This award was presented to Eastwood a few months before the Cannes Film Fest launches.  The statement about Eastwood said was “the talent of a grand master at the summit of his craft.” Jacob said it also was a “testimony of my admiration and a quarter-century of complicity.”

Eastwood will next bring the Nelson Mandela story to the big screen with Morgan Freeman in the lead.  Freeman is starring with Eastwood for the third time.  The first two films, Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby, both won Best Picture.  This is what is going to bring the Oscar chatter to a fevered pitch.  One must only remember Munich to see how “on paper” Oscar favorites are as hit and miss as any other.

Thanks to reader Fer for pointing us to this slamdunk response and perspective from Nick Hornby on Slumdog Millionaire, the intent of its filmmakers, and its odd position of now being on top:

There’s a lot packed in here: the snobbery, the smug and unexamined assumptions, the writer’s apparent pride in his utter ignorance of the independent film-making process, the nonsensical contradictions (can something be both “garish” and “gaggingly photogenic”?) It’s perfectly possible not to enjoy Slumdog Millionaire, of course – nothing appeals to everybody, and I didn’t have enough invested in the love story for the film to lift me as much as it seems to have lifted others. But typically, when the success of a book or a film or a piece of music baffles the liberal intelligentsia, then that success will usually be put down to the cynicism of the makers, or the depressing ignorance of the consumers. (Sometimes, when these critics are trying to be nice, they make a plea for better arts education. “It’s not the public’s fault that they enjoy the paintings of Jack Vettriano. They just don’t know any better.”) This letter is a prime example of that attitude: you loved Slumdog? You’re a moron.

Absolutely worth a read.  This is probably one of the best defenses of the film yet.  And this is something we should all remember, no matter where in the beast we reside:

Every time there’s a left-field, one-off, totally unpredictable hit like ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, or ‘Juno’, or ‘The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time’, or ‘Stalingrad’,  we should all give thanks to our gods, because they are what keeps the wheels of the whole commercial arts machine turning; without them, we’re doomed. They encourage risk – editors and commissioners can look at a script or a draft of a book and think, well, with a fair wind and a lot of luck, this might find its audience – and without risk, every new book and film and album would of necessity have to be part of a franchise.

Alden Michaels sent this in from his site, Iconoclast Entertainment, Can you do it without googling?  I know at least one of the first one.

Best Picture
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE… is the first best picture winner to be set exclusively in Asia since the 1980s when there were THREE such films. Name the films

Best Director
DANNY BOYLE…. is the first director winner from the UK for some time. Who was the last Best Director winner to hail from the UK?

Best Actor
SEAN PENN…. was the second straight prior winner to take home Best Actor. His closest competition was MICKEY ROURKE, who was previously not nominated (ditto perceived 3rd placer Frank Langella). Despite the perception that the Oscars hand out consolation prizes to overdue actors, only TWO actors in the past fifteen years were prior nominees of an acting award, but had yet to win one. Name them.

Best Actress
KATE WINSLET… was considered supporting during the Golden Globes Ceremony, but ultimately won the Best Actress Oscar. This has happened before, but decades earlier. What actress, prior to Winslet, won the Best Actress Oscar despite being nominated for Supporting Actress for the Golden Globes

Best Original Screenplay
DUSTIN LANCE BLACK ’s screenplay was considered original because it was not based on any biographical account or the famous documentary film on the subject. What script won an award for Original Screenplay despite being obviously based on famous and successful source material?

There are only two I can think of off the bat — The first is in wide release – Coraline for Animated Feature.  The other was An Education, which spring-boarded out of Sundance thanks to the raves for its star, Carey Mulligan.  In many ways, you have to appreciate the Oscar race for landing one good film in the top ten at the box office:

1. Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail
2. Coraline
3. Taken
4. He’s Just Not That Into You
5. Slumdog Millionaire
6. Friday the 13th
7. Paul Blart: Mall Cop
8. Confessions of a Shopaholic
9. Fired Up!
10.The International

I can’t really speak about Tyler Perry, as I haven’t seen the movie, but Taken, starring Liam Neeson is better than it has any right to be.  It’s kind of cheaply put together, with an unbelievable plot.  But there is something about it that is truly mesmerizing.   Still, the only way this gets to the Oscars is if Neeson’s career is somehow revived as a result.  Films released right after the Oscars, though, are generally obliterated by films that come later.

9-13-2008, 3:00pm, ladylurks calls it for Slumdog Millionaire

Can I take a minute to reflect on the past year and the truly amazing predictive powers of our readers? One of the things Sasha does that nobody really knows about or appreciates but me is keep our vast archives active. At great effort and in spite of huge tech headaches, Sasha listens to me beg to preserve the enormous files of all our posts and comments so that every word you guys write stays online. (that adds up to 39,756 comments over the past year, and counting)

Posts and comments are searchable by keyword and username, so I got curious last night, wondering who was the first person to mention the word “slumdog” on the site last year, and when. Longtime AD-er and 2-year veteran Sultan ladylurks posted the comment above on Sept. 13 last year, 5 and half months ago. This was in response to the 3rd installment of the Festival Diary written by Nancy Kriparos, Awards Daily’s Toronto correspondent, who two days earlier (on the ominous date of 9-11) posted this:

The third film of the day was Danny Boyles, Slumdog Millionaire. The film played to a packed film house of at least 1000 people eagerly in anticipation of this film. This film has all the elements that make a great story; a poignant love story, a hero that the audience roots for and the triumph over adversity. In Danny Boyles kinetic style of filmmaking, he has woven a heartwarming story about the resiliency of the human spirit. The film is accompanied by a thrilling original score by A.R Rahman. Above all, what makes this film great are the compelling characters created by endearing actors who are for the most part unknown to North American audiences, but not for long. Great film.

How smart are the women of Awards Daily? ladylurks was our second reader ever to mention Slumdog Millionaire (and just went nuts by instantly handing it the Best Picture Oscar, sight unseen). Due credit to sonnymoscoso who named it first, 5 days earlier, in response to the brand new poster for Milk that I published on Sept 8th. I’m not shy about saying that the absolute first time Slumdog Millionaire appeared on AD was the fuzzy clip and review excerpt I posted on Sept 4th. But I had no idea what I had found, no idea at all.

sonnymoscoso’s comment and those of a few other significant first-responders, after the cut.

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Jon Pace writes in the comments section that we should start to look at those actors who could use a comeback a la Mickey Rourke about now.  He suggests:

3. Ally Sheedy – She got nice reviews in High Art, 10+ years ago. Was never a bad actress, still looks great, and think if she got a decent supporting role directed by a talented Aronofsky-type director she would do wonders.

2. Kathleen Turner – She has not aged particularly well and I think had a reputation for being difficult, but my goodness when I go over her filmography she made some great films in the 80’s – at least extremely entertaining roles. I think if a director could cast her in a dramatic supporting role she could be wonderful. Would like to see it.

1. Rick Moranis – He left the film industry to raise his kids after his wife died. He has expressed a desire not to go back to films and live a quiet life in NYC. However I think if a Sofia Coppola/Alexander Payne-type director wrote a supporting role that was mainly dramatic with bits of comedy in it he could snatch an Oscar nomination. Would love to see him comeback.

Rick Moranis is interesting.  There are two directors who use actors well in this regard – Quentin Tarantino (has made it into an art form) and Christopher Guest.  Mickey Rourke suggested indie actors giving Eric Roberts the role of a lifetime.  No one has yet or if they have, nothing has come of it.  Off the top of my head, actors I think deserve a decent break: Debra Winger is someone I’d love to see with a juicy lead role that really challenges her abilities.   I’d like to see Helen Hunt come back to see if the Oscar was a fluke or not.  And likewise, Haley Joel Osment could be used interestingly.   And finally, Kevin Spacey could probably use some sort of career intervention.  Pay if Forward 2?

I’m trying to drop it but others keep bringing it up and if they’re going to bring it up, well, what can do but go back on the offense. Sorry, readers, guilty. David Poland writes this:

One of the blog commenters can’t seem to separate why Slumdog won from why The Dark Knight was not nominated. In response, I found myself explaining my TDK issues – which are not nearly as severe as he constantly claims – in yet another way… so I thought I would share…
…The problem with Dark Knight – though it is certainly a beautifully made and strong film – is that it didn’t achieve its own ambitions… not MY ambitions for it… ITS ambitions.

There are two things at issue here that Poland, and everyone else who ever tries to explain why the Academy didn’t nominate the film. The first is their own personal opinion of the film. Okay, fine, so they didn’t like it. The second is to take the Academy’s snubbing of the film as some sort of validation for their own.

By contrast, Andrew O’Hehir takes the same issue on at Salon and really does get the big picture. His point is that he might not have liked it but that doesn’t diminish its importance this year. In other words, no one liked The Reader or Benjamin Button very much either but those still got nominated, and even won a few Oscars. So no one can tell me that their dislike of a film is a good enough reason to ignore a film like The Dark Knight. What O’Hehir said:

If you take the long view, maybe this change is normal and cyclical and in no way new. This tension between arty and commercial cinema, and this tendency to revert away from either extreme toward a mean of mediocrity, has been present in the Academy all along. In 1931, the fourth year Oscars were handed out, best picture went to the western “Cimarron,” while neither “City Lights” nor “Frankenstein” was nominated. Consider this list of non-nominated pictures from 1955 and 1956 alone: “The Night of the Hunter,” “Rebel Without a Cause,” “The Searchers,” “The Seven Samurai,” “Bus Stop,” “Oklahoma!,” “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” “Written on the Wind.” (Winners: “Marty” in ‘55, “Around the World in 80 Days” in ‘56.) One could go on; look up 1973 if this sort of thing engages you.

Fairly or not, “The Dark Knight” now belongs on that list, while “Slumdog Millionaire,” a nifty little film without much steak beneath its sizzle, is now inscribed on the tablet of what-the-hell-were-they-thinking Oscar champions, alongside “The Life of Emile Zola” and “The Greatest Show on Earth.” And “Dances With Wolves” and “Shakespeare in Love” and “Crash” — and most likely whatever wins a year from now. Still, I can’t wait for the tender, tearful exchange between Judi Dench and Miley Cyrus.

I wrote a preview piece for the Oscars 2009 way back on February 9 for Variety.  Here are the films that seem to have a great potential to be good, whether or not they trip the light fantastic at the Kodak or not.  The names attached, the subject matter, the stars, the release date and the studio are the ingredients that often make a sight-unseen premature Oscar contender.  The best candidates for these are here.

Nine - Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, Daniel Day Lewis, Sophia Loren
Directed by Rob Marshall, a Weinstein joint.

The Human Factor/Mandela/Untitled Nelson Mandela Project – Morgan Freeman
Directed by Clint Eastwood
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I was waiting to hear something from Scott Foundas at the LA Weekly, as he seems to be the one critic lately who can be counted upon to call out the Academy for their safe choices.  The thing I’ve realized about the Academy is that when it comes to judging films themselves, not actors, they go by the “I just liked it” rule.  They have no other criteria for judging a film, maybe because they’re not film critics.  Either way, that’s the way it is and the way it always will be.  Foundas writes:

Rather, it seems more likely that Folman’s film was simply too innovative for the Academy’s notoriously calcified tastes. Certainly, by Academy standards, it was one of the more radical works ever to be nominated in the Foreign Language category — a fragmented memory film in which truth and illusion collide on a tide of uncertain recollection. There are multiple narrators, dreams masquerading as reality (and vice-versa), and so many genres exploded moment by moment that it becomes imossible to squeeze the film into an easily definable box. And while Waltz builds to a conclusion that many (including this critic) counted among the most emotionally devastating in movies last year, it is a moment that is earned by the film rather than cheaply calculated, and which raises more questions than it answers. That’s something that many viewers of Folman’s film have found thrilling to behold, but which may well have inspired paroxysms of rage in Academy voters who stand by the belief that a movie should have a clear beginning, middle and end and send people out of the theater feeling better about “humanity.”

And he closes it this way:

Or it could simply be that the Academy felt the nomination was honor enough for films starring non-professional talent made well outside of their own countries’ “studio systems.” Such films do little to stroke the egos of actors (the Academy’s largest voting branch) who seem to relish sitting in the Kodak auditorium while being reminded how fabulous they are. It’s hard to imagine a Hollywood remake of Waltz with Bashir or The Class that would have roles in it for many of last night’s nominees, but an American Departures starring Sean Penn as the cellist/undertaker and Kate Winslet as his clueless wife…well, that may already be in the works.

The day the Oscar ceremony was held, I had come down with a pretty bad cold.  The season had taken its toll on me at last.   That made me slightly funny in the head so that I forgot to, for instance, thank Dora, who single-handedly kept the FYC gallery running this entire year.  I also forgot to thank Daniel Kenealy, who wrote many articles for the site.  And Nancy.  And countless other tipsters and readers who continually found news and either posted it in the comments or sent it to us.  It is always impossible to do justice to the kindness of people.  Okay, so now that the awkward intro is over and done with let’s get on to the new season of Oscar 2009.

The names weren’t even etched on the Oscars yet this year before scads of sites came out with their 2009 Oscar shapings.  Kris Tapley wrote a very extensive one.  So those of you are wanting to start your Oscar watching (very) early can do so.  Me, I’m afraid of early speculation and will remain afraid of it after watching another disasterous season come and go.  It is true what the naysayers have said: this attention on the films before they’ve completed filming, before they’re seen, before they’re released can do no one any good in the long run.  They can’t help the bloggers, who just look more and more ridiculous. They certainly can’t help the films because expectations for Oscars (which they won’t receive anyway) are swollen with hype.  They don’t help the publicists who must do damage control constantly even though there isn’t any “there” there.  I don’t blame Kris; he’s just doing his column early so he can get out of town and enjoy what’s left of his life.  This beast can’t be so easily killed anyway.  But we can talk to it and try to calm it down.

I learned a few more lessons this year that I hadn’t known before.  The Oscars, for me, have always been a letdown, starting way back in 1999 when I became involved in Oscar Watching.  Before that, they were just a fun guessing game.  I believed them to be kind of silly, a popularity contest.  As I got knee-deep in them, though, I began to see them as far more sinister than that, though they still are a popularity contest.  First, the critics seemed to have all of the answers. But the face of film criticism has changed since I started doing this.  For one thing, there are less of them.  Where Manohla Dargis used to be along the lines of Scott Foundas – someone on the fringe — she’s now the top critic, along with AO Scott, at the NY Times.  Kenneth Turan is all that remains of the LA Times’s film criticsm – it has been swallowed up by awards coverage.  I say this as someone who helped feed and nurture the beast.  I am not judging.

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From squalor to star spotting: Rubina poses with one of the film’s eight Oscars (click to enlarge)

Can’t argue with last week’s conclusion that a billion dollars is better than an Oscar. This week Danny Boyle beats that deal all to heck with an offer even more directly life-altering. The Mumbai kids gave Slumdog Millionaire its roots in reality, so its really gratifying to see the producers return the favor by making a new reality available to those kids.

The poverty stricken child stars of Slumdog Millionaire are set to be property tycoons after being promised new homes by the film’s Oscar winning director Danny Boyle and by Mumbai officials.

Boyle and producer Christian Colson told the Daily Mail that Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail and Rubina Ali and their families will be moved to apartments worth £20,000 each in the coming months. But in an astonishing turn of events, officials from the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority – a Mumbai housing association – have now also said they want to gift the children a new flat each. (The Daily Mail)

The full story and photos at the Mail Online will alternately warm your heart and break it. More details and photos after the cut.

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Simultaneous tipsters, Nadeem guides us to a video companion to go along with vcb’s link to a still for Amenabar’s “Agora,” with Rachel Weisz and Max Minghella.

According to Variety, Agora, Amenabar’s second English-language film after The Others is set in Roman Egypt in the fourth century A.D. Weisz plays astrologer-philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria, who fights to save the collected wisdom of the ancient world. Her slave Davus (Minghella) is torn between his love for his mistress and the possibility of gaining his freedom by joining the rising tide of Christianity.

firstshowing has been on top of this for months:

Alejandro Amenábar wanted to allow “the audience to see, feel and smell a remote civilization as if it were as real as today.” The civilization in question – the Egyptians during the 4th century AD.

Another still, after the cut.

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Keith Olbermann speculates that speeches at this year’s Oscars addressed political issues with a freedom that was often frowned upon during the Bush era. Of the 40 hours of TV Oscar analysis I’ve seen in the past 48, the depth of this 6-minute segment make the rest look like the cover of US magazine.

(click the jpg above to link to the video on Olbermann’s site. Then back-page to return here if you want to comment.)

(click to enlarge)

So, unless I’m mistaken, the Inglourious Basterds are sort of like the Boy Scouts, right? And these posters represent merit badges in Sports, First Aid, and um, Woodcarving?

Grim, brutal and dripping with the impact of potent and perverse fetish objects, the overcast grays and desaturated reds of these posters are a direct visual extension of the trailer Sasha first posted in youtube quality 2 weeks ago. We have an HD version embedded now, so you can get a better idea of the wet foggy light 2-time Oscar winning cinematographer Robert Richardson might be using to tone down the gore factor. (I’m seeing the same shade of brownish burgundy blood Michael Ballhaus Chapman and Scorsese used in order to get an R-rating for Taxi Driver.)

From these early indications Inglourious Basterds will be the most visually sophisticated Tarantino film since, well, the last time Q worked with Richardson on Kill Bill. Over the past 22 years, Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino have turned to Robert Richardson 18 times, and this year he’s doing double duty with Marty and Quentin both, on Inglourious Basterds and Shutter Island. Four of Richardson’s five Oscar nominations have come from that set of directors. Will this year be number six?

(HD trailer after the cut)

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Even though the Oscars were more in touch, I’d say, than they’ve been since I started watching them (I will always have a fondness in my heart for the clunky old timey versions too), and even though their choices were still out touch, the Bagger thinks that, with the seal now broken, they can take it even further:

Next year, the Academy might consider a generational update instead of transplanting this or that young star. There are plenty of young producers who may not have the demonstrated chops of Bill Condon and Laurence Mark, but could begin to integrate digital culture and contemporary music in more than token ways. What if Beck or Spike Jonze were given a chunk to program, or, if you’re looking for more theatrical DNA, Stew of “Passing Strange”? Young audiences drive the business and they should be invited to the big night with more than a nod.