BFCA Live Blog

8:55 Keith Urban announces that he is "not afraid to cry." Good thing because he's married to Nicole Kidman! Not to imply that she's difficult but she can access the heavy soul-shattering stuff.

8:57 Oh hi! Live Blog. Why am I doing this? Does anyone watch this? Refresh your screens!

8:58 Jeff Bridges is doing his Rooster Cogburn voice for the press guy? Does he feel like a performing seal?

9:04 Arnold Schwarzenegger emerges to open the show. Noooo... I was about to predict that Ahnuld would say "I'm back" or "I'll be back" or some lame Terminator pun that we'd enjoy as a guilty pleasure but no. He's being sincere. [gasp]. That's no adjective with which to open a show.

9:06 Ahnuld...

"I invented not speaking English correctly"

Okay that was funny. Albeit subtle funny which is always a tough sell during awards show.

9:07 Quick show of hands. Who believes that Ahnuld saw Black Swan three times in the theater as he claims?

poll by twiigs.com

9:10 THE FIGHTER wins Best Ensemble. I'm glad they let Jack McGee accept. He was really special in the background, don't you think? He made you believe that he could handle and was even happily married to Melissa Leo's Crazy! That's an achievement in authentic masochism. Go McGee.

9:17 Hailee Steinfeld wins Best Young Actor/Actress. Chloe Moretz is undoubtedly pissed. Hailee thanks "everyone in here. And the Lord." I always think it's funny when celebrities thank God when they beat other celebrities to prizes. If God is that guy cares about who wins movie awards than... ohmygod. I AM GOD!

MORE AFTER THE JUMP including made for tv movie titles, blonde Emma, Natalie skinny/pregnant and armpit licking.

Click to read more ...

Reminder: 11 Days...

Two point of business. Two goodies.

QUESTIONS?
I have heard from a couple of people about feed / reader problems but just wanted to make sure everything is working for everyone? If you used to subscribe to the blogspot site, your feeds/readers should be properly updating with info from this site by now. If you switched it yourself manually the second we went live you may have had a problem? (a mistake on my end) You can subscribe from the sidebar (right) or use this url.

http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/rss.xml

LIVE-BLOG
Yes, I'll be live blogging the BFCA Critics Choice Awards tonight (we'll start about a quarter to 9:00 PM) and the Globes on Sunday. If you're not hosting your own party, be here for this one.

GOODIES!
Just a reminder that we've got two handy-dandy widgets for you to embed in your own personal webspaces if you'd like. (You can see both on the sidebar if this post should mysteriously vanish of you decide to use them later). Both will take you here should you click on them if you see something of interest or just have a jones to visit. Daily. You come every day, right? [/NEEDINESS]

Countdown
The day after the Oscar nominations, this clock below will shift and beginning counting down to our favorite holiday, Hollywood's High Holy Night... THE OSCARS! And the day after that historic night (provided enough of you download this to make it worth my while) it'll shift to countdown to next year's Oscar nominations. [Translation: We're all crazy!]

The Film Experience
This one lists each new post in real time so you never have to miss a thing.

25 Best Performances By People Whose...

One thing I forgot to mention about that issue of W magazine that Rooney Mara / Dragon Tatoo covers (discussed yesterday) is that it also contains an article called "25 Best Performances of the Year". Some though not all of the 25 are online now including: Julianne Moore, Michael Douglas, Jeff Bridges, Nicole Kidman, Mila Kunis, Justin Timberlake... In other words "25 Best Performances By People Whose Names Move Magazines Off The Shelves" but that title just seems so... honest. 

We can't have that during awards season!

How great is the photo of Helena Bonham-Carter? I'm dying!

AFTER THE JUMP my 4 other favorite photos from an incredible W shoot by Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. It's enough to make me want to buy a hard copy and I never do that anymore.

Click to read more ...

Geoffrey Rush Post-"Speech"

...as in post The King's Speech not post-acceptance speech.

Until we saw Christian Bale's appropriately showy work in The Fighter -- you thought local celebrity crack addicts were wallflowers? --  we thought Geoffrey Rush's less-showy-than-expected eccentricity in The King's Speech would net him a second Oscar [Supporting Actor Category... though they're both arguably co-leads]. And why not? The man is a veritable magnet for gold (he ought to hire out as a metal detector) and, as such, is already a Triple Crowner (Oscar: Shine; Tony: Exit the King; Emmy: The Life and Death of Peter Sellers).

So what's next? Another showy eccentric on stage!

Diary of a Mad Man starring Geoffrey Rush

One assumes they'll be a couple of dark days 'round the Oscars so that Rush can attend but he'll spend Feb 11th to March 12th on stage at BAM in Brooklyn in Nikolai Gogol's Diary of a Mad Man. It's not a Quills remake no but, you know how those theatrical mad men do all kinda bleed together in still photos.

More photos at Playbill

Editor's Guild & Visual Effects Society

The seaon barrels forward waiting for no man! ACE (American Cinema Editors) have announced their nominees and it's the talented cutters who worked on Best Picture hopefuls. Like Pamela Martin here, who so beautifully responded to David O. Russell's squirrely rhythms and caught indelible acting moments with precision.

Pamela Martin at work on The Fighter

Editing (Dramatic)

• Tariq Anwar for The King's Speech
• Pamela Martin for The Fighter
• Lee Smith for Inception
  
• Angus Wall & Kirk Baxter for The Social Network
• Andrew Weisblum for Black Swan

The snubs of note here, in terms of the Oscar race -- which is a different discussion than pure category worth since each awards season reminds us that Hollywood only makes ten movies each calendar year and they're brilliant in ALL categories -- are 127 Hours and True Grit. This is especially bad news for 127 Hours since Danny Boyle's films are nothing if not edited if you know what I mean. One could immediately assume that it's going to fall from the Best Picture list but then Winter's Bone hasn't scored with any guilds so... who knows? Both have obsessed fans and thus #1 votes. So maybe it'll be The Town that can't rally or something we assume is safe that isn't? True Grit? I'm still worried about The Kids Are All Right but that's probably just because it's so high up my own top ten list.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE...
More Editing honors to come. ACE, like many guilds, has several categories including Comedy (a far worthier list than the Globes came up with). So there's a few more to cover. Plus: Visual Effects.

Click to read more ...