In Contention

Tag: WALL-E

  • TECH SUPPORT: Final predictions

    Tech Support at In ContentionAfter six months of Tech Support previews and interviews, the films have arrived, the nominations have been announced and the guilds, the critics and BAFTA have all announced their preferences.  Today we take a final look at the races before the envelopes are opened on Sunday.

    BEST ART DIRECTION
    After guild and BAFTA wins, I would say “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” has cemented its frontrunner status in this category. Spanning decades of the 20th Century, Donald Graham Burt’s production design was impossible not to notice and gave us gorgeous backdrops for its character’s predicaments.

    The other nominees all have the odds stacked against them, whether similar work has been seen before (Michael Carlin’s “The Duchess” and Kristi Zea’s “Revolutionary Road”), is just not showy enough (Nathan Crowley’s “The Dark Knight”) or the nominee is otherwise along for the ride (James Murakami’s “Changeling”).

    Will win: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
    Could win: “The Duchess”
    Should win: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

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  • Hammond, O’Neil debate the original screenplay race

    Everyone’s wondering lately whether “WALL-E” can pull off an upset in the original screenplay category as of late, taking down the only Best Picture nominee of the bunch in the process: Dustin Lance Black’s “Milk.”  Gold Derby’s Tom O’Neil cornered Pete Hammond recently to debate just that, as well as some discussion on the adapted screenplay category.

    “I think the original screenplay category is interesting this year because I think there are three nominees we can write off, ‘In Bruges,’ ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ and ‘Frozen River,’” Hammond says.  “Then we’ve got ‘Milk’ and ‘WALL-E.’  No animated film has ever won in the writing categories and I think the time is right because “WALL-E’ is loved in the Academy.  I think they may be receptive to putting it in the winner’s circle in some other categories and I think the screenplay is where we might see the biggest upset of the night.”

    That’s kind of what I’ve been thinking for a while now, too.  This and the lead actor race are the two most interesting categories of the evening, I think.

  • THE LISTS: Top 10 pet peeves of the 2008-2009 Oscar season

    Rachel Getting Married

    The season is winding down this week.  The slow President’s Day holiday yesterday seemed to be more of a harbinger than a lull in the excitement.  This time next week, we’ll probably be over the fallout of the circuit and on to debating the contenders we’re likely to see a year from now.

    It’s a vicious, beautiful, sad, interesting circle.

    But before the 81st Annual Academy Awards telecast puts a bow on the festivities Sunday night, it seems a decent enough time to reflect.  And not to be too negative, but this became one of the most irritating seasons I’ve ever covered, both in the lack of excitement to the dichotomy that circumstance presented for me (given that my favorite film of the year has lead the field throughout).

    With that in mind, I fully expect this piece to grate the nerves of more than a few readers.  Then again, I’m sure plenty of these views are shared by a handful as well, but whatever the case, a list of pet peeves began to stack up early on in the season.  I thought it reasonable to collect them here, so feast your eyes (or roll them), this is what got under my skin this year.

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  • 2/17 Oscarweb Round-up

    WALL-E• Patrick Goldstein joins a massive chorus pondering this year’s lack of an “Oscar bump” at the box office. [The Big Picture]

    • David Poland responds…at length. [The Hot Blog]

    • The Gurus o’ Gold crank out the odds. [Movie City News]

    • Anne Thompson wonders if all the bad press for “The Reader” last week could affect its Oscar chances at the last minute. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • The week after our own Guy Lodge dived into the matter, John Horn tackles the Oscar nominated “WALL-E” screnplay. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Tim Shipment, meanwhile, calls said bad press an “orchestrated attack.” [Daily Telegraph]

    • New Yorkers head west to help bring the Oscars to life. [New York Daily News]

  • Can ‘Slumdog’ really make a clean sweep?

    As we all know, this was a(nother) exceptionally good weekend for “Slumdog Millionaire,” as it nabbed a quartet of technical guild trophies, from the cinematographers, editors, art directors and even, in an especially unlikely coup, the sound mixers. With just the costume designers left to weigh in, this means that Danny Boyle’s film has not come up empty at a single guild ceremony all season — it is an unprecedented hot streak.

    With voters seemingly incapable, on any given ballot, of not checking the box alongside the word “Slumdog,” the film suddenly poses a very real threat of nabbing 9 awards, sweeping every category in which it is nominated at the Oscars. Nathaniel Rogers, for one, is predicting such an outcome, and thinks that the key to everything lies in the usually unheralded sound categories:

    It might sound odd to say but I believe these are the key categories of the night. If they announce them early and they both go to Slumdog Millionaire we have a sweeper on our hands and you’ll watch it win all 9 of its categories. If it loses both it will likely be a more traditional night when several film get a couple of statues each. But these two categories are clearly where Slumdog is most vulnerable to defeat. Voters could also opt to improve WALL•E or The Dark Knight‘s statue total … (But) the biggest problem for both the robot and the batman is, I fear, each other. Which might have also been the case in the best picture nomination battle.

    I completely agree. The two sound categories are among the races causing me the most head-scratching as I finalise my predictions. As a technical feat of sound design, “WALL-E” would appear to be the connoisseur’s choice, but the fact that it was passed over by the guild raises a questionmark. “The Dark Knight” fits the same “acclaimed action movie” profile that netted “The Bourne Ultimatum” a brace of wins here last year. But aren’t the Academy members who don’t know much about the craft, but do love “Slumdog,” simply going to check off the film’s name twice more?

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  • ‘Slumdog,’ ‘WALL-E,’ ‘Wire’ win big at the Eddies

    ACE Eddie AwardUPDATED: Alright, back from the show and it seems “Slumdog” also predictably won the ASC award, which brings me to a possibility that has come up in a number of conversations recently: could the film sweep all its Oscar categories in one week’s time?  It is the film of the year and truthfully, there seems to be a ripple through the industry hinting at a nine Oscar outcome (since it can’t exactly win two Oscars in the Original Song category — but wouldn’t a tie just be hilarious?).

    Anyway, this was my second time reporting from the ACE Eddie Awards ceremony and it’s generally a good time, for those who can keep up with the inside baseball, of course.  Note to self: maybe not bring the girlfriend next time.

    Beyond the quick dash of kudos-dishing there were a trio of special awards handed out tonight.  For starters, the Career Achievement Eddies went to Arthur Schmidt and Sidney Katz (father of ACE member Virginia Katz).  Watching Schmidt’s reel play before Robert Zemeckis handed him his honor was a treat, of course, considering the nearly three decades of movie magic the man has been partially responsible for: “Back to the Future,” “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?,” “The Last of the Mohicans,” “Forrest Gump,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” “The Birdcage,” etc.  He seems to have taken a break the last four years.

    Mel Gibson, meanwhile, joined Stuart Baird in presenting Richard Donner with the Golden Eddie Award (which last year went to Norman Jewison).  Donner’s speech was a highlight, despite the rambling (which was done with trademark Donner endearment).  He put a bow on the thing with a trio of political points, the first being an anti-fur declaration (to go along with an anti-fur button pinned to his lapel).  Then he encouraged us all to adopt puppies rather than buy, and whether you voted for Barack Obama or not, he said, “we’re going through a lot of shit and he needs all of your support now.”  Each of them were met with big applause in a West L.A. ballroom, but of course.

    But again, the highlight reel = movie magic: “Superman,” “The Omen,” “Lethal Weapon,” “The Goonies” — GREAT call by ACE this year, I have to say.  But the one thing that stuck in my mind was Gibson’s weird cavalier facial hair…thing.  An evil Robin Hood, that’s what he looked like up there.  Or a “V for Vendetta” mask.

    Anyway, the big awards went to “Slumdog” and “WALL-E,” of course (as well as “Man on Wire”), the newsy news of which you can find after the jump.  I think the Pixar win is a bit of a surprise and in a way, a refreshing one.  It’s nice to see this guild really break down the barrier for animated films in this way, since no other toon has taken the Eddie in the past despite numerous nominations in the comedy category.  The former, however, and Chris Dickens (looking quite Moby-esque, I have to say), seems to be on an unstoppable Oscar trajectory.

    Much to the chagrin of some, the enthusiasm of others.  Such is the season…

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  • Writing the silences

    Hard as it may be to believe, it seems there are a lot of people in and around the industry who don’t fully understand what a screenplay is — who think that ‘writing’ equals ‘dialogue.’ This makes it all the more laudable that the Academy’s writing branch recognised “WALL-E,” a film that hinges, of course, on extended stretches of dialogue-free storytelling.

    As I’ve written before, it’s a significant challenge to build empathetic characters, credible relationships and narrative immediacy with a minimum of on-screen words. And yet, one still hears occasional murmurings questioning the validity of the film as a feat of screenwriting. (Presumably they imagine the animators made up the story as they drew, or that all silent cinema was entirely improvised.)

    So I was pleased to read Andrew Stanton thoroughly address this issue in a chat with Pete Hammond, wherein he states that of all “WALL-E”‘s 6 nominations, he takes the most pride in the screenplay nod:

    “I am prouder to be in writing more than anything else. At Pixar we say ‘story, story, story.’ It’s the root of everything,” he says. “It’s the biggest pat on the back I can think of. We put ourselves fully into every aspect but it’s all in service of the story.”

    It could be a tough sell to the overall academy (every branch votes on the final screenplay award) as a lot of members just don’t understand how a virtually silent movie, in which the main characters speak their own language, could possibly have been “written.”  But Stanton says it’s no different than the process any other writer would go through.

    “How you tell a story is just as important as what the story is. In my mind these characters were gonna speak. They just weren’t gonna speak in a language you and I knew. When they spoke and why they spoke was just as important as if you could understand their language,” he says.

    Well said. Got it, voters?

  • Peter Gabriel pulls out of performing at the Oscars

    Peter GabrielHmm, I totally agree with him on principle but at the same time, it’ll be a shame for him to not grace Oscar’s stage.  Especially since he’s likely to win the award:

    I was delighted when Down to Earth was nominated for an Oscar. I was also pleased to have been asked to perform the song in the Oscar ceremony. However, in recent discussions with the Producers, it became clear that despite there being only three nominees, only 60-65 seconds was being offered, and that was also in a medley of the three songs. I don’t feel that is sufficient time to do the song justice, and have decided to withdraw from performing.

    I fully respect and look forward to the Producers’ right to revamp the show. Even though song writers are small players in the film making process, they are just as committed and work just as hard as the rest of the team and I regret that this new version of the ceremony is being created, in part, at their expense.

    I still very much look forward to attending the ceremony.

    The news first dropped at Peter Gabriel’s official website via video message, though Nikki Finke apparently thinks she had it as an exclusive.

    Somebody call up Phil Collins…

  • Pixar’s latest a “tearjerker” and a “gamble?”

    That’s what this Anthony Breznican USA Today story suggests of Pete Docter’s upcoming “Up.”  Just reading through the brief recap of a footage screening, it seems to me “WALL-E” might not be the Pixar high-mark after all (not that it is for me to begin with, mind you, but it certainly is for the great majority of film fans).  I have to say, it seems to be a story that could have a lot of resonance within the zeitgeist.  After all, who doesn’t want to get the hell away from everything after the last eight years?

    Here’s a taste:

    Instead of Clint Eastwood clashing with street gangs, the old-timer in this story (voiced by Ed Asner) decides to get off his own lawn, tying thousands of balloons to his little wooden house to float away from his troubles.

    Up opens May 29, and early footage reveals a gamble from the makers of Cars and Toy Story: a plunge into tearjerker territory. The first third of the movie establishes the main character, Carl, as a lost and angry soul after a happy, mostly quiet life with his childhood sweetheart, Ellie.

    The montage of their marriage touches on themes rarely seen in bedtime storybooks: romance, financial hardship, a lost pregnancy, loneliness and the blink-of-an-eye passage from childhood to wrinkles.

  • 2/12 Oscarweb Round-up

    (from left) Afa the Wild Samoan and Mickey Rourke on the set of The Wrestler(Kind of quiet out there…)

    • David Carr addresses the “some stars won’t walk the red carpet” talk, slams fashionistas as being “pilot fish on a big whale.”  Ooooooohhhhh. [The Carpetbagger]

    • Rebecca Ascher-Walsh talks to double nominee Kate Winslet. [The Envelope]

    • Dave Karger says it’s Harvey vs. Miramax in the ladies’ acting fields. [Entertainment Weekly]

    • Sasha Stone goes deep with “WALL-E” helmer Andrew Stanton. [Awards Daily]

    • David S. Cohen writes up “The Wrestler”‘s unsung hero: trainer Afa “the Wild Samoan.” [Variety]

    • Patrick Goldstein responds to the week’s “Reader” slams. [The Big Picture]

  • Start from scratch, Academy

    I do love a good rant about the Academy Awards. And Ryan Gilbey is, for my money, one of the sharpest, most entertaining film writers around these days. So it figures that a Gilbey-written attack on the Oscars, in the lefty political mag the New Statesman, should make for good reading.

    Gilbey cheerfully admits that he “hates” the Oscars, even as they fascinate him by “systematically disparag(ing) the creativity and alchemy of filmmaking.” And as in David Denby’s own recent rant, he dislikes all of this year’s Best Picture contenders save for “Milk,” though he still thinks Gus Van Sant’s film “pales beside” the likes of “WALL-E.” (I particularly like the accuracy with which he skewers “Frost/Nixon,” arguing that it is “built like a sitcom — every joke has its payoff in the following shot.” Bingo.)

    But he also offers some ideas for how to fix the supposedly broken machine that is the Oscars. And while some of them are typically playful and even perverse (ban Ron Howard and Meryl Streep from future nominations, he pleads), some of them (to me, at least) really make a lot of sense. I particularly like his two-birds-with-one-stone approach to rectifying the embarrassing foreign-language situation, starting by abolishing the Foreign Film category altogether:

    Scrap the only award specially designed to allow a sliver of glory to fall on cinema from other cultures. Why? Well, it’s patronising, for a start. Not quite as bad as the Best British Film Bafta, I’ll grant you, but still only a hair away from being termed The Special Needs Award For Hopeless Cases. It’s nothing short of insulting to see Laurent Cantet’s The Class and Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir consigned to this subsidiary category when there is more accomplishment in one frame of those films than in the entirety of most of this year’s Best Picture contenders. An awards system that does not consider The Class good enough to compete with Frost/Nixon or Slumdog Millionaire deserves to be a laughing stock.

    So how will foreign-language films get a look-in? Call it positive discrimination or affirmative action, but from now on, the total number of Best Picture nominees should be raised to six, of which two must come from non-English-speaking countries. There is simply no other way to redress the balance than to force Academy voters to consider films that are not being screened at the local mall. Let’s put The Reader up against Waltz With Bashir and then we’ll see some real tears from Kate Winslet.

    Good stuff. The rest here.

  • What the techies think

    There’s an interesting article in Popular Mechanics, in which several industry experts offer their own predictions in a number of technical categories. Like Kris’ earlier post about the DPs’ thumbs-up to “Slumdog Millionaire,” it offers a perspective on the race that can widely differ from that of critics, audiences and even the Academy itself.

    I’ve often wondered just how differently the tech winners would turn out if they were voted on by the individual branches rather than the entire Academy membership. I think it’s likely that Emmanuel Lubezki would have a cinematography Oscar for “Children of Men,” for example, or perhaps the costume design gong wouldn’t always go to the film with the most opulent threads.

    Here, sound mixer Richard Van Dyke and sound editor Brian Riordan both name “WALL-E” the clear winner in their respective fields, with the latter simply remarking, “If you mute ‘WALL-E,’ you don’t have a movie … if you mute ‘Slumdog’ for five minutes, it’s still amazing.” Both men approve of the work in “Slumdog,” while Van Dyke has some qualms with the mixing in “The Dark Knight.”

    There’s an interesting conclusion in the makeup category, where artist Barney Burman’s personal standout is “Hellboy II,” though he rather surprisingly predicts that the general membership will lean towards “The Dark Knight,” given how powerfully the makeup job supported Heath Ledger’s performance.

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  • Predicting BAFTA, part two — main categories

    Continuing yesterday’s not-so-educated guesses at tomorrow’s BAFTA Awards, we move on the main categories. In many ways, they’re easier to predict than the frequently confounding technical categories, but that’s no reason to get complacent – as we saw last year with then-unexpected wins for Tilda Swinton and Marion Cotillard, BAFTA is more than capable of throwing a significant spanner in the works in the top races.

    By the way, be sure to tune in tomorrow, when I’ll be liveblogging the ceremony, beginning with the red carpet coverage at 11 a.m. PST (that’s 7 p.m. London time).

    BAFTA bizarrely issues a press release revealing the winners before the ceremony begins. (I told you they haven’t a clue how to organise the event.) I’ll be ignoring that, for my part – the ceremony can be dull enough without having every last drop of suspense extricated from the proceedings. But the info will be available. I leave the choice up to you.

    Moving on to the predictions…

    Best Film
    “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
    “Frost/Nixon”
    “Milk”
    “The Reader”
    “Slumdog Millionaire”

    There really is terribly little to discuss here. The truth is that “Slumdog” would likely be a BAFTA favourite even if it weren’t primed for Oscar glory – a true British success story, from a popular but largely unsung hometown filmmaker, featuring a British lead actor from a high-profile Channel 4 TV drama, it’s been a massive local box-office success, and has enjoyed nearly the same level of critical adulation here as in the States. BAFTA has celebrated homegrown product in this category for the last two years, and will do so for a third time running. If anything were to derail the Mumbai express, it would be the very British-flavoured “The Reader” … but it won’t.

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  • 2/7 Oscarweb Round-up

    (from left) Laurence Mark and Bill Condon• Rochona Majumdar and Satyam Khanna discuss the “Slumdog Millionaire” controversy. [NPR]

    • Kim Voynar spotlights the Best Director category. [Movie City News]

    • David Poland spends 30 minutes with “WALL-E” writer and director Andrew Stanton. [The Hot Blog]

    • Five Oscar night surprises Mark Lisanti would like to see. [Little Gold Men]

    • Searchlight may be making a wise business decision, but they’re still abandoning the best of the nominated songs in the process. [Gold Derby]

    • Yet another “meet the Oscarcast producers” piece. [Associated Press]

  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Slumdog’ stays happy, Bale gets angry

    A slower news week, this, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t find plenty to discuss. Here’s what was on our (and your) minds:

    • In the week’s biggest precursor news, Danny Boyle won the Directors’ Guild Award. Hollywood is still reeling from the shock.

    • Oh, and “Slumdog Millionaire” nabbed the USC Scripter award too.

    • Speaking of scripters, we say “WALL-E” is taking Best Original Screenplay. Here’s why.

    • We take a detailed look at this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts.

    • The Santa Barbara fest wrapped, with a tribute to Mickey Rourke among the highlights.

    • Two London critics’ groups acquitted themselves well this week, giving long-overdue Best Picture honours to “Hunger” and “The Wrestler” respectively.

    • Does “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” have a prayer in the Best Picture race after all?

    • Sticking with “Button,” Tech Support interviewed composer extraordinaire Alexandre Desplat.

    • We finally laid eyes on an Oscar season institution: the Vanity Fair Hollywood issue.

    • We contemplated what constitutes a genuine ‘upset’ in the Best Picture category.

    • BAFTA is taking a long hard look at their own voting process.

    • Away from the awards beat, you probably didn’t know this, but Christian Bale said some bad words.

  • Best Original Screenplay: The case for ‘WALL-E’

    I think it was some smart person on Nat Rogers’ most recent podcast who remarked that if you really want to get a picture of what was going on cinematically in any given year, you’d be better off bypassing Oscar’s Best Picture category and heading straight for the Best Original Screenplay nominees – a category that has a far higher tolerance for eccentricity, controversy and the occasional foreign tongue than any other.

    Case in point: 2002. When the top categories were splintered between the respectable but less-than-relevant likes of “Chicago” and “The Pianist,” Original Screenplay afforded voters the luxury of choosing between Pedro Almodovar, Todd Haynes and Alfonso Cuaron. Two years later, the category gave recognition to the otherwise shamefully sidelined “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” just as, a decade earlier, “Pulp Fiction” fans sought refuge there from a merciless shower of Gump. As I’ve said before, from “Citizen Kane” to “The Crying Game,” Best Original Screenplay tends to be the connoisseur’s favourite Oscar category.

    And so it is this year, when the writers’ branch really demonstrated admirable ingenuity and adventurousness in their selections, in the face of some otherwise uninspired voting. For me, it’s by far the most exciting of this year’s major Oscar categories, both for the calibre its competition and the unpredictability of its outcome. It’s one category where the Guild award is of little to no use to prognosticators, as only one title (“Milk”) features on both the Oscar and WGA lists.

    Like Kris, I’m placing my money on Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon and “WALL-E” emerging triumphant here, and thus becoming the first animated film in Oscar history to win a major category. This morning, meanwhile, I was interested to see that the majority of the Gurus of Gold are thinking the same way. It’s a healthy vote of confidence for a prediction that, let’s face it, would represent a significant leap for Academy voters. Just last year, the Reel Geezers (AMPAS members both) immediately discounted “Ratatouille” from consideration in the category because it was a “cartoon.” How do we know that most of the notoriously conservative Academy voters won’t feel the same way?

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  • Here’s a question…

    Okay, so I’m a bit slow on the uptake, but this just occurred to me today, after Ari Folman’s semi-surprising win at last night’s DGA awards. So I ask you: Why was “Waltz With Bashir” eligible for the DGA, but “WALL-E” wasn’t?

    Anybody?

  • ‘WALL-E’ shut out of the Annie Awards?

    Wow.  “Kung Fu Panda” pretty much cleaned the floor with all comers.  Did anyone see that coming?