In Contention

Tag: Precious

  • SAG on the way

    Meryl Streep at the 2009 Screen Actors Guild AwardsSaturday night the Screen Actors Guild Awards will go down, televised on TNT, and I can’t really believe the race is THIS sewn up.  Right down the line, most are calling it for Bridges, Streep, Waltz and Mo’Nique.  There are some differences of opinion on the ensemble performance category, but for the most part, those four Oscar favorites are the expected victors with the guild.

    The last time SAG went four-for-four with the Academy’s ultimate winners was 2004.  The last time before that was 1997, which actually featured a tie between Gloria Stewart and Kim Basinger, so it’s a bit less definitive.  And in point of fact, those are the only times things have matched up.

    The reason for this is fairly simple.  The Screen Actors Guild (a 90,000-member body of people) votes for the winners at large, while the nominees are decided upon by a roughly 2,000-member nominating committee, 1,200 of them based in Los Angeles.  The nominating committee obviously sees more of the contenders than the vast membership.  For that reason, generally speaking, you can expect the unexpected.

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  • Paramount and Lionsgate do it up pre-Globes

    Tobey Maguire in BrothersThere will be a number of post-Golden Globes parties tonight — Summit, Warner Bros., Fox, Weinstein, etc. — but a pair of studios did it up Saturday night in honor of their nominees.

    First at the Chateau Marmont, Paramount toasted its stable with a star-studded, paparazzi-snapping affair.  Actually, it wasn’t the least bit comfortable.  Talk about over-invited.  In the inner sanctum, surrounded by Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Benicio Del Toro, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick, Mike Tyson (who wasn’t on the list, but would you turn him away?), George Clooney, Chris Pine, Tobey Maguire, etc., breathing, let alone moving more than two inches, was a chore.  Jason Reitman was on hand early on but had to take off for the LAFCA gala before long.  Luckily, he missed that fire hazard.

    I got a few seconds with Farmiga, who was excited to say hello to Scorsese again.  Anne Kendrick and her beau Edgar Wright smartly made their way to a secondary room at one point where we had a nice chat.  Wright was, of course, being hit up by “Scott Pilgrim” queries left and right.  From the youngsters, that is.  The crowd was largely, shall we say, octogenarian.  Plenty of HFPA and Academy members scattered throughout.  And Kendrick, bless her heart, didn’t even want to talk about the “O-word.”

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  • Iowa critics spring for ‘Up in the Air,’ ‘Crazy Heart’

    Best Picture
    “Up in the Air”

    Best Director
    Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”

    Best Actor
    Jeff Bridges, “Crazy Heart”

    Best Actress
    Gabourey Sidibe, “Precious”

    Check out the rest at The Circuit.

  • ‘Avatar,’ ‘Star Trek’ among WGA nominees

    Michelle Rodriguez in AvatarAnd, there we are. “Avatar” gets a nomination for best writing from a 10,000 member-strong guild and plenty will find reason to argue with it. But let’s look at the rest.

    “The Hangover” managed to get a nomination in the original screenplay field in the wake of a number of eligibility rulings on some top contenders. I’m most excited for Scott Cooper and “Crazy Heart,” because I’m getting the feeling he might turn this and his USC Scripter bid into something tangible for Oscar consideration. “District 9,” of course, was not eligible here and is still a threat, ditto “An Education,” but the race is a little more interesting now.  Especially when you consider Nora Ephron (also nominated today), who I’ve always felt was a threat with the Academy for navigating two sources and making some entertaining sense of it all.

    Elsewhere it’s the usual suspects, except for the appearance of “Star Trek” in the adapted ranks.  Yes, the writers of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” are WGA nominees.  But in my view, they deserve the pat on the back for this film, a high octane entertainment that was smartly conceived and remains one of the true gems of 2009.

    Check out the nominees after the jump.

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  • African-American critics’ group splits after voting scandal

    Gabourey Sidibe in PreciousYou may well disagree, but I’ve never really understood the point of awards bodies that define themselves along racial lines.

    Perhaps I’m missing the point, but when an African-American critic like Armond White is head of the NYFCC, or a film like “Precious” is receiving mainstream awards attention, the existence of a group like the African-American Film Critics’ Association seems a little self-marginalizing to me.

    In any case, The Carpetbagger’s Melena Ryzik reports that the stature of the group has taken a knock after a number of AAFCA members left its ranks to form a rival group, the Black Film Critics’ Circle. This follows dissent within the group after AAFCA president Gil Robertson IV allegedly rigged the Best Actress vote to deny top vote-getter Gabourey Sidibe, in favor of “American Violet” star Nicole Beharie.

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  • Mo’Nique: “The performance is done.”

    Mo'NiqueIt’s interesting that David Carr’s interview with Mo’Nique in today’s New York Times appears on the main page of the paper’s website — there isn’t much more to say about her, shall we say, passive campaign for “Precious,” but it’s clearly become one of the dominant stories of the awards season.

    Not that she needs much of a boost, but I think this interview helps her cause: where some industry wags have made a shrill fuss over the actress’s reluctance to play the publicity game, portraying her as egotistical or ungrateful, with Carr she put forth her perspective in very rational, matter-of-fact terms:

    “Anytime I’ve been given an award, it has been because of the performance; what else goes into it?” she said, appearing genuinely mystified. “Look, it makes me appreciative any time someone says they may want to honor your performance. I’m appreciative at any talk in reference to any award, but there’s not much I can do about it now. The performance is done.”

    “I also have this show called ‘The Mo’Nique Show’ where I tape six shows a week. I have twins who are 4, so I have babies, I have an amazing husband and a son who’s 19. What I can participate in I’m more than happy to.”

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  • WGA on the way

    (from left) Quinton Aaron and Sandra Bullock in The Blind SideWith the DGA, SAG and PGA out of the way, it’s on to the fourth and final of the major guild announcements: the Writers Guild of America, which announces Monday.

    The WGA has seemingly instituted a slash and burn campaign on a number of the year’s hopefuls this season.  Go here, here and here for the details.  Alright, “slash and burn” isn’t really accurate.  If WGA brass wants to play “in the club,” that’s their prerogative.  No sense getting worked up over it.  But suffice it to say, the field is fairly wide open now and, at the end of the day, no one should really bother putting too much prognosticative stock into what we get from the guild next week, seeing as the AMPAS writers branch is likely to go with a number of the fallen.

    Still — it’s fun to guess at the picks, no?

    From where I stand there are still 10 really decent bets, and maybe five or six more that wouldn’t surprise me if they made it through.  Best Picture contenders “The Hurt Locker,” “Precious” and “Up in the Air” are probably the easiest picks of the bunch, but what about the other seven?

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  • Mariah Carey lit up in Palm Springs

    Harmless, but she’ll probably get derided here and there.  I laughed.  What’s more interesting is the fact that I don’t think I’ve ever seen an awards presenter stick around and add commentary to an award recipient’s acceptance speech.

    Anyway, have a look:

    And here’s the AP story declaring this news.

  • USC Scripter nominations announced

    Cover of Crazy Heart by Thomas CobbThe USC Libraries has announced its list of contenders for the Scripter prize, which honors adapted screenplays, their writers and the source materials and authors that spawned them.

    So, with that in mind, I’m not sure how the “District 9” nod is justified here in the slightest, given the stated intention of the award.* But that’s another feather in the film’s cap regardless.  It could be picking up a big head of steam here.  More on that when we preview the DGA nominations tomorrow.

    A big congrats to Scott Cooper for finally getting some love of his own this Oscar season. I had a hunch he might show up here. Maybe this can help turn the corner for a film too many are quick to chalk up as “performance only.”

    I guess we can probably expect Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner to walk away with the award, but as always, it’s a refreshingly out-of-step line-up from the USC Libraries. Fight on.

    Anyway, check out the nominees, via press release, after the jump.

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  • December winner predictions, part 2: Yours and mine

    Melanie Laurent in Inglourious BasterdsAs I like to do when Kris boldly throws out a set of winner predictions, I thought I’d follow up with an indication of which way our readers are leaning — as well as an update of my own previous guesses.

    The conclusion: well, what a difference seven weeks makes. Of course, it’s inevitable that things would go topsy-turvy in this of all months, when multiple question marks have been answered — some becoming unexpectedly insistent exclamation marks in the process.

    Still, I’m surprised by how dramatically my own picks have shifted, largely due to my overestimation of “Precious”‘s pop-culture sway, and my misplaced hunch that “Avatar” would disappoint. (Well, it disappointed me, but that’s hardly the deal-breaker I’d like it to be.) Today, I’m not even predicting a nomination for the man I (rather rashly) backed to win Best Director last month … such is the fickle nature of the game.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: A spade is a spade

    Sam Worthington in AvatarOscar ballots are being mailed to AMPAS members today.  So now is the time to pay attention to the buzz, as most ballots are returned within the first couple of weeks (which says everything you need to know about how much time and care is put into the process by voters).

    However, it’s somewhat amazing to me that not much has shifted in the scheme of things since the last proper Off the Carpet column.  Of course, there is “Avatar” (which I’ll get to in a second), but otherwise there are just a bunch of non-issues rearing their heads (like “Michael Jackson’s This Is It” being in the conversation, for instance, or the perpetuated Mo’Nique/bad press angle).  Chalk it up to boredom.

    The only significant note is “Nine”‘s box office whiff, which accompanied an entirely dismissive response from critics and has left many wondering whether it will be able to push through into the 10.  Passion is still necessary, despite the wider net, and it’s becoming more evident than ever that getting voters to check the film off as a #1-3 choice is going to be a chore.

    The most appreciated aspects, of course, are the below-the-line achievements (which I still think could be enough to get it across) and Marion Cotillard’s “why-the-heck-have-they-been-campaigning-for-lead?” performance.  Rightly so.  Maybe The Weinstein Company can switch gears like Fox Searchlight did with Maggie Gyllenhaal and find one more nod in the major categories.

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  • December winner predictions

    Meryl Streep in Julie & JuliaI gave this an initial stab nearly two months ago.  I thought I might as well re-visit things.  (And hopefully there won’t be anyone getting their panties in a twist over something as harmless as this.  You know who you are.)

    Best Picture: “Avatar”
    Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”
    Best Actor: Jeff Bridges, “Crazy Heart”
    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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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Precursor avalanche, best of 2009

    Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker• Kris wrapped up 2009 with his take on the year’s best films, also offering his own preferred nominees and winners in a range of categories. (I’ll chime in next week.)

    • “Up in the Air” led this year’s pack of Golden Globe nominees.

    • It also joined “Precious” and “Inglourious Basterds” at the head of the pack in the SAG nominations — while missing out in their top race.

    • “The Hurt Locker” emerged as this year’s critics’ favorite, earning top honors from a host of groups, including the two biggest: the NYFCC and the LAFCA.

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  • Best in show: the year in superlatives

    Robert Downey Jr. in Sherlock HolmesWrapping up my perspective on the year today, a personal list of superlatives, Oscar categories and other silly nonsense.

    Swing back around on Monday for the ultimate wrap-up, my list of the best films of the decade.

    Best Picture
    “A Serious Man” (Focus Features)

    Best Director
    Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, “A Serious Man”

    Best Actor
    Sharlto Copley, “District 9”

    Best Actress
    Gabourey Sidibe, “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”

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  • ‘Air,’ ‘Basterds,’ ‘Precious’ lead the way with SAG

    Diane Kruger in Inglourious BasterdsThere wasn’t much in the way of a surprise with this year’s Screen Actors Guild announcement.  The nods that are least likely to translate to Oscar, if I were a betting man, are Diane Kruger’s supporting actress bid for “Inglourious Basterds” and (I guess I just have a feeling) Matt Damon, supporting for “Invictus.” The rest seem like safe bets on down the line.

    I wouldn’t read too much into the ensemble snub of “Up in the Air,” though it’s curious to nominate three actors from the film and then ignore it in that field.  The ensemble category is also where “Nine” got its expected attention, though Penelope Cruz also showed up in supporting for the film.  The BFCA, you’ll recall, went for Marion Cotillard instead.

    “Precious,” “Inglourious Basterds” and “Up in the Air” had the most nominations, with three apiece.  I would have expected “An Education” to have that designation, too, but somehow Alfred Molina was ignored.  Maybe that won’t be the case with Oscar, maybe it will.

    On to the next thing.  Check the full list of nominees after the jump.

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  • If I had a ballot

    Sam Worthington in AvatarEvery year I like to keep track of personal favorites throughout the Academy’s designated categories (plus one of my own addition, Best Ensemble). At the end of the year, my “if I had a ballot” post is the result.

    Of course, for the most part, I follow Academy designations here. If something is ruled ineligible, I play along. It’s not that often that something like that is egregious anyway, though the music branch consistently tests my resolve on the matter.  In years past I’ve tried to make it an AMPAS/critics’ awards hybrid kind of thing, but this makes it easier.

    I know, I know.  “Why don’t you just list what you think should be nominated, the rules be damned?”  Because then I couldn’t call it “If I had a ballot?”  But I guess I’m contradicting myself by adding a category.  I don’t know.  I’m just trying not to be too lamely definitive or authoritative with something like this, I suppose.

    Anyway, I’m also abstaining from offering up a list of foreign language nods. Firstly, I feel it’s been a rather weak year in general there, but I also haven’t made my way fully through the list of submissions either. So I’ll address that another time.  The same goes with he doc features, as I’d rather push through more of the eligible titles first.

    This year the top 10 is the Best Picture field, obviously, and from there, I toss my two cents into a variety of discussions. Here’s what I came up with…

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  • ‘Wild Things,’ ‘Up in the Air’ lead Chicago crix nods

    Where the Wild Things AreNormally, I’m against critics’ groups bothering with nominations. Just cut the crap and give us your picks — you’re not that anticipated, after all.

    But I’ll make an exception this year for the Chicago Film Critics Association, if only because it allows them to shine a light on some names that have been lost amid the consensus of critics’ prizes so far. There are some pleasantly left-field picks here, beginning with a co-leading six bids, Best Picture and Director included, for “Where the Wild Things Are.”

    “A Serious Man” also makes the Best Picture cut, while “Precious” is a surprising omission. (Is it losing momentum?) Hearty cheers, too, for the mentions of Matt Damon (for the right film, this time) and — finally — “Bright Star”‘s Abbie Cornish and Greig Fraser. Still no Tilda Swinton, but I’m letting that one go.

    Full list of nominees (props to AwardsDaily) after the cut.

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  • Quentin Tarantino names ‘Star Trek’ the year’s best

    Quentin TarantinoOf what he’s seen, that is. He hasn’t seen “Avatar,” “The Lovely Bones” or, um, “Invicitus” (his pronunciation). And his film is “out of it,” he says.  Not mentioning it.  Thanks for being stand-up like that, Quentin.

    Anyway, here’s the list:

    1. “Star Trek”
    2. “Drag Me to Hell”
    3. “Funny People”
    4. “Up in the Air”
    5. “Chocolate”
    6. “Observe and Report”
    7. “Precious”
    8. “An Education”

    And the video, courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision blog, after the jump. (He says he needs to see a few more films again before fully committing, FYI.)

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