In Contention

Tag: The King’s Speech

  • Debating historical hiccups in ‘The King’s Speech’

    Unless you really haven’t been paying attention, you’ll have noticed by now that a few people have taken issue with the history lesson given by “The King’s Speech.” Or more specifically, with the one not given: that George VI supported British PM Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement towards Adolf Hitler, while his brother Edward VIII was an outright Nazi sympathizer, none of which is acknowledged in the film.

    Writing for The New Republic, Isaac Chotner took the film to task both for “grossly misrepresenting real events and people” and for shortselling its own dramatic potential through these omissions, while none other than Christopher Hitchens raised the same issue in a recent Slate essay, damning the film as “a major desecration of the historical record.”

    Whatever my own issues with the film, its historical filleting hasn’t been high on the list. As much as I think the gray political alliances of the Royal Family would make for a far richer narrative, the bottom line is that screenwriter David Seidler was more interested in George VI’s personal struggles — as a dramatist, it’s his right to frame the story as he wishes, free of the obligation to furnish the audience with every historical detail.

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Supporting Actress

    Like last year, this year’s Best Supporting Actress race was a free-for-all when it came to the last spot.  Potential category confusion almost had two spots up for grabs.  And there was absolutely no shortage of possible spoilers once the BAFTA had spoken up with a slate of formidable possibilities.

    And great work was still left off the ballot.  Mila Kunis was on track to score, but ultimately fell short.  Veterans Barbara Hershey and Miranda Richardson seemed to be making a play for recognition, too.  In the end, an early campaign made all the difference for one indie contender, while another young hopeful managed to keep her grip in the supporting ranks despite giving a lead performance.

    The nominees are:

    Amy Adams, “The Fighter”
    Helena Bonham Carter, “The King’s Speech”
    Melissa Leo, “The Fighter”
    Hailee Steinfeld, “True Grit”
    Jacki Weaver, “Animal Kingdom”

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  • 1/26 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Facebook is over it, ‘Superman’ snub “myths,” an all-white acting class

    • Facebook on the film’s eight-nomination haul: “We’re over it, thanks.  Trying to build the future here.” [Hollywood Reporter]

    • A.J. Schnack attempts to unravel the myths behind the “Waiting for Superman” snub. [All These Wonderful Things]

    • Patrick Goldstein notes the (anticipated) lack of color in this year’s acting categories. [The Big Picture]

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 50 — Special Edition! — Nod postmortem with Guy Lodge and Peter Knegt

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your 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 en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    Unless you’ve been under a rock this morning, you’re aware of the day’s big news. Oscar nominations were revealed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 24 categories. And, as is typically, there were enough eyebrow-raisers to give us a ton to talk about. We’ve got IC’s own Guy Lodge and indieWIRE‘s Peter Knegt on board. Also, it’s our 50th episode! Let’s see what’s on the docket today…

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  • Oscar nominations: the good, the good and the good

    Even when they aren’t being read out with gale-force enthusiasm by Mo’Nique, the Oscar nominations tend to attack you with breathless speed that you need at least half an hour to decide how you feel about them at all. As usual, this morning’s announcement found me bouncing from one split-second reaction to another: Yay! No! What? That? Why? Who’s missing? What did she say? That? No! Did I call that? Yay!

    As Kate Winslet would say in such situations: “Gather.” And now that I’ve stepped back, gathered and taken into account that no Oscar nomination slate in history has been without its disappointments, I can honestly say that I’m more happy than not with the list in front of me.

    Some of the day’s biggest surprises didn’t elicit much of an emotional reaction from me. My eyebrows rose as high as anyone’s over Christopher Nolan’s latest failure to secure a Best Director nomination — is he the first man in Oscar history to fall three times at this hurdle after being DGA-nominated? — though I always said he couldn’t be regarded as a sure thing.

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  • Post-nod winner predictions (and a new poll)

    Did you hear?  The Oscar nominations were announced this morning.  And there was a lot to chew on.  (And boy can we be grateful for that.)

    With a full slate of contenders in front of us, it seemed only right to go ahead and offer up the latest set of winner predictions.  They are indicated by asterisk in the sidebar and are listed out in full after the jump.

    After roughly a week of falling into the logic (and blaring rhetoric) suggesting “The Social Network” would turn its critics run into Oscar gold, I’m back to my instincts (and, judging by its nomination haul, the will of the Academy) with a bet on “The King’s Speech.” Not only that, but I think we could see a mini-sweep for the film, as a couple of potentially formidable competitors were ousted from the nominations in a few craft fields.

    Of course, things could change.  But I’m sensing a momentum shift, and it’s frankly one we could have expected was around the corner.

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  • ‘King’s Speech’ leads the pack with 12 Oscar nominations

    On the face of it, the nominees for the 83rd annual Academy Awards seemed fairly unremarkable. Aside from the deafening nature of not hearing Christopher Nolan’s name in the line-up for Best Director (the only true shock of the major categories), everything seemed to be within the expected parameters (even Javier Bardem sliding in, which seemed, increasingly, like a very real possibility these last few weeks).

    But then I got to looking through the craft category nominations and the real interesting beats started to surface. First and foremost, “The King’s Speech” led the field with a whopping 12 nominations, even scoring in the Best Sound Mixing category. That’s major, to say the least. And enough, along with the PGA win, to consider it the frontrunner to win the Oscar for Best Picture.

    “True Grit” wasn’t far behind with 10 nominations, including a bid for the Coen brothers in Best Director after all. Hailee Steinfeld stayed in Best Supporting Actress and Bridges was chalked up, but again, let me go back to the more intriguing crafts fields.

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  • ‘King’s Speech’ cast to be honored in Santa Barbara

    Last SBIFF news before the fest.  I head up there Thursday.  The press release, in part:

    The 26th Annual Santa Barbara Film Festival will honor the cast of THE KING’S SPEECH as the best motion picture ensemble of the year, it was announced today by SBIFF Executive Director Roger Durling. The film, which features performances by an award-winning collection of actors including Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Guy Pearce, Derek Jacobi and Claire Bloom, has garnered critical and industry-wide acclaim, recently winning the Producer’s Guild of America’s Best Picture of the Year Award.

    The honor will be bestowed on Monday, January 31 at Santa Barbara’s historic Arlington Theatre, as part of the 11-day film festival. Firth, Bonham Carter and others are expected to attend the ceremony, along with the film’s director, Tom Hooper, joining Geoffrey Rush at his Montecito Award Tribute.

    [Photo: The Weinstein Company]

  • OFF THE CARPET: Remember the movies (but maybe not these final predictions)

    Two weeks ago, one of our readers, KevinK, asked the following question for Oscar Talk:

    What do you think of the atmosphere that comes out of this late stage of the awards season?  I think the atmosphere is really toxic and really flies in the face of what we all care about in the first place: a love of film.

    We didn’t get to it on the air.  So I saved it.  Then Thursday, Guy touched on some profound textures in his final pre-nod column.  It was one of his best, a sound consideration of the posterity of an awards season above its pageantry.

    The Yin and Yang of things is what struck me.  To Kevin’s point, the environment around these films is more and more enhanced or diminished by steadily increasing media attention — this outlet being no exception.  He went on to note a well-regarded critic’s perceived change of heart on one of last year’s front-running contenders due to its consistent registration during the season, as if a virginal opinion had been sullied by the air of competition and acclaim.

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  • 1/24 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Rich’s two Americas, meet the foreign film exec committee, Jonze interviews Russell

    • Frank Rich sees two Americas in “The Social Network” and “True Grit.” [New York Times]

    • David Poland sits down with the latter’s cinematographer, Roger Deakins. [The Hot Blog]

    • Meet the executive committee charged with saving esoteric foreign films hopefuls. [The Odds]

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  • BOX OFFICE: A good weekend for Portman

    She’s got two entries on the box office chart and a headwind going into phase two.  Nice ink for “The King’s Speech” being in the top four after last night’s big win.  “True Grit” closes in on $150 million.

    (Courtesy: Exhibitor Relations)

  • ‘King’s Speech’ wins in PGA shocker

    Tonight’s PGA awards were the first stab at the preferential ballot for this year’s Best Picture hopefuls.  The big winner in the feature film field was…oh my…“The King’s Speech.”

    Considering this is a beefy organization (not quite as big as AMPAS but big) and its nominees are likely to match the Best Picture 10 pretty closely, I’d say this is one of the fairest indications of how things could play out in five weeks.  Last year, remember, the PGA went for “The Hurt Locker” rather than $2 billion grosser “Avatar.” I think it will prove, more and more, to be a reliable indicator, as long as it shares this voting method and breadth of nominees with the Academy.

    So does that apply this year?  Is there a major swinging of the pendulum under way?  Who knows.  And there is still the increasingly strong possibility of “The Fighter” taking the SAG ensemble prize.  Perhaps at the end of the day we’ll have a phase two to remember.

    Check out the full list of theatrical and honorary PGA award winners at The Circuit.

    [Photo: The Weinstein Company]

  • WEEKLY WRAP: Globes chatter, Batman buzz, foreign Oscar surprises

    • The Golden Globes did their thing, with Ricky Gervais’s antics drawing more attention than the sweep for “The Social Network.”

    • David Fincher’s film continued its dominance at the Broadcast Film Critics’ Association Awards, which Kris reported from first-hand.

    • As if to remind us that there’s more than one film in the race, this week’s BAFTA nominations were ruled by “The King’s Speech” and “Black Swan.”

    • Sadly, we bade farewell this week to regular columnist Chad, who left us with his idiosyncratic Best of 2010 list.

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  • Evening Standard Award nominees, take two

    A couple of weeks ago, we reported on the nominations for the London Evening Standard Awards — a juried critics’ honor devoted to British films and talent. As it turns out, that “nominee” list was a bit of a false alarm; rather, it was a rough longlist of names considered by the jury that the Standard released prematurely.

    The official nominations for the awards were announced today, and I have to say, it’s my favorite such list I’ve seen all season. This year’s jury can’t be accused of playing it safe: it’s certainly ballsy to omit “The King’s Speech” in the top race.

    In its place, I’m thrilled to see my #1 film of 2010, Sylvain Chomet’s “The Illusionist,” as well as Peter Mullan’s riveting youth drama “Neds,” which I reviewed back in October. Add in due respect for Mike Leigh, and I don’t think the field could better represent the year in British film.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final analysis, part two

    Yesterday I began a final look at the crafts categories. Today, a look at the four remaining fields: Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design and Best Film Editing.

    BEST ART DIRECTION

    The precursors of the BFCA, BAFTA and Art Directors Guild have been fairly consistent in citing four titles in this category. Last year’s winner, Robert Stromberg, seems poised to dip again for creation of a 3D world on Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland.” Eve Stewart, on the other hand, will likely be returning to the fold after an 11 year absence for “The King’s Speech.”

    Guy Hendrix Dyas and Jess Gonchor also have got all necessary precursors, and have fashioned surefire Best Picture nominees, in “Inception” and “True Grit” respectively. It is true that they have had difficulty being nominated in the past but Gonchor has also never had such an Oscar-friendly opportunity, whereas the impressive, integral-to-the-story nature of Dyas’s work has been especially embraced by the precursors.

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  • Costume confusion

    Gerard will address this category in tomorrow’s Tech Support column, but I did want to say something about Best Costume Design — partly because the Guild dropped some rather interesting nominations today, and partly because it’s the technical category that’s still prompting the most head-scratching as I work towards my final predictions.

    We all know the Academy favors lavish period productions with corsets and hoop skirts a go-go in this category, but 2010 served up remarkably few possibilities in this vein. Even “The King’s Speech,” the year’s default well-dressed prestige title, is hardly a sartorial showcase in the vein of “Marie-Antoinette” or “The Duchess” — Jenny Beavan’s crisp 1930s wardrobe is functionally stylish rather than spectacular.

    As if to illustrate the lack of conventional historical options, the Costume Designers’ Guild found only three films to nominate in their period category, instead of the usual five — and one of them, I’m thrilled to say, is the 1990s-set “The Fighter,” whose threads I was plugging just the other day.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final analysis, part one

    It seems hard to believe that it’s been more than six months since I wrote this year’s introductory Tech Support column ( a dissection of the art direction race). Much has changed since then, naturally, as we are less than a week away from the big day when we find out the nominees for the Oscars this year. Today, I take a final look at the music categories, sound categories and the two categories that have been narrowed down to seven finalists – Best Visual Effects and Best Makeup.

    BEST MAKEUP

    In this utterly bizarre category, virtually any combination of the seven finalists would fail to surprise me as the final three. That said, I’ve had the same top two predicted all year and see no reason to change now: “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Wolfman.” The former had massive box office and very noticeable makeup, whereas the latter is exactly the sort of movie that tends to score here and nowhere else.

    Logic may put “True Grit” or “The Fighter” next in line due to their Best Picture contender status. But as much as these films are loved, they don’t have as showy makeup as the other finalists, and this is a category that often doesn’t care how films are received overall.

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  • Behind the scenes of ‘The King’s Speech’

    Hat tip to /Film on this: