As Twitter pal, @allflicker quipped this morning:
When can I pre-order my Dark Knight Rises prologue tickets? I hear there’s a movie attached to it!
(Answer: The 6-minute prologue is a bonus with your ticket to IMAX screenings of Mission: Impossible 4, Dec 21). Christopher Nolan and Tom Hardy talk about Bane and The Dark Knight Rises in the current issue of Empire Magazine.
Tom Hardy
On Bane: “He’s brutal, brutal. He’s expedient delivery of brutality. And you know, he’s a big dude. He’s a big dude who’s incredibly clinical, in the fact that he has a result-based and orientated fighting style. The result is clear. “Do you know what I mean? It’s: f**k off and die. Quicker. Quicker. Everything is thought out way before. He’s hit you, he’s already hit somebody else. It’s not about fighting. It’s just about carnage with Bane. He’s a smashing machine. He’s a wrecking ball. The style is heavy-handed, heavy-footed, it’s nasty. Anything from small joint manipulation to crushing skulls, crushing rib cages, stamping on shins and knees and necks and collarbones and snapping heads off and tearing his fists through chests, ripping out spinal columns. It’s anything he can get away with. He is a terrorist in his mentality as well as brutal action. So he’s horrible. A really horrible piece of work.”
About filming the fight scenes: “It’s very overwhelming. When you’re training in a rehearsal room you go, ‘Okay, I have a contact with seven people. This guy I chin, this one I slip and I punch, this one I pick up and suplex, this guy I kick in the face, and this one, he stops a hammer with his head. And then I meet Batman.’ That’s all alright in a rehearsal room, but then you add 1,000 people that are all dressed the same as the seven you’re supposed to hit — ’cause they’re all police officers — and I don’t know where my police officers are. But the stuntmaster’s like, ‘Don’t worry. They will find you.’”
About Christian Bale’s Batman: “He looks really intimidating! There’s a three-year-old in me that’s going, ‘Oh my God that’s Batman! That’s Batman and he’s going to hit me! But I love Batman!’ Then I look in the mirror. And I hit him back. Twice as hard.”
Christopher Nolan
On Bane: “With Bane, we are looking to give Batman a physical challenge that he hasn’t had before,” says the film’s director, Christopher Nolan. “With our choice of villain and with our choice of story we’re testing Batman both physically as well as mentally. Also, in terms of finishing our story and increasing its scope, we were trying to craft an epic, so the physicality of the film became very important. Bane’s a very different kind of villain than Batman has faced before in our films. He’s a great sort of movie monster, but with an incredible brain, and that was a side of him that hadn’t been tapped before. Because the stories from the comics are very epic and very evocative — very much in the way that Bruce Wayne’s origin story is epic and evocative. We were looking to really parallel that with our choice of villain. So he is a worthy adversary. What Bane represents in the comics is the ultimate physical villain.”About casting Tom Hardy in the role: “He has this incredible disjunct between the expressiveness of the voice and the stillness of the movement of his body. He’s found a way to play a character who is enormous and powerful with a sort of calm to it, but also is able to be incredibly fast at times. Unpredictable. He just has a raw threat to him that’s extraordinary. It’s a very powerful thing when you see it come together, beyond what I had ever imagined. That’s what you get from working with great actors.”
(high-res scans via comicbookmovie.com)
@ vvs…
if you look hard enough you can find a detractor for almost anything. every once in awhile someone comes along and says something like “cary grant is not a good actor”… or “the godfather isn’t that good” or something like that… luckily pretty much nobody pays attention to that person… my mistake here (and i blame myself) was paying attention to you.
I did not realize that you need to go to school to be a critic. What a joke. What do they study? Do they study acting? Do they do scene study? take improv classes? I don’t think so.
The critics, many of whom have received extensive education and training in their field, lack that ability, yet you, some random person on the internet spewing bizarre opinions, possess it? Sorry, that supposition holds no water whatsoever.
And Payne’s statements do not support you. If a great performance is put together by the director, then it is still a great performance. One of the primary duties of a director after all is to direct actors. And in any case, while I don’t have evidence to support this, I highly doubt that Cart Grant’s performances were cobbled together in editing.
@drake
if you read what i’ve said you would know that i clearly stated that critics do not have the ability to distinguish acting from other components of film making. And often they rave over a performance, that has nothing to do with acting.
Did you see the Director’s roundtable this year? Alexander Payne echoes these thoughts when he says that he has saved many actors performances through editing and those actors went on to get critical praise, when in fact they simply were not good.
Whatever, this is a moot point. You simply do not understand the different between the quality of a film and the quality of the acting in it.
Just wait until you guys wake up tomorrow and realize that this blog – and all the comments – were written by one person assuming different identites, and a figment of Charlie Kaufman’s imagination.
Don’t mind me, just tiptoeing though…see you at the next post. Pretend i’m not here.
haha i can’t believe i spend all this time arguing whether cary grant is a good actor… what a waste of time– haha its funny actually. i think at this point we can agree to disagree. all i can say is thank god its opinions like those of Matt H and I that are the clear consensus and the ones that matter in the world of film study. i guess no matter how brilliant an actor you are there are bound to be detractors. who else do we want to try to take down? hitchcock? orson welles? robert de niro? daniel day-lewis? haha jk
@ Antoinette
haha i’m not even going to argue this … you go ahead and enjoy oldman over brad pitt. oldman’s had 7 archive-worthy films in 25 years (and he’s a supporting actor in like 5 of those)… pitt has accomplished more and shined brighter in the past 5 years alone… haha. i should go into acting and give a performance with an accent, a disguise, and maybe a mental deformity and watch you hand me an oscar and call me better than pitt or cary grant
@vvs…. so lets dig deeper…. are all these critics and industry experts (that you use in your argument when they favor your argument (hardy) but you dismiss when they don’t favor your argument (pitt) just wrong about grant? i’m saying this, not because i can’t make the decision on grant on my own (trust me i am 100% positive i’m correct in KNOWING that he is a brilliant actor and deserves all the recognition he continues to get today) but because i want to show that this is an objective consensus truth that he is a great actor that you are not getting/understanding/grasping… it is your error in evaluation and not my error, the critics error, nor grant’s error in performance… its not simply 2 or 4 people arguing on some some blog with equal opinions
is grant the luckiest guy ever being in 4-5 of the best films of all time? is his comic genius in “bringing up baby” and “his girl friday” lost on you? or how about the dramatic cool and poise in “notorious”? a completely different but equally brilliant role in another masterpiece. if you don’t call him “spontaneous” in “bringing up baby” or “arsenic and old lace” i’ve got to assume you either haven’t seen the films, or simply can’t evaluate films/performances
@Matt H http://youtu.be/3Flg9UZKdQc
Brad Pitt: “When I started out my gods, so to speak, were Gary Oldman, Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke.”
Cary Great is a charismatic actor. I can’t say he’s a great one. What does he do that is so great besides be charming in his roles? Does he make interesting choices in his scenes? Is he so spontaneous that you’re on the edge of your seat not knowing what he will do next? I don’t think you’ll like the answers you give to these questions, if you are honest with yourself.
@ antoinette…
most of the condescending words probably came from me…. and i’m sorry. i didn’t take Matt H’s “ignorant” comment as anything but the dictionary definition of the word – which seems to be correctly placed given the context. i don’t comment often on this site but when i see things like “scorsese isn’t that good” or “brando is overrated” or, in this case “cary grant isn’t a good actor” i tend to react … i should probably just laugh it off as nonsense but i have a tendency to let it bother me and feel like somebody needs to speak up to call out such nonsense. i obviously don’t know you personally, you could be (and probably are) a very sweet person.
“I can’t even.” Translation, your opinion is so ridiculous that I can’t even begin to debate you on it…
Okay, turns out most of what I was talking about came from VVS, and perhaps I lashed out at you when I should have focused it on him, but that was still pretty condescending.
In any case, I should probably have worded it more softly, but there really is no ground to stand on when you make negative claims about Cary Grant. It is, without drawing any broader conclusions about the person who holds it, an ignorant (as in unfounded/in defiance of mountains of evidence to the contrary) opinion. That doesn’t make you an ignorant person and I’m sorry if I gave that impression. I made the Brad Pitt/Cary Grant comparison under the assumption that just about everyone considered Cary Grant about 10x the actor Brad Pitt is, I merely meant to point out that greatness (all-time greatness in Grant’s case) is completely attainable in acting without some sort of transformation. Indeed, transformation is entirely overrated as a determinant of acting quality. It’s the sort of ridiculous criteria that concludes someone like Gary Oldman is amongst the finest actors of his generation. No he isn’t. He’s a gifted chameleon, but he has never given one of the great performances of his time… in fact returning to the Brad Pitt comparison, a list of the top 10 performances between Pitt and Oldman would probably have 6 or 7 Pitt performances.
But now I’ve probably opened a whole new can of worms and Oldman’s disciples will come flooding out of the woodwork to insist he’s the best actor on the planet. Oh well.
Excuse me, but I was talking about Tom Hardy in a Tom Hardy post. I never insulted anyone nor did I try to start a Brad Pitt fight out of nowhere or drag Cary Grant into it. I would love to know where I was condescending to you. Tell me. I clearly can’t edit my posts so it still must be up there.
@Antoinette
I began this conversation entirely respectful, insisting merely that Brad Pitt is being undervalued, without demeaning Tom Hardy or anyone’s opinions. I then endured a half dozen condescending posts demeaning my views before I responded in kind. Forgive me, I should have remained above it… but neither you nor VVS is in a position to take any sort of high ground here. You brought the conversation down in the first place.
@ antoinette
haha we’re not the same person… if i went around saying “cary grant isn’t a good actor” i would expect to be chastised by people who know even a little bit about film. it sounds like you’re still trying to figure some stuff out… take this as an opportunity to learn
@drake one person knows what they are talking about and the other doesn’t
You’re so full of yourself. LOL
@Matt H calling people ignorant makes you a wonderful person too.
Please tell me that the two of you are the same person.
@ vvs
“Brad Pitt a legend in celabrity history”….
have you been paying attention at all since 2006? “babel”, “jesse james”, “tree of life”… working with tarantino, the coen brothers, malick, etc… celebrity? yeah i get him confused with kim kardashian all the time… if you think Hardy is more talented and will (in the future) be better than Pitt, that’s one thing, but give Pitt some credit. I mean the guy is doing great work and going out of his way to take on intricate roles, make great movies (with great directors), and avoid the “celebrity” stigma
@ vvs
“Hardy’s performance has been praised as one of the best of the year as well. Don’t play yourself”
haha i thought “Critics are some of the worst gauges of great acting” …. did i miss something?
@ antoinette
haha of course i have no confidence because i happen to agree with what all the experts think in this instance… lets recap… i think pitt a better actor than hardy right now, i think he’s stronger this year than hardy (without trying to slight hardy- cause i’m not), i think cary grant is a great actor, and i think acting is about more than just having great range…
tell me… one person knows what they are talking about and the other doesn’t…. i’m thrilled to be on the side of the arguments i’m on on all of these
@Matt H. Hardy’s performance has been praised as one of the best of the year as well. Don’t play yourself
and you obviously have comprehension problems. I didn’t compare myself to Einstein. I was explaining that being in the minority doesn’t mean you are wrong. In most cases it means, everybody else hasn’t caught up yet.
Tom Hardy will be a legend in acting history. Brad Pitt a legend in celabrity history.
@drake just keep going to metacritic to know what you should think. You’re incredibly condescending for someone who has no confidence.
@Drake. Critics are some of the worst gauges of great acting. Why? Because they simply cannot distinguish acting from writing from charm from editing from score. To them it’s all one big mesh. For example. MoneyBall….Brad Pitt brings his charm to anchor the role, and that’s a fine thing to do for a movie star like him, but it is not great acting. Sure he is nuanced but those nuances are the same ones we have seen in other performances. They are Brad Pitt’s nuances, ticks, and behavioral details.
Then there’s the score. Then there’s the great writing. And the amazing cinematography. All of those things add to the impression a “critic” has of Brad Pitt’s performance. But they are not actors so they cannot distinguish the difference.
I think Pitt did a great job in Tree of Life and deserves to be nominated for that, I’d even be okay if he won for that role. But his Moneyball work is phoned in. There’s nothing interesting or special about it.
I’m sorry, but claiming Cary Grant is not a great actor should be in the dictionary as a possible definition of the word “ignorant”. And Drake is right, range is not even close to the most significant attribute for an actor.
As for Hardy/Pitt, it’s hilarious that someone would equate their oddly atypical opinion on the relative merits of these actors to great thinkers in history. Let me fedex you a pin to pop that ridiculous ego you have there. Hardy is excellent, but he’s not getting nominated this year while Pitt probably is… and that’s pretty much how it should be. Pitt’s performances have been rightly and roundly praised as amongst the year’s best. Hardy’s work was rightly praised as one of the best performances in his own (pretty damn good) film. Big difference.
While I’m looking forward to TDKR, I read an article in the local paper this morning (sourced Box Office Mojo) that discussed the trend for sequels in Hollywood. In 2000, there were 12; in 2011, there were 27 (and this number did not count TV adaptations or “spinoffs”)!
I have to challenge their criteria because they consider the HP series, Twilight, etc, as sequels when the films were actually based on original books, but I think the trend is disturbing. I know it’s economics and it’s better, dollarwise, to have a surefire opening weekend over the risk of something original catching on, but in the current economy when fewer films actually get made, it bothers me that less and less original thought goes into producing work for the screen.
Having said that, if Fincher goes for the other two books in the Millenium trilogy, I’m there. And we all know that Nolan is wrapping up his Batman phase. But do we need Bridesmaids 2, Hangover 13 or, god forbid, Pirates 101?
@ antoinette
i don’t mean to be harsh… sorry if i sound like a jerk… but read some reviews of “moneyball” and pitt
http://www.metacritic.com/movie/moneyball …. why are you the only one that thinks his (pitt) role is “medicore”? are you smarter than these professional critics? or are you a pioneer like vvs is like einstein and galileo?
@ antoinette
“I feel bad for you since you seem to think that your “in the know” opinion is better than anyone else’s. ”
haha i said everyone was entitled to an opinion, i didn’t say all opinion’s were created equal. if you think “range is the definition of being a good actor” then you simply don’t know what you’re talking about. Range is a factor, but it certainly isn’t the definition of being a good actor. This seems like a really easy concept to get- i’m surprised it’s such a struggle.
@drake I feel bad for you since you seem to think that your “in the know” opinion is better than anyone else’s.
If Cary Grant had a range he probably cooked a chicken on it. Jimmy Stewart and Humphrey Bogart were better actors than him. I get it. He’s your man crush but having range is the definition of being a good actor. If you don’t have it, then you’re a personality. Playing yourself is not acting. Creating a persona and then playing that part over and over again is lazy acting.
Brad Pitt has done some really good work. There were times when he acted. One of his best performances he tried to distance himself from because he didn’t like all the attention he got after playing Tristan Ludlow in Legends of the Fall. That was his movie star role, the one that made him BRAD PITT. He then tried to play quirkier roles like the cartoonish mental patient in Twelve Monkeys and later he continued to try to stretch by mangling accents in Seven Years in Tibet and The Devil’s Own. He does great work went he’s being funny in films like True Romance and Burn After Reading. But he’s not meant to be a character actor. He’s meant to be the guy out front dazzling everyone. When he owns it in roles like Achilles or Jesse James or Lt. Aldo Raine, that’s when he shines. That’s where he belongs, playing larger than life characters. Maybe one day one of those roles and the road to Oscar will meet head on. But it shouldn’t be this year. Not for these mediocre roles.
It seems like you’re judging people on some kind of cumulative scale. So you want a person to win for their body of work. In that way, you’re always going to root for the person who has been around longer. Therefore there’s no point comparing actors when one of their careers is twice as long as the other’s. But the fact is actors are supposed to be awarded for a single role in a single film. But I’ll eat my hat if on nomination morning they nominate Brad Pitt for “everything he did this year” and George Clooney for “‘The Facts of Life’ and so on”.
@VVS Thanks for the Bane info. 🙂
@ vvs… so its einstein, galileo and then ….. you? haha sounds good… thanks for making my case for me by crushing yourself under the weight of that last statement comparing yourself to einstein and galileo…
i don’t look to the left and right of me before i speak my mind, but when i’m as alone in an argument as you are here, i try to use reason (which as illustrated by your last statement, isn’t what you’re interested in) to figure out if i’m the only one still saying that the world is flat….you’re either wrong or a genius… guess where my vote stands on that one?
I’m so pleased that Warner Bros. is letting Nolan wrap his series up and stand as its own trilogy. In reality Batman could only exist for a short period of time and this series is reflecting that. I can’t wait to see how it all ends.
@Drake
i’m perfectly fine being in the minority. Was Einstein not in the minority when he developed his scientific concepts? Was Galileo not in the minority? You don’t really present a good argument there.
I feel sorry for you, who has to look left and right, to see what other people are saying, before he can speak his mind.
@Drake
Pitt has never giving performances as powerful as Warrior, The Take, Bronson, or Stuart
and after next year we will add 2 more to the list: Forrest Bondurant and Bane.
as far as Hardy in “warrior” vs pitt in “moneyball” and “tree of life” i’m 100% with Matt H (and so are the critics). Pitt is a most praised actor in 2 films that got both an 85 (tree of life) and an 87 (moneyball) on MC. Hardy is the 2nd (or 3rd) most praised actor by in a film that got a 70 on MC (warrior). i it would seem that the critics are in agreement with Matt H
@ VVS
if you made a list of the best 10 performances between Hardy and Pitt 8-9 of them would be from Pitt. i’m not saying Hardy doesn’t have the POTENTIAL to be as good or better than Pitt… but i think Matt H is going on accomplishments at this point and he’s pretty smart for doing so. Saying Pitt couldn’t do what Hardy did in “warrior” gets us nowhere… i could easily say that Hardy couldn’t pull off what Pitt did in “moneyball” and be just as on-point if not more so.
its a free world and you can have whatever opinion you want and are entitled to it… just know that if you think Hardy is better (or has more accomplishments) than Pitt at this point you will be in the extreme minority of those who are in the know about film and screen acting.
I have new details about the prologue and Bane, for those who care. And this info is 100% legit so read at your own caution
Bane is grows up under Ra’s tutelage and his childhood mirrors Bruce Wayne’s in eerie ways. He is meant to be a reflection of Bruce, but imagine that mirror being broken….the reflection is distorted and grotesque.
Bane essentially becomes the head assassin of this cult/organization and Ra’s gives him orders to assassinate key political figures.
The prologue will feature one of these assassinations. Bane is to assassinate a Saddam Hussein type of figure. He hijacks the military plane that he is being transported by and kills him, but things go awry and he cannot safely land the plane. This is how he gets all those nasty scars and winds up being operated on by Alon Aboutdoul’s character, who is also a member of the League of Shadows.
The action sequence aboard the plane will feature some mind blowing, innovative camera work ala Inception Hallway fight scene.
@Matt H…i value nuances and small detailed behavior too, but the different is Tom Hardy does that better than brad pitt, AND he transforms, and he actually brings emotion. Brad Pitt is always skating on the ice, but never exploring the water beneath, in terms of emotionality. He lets the music score suggest to the audience how he feels and how they should feel.
Brad did transform for Tree of Life, I’ll say that. In my opinion the Best Supporting actor should go to either him or Nolte. But as a Best Actor? That performance is plain and we have seen it dozens of times. It doesn’t deserve a nomination.
Tom Hardy WAS Warrior. The whole movie is built on his angst towards both Brendon and Paddy. He has the biggest emotional journey in the film. Everybody is great in the film, but I thought Tom just did more than everybody else and this is obviously because the writing of the character allowed that, but he still took every single opportunity to make the journey as huge as possible and did interesting things in every scene. Can you imagine Pitt attempting this kind of role? It’s laughable. You can imagine a young Deniro or Brando doing something like this. Or Daniel Day Lewis. But Pitt and Clooney? That would be the most epic fail ever.
@ANTOINETTE, Mattoc and Matt H
haha how did cary grant come into this and get thrown under the bus? Ryan has said this and it sounds like Matt H has said this as well, you don’t have to wear a fake mustache or a fat suit to have a good performance. On any objective list, Cary Grant is one of the 5-10 greatest actors of all-time (some have him as high as #2). If you want range, he starred, and was excellent, in some of the best comedies, thrillers, and dramas of all time (most lists of the top 100 films of all times have Grant starring in 4-5 of the best 100 films). He was was also in some of the best work from two of the great masters, Hitchcock and Hawks. You don’t need range though. Screen presence counts for just as much. Why we’re at it why don’t we just say that Bogart, Jimmy Stewart and everyone else pre-brando was just playing themselves and weren’t really good actors? haha (gobs of sarcasm).
If you don’t think Pitt was very good to excellent in “moneyball” and “tree of life” i feel bad for you, you are limiting your criteria of great screen acting to one specific “transformative” criteria you have set up yourself.
Hardy is showing signs of being a great actor. he’s talented and seems to have caught the eye of a lot of great directors (nolan included). however, he’s not brad pitt yet and his achievements aren’t on that level. Pitt has been fantastic the last 5 years. i agree with Mattoc about: “Hardy is a bit player at the moment on the grand scheme of things. Let us see how he goes navigating the roles and temptations that split the pack”. He’s (hardy) fantastic in Bronson and is a standout in almost all of his supporting and lesser roles, but the path to get to where say Brad Pitt is right now as an actor is still before him.
Antoinette, I think the really good performances this year are from the females.
I’ve seen both Pitt performances – he’s strong in both but that’s all that was required for the roles. He’s done some great work in the past and will again. Hardy reminds me a bit of Pitt actually- they’re not that dissimilar.
Pitt is a bit prettier IMO, but I wouldn’t hold that against him.
Hardy is a bit player at the moment on the grand scheme of things. Let us see how he goes navigating the roles and temptations that split the pack. I sincerely hope he chooses to do quality roles for the next couple of years and not succumb to choosing to be a villain in the next Bond film. Next year will be HUGE for Hardy even without TDKR – although I worry about This Means War.
Good night, god bless and keep up the good work.
Cary Grant, one of the greatest actors to ever live.
Not really. He was the greatest Cary Grant to ever live. But give Clooney time, he may outdo him.
As for Hardy, he was very good in Warrior, but his role was too small to warrant serious comparison to Pitt’s extraordinary work this year,
What? He was the whole damn movie. How was that role too small? There were two stars, Hardy and Edgerton. Much like Gyllenhaal and Ledger were both stars of BBM even if they weren’t billed that way. Nolte is Nolte. He was great in his supporting role and I hope that he does at least get nominated as well. But Hardy was the emotional anchor of that film. You’re locked in with him in nanoseconds on the front steps of the Conlon home and the whole plot revolves around Tommy. It’s about his relationship with his brother and his relationship with his father. (I hate doing spoilers but I have to now dammit) There are two big confrontation scenes one with Tommy and Paddy and one with Tommy and Brendan. Then there are two big reconciliation scenes again Tommy and Paddy and then Tommy and Brendan. The whole thing was about what happened to Tommy and how he always gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop. The relationship between Paddy and Brendan is there but it’s not as powerful. They did try to make parallel stories about the two brothers but Brendan’s story isn’t remotely as compelling. Whether they meant it to be that way or not, Warrior is emotionally lopsided in Tommy’s and therefore Tom Hardy’s favor. Was it that way on the page or is it because of Hardy’s performance? I don’t know. I don’t think I could separate the two at this point.
As far as Brad Pitt in Moneyball and Tree of Life goes, I think you have to take the roles separately. Even though people may want to reward someone for their year’s work, it’s supposed to be about specific roles. I am a Brad Pitt as Billy Beane detractor. Tree of Life? Eh he was okay in it, from what I remember. I only saw it a couple of weeks ago, but his performance has already faded from my mind. I remember thinking it was better than Moneyball but I definitely didn’t think “extraordinary”. In fact if I’m telling the absolute truth I don’t think I’ve seen extraordinary at all this year from anyone. Yet.
Anyhoo, the marinating was a success.
Mattoc said what I wrote “sounds like fanboy shit”
I wasn’t referring to you Ryan, it was the following quote which I found presumptious.
In an ideal world, this would sweep the 2012 Oscars as Ben Hur, Titanic and Return of the King before it.
My mention of the word campaigning was not to suggest you were be bankrolled by the studios and some cash for comments fiasco. More engaging in something to achieve an outcome.
You should maybe change the post title to “When Nolan fans turn on each other”
I sorta wish Nolan won’t be nominated. The more glory he shall have if he doesn’t; just like Hitchcock.
I mean, the Coens have won many oscars but yet they are not as well established as Nolan. Say the name “Nolan” to anyone and the name would be as famous as “Spielberg”. People recognizing Nolan for great films like Hitchock and Spielberg will be better than being recognized for winning an oscar in my opinion.
@VVS and Antoinette
You won’t get me to say a word against Tom Hardy, I like him very much. But I will reiterate that you’re severely undervaluing Pitt’s work this year. Transformation is not remotely essential to a great performance. Pitt’s detractors say he plays himself, to which I respond, first, in the case of Tree of Life, no he doesn’t. And second, even if I conceded that he played a version of himself in Moneyball, it was still a tremendous performance filled with subtleties and nuance. You know who else usually played a version of himself? Cary Grant, one of the greatest actors to ever live.
As for Hardy, he was very good in Warrior, but his role was too small to warrant serious comparison to Pitt’s extraordinary work this year, and again, as good as he was he was no better than Joel Edgerton or Nick Nolte in the same film.
D: is the face you make when People magazine chooses Bradley Cooper as the sexiest man alive. lol
TDKR is bound to get some nominations. Even if it’s not one of the big ones. And I’d say it’s even money right now that it will get a big one. 🙂 Perhaps even if it’s not super duper, they’ll still want to reward the trilogy with some recognition. Besides, how many people working on it are in the Academy? Maybe they can be their own voting block.
God help me I meant Rises. I just contaminated it with the Burton movies. Cripes. D: Somebody fix it.
D: Somebody fix it.
done
how do I fix this:
D:
what sort of horrified emotion is that?!
There have always been posts here about the next awards season during the current one, especially when there is news breaking about a film that has the potential to be in the race. Right now as much as we’d all like to talk about this year’s batch of movies, the movie currently leading the entertainment news sites is The Dark Knight Rises. It’d be irresponsible not to cover it. It was one of the top stories on Google News the other day. It stars Academy Award winners, nominees, and actors who could be potential nominees/winners this year. And it’s predecessor is one of the main reasons the Best Picture category was bumped from five nominees to ten nominees. It’s got Oscar’s fingerprints all over it.
Right now as much as we’d all like to talk about this year’s batch of movies, the movie currently leading the entertainment news sites is The Dark Knight Rises. It’d be irresponsible not to cover it.
We have a thingy that counts the page hits for each post every day.
Sasha’s War Horse article is the #1 most popular post today.
this Nolan and Hardy post is #2
I’ll gladly admit that I put “Oscar 2012” in the headline to help justify posting this in the middle of peak Oscar season — a movie that won’t be in theaters for 8 months.* But it’s not as if I’m making wild unfounded claims, right?
*(only 33 weeks!)
“We’re heading into the final phase now”
Where do I enlist?
Sorry for the delay – I was marinating my head. And I don’t see any hostility, just discussion in anticipation…of maybe some hostility
didnt see the fanboy shit post. haha oops
no problem, john.
and no hard feelings to Mattoc either.
we all have opinions that could’ve been phrased a little less roughly. no big deal.
but I’m not comfortable with the idea that I’m campaigning.
didn’t want that left hanging out there.
the way I define it, campaigning is a studio’s responsibility and it’s a publicist’s job.
in my opinion, mattoc was simply stating that people are already being so negative about how the movie will do come award season. why be so negative when the movie hasnt come out yet, and ya it will be hard to top dark knight, but Nolan will find a way to do that. Hes Christopher Nolan so I dont doubt its gonna be a great movie.
And Ryan whats with the hostility in attacking Mattoc? he didnt say anything pretentious or insult anyone until you came on and said he didnt know shit about movies…..soooo if I were him Id probably take that a little personally too.
he didnt say anything pretentious or insult anyone until you came on and said he didnt know shit about movies….
John, let’s play back the tape:
Mattoc said what I wrote “sounds like fanboy shit”
and then he suggested I’m campaigning for Nolan, which to me is an unseemly way to characterize my admiration.
I’m in no position to campaign, and that’s not what we do here. I don’t want to be afraid to speak up and talk about my favorites and worry about people saying I’m on a campaign. So I want to nip that in the bud.
Jason L is right — it’s semantics. But these are words that carry specific meaning, And I want to make clear that I don’t campaign for anybody. To say that suggests I’m working for someone. The only person I work for is Sasha. Let’s get that straight, ok?
I never said Mattoc “didn’t know shit about movies”
please don’t misquote me.
I said “IF” he doesn’t think Nolan will be part the discussion next year, “THEN” he “doesn’t know a damned thing.”
Mattoc then assured us that he does think TDKR will part of the Oscar talk next year, so my “IF/THEN” question was answered to everyone’s satisfaction.
If you don’t see the hostility I felt when I read Mattoc’s first comment then maybe it’s because you weren’t the target.
I like Tom Hardy a lot, but people in this thread are severely undervaluing Brad Pitt. Hardy was very good in Warrior (though no better than his two excellent co-stars) but Pitt’s performances in Moneyball and especially Tree of Life were easily a cut above.
I can’t even.
Anywho, I really hope it’s a great movie. I love everyone involved. (Okay I kinda like Hathaway lol) But I still have to see it first. I hope it’s superawesome. I trust Christopher Nolan. But you never know. He has to make a crappy movie at some point in his career. I hope it’s not this one. Tom Hardy I’m obsessed with this year, as is everyone else. So I was really hoping he’d get an Oscar push this year. I heard he was great in TTSS, but I know for a fact that he was great in Warrior. I’m still going to wave the flag for that one. I just hope he does a little campaigning for himself on talk shows, etc. If they don’t do some kind of media blitz with all those TTSS guys in the weeks surrounding Christmas I won’t know what planet I’m on. They’re all great talk show guests. I hope they take advantage of that in terms of Oscar campaigning.
But back to TDKR, as hopeful as I am, I can’t imagine it being better than TDK. I think that film is a masterpiece. If Nolan were to surpass it, all the other directors of his generation will have to step aside.
There’s a Batman campaign? Is Obama Batman? Steaks and chicken? Stakes and chicken? I’m so confused.
There’s a Batman campaign?
Those of involved in La Résistance against the Academy Vichy régime like to think of it these terms: The Batman Agenda (2005) and The Batman Supremacy (2008). We’re heading into the final phase now: The Batman Ultimatum (2012)
I will weigh in here.
The AMPAS is a hard pill to swallow as I have learned in my more “mature” years of being an avid film fanatic. Their politics…as the tag line of this incredible site states, should be paid no mind, therein lies the trick of dealing with awards season.
So it comes to pass as a lifelong Batman fan, that I was hurt TDK did not receive the BP or Directing Awards it so rightly deserved. I like what you said Ryan, that this article is not campaigning, rather it is advice. Awards Daily (I’ve been around since Oscar Watch) has become a reputable destination for Awards Season gurus and film nuts alike, and therefore has the authority to post TDKR under the 2012 section, because people will listen to the advice Sasha and Ryan give.
“Campaigning has nothing to do with money” – semantics, and what world do YOU live in Mattoc?
@WS – not a distorted perception, just a different outlook. He likes both, you like one.
Big deal, the sun will still come up in the morning…
@MAtt H
sorry, if you think Pitt is anywhere near as good as Hardy you have a distorted perception of what acting is. Brad Pitt brings charisma to his roles, which is why he is a movie star.
But he doesn’t hold a candle to Tom Hardy. We’re comparing Einstein to your high school physics teacher.
Ryan, campaigning has got nothing to do with money.
Matt H, semantics and still lazy.
James, now that’s how you phrase a thoughtful sentence. He doesn’t imply that his personal opinion is fact.
Sorry for the tardiness I was marinating some steaks and chicken…
Ryan, campaigning has got nothing to do with money.
Then your definition of campaigning is different than mine, because here’s the reality: actual effective campaigning is ALL about money.
I’m not able to campaign. I’m not interested in campaigning. Campaigning is done by people who have a stake in the outcome.
I can’t campaign for Obama. Obama has to campaigns for himself, with the help of his paid campaign committee, he hires a paid campaign staff, and has hundreds of millions of $$$ in campaign funds.
I can volunteer to help, and advocate for him, write about my admiration. But my support for Obama doesn’t make me part of his campaign.
I’m not on Nolan’s staff, and I don’t work for Warner Bros.
I don’t even make donations to The Batman campaign.
“Nolan is perhaps the finest director to come to prominence in the 21st century” and “Nolan is the greatest director to come to prominence in the 21st century” are not identical statements. One leaves room for reasonable disagreement, the other could be fairly labeled as “lazy”. I chose to employ the former.
I really don’t care if TDKR is embraced by the academy or not. What I know is that there is no other filmmaker that makes me shiver with excitement the way Nolan does. Even more pumped to see what he does next.
Yes, agreed. Fanboy shit was thoughtless. And I didn’t say you aren’t allowed to excited.
You are campaigning though, you even say you are in the post.
If I spend $10,000 to take out ads for The Dark Knight Rises and make the rounds of the talk show circuit introducing next year, then I’ll be campaigning.
What I’m doing today is simply advocating. Advocating for future recognition of a filmmaker I admire.
What I say here when I’m relaxed in the comments and on Twitter is different than the more professional tone I take on the home page. If I wanted what I said in my first comment to appear on the main page, I’m capable of putting it there. But I didn’t.
Ryan, I didn’t say it would or it wouldn’t …’cause I haven’t seen it yet.
And I’m not pissed about it either. I hope it’s great as the first two were. And if it is, and better than the competition then I hope it will get nominated.
I’m not going down the ‘my dick is bigger than yours’ path with you Ryan. Taste has nothing to do with knowledge.
Then don’t come at me with reckless insults like “fanboy shit”
It’s not “campaigning” to post news like this. I’m allowed to be excited about upcoming movies without suspicions that I’m trying to launch a campaign.
@matth-not sure how lazy comes into it. If you read the comments above impartially, it doesn’t make sense to judge a movie positively or negatively without seeing it – let alone start painting the picket signs. Am I wrong?
What if it’s a turd (which I doubt) – do you still hope it wins BP in 2012.
Statements like ‘Nolan is the greatest director to come to prominence in the 21st century’ is lazy. It’s subjective.
Everything I’ve read about Bane suggests that he’s supposed to be enormous, but this picture makes him look like your average light-heavyweight bodybuilder. I think Tom Hardy is a good actor from the few things I’ve seen him in, but I’ve seen Christian Bale with this exact same build in other films (including the first Chris Nolan Batman film), plus he’s 4 or 5 inches taller than Hardy. I admit I’m not really a comic book geek, so maybe my perspective is a bit irrelevant, but I would have thought physicality would have been as important as acting quality. I would have picked someone like Shuler Hensley, who is both bigger than Bale and has proven acting chops (on stage, at least).
Cinematography, Costume, Supporting Actor aren’t exactly small, but you’re right. No BIG nominations like Director to support my theory.
Except every Lord of the Rings film was nominated for the big Oscars and no Nolan Batman has yet been. And Mattoc, it’s easy to dismiss anticipatory excitement as fanboyism… it’s also lazy. Nolan has proven to be perhaps the finest director to come to prominence in the 21st century, and yet his work has been ignored by the Academy. The general mentality of this thread is therefore entirely understandable. We’ve come to expect excellence from Nolan and we’ve come to expect that that excellence will be insufficiently acknowledged. Period.
I would personally like to think the Academy was waiting for the end of the trilogy to reward it, much like what it did with Lord of the Rings.
Why are you all campaigning for a movie that hasn’t even been made?
You’re rooting for the man rather than the art he produces – sounds like fanboy shit to me.
If you think you know what you’re going to get with this movie, then in my opinion, the movie has failed miserably…it’s just scratching an itch and feeding the masses.
Mattoc
Why are you already pissed about a movie that hasn’t been made?
Sounds like hater shit to me.
Mattoc
If you don’t think TDKR will be in the Oscar discussion next year then you don’t know a damned thing about Nolan, the Oscars, or movies.
I like Tom Hardy a lot, but people in this thread are severely undervaluing Brad Pitt. Hardy was very good in Warrior (though no better than his two excellent co-stars) but Pitt’s performances in Moneyball and especially Tree of Life were easily a cut above.
I meant the “Clooneys and the Pitts”, sorry about that
VVS, you really nailed it. Tom Hardy in Warrior is having the Clooney’s and the Pitt’s of this acting world for breakfast. He is more talented that the extraordinary late Heath Ledger. You bet he will get an Oscar in the next 3-5 years. You see, that’s how the hollywood system works.
There’s so much hype with this movie that I think it won’t live up to expectations. I’d actually prefer that they not tell us about Bane and let us discover him ourselves, as we did with Health Ledger’s incredible performance.
I would love to see what Hardy could do with some of Brando’s old roles. Imagine him in Streetcar or Waterfront. There aren’t many actors who can couple sensitivity with brutal toughness as he can.
Hardy should have been had an Oscar for either Stuar or Bronson….now this year he is going to be snubbed for his amazing work in Warrior, which is leagues above what clooney or Pitt do in their films
the Best Actor nominations should be as follows
Oldman
Fassbender
Hardy
Shannon
Harrelson
that is if the Academy really judged acting and not made it some damn political race.
@ Nick
We were all saying that when The Dark Knight had an 82 on Metacritic, a 94 on Rotten Tomatoes, a record opening weekend gross, over $1 billion worldwide and nominations from every single guild. How could they not? Well, they didn’t, did they?
Academy not giving any “main” award to TDKR is a given but the thing that I’m most concerned about is Hardy’s chance. He has been snubbed before and here, he is essentially playing the “Joker” type of role, where he is a villain who can overshadow the hero, get a lot of attention and finally earn serious oscar buzz.
His performance is gonna be based on movement and body language. It’s gonna be hard but I believe he can turn Bane into something exceptional. Ledger did that with Joker and literally FORCED academy into giving an acting Oscar to the film they clearly resent. Who knows, maybe if Ledger was alive, they would have completely overlooking him or at least only nominated him (Just look how they treated Nolan’s direction for both films along with Cottilard’s superb “Joker” level performance in Inception). This is why I worry about Hardy and the possibility of his performance as Bane getting snubbed by the academy members due to reasons PaulH mentioned.
“He just has a raw threat to him that’s extraordinary. ”
I’m hoping Hardy can pull a Fassie in 2012 and show the mainstream what range and skill he has. We need more of him.
And please – NO Nolan snub again. He will pull this off and he had better be recognized. I just don’t get the continuous oversights.
this will be the best movie of the 3.
Tom Hardy for Best supporting actor!!! let’s go
We’re all assuming it will be fantastic. But lets be honest…it will be hard to top Dark Night. Even for Nolan. If he manages to make this even better…then I dont see how the AMPAS could NOT recognize it.
Christopher Nolan: 3 DGA nominations, 0 Best Director Oscar nominations, 1 Best Picture Oscar nomination (which would not have occurred had there been 5 nominees)
The Academy doesn’t give a shit about Nolan. I only care whether or not this film is good, and I expect it to be. In fact, I hope Oscar buzz never even bothers to materialise for it, so that we can appreciate it for the film it is without suffering the disappointment of Oscar nomination day when it earns about 2 nominations, most likely…
The Academy doesn’t give a shit about Nolan.
The Blind Side is more important to the Academy than The Dark Knight. They flaunt their lack of sophistication like the price tag dangling from Minnie Pearl’s hat.
In an ideal world, this would sweep the 2012 Oscars as Ben Hur, Titanic and Return of the King before it. But it’s far from an ideal world. It will spawn resentment in the Academy membership, because their outrageous and scandalous snub of the 2008 sequel forced AMPAS to go to a 10-nominee best picture field. It will make a Fort Knox like mint at the boxoffice, flirt with 90+ on RT and MetaCritic, and get the usual door prize nominations of art direction, VFX and sound, if that. Nolan will be snubbed 2x (director and screenplay) to continue the Academy’s inexplicable personal disrespect of the man. It is illogical to think this plays out any other way that what’s mentioned beforehand. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s something we have to accept.
PaulH, your crystal ball shows a grim future, but I like your attitude.
Headlining this piece with “Oscar 2012” isn’t frivolous. It’s a dare, a taunt, advice, and a challenge to the Academy.