NYFCC champ Hilary Swank in “Boys Don’t Cry.” What made Witherspoon’s work so incredible was that we all must have known a Tracy Flick during our high school days, and the actress created such an accurate depiction.
Swank was a most deserving winner for her superb performance, winning over nominees, Annette Bening in “American Beauty,” Janet McTeer in “Tumbleweeds,” Julianne Moore in “The End of the Affiar” and Meryl Streep in “Music of the Heart” (perhaps the perennial Oscar favorite’s least accomplished nominated performance).
Bening’s performance was brilliant, she won the Screen Actors Guild award for it, and though there seemed to be a swell of support for her as Oscar night approached, there was no denying Swank for her career-altering work.
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REVIEW: “A Christmas Carol” (***1/2)
Filmmaker Robert Zemeckis’s allegiance to performance-capture technology these last few years has begun to wear thin for some. But the fascinating thing to note is an artist improving his craft before our very eyes over the course of three separate productions.“The Polar Express” in 2004 didn’t hit the mark for a great many, the “uncanny valley” of its characters’ glossy, somewhat lifeless expressions a considerable liability. But it was the beginnings of a new process Zemeckis was bound and determined to master.
“Beowulf” in 2007 was a big step forward, though the director perhaps got a little carried away with consistent, gimmicky elements meant to emboss the 3D aspect of the film. But you could see the improvement.
A typical complaint of the technology is that it comes off a bit arbitrary, or that it drowns out the work of actors. But the value of the process that is too hastily dismissed is that it allows an artist to tell a story in ways rather unfathomable under traditional filmmaking techniques.
With “A Christmas Carol,” a performance-capture adaptation of Charles Dickens’s classic tale, Zemeckis proves that point explicitly. And as far as refining his medium of choice goes, I have to say he’s close. VERY close.
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Kinda awesome, kinda weird official Jim Carrey site
Thanks to Cinematical for the tip here. Click the image below to enter the world of JimCarrey.com. Very…strange. Tons of Flash:
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On acting
What constitutes a great performance? What makes it something that puts it head and shoulders above the rest? What does an artist do to go to that level of art and achieve something that is both extraordinary and rare?Does the Academy, or rather the branch that nominates the actors, look as closely at performance as critics do? Is a performance considered great because it is an Oscar-winning piece of acting or nominated for one of the acting prizes?
An actor reads a script and likes both the character he or she is being offered and the story on the page. The actor accepts, and begins (we hope) work on the character. A year or so later, after shooting and cutting the film, on the screen in front of us the actor’s work will be seen and judged, commented on, praised, perhaps showered with accolades or negative comments, perhaps winning an Oscar or a Razzie, maybe becoming discussed for years to come, or forgotten moments after seeing it.
I doubt, seriously, that an actor accepts a role with any of that in mind. Perhaps I am overly idealistic, but I hope actors accept roles because they are trying (always) to evolve as an artist, to discover something different in their acting and themselves, and to do something they have never done before. Of the many actors I have interviewed over the years, most of them take a role based on something that speaks to them in the screenplay.
Meryl Streep once told that me she seeks something that “touches my soul” while Robert Duvall looks for a character that is “real, something that will challenge me, but he has to be real.” Tom Cruise said he “likes to try different things each time out, and hopes he does the part justice”, while Hilary Swank looks “for something that speaks to me, as though the character were whispering to me.”
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COMIC-CON: Disney showcases ‘Carol,’ ‘Alice,’ ‘Tron’
The first opening day studio panel has just concluded as Walt Disney Pictures brought Robert Zemeckis (“A Christmas Carol”), Tim Burton (“Alice in Wonderland”) and the “Tron: Legacy” principals to Hall H for a hefty three-dimensional dose.The “Christmas Carol” footage, which was an extended version of the Marley’s ghost sequence Disney has been showing for a few months, seemed to leave the audience dizzy with glee.
Patton Oswalt sat down with Zemeckis before the unveiling for a brief Q&A, leading by questioning the director’s reason for tackling the Charles Dickens classic after so many incarnations have already been filmed.
“If you read the actual novel, it’s very, very trippy,” Zemeckis said. “It’s very surreal and it’s really cool, and it’s very cinematic. I think we now have the filmmaking tools to film what Dickens wrote.”
Oswalt addressed the issue of “dead eyes” in the performance capture technique and a term applied to the uneasy visceral feeling it summons: “the uncanny valley.”
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Remembering 1999, the movie year that was
Last year I dedicated one of the first formal installments of The Lists to the films of 1999, one of the most electrifying slate of films to come along since Hollywood’s epic 1939 peak 60 years prior. There was an embarrassment of riches, truly, great work from the classic masters, eye-opening new work from future masters and everything in between.There was exceptional independent filmmaking on display as well as impressive studio offerings. Envelope-pushing was the norm while formulaic studies also seemed curiously refined. As the century drew to a close, it seemed, in some ways, that 1999 would come to represent everything that made the medium so special for its first 100 hundred years.
Over at Movie City News, Noah Forrest has dedicated a new column to the discussion. He can be forgiven, I think, for twisting in the winds of indecision when it comes to pegging a personal best film from 1999, but he also offers a number of other superlatives to honor the films and performances from the year.
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Yes, but you didn’t actually WIN
There are several reasons I’m bothered by this one-sheet for gay rom-com “I Love You Phillip Morris,” which has built up a fair amount of goodwill from its appearances at Sundance and Cannes this year.
