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Entries in Tom Hardy (66)

Thursday
Jan142016

New Oscar Records. An Evolving List

Refresh your screen for updates as we add to the list. If you suspect you've seen a statistic worth shouting about, put it in the comments.

Records Broken This Year

Jennifer Jones (Duel in the Sun, age 27) vs Jennifer Lawrence (Joy, age 25)Jennifer Lawrence (who is 25 years old) breaks Jennifer Jones's record of quickest actor to 4 nominations. Jones had held that record -- she accomplished 4 nominations by the age of 27 -- since 1947. But no more. And how is this for a freaky detail about this record. As Joe Reid points out both of these Jennifers had a powerful "David O" in their corner, Russell for Lawrence and Selznick for Jones.

John Williams, the Meryl Streep of Original Scores, broke his tie with the long dead composer Alfred E Newman (1900-1970)  to score a 44th nominations for Original Score. He's won 5 times (not a record). This is his 50th nomination in total since he's also been nominated for Original Song.

Sylvester Stallone has broken the obscure record of  longest stretch between acting nods for playing the same character for Rocky (1976) and Creed (2015). The previous record holder was Paul Newman between The Hustler (1961) and The Color of Money (1986). Other actors who've done this double whammy character trick are Cate Blanchett for Elizabeth, Bing Crosby for Father O'Malley, Al Pacino for Michael Corleone and Peter O'Toole for Henry II.

• This is reportedly the only time in history that all 5 Original Song nominees have been their films only nomination. It's also reportedly the most nominations ever amassed by Australians though I don't have confirmation on what the number is.or what the previous record that was broken is. 


Carol becomes the Most Nominated Film in the modern expanded Best Picture field era to not receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. The previous record was a three way tie between The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Skyfall (2012) and Foxcatcher (2014) which each received 5 nominations but were not included in Best Picture.

[Aside: The all time record holder, from back when there were only 5 Best Picture nominees and more room for this sort of "achievement" in not-quite-making-it, is They Shoot Horses Don't They (1969) -- which is the most amazing movie you MUST see it --  which received 9 nominations but no Best Picture bid. Of these four other pictures, all but Foxcatcher won at least one Oscar. So we'll see on Carol.]

2015 Specific Records

Tom Hardy and Domnhall Gleeson are the most ubiquitous faces from the Best Picture lineup. Each actor appears in two nominees; Hardy headlines Mad Max: Fury Road and is nominated as supporting actor in The Revenant; Gleeson has supporting roles in Brooklyn and The Revenant. TFE crush Billy Magnussen also appears in two Best Picture nominees (Bridge of Spies and The Big Short) albeit in small roles.

Sandy Powell (Costume Design for Carol & Cinderella) and Andy Nelson (Sound Mixing for The Force Awakens and Bridge of Spies) are the only double nominees in a single category this year. Powell and Nelson already have 3 and 2 Oscars respectively.

• Four of the five Best Director nominees are enjoying an additional nomination:  George Miller and Alejandro G Inarittu  are both nominated for producing (Best Picture). Tom McCarthy and Adam McKay are also nominated in Screenplay.

• Most Nominated Person in the running again this year: John Williams on his 50th nomination (he's won five time)

• Most Nominated Person this year who has never won: Thomas Newman (Score) and Roger Deakins (Cinematography). They're both on their unlucky 13th nomination. Newman comes from a big family of musicians and composers. His father Alfred Newman was nominated 45 times (second only to John Williams for composing) and won 9 Oscars. His brother David was nominated once. His cousin Randy Newman was nominated 20 times winning twice (both times in "Original Song" for Pixar movies) His uncle Emil was nominated once and there are more of them still out there... 

Climbing The Ranks

Neither Russell or Inarritu are there yet but they're both quickly climbing the ranks for 'Directors who've had the most Best Picture nominees' and 'Directors who've directed the most nominated performances.' They both have exactly 3 Best Picture nominated films on their resumes now. One more for either of them and they're up there with the likes of Clint Eastwood and Elia Kazan and Alfred Hitchcock (who are all --- with many other men -- tied for 19th place of most Best Picture nominees). It'll be easier for them to climb that chart than it was for others due to the expansion of the Best Picture field. 

Steven Spielberg is currently #2 of all time for 'Directors who've had the most Best Picture nominees' Bridge of Spies gives him his 11th Best Picture nominee. Two more and Spielberg will tie the all time leader William Wyler who directed 13 Best Picture nominees in his career. Spielberg isn't a strong factor in the 'Directors who've guided the most Oscar nominated performances' with 11 such examples in his long career but Russell and Inarritu are skyrocketing up that same chart. This year's nominations give Russell his 11th (tied with Spielberg now despite a much shorter career) and Inarritu his 10th. The only two living directors who are in the top ten in that regard are Martin Scorsese (22 performances, 3rd place of all time after William Wyler and Elia Kazan), Woody Allen (18 performances, 6th place of all time after those three plus George Cukor and Fred Zinneman). 

Oops

• This one comes from Tim. Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the first film post Gone with the Wind (1939) to hold record for highest grossing film in the history of the U.S. box office that has not received a Best Picture nomination to go along with its cash haul. The others to hold that status at given points were (though box office statistics pre modern era are always somewhat debatable were) The Ten Commandments, The Sound of Music, Jaws, Star Wars, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Titanic, and Avatar. It's worth noting that Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the first sequel in that list which could account for it being the first to not win the nomination.

Thursday
Jan072016

The Revenant's Costume Designer Jacqueline West on Terrence Malick, Ben Affleck, and... Anaïs Nin? 

Jacqueline West at the premiere of The Revenant.© Frazer Harrison for Getty ImagesClothing was always in her blood though Costume Design came later. Two time Oscar nominee Jacqueline West (Quills, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), the daughter of an avante garde designer, originally pursued fashion. After building a successful clothing line of her own her career made a sudden fate-filled turn in the late 80s via a favor for a personal friend, the director Philip Kaufman.

Her filmography in the subsequent 25 years has been a grab bag of film genres --  her latest The Revenant (2015) is a 180 from Henry & June (1990) you must agree -- but the consistent throughline is that she's in demand with the auteur set. She's worked repeatedly with Terrence Malick, David Fincher, Philip Kaufman, and Ben Affleck. The Revenant marks her first, though one assumes not last, collaboration with Alejandro González Iñárritu. To get in the right mindset, she drew on her personal history -- she was intimately familiar with the Hugh Glass story before Inarittu and Leo were all about making it for the screen-- and eventually read a ton of journals by fur trappers, including the invaluable "40 Years as a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri.

Our conversation starts with The Revenant but you know yours truly won't let this talented woman go without talking Henry & June and other more glamourous gigs...

NATHANIEL R: You've designed many gorgeous movie costumes over the years but for The Revenant your challenge is so different. I imagine a lot of your job this time was making the clothes look disgusting!

JACQUELINE WEST: [Laughter]

NATHANIEL: They're overworn. They're muddy. They're bloody. [More...]

Click to read more ...

Sunday
Jan032016

Who Will Be This Year's "Out-of-Nowhere" Oscar Nominee? 

Coco here, ready to talk about the current Oscar race and the surprises that might pop up.

Last week, we discussed SAG's bizarre taste. The math works against it but we're desperately hoping the Academy breaks free of their influence. Perhaps we should focus our hope on a recent wave of surprising, "out-of-nowhere" nominations at the Oscars.  Ever since 2011 (the year the Academy turned Best Picture into a flexible category with as little as 5 and as many as 10 nominees), there's been at least one acting nominee that landed on Oscar's list without being previously nominated at either the Golden Globes, SAG, or BAFTA.

Here are the stats...

2011 - The shocking inclusion of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in Best Picture came with the legendary Max von Sydow in tow for his mute performance in Best Supporting Actor. 

2012 - Everyone was surprised by the amount of support Silver Linings Playbook had considering the supporting Actress nomination for Jacki Weaver. (Various precursors had usually included Nicole Kidman in the divisive Lee Daniels film The Paperboy or random shout outs to Dames Judi Dench (Skyall) and Maggie Smith (Marigold Hotel) and even the then lesser known Ann Dowd (who was pitched as supporting in Compliance though she had the film's central role). It's also hard to remember now, but Quvenzhané Wallis had none of the big three precursor nominations before she made the Best Actress line-up for Beasts of the Southern Wild (though she was included at Critics Choice and at the Spirit Awards)

2013 & 2014 stats. Plus 2015 speculation after the jump... 

Click to read more ...

Tuesday
Dec292015

Top 15 Most Hardworking Performers in 2015

Manuel here continuing our year end review.

Remember in 2011 when Jessica Chastain went from unknown actress to Oscar nominee in the blink of an eye thanks to the whirlwind of release dates that had her starring in over six films in that calendar year? It was as great a calling card as you could ask for and while Chastain had a relatively subdued year (Crimson Peak, The Martian), other actors gave her a run for her money in the “how many projects can I appear on in one year” race. Not that it’s a contest, but we’re fan of lists here at TFE even as we understand they’re more jumping off discussion points rather than monolithic assertions of quality or taste. And so find below a list of 15 actors who were extra hardworking and who you couldn’t have missed seeing as they were everywhere from superhero franchise films and prestige flicks to Netflix series and festival sensations.

The Martian cast had a busy 2015, but 2016 looks busier still for Damon, Chastain, Mara and Marvel boy Stan.

Rankings and inclusions were both arbitrary and subjective. Thus, they’re neither binding nor absolute (my personal fave and the inspiration for this post in the first place comes at #2). Feel free to tell me who I missed and whether you agree with our undisputed #1 placement who’ll be getting a special Gold Medal from Nat himself for their Body of Work this year.

15. Bill Murray (Aloha, Rock the Kasbah, A Very Murray Christmas)

14. Nicole Kidman (Grace of Monaco, Paddington, Strangerland, Secret in Their Eyes)

13. Chiwetel Ejiofor (Z for Zachariah, The Martian, Secret in their Eyes)

the ubiquitous dozen after the jump

Click to read more ...

Saturday
Dec262015

Link Wars Episode ∞: The Blog Awakens

Guardian has a piece on the 7 best financial films for the release of The Big Short. Confession: I'm always surprised when internet lists remember that films existed before 1990. And this list has 4 of them [gasp]
CHUD Have you heard Radiohead's Spectre theme. The studio went with Sam Smith instead for the latest Bond
Variety Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez On Me is coming your way (and filming already). Given the massive success of Straight Outta Compton expect more hiphop/rap biopics 

Gothamist Oooh. AMC Village 7 has reopened in Manhattan with spiffy new seats and bathrooms. I haven't been there in years but will have to return now. Now if only Film Forum and Village East would get renovations and they'd burn down the Angelika, Cinema Village, and Lincoln Plaza and build new non-tiny, non-crappy, subwayrumble-free arthouse theaters somewhere else... wouldn't that be swell?! 
MNPP the only recap of the recent Tom Hardy junket journalist dustup that you need is right here. Seriously who cares?! Stars cancel or push back interviews ALL THE TIME. 
Comics Alliance prepare for your heart to melt with these photos of Chris Pratt visiting a children's hospital 

Best of '15
Florida Film Critics went with Mad Max Fury Road as best of the year in 4 categories and gave Daisy Ridley Breakthrough for Star War: The Force Awakens
Movie Scene Kyle Turner's top 15 from Appropriate Behavior (yay!) to Mistress America (say what?)
Playbill 10 biggest social media moments for Broadway this year. Naturally Hamilton made the biggest splash
Theater Mania names the 9 best Off Broadway shows... i dont understand this number 9? It has to be 10 or 15 this year. I mean, MATH. SYMMETRY. LIST RULES. 
The Film Stage names 50 "Overlooked" films... though the criteria for overlooked is sligthly murky. Tangerine and James White, for example, didn't get even a tiny percentile of the box office they deserved but they did win spirit and gotham nods and in Tangerine's case a lot of press... which has to count for something. Very happy to see Appropriate Behavior (which you'll remember I loved nearly two years ago at its festival debut) and Victoria on the list though. Hopefully Mustang's inclusion (Team Experience loves it) will look silly after the fact if the Academy nominates it and it proves a late-bloomer at the box office. But for now with only $100,000 in the bank at only 3 theaters, it deserves this list placement.

More Star Wars... The Force Won't Go Back To Sleep
Digital Spy People will post ANYTHING about Star Wars for traffic. Here we consider the possibility of a gay Star Wars romance between Finn & Poe 
Gizmodo award winning interactive fan animations - Love the Grand Prize winner on Tattooine.
Vulture polls several celebrities about the best order to view the 7 Star Wars films in. The correct answer is obviously 4,5,6,7 (ignoring 1,2,3) but there's a lot of variety in the responses
/Film concept designs for BB-8 
American Leather Jacket for only $209 you can try to look at cool as Finn or Poe from Star Wars with the jacket they trade off onscreen
Academy Conversations the filmmaking team talks about production - I haven't watched it in full yet but it's nice to see Michael Kaplan represented there. He's one of the great costume designers and has had ZERO academy attention. That's probably because his best work comes in stylish contemporary film (Fight Club, Burlesque, Flashdance, Mr & Mrs Smith) or genre films (Blade Runner, Star Trek, The Force Awakens) and we know how Oscar feels about both of those kinds of pictures.

And if you haven't checked out the Emo Kylo Ren twitter page, do so. Laugh, you will. Know that it's more fun than a yub-nubbing Ewok treehouse party. This is my favorite but there were many many choices for that honor...

 

 

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