• Nathaniel Rogers gets delightfully painstaking with Oscar trivia, notes that, should Jesse Eisenberg be nominated for Best Actor, he’ll boot Matt Damon from the list of top 10 youngest nominees in the category. [The Film Experience]
• Speaking of which, Damon has the directing bug and continues to bone up on the ins and outs via collaborations with Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese and the Coens. [The Big Picture]
• Roy Greenslade sings the praises of “Made in Dagenham.” [The Guardian]
• President Obama met with children featured in the film “Waiting for Superman” yesterday. [Associated Press]
• Handicapping this year’s documentary feature Oscar race. [Vulture]
• Dave Karger explains his Gurus choices, calls “Love & Other Drugs” (one of his predicted Best Picture nominees) one of the sexiest films he’s seen in years. [Oscar Watch]
For the second week in a row, “The Social Network” tops the U.S. box office charts in a photo finish with “Life As We Know It.” (I’m happy to say I offered up some money for the Fincher cause and saw it a second time yesterday.) But the real story is the soft opening for “Secretariat.” Or will it mirror the subject of the film, start out slow out of the gate and prove to have some endurance? Doubtful.
[Courtesy: Exhibitor Relations]
• As robust box-office returns for “The Social Network” amplified its Oscar buzz, this week’s Off the Carpet column warned that the awards race is “a marathon, not a sprint.”
• Keeping the conversation on David Fincher, we counted down the greatest technical achievements in his filmmography…
• …and invited you to name your favorite Fincher film in our new poll.
• Oscar-watchers got a new title to play with this week, as it was revealed that Peter Weir’s “The Way Back” will qualify for the 2010 awards after all.
• Tom O’Neil takes back Gold Derby, prepares re-launch of GoldDerby.com on November 1. [Gold Derby]
• Grilling a Harvard grad on the accuracy of final club depictions in “The Social Network.” [Vulture]
• Cole Abaius chats with Armie Hammer about his performance(s) in the film. [Film School Rejects]
Confession: since their utterly senseless redesign, Metacritic has gone from a daily (many times daily, often) stop on my web rounds to a place I barely visit. “It’s like walking through my old high school,” wrote my friend Nick, echoing my thoughts precisely. “I used to live here, now I can’t even find the bathroom.”
It’s all for the best, probably: the less brain space I devote to the numerical quantification of critical opinion that, for some folks, now seems to stand in the place of critical opinion itself, the better for my sanity. I know which critics I like and/or which ones matter, and I can just as easily visit them in their own online living rooms.
That said, I remain fascinated by how the advent of review-scoring has made the media (the new media, in particular) unprecedentedly obsessed with the role of critics — at a time when their opinion seemingly couldn’t have less influence on the paying public. This year alone, we’ve already seen flare-ups on the blogosphere over the critics who dared to sully the Rotten Tomatoes scores for “Toy Story 3” or “Inception”; the notoriously hard-to-please Armond White has become the critic that everyone claims not to care about, yet the arrival of one of his against-consensus pans is now greeted with mass re-Tweeting.
• On the hunt for “Catfish”‘s Angela Wesselman-Pierce. [Los Angeles Times]
• Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes write up the beginnings of the season (with a little quotage from yours truly). [New York Times]
• Scott Feinberg makes the case for both Annette Bening and Julianne Moore getting nominated for “The Kids Are All Right.” [ScottFeinberg.com]
With “The Social Network” hitting theaters this weekend, audiences are reminded once again of director David Fincher’s skill and vision as a craftsman. The eight films he has assembled throughout an 18-year career in feature filmmaking have been dazzling showcases for below-the-line talent.
As you know, we make an effort to keep the spotlight on these elements of the filmmaking process. Art direction, cinematography, costume design, film editing, makeup, music, sound and visual effects are all key ingredients, and Fincher has always been a director consumed by their implementation in his work.
The seeds of this, of course, were planted early on in his commercial and music video career. They seemed to reach a full apex two years ago with the period and effects detail of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (racking up eight of the 11 total nominations Fincher’s films have amassed in these arenas), but each film in his portfolio sports below-the-line creativity and artistry worth singling out.
So it seemed to me a great opportunity to dedicate an installment of The Lists to the best craft elements of Fincher’s filmography to date. Let’s dive in…
• The Academy considers moving the Oscars up to late January or early February. Same old song and dance. It would begin in 2012 and is dependent on the NFL’s plans. [Los Angeles Times]
• Tom Shone talks to “Nowhere Boy” director Sam Taylor-Wood. [New York Magazine]
• Monika Bartyzel toasts Helen Mirren’s rise from sexpot to Oscar winner. [Cinematical]
Last week, I mused on the possibility of “The Social Network”‘s highly youth-oriented narrative proving a bit of an obstacle to older audiences, Academy members among them. So far, it seems not to be a problem: judging on reactions I’ve skimmed and conversations I’ve had, interest in the film spans a broad demographic range, as the media saturation has ensured even people who wouldn’t dream of opening a Facebook account are aware of its existence.
Nevertheless, a couple of articles published over the weekend suggest that the film does still expose a generational divide — just not in simple “will see/won’t see” terms. Rather, as the NYT’s David Carr writes, it’s the way audiences respond to the film and its characters that is likely to differ across age groups, with some seeing it as a cautionary tale and others as a success story:
“When you talk to people afterward, it was as if they were seeing two different films,” said Scott Rudin, one of the producers. “The older audiences see Zuckerberg as a tragic figure who comes out of the film with less of himself than when he went in, while young people see him as completely enhanced, a rock star, who did what he needed to do to protect the thing that he had created.”
Two weeks ago in this space I discussed the precariousness of “frontrunner” status in an Oscar race. At the time, coming off of a big surge in Toronto, “The King’s Speech” was the big dog on the porch. But be warned, I said. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Now that “The Social Network” has released, accompanied by glowing review after glowing review, not to mention a media blitz to make the head spin, that film is looking like an alpha in the year’s awards season. And, inevitably, the race is already being reduced to a generational battle between the two…yet it’s barely October.
Here’s the thing. If you’re a studio still priming your pony, you have to be watching all of this unfold with giddy delight, licking your chops, ravenous. This is the kind of situation easily devoured by savvy marketing in Oscar land, and if I’m a rival contender, I’m remembering my Horace: “Seize the day.”
But it’s a delicate balance. One doesn’t want to charge out and shoehorn into the discussion, lest you be tossed aside as mere garnish to the main course of these two films. However, playing it too cool and quiet isn’t the safest bet either, as an Oscar win is the culmination of built steam and sustained speed (which be in the form of a long drag or a quick burst of energy at the right during the right frame).
• Peter Lattman sits down with “Inside Job” director Charles Ferguson. [Dealbook]
• A.O. Scott on the drive and determination of Gordon Gekko and Mark Zuckerberg. [New York Times]
• Scott Feinberg puts together a massive, comprehensive list of Oscar contenders and pundits on Twitter. Follow away! [ScottFeinberg.com]
A solid start and a big win for Sony marketing, I should think. “The Town” pulled in a little more than I would have expected. “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” is fading away as it was leapfrogged by “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole.” And “Let Me In” had the life sucked out of it. More importantly: REDSKINS/EAGLES!
• A grim week for Hollywood talent, as we said goodbye to Gloria Stuart, Tony Curtis, Arthur Penn and, most prematurely, Sally Menke.
• Mexico’s “Biutiful” became the starriest entry yet on the Best Foreign Language Film longlist, now up to a round 60 titles.
• This week’s Long Shot column examined the widely predicted “Social Network”-versus-“King’s Speech” Best Picture battle, wondering what it says about the current state of “Oscar bait.”
• Just to remind us that there are other films knocking around, the long-awaited trailer for the Coens’ “True Grit” set the web abuzz.
It seems like David Fincher’s latest has been talked to death the last few weeks. My thoughts are here. Hopefully you aren’t bored with it before it had a chance to release (I doubt you are), so once you get around to seeing “The Social Network” this weekend (or whenever), head on back here and give us your thoughts.
• Ed Harris opens up about his career (speaking of which, P.S.: I’m hearing a one-week qualifier for “The Way Back” may just happen after all). [MakingOf]
• Stephen King: Do vampires right! [Entertainment Weekly]
• Speaking of vampires, Steven Zeitchik sits down with “Let Me In” director Matt Reeves. [Los Angeles Times]