Oscar Bits and Bites

“She, over a decade, kind of went down the rabbit hole, getting lost in her work, until finally at the end of the movie, [the pilot] says ‘Where do you want to go?’ She has no idea where she goes now. Who is she now? She’s trained to be unemotional and analytically precise. I’m trying to be the exact opposite. I’m trained to be emotional and kind of a hot mess, so that was a bit of a stretch.” Jessica Chastain on her role in Zero Dark Thirty.

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AO Scott, Manohla Dargis and Stephen Holden do their annual “And the Oscars Should Be” column.  They only agree on two films, Amour and Zero Dark Thirty.

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“If they don’t, they won’t vote. And that could suppress the number of people who participate in Oscar nominations this year. We’ll never know, as the Academy does not release the number of people who vote.” – Anne Thompson speculating on what many Oscar bloggers (Hammond, Feinberg, Poland) are calling a “disaster” in Academy online voting.

Just so you all know, Hammond wrote this in mid-December:

Firmly answering those concerned members, the Academy is going the extra step of automatically sending a paper ballot to every dues-paid voting member who did not, for whatever reason, register to choose either online or paper ballot options by today’s deadline. In other words — have no fear. As long as your dues are paid up, one way or another next week you will be getting a ballot even if you did nothing. Whew.

That means, they got paper ones in case the online thing doesn’t work out. The only ones shit out of luck are those overly confident seniors who chose the online option, couldn’t figure it out, called the helpline, still couldn’t figure it out, got huffy because they might have had to download Firefox, then threw up their hands. How many of THOSE do you think are out there?

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In Contention’s Kris Tapley tweeted his best performances:  “Chastain, Day-Lewis, Hathaway, Hedlund, Lavant, Lerman, Jackson, Mann, Neeson, Phoenix/Hoffman, Riva & Wallis.”

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“But there’s also a case to be made that doing that is part of the job of Oscar writers such as myself. We have a platform that can serve a purpose beyond just, “Look at me, I’m a good guesser!” There’s value in pushing for what you think is right – or at least worthwhile (which, ironically, is the central theme of Compliance, too.)” EW’s Anthony Breznican’s column, Why I Wish I’d pushed Harder for Ann Dowd