MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Gurus o Gold – Darkhorses

gurusdarkhorsea.jpg
gurusdarkhorseb.jpg
The full charts…

Be Sociable, Share!

18 Responses to “Gurus o Gold – Darkhorses”

  1. Firstly, Sally Hawkins is hardly a “darkhorse” considering a lot of people have been predicting her since APRIL (I’ve been predicting her since the day after the ceremony fwiw) and DeWitt is most definitely in contention.
    As for Michelle Williams, I suspected that after the Heath Ledger story if she had something worth nominating that they would nominate her, but it seems Best Actress is just too full with too many stars and foreign prestige to allow a movie like Wendy & Lucy in.

  2. LexG says:

    BEST ACTRESS CHOICES SHOULD BE:
    Evan Rachel WOOD, Kristen Stewart, Keira Knightley, Freida Pinto, Kate Beckinsale.
    THAT WOULD OWN.
    I also want to say that if that Mickey Mouse fucking dorkfest CARTOON bullshit WALL-E wins Best Picture (IT’S A FUCKING CARTOON, PEOPLE), I will seriously consider moving to Japan, where I will teach English to 21-year-old smoking hot Tokyo chicks who will be in AWE of my awesome American ass like I was Bond in You Only Live Twice.

  3. scooterzz says:

    sally hawkins may get a nom but stands zero chance of a win…it just won’t happen for this one…..really, zero….

  4. LYT says:

    Sad that Sony Classics isn’t pushing Misty Upham at all for Frozen River…she’s better in it than Melissa Leo. I was amazed to find out she’s an LA-based actress, rather than just some local plucked out of obscurity to “play herself”; same reaction I had to Amy Ryan last year.
    If that damn kid from Australia gets nominated I will vomit.

  5. movieman says:

    “Wendy and Lucy” might be deemed too “small” by Oscar voters to land Michelle Williams a Best Actress nomination, but no performance this year moved me as much.

  6. “Wendy and Lucy” is very good but it’s not gonna stick with voters I don’t think. Williams is super in it too, but it’s all introspect and no big moments. It would be neat if she got recognized but I don’t see it happening.
    Plus it seems like there’s always these token “small” films that get recognition and I don’t see “Wendy and Lucy” outsmalling “Frozen River” in that regard.
    Then again, I’ve been wrong before.

  7. Aris P says:

    Why is Debra Winger there at all? She was in 4 scenes, and her character had a blank expression the entire time, except the scene where she punches her daughter. That’s it. Am I missing something here?

  8. djiggs says:

    The longshot acting nomination that I am hoping for is Gary Oldman for “The Dark Knight”. I know that the Supporting Actor Oscar is Mr. Ledger’s and it is well deserved…But I hope that people remember the great, understated performance that one of the all-time great scenery chewers gave in this film. It is akin to Richard Jenkins’ turn in “The Visitor”…a great, decent Everyman performance. I believe that “The Dark Knight” is a lock of one of the top five Best Picture nods, and I hope that every viewer/voter will remember how good his performance particular the last bit of monologue that Commissioner Gordon gives to his son. “So we’ll hunt…because he can take it…A watchful guardian…the Dark Knight…”

  9. jeffmcm says:

    Oldman deserves praise for making that line just a little cringe-worth instead of totally ridiculous, hats off indeed.
    My favorite never-could-ever-get-awards performances of this year would be Mena Suvari and Stephen Rea in Stuck.

  10. yancyskancy says:

    At the risk of beating a dead (dark) horse, it still irks me that great comedy work so rarely gets considered for a seat at the grown-ups’ table. Downey, Jr. in Tropic Thunder and Franco in Pineapple Express gave two of the best performances of the year, regardless of genre. After a century of cinema, you’d think that more people, especially actors, would realize that giving a great comedy performance is just as hard, and often harder, than delivering the dramatic goods.
    And I agree with jeff’s take on Oldman — that monologue is pure comic book stuff, and shouldn’t work AT ALL on screen. Oldman’s delivery kept my eye-rolling to a minimum.
    And TypePad still sucks.

  11. leahnz says:

    ‘Downey, Jr. in Tropic Thunder and Franco in Pineapple Express gave two of the best performances of the year, regardless of genre. After a century of cinema, you’d think that more people, especially actors, would realize that giving a great comedy performance is just as hard, and often harder, than delivering the dramatic goods.’
    hats off to you on that one, yancy, i couldn’t agree more, esp. about franco (but only because rdjr is such a powerhouse that exceptional perfs seem almost run of the mill for him, he’s a phenom). i gushed about franco’s ‘pineapple’ perf a while back and no one agreed with me, so i thought maybe it was just me who thought he utterly embodied the role of ‘saul’ and produced a flawlessly engaging performance. i’m glad someone else saw it, too.

  12. jeffmcm says:

    I agree too, for both Downey and Franco. Downey’s subtle, yet consistent contempt for Stiller’s character, filtered through both the blackface and the Australia-face personae, was excellent.

  13. leahnz says:

    australia-face. you’re on a roll today jeff

  14. jeffmcm says:

    I’m in a good mood because Lex shut his maw for a spell.

  15. Hallick says:

    Cate Blanchett as a dark horse!? That woman could spend an entire film in a coma, entombed in a body cast, only being seen in the background of ONE shot, for .5 seconds, from the ankle down and out of focus, and she would STILL be considered a frontrunner for best actress! Sheesh!!

  16. Aris P says:

    Just watched Frost/Nixon. Michael Sheen was good — but had about 3 reactions throughout: smiling smug, blinking with concern, and shock. Langella was superb, however. Truly a great performance. Why he’s not even in this list of contenders is beyond me.

  17. Hallick says:

    “I also want to say that if that Mickey Mouse fucking dorkfest CARTOON bullshit WALL-E wins Best Picture (IT’S A FUCKING CARTOON, PEOPLE), I will seriously consider moving to Japan”
    1. That destination is so unintentionally humorous, in light of the topic, it almost seems intentional. And WALL-E is no more cartoonish than your personality on this blog. Probably less.
    2. Between your Kristen Stewart Tourettes spasms and comments like this, I’m beginning to think that the other intelligent postings you’ve made in the past were probably accidental, akin to somebody repeatedly slamming their hands down on piano keys, who once in a while happens into a beautiful fragment of a song in between all of the noise.

  18. yancyskancy says:

    Aris: Langella’s not on the dark horse list because he’s one of the frontrunners.

The Hot Blog

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon