Looking to catch up on the Oscar nominees — and fast?
Scott Tobias tells all, in the New York Times.
Check out his how-to guide here.
Category: Oscars
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Affecting, carefully calibrated performances by Ruth Negga, Tessa Thompson (those two actresses in particular), Alexander Skarsgard, Bill Camp and others. Brilliant, literate script. Gorgeous b/w photography. Superb sense of time and place. Resonant themes around race and society.
Seriously, what’s not to like about “Passing,” the impressive feature directorial debut from Rebecca Hall?
The Oscar nominations completely passed over “Passing.” Why?
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As you’ve heard by now, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences wants to add an Oscar for outstanding achievement in “popular film” to the mix in 2019.
“The film business passed away today,” Rob Lowe (above left) tweeted in response. “It had been in poor health for a number of years. It is survived by sequels, tent-poles, and vertical integration.”
On the surface, it seems like a cockamamie, ill-advised plan. A few quick thoughts:
- The Academy may be imperfect. The Oscars telecast may be kooky and overlong. But it has the highest profile of any organization/show designed to honor achievements in filmmaking — accomplishments related to the art of making movies. Box-office receipts aren’t the same thing. Does Oscar’s history count for nothing?
- Some films are simultaneously artistic standouts and commercial juggernauts. If the Best Popular Film award in 2019 goes to box-office hits “Black Panther,” “Avengers: Infinity War,” or “Mission Impossible: Fallout,” but those movies don’t get Best Picture nominations, isn’t that like saying, “Sure, your movie isn’t a stand-out artistically but it made a heckuva lot of money, so we’re giving you our Very Special Oscar?”
- Doesn’t introducing an Oscar for Best Popular Film dilute the impact of the Oscar for Best Picture? Which one is the “real” top winner?
- If the idea is to pump up the TV ratings of the Oscars telecast, a last-minute CYA attempt to get more fans of, say, superhero movies to tune in seems misguided. There are other ways to restructure the thing to make it funnier and faster moving. And maybe, just maybe, the Academy’s members might consider cutting back on the political speechifying that’s alienated so many viewers, and potential viewers?
- Is the plan designed to keep the Academy from accusations of a) being “so white” if/when the enormously popular “Black Panther” doesn’t get nominated and/or win Best Picture or b) being unwilling to honor superhero movies if/when that film or “Avengers” don’t get nominated and/or win Best Picture? The Academy has notably made moves to diversify its membership via increases in minority, female, and younger members, along with other tweaks, including expanding the number of Best Picture nominees. Why not allow a bit of time for the nominations to reflect those changes? Is it really necessary to press the panic button right now? Patience, grasshopper.
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Hollywood loves movies about showbiz, and Alejandro Inarritu‘s funny, visually novel and quite original “Birdman” is justifiably lauded for its excellence in direction/tech and acting. So look to see that film win for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, and possibly for Best Actor (for Michael Keaton’s brilliant performance AND his body of work).
Still, I’m thinking it’s more likely that Eddie Redmayne will win for his impressive feat as Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything.” Because, you know, it’s a “serious” biopic and Hawking is played by a Brit. And Brits win many of the big acting Oscars.
The cumulative effect of Richard Linklater‘s beautiful, unusual “Boyhood” — seeing a boy played by the same actor grow from child to adult, and his family members age, too, in what feels like real time over the course of a few hours — indeed was emotionally engaging, and it was the first feature film to notch that accomplishment. So it COULD take Best Picture and Best Director, but my guess is that Patricia Arquette‘s naturalistic turn as the protagonist’s long-suffering mom will result in the movie’s only major win, for Best Supporting Actress.
Best Actress: Julianne Moore, as an Alzheimer’s patient in the moving but not entirely satisfying “Still Alice,” deserves the win, and will get it, in part for a career’s worth of great work.
Best Supporting Actor: J.K. Simmons will win for his towering performance in “Whiplash” as the scariest band director in history.
Best Original Screenplay: Wes Anderson’s quirky, wildly inventive screenplay for his “The Grand Budapest Hotel” deserves it and will win it, I think. The film will win for Production Design, too, and probably Costume Design.
Adapted Screenplay: “The Imitation Game” deserves/gets the win.
Editing: What feat could beat the artfully-stitching-together-12-years-of-footage accomplishment of “Boyhood”?
Visual Effects: “Interstellar” deserves it and, I think, will win.
Foreign film: Probably “Ida.”
Documentary: Probably “Citizenfour”
Score: Probably Johann Johannsson, for “The Theory of Everything”; AMPAS wrongly denied Antonio Sanchez a nom for “Birdman,” IMO.
Upset potential: If anything, the commercial juggernaut “American Sniper” could force a surprise or two.
Stay tuned.
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All the hype this weekend is focused on the bloody arrival of dysfunctional-superhero saga Watchmen, as grim, brutal and overlong a movie as likely to play the multiplexes this year (read my review).
Better news: The third annual Gasparilla International Film Festival continues through Saturday. The Tampa Bay Jewish Film Festival continues through March 15.
And still playing Tampa Bay area screens are gorgeous looking animated movie Coraline and quite a few 2008 films that landed Oscar wins and nominations, or should have notched Academy Awards attention.
All of the latter group — including Slumdog Millionaire, Defiance, Gran Torino, The Wrestler, The Reader, Milk, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Waltz With Bashir, Frost/Nixon, Rachel Getting Married and The Dark Knight — are far more satisfying than Watchmen.
Also opening 3/6:Fanboys, the tale of five Star Wars fanatics who break into George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch in 1998 to steal a print of Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace (released in 1999). The road-trip comedy includes a brawl between Star Wars fans and Trekkies. Seth Rogen makes a cameo, as do Princess Leia, er, Carrie Fisher and fellow Star Wars cast member Billy Dee Williams; William Shatner (Captain Kirk, of Star Trek); and Kevin Smith. “The most appealing aspect of the movie is that the guys and gal at the center of it don’t just love the Star Wars saga for its own sake,” Michael Sragow writes in the Baltimore Sun. “They love the way they feel about each other when they’re escaping into its universe and sharing all the wonder and the trivia.
Alternatives:
- Tampa Theatre – Two Lovers , the well-reviewed new drama starring Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw; cast also includes Isabella Rossellini and Elias Koteas (through March 11)
- Beach Theatre (St. Petersburg Beach) – Slumdog Millionaire
- Burns Court (Sarasota) – Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, Waltz with Bashir, Two Lovers
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Blame it on the down economy, and the accompanying desire for escapist entertainment. Or perhaps it’s the fault of the nasty winter weather, which continued to break records nationwide (global warming, or new ice age?). Who wants to go outside?Or maybe there simply wasn’t anything else worth watching on Sunday night.
At any rate, the 81st annual Academy Awards telecast drew 36.3 million viewers, an increase of 13 percent over the 32 million who caught the show last year, according to a report in the New York Times. Viewership grew by 22 percent among men ages 18 to 34.
That’s despite the predictable post-show grumbling by television critics and others, some of whom probably wouldn’t be pleased by the Oscars even if the telecast ran no more than two hours and was the funniest thing on TV.
By the way, some of these same critics kill acres of trees in the course of endlessly hyping such awful “reality” programming as “American Idol” and “Dancing With the Stars” and “The Bachelor” and “The Biggest Loser.” Like they know from quality.
More factoids: Viewership for the show peaked in 1998, when 55 million watched Titanic win 11 Oscars, including best picture and best director (James Cameron). More than 40 million watched the Oscars show in 2007, when the award for best picture went to Martin Scorsese’s The Departed.
So much for those who would want to force the Oscars to honor only the year’s biggest crowd-pleasers.* Isn’t television already overwhelmed with popularity contests?
*(This is NOT a dis on The Dark Knight, which deserved Oscar attention on artistic merit alone. Its exclusion had more to do with a)a general disrespect for comic-book culture, and b)a liberal political agenda that clearly dominates the thinking of Hollywood types).
UPDATE: Mary McNamara, a television critic for the L.A.Times, writes, “If nothing else, the 81st version proved that the Oscars are important after all, that in this digitally splintered world where everyone can find something better to do every single second of the day, there remain media and entertainment experiences we long to share with one another.” The rest of her piece.
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- Biggest winner: Slumdog Millionaire, with best picture, best director, and six other Oscars.
- Number of posthumously awarded Oscars: 1, to Heath Ledger, for The Dark Knight. Ledger was only the second actor in Oscar history to win posthumously. The first was Peter Finch, who won in 1977 for Network.
- Biggest-grossing movie not nominated for best picture: The Dark Knight, with receipts of $1 billion worldwide. Other movies that hit that magic mark, according to trade publication Box Office: Titanic, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
- Most nominated movie with the least number of wins: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, with 13 nominations and just three wins — in the categories of make-up, art direction, and visual effects. Button is the most-nominated film to have lost the best picture Oscar, breaking records set by The Color Purple and The Turning Point, which had 11 each. Button‘s nominations total was just shy of Titanic’s 14, in 1998. The latter film won a record-tying 11 Oscars.
- Number of winners in the female acting categories with non-American accents: 2 (all of them) – Brit-born Kate Winslet, as a former Nazi guard, with a German accent, in The Reader; Penelope Cruz, as an emotionally volatile Spanish woman in Vicky Christina Barcelona.
- Number of American-born performers who won in acting categories: 1, California native Sean Penn (Milk). Winslet was born in England, Ledger in Australia, and Cruz in Spain.
- Number of American-born show hosts: Zero. Hugh Jackman was born in Australia.
- Number of nominated songwriters born in the U.S.: Zero. A.R. Rahman was nominated for “Jai Ho” (the winner) and “O Saya,” both from the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack, and UK-born Peter Gabriel was nominated for “Down to Earth” (Wall-E)
- Number of actors who gave extended impressions of other actors: 1 – Ben Stiller, mocking Joaquin Phoenix’s bizarre David Letterman appearance, in one of the evening’s funniest moments.
- Longest speech: 3 minutes, 21 seconds (Penn)
- Shortest speech: 28 seconds (director of animated short La Maison en Petit Cubes)
- Running time: 3 hours, 30 minutes (about average)
- Jack Nicholson appearances: Zero. Where was he?
- Winners whose speeches were cut off by music: Donald Graham Burt, art director for Benjamin Button
(Thanks to a piece in USA Today for some of the stats provided in this post)
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Nice touches for this year’s Oscars, including insightful and sometimes touching introductions of this year’s acting nominees by notable past winners; a terrific musical sequence featuring A.R. Rahman, John Legend and the Soweto Gospel Choir; and a Busby Berkeley-style dance sequence, capped with Jackman’s shout, “The musical is back!” (well, not quite).
Best picture: Slumdog MillionaireSaid Christian Colson, Slumdog’s producer: “We had passion and we had belief and our film shows that if you have those two things then truly anything is possible.”
Best actor: Sean Penn, Milk.
Penn (joking): “You commie, homo-loving sons of guns. I do know how hard I make it to appreciate me, often” and “Mickey Rourke rises again, and he is my brother.”
Best actress: Kate Winslet, The Reader
Winslet: “I think we can’t believe that we’re all in the same category at all. I’m sorry Meryl, you’ll have to just suck that up.”
Best Director: Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
Foreign Language Film: Departures (Japan)
Original song: A.R. Rahman, “Jai Ho,” Slumdog Millionaire
Rahman talked about how Slumdog is about “optimism and the power ofhope in our lives. All my life I’ve had a choice of hate and love. I chose love, and I’m here. God bless.”
Original score: Slumdog Millionaire
Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award was presented to Jerry Lewis, who has raised $2 BILLION — I was stunned by this number — for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. No surprises, just a brief thanks. I’m thinking that Lewis probably deserved a more extensive tribute, at least via a longer series of clips from his films and a more expansive explanation of his impact on film comedy than that offered by Eddie Murphy.
Editing: Slumdog Millionaire
Sound mixing: Slumdog Millionaire
Sound editing: The Dark Knight
Visual Effects: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Documentary short: Smile Pinki
Documentary feature: Man on Wire
Supporting actor: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Ledger’s father, mother and sister accepted on his behalf. Sister: “We proudly accept this award on behalf of your beautiful Matilda (his daughter)”
Live Action Short: Toyland
Director of Toyland: “I spent four years of my life making this 14-minute movie.”
Cinematography: Slumdog Millionaire
Ben Stiller offered a hilarious impression of Joaquin Phoenix, circa his recent, bizarre visit with David Letterman – i.e., Stiller, wearing an out-of-control beard, and chewing gum, was entirely distracted. Stiller: “I just want to retire from being a funny guy.” He aimlessly wandered around while Natalie Portman talked about cinematography.
Makeup: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Costume Design: The Duchess
Art Direction: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Animated Short Film: La Maison en Petits Cubes
Director Kunio Kato ended his speech with “Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto” (from the Styx song)
Animated Feature: Wall-E
Wall-E director Andrew Stanton thanked his high-school drama teacher for casting him in “Hello, Dolly”
Adapted Screenplay: Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire
Simon Beaufoy said that the cast and crew taught him so much about India and “changed my life.”
Original Screenplay: Milk
Funny “instructional” sequence about screenwriting, with Steve Martin and Tina Fey. And terrific quick illustration of how screenplay translates to a movie.
Best Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz, Vicky Christina Barcelona
Cruz spoke about the long road from her lowly origins to the Oscars, and said: “Art in any form is and has been and always will be our universal language and we should do everything we can to protect its survival.”
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The Reader, nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress (Kate Winslet) and five other Academy Awards, essentially is an examination of how a nation, Germany, chooses to deal with the sins of its past.And yet, some have attacked the movie as a “Holocaust denial film,” saying that Winslet, who has already been honored with a Golden Globe and a Bafta, was too sympathetic in her portrayal of a female prison camp guard.
Mark Weitzman, head of The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said “Essentially it takes a woman who serves in, is responsible for, is complicit in, you pick the words, in the deaths of at least 300 Jews – and her big secret shame is that she’s illiterate.”The London Jewish Cultural Centre’s head, Trudy Gold, in an interview with Jewish News, also expressed her displeasure with the movie.
“This is just one of a spate of films portraying sympathetic Nazis. This woman acted monstrously, there’s no question about that. The question is have we gotten to the point where we have to make heroines out of Nazis? I do find it a bit sick.”
The talent behind the film, including director Stephen Daldry, David Hare, whose screenplay was adapted from the German bestseller, producer Donna Gigliotti and studio owner Harvey Weinstein, are striking back.
So are leading Jewish voices, including author and activist Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Here’s the joint statement issued by the filmmakers (caps are theirs), courtesy of the movie’s publicists:
“We are proud of The Reader and everyone who made this film. It is outrageous and insulting that people have called it a “Holocaust denial film.” While entitled to their opinion, these allegations are fueled by ignorance and a misunderstanding of the material, and are based on unsubstantiated arguments.
The greatest films elicit great debate and conversation. Unfortunately, the recent attacks on The Reader have generated debates, not about the substance of the film, but about what people believe to be the intent of the filmmakers. To take a piece of art that was constructed with the hard work of many talented people and turn it into propaganda is plain ignorant. No one is suggesting that The Reader must be beloved by everyone. On the contrary, there is always room for criticism. If one does not like the film that is one matter; but to project one’s personal bias on the filmmaker’s objective is wrong and something we could no longer remain silent about.
The Reader is a film about how a generation of Germans lived in the shadow of one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century. Some detractors of the film have said that it is a piece of Holocaust revisionism; however Holocaust survivors, children of Holocaust survivors and a Nobel Peace Prize winner feel differently.Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, has praised The Reader as “a film that deals powerfully with Germany’s reconciliation with its past.” He said that ‘it is not about the Holocaust; it is about what Germany did to itself and its future generations.’ He called it ‘a faithful adaptation of an important book, that is still relevant today as genocide continues to be practiced around the world.’ ”
Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti Defamation League, concurs, according to a press release:
“As we move further away from the Holocaust we must continue to tell the story of the Shoah in ways that will reach and touch new generations. The Reader, which takes place in post-WWII Germany, clearly portrays the horrors of the Holocaust, not visually but intellectually and emotionally. There is no doubt to what Kate Winslet’s character, Hannah Schmitz, did during the war. Her guilt is given. At her trial her crimes are portrayed in detail and she is brought to justice for them. The Reader is not meant to be a factual re-telling of the Holocaust; for that we have documentaries. Rather it is about guilt and responsibility that is as important for our times as it was for post-war Germans.”
Will any of the folks associated with the movie, or anyone else, allude to the controversy during the Oscar ceremonies on Sunday night?
Stay tuned.
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Changeling (Universal, widescreen, $29.98) DVD of the Week
— feature, 140 mins; rated R
The first and least accomplished of last year’s Clint Eastwood films*, Changeling, set in the Los Angeles of the 1920s, features an Oscar-nominated performance by Angelina Jolie.Jolie, in another turn as a real-life character (she played Mariane Pearl in 2007’s A Mighty Heart), is Christine Collins, whose 9-year-old son suddenly vanishes.
The LAPD, steeped in corruption, instead of working the case brings another boy — a street urchin, not Walter — back to Collins. Why the wrong kid? So that the department, in a hasty attempt to repair its heavily damaged reputation, can trumpet its success at solving the case and gain a little good PR.
Collins, of course, despite assurances to the contrary, protests that her son is still missing. For her troubles, she gets a quick trip to a mental ward, and public humiliation to boot. Her only ally, for a while, is a stiff-collared minister played by John Malkovich; his attacks on police misdoings reach thousands via his radio broadcasts.
There’s plenty of grist here for a terrific neo-noir film, ala L.A. Confidential — bone-deep corruption in the police force, a sycophantic press, a force for good that may or may not be in the fight to boost his own celebrity, a few good cops, evil running rampant, a vintage-sounding score (composed by Eastwood) with mournful trumpet ballads on the soundtrack.
Eastwood, not surprisingly, gets the period feel right, and Jolie effectively gives her all to a somewhat undercooked character. And yet, Changeling is oddly misshapen, shifting from a tale of a missing child and police corruption to another story, about an emotionally/mentally damaged murderer of children, played to sickening effect by Jason Butler Harner.
The resulting trials – of the killer and the police department – take place simultaneously in film time, along the way causing the movie to nearly, but not quite, overstay its welcome. Call Changeling another smoothly professional, craftsmanlike effort from Eastwood, a veteran director who retains a knack for expert storytelling.
DVD extras:
- “Partners in Crime: Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie”
- “The Common Thread: Angelina Jolie Becomes Christine Collins”
*(The second, superior Eastwood film released last year was Gran Torino)
Also released this week:
Flash of Genius (Universal, $29.98), the “true” story of the man who invented the intermittent windshield wiper. Oddly, it’s more compelling than it sounds, largely due to Greg Kinnear’s surprisingly nuanced performance as a gifted engineer determined to fight for recognition for his achievement – even at the expense of his marriage and his sanity. Also stars Lauren Graham, Dermot Mulroney and Alan Alda. Extras: Audio commentary by director Marc Abraham; deleted scenes.
Choke (Fox, $27.98), a willfully quirky, occasionally funny, decidedly adult-oriented comic drama, adapted from the book by Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club). Sam Rockwell is a sex addict and con artist on a quest to find his father — he’s choking on his urges and his mixed-up identity, and he’s literally choking on pieces of food, stuck in his throat in hopes that a wealthy restaurant patron will save him, and then shower him with sympathy checks. Clark Gregg, making his directorial debut, strains for a mix of edgy indie comedy and Judd Apatow slackerdom. But the seams are showing. Also stars the reliably offbeat Anjelica Huston, Kelly MacDonald, and Brad William Henke. Extras: Very funny, very crude audio commentary by Gregg and Rockwell; “A Conversation with Clark Gregg and Chuck Palahniuk; deleted scenes; gag reel; more.Also out:
Body of Lies (Warner Bros., $22.99)
Hobson’s Choice (Criterion, $39.95)
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (Sony, $27.98)
I Served the King of England (Sony, $28.96)
Quarantine (Sony, $28.96)
