Reitman’s Movie Hits the Sweet Spot
Newsweek’s David Ansen kind of sums up the rub of this Oscar year: how do you change the Oscars to include mainstream films the rest of the country can enjoy while also not selling your soul in doing so? The Academy aren’t going to vote for shitacular movies and yet that is what you find oozing out of the multiplex. In other words, Big Hollywood needs to start taking the kinds of chances the indies do. We need William Goldman out there advising people that nobody really knows how a movie will play so why not take a chance? Easy for me to say – I’m not the one bankrolling it to the tune of $100 million. Ansen suggests that Up in the Air is right where it needs to be in terms of Oscar:
This year the Academy expanded the field of best-picture nominees to 10 in the hope that the longer list would include more mainstream, populist offerings, and thus broaden the telecast’s declining audience. Hollywood would be seriously embarrassed if the result instead is a lineup stacked with more small, independent movies and foreign fare—especially in a year in which many of the studios, such as Warner Bros. and Paramount, shut down their independent boutiques and other distributors went out of business. It could well happen: in the first 10 months of the year the movies most often cited as contenders, such as The Hurt Locker, Precious, and An Education, have all been independent productions. Only Pixar’s universally adored Up, and long-shot studio hits such as District 9, Star Trek, and Julie & Julia, even enter the conversation. As Hollywood becomes more committed to movies based on videogames, comic books, and the hormonal fantasies of 16-year-old boys, the trend toward independent Oscar dominance will continue—if the indies can find people to bankroll their increasingly endangered efforts.
Reitman’s movie has hit the sweet spot: it’s an audience-friendly studio movie, yet it harbors an independent spirit and heart. If it gets Reitman his second best-director nomination, it’s not because he set out to get one, though he thinks he could handle the heights. He’s seen directors paralyzed by success after winning an Oscar, not that he worries about that, either. “I’m not going to have a perfect career,” he says. “It’s better to be Billy Wilder and make lots of movies and have five or six great ones than to make so few movies that when you make a bad one it crushes you.” Up in the Air is likely to be remembered as one of his best.
I like Reitman’s attitude about most things. He’s a laid back dude, doesn’t take things too seriously, has led a charmed life and thus feels no need to complain about it.
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[...] Sasha Stone of Awards Daily puts it in her sum-up of David Ansen’s Newseek article about “Up in the Air” – “How do you change the Oscars to [...]
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[...] Sasha Stone of Awards Daily puts it in her sum-up of David Ansen’s Newseek article about “Up in the Air” – “How do you change the Oscars to [...]
Bill says:
Tuesday, December 1, 2009 at 6:16pm
they forget to mention Inglourious Basterds. I think Up in the Air will win best picture.
aspect ratio says:
Tuesday, December 1, 2009 at 7:40pm
I was reading Kris’ interview with Jeff Bridges on In Contention earlier and he mentioned how hard it is to get a $30m film off the ground. These days, so many films are either extremely expensive which in turns means most of them have to appeal to the widest possible denominator (in the worst way possible) or they’re made with independent funding which may limit their ability to be seen and get out there.
The studios need to start making more films that cost less, films that don’t need to appeal to everyone because they don’t need everyone to come see them in order to turn a profit. For every G.I. Joe you could make 5-10 smaller-budget films, and if you make sure you attract and pick the right scripts and talent, even if they all don’t become successful boxoffice-wise the odds are still pretty good that a few of them will do really well and enough to turn a profit on the investment for all those films.
Not to say that studios should stop making big budget films, but there should be a better balance instead of continuing down the road of having a few really expensive films that are enormous gambles if the audiences don’t show up in droves.
Jerry Grant says:
Tuesday, December 1, 2009 at 8:05pm
What about “Avatar” and “Nine”? Those should be big production crowd-pleasers. “Inglourious Basterds,” too
Jason says:
Tuesday, December 1, 2009 at 10:06pm
up in the air = love.
Chris says:
Tuesday, December 1, 2009 at 10:09pm
I think Jason Reitman might want to start getting acceptance speeches ready.
Pierre de Plume says:
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 1:20am
This film seems to have a Best Picture vibe.
Artimus says:
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 1:51pm
I think this is a fairly incompetent piece by Ansen. No one is asserting Transformers should be let in over a Precious or a Capote or a There Will Be Blood or whatever. The problem is horrid nonsense like The Reader getting picture and director nominations because it’s a “serious” picture and the two best films of the year miss out because they’re not the right genres. The Dark Knight’s snub is the clear result of the Academy bias’. Christopher Nolan’s snub is even more transparent. By opening up to ten it lets those films, which don’t have 1/5th the votes but do have more than 1/10th, get their nomination.
This year there isn’t a Dark Knight to really push the case so we might end up with ten nominees which are mostly smaller. But the reason for ten nominees isn’t to change the top five. It’s to allow the smaller amount of less biased members to have influence as well.
Up getting a nomination is sufficient, even if the other nine are obscure beyond belief. It’s exceptionally popular with critics and fans but wouldn’t stand a shot otherwise. If it gets in then the experiment worked: bias overcome by lowering the threshold of nomination.
It’s not about recognizing unworthy films. It’s about diluting the majority’s bias towards certain types of films that are, by any reasonable standard, far worthier than a great portion of the films that survive when 1/5th is the mandatory standard.
FromChelseaManhattan says:
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 4:26pm
EW gave a rave review to Up in the Air. and also to George Clooney
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20323777,00.html