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Entries in Oscars (10) (100)

Tuesday
Jan252011

And the Link Goes To...

General Entertainment
Big Shiny Robot is AMC going to bring all three of their big shows (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead) back at once? That'd be a switch.
Movie|Line hot trend at Sundance: Actors directing movies. I'm hearing good things about Vera Farmiga's efforts.
Focus Features ooooh pretty Jane Eyre photos.
Go Fug Yourself Well Played Kirsten Dunst

Telegraph Tim Robey gives a rasberry to the lazy Golden Rasberries.
Mr Hipp X-Women. Yay.
Kenneth in the (212) Hugh Jackman taken a cab. Just cuz.
Zombie Toenails [NSFW] the only reason to see Love and other Drugs right here on loop. I never talked about that movie once I saw it but my goodness it was a mess.

Oscar Stuff
LAMB looks at the Oscar Foreign Film race.
New York Magazine a fine profile on Darren Aronofsky
The Hollywood Reporter Mark Zuckerberg on The Social Network's Oscar nods
Movie|Line The Social Network backlash is officially in full swing. Even James Franco is taking shots at it! Although if you want to bitch about "conventional" films, why choose that one when The King's Speech has more nominations? This is what sometimes happens to films when they're out front for too long. People get uppity about their "status".
Reddit Coen Bros ensemble infographic... fun! It's kinda like my "familiar faces" series only more visually enticing.
Alt Film Guide discusses the preferential balloting system and what it means for Oscar.
Antagony & Ecstacy offers up "The Antagonists", Tim's own awards.


Finally, have you seen this clip from Newsweek about pregnancy at the Oscars? I love The Bening's humor and Natalie's wonder about her own experience as well as Nicole Kidman's minor interjections "golly!" haha. Cuteness. 

Tuesday
Jan252011

Happy Australia Day, Jacki Weaver

I know we have many Australian readers here at The Film Experience because I hear from you. I didn't realize it was your special day and making it doubly special, Jacki Weaver got nominated as Best Supporting Actress for her incredible work in Animal Kingdom! I had a wonderful time interviewing her a couple of weeks ago.

Here's what she said about this morning's nomination (courtesy of Variety).

 

"I'm elated to the point of euphoria. I feel like I'm in a walking dream. I'm so relieved that all those millions of Australians who wanted me to get this nomination aren't disappointed. Happy Australia Day."

Other Australians getting happy news on the national day were Geoffrey Rush (The King's Speech), Nicole Kidman (Rabbit Hole)  and the team behind Animated Short nominee The Lost Things.  

Did your countrymen snag any nominations this morning?

 

Tuesday
Jan252011

RIP Oscar Hopeful (Dec 2nd, 2010 - Jan 25th, 2011)

For the next month everyone including everyone here at The Film Experience will be fawning all over the twenty thespians lucky enough to be Oscar nominated as well as another few handfuls of people in various races that people will be honoring/discussing/interviewing. But snubs are what has to happen when Oscar goes gaga for the films they go gaga for in multiple categories each year. Quoth the Coen Bros this morning...

“Ten seems like an awful lot. We don't want to take anyone else's."
-Joel & Ethan Coen responding to the True Grit nominations.

So our condolescences to all the industry professionals whose hard work went unrewarded this morning. Not everyone can be nominated.

THE MAJOR SNUBS
And we mean "snub" in the sense of films or performances many thought would place. Qualitative snubbing is a different discussion with some overlap depending on one's own opinion.

Mila Kunis (Black Swan) joins Cameron Diaz in that rare list of beauties who've been Globe and SAG nominated but have not gone on to an Oscar nomination. Was it going down on that sweet girl Natalie Portman? Was it merely that the Academy just wasn't as into Black Swan as precursor voting bodies were? Was fellow Swan snubee Barbara Hershey also pulling a significant amount of votes away? Was it Black Swan fatigue? It has been omnipresent for over a month now.

How she could console herself: Her electric but relaxed life force in the movie -- as Nick recently observed how often does someone seem "casual" yet still impresses in an Aronofsky movie? -- will undoubtedly endear her to auteurs. She doesn't seem at all fearless, does she? And she's 27, the idealish age for actressy job offers.
Next up: Friends With Benefits (2011) another showdown of sorts with Natalie Portman given that Portman is in theaters right now with similarly themed movie.

Robert Duvall (Get Low) was, for some time, looking at his 7th nomination for playing an eccentric hermit who stages his own funeral party. Perhaps the mellow film t'was what undid him;  eccentric hermits should possibly come with more eccentric films? Perhaps it was the release date though I'm always loathe to suggest that every film should wait until late in the year too appear and the early release date sure didn't hurt Jacki Weaver or Toy Story 3 or The Kids Are All Right team. Maybe it was just too many men in the running and Jeff Bridges's blocking the Great American Actor establishment vote?

How he could console himself: nomination or no, he's still one of the most rewarded and legendary actors of American cinema.
Next up: Seven Days in Utopia (2011), a sports drama with Melissa Leo and his Get Low co-star Lucas Black

Christopher Nolan (Inception) is beloved by his peers in the Director's Guild but not beloved by the tiny percentage of his peers in the Director's Branch of AMPAS.  He's now won 3 DGA nominations (Memento, The Dark Knight, Inception) none of which were converted to Oscar nominations. This is a very uncommon situation though Rob Reiner must know how he feels after three similar golden cliff dives for Stand By Me, When Harry Met Sally and A Few Good Men.

How he could console himself: He's still an Oscar nominee (Screenplay, though he's a better director than a writer so that's a bit...odd) and with his vast fortunes, he could probably buy the Academy and reshape it in his own image. Plus: If his populist appeal continues he's easily looking at a Steven Spielberg like trajectory with Oscar wherein as soon as he makes a film in a genre they love (World War II? Dramatic Story Without Genre Elements?) they will shower him with gold.
Next up: The Dark Knight Rises (2012) the casting for which we just discussed.

 

Andrew Garfield (The Social Network) provided his zeitgeisty movie with a beating everyman heart. But today it was life imitating art.

You're going to get left behind!

How he could console himself: Every little boy dreams of being a superhero but he gets to do  it; nobody else gets to be the new Peter Parker/ Spider-Man. There's that plus the multiple offers that will be coming his way after a meteoric rise these past two years with four films that greatly benefitted from his gifts (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Red Riding Hood, Never Let Me Go, and The Social Network)
Next up: Spider-Man (2012) though we suspect that he'll film something else right after it and see that released before the webslinger arrives.

Ryan Gosling (Blue Valentine) he may be the best actor of his generation but Oscar likes their Best Actor nominees to be closer to middle age. This year the field was already pushing the limits of their invisible age barriers with Jesse Eisenberg and James Franco both in the mix.

How he could console himself: Hey Girl, whenever he plays the romantic lead, his co-star gets tons of attention and great reviews (Kirsten Dunst, Rachel McAdams and Michelle Williams) which means that every actress in his age range wants him. I mean wants to co-star with him.
Next up: Crazy Stupid Love a romantic comedy with an all star cast, Drive a dramatic action flick with Carey Mulligan and the stage adaptation The Ides of March with an all star cast of Oscar nominees plus Evan Rachel Wood

 

 

Finally...

Though the following films were not really expected to place in a major way they came up with ZERO nominations despite a hefty presence involving one specific category or another in the discussions this year. The zero tally films:

  • Conviction - had an outside shot at two acting races. Nothing materialized.
  • Made in Dagenham -seemed like a supporting actress & costume option early on.
  • Never Let Me Go -seemed like it had a shot at Original Score.
  • Scott Pilgrim vs. The World -was never going to place but that's not for lack of worthiness, particular in the visual effects department where the artists had so much fun with the vidgame stylizations.
  • Shutter Island -seemed like it could get anywhere from zero to 5 nominations what with its busy much lauded below the line talent. Zero was the correct answer.


Apart from these former hopefuls, who were you most sad for this morning?

all Oscar race posts
complete list of nominations

Tuesday
Jan252011

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?


complete list of Oscar nominations

all related posts

Tuesday
Jan252011

How I Did Prediction-Wise. How 'Bout You?

I'm not much for stats but for what it's worth, here's how I did on my Oscar predictions.

74% (89/120) if you include all categories, including those very few others predict like the short features.
77% (81/105) if you drop the three shorts categories which very few people bother with, thus upping their predictive ratio ;). If you'd like to know how I stack up with other pundits, I'm hearing Kris Tapley edged me out with 84/105 but am I in second place this year? Does anyone know? 81 is a good score. Yay me!
88% (40/45) in "the big eight" director, picture, acting and screenplays

Best Categories: I went 100% in Animated Feature, both Actress categories and Lead Actor -- if I'd only seen Hawkes over Garfield, I would have had an historic 100% in all acting categories --  correctly assuming those Big Hollywood Players raving about Javier Bardem (Ben Affleck & Julia Roberts among them) would do the trick for him. Another category I'm really proud of is Animated Short, which is often difficult to guess and I went 4/5 after viewing clips from all the finalists.

Worst Categories: I totally biffed Makeup (1/3) which is, in my defense, year after year the most baffling category (though I think The Way Back is very deserving and I also nominated it in my own awards). But I'm much much more surprised to have done so poorly on the Sound Categories (3/5 in each). In my defense there this is a very unusual year: for once the Sound Mixing and Sound Editing nominations are not virtual mirror images of each other. In fact, I can't recall a year ever with less overlap. Only two films Inception and True Grit show up in both categories. Usually these categories are 4/5 overlaps. Frustrated that I didn't predict the Angelina actioner Salt since I nominated in my own awards and it was my "alternate" that I nearly went with but in the end I chickend out and just used the Sound guilds nominees, which turned out to be not at all what Oscar's sound branch was thinking ;)

Just Curious: Did anyone predict I AM LOVE for costumes? I'm so thrilled that happened for Antonella Cannarozzi.

Very deserving if I do say so myself.

What are you most proud of from your predictions? Where did you fail most spectacularly?

all Oscar race posts
complete list of nominations