At the awards ceremony for The National Board of Review Tuesday night, The Huffington Post asks Michelle Williams, Aaron Sorkin and Armie Hammer, Blake Lively, Sofia Coppola, M. Night Shyamalan and Hailee Steinfeld about their own expectations during awards season.
As we close out the last gasp of Phase I of the 2010 Oscar race, there are just three days left for Oscar voters to fill out their ballots. I started Oscarwatch in 1999. That is a long time at the wheel. I’m just saying. It has never been as much of a circus as it’s been this year. Twitter and Facebook have just added to the feeding frenzy and if I were an Oscar voter I’d either feel exceedingly special, or hunted like one of Sarah Palin’s wolves.
To celebrate this, the last few days before the end of campaigning, I’d like to to toss out a giveaway for you all. We’ll be giving out three DVDs of David Fincher’s brilliant film, The Social Network. The two-disc set features, in addition to the movie (which I listen to like I’m listening to a CD, so smooth is the dialogue, so flawless is the sound design) there is the DVD commentary with Fincher going through the various scenes, the choices they made. There is also much in the way of cast and crew interviews in the supplemental disc that is fascinating too.
To enter this giveaway, simple tell us all which actor, actress, film, script, composer, designer you’d most like to see get a nomination. We will select three people at random to receive this.
I’ll start. Dear Oscar, Hear My Plea: please nominate Lesley Manville. Please nominate John Hawkes.
Nominee for Best Actress at the Golden Globes this weekend, Michelle Williams talks about her role in Blue Valentine with The Australian, whose reporter says this search through the wreckage of a relationship is “the ultimate anti-date movie.”
Derek Cianfrance’s clever, counter-intuitive film does not reveal why Cindy and Dean are in such a mess or ply us with easy melodrama, but sketches the raw terrain of a relationship’s descent from tenderness to snarling mutual disdain.
Williams denies rumours that she and Gosling had a relationship off camera. However, they lived in their alter-egos’ “house” and went grocery shopping together. The film’s improvisational heart is clear in the naturalism of their performances. “When I dreamt of being an actor, as a teenager reading books about Marlon Brando and James Dean and the Method and all that embarrassing ‘actor’ stuff,” Williams says, “I hoped that one day I would be given the liberty to do the same, and now I have. We never did lines, everything was done straight on to camera. I hold myself to a high standard; I’m hard on myself, for better, for worse. I always ask for another take.”
The time has come, Oscar watchers. This upcoming weekend is the Golden Globes –it’s time to predict the winners! There will be prizes TBA.
In the meantime, Gold Derby has assembled the largest group of pundits on the web and produced Golden Globe predictions — HAVE A LOOK!
[notice]I added animated feature – so if you already entered, please enter again.[/notice]
In each of the five films nominated for Best Director by the Directors Guild yesterday, overcoming an obstacle to become a winner drives the main characters. Micky needs to rid himself of his brother‚Äôs shadow and his own lack of self worth, Nina needs to rid herself of her repressed, infantilized vision of herself to become a perfect dancer. Cobb needs to overcome the guilt he feels in planting the idea in his wife‚Äôs head that the dream was the reality. And finally, George VI needed to overcome his fears of being King, of speaking publicly, of rising to the occasion and ruling a country at war. (more…)
Heading David Fincher’s sound team on The Social Network, Sound Re-recording Mixer and Supervisor Sound Editor Ren Kylce and Sound Re-Recording Mixer Michael Semanick walk us through the creative and technical process for designing the audio soundscape. (via Soundworks)
