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Being sick would be awesome if one didn't feel like crap whilst staying in bed all day watching movies,  reading blogs, playing iPhone games, and snuggling with the cat. 

IndieWire has an interesting chart of which Toronto People's Choice Winners scored big at the box office after the fest. Adjusted for inflation American Beauty (1999) is still the champ. Or Slumdog Millionaire (2008) without any fancy maths. But those People's Choice winners sure do have a good track record at winning Oscar attention.
Parade has an interview excerpts piece up about Brad Pitt. I don't want to get too sentimental about it but I consider it a huge blessing when very famous and very rich celebrities actually reveals themselves to be good souls, too. The things he has to say about religion and federal government and affordable housing and adoption and all of these things... they are so spot on. I really don't get the bad rap that charitable celebrities often get -- is it just self-loathing turned outward when people realize they wouldn't be even a tenth as altruistic if they were wealthy? Is it jealousy of good fortune? I don't know. But my point is Brad & Angie: love 'em. 
Just Jared Bizarre contest alert. Seems you can enter/audition to be a voice in the animated musical Dorothy of Oz starring Lea Michele (first photos of characters are also present). The closer all these Oz movies get to theaters (I keep losing track of how many there are), the more naive the producers of the celluloid transfer of Broadway's Wicked look. How on earth do you sit on that golden goose property (which has already outgrossed most of the biggest blockbuster films ever) long enough to let an animated film --they take forever!-- beat you to theaters and live off, profit from and burn out the renewed Wizard of Oz fever that you yourselves stoked? Sometimes the Hare and not the Tortoise wins.

Speaking of Brad Pitt, somewhere in this past week I missed the Oscar Fever rise of his candidacy for Moneyball. It would be so weird if the Best Actor race was all hunky across the board: DiCaprio, Gosling, Fassbender, Pitt, DuJardin, and Clooney? 

Awards Daily snapped photos of Julianne Moore and Ed Harris in a Game Change preview. Disturbing it was (I saw the same one) with Julianne being so spitting image of that one celebritician
Ultra Culture opens the PR package for The Change-Up. Big LOLS ensue.
Nicks Flick Picks starts his beloved "Fifties" column, i.e. best of the year thus far. As always his choices and writeups make you rethink the work... which is what great critics do.
Empire Colin Firth, whose career is still giant-sized post A Single King Man's Speech, will next star in The Railway Man, a POW drama. That is after Tinker Tailor. 
Towleroad my latest movie column in which I order people around. Go see Drive.
Stale Popcorn remembers the character actress Frances Bay (RIP) from The Golden Girls to Twin Peaks

October News and Request For Reader Input
When I was reading this article on Everything I Know...  in which Mr. Caggiano who teaches courses in musical theater history and the neuropsychology of music (?!?) asks his incoming students to name the best musical of all time, I remembered that next month marks the 50th anniversary of my personal favorite (WEST SIDE STORY). The film version of West Side Story, which first hit the big screen on October 18th, 1961 went on to become a huge hit and one of the biggest Oscar champs of all time (11 noms, 10 wins losing only its screenplay nomination as musicals tend to.). On the classic movies note, I wondered, for younger readers especially (and please do speak up if you have feelings about this), if I use too much of a shotgun approach when discussing old movies here? I sometimes suspect you have too many titles flying at you all the time to really decide what to get familiar with (like in those huge "all time" lists). So perhaps we should focus more going forward? Maybe we should try Classic of the Month style loose themes? It would be boring to talk about the same movie -- any movie -- for an entire month but perhaps a loose theme could include all sorts of detours that tie in but aren't too much of the same thing (Oscar competitions, influences, actor careers.

Sound off in the comments... I guess I'm interested to know if you liked the previous theme weeks like Aliens or the films of Tennessee Williams or Moulin Rouge! this summer or if you had to already know and love the movies to enjoy those?

Vote on the Euro Film Awards (Plus: Oscar Submits)

While I normally approve not of "people's choice" awards -- that's what box office is for -- I do find the European Film Awards a curious beast worth noting each year. They have variety by way of scattershot film culture, there being no unifying "Hollywood" to control them. This year their People's Choice Awards -- which you can vote on and enter for a chance to win a trip to the awards in Berlin -- offers up an odd collection of Camp Comedy (France's star-laden Potiche), Royalty Porn (The UK's Oscar winner The King's Speech), Meta History (Spain's Even The Rain), Message Movie (Denmark's Oscar Winner In a Better World), Neeson-y Thriller (the international Unknown), Fish Out of Water Comedy (Italy's Welcome to the South), Ensemble Drama (France's star-laden Little White Lies), and even Animated Family Film (Germany's Animals United).

And the Nominees Are...

Go and vote...
...as long as you're not planning to help The King's Speech win yet more statues. Cinema-Gods help us all.

Meanwhile the Oscar Foreign Film submissions continue...

NORWAY
Anne Sewitsky’s debut Happy, Happy (Sykt lykkelig) which we've previously discussed (I heart the trailer) will represent the land of the midnight sun in this year's Oscar race. Previous awards under its belt include the Sundance Festival's World Cinema Jury Prize Dramatic which, if you'll recall, is the same prize that the great Australian feature Animal Kingdom got its first big boost from in 2010. Joachim Trier's Oslo August 31st is the loser in this Oscar scenario but here's hoping that both films get stateside distribution. 

HUNGARY
Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse will represent daring Hungary in this year's Oscar race. Hungary nearly always competes for Most Atypical Submitted Film which is bad for their nominatability but great for proof of variety in that odd annual Oscar survey of what's happening in international cinema. This one will need a helping hand from that special committee that Oscar dreamt up to basically force critical darlings on to the nominated shortlist. The new system obviously paid off last year for Greece's Dogtooth. Cinema Underground tells it like so...

Not since Alexander Sokurov’s The Second Circle have I watched a movie that felt so much more like physical endurance than an active intellectual and emotional experience... The Turin Horse is a punishing film.  The people in it are ugly and often cruel.  Their lives are repetitive and arduous.  There is little plot, little action, little change of scenery, but there are plenty of long, long takes in which no words are spoken.   

And that's from a somewhat positive review.

Oscar Foreign Film Pages

Shouldn't "Best" Mean Something?

By now you've heard that the Producers Guild, one of the true Oscar precursors, will stick to 10 Best Picture Nominees thank you very much. I'm sure we'll be hearing more of this from all precursor voting bodies. Many of them had ten nominees / honorees before Oscar even went there, hewing close to the critical "top ten" system. Since most precursors have a weird desire to predict Oscar that is equal to or even sadly greater than their desire to name "best" we assume most of them will stick to ten.

This way all of them can be 100% accurate in predicting the golden boy -- just have more nominees than could ever make it to Oscar's shortlist and you'll always be 100% accurate! The Hollywood Reporter thinks this will make the Oscars look elitist as the PGA is bound to honor Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two (a franchise they've already nominated if you'll recall) and Oscar probably won't. They write:

And the Academy will find itself back where it was three years ago, fending off accusations of elitism.

They say "elitism" like it's a bad thing! 

OUR HONEST QUESTION: Shouldn't you be elitist when you're naming "BEST"? Isn't that part of the deal?

10 Best Picture Nominees... OR LESS

Just when we were getting acclimated to the new system of ten best picture nominees, Oscar is changing up their rules again. Deadline reports that after carefully studying their voting data, the Academy's governing board has decided that that Ten Best Picture Nominees thing was perhaps a little too generous. 'Shouldn't there be some threshhold of passion for a film to win that coveted "best picture" title' they asked themselves.

Their answer was "yes".

How much passion will be required exactly? The magic number is 5%. In short, a film will have to win at least 5% of #1 votes in the nomination balloting in order to join the Best Picture Lineup. There'll be no less than 5 Best Picture nominees in any given year and no more than 10. So one could say they're splitting the difference between the old system and the new.

Best Thing About This Change
It'll be quite unpredictable. We won't know until Oscar nomination morning how many "Best Pictures" we're getting. Otherwise I can't see an upside. We'll still get those pictures that we scratch our heads over "how did that get in there?! That doesn't belong!" -- don't think for a moment, for instance, that you can wipe out choices like The Blind Side. After all, we had those kind of decisions in the days of five nominees. Bad taste is indestructable!

The ZZZ Thing About This Change
I suspect other pundits will disagree but I don't see how this change means anything at all in terms of precursor madness. Not all precursor awards -- those would be tastemakers that proceed AMPAS's 'final say' -- are bound and determined to predict the Oscars but they'll stick with 10 nominees anyway as it gives them more wiggle room in the mirroring.

The Worst Thing About This Change
If you value visual and numerical symmetry as I do -- and boy do I -- you'll hate that you won't be able to line up various years in neat chart formats or say things like "2013's lineup is so interesting but nothing beats 2007. No, no, let us not speak of 1999!" There won't be any way to directly compare year-to-year anymore. (How will we even structure our prediction charts?) There's something quite beautiful about tradition in mythic institutions like Oscar. The chronologies will line up nevermore. Won't it also be more of a slap in the face for the snubs? "Sorry there were only 5 nominees this year but the rest of you who were 'in the hunt'. Turns out they only told you they loved you in the heat of the moment. They didn't."

Here's the part I found most intriguing* about the decision...

“In studying the data, what stood out was that Academy members had regularly shown a strong admiration for more than five movies,” said Davis. “A Best Picture nomination should be an indication of extraordinary merit. If there are only eight pictures that truly earn that honor in a given year, we shouldn’t feel an obligation to round out the number.”

If this system had been in effect from 2001 to 2008 (before the expansion to a slate of 10), there would have been years that yielded 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 nominees.

*And by intriguing I mean CRAZY-MAKING. Does this mean none of those years would have seen 10 nominees? Will ten films be a once a decade thing? [Tangent: This DOES mean that they keep all the voting data. How is it that this never leaks? Price Waterhouse must be guarded by Heimdall or suspended in a heavily guarded plastic prison like Magneto.]

You know what else this means: LISTS, Lots of lists! We'll look at 2001 through 2008 soon but we have to save some chi for a later post, can't blow it all at once on this announcement.  For now, let's just discuss this change and wonder which films would've been axed from the top ten by way of not getting enough #1 placements.

Here's my guesswork...

2010 - 8 nominees

I realize I'm stubborn about The Kids Are All Right... I enjoy being stubborn. But there was a time, if we're being honest with yourselves, that people thought it would be one of the five even if there were only five. My guess is that 127 Hours just barely slipped in and that Winter's Bone, despite being very well regarded was lacking in #1 votes. Who knows... But there did seem to be a broad range of support for many features last year so perhaps only The Boy And His Rock would've been eliminated.

2009 - 7 nominees

Though I was personally horrified at The Blind Side's inclusion in 2009 I do not think it was in 10th place. Oscar is so much more mainstream than the media likes to pretend and given the massive embrace of that movie from the general populace, there are few sound reasons to think AMPAS voters weren't also squeezing it, with formulaic tears streaming down their faces. District 9... well, I'm still surprised it got in given Oscar's history of shunning sci-fi. Perhaps most controversially, I'm guessing Pixar would've had to wait until Toy Story 3 to get the "only the second animated picture nominated for Best Picture" honor.

What'cha think of the rule change?

P.S. In other rule changes, the number of Animated Features nominated will be more flexible too. Previously it was 3 or 5. Now it'll be 2 to 5 depending on the number of films released that are eligible and number of votes those films received. The documentary category's eligibility will now be in sync with the calendar year like most categories.

Podcast: The Elephant in the Room

For this final podcast of the 83rd Oscar season, we've misplaced Katey. Oops? Where she go? But Nick, Joe and myself (Nathaniel) are back to close out the season.

We had fun chiming in weekly and after a  break will be back with Off-Season cinematic musings.  While we normally have quite a laugh during these, and there's a fair bit of that againe, we do get a bit serious on a couple of topics. "The End" always brings a smidge more sober take-it-all in perspective.

Topics covered include:

• Kirk Douglas & Melissa Leo. The early peak.
• Dressing like a winner / Dressing like a nominee
• Cate Blanchett, Sharon Stone and other fancy dressers
• Nobody ever likes the hosts of the Oscar show. But Anne Hathaway & James Franco?
• Ovearching themes and production confusion: Old or Young?
• Why no visual gags for non-comedian hosts?
• Colin Firth, Christian Bale and Natalie Portman speeches
• Awards Fatigue (and strategies for coping)
• Next?

Listen in and join in the conversation in the comments.

Podcast: The 83rd Annual Oscars. Season Finale