Have Link Will Travel

New York Times on Paul Thomas Anderson's secretive new movie The Master. It's about... something.
MNPP Charlize Theron and Alexander Skarsgård are dating? The Mayans were right about 2012 
Your Movie Buddy interviews The Hunter's storied leading man Willem Dafoe 
Draw Adrian Draw isn't happy about Anne Hathaway as Catwoman but is sketching her anyway
Michael Musto "who's your favorite Taylor?" fun question except there's only one appropriate answer. La Liz! Not that I don't appreciate Taylor Mac...

The Incredible Suit unexpectedly loves The Avengers ... even the Hulk part.
Awards Daily Sasha Stone loves HBO's Girls and Lena Dunham in particular
Stale Popcorn meet the Cannes class of 2012. Serious Thespians (lol) 
Flavorwire always finds interesting things. Did you know that crazy auteur Werner Herzog didn't realize that crazy auteur John Waters was gay for 30+ years. lol
Gold Derby who will Laura Dern (Enlightened) knock out of the Emmy Best Comedy Actress race this season? 

Today's Most Oscary Discussable:
Stranger Than Most looks at the oddest Best Picture snubs of all time. i.e. films that were nominated in the always Best Picture related fields (Dir+ Editing + Screenplay + Acting) and still missed out. Incidentally I love every single one of the "top five" that weren't actually top five (They Shoot Horses Don't They, Hud, Thelma & Louise, Bullets Over Broadway, and My Man Godfrey)  Like crazy 'would run away with them for lost sex-weekend' kind of love. That's how much!

Hud (1963), for example, is a movie I continuously feel guilty about not forcing upon people at every opportunity -- we should totes do it for "Hit Me" but I keep forgetting to put it in the schedule. It's just a freaking masterpiece. And it's weirdly underdiscussed given how many of Paul Newman's films endured.

Farewell Oscar Hopeful! (Snubs That Hurt Us)

Last night at 4 AM this was the only image my brain would settle on...

I don't normally spend time in the middle of the night thinking of Fassbender lying naked in bed (Shush!). It's just that I had the worst insomnia I'd had in months. As I stared down at this still image in my state of delirious sleep deprivation I'm reasonably certain that he stared back, his eyes shifting just a little. He must have seen a mirror image of his vacant orbs and haunted zombie expressionless. Only with less handsomeness.

Brandon's addiction was sex and mine is the Oscars but either way we are powerless against our disease. Perhaps it was all the Oscar Morn Excitement catching up to me? Fassy's frozen image reminded me that I forgot to offer my condolescences to the Oscar Forgotten yesterday. Some people and cinematic contributions you'd be really happy to spend another 32 days celebrating but the time has come to say goodbye. [sniffle]

Farewell Oscar Hopeful. Better Luck Next Time
8 Snubs/Omissions That Hurt The Most

08 Melancholia Best Anything
Given that mad Dane Lars von Trier's sole nomination is in songwriting (find a more hilarious Oscar statistic, I dare you!) we never suspected that this would be an Oscar film. But the tiny scattered awards crumbs for his dreamy apocalyptic depression metaphor, arguably his best film in a decade, allowed us to pretend in a feverish bipolar sort of way that miracles would occur and it would wake up as the nomination leader. No, not really. But it's a shame that that masterful Cinematography and Kirsten Dunst's spooky narcoleptic bride won so little traction.

Click for 7 more

Click to read more ...

Do Movies About Movies Win Oscars?

George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) has had it with the movies in "The Artist"Over at Fandor's Keyframe blog I'll be musing about the Oscar race on a biweekly basis. This week's topic is the unusual abundance of movies about movies in this year's Oscar race from Marilyn Monroe (My Week With Marilyn) to George Melies (Hugo) to Hollywood's seismic sound shift in the late 20s (The Artist). But one thing I didn't dwell on too much in the article (which I hope you'll go and read!) is the lack of Oscars won for movies about movies.

Everyone predicting a win for The Artist (2011) before the nominations are even announced should consider the following list and sobering fact: No movie about movies has ever won Best Picture.

Movies About Movies: How Do They Do With Oscar?
(Best Picture Nominees are in red) 

Janet Gaynor (already an Oscar winner) was nominated again for playing an actress who wins a fictional Oscar in "A Star is Born"1930s
What Price Hollywood (1 nomination. 0 wins)
A Star is Born (7 nominations. 1 win + 1 honorary) 

1940s
Was Hollywood too busy with patriotism to make movies about movies? Or were they still too enamored by live theater to turn their cameras on themselves?

1950s
Sunset Blvd  (11 nominations. 3 wins)
The Bad and the Beautiful (6 nominations. 5 wins)
The Star (1 nomination. 0 wins)
Singin' in the Rain (2 nominations. 0 wins)
A Star is Born (6 nominations. 0 wins)

1960s
Sweet Bird of Youth (3 nominations. 1 win)
8 ½ (5 nominations. 2 wins) 
Inside Daisy Clover (3 nominations. 0 wins)
The Oscar (2 nominations. 0 wins)

1970s
Day For Night (4 nominations. 1 win) 
The Way We Were (6 nominations. 2 wins)
The Day of the Locust (2 nominations. 0 wins)
California Suite (3 nominations. 1 win)
All That Jazz (9 nominations. 4 wins) 

1980s
The Stunt Man (3 nominations. 0 wins)
The Purple Rose of Cairo (1 nomination. 0 wins)
The Kiss of the Spider Woman (4 nominations. 1 win)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (6 nominations. 3 wins. 1 special achievement.)
Cinema Paradiso (1 nomination. 1 win) 

Baby Herman (a handful off camera) and Roger Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)... which would have been a worthy Best Picture contender.

1990s
Postcards from the Edge (2 nominations. 0 wins)
Bugsy (10 nominations. 2 wins)
Barton Fink (3 nominations. 0 wins)
Chaplin (3 nominations. 0 wins)
The Player (3 nominations. 0 wins)
Ed Wood (2 nominations. 2 wins)
Boogie Nights (3 nominations. 0 wins)
Gods and Monsters (3 nominations. 1 win) 

Jude Law as Errol Flynn and Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn in "The Aviator"2000s
Shadow of the Vampire (2 nominations. 0 wins)
Mulholland Dr (1 nomination. 0 wins)
Adaptation (4 nominations. 1 win)
The Aviator (11 nominations. 5 wins)
Tropic Thunder (1 nomination. 0 wins)
Nine (4 nominations. 0 wins)
Inglourious Basterds (8 nominations. 1 win) 

2010s
The Artist (we shall see)
My Week With Marilyn (we shall see)
Hugo (we shall see)

A semi-random selection of movies about movies that Oscar ignored: The Cameraman, Man With a Movie Camera, Sullivan's Travels, Stand-In, Peeping Tom, Contempt, Beware of a Holy Whore, F For Fake, The Last Action Hero, Stardust Memories, Blow Out, The Majestic, Irma Vep, Living in Oblivion, Be Kind Rewind, Guilty by Suspicion, Los Angeles Plays Itself,  etc...

You'd think that Hollywood's High Holy Night, which is one big self-congratulatory spectacle, would embrace movies about movies and they do to a point. But perhaps even Hollywood's notoriously fulsome egos feel sheepish about taking it all the way. Do they fear it would be overkill, the back-patting night of nights morphing into something far more orgiastic, a daisy chain of self regard? 

What are your favorite movies about movies? Do you think The Artist can buck the trends here?

Related: my new keyframe article and a previous roundup on Keyframe "top ten films about filmmaking" which I also had the pleasure of contributing to and which should give you plenty of rental ideas.

Reader of the Day: Hayden

Sometimes when I'm reading the comments, at least for the frequent chatterboxes, I start to get a sense of which directors and actors some of you like. Other times it's hard to tell. With Hayden I knew in the subcategory of Warren Beatty Paramours we disagreed on Annette Bening and were sympatico on Julie Christie. So let's learn more in today's reader of the day.

Nathaniel: Do you remember your first moviegoing experience? first obsession?
HAYDEN: The first time I went to the movies was to see The Lion King, which fits because Elton John was my first concert. I was all of three years old in 1994, so I remember leaving early for crying or misbehaving or something. As for an obsession, I really got hooked on Woody Allen during my sophomore year of high school. There were dozens of his classics and lesser films OnDemand so I probably powered through thirty of them in one year.

You were three in 94?! [cough. *pauses to take some Geritol*]. When did you start reading the Film Experience?
2004 was the first year I actively followed the Oscars, and I first came here for the charts. I would say that I stayed when I realized that TFE blog was so fun to read, too. I think before you can enter the dialogue on the Oscar blogosphere, you need a semi-comprehensive sense of Oscar mythology. So I spent some time catching up on history before I started participating.

That's actually astute. There is a learning curve or at least a gateway year to sensible Oscar obsessiveness. Not that Oscar is a sensible state of being exactly! But moving on. Let us not speak of your bizarre hostility to The Bening. Your favorite 3 actresses?
Julianne Moore, Julie Christie, Vanessa Redgrave. And I’m not hostile towards the Bening so much as I think she gets slightly more credit than is due, in a sea of actresses who aren’t even close to getting the praise they deserve.

[short e-pause] I also want to add Blythe Danner to my "favorite actresses" thing. 'Cause she's so absurdly underrated.

Take away somebody's Oscar and give it to someone else. What year? who? why?
Well, I don’t want to pick on Driving Miss Daisy's Jessica Tandy, so I’ll just give Helen Hunt’s As Good As it Gets win to Julie Christie (Afterglow). Julie won so early in her career and has been ripe for a second win so many times. And I have a much easier time accepting (and embracing) wins like Marion Cotillard’s in La Vie En Rose and Jane Fonda’s for Klute than I do Hunt’s. (But seriously, Pfeiffer's The Fabulous Baker Boys was a Crowning Best Actress Moment if ever one existed.)

[Editor's note: I swear I did not pay Hayden to say that but all Pfans agree and thank him.]

Which newish directors are you rooting for in the coming decade?
I’ve been dying to see how Jonathan Glazer follows up Birth. If that wasn’t a fluke, he’ll be one of my favorite directors. I’m also dying for more direction from Sarah Polley.

previous readers of the day: Dominique, Murtada, Cory, Walter,  Paolo, Leehee and BBats

Oscar Decree "Thou Shalt Not Perform Cunnilingus."

Oscar Trivia!
If you want to be nominated for an Oscar there is one thing you must never do onscreen. You must not go down on a woman. Mila Kunis (Black Swan), Ryan Gosling (Blue Valentine) and Julianne Moore (The Kids Are All Right) all learned this the hard way this Oscar nom' morning. For their sins of servicing the Natalies, Michelles & Annettes of this world, they are banish-ed.

[I was about to insert a blurry screencap here but thought better of it!]

Know the sexual rules, Oscar hopefuls!

Jules: And then my tongue started working again.
[Laughter]
Nic: We've been glued at the hip ever since.

Paul: No doubt.

Oh sure this was totally okay in the seventies for Jon Voight but he was playing a paraplegic and Jane Fonda is Jane Fonda. Who wouldn't?

Tweet

complete list of Oscar nominations

all related posts