Danny Boyle Wins! Hollywood Reporter gets scoop. (thank you Bill)
Walt with Bashir’s Ari Folman Wins for Documentary.
Looks like Dan Attias just won for The Wire.
FULL LIST AFTER THE CUT.
Archive for January, 2009
DGA Award Goes to Boyle
On January - 31 - 2009
Younging it Up
On January - 31 - 2009
So, MTVU is holding a contest for college students to win a place on the red carpet before the Oscars. We have a q&a one of the entries, David Distenfeld, who compete with his cameraman, Lawrence Chen, against the other finalists.
I watched them all and I’d say David is one of three who strike me as the best. I gave him my vote. He is a film student, not a journalist major, and seems to know more than the others in terms of film awards, and specifically the Oscars. The others were all charming and could act well in front of the camera but they didn’t seem to have the same kind of insider knowledge he had. Anyway, take a look at the vids and vote here. David’s q&a after the cut.
How to Suck up Nicely at the Awards Luncheon
On January - 31 - 2009
Tom O’Neil reports that Angelina and Brad, along with Meryl Streep, will be no-shows at Monday’s Oscar nominee luncheon, which reminds me a bit of a speed dating group meeting. Each one gets a chance to hob nob with the Academy for a few minutes, flash a smile, a bit of leg and maybe just maybe their name will get called. The best thing about the luncheon, by the way, is to be part of that group photo they do every year. So let’s look at few tips from a Speed Dating site that might help some of our less seasoned nominees.
BAFTA Rethinks Voting Practices
On January - 31 - 2009
This story from Variety takes a look at BAFTA’s current voting process and how they might fix it going forward. The BAFTAs are a week from now:
The first round of voting, which involves the whole membership, produces a longlist of 15 candidates in each section (five asterisked as the choice of the relevant chapter for each category, such as acting or sound, and 10 selected by the BAFTA membership at large). This year, the nominations, which come from the second round of voting, mirror the chapter preferences in all but four cases. In other words, 75 out of 79 nominations matched the chapter vote.
BAFTA introduced chapter voting only in the past couple of years, with the intention of drawing attention to otherwise overlooked talent. But there’s concern in BAFTA circles that the chapters have started to exert a distorting influence over the final outcome. BAFTA officials plan to conduct a detailed review of how the chapter system is working after this year’s awards.
31 Days of Oscar Starts Tomorrow
On January - 31 - 2009
It’s probably the best thing about Oscar season, when they run the great films on TCM without commercials for 31 Days of Oscar (you know, with the date change, it’s no longer 31 days but it used to be). Here is a lovely promo:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6J4X0VLSzU[/youtube]
DGAs Tonight
On January - 31 - 2009
Host Jon Cryer will take over duties now that Carl Reiner has taken ill. The DGAs will be held tonight, with drinks and chatter at around 6:30pm and the awards ceremony at 8pm. We’ll do our usual game of trolling the news sites for photos of the nominees and then Danny Boyle after he wins. It’s always fun to do the Yahoo news photos guessing game to figure out who’s got the winner’s plaque as opposed to the nominee’s plaque.
Prediction: Danny Boyle
No Guts, No Glory: David Fincher
You’ve GOT TO BE KIDDING
On January - 31 - 2009
In the weirdest Oscar year ever, Kung-Fu Panda swept the Annie Awards and Wall-E, a film that holds the record for the most nominated categories for an animated film at the Oscars, goes home empty-handed.
No joke, read it and weep, as Variety’s Peter Debruge reports:
Fifteen-category victory marks a coup for DreamWorks Animation, which hasn’t seen one of its CG features take the Annies’ top prize since 2002 (though they did share the stage with Aardman three years back for stop-motion “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit”), especially since the show has correctly forecast the Academy’s taste all but once since the Oscars introduced its feature animation category.
Well guess what, Annies, get ready for number two. Perhaps they did this because of Pixar burn-out but it’s rather self-hating I’d say to give a sweep to Kung-Fu Panda after a film like Wall-e has broken new ground with the general population. This is not to discount Kung-Fu Panda for being good, it is good, it just isn’t one of the best. films. of. the. year.
A travesty.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69tX-vMn9-M[/youtube]
Slumdog Takes the Scripter
On January - 30 - 2009
Simon Beaufoy declares his love for Jamie Lee Curtis as he accepts yet another award for Slumdog Millionaire. Curtis was the host and did a bang up job, per the live webcast we all watched.
Slight Correction
On January - 30 - 2009
Tom O’Neil finds two people out there who actually think someone else could win the DGA tomorrow night:
Well, Gold Derby decided to pursue the point anyway and pooled predix from lots of pundits, who back Boyle by a landslide, that’s true. But I found a few brave (crazy?) souls who dare to stray. They include Bob Tourtellotte (Reuters), Kevin Lewin (World Entertainment News Network) and, well, me. All of us believe Fincher will take this. I even think Christopher Nolan (who’s not nominated at the Oscars) has a shot. After all, there were a few notable cases of previous Oscar snubees actually claiming the DGA trophy: Ron Howard (”Apollo 13″) and Steven Spielberg (”The Color Purple”).
I never said that a director not nominated for an Oscar could win the DGA – that has happened. But it has never happened that a director whose film wasn’t nominated for Best Picture actually wins the DGA. Here’s the other “problem” with Boyle versus the other guys. No one can compete, or has even really tried competing, with Danny Boyle’s charm on camera. He is unpretentious, funny, likable and shows up all the time. The only other director who comes close to him in this regard is Ron Howard. I love Mr. Fincher and Mr. Van Sant but they aren’t exactly the most affable guys on the block. Much of the Slumdog phenom, by the way, in case you all haven’t noticed, is how surprised and happy they all look when they win. Did you happen to catch the look on Danny Boyle’s face when Slumdog won the SAG? He put his head in his hands, shook his head in shock and amazement. That kind of stuff makes voters feel good about what they’re doing. Just a notion but one that is, I think, semi-worth pursuing as an actual thought.
The State of the Race – The Big Pull
On January - 30 - 2009
The Reader is like the English Patient. Old age makeup, great sex scenes, World War II, Harvey Weinstein, redemption, suffering.
This occurred to me today as I was contemplating who might win the Scripter. Is The Reader still coming up from the outside, or is, as NY Times’ Michael Cieply suggests, Benjamin Button the potential spoiler? This subject has been bandied about in our comments for quite some time now, though the consensus seems to be that it’s either Milk or Benjamin Button to upset. The way I look at it is this. This same rule, by the way, applied to the year The Departed won. You have your obvious frontrunner. Then you have little splinter groups that don’t like the frontrunner and so what is next on their list? Benjamin Button is the obvious choice, with 13 nominations. But what if it isn’t. The Reader was clearly beloved enough to make a last minute show at the Oscars and not like Atonement, which made it with no director nod, not like Munich, which started out strong, then was a disappointment but ultimately made it anyway: The Reader succeeded despite the critics mostly panning it. That is some serious Academy love there.
Read the rest of this entry »
Kate Winslet Talks Oscar
On January - 30 - 2009
Thanks to Pierre for sending this our way – Ms. Winslet talks about kids, acting and Oscar – worth a look. It’s from the site, Movies.ie. They have plenty more where that came from.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwjkI3iPrsc[/youtube]
The Scripter Awards – Who Will Win
On January - 30 - 2009
The USC Scripter awards are being held tonight here in Los Angeles and they are doing one thing differently this year – they are announcing the winner at the actual event. The nominees are:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Iron Man
The Reader
Revolutionary Road
Slumdog Millionaire
I’d say they all had a shot here but Slumdog is probably the favorite to win this and the WGA and the Oscar, unless something derails it. Benjamin Button has a really good chance, as it’s (loosely) adapted from an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story. And of course, The Reader could win here and start picking up big in this category – if it is going to win anywhere it could be for screenplay. Still, I pity anyone who must go up against Slumdog for anything.
The Great Five
On January - 29 - 2009
This weekend, Saturday night, the DGA Awards will honor Danny Boyle, Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, Ron Howard and Gus Van Sant. There probably isn’t much to write about here as Boyle has this one in the bag. He has it so much in the bag, in fact, that I don’t even think I’ll run predictions because what would be the point.
Carpetbagger Asks the Question
On January - 29 - 2009
What if there were no such thing as “Slumdog Millionaire,” if it had fallen into a life of limbo, as seemed likely for a time before Warner Brothers farmed it out to Fox Searchlight? We can assume another film would be in the mix – “Revolutionary Road,” “The Dark Knight” or “Doubt” – but who would be in the frontrunner position?
In other words, is it writ that “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” with its near-record 13 nominations, would take down best picture, or would the others have a shot? Put less delicately, what is your second choice for the first-ranked honor in motion pictures?
I agree that Doubt would probably be in the mix. It’s difficult to imagine what film would have taken Slumdog’s slot, though. The only other “feelgood” movie that was getting heat was Wall-E but once Slumdog entered the race, that was the end of the that. What do you all think? Head on over to the Carpetbagger.
Salute to 2008’s Best Films
On January - 29 - 2009
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN_H2qdFULM[/youtube]
One hopes that anyone who loves movies can move beyond this idea that they have to be validated by the Academy to remain in our hearts – those 6,000 people can only pick five. In looking over this video, three films stand out to me: The Dark Knight, Tropic Thunder and Benjamin Button – but there were so many good ones, albeit not Oscar-appropriate. The film is made by Ben Zuk.
