• Steve Pond chats with “Casino Jack” star Kevin Spacey. [The Odds]
• Rebecca Keegan writes up the hairy task of creating Rapunzel in “Tangled.” [24 Frames]
• Marc Lee thinks it’s looking up for Britain at the Oscars this year. [Daily Telegraph]
Tag: The King’s Speech
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11/26 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: The hairy task of ‘Tangled,’ Britain’s Oscar potential, Julianne Moore a best bet?
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11/25 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Dubbing ‘Tangled,’ ‘King’s Speech’ discourse, Portman talks the trade
• How did Rapunzel become “Tangled?” Directors Nathan Greno and Byron Howard set the record straight. [Inside Movies]• Peter Sciretta posts alternate, unused poster artwork for “Inception.” [/Film]
• Jenelle Riley talks “The Fighter” with the film’s prickly star, Christian Bale. [Backstage]
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11/24 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Kunis on her ‘Machinist’ impression, Hammer talks twinning, bad boy celebrity
(Ended up unexpectedly taking the day off yesterday. Not that I’m complaining.)• Anne Thompson talks to “Secretariat” star Diane Lane. [Thompson on Hollywood]
• Mila Kunis on dropping to a bony 95 pounds for “Black Swan.” [E! Online]
• Dave Karger, meanwhile, wonders if the actress can score an Oscar nod alongside co-star Natalie Portman. [Inside Movies]
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WEEKLY WRAP: Weinstein takes the gloves off, Hollywood mourns its own, doc and animated fields shortlisted
• 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”
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Weinstein lawyers up on MPAA
Well, we all knew Harvey Weinstein wasn’t going to take that head-scratching (and commercially damaging) ‘NC-17’ rating for “Blue Valentine” lying down. (While still generating maximum publicity from the unfortunate situation, natch.) The Weinstein Company today announced that it has gathered “a formidable legal team” to challenge the MPAA’s decision — and while they’re about it, they’re contesting that ‘R’ rating for “The King’s Speech” too.And Weinstein’s lawyers mean business: Bert Fields, the attorney overseeing the “Valentine” appeal, goes so far as to say the extreme age restriction “violates [the company’s] right to freedom of speech under the state and US constitution.” Alongside the legal speak, the press release issued today by TWC also includes this heartfelt, well-reasoned plea from star Michelle Williams:
The MPAA’s decision on Blue Valentine unmasks a taboo in our culture, that an honest portrayal of a relationship is more threatening than a sensationalized one… Mainstream films often depict sex and violence in a manner that is disturbing and very far from reality. Yet, the MPAA regularly awards these films with a more audience friendly rating, enabling our culture’s desensitization to violence, rape, torture and brutality. Our film does not depict any of these attributes. It’s simply a candid look at the difficulties couples face in sustaining their relationships over time. Blue Valentine opens a door for couples to have a dialogue about the everyday realities of many relationships. This film was made in the spirit of love, honesty and intimacy. I hope that the MPAA will hear our pleas and reconsider their decision.
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Palm Springs fest to honor Portman and Firth
The Palm Springs International Film Festival may claim independent thought in the rationing of their performance awards, but rather like Santa Barbara, any West Coast fest that takes place in prime awards-season territory can’t claim to be free of the Oscar campaign circuit.After all, when their press release states that the two actors being honored with their Desert Palm Achievement Awards (essentially Best Actor and Actress) “deliver Oscar-quality performances,” they’re effectively admitting to being another cog in the machine.
So it is that for the last three years running, their male Desert Palm Achievement Award winner was gone on to scoop the Best Actor Oscar. These folks know what they’re doing. Try and conceal your astonishment, then, that this year’s honoree is Colin Firth, the unanimously agreed-upon frontrunner (and to my mind, lone contender) for the Oscar. “Colin Firth brings a regal versatility to each of his roles, but his portrayal of King George VI in his latest film, ‘The King’s Speech,’ is extraordinary,” says PSIFF director Harold Matzner.
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TECH SUPPORT: Best Original Score — Volume II
A great score can take a film from memorable to unforgettable. Whether it be Vangelis’s synthesizer on the beach in “Chariots of Fire,” Nino Rota’s haunting waltz from “The Godfather” or John Williams’s blaring, adventurous march from “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” scores can elevate amazing images to bring the director’s vision to even greater fruition.The last time I discussed this category, I noted how it is very hard to predict in advance without having heard the scores. Synopses and stills give clues in other categories to an extent frequently not seen here. That said, most contenders have screened, if not opened, now, so we can make safe assumptions.
But I still think this can be one of the most difficult categories to predict. But in the way of patterns, films that feature noticeable, loud, memorable and often exotic music are usually contenders. And being in a Best Picture frontrunner never hurts matters, as always.
This branch certainly has its favorites, and I expect to see past nominees and winners prominent in the race this year. The composers don’t frequently embrace new nominees. Usually only one newcomer is welcomed per year.
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11/12 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: ‘Burlesque’ brouhaha, ‘How Do You Know’ concedes cuts for PG-13, box office and Oscar
• Anthony D’Alessandro on how box office impacts Oscar players. [Thompson on Hollywood]• Kim Masters writes up the juicy story of on-set fighting that marked the production of “Burlesque.” [Hollywood Reporter]
• Christy Grosz on awards season buzz momentum built on the festival circuit. [The Envelope]
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11/10 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: ‘Biutiful’ crew on the circuit, Hooper’s Hollywood education, Weinstein v. Rudin II
• Anne Thompson ponders how the year’s mainstream studio pics might fare with Oscar. [Thompson on Hollywood]• Patrick Goldstein catches up with Tom Hooper and the director’s Hollywood education. [The Big Picture]
• Steve Pond dutifully reports from a “Biutiful” post-screening Q&A with members of the crew. [The Odds]
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‘Dagenham’ producer protests ‘R’ rating
The delicate folks at the MPAA have come in for a right old bollocking in the past few weeks, and deservedly so. First came the furore over the baffling ‘NC-17’ rating they awarded “Blue Valentine” — a lemon of a situation that Harvey Weinstein, to judge from the steamy poster unveiled yesterday, has decided to make into lemonade.Another of Weinstein’s babies, “The King’s Speech,” also got the brunt of the ratings board’s conservatism when it was slapped with an ‘R’ for a brief torrent of narratively contextualized four-letter words — despite having a fair claim to being the most mild-mannered prestige drama of the year.
We all know that bad things, like Kardashian sisters, come in threes, so we didn’t have long to wait before the next eruption over MPAA idiocy, and once more, the film at the center of it is a calculatedly inoffensive true-life Britpic. Despite having the kind of cheery inspirational message that young girls and their grandmothers alike can appreciate, feminist dramedy “Made in Dagenham” has received an ‘R’ rating for “language and brief sexuality,” referring respectively to a scattering of f-words and some gentle, clothed innuendo.
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11/9 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Screenwriting hopefuls, Hooper on fugly ‘King’s Speech’ poster, MPAA shamed
• Sasha Stone on the season’s screenwriting contenders. [Awards Daily]• “The King’s Speech” director Tom Hooper also hates the poster everyone has been knocking. [Movieline]
• David Poland split screens “The Social Network” star Armie Hammer. [The Hot Blog]
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Zadie Smith on ‘The Social Network’
It’s fair to say that there aren’t many movies in 2010 — much less in the awards race — that have earned the distinguished attention of The New York Review of Books, let alone a 5000-word essay by a superstar of contemporary literature. But such is the curious magnetism of “The Social Network,” whose queasy social currency has now been nailed, better than any film critic has managed thus far, by New York-based British writer Zadie Smith.I’ve always thought Smith a better essayist than a novelist, and her quasi-review of David Fincher’s film is a tour-de-force, using Aaron Sorkin’s script (the verbality of which she likens to “His Girl Friday”-era comedy) as the starting point for a stinging but compassionate address to ‘Generation Facebook,’ its communicative lapses and its identity insecurities. She likes the film quite a bit, but that’s almost beside the point: it’s more of a compliment that she felt it merited this level of scrutiny in a publication dedicated to another medium entirely.
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11/8 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Oscar’s misogyny, Gurus back on the case, classifying the 10’s “slots”
• Rachel Shields on the misogyny of Oscar. [The Independent]• Gregory Ellwood reports from Friday’s Britannia Awards. [Awards Campaign]
• “The King’s Speech,” Colin Firth and Annette Bening top the new weekly Gurus o’ Gold survey. [Movie City News]
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WEEKLY WRAP: ‘127 Hours’ dissent, BIFA nods, interviews
• Guy didn’t much care for “127 Hours.” That got you talking.• Happily, Kris did, and got talking to director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy.
• The British Independent Film Award nominations threw some surprises into the mix, handing scads of noms to “The King’s Speech”… and “Kick-Ass.”
• Chad’s Life Without Oscar column eased into the late 1980s, showcasing one films on either side of the Hollywood border.
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‘The King’s Speech’ poster
Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” has had an air of “prestige” around it ever since a plot synopsis hit the net. So no mistake that the official one-sheet for the film adopts that kind of high gloss approach, but, well, it’s a bit vanilla if you ask me. Check out the full image, courtesy of Cinematical, after the jump.
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11/2 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Newton on ‘For Colored Girls,’ Godard’s Oscar revives controversy, ratings board drama
• Jean-Luc Godard’s Honorary Oscar revives controversy over the director’s supposed anti-Semitism. [New York Times]• Amy Kaufman sits down with “Love & Other Drugs” director Edward Zwick. [The Envelope]
• Edward Douglas chats up “For Colored Girls” star Thandie Newton. [Coming Soon]
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‘King’s Speech’ leads BIFA nods, ‘Another Year’ snubbed
Mike Leigh has long bemoaned the fact that he gets more respect from American awards bodies than those in his homeland. He received further proof of that this morning, as his broadly acclaimed new feature, “Another Year,” was snubbed in the top category at the British Independent Film Awards in favor of, among others, Matthew Vaughan’s dismal po-mo superhero movie “Kick-Ass.”
The BIFAs are, of course, to the BAFTAs what the Indie Spirits are to the Oscars. They can always be relied upon to make some interesting calls, but while some of this year’s surprises are laudable, others are just perverse.
Leigh receives some compensation in the shape of a Best Director nod, plus a trio of acting bids (which interestingly place Ruth Sheen in lead and the much-fancied Lesley Manville in support). But Leigh’s omission from the Best Screenplay category — when the pleasant but join-the-dots writing of “Made in Dagenham” makes the cut — is, if anything, even more of a jawdropper than the Best Film miss. The BIFAs were similarly cool on “Happy-Go-Lucky” two years ago, somewhat anticipating the film’s BAFTA whiteout — here’s hoping we’re not setting ourselves up for a repeat.
(More thoughts, and the full list of nominations, after the jump.)
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WEEKLY WRAP: Leading men, Halloween horror, comic contenders
• This week’s Off the Carpet column took a roll call of this year’s Best Actor contenders.• Meanwhile, we interviewed one of the strongest of those contenders, “127 Hours” star James Franco.
• With “The King’s Speech,” “Another Year” and “Made in Dagenham” all in the hunt, The Long Shot mused on Britain’s back-and-forth relationship with the Oscars.
• In case you’d forgotten what day it is, Chad got into the Halloween spirit by counting down his ten favorite alternative horror movies.