In Contention

Tag: The Fighter

  • Predict the WGA and Scripter nominees

    Also speaking up tomorrow will be the WGA (Writers Guild of America).  The recently revealed list of ineligibilities makes picking this group’s choices much more fun, though it still kinda stinks because you know some of the best scripts of the year will be spectators.

    Last year the beneficiaries of the purge (which ultimately missed with Oscar) were “Crazy Heart,” “Julie & Julia” and “Star Trek” in adapted, “(500) Days of Summer,” “Avatar” and “The Hangover” in original.  From my vantage, there doesn’t appear to be as many options to choose from on the periphery of these races, but I’ll give it a stab.

    Click on through the jump to see my picks in the adapted and original categories, as well as discussion of the USC Scripter Awards.  (I’ll opt out of picking the documentary field from the WGA, which is likely to be a crap shoot, anyway.)

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Counting chickens

    The critics have had their say.  “The Social Network” has enjoyed an impressive kudos haul throughout the month of December.  Game over, call it, throw in the towel, all other comers need not apply, “there is only one.”

    That’s the instinct.  But I embrace caution over haste (and I’m not on the advocacy bandwagon), so sue me if I’m just not there yet.

    One of the more undercooked arguments I’ve read recently that places “The Social Network” in the Oscar frontrunner position is that you should call the race as it stands rather than forecast.  Obviously that goes completely against what it means to prognosticate, but it also ignores the fact that what’s afoot isn’t always represented by what’s in the news, at least at this early stage.

    Yes, the critics predictably went gaga over the film.  But the #2 coming out of that circuit is probably “Black Swan.” So do we then assume the race for Oscar is between those two films?  Of course not.  Because, however overstated the point may be (by necessity, though, given stubbornness), critics don’t vote for Oscars.

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  • Predict the PGA nominees

    Tomorrow the guild circuit launches with the WGA (separate post coming) and PGA nominations.  The critics’ circuit was well and good but this is where crossover memberships begin to give us a tangible view of how the race will fill out.

    Last year the PGA (Producers Guild of America) piggy-backed the Academy’s plan to expand the field of nominees from five to 10.  It also copied the new voting scheme, which uses the preferential balloting system to determine nominees.

    The two films that missed with the guild but made it into the Best Picture 10 were “The Blind Side” (odd that it missed, given its box office take) and the Coens’ “A Serious Man.” In their place: Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus” (why?) and the blockbuster “Star Trek.” What can we expect this year?  Continue after the jump to see what I’m thinking.

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  • 12/31 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: ‘Way Back’ last on the scene, 70 votes gets you in, Sparling breaks the rules

    • Peter Weir’s “The Way Back” intentionally hits voters’ doorsteps last, just s ballots are arriving.  Shrewd, given the P&A budget.  Will it pay off? [Deadline]

    • Steve Pond does the Oscar math and discovers that fewer than 70 votes will secure you a nomination everywhere except the four acting categories and Best Picture. [The Odds]

    • Dave Karger reports on Chris Sparling’s gross self-promotion to the Academy in the form of the “Buried” screenwriter’s best Nicolas Chartier impression. [Inside Movies]

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  • THE LONG SHOT: A new year wishlist

    [Guy’s updated predictions here.]

    Okay, I won’t lie to you: I initially conceived this column in my head last week as a Christmas Eve wishlist, but then got too busy mulling wine and Christmas shopping in Dublin snowdrifts to actually write it.

    So a New Year’s Eve wishlist it is, then. Under either name, with the season currently in stasis until January’s Guild awards usher in the next phase of competition, here’s a list of ten open requests (or distant hopes) for Academy members currently hemming and hawing over their ballots.

    Go forth into the world: Okay, I’ve given up my fight for a foreign-language Best Picture contender for yet another year. And despite a banner year for the form, a documentary nominee ain’t happening either. But is it too much to ask the Academy to recognize that not all notable filmmaking happens within U.S. borders? We’re looking at the sad likelihood of 90% of the Best Picture race being given over to American productions, with the lone exception, “The King’s Speech,” about as authentically British as a “Mind the Gap” T-shirt. Wouldn’t “Another Year” or “Animal Kingdom” be slightly more interesting stamps in Oscar’s passport?

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  • 12/29 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Timberlake’s Harvard honor, ‘Kids’ and the “steak eaters,” HFPA/Clark tension

    • Golden Globes tension as Dick Clark and HFPA fued over contract. [The Wrap]

    • Justin Timberlake gets a prestigious Harvard award. [Pop Eater]

    • Anne Thompson on the obstacles her #2 film of the year, “The Kids Are All Right,” will face with the “steak eaters.” [Thompson on Hollywood]

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  • Watch ‘High on Crack Street,’ featured in ‘The Fighter’

    “High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell,” the HBO documentary featuring Dicky Eklund (the making of which is featured prominently in “The Fighter”), has been available on the net for some time now, but I figured I’d wait until you all had a chance to see it to dedicate a separate post.

    Well, now that you have, it seems a perfect time to post it up for you. The film, directed by Richard Farrell, Maryann DeLeo and Jon Alpert, first aired on HBO in 1995. You can read more about it at the film’s Wikipedia page and Snag Films has the full hour-long film posted for your viewing pleasure.

  • Academy DQs scores for ‘Fighter,’ ‘Grit,’ ‘Kids’ and ‘Swan’

    I had a bad feeling Carter Burwell’s work in “True Grit” was going to get the axe from a consistently dubious music branch, and so it has. Along with three other hopefuls.

    Variety is reporting that Burwell’s score and Clint Mansell’s for “Black Swan” were nixed due to being overwhelmed by pre-existing music (19th century hymns with the former, Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” with the latter). Additionally, the scores from Burwell on “The Kids Are All Right” and Michael Brook “The Fighter” got the boot because of an abundance of songs.

    We’ve been expecting some kind of ruling on this year’s crop of contenders. It’s a shame, as always, that well-regarded original material has to be penalized due to rules like this, but it’s their game and they’ll play it how they want.  Thursday we’ll feature an interview with Burwell and you can hear the thought process that went into the score for “True Grit.” Until then, chew on this.

    [Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures]

  • Tell us what you thought of ‘The Fighter’

    I should have posted this this weekend but I totally forgot, so apologies.  I’ve had my say on “The Fighter” out of AFI Fest and there has been plenty of discussion on it here and there since.  But it hit theaters nationwide Friday and many of you got a chance to take a look, so let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

  • OFF THE CARPET: Macro/micro

    I decided to update the Contenders section this week by addressing things (mostly) as they seem to stand in the wake of the critics’ awards circuit of the last two weeks.  Save for this or that personal hunch (like buying into Guy’s shrewd proposition that the BAFTA contingent could help Lesley Manville over the hump, or keeping in mind, over all, that critics don’t vote for Oscars), I think it’s fairly representative.

    I don’t have a lot to offer in the way of a column this week.  The race as it stands is how you see it.  There are pockets of advocacy growing louder and louder out there, but I’m waiting for guilds to chime in and for studios to decide if they are in it to win it (and it becomes clearer and clearer who is and who isn’t, by the way).

    Ballots will go out a week from today.  Voters will have, presumably, spent the Thanksgiving and upcoming Christmas holidays digging into screeners and catching up on this or that.  The precursors have illuminated a few paths they may not have taken (precious few, though), but mainly they’ve demanded viewings of 11 films in play for 10 Best Picture slots.  What will the small screen do for these contenders?

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  • On Paramount’s dueling ponies

    There’s some fuzzy Oscar reasoning in this Guardian piece on Paramount’s two-pronged stab at the Best Picture race, but the essential point it makes is an interesting one: with “True Grit” having been produced in-house and “The Fighter” something of an adopted son for the studio, does Paramount have a favorite child in this race?

    Writer Jeremy Kay believes they do, and in the light of the precursors thus far, isn’t sure they picked the right one:

    While [The Fighter’s] $12.2m gross is nothing to write home about from 2,503 theatres, it’s no disgrace either – especially when you consider Paramount hasn’t thrown as many marketing dollars behind The Fighter as it has invested in True Grit. That’s because the studio’s top brass made an early bet that True Grit, a Paramount movie, would ultimately be more successful than The Fighter, which the studio is distributing for a fee on behalf of the movie’s backers Relativity Media.

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  • 12/20 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Angie’s potential embarrassment, best perfs destined to be snubbed, top 10s

    • PR experts tell Kim Masters that critical pans of “The Tourist” could make Angelina Jolie’s support for her Golden Globe nomination in the form of attending the ceremony “potentially embarrassing.” [Hollywood Reporter]

    • Guy Adams, meanwhile, takes aim at the HFPA’s susceptibility to bribery this year. [The Independent]

    • The 25 best performances from 2010 that won’t win Oscars. [Vulture]

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Network’ sweep, Globes outrage, best of 2010

    • Kris listed his 10 favorite films of 2010 in black-and-white, later adding his dream Oscar ballot and winners list.

    • The critics’ award beat turned into a “Social Network” landslide, as New York, Los Angeles, Boston and many, many other groups lined up behind the film.

    • Away from the critics’ circuit, Team Fincher didn’t have it all their own way, as “The King’s Speech” led a widely derided list of Golden Globe nominees.

    • When it was the Screen Actors’ Guild’s turn to announce their nominees, however, the royal biopic had to settle for sharing the lead with “The Fighter.”

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  • Best in show 2010: the year in superlatives

    The week, and with it, the bulk of my 2010 coverage, draws to a close today with a look at the best of the best. I’m offering up a personal list of superlatives, including most Oscar categories and some other fun fields thrown in for good measure. A tradition at this point.

    There will be plenty going on next week, though, despite travel and the holidays. As always, we’ll be at your disposal. But allow me to put a tidy bow on the year here and keep forging ahead…

    Best Picture
    “Exit Through the Gift Shop”

    Best Director
    Mike Leigh, “Another Year”

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  • Adams does Conan, Wahlberg/Bale/Russell on Charlie Rose

    I had lunch yesterday with “The Fighter” star Amy Adams and hope to have that interview up some time over the holiday.  When we said goodbye, she was off to the Warner Bros. lot for an interview taping with Conan O’Brien.  I wasn’t able to watch last night but I wanted to track it down since, interestingly enough, O’Brien’s sister, Kate, played one of Mickey Ward’s sisters in the film.  Here it is:

    Meanwhile, Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale and David O. Russell sat down with Charlie Rose this week. Check that interview out here.

  • ‘Fighter’ and ‘King’s Speech’ lead SAG nominations

    Well, we got ourselves a surprise or two, after all. If you predicted Hilary Swank’s out-of-nowhere Best Actress nomination for “Conviction,” go out and buy yourself a congratulatory drink. (While you’re at the bar, buy a commiserative one for Nathaniel Rogers too.)

    I doubt the nomination will launch her into the Academy’s five (unless story-mongers really are desperate to see another round in the Swank vs. Bening grudge match), but it does demonstrate how up for grabs that fifth slot is. Lesley Manville and Michelle Williams, the ball is still in your court.

    Nothing on the list matches that nomination for sheer unexpectedness, but I suspect a fair few people didn’t see “Winter’s Bone” star John Hawkes coming in the Best Supporting Actor category — much less at the expense of the season’s nominal frontrunner, “The Social Network.” I wrote in my predictions last night that I wasn’t sure how fully SAG would warm to the film’s young, non-insider cast: while I predicted a snub for Jesse Eisenberg, it was actually Andrew Garfield who got the shaft.

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  • Make your SAG predictions

    Now that most of the major critics’ groups have had their say, tomorrow begins the second phase of the precursor season, as the Screen Actors’ Guild makes the first of this year’s industry award pronouncements.

    I always feel a twinge of dread about the SAG nomination list — frequently more middle-of-the-road than the critics’ picks, though with odd flashes of peer affection for unlikely veterans and character actors, they have a way of reducing the pool of Oscar hopefuls rather aggressively. More often than not, boredom ensues: last year, 19 of the 20 SAG individual performance nominees went on to repeat at the Oscars.

    Suffice to say, a snub from these guys stings more than one from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, but Marcia Gay Harden will forever remain a beacon of hope to the SAG-ignored: 10 years ago, a diss from the Guild (and indeed from virtually every other precursor, save the New York critics) didn’t stop her taking the golden boy home for “Pollock.”

    Predictions after the jump.

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  • If I had a ballot

    The year is winding down.  Today, as part of the week’s on-going year-in-review specials, I’m offering up my annual “if I had a ballot” post.

    In years past I’ve tended to defer to studio campaigns for category placement, but this year I figured, “Screw it.”  After all, if I actually had a ballot I could call the shots.  So I have.

    You’re familiar with my Best Picture line-up by now.  I’ve opted out of the Best Foreign Language Film and Best Documentary categories because there are a few films I’d rather have seen before making that call, but otherwise, it’s the usual Oscar fields with an ensemble category tacked on.

    Feel free to post up your own selections, if you have them, in the comments section below.  And remember to check back Friday as I close up shop on 2010 with my list of superlatives.  For now, check out my personal ballot after the jump.

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