• Steve Pond lays it all out for “The Descendants” winning Best Picture, trying to make good on his two-year streak (though at least he had seen the other two before making those calls). [The Odds]
• At Telluride, meanwhile, Sasha Stone laid down a cool 20-spot on Viola Davis taking Best Actress. (I’m a witness.) [Awards Daily]
• That Cannes hole just wasn’t deep enough for Lars Von Trier. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Anne Thompson talks to “Warrior” stars Joel Edgerton and Tom Hardy and director Gavin O’Connor. [Thompson on Hollywood]
• Lucas Kavner on the debt “The Help” owes to social media for its box office staying power. [Huffington Post]
• Louis Virtel looks shines a light on five female roles that seem to have the right Oscar stuff. [Movieline]
I have to say, even though the pieces were there and I tend to respond overwhelmingly to father/son dramas, I was really surprised at how little I felt emotionally while watching Gavin O’Connor’s “Warrior.” And O’Connor really excels at this stuff, in general, for me. But it didn’t come together this time.
I feel pretty much alone here because the film has been affecting a number of critics and press members for the past month or so now and the room I was in tonight was all energy and tears, right there with it. But I don’t know, there is something in the fabric of the writing that kept me at arm’s length.
So Nick Nolte’s Paddy Conlon character was an asshole father to sons Tommy (Tom Hardy) and Brendan (Joel Edgerton). I know this because I’m being told over and over and over again. I know it, but I don’t feel it. Being presented with a thousand-day sober man looking to make amends really shoots that in the foot and you start wondering why his kids can’t just stop being pricks. Something, anything, that would have keyed us into their perspective would have gone a long way.