Oscar Non-News, Taye Hewdig-Diggs, and Link Roundup
Wednesday, June 24, 2015 at 3:00PM Before we get to the link roundup a bit of Oscar Housekeeping. There are no significant changes to the rules this year so we're stuck with "somewhere between 5 and 10 nominees" in terms of Best Picture (I'd been hoping for a set number, no matter what that set number was, as I like the awards to have proper comparative pleasures in the grand scheme of history). Wisely though in minor changes, the visual effects category gets an expanded finalist list before nominations (smart), and the shorts category get longer finalists lists to choose from and the number of nominations per category is set at a concrete five (it's usually five but sometimes it's less depending on how voting goes, currently). I do like the consistency but I wonder why they're still holding out on Makeup and Hair -- EVERY FILM USES IT which is more than you can say for a lot of categories. The makeup branch should get 5 nominated slots like every other Oscar branch category. Sucks to be them.
Links
MNPP Flaunt and Jason try to convince us to love Aaron Johnson. Hey, no one else will.
A Fistful of Films reviews Inside Out from a parental perspective and cries all the way through it
Dissolve David Tennant takes over a Robin Williams voice role in the animation adaptation of Chew. I didn't actually know they were making this but that comic, which a friend of Anne Marie's turned me on to, is SO good and weird. So I'm excited for this
Towleroad somehow I missed this Magic Mike XXL clip of Matt Bomer singing. When perfect gets more perfect it's just so not fair, you know?
Kenneth in the (212) RIP Dick Van Patten. Remember "Eight is Enough"?
Mike's Movie Projector looks back at Dirk Bogarde in 1960
Movie Mezzanine looks back at The Blues Brothers (1980) -- I knew so many people who loved this movie growing up but I never "got" its appeal
The Hot Blog David Poland talks Inside Out's "Bing Bong"
Screen to... Other
Theater Mania 45 years after Love Story (1970) Ali McGraw and Ryan O'Neal are working together again -- they'll tour with the play "Love Letters" which had a short run on Broadway recently with rotating older celebrities
AV Club Fight Club (1999)... for kids?
Playbill Michael C Hall (Dexter) will star in a new Off Broadway David Bowie musical based on The Man Who Fell To Earth this fall. It's called "Lazarus"
Deadline Emmy winning Laurie Metcalf, so brilliant currently on the underseen sitcom Getting On has replaced Elizabeth Marvel in the upcoming Broadway adaptation of Misery (1990). So she does the Bruce Willis hobbling honors now
Showtune to Go...
The first photo of Taye Diggs as Hedwig has been released to excite you for his theatrical run in one of the great roles! So naturally our Showtune to Go this time is a Hedwig toon.
Reader Comments (17)
Taye Diggs should be a bigger star. In a perfect world, Hedwig would never end its Broadway run and Jake would be the next one.
Taye looks amazing!
This sentence from a comment in the Bing Bong article is priceless. "Hey David, I’m on the same page as you with regard to Bing Bong." I love the idea of adults v seriously discussing something named Bing Bong.
I feel the same way about both Animal House and The Blues Brothers, Nat, but at least the latter one captured James Brown, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, John Lee Hooker, Big Walter Horton, Pinetop Perkins and a slew of lesser known musicians in the same movie.
I'm not against certain categories getting less than five nominees. I know there are at least five worthy candidates and more for every category but some categories should be completely retired from the main show (short categories) since the public has no proper venue to ever see them. And I hate sound having two separate categories. Also best song feels antiquated and only an excuse to give Oscars to superstars or movies which would be not contenders elsewhere due to a variety of reasons.
The should bring the number of best picture contenders back to five. I cannot believe so many distributors and producers fought to keep it expanded.
3rtful: What I agree with: Song being at least somewhat antiquated (musicals haven't been consistently huge for DECADES and original musicals written from the ground up for film don't happen at all, making the category baffling) and shorts being banished from the main show. What I disagree with: Picture lowering to five and sound being one category. Yes, I'm saying either keep it like this or up it back to ten. Why? 2009: A Serious Man, Up in the Air. 2010: The Kids Are All Right, Winter's Bone, Toy Story 3. 2011: Okay, you got me there, everything here is either kind of typical of them or disappointing as a nominee. 2012: Beasts of the Southern Wild, Amour. 2013: Her. 2014: Boyhood, Selma. NONE of these would have seriously gotten Best Picture nominations in a five wide system and they're all ones that it's glorious that they got nominations. So, yeah, I can't defend a retreat to the five system and I'd probably want them to go to ten again. (Sorry, but critics release a full top 10, so that the Academy doesn't is bizarre.)
3rtful: And I forgot to mention sound: Yes, sound mixing is important. As is sound editing. I know they overlap in terms of nominees, but it's still mostly different people working on each side.
I get Nathaniel's request for a set number of nominees-- I love my Oscar comparisons too!-- but:
a) my neuroticism takes a backseat compared to my desire for good pictures to be nominated for Best Picture. I much prefer a world where The Tree of Life, Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Her, and Selma are BP nominees. And given that all the rumors pointed to the fact that the Board of Governors was really considering the status quo (five-to-ten) vs. five only, divisive and less-Oscar-friendly films clearly won today.
b) the move to ten and then five-to-ten nominees has already ruined any ability to compare 2009-2014 with any years pre-2009. At least we can now compare how vote splits yield a particular number of nominees (9 vs. 8 vs. whatever might pop up this year).
By "less-Oscar-friendly," I really mean "populist."
Did you already dissect the international trailer for Queen of the Desert? Man, Nicole Kidman cannot stop pooping out bad movies. James Franco and Robert Pattinson with Nicole is like gluing donuts to an ice cube and calling it dinner. Bomb.
I think I will just stare at that picture of Taye Diggs for the next hours.
I am only the only one who finds Matt Bomer completely sexless,handsome in a mixed in a pot kind of way,the type of person whom women say of "WHAT A WASTE",a slight i feel that gay men are only as good or as interesting to people cos of their looks and his have got him a lot of places and i'm glad he is doing ok but judge his talent overall not that fact that he's cookie cutter pretty.,
Ivonne -- right?
MARK, for me Bomer belongs to that category of actors who are just enough of everything that one understands why they've made it, but not enough of anything to elicit much excitement.
@ Mark: “Hit Me With Who Wore It Best Shot?”
MONTY MONTY MONTY!!!
I can't disagree.