In Contention

Tag: Kathryn Bigelow

  • Kathryn Bigelow speaks up for ‘Winter’s Bone’

    Given that it’s currently fighting tooth and nail for a place in the Academy’s tight Best Picture lineup, scrappy fringe darling “Winter’s Bone” could use some high-profile cheerleaders as we head into the home stretch of voting. And as Steve Pond reports, it just got one, in the shape of reigning Best Picture and Director winner (and member of the Academy’s Board of Governors) Kathryn Bigelow.

    Bigelow, who has some idea how it feels to be the indie spoiler in the race, recently hosted two private screenings of the film — though she has no personal connection to it or to director Debra Granik. (This makes it slightly different to Julia Roberts’ recent Academy-targeted reception for former co-star Javier Bardem.) Speaking to The Wrap, she waxes lyrical on the film:

    I just think it’s a masterful film that deserves exposure – and if I can do anything to help it out, I’m happy to do it … I was fascinated to meet [Debra Granik], because the film is so perfectly crafted. The performances are extraordinary, Jennifer Lawrence is a star turn. And it’s got this prescient knowing, this confidence you feel watching a film that’s haunting and provocative. It’s just a magnificent film.

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  • What came after “the year of the woman?”

    This time last year, we were still in the thick of a long-running “year of the woman” narrative, as female filmmakers enjoyed critical, festival and box-office success, plus an unprecedentedly high profile in the awards season –culminating in that history-making Best Director win for Kathryn Bigelow (as well as a Best Picture nod for Lone Scherfig’s “An Education”).

    Once the dust had settled on Bigelow’s Oscar, however, the narrative tailed off a bit; with that particular blip on their conscience eased, the industry at large could go back to business as usual. Right?

    Well, perhaps not. Although there’s been no major name like Bigelow for the media to make into a wider cause or mascot, when put under the microscope, 2010 has proved a quietly successful year for female filmmakers after all. Although none have managed the box-office presence that Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers had in 2009, women in the indie sector have taken the baton from Bigelow and kept running.

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  • Cholodenko: Hollywood “lopsided” against female directors

    In Oscar-watching, causes can be seasonal things: there’s no guarantee that what the industry and the media jointly declare a crucial issue one year will last to the next. In 1991, “Beauty and the Beast” earned applause for breaking the animation ceiling in Best Picture, but it took 18 years (and a format change) for the Academy to go there again. The year after voters redressed the balance by handing both their lead acting Oscars to African-American actors in 2001, not a single black face featured in either category. Every year has its own story.

    We might well be learning that again this year. In many quarters, 2009 was dubbed “the year of the woman” as a string of successes for female filmmakers culminated in Kathryn Bigelow’s history-making Oscar win.

    This year, however, that level of cheerleading has been largely absent, despite another strong year for women in the field: Debra Granik and Sofia Coppola were the toast of Sundance and Venice, respectively, box-office titan Pixar announced its first female-helmed feature and Lisa Cholodenko’s “The Kids Are All Right” was the crossover arthouse story of the summer.

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  • Kathryn Bigelow elected to AMPAS Board of Governors

    Well, this is a pretty nifty ascent for a director whose seven previous features received not a sniff of an Oscar nod between them. Four months after becoming the first female Best Director winner in Oscar history, Kathryn Bigelow has been named one of three first-time electees to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Board of Governors.

    Joining Bigelow are two other previous Oscar champs: documentarian Michael Moore (I guess AMPAS brass don’t hold a grudge over that acceptance speech) and one of the greatest editors in the history of the medium, Anne V. Coates (“Lawrence of Arabia,” “Out of Sight”). Congratulations all round.

    To give you an idea of the exclusivity of the honor, AMPAS has only 43 Governors in total — three for each of their 15 branches (which the exception of Makeup, which has a single representative). Bigelow therefore joins Martha Coolidge and Edward Zwick in leading the Directors branch. Interesting that this long male-skewing branch should now have two female Governors.

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  • Michael Moore on ‘Hurt Locker’ politics

    Michael MooreOne of the most common lines (usually used in praise) on our newly-crowned Best Picture winner is that it’s deliberately apolitical, taking no sides in the Iraq conflict as it aims simply to present the soldier’s experience on the ground. Kathryn Bigelow herself dismissed that as something of a misconception in a recent interview with Steve Pond:

    I guess my feeling is that graphic portrayals of innocent children killed by bombs, and soldiers incapable of surviving catastrophic explosions … I think that’s pretty clear. And then also, to add to that, the movie opens with a quote, “The rush to battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” So it’s definitely taking a very specific position.

    Blogging last night on the Oscar race, Michael Moore says much the same thing — less tacitly, of course, than Bigelow:

    The truth is “The Hurt Locker” is very political. It says the war is stupid and senseless and insane. It makes us consider why we have an army where people actually volunteer to do this. That’s why the right wing has attacked the movie. They’re not stupid — they know what Kathryn Bigelow is up to. No one leaves this movie thinking, “Whoopee! Let’s keep these wars going another 7 years!”

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  • The gift, not the wrapping

    Kathryn Bigelow in The Hurt LockerLike a Tiffany engagement ring presented in a Happy Meal box, sometimes the most beautiful gifts come in really cruddy wrapping. And such was the case with last night’s Academy Awards ceremony.

    On the one hand, the show managed to delight (if not surprise) me with one of the unlikeliest sweeps in Oscar history, making history in more ways than one — and for a film that just happened to be my favorite U.S. release of the year. I can’t say that about every (or any) Oscar show I’ve watched in my lifetime. On the other hand, this remarkable turn of events was merely the silver lining to a confounding debacle of a ceremony, one of the most lazily conceived, sloppily staged and lumpenly paced efforts I’ve witnessed in two decades of Oscar-watching.

    I’d dearly love to bring a sunnier perspective on the matter than that of Kris, but just as we were in near-complete agreement on our predictions (save for, ahem, Best Animated Short), I can only echo every gripe he expressed in last night’s wrap-up. Unlike many others, I wasn’t the greatest fan of Bill Condon and Laurence Mark’s streamlined, revue-style reboot of the Oscars last year, but it had a tonal consistency and moved at a clip that last night’s show could only dream of.

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  • If YOU had a ballot

    Colin FirthTonight’s the big night, and as we close in on the final hours of the 2009-2010 film awards season, I thought I’d offer up this list (another one!), which reflects how you, the readership, would like the night’s festivities to go.  These are the results of the daily polls that accompanied our Oscar Guide series during the second phase of the season.  Thanks for participating.

    Best Picture: “The Hurt Locker”
    Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”
    Best Actor: Colin Firth, “A Single Man”
    Best Actress: Meryl Streep, “Julie & Julia”
    Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds”
    Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique, “Precious”
    Best Adapted Screenplay: “Up in the Air”
    Best Original Screenplay: “Inglourious Basterds”

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  • Ranking the categories

    The Hurt LockerAh, 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”

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  • Oscar day nuggets: Bigelow and Boal

    Kathryn Bigelow and Mark BoalPlenty of interesting Oscar-related floating around the web on the last day for any such discussion, but two pieces related to tonight’s principal “Hurt Locker” hopefuls stand out.

    Kathryn Bigelow’s likely win tonight will probably prompt some over-optimistic speculation in some quarters about the future of female directors in Hollywood. With that in mind, the L.A. Times’s Rachel Abramowitz seeks to keep those hopes in check with some sobering stats of present-day industry inequality that one Oscar can’t fix on its own:

    Although successful female directors appear to have gained higher profiles of late, the actual percentage of top films directed by women has remained static for 25 years at 7% to 9%, according to an annual study of women writers, directors, and producers of the 250 top-grossing films of the year by the Center for the Study of Women in Film and Television at San Diego State University.

    For instance, neither Warner Bros., the world’s largest studio, nor Paramount Pictures hired a single female director last year, while Walt Disney Studios and Universal Studios hired just one apiece. No woman has ever been hired to direct an event picture with a budget of more than $100 million, the kind of film most valued by the Hollywood machine.

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  • Guy’s final Oscar predictions

    Christoph Waltz in Inglourious BasterdsAnd so it comes to this: more months than I care to count of watching, thinking, sweating, fretting, writing, deleting and occasionally not caring boil down to single predictions in 24 categories. There’s a lot to get through here, and I’m not going to delay things with an introduction.

    Well, except for this one caveat — apology, even — of sorts. As you wade through my list, you may notice that my predictions look quite similar to those of one Mr. Kris Tapley. Remarkably similar, in fact. Unhealthily similar, even.

    What can I say? Short categories aside (which were subject to further research), the following predictions haven’t wavered in my mind since nomination day, over a month ago — and I see no compelling reason to go out on a limb this year. Sometimes great minds think alike. Frequently wrong, but alike nonetheless.

    With that, my predictions, preferences and rationales continue, category by category, after the cut.

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  • Nut up or shut up: final predictions

    Jeremy Renner in The Hurt LockerAs I look over my final predictions for tomorrow night’s Oscar ceremony, I notice that I’ve made only one change — in the Best Live Action Short category — since taking my initial stab the day of the nominations.  And I haven’t made a single change since I started the Oscar Guide series.

    Am I that confidant in my picks?  Not really.  It’s a very unpredictable year all of a sudden (the AP chimes in on that here), even if conventional wisdom would have us believe much of this is a foregone conclusion.  But nothing has really moved the needle during the bulk of phase two and the one controversy that popped up may not be as detrimental as some suspect.  Regardless, I’m frankly bracing myself for having an off year.

    And it kinda sucks because I set a pretty high bar for myself last year, a personal best, as I nailed down a web-leading 21 of the 24 categories (23 of 24 if you count alternates).  That included a call for “Departures” that left me exposed to plenty of “You’re just trying to be different” heckling.  Ahem.

    If I even approach those numbers this time around, I’ll certainly be surprised.  I frankly don’t expect to hit 21 ever again, but who knows?  Many areas of this race are coming right down to the wire.

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Directing

    (from left) Lee Daniels and Gabourey Sidibe on the set of PreciousThis year’s Best Director category has stirred a media frenzy for featuring, along with Best Picture, a face-to-face duel frequently dubbed “the battle of the exes.” Unfortunately the desire to tout that headline has clouded the discussion of the films, their merits and the actual accomplishments of those at the helm. But who cares about that stuff?

    Seriously, though, this could be a milestone occasion for two of the filmmakers in question, a return to glory for two other former awards season players and is already  the second notch on an exciting young filmmaker’s belt as he continues to make his mark on the industry. Not a bad cross-section.

    The nominees are:

    “Avatar” (James Cameron)
    “The Hurt Locker” (Kathryn Bigelow)
    “Inglourious Basterds” (Quentin Tarantino)
    “Precious” (Lee Daniels)
    “Up in the Air” (Jason Reitman)

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  • Bigelow does 60 Minutes

  • BAFTA predictions

    Carey Mulligan in An EducationEnjoying a curious position this year as the only televised awards ceremony between the Academy Award nominations announcement and Oscar night itself, the BAFTAs will no doubt be relishing their precursor status even more than usual.

    Since they made the move to precede the Oscars nine years ago, BAFTA hasn’t slavishly anticipated the bigger awards (they’ve matched the Academy’s Best Picture pick only three times), but they have sometimes been at the crest of new waves in voting: late surges of momentum for the likes of Marion Cotillard, Tilda Swinton and Alan Arkin all made their first appearance on BAFTA night.

    This year, however, I’m suspecting that the Brits will voluntarily isolate themselves from the Oscar-influencing game. Never ones to shy away from patriotic voting, BAFTA has handed its top prize to a homegrown production for three years running – it’s highly likely that Oscar longshot “An Education,” which leads the nomination count with two U.S. productions, will make it four.

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  • ‘A Prophet,’ ‘Fish Tank’ lead London Critics’ awards

    Best British Actor winner Colin Firth at the London Film Critics' Circle awardsThe BAFTA Awards take place on Sunday, but last night the UK’s premier critics’ body had their say at the London Film Critics’ Circle Awards. And what we learned is what the London Film Festival, Sight & Sound and even the BAFTA longlists already taught us: the Brits really, really like “A Prophet.”

    Busting out of the foreign-language ghetto, Jacques Audiard’s Oscar-nominated prison gang saga took the night’s top award, Film of the Year. That was its lone award of the night, however — Kathryn Bigelow continued her steamroll through every directing honor in sight, while they democratically handed what would have been a rather superfluous foreign-language prize to “Let the Right One In.”

    The night’s biggest winner, meanwhile, was another of my pet films: “Fish Tank” took four awards in the British categories, including Best British Film and acting honors for Katie Jarvis and Michael Fassbender. Following Bigelow, Andrea Arnold made it an all-female affair in the directing categories.

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  • 2/15 Oscarweb Round-up

    Mia Wasikowska in Alice in Wonderland• Were some details of the Oscarcast revealed in a recent promotional video? [Gold Derby]

    • Rosanna Greenstreet sits down with “The Last Station” star Christopher Plummer. [The Guardian]

    • “Alice in Wonderland” cinematographer Dariusz Wolski complains about green screen technology. [Hero Complex]

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  • Bill Paxton on Cameron, Bigelow

    Bill PaxtonActor Bill Paxton always seems to give Kevin Bacon a run for his money in the “six degrees” department.  I’ve always joked that if they ever wanted to nut up and do “Aliens vs. Predator vs. Terminator,” Paxton had better be in it since he’s the common thread throughout.

    That ubiquity has, of course, led him to work with a number of talented filmmakers, including the two at the center of this year’s Best Director showdown.  For James Cameron Paxton has appeared in everything from “The Terminator” to “True Lies,” while he starred in Kathryn Bigelow’s 1987 vampire western “Near Dark.”

    The actor stopped by Jimmy Fallon last night (which I was only watching because it was background noise — I try to steer clear of frat boy hour) and Fallon asked about working with the two of them, especially Cameron.  It’s not earth-shattering stuff but it makes for nice viewing on an idle Wednesday.  Although it’s too bad there was no “Reach!” inquiry.  Have a look after the jump.

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  • SANTA BARBARA: Bigelow honored as Outstanding Director of the Year

    (from left) Andrew Davis, Kathryn Bigelow and Roger Durling at the 25th annual Santa Barbara International Film FestivalAs if another accolade was necessary at this point, Kathryn Bigelow was in town this evening to accept SBIFF’s Outstanding Director of the Year award.  The one-two punch of Bigelow here and James Cameron for the fest’s Modern Master honor made for, again, quite the prescient choices from festival director Roger Durling in the fall.

    The retrospective was emceed by Durling, which was endearing.  Two incredibly shy personalities on the stage at one time.  Lots of “ums” and “uhs,” but they caught their rhythm some time around the “Near Dark” discussion, which is when Durling said Bigelow first caught his attention.  He said he was fascinated by how Bigelow would take genres and deconstruct them, paint with different, darker shades.  Like melding a biker film with film noir in “The Loveless,” or attempting a western through the tools of the horror genre in “Near Dark.”

    Of course, Bigelow’s big achievement this year is no exception to this feature of her work.  It has long been a point of discussion that “The Hurt Locker” isn’t a typical war film, but a combination of suspense, action and, indeed, deep dramatic hues.  And like all of her work, an intense focus on character is at the fore.

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