In Contention

Tag: The Fighter

  • OFF THE CARPET: Can the ladies get some support?

    A number of people wanted Anne and I to discuss the seemingly thin Best Supporting Actress category on the podcast Friday, but we didn’t get to it. So it seemed an opportune time to dedicate this space to the discussion.

    One should keep in mind that the race is still in its early days. This time last year we didn’t even know “Crazy Heart” would be in the mix, and any number of things can change. But while I have been saying for a while now that the supporting actress field is week, it does seem to be taking shape as of late.

    There is no hard and fast frontrunner in the field right now. If Lesley Manville’s “Another Year” campaign were to switch gears, that would be a different story, but the only contender that feels right at the moment is Miranda Richardson as the fiery Barbara Castle in the Brit comedy “Made in Dagenham.”

    On the next tier, I feel pretty good about Dianne Wiest’s chances in “Rabbit Hole,” where the three-time nominee (and two-time winner) stars as a concerned but affable mother to Nicole Kidman’s grief-stricken housewife. Meanwhile, Helena Bonham Carter could well ride the coattails of “The King’s Speech” to a nomination for the comic relief and emotional support she maintains throughout the film.

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 33 — ‘Social Network’ front-running, Gibson persona non grata and why ‘The Fighter?’

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, a one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change on route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    There isn’t a whole lot to discuss this week though there are a number of forced stories out there which kind of prove the point. I’m up in Berkeley talking to Anne down in LA so, as the New York fest kicks off tonight, let’s see what’s on the docket today…

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  • OFF THE CARPET: King…for the moment

    Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” is on top of the world right now.  Telluride buzz was hot and it carried all the way through the Toronto International Film Festival to a coveted People’s Choice award.  The race is already being boiled down in some quarters to this old school Academy play versus a Gen-Y instant classic opening in just under two weeks.  You couldn’t ask for more if you were The Weinstein Company with this film as your prize pony…

    …except maybe a season half as long as it actually is.  Hooper’s film finds itself in a very precarious spot right now.  Just ask awards consultants at Paramount Pictures.

    After coming out strong with the of-the-moment “Up in the Air” last season, taking the same Telluride-Toronto crowd-pleasing path, their film slowly boiled down to an also ran and even came up short in the one category it seemed assured going into the Academy Awards.

    It’s easy to peak early in an Oscar season.  It takes tactical endurance to really come out on the other side with something to show for yourself and “The King’s Speech” is burning fuel fast and early.  But I imagine if anyone understands this it’s Harvey Weinstein, who, if he does find himself in a battle with “The Social Network” for the big prize, will be going toe-to-toe with one of his former Miramax executives, Cynthia Swartz (who has overseen Best Picture marches for “Crash,” “No Country for Old Men” and “The Hurt Locker” in recent years).

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  • ‘The Fighter’ trailer

    In yesterday’s “what could be the frontrunner” rant, one of the titles I noted could really change things up by year’s end is David O. Russell’s “The Fighter.” Every indication I’ve received is that it’s a powerful piece of work and that Christian Bale is outstanding (so much so that a lead actor push was considered at one point).  Well the trailer has just launched via Apple and it looks like a high gloss prestige pic that could absolutely strike the right chord.  Check it out by clicking the link below or watch an embed after the jump.

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  • Schemers trying to control their little worlds

    It’s intriguing that two of the most press shy entrepreneurs of the internet age – Mark Zuckerberg and Sean Parker – have suddenly participated in two dense magazine profiles this month.  It’s almost as if there was a film depicting key moments in their lives set for imminent release and they want to set the record straight.  Oh…

    Really, though, I was struck reading this Vanity Fair profile of Parker that the character described is perhaps a bit more interesting than the more simplistic character Aaron Sorkin wrote in “The Social Network.” In the film, Parker is portrayed by Justin Timberlake as a paranoid, mean-spirited misfit.  A misfit (and party animal) he may be, but Parker is lauded in the piece as a “higher being,” “generous” and “loyal,” and frankly comes off as something of a saint.

    The writer does mention that Parker reached out to potential sources to smooth out his image, but even still, the accounts of generosity become a bit too consistent to ignore.  Parker works well as an antagonistic figure in the film, mind you, but I think an instance of some of this would have added a nice layer of depth to the character.  After all, Zuckerberg sure is dealt with in complex hues, and is all the more fascinating for it.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Once more into the breach

    So nine years ago yesterday I started a crappy, embarrassing little amateur site on Yahoo!’s now defunct Geocities platform and called it Oscar Central. It was a way to blow off steam in film school, maybe fold an offline hobby (Oscar-watching, predicting, obsessing) into an online community that seemed to already have healthy numbers. Plus, hey, it was the early years. I figured some low tech internet training was far from the worst thing I could be doing.

    That’s a long way of saying today kicks off my 10th season of Oscar coverage online, and in that decade, plenty has changed. One thing has remained the same, however, and that is a focused interest, both from myself and a growing readership, in the admittedly arbitrary and somewhat solipsistic process of awarding the “best” in filmed art and entertainment.

    To put it more succinctly: Here we go again.

    The 2010-2011 Oscar season takes its first real steps Wednesday as the 67th annual Venice Film Festival sets sail on the Lido. That opening night will see Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” get its toes wet as Fox Searchlight tests the season’s waters, perhaps with a worthy follow-up to the director’s 2008 awards title “The Wrestler,” perhaps not. Two days later the 37th annual Telluride Film Festival lifts its curtain in the mountains of Colorado, bringing any number of “surprise” bows (we all know what they’ll be but, again, I’ll respect the fest’s wishes in this space), before Toronto’s media circus fills in the cracks and brings us to mid-September and the fiery beginnings of Oscar’s 83rd barbecue.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Makeup — Volume I

    Makeup and hairstyling builds characters by transforming actors with realism or imagination that would otherwise be lacking on the screen. With the announcement that the Best Visual Effects is expanding to include five nominees this year, Best Makeup now remains the sole category to have three nominees, chosen from a “bake-off” of seven finalists which are revealed in advance of the January nominations announcement.

    This award tends to cite so many different aspects that it is difficult to pin down exactly what the branch looks for. However, aging and illness are certainly well regarded, as are the creation of blood and injuries, disfigurement and turning actors into monsters and other fantastical beings.

    It should be remembered that this category awards both makeup and hairstyling. However, last year’s nomination for “The Young Victoria” is a rare example of where the hairstyling portion of the category apparently played a significant role. Traditionally, facial and body makeup is far more important.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Film Editing — Volume I

    I still remember when I was 12 and getting into the Oscars for the first time. My Dad said, “How can you tell if the film has good editing?” To a very large extent, I had to concede his point, as the best editing is often that which we don’t explicitly notice. Rather, it simply “becomes” the film as we become immersed in what is on the screen, not remembering that everything was staged from different angles on different days.

    Film Editing brings films to agreeable length, coherent narrative and appropriate pacing so as to engage the audience in accordance with the director’s vision.  The Academy Award for the art form has definitely shown a tendency toward “showy” editing in the past, though.  War films, musicals, action films and movies that are not told linearly all frequent this race. But perhaps the best predictor of the editing nominees is what is occurring in the Best Picture race.   Most of the nominees show up here.  Now that we have ten Best Picture nominees, I would think at least four nominees will also be there.

    All things considered, Lee Smith’s editing of Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” has got to be considered the leader in this race. The film was well received, is a Best Picture favorite, was certainly told in a “unique” manner and Smith was nominated last time he and Nolan worked together. I fully expect him to earn his third nomination this year.

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  • Wahlberg talks up ‘The Fighter’

    When I remarked in a post yesterday that the upcoming awards season looks a little short on the high-profile biopic contenders so beloved of Academy voters, I had a feeling I was forgetting something obvious. And so I was: “The Fighter,” David O. Russell’s biopic of against-the-odds boxing champ “Irish” Micky Ward, starring Mark Wahlberg in the title role.

    In Friday’s episode of Oscar Talk, Kris expressed his high hopes for the film, singling out Christian Bale (as Ward’s half-brother and trainer Dicky Eklund) as a rumored standout. His faith is reflected in the updated predictions to your right, including potential bids in the two top races, as well as three acting categories. (Melissa Leo is currently tapped for Best Supporting Actress, but Amy Adams could be in the mix too.)

    Anne Thompson responded somewhat skeptically to Kris’s enthusiasm, suggesting that Russell’s film (should it turn out well, of course) is in a position to take some in the industry by surprise — always a good place to be from an awards-campaign standpoint. Meanwhile, it would appear that the film’s minders are opting not to build up buzz via the fall festival track: in this Collider interview, Wahlberg explains that they’ll likely skip Toronto and the rest, choosing instead to “go out and go big” with a December release.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: ‘Inception’ to the rule?

    As I look over the last week of activity, believe me, I’m as over-inundated with “Inception” talk as the next guy. But it is the film that captured a collective imagination throughout the country this weekend and, therefore, it has been a mainstay on the front page.

    I purposely held the latest Oscar column until today because I wanted to see how profound its release would truly be. I wanted to know what kind of a mark it would make at the box office, how the masses would react, how the critics would leverage it this way or that. And I haven’t come up with anything more or less definitive, in my mind, than what I’ve already mapped out.

    In the world of Oscar, there might just be three Best Picture nominees already in the marketplace, as Nathaniel Rogers shrewdly noted in a recent column. That’s actually kind of a miracle this early in the season. But it’s also interesting to note that each film — “Toy Story 3,” “The Kids Are All Right” and “Inception” — probably needed the extra five slots to make it in (assuming they all do get in).

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  • Shouting match

    I can’t be the only one who read the news that David O. Russell will be directing Christian Bale in his next film and thought, “Uh-oh.”