In Contention

Tag: Up in the Air

  • Gleiberman’s mea culpa

    Ralph Fiennes in The Hurt LockerA few weeks ago we directed you to an Owen Gleiberman piece focusing on the perceived Best Picture battle of “Avatar” vs. “Up in the Air,” that it was a battle of film culture significance.  Obviously, as Gleiberman notes in his recent “my bad” post, that doesn’t appear to be the race anymore, and I’m as guilty for boiling it down at that time as anyone.

    If one is still inclined to boil things down to a “race,” then it appears more likely that it is “The Hurt Locker” and “Avatar,” and as I noted following the former’s PGA victory, that makes for an incredibly compelling clash of filmmaking values.

    “It’s low budget, efficient, muscular independent filmmaking versus blockbuster, groundbreaking, high octane studio entertainment,” I wrote at the time.  “It’s level-headed political realism versus archetypal political grandstanding.  It’s character versus idea.  It’s measured theatrical meditation versus visceral theatrical experience.”  And Gleiberman is now saying virtually the same thing.

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  • ‘Up in the Air’ wins the Scripter

    Cover of Up in the AirI’m currently sitting in the back of the Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara for James Cameron’s Modern Master tribute and word has trickled in that Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner and Walter Kirn have won the USC Scripter prize for “Up in the Air.”

    This was obviously somewhat anticipated and the WGA and Oscars will likely follow suit, but for now, a great moment for all involved as Kirn gets his moment in the circuit’s sun. The Scripters, of course, celebrate both the screenwriters of adapted screenplays and the authors of the source material that spawned them.

    Reitman and fellow Scripter nominee Geoffrey Fletcher were here in Santa Barbara this morning for a writers panel. Reitman will be coming right back tomorrow for the directors panel after heading down to LA to accept his award this evening.

    There’s no rest for the wicked during the season.

  • THE LONG SHOT: Now what?

    Jeremy Renner in The Hurt LockerA whole 31 days ahead of the 82nd Academy Awards ceremony, the race already feels like it’s winding down.

    Of the precursors, only BAFTA and the lesser guilds (sorry, WGA, but you brought irrelevance upon yourself) lie in wait to distract us from a month of wafty speculation and idle editorializing. Trust me, you’re going to get very sick of the phrase “battle of the exes” before the month is out … if you aren’t already.

    For me, a trip to the Berlinale next week couldn’t be better timed – a few days of seeing and discussing some new films, including several of this year’s hot Sundance titles, will be a welcome vacation from the ever-dwindling pool of names and titles we’ve been talking about since the fall.

    But if you’re not one of the lucky few who can make it to a festival – or if you’re as uninspired as everyone else by the new releases of the last few weeks – fresh perspective needn’t come only from fresh films. I recently had the pleasure of rewatching “The Hurt Locker” and getting happily reacquainted with it as a movie, rather than as the industry story it has grown into over the months.

    Awards season can sometimes smother the movies it celebrates, turning them into representations of competing social and artistic ideals that they were never intended to be. As the competition narrows, these definitions get progressively more binary – and the side-taking more vicious. (You only have to look at Roger Ebert’s online opposition of “Avatar” to see what the season can make us do to movies we even like.)

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  • Yes…and more than one movie, actually…

    Cover of Entertainment WeeklyAlright.  It must be said.  I’m as guilty as anyone, perhaps more than most, at positioning this year’s Oscar race as a two-horse sprint to the finish between “Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker.” But slowly it’s occurred to me that this Oscar race has been boiled down so quickly because it makes for such a sexy headline.  There’s David and Goliath, there’s the exes thing, there’s plenty of meat in the idea that these two films are out in front of the pack.

    And now I see it once again with Entertainment Weekly’s cover query: “Can anything beat ‘Avatar?’”

    Has the press (again, guilty) been lazy in allowing things to be positioned as such?  Well, yes and no.  The usual indicators tell us that these are the two films in question for obvious reasons. Guild support has been rampant for both, after all.  And the list of Oscar nominations had each out in front, tied with nine nominations apiece.  But there is a crucial point that many a journalist (again, guilty) is failing to consider when calling this thing.

    This year the Best Picture category (and only the Best Picture category) will use the preferential voting system rather than the standard one-vote system to determine the winner.  In so many words, the answer becomes: Which film is the most acceptable to the group, regardless of passion pockets?

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Supporting Actress

    Penelope Cruz in NineThis year’s Best Supporting Actress race made for, in many ways, one of the most wide open categories of the major nominees. While three of the contenders seemed fairly locked in place, the other two slots appeared up for grabs, and there was no shortage of deserving contenders waiting to fill out the field.

    Contenders such as Samantha Morton and Julianne Moore ultimately missed despite precursor attention, paving the way for last year’s winner in the category (a SAG nominee in a film that found itself floundering by year’s end) and a young actress who found herself opposite the year’s likely lead actor Oscar winner (and landing her first Oscar nomination in the process).

    The nominees are:

    Penélope Cruz, “Nine”
    Vera Farmiga, “Up in the Air”
    Maggie Gyllenhaal, “Crazy Heart”
    Anna Kendrick, “Up in the Air”
    Mo’Nique, “Precious”

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  • February winner predictions

    Jeff Bridges in Crazy HeartThese appeared at Movie City News’s Gurus o’ Gold page this morning, so you probably already saw them.  Here they are in any case, since, you know, I guess it’s about that time:

    Best Picture: “The Hurt Locker”
    Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”
    Best Actor: Jeff Bridges, “Crazy Heart”
    Best Actress: Sandra Bullock, “The Blind Side”
    Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds”
    Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique, “Precious”
    Best Adapted Screenplay: “Up in the Air”
    Best Original Screenplay: “The Hurt Locker”

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  • The bright side

    Abbie Cornish in Bright StarWell, I’ll start the good news selfishly, by noting that I didn’t entirely embarrass myself with my predictions: not counting the short categories (which I was too cowardly and uninformed to predict) I nailed 78/106, just two points behind Kris’s round tally of 80.

    But while I was pleased to see at least one of my out-on-a-limb guesses come good — seriously, why didn’t more people call that Art Direction nod for “The Young Victoria?” — I was better at predicting what wouldn’t get nominated.

    So, my season-long hunches that Julianne Moore would be frozen out in the supporting race, that “(500) Days of Summer” would be blanked, that “Up in the Air” would miss that crucial Film Editing nod, and so on, were all on the money. And my increasing sense that nobody really liked “Invictus” enough to put it atop their ballot proved right too.

    Now, if I only I’d known what would land in their place. You can’t have it all, I suppose.

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  • SUNDAY CENTS: ‘Darkness’ falls

    Edge of Darkness*All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.

    The self-proclaimed King of the World wiped the floor with the self-proclaimed King of Malibu as “Avatar” spent a seventh consecutive week at the top of the box office. A cool $30 million represents a drop of only 14% from last week and again sits only behind “Titanic” as the biggest seventh weekend tally ever.

    The running total is now $594.5 million and it should pass the $600 million mark by Wednesday, joining “E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial,” “Titanic,” “Return of the Jedi,” “Jurassic Park” and “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace” as the only films of the modern era to do so. The success of this film has become so monotonous that I can’t even muster any energy to be snarky about it anymore.

    Mel Gibson’s return to the silver screen proved to be no “Taken.” It proved to not even be a “Legion” as it debuted with a soft $17.1 million. That’s the lowest debut for a Gibson joint since the $17 million start for “Braveheart” in 1995 on 1,000 less screens. Blame it on fading star power, bad accents, generic advertising and a lack of 3D smurf-like things riding dragons.

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  • January winner predictions

    Guy Pearce in The Hurt LockerIt’s time for me to go to the well one more time before next week’s big announcement.  That’s right, six days and the mystery of the 10 will finally be answered.  But first, some blind (since there are no nominations yet) guesses.  Just trying to find the right balance here:

    Best Picture: “The Hurt Locker”
    Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”
    Best Actor: Jeff Bridges, “Crazy Heart”
    Best Actress: Meryl Streep, “Julie & Julia”
    Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds”
    Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique, “Precious”
    Best Adapted Screenplay: “Up in the Air”
    Best Original Screenplay: “The Hurt Locker”

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  • 1/27 Oscarweb Round-up

    Woody Allen• Captain Kirk to host the Annie Awards. [The Independent]

    • Roger Ebert writes a love letter to famed paparazzo Ron Galella in the course of reviewing “Smash His Camera” in Sundance. [Chicago Sun-Times]

    • Carey Mulligan, self-deprecating British actress rejected by three drama schools who went on to star in An Education has Tinseltown at her feet. [The Times]

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  • This again

    (from left) Jason Reitman and Sheldon TurnerWait, did Pete Hammond really say that “the bloggers” are responsible for the whole (sensationalized) Jason Reitman/Sheldon Turner dispute thing without noting that Steven Zeitchik, at Hammond’s own outlet, was the one responsible for spurring the debate without having (or seemingly being interested in) certain facts?

    Anyway, not that Hammond needed to be anything other than a showman when he moderated last night’s WGA post-screening Q&A between Turner and Reitman, but let’s not deflect too much here.  And I think Steve Pond is stretching matters a bit further when he writes that Reitman failed “to thank his credited co-writer” at the CCMAs last weekend.  Reitman clearly said “our screenplay,” gestured to Turner and stepped away for him to speak when he was finished.  He wasn’t conducting the band.

    I wasn’t going to bother with this whole mess because it was built on some sloppy journalism from the outset and serves to point a finger at something that isn’t as big a story as certain parties would like it to be, but, too late.  Here I am doing it anyway.

  • OFF THE CARPET: David and Goliath

    Jeremy Renner in The Hurt LockerThe stunning PGA victory for “The Hurt Locker” last night not only injected some more excitement into what was a coagulating Oscar race, but it also injected some intrigue and drama as well.

    Some might want to say it wasn’t such a surprise, and if you called it, great.  But it was an against-all-odds victory no matter how you slice it.  The film’s $12 million box office haul is the lowest for a PGA winner, by $50 million, since 1992’s “The Crying Game.”

    The competition we’re now seemingly faced with in “The Hurt Locker” versus “Avatar” couldn’t have been scripted.  And it’s a battle of philosophies more intriguing than the one put forth by Owen Gleiberman a few weeks back.

    It’s low budget, efficient, muscular independent filmmaking versus blockbuster, groundbreaking, high octane studio entertainment.  It’s level-headed political realism versus archetypal political grandstanding.  It’s character versus idea.  It’s measured theatrical meditation versus visceral theatrical experience.

    In a nutshell, it’s everything the cinema is about, it’s a Civil War of the medium, and it just happens to be a battle whose warring factions are led by former spouses.  Drama doesn’t begin to say it.

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  • 1/21 Oscarweb Round-up

    (from left) James Schamus and Ang Lee• Cathy Yan chats with “Up in the Air” star Anna Kendrick. [Speakeasy]

    • James Schamus sets to work on “tragic, suicidally depressing” script for Ang Lee.  Terrific. [Hollywood Reporter]

    • Peter Bradshaw saddles back up to “Toy Story 2,” with a father’s eye. [The Guardian]

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  • SAG on the way

    Meryl Streep at the 2009 Screen Actors Guild AwardsSaturday night the Screen Actors Guild Awards will go down, televised on TNT, and I can’t really believe the race is THIS sewn up.  Right down the line, most are calling it for Bridges, Streep, Waltz and Mo’Nique.  There are some differences of opinion on the ensemble performance category, but for the most part, those four Oscar favorites are the expected victors with the guild.

    The last time SAG went four-for-four with the Academy’s ultimate winners was 2004.  The last time before that was 1997, which actually featured a tie between Gloria Stewart and Kim Basinger, so it’s a bit less definitive.  And in point of fact, those are the only times things have matched up.

    The reason for this is fairly simple.  The Screen Actors Guild (a 90,000-member body of people) votes for the winners at large, while the nominees are decided upon by a roughly 2,000-member nominating committee, 1,200 of them based in Los Angeles.  The nominating committee obviously sees more of the contenders than the vast membership.  For that reason, generally speaking, you can expect the unexpected.

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  • Things I learned from the Globes

    Sandra Bullock at the 2009 Golden Globe AwardsLast January, I wrote an especially effusive review of the previous night’s Golden Globe awards, commending the usually much-derided HFPA for looking beyond star power and box-office grosses. Instead, they assembled an international and rather indie-minded winners slate that included such titles as “Happy-Go-Lucky,” “The Wrestler,” “In Bruges,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and eventual Oscar-sweeper “Slumdog Millionaire.”

    What a difference a year makes.

    Whether stung by matters of ratings and economics, or simply wowed by a very different school of cinema this year, the Foreign Press voters were back to the big-name pandering for which they are famous.

    Everyone present, meanwhile, seemed quite aware of the fact, some — including host Ricky Gervais and, in the night’s best speech, Robert Downey, Jr. — openly teasing them for it. “One thing you can’t buy is a Golden Globe,” the reliably droll Gervais observed, beer in hand. “Officially.”

    So, what did I learn from last night’s proceedings?

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  • An evening at the CCMAs

    Kathryn Bigelow at the 15th annual Critics' Choice Movie AwardsAlright, now that the booze and the hangover have worn off, let’s talk last night’s Critics’ Choice Movie Awards.

    It was a decently produced evening, the venue having shifted from the Santa Monica Civic Center to the Hollywood Palladium, right in the middle of Tinseltown.  The scheme of having 10 tables rounding the stage representing the 10 films nominated for Best Picture was a nice touch.  I was fortunate enough to be at the “Up in the Air” table with Jason Reitman, Vera Farmiga (who I was meeting for the first time) and Anna Kendrick.

    George Clooney was a no-show (working on his upcoming Haiti telethon), though at least that didn’t make for an awkward moment later when Jeff Bridges won the lead actor prize, the first on his way to an eventual Oscar win.

    Anyway, a few notes (since Guy has already given you a thorough rundown of last night’s implications)…

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  • ‘Hurt Locker’ takes top honors at Critics’ Choice Awards

    Best Actress winners Meryl Streep and Sandra Bullock at the Critics' Choice AwardsThe BFCA are rarely ones to take an individual stand on the awards trail, and such was the case last night, as they mostly stuck with Oscar frontrunners down the line. In the numbers stakes,  “Avatar” (with six awards) and “Inglourious Basterds” (with three) came out on top.

    But it was “The Hurt Locker” that emerged as the night’s real winner, maintaining its tight season-long grip on the Best Picture and Best Director prizes, even with this more mainstream-oriented group. (It should be stressed that, despite the name, this is not a critics’ award.)

    Is this another “Sideways” — which also managed to parlay critical momentum into a top win here — or is something bigger afoot for the film? I’m starting to suspect the latter.

    Kris can obviously offer more first-hand perspective at a later stage. Still, the sense I get from this is that, for all the claims of it being a level three-horse race, “Up in the Air” is actually trailing “The Hurt Locker” and “Avatar” — if any major precursor was going to swing the way of Jason Reitman’s film, I’d have expected it to be the sometimes safe-playing BFCA.

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  • Iowa critics spring for ‘Up in the Air,’ ‘Crazy Heart’

    Best Picture
    “Up in the Air”

    Best Director
    Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”

    Best Actor
    Jeff Bridges, “Crazy Heart”

    Best Actress
    Gabourey Sidibe, “Precious”

    Check out the rest at The Circuit.