• The Academy honored legends Francis Ford Coppola, Eli Wallach, Jean-Luc Godard and Kevin Brownlow at the annual Governors Awards.
• Kris attended a Summit Entertainment holiday party, chatting with the talent in attendance.
• Disney revealed a clever plan geared toward presenting “Toy Story 3” as a legitimate Best Picture contender.
• The Weinstein Company lawyered up on the MPAA rulings on “Blue Valentine” and “The King’s Speech”
Catch up with the idea behind this series here.
1991 was a banner year for the Academy bucking trends. Of course, “Silence of the Lambs” was the big winner, a first for the horror genre and the first time the winning film was available to own on home video before nominations came out. That it was only the third film to win the “big five” was even more impressive.
Arguably more daring was the Best Picture nomination bestowed upon “Beauty and the Beast,” which remains the only animated film to get the call in a field of five. Also noteworthy is the Best Picture nomination for “The Prince of Tides” and Best Director omission for Barbra Streisand. Many cried sexism since it was the third straight time a female-directed Best Picture nominee failed to also receive a nomination for Best Director.
Instead, we got John Singleton, our first African American Best Director nominee and our youngest, at age 24! How exciting must it have been to be following the Oscars this year? I wouldn’t know because…
1992 was the first year I watched the Oscars. I vividly remember Billy Crystal singing and dancing his way through the nominees and Clint Eastwood collecting his gongs for “Unforgiven.” I hadn’t seen a single nominated film from the big categories and since I was living in Cyprus and the show would have been at 4am live, I imagine my Dad must have taped it onto VHS for me, but I remember loving every second of it.
But enough Oscar nostalgia. The real good films are never nominated anyway and here’s the proof.
• Pete Hammond reports on a last minute surge to get “Iron Cross,” Roy Scheider’s final film, into Oscar contention. [Notes on a Season]
• Gregory Ellwood takes note of the season’s box office champs so far: “Inglourious Basterds” and “Up.” [Awards Campaign]
• Geoff Boucher talks to “Avatar” composer James Horner. [Hero Complex]
It’s funny how strong festival buzz can be frozen indefinitely as a film jumps through the increasingly complicated hoops of securing distribution — only to be thawed and reheated later. Such looks to be the case with Richard Linklater’s latest, “Me and Orson Welles” — or, to be more specific, its breakout star Christian McKay.
A year ago, the previously little-known Brit was the talk of Toronto for his apparently uncanny interpretation of Welles — even critics lukewarm on the film itself had nothing but superlatives for McKay. (Our own John Foote waxed lyrical here, while Eddie Marsan, who plays Welles associate John Houseman in the film, couldn’t stop gushing about the performance during our interview last fall.)
Listening to the conversations of the other critics in the various theaters, it becomes very clear that this year’s fest has been something of a disappointment, the first in a long, long time.
At least one critic pointed out to me that Oscar and TIFF divorced this year, which has been mentioned ad nauseum and is probably a pretty fair assessment of the situation. A lot of the press are heading home today and tomorrow as the festival begins that slow march toward the end, always exiting with a whimper and never a bang.
These last couple of days I have screened some interesting films: a noble failure, a superb documentary, a fine war film that is still not the great film we need about Iraq. I will get to them as I can, but for now, some quick catching up…
(Reviews after the jump.)