Awards Watch Archive for August, 2006

Best Screenplay Chart

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Writer(s) – Film Comment World Trade Center Babel The Queen Little Miss Sunshine Volver Borat The Good Shepherd Stranger Than Fiction Catch A Fire United 93 Goya’s Ghosts Home of the Brave Bobby BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Writer(s) – Film Comment Little Children Dreamgirls Running With Scissors Flags of Our Fathers The History…

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Best Actress Chart

BEST ACTRESS Actress – Film Comment Meryl Streep – The Devil Wears Prada Miranda is this year’s Capt. Jack Sparrow Annette Bening – Running With Scissors Probably the best of her recent Oscar hopeful roles Dame Helen Mirren – The Queen Always grand. Dame Judi Dench – Notes On A Scandal There ain’t nothin’ like…

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Best Actor Chart

BEST ACTOR Actor – Film Comment Will Smith – The Pursuit of Happyness A funny guy doing drama… always a good bet Richard Griffiths – The History Boys Should be easy… unless he goes supporting George Clooney – The Good German Is he in the can’t miss groove? Nicolas Cage – World Trade Center Falls…

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Best Director Chart

BEST DIRECTOR Director – Film Comment Oliver Stone – World Trade Center Clint Eastwood – Flags of Our Fathers Steven Soderbergh – The Good German Bill Condon – Dreamgirls Alejandro Inarritu – Babel Todd Field – Little Children Nicholas Hytner – The HIstory Boys Phillip Noyce – Catch A Fire Stephen Frears – The Queen…

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Best Picture Chart

BEST PICTURE Picture – Studio Comment World Trade Center Could still fall if the box office turns spotty…. FOUF is its real threat… how much America can people embrace at once? Dreamgirls I’m telling you… it’s not goin’ Flags of Our Fathers How good is the film…how much Eastwood/ Haggis fatigue is there? The History…

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205 Days to Go: The Year Of The Huh?

About three months ago, I was excited about this being the Year of The Director. And now, a few weeks from Toronto, it feels like The Year of Who The Hell Knows. The directors I foresee racing are still pretty much familiar awards season names, but a lot of those directors’ films have simply become…

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Academy Declares Oscar on Block a Counterfeit

Beverly Hills, CA — The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has examined the Oscar® statuette that was scheduled to be sold at an Internet auction on August 16 and declared it a “high-quality counterfeit.” Auctioneers Mastro Auctions, who brought the statuette to the Academy on Thursday so that its authenticity could be confirmed…

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Awards Watch

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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