The Link Experience

Towleroad Revisiting Drive on DVD. Ryan Gosling's scorpion jacket is at auction. One more day to bid! (I suspect this is a good investment as movie memorabilia goes.)
Carpetbagger Author Jeffrey Eugenides on his Oscar ballot. He loves The Tree of Life and all things Woody Allen. Has issues with Bridesmaids. 
In Contention breaking Oscar's biopic addiction. Halleloo. 
Movie|Line today is The Artist day in LA. Officially! Harvey Weinstein continues to be a god amongst mortals when it comes to Oscar campaigns.

 

My New Plaid Pants JA has gone totes l'amour fou for Jean Dujardin. Pervy animated gifsm, dancing in boxer shorts, gratuitous photo spreads. But can you blame him?
Empire another new role for Jennifer Lawrence in the adaptation of the novel Serena about an ruthless ambitious married couple running a timber empire in 1929. This role was once earmarked for Angelina Jolie so clearly Hollywood has faith in Jennifer Lawrence.
IndieWire for your consideration at next year's Oscars. The Sundance crop.
Towleroad Director Stephan Elliott (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) is out of the closet. I didn't realize he was in. 

The TV Experience?
Brief somewhat random thoughts on Glee vs. Smash and more small screen after the jump...

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Oscar Ballots Are in the Mail

Soon electronic voting will speed Oscar up. (How long before we see Oscar night moving to January?) Hopefully distributors will take pity on the public and AMPAS members and start opening movies before December to help that along (oh who are we kidding?!?). But until that instant voting happens, the post office will be involved. The final Oscar ballots hit the mail today, with those SAG wins fresh in voter's minds if they were watching. Dujardin, Davis, Plummer and Spencer could well repeat if they liked what they saw.

To mark the balloting occassion our annual Oscar Symposium is about to begin! Day One hits the site tonight. So join the party in the comments once the festivities kick off.

"Dream Big, Dream Fierce" This Oscar Season

The SAG Awards are receding in the review mirror, but the afterglow remains. How much power can emotional narratives have within our seasonal awards journey? Viola Davis has been a major actress for a long time within the showbiz community -- this very website first handed her two gold medals way back in early 2003 for her gobsmackingly great single scene in Antwone Fisher and her breakthrough year of smart character work in Far From Heaven and Solaris -- but it's only in the past few years that the mainstream has begun to learn her name and key in to her potent gift.  There's nothing like a 'who's that?' Oscar nomination (Doubt), A List friendship (Streep) and a big fat juicy hit (The Help) to boost your profile.

So I wasn't surprised but was definitely delighted to see her receive a standing ovation when she walked up to accept Best Actress for The Help.

Perhaps the standing ovation is an annual occurence and I've merely forgotten.

In some ways our relationship with the awards circus is a long one with deep pockets of memories, held grudges and fond crushes. In other ways it's as if we're goldfish swimming round the bowl and we're surprised by that little plastic castle every time.

But I think the true indicator that Viola Davis is the likely winner of the Best Actress Oscar is not the win itself with SAG, which has a much wider more diverse voting body than Oscar, but the crowd response. Reducing co-stars to tears is probably no great achievement. They were in the trenches with you so naturally Jessica Chastain, Octavia Spencer and Cicely Tyson were crying their eyes out. But making Zoe Saldana and Angelina Jolie all misty? Boosting Dick Van Dyke's mood when he was already high on life? 

What is going on here? (More after the jump)

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Burning Questions: What Explains the Extremely Loud Nomination?

Michael C. here to take a shot at one of the curious questions that came out of the Oscar nominations. 

A little over a year ago I published a post in which I tried to determine just how bad could a film be and still make the big category. In an attempt to squeeze popular opinion into chart form I subjected the last decade of nominees to an extremely unscientific examination wherein I averaged their Metacritic rating with their Rotten Tomatoes rating to come up with a rough measurement of a film’s critical reception. You can read the full post here but one of the main conclusions I reached was that the Best Picture minimum was set right about the 60% mark. This was the average Blind Side and The Reader, the two worst reviewed nominees, had received. It was a result that jibed pretty well with intuition. It’s tough to think of a nominee that received a resoundingly negative reception. 

But this then begs the question: How exactly did Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close manage a Best Picture nomination? I know critics don't get a vote but rarely, if ever, has the gap between the two been this glaring.

more after the jump

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DGA to Oscar? Hazanavicius Nears Finish Line

This weekend everyone is a winner! So many awards. And SAG continues the trend tonight (we'll be live blogging right here). Can clapping for 30 days straight give you carpal tunnel?

Let's start with the biggie, the DGA Awards. Last year's winner Tom Hooper (The King's Speech) passed the baton, in the shape of that golden eagle plaque, to this year's winner Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist). Tom Hooper got ambitious post awards flurry as is busy on Les Miserable. Hazanavicius will chase The Artist with another film inspired by Old Hollywood. He's going to remake The Search (1948) which The Film Experience readers will know as Montgomery Clift's debut. (All we can say is good luck finding another Monty. That's an irreplaceable star in Hollywood's firmament.) Given that The Search is a post World War II drama about an American soldier and a child who survived Auschwitz, maybe Hazanavicius won't be a one hit wonder with AMPAS. Time will tell.

One of the best things about the more specific awards night like the DGA is that there is time to honor the nomineees as well, so even if you don't win, the night is still about you. Each director takes the stage to receive their plaque. Kathy Bates accepted in person for Woody Allen who never shows up at this sort of thing although he did speak via satellite this time. 

Michelle Williams with James Marsh's prizeDGA PRIZES

• Director, Feature Film: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
• Director, Documentary: James Marsh, Project Nim (which was recently shut out of the Oscar nominations in its category)
• Director, MiniSeries: John Cassar, The Kennedys
• Director, Drama Series: Patty Jenkins, The Killing "Pilot"
• Director, Comedy Series: Robert B Weide, Curb Your Enthusiasm "Palestinian Chicken" (wow. people are still excited about this show? Who knew?)
• Director, Variety: Glenn Weiss, the 64th Annual Tony Awards
• Director, Reality Show: Neil P Degroot, Biggest Loser
• Director, Commercial: Noam Murro (Biscuit Filmworks)
• Director, Daytime Television: William Luel, General Hospital "Intervention"
• Director, Children's Television:  Amy Schatz, A Child's Garden of Poetry

Does this mean Hazanavicius has the Oscar sewn up?
Not necessarily...  More after the jump including stats and photos. 

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