Awards Update Archive for December, 2011

The Top Tens: Updated December 30

164 lists, 220 films, and The Tree of Life continues to sit on the top of the
scoreboard. As new lists come in, The Artist is closing in on the The Descendants and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is making a play for the top ten .. stay tuned.

See the individual Top Ten lists here.

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The Top Tens of 2011: December 27

With over 100 top ten lists in, Tree of Life and The Descendants are firmly at the top of the scoreboard, while Drive makes a play for the number three spot.

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The Top Tens of 2011: December 23

Still a lot of lists to go, but it’s still Clooney and Pitt at the top of the chart, with The Tree of Life edging out The Descendants. The girls aren’t far behind, though – Bridesmaids and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are quickly catching up.

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Gurus o’ Gold: Happy Holidays

The Gurus, like the rest of Hollywood, are ready for a break. The only changes in Top 10 rank are in the bottom slots as we move on to 10 choices instead of 10. However, The Artist is now the #1 choice on all Gurus projections but one.

And there is a chart of movies that voters should be checking out over the holidays before handing in Oscar ballots. The top vote getter is Mike Shannon’s performance in Take Shelter. See it. And check out the rest of the suggestions. Ho Ho Ho!!!

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Gurus o’ Gold: Golden Globes Nominations

There’s been surprisingly little movement in the Oscar Top 10 chart this week. Hugo rises, War Horse and Extremely Loud fall a bit. But nothing dramatic.

The Gurus were busy ranking contenders in all the Golden Globes categories. And in their eyes, it looks like a very good night for…

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2011 Top Tens: The First of the Lists

As the first of the Top Ten Lists start to roll in, George Clooney and Brad Pitt top the leaderboard with The Decendants and The Tree of Life. With Moneyball in the fifth spot, Pitt has two horses in the race. Only 14 lists so far .. a couple of hundred yet to go.

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13 Weeks To Oscar: The Irony Of Fear

Every year about this time, after those of us in the Oscar chattering class have, basically, shaped the conversation for months, taking the whole mess within 80% or so of what the actual outcome will be, I start to notice the desperation of the films and candidates that just aren’t going to make it. It’s like seeing a beautiful woman of a certain age without make-up… they may still be beautiful, but the willing illusion is gone.

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Gurus o’ Gold: December 6, 2011

In Best Picture, the big mover is Hugo again, now up to #4 after being at #13 less than a month ago.

Amazingly, there has been no change at the top of the Actor and Actress charts, though the field has continued to narrow and one of the superstars drops out of the #5.

Also, The Gurus take on potential Golden Globe nominations that might shock or surprise.

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14 Weeks To Oscar: Down To The Real Nitty Gritty

There are two major battles underway. The first is for the number of Best Picture nominees.

Usually, it’s Best Actor or Supporting Actor where the big fight is. This year, it feels like some big chances can still happen in all the acting categories, but one… Best Actress. That’s the second key battle.

There are, basically, eight deadly serious potential nominees for Actress this year. Three of them are going to be left out. And it will really feel like that… left out.

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Awards Update

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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