• Pete Hammond talks “I Am Love” with dark horse Best Actress contender Tilda Swinton. [Deadline]
• How DreamWorks Animation is using social gaming to boost “Megamind.” [Hollywood Reporter]
• Meet the characters of “Morning Glory.” [MakingOf]
Tag: Jon Landau
-
AMPAS welcomes 135 new members
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.
-
Jeremy Renner joins the club
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?”
-
2/25 Oscarweb Round-up
• Jamey Duvall catches up with Jeremy Renner and “Food, Inc.” director Robert Kenner. [Movie Geeks United!]• Louie Psihoyos asks what you would do with 45 seconds in the global spotlight. [Huffington Post]
• Dave Karger and Missy Schwartz on four underdogs they love. [Entertainment Weekly]
-
2/17 Oscarweb Round-up
• David Poland sits down with Mark Boal and, separately, Paul Ottosson and Ray Beckett to talk “The Hurt Locker.” [The Hot Blog]• Saoirse Ronan talks “The Lovely Bones” across the pond. [Daily Telegraph]
• Chris Jones profiles Roger Ebert, the man and his thumbs. [Esquire]
-
SANTA BARBARA: Bridges, Firth, Stone and producers
Things are winding down in Santa Barbara. Today is the last day of the fest, an all-day celebration of Jeff Bridges’s work. Screenings of “Thunderbolt & Lightfoot,” “Starman,” “The Contender” and “Crazy Heart” are lined up. I’ll be moderating a Q&A with the actor following the “Crazy Heart” screening at the Lobero Theatre.Yesterday it was the producers panel early in the afternoon, Patrick Goldstein moderating an enlightening discussion with Lawrence Bender, Mark Boal, Jon Landau, Lori McCreary, Ivan Reitman and Jonas Rivera. It was a good cross-section of perspectives on the work of a film producer, and certain a diverse mixture of budgets, economics and creative philosophy.
There was a moment when Landau proposed that it was a filmmaker’s responsibility to tackle gravitas and Bender took umbrage with that, positing that the real responsibility is to entertain. Obviously it depends on the circumstance and no filmmaker should be beholden to either ideology (as Boal, always the diplomat, shrewdly noted). But it was still funny watching Bender once again defending the frivolity of “Inglourious Basterds” in the face of loftier examinations from Landau, McCreary, etc.
-
Up, up and away
Back in a November installment of Off the Carpet, I noted that, by my measure, the films of 2009 reflected a particular theme. “I’ve always come back to one thought on this year’s slate of films: catharsis,” I wrote at the time. “With expected exceptions here and there, in one way or another, the bulk of what we’ve seen on screens in 2009 has very much been about emotional purging, bleeding out the past and, not to be too on-the-nose with the zeitgeist connotations, change.”I bring it up because it’s something I was reminded of while reading this Cristy Gosz piece at the LA Times, which treads similar waters but comes up with the idea that a number of the year’s films use travel as a metaphor for a character’s “visceral transformation” on the screen.
The piece takes quotes from Jason Reitman and Jon Landau (at least one more would have been nice) to buttress the thesis and ens up making a solid enough point. It’s always interesting to note similar thematic rhythms in a given film year, however irrelevant they might ultimately be.
-
OFF THE CARPET: All Globed out
As it turned out, the only celebration I made it to last night was Fox’s Globes after-party at Craft in Century City. Given that “Avatar” and “Crazy Heart” were two of three films to win more than one Globe (the other being Pixar’s “Up”), it kind of felt like the place to be.The early part of the evening was dominated by the “Crazy Heart” crew. I came in with Ryan Bingham and Scott Cooper, the latter dumbfounded at how certain celebs were getting his number to send well-wishes and praise for his little film. Bingham, meanwhile, told me he was at the bar when the Best Original Song category was announced, which explains why T Bone Burnett accepted solo. “Sorry for partyin’,” Bingham told me. “Story of my life.”
Burnett, it turns out, will be producing Bingham’s next album.
Meanwhile, you could follow the bursts of applause to locate Jeff Bridges, who took down the Best Actor in a Drama trophy when many thought George Clooney would register with the, shall we say, star-friendly HFPA. Then again, whoever said Bridges wasn’t a star? And judging by the standing ovation, his second of the weekend (everyone was on their feet Friday, too), you can expect his steamroll through the season to continue next weekend at the Screen Actors Guild Awards and then, ultimately: the Oscar. Interesting to note his lawyer advised him not to take the part, I assume thinking it wasn’t high enough on a scale of exposure.
And yet here we are.
-
10/9 Oscarweb Round-up
• Digital marketing consultant Chris Dorr points out missed online opportunities with “Bright Star.” [Thompson on Hollywood]• Steve Pond jumps on the “Up in the Air” train, says it renders the expectations irrelevant. [The Odds]
• Lying about seeing “The Godfather.” [The Guardian]
-
‘Avatar’ sequel a possibility, says producer Jon Landau
Okay, let me first connect the dots on how I came to this nugget: Le Film via /Film via MTV. Now that that’s out of the way…It goes without saying there will be a lot of people looking at the bottom line on “Avatar,” so any talk of a sequel is obviously silly until the film proves itself a success, which is what producer Jon Landau is getting at at the beginning of the following quote:
If the public likes Avatar, it’s a possibility. After all, here we are exploring the surface of the planet Pandora. The interior remains to be seen.
But now that it’s out there, clearly there seems to be more to this world than what Cameron ultimately put up on the screen. His initial treatment was pretty massive, after all. Who knows what he had to exclude? But I’ve been getting the vibe for a while now that vested interests would love to sequel-ize this thing. There are already toy tie-ins and a video game on the way, the obvious harbingers of a new franchise.
Anyway, we’ll keep an eye on it.