An interesting essay over at  Fandor.com comparing two stage adaptations being released this year, Carnage and A Dangerous Method (The Ides of March and War Horse are two other prominent stage productions to be brought to film this year).  I agree with the writer who says that the trick in making Carnage is successful is choosing the right actors.  Polanski, I think, did a marvelous job as director hemming in the story.  At any rate, the subject of Keira Knightley in A Dangerous Method is brought up:

Knightley has taken a lot of undeserved flack for the extremity of her performance in the early scenes of A Dangerous Method, when her character is manically all-over-the-place. Her sexually unhinged Sabina often falls into a jutting mannerism with her chin when she’s really unsettled, a bold choice on Knightley’s part; it looks like she’s chosen an animal of some kind as a pattern for Sabina’s physical behavior, and she goes all-out with this choice. As someone with more than a passing acquaintance with the mentally disturbed, all I can say is that Knightley’s chin mannerism here is exactly the kind of protective physical thing that people who are clinically ill often cling to, and it is also exactly the kind of thing that actors shy away from when they are playing mentally disturbed characters because it is wildly unflattering.

Continue Reading

This year’s shortlist is:

360
The Artist
The Deep Blue Sea
The Descendants
Faust
The Kid With A Bike
Shame
Trishna
We Need To Talk About Kevin 

The shortlist for Best British Newcomer is:

Continue Reading

There are several factors you look at when comparing Oscar contenders.  Box office, critical consensus, the gravitas/prestige factor and the popularity of the stars and filmmakers.  It doesn’t matter how good the reviews are on an obscure film if the Oscar voters will never go near it with a ten foot pole (it will be more appealing to the Spirit Awards).  It also doesn’t matter if a film made a lot of money if it isn’t also “respectable” or “groundbreaking.”  The only thing that can make a difference is if the film gets near the Dark Knight, Titanic and Avatar numbers.  The Dark Knight briefly changed the way the Academy chose Best Picture.  They went with ten, now they’re going back to a system that looks a lot more like five.  In other words, according to a publicist I talked to, they’re trying to go back to the old way without it looking like they made a mistake.

The question is, if this were the Oscars of old, as in five contenders only, would any of the films released before November have a shot?  It’s really too early to look at these films within the context of the full year but let’s see how it’s shaking down anyway.

But let’s get down to it, shall we?   By the numbers for films that have opened so far – I’m ranking them in order of how I think they’ll go down in the awards race.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Box Office: $379,245,610
Critics Choice: 93
Metacritic: 87%
RT: 96%
Yahoo Audience rating: A- (3237 ratings)
Goodwill/Prestige – Harry Potter stars some of the best actors working in film, including Potter series regulars who deserve recognition, like Alan Rickman and Ralph Fiennes, to name just two.  This beautiful end to the successful series is better rated in every aspect than any of the other films in the series. Honoring it is a way of honoring the whole series.
Why it will:  If it hits the critics awards and begins to gain momentum it could start to be seen as a film people want to honor.  If it makes the Golden Globes or the PGA it could be taken more seriously early on in the race, enough so that Academy members might say — you know, I had no idea what was going on but these films were truly something special so I’m going to give my vote to Harry Potter.
Why it won’t: The movies are faithful to the books. They aren’t dumbed down for non-readers to enjoy – they don’t have to be.  These are movies made for fans of the book.  To immerse yourself in the Potter world is to have the filmmakers get it right. They get it right and it made the films successful but it has left many adults who have no idea who any of the characters are completely lost.  With ten slots, it had a much better chance of being named one of the best ten of the year. With the new method, though, it has to have enough number 1 votes to make it through the first round and then more number 2 and even 3 votes. It’s hard to imagine any number of Academy members going that way.  Still, because it scores so high in every one of these markers, one has to take it seriously to a degree as a contender.

Continue Reading

Gorgeous trailer, another fully charged female lead for consideration.  The Best Actress race just got more crowded.

It’s that time of year again for the critics who are lucky enough to still have jobs writing about movies to complain about the Oscars and the Oscar coverage.   I get it. I get that no one wants to see their beloved films dumped into the chute and set loose to run a race to win.  I get it that they wish all coverage about the Oscars, the contest, the winners, the losers would just “die in a fire.”  I get it that they long for the days when “it was about the movies, man.”  What I don’t get is why they don’t see the bigger picture.

Manohla Dargis said, quoted by Jeff Wells at Hollywood-Elsewhere.com (who gets a lot of heat from his readers whenever he brings up the O word because movies are pure, damnit. They don’t need awards to make them great — they don’t need awards so that deals can be made so that money can be made so that MOVIES CAN BE MADE -they are made on the collective love by the film critics who still have jobs and can still reach a wider audience and don’t they know that awards make a mockery of the proceedings because all anyone who watches the Oscar race cares about is who wins or loses!):

“It’s a drag how late-summer, early-fall festivals like Telluride and especially Toronto are now too often seen as warm-ups for the Oscars. Both events solicited that attention, and grew more influential as a result. Yet is that what we want from film festivals? This isn’t as true of Cannes…because it takes place in May and remains a showcase for world cinema and French cultural patrimony. It’s where Brad Pitt can work the red carpet, but also where filmmakers as dissimilar asTerrence Malick and Apichatpong Weerasethakul can be talked about without that chucklehead, Oscar, sucking up all the air in the room.”

It’s a drag, man.

Continue Reading

Tom O’Neil has officially left the LA Times and explains his reasons why — Goldstein, who used to write about the Oscars before a whole industry sprouted up, is named as one of his replacements.  Oh Patrick.  Oh Patrick. Oh Patrick.  This is going to be a fun Oscar year if the likes of Patrick Goldstein are going to take off their flip flops and get into the hot tub with the rest of us grease monkeys.  The mind reels at the possibilities, the insults that will fly, the bitterness, the competition.  Just another day in the blog eat blog world.   Tom’s reasoning:

But human nature being what it is, I always privately yearned to resurrect my dear old Gold Derby, of course, and I had ambitious plans for it. I wanted to make it more interactive –- to empower users to make their own predictions and compete against the experts. Last year, when I told my Times bosses that I planned to do just that, they were surprisingly supportive and offered to help. They took on the job of ad sales and did a terrific job while I remained at Latimes.com writing about Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and more.

So look for Tom’s insights and more predictions over at Gold Derby.  What I like about this move is that there are only a few of us independents left out there.