Posts Tagged ‘Frost/Nixon’

Wilmington on DVDs: Frost/Nixon, The Wrestler, In the Realm of the Senses, Assault on Precinct 13 and more …

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

CO-PICKS OF THE WEEK: NEW

Frost/Nixon (Three-and-a-Half Stars)
U.S.; Ron Howard

Taken from Peter Morgan‘s stage play — which also starred the spot-on Frank Langella as (more…)

ShoWest Sampler: Animation, 3-D and the new Woody Allen Film

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

LAS VEGAS — It’s been rumored here that the annual ShoWest soiree, as sure a harbinger of spring as any returning robin, soon could go the way of such once-storied conventions as COMDEX, VSDA, NATPE, NAB, Summer CES and E3.

The computer industry’s “geek week,” as COMDEX became known, once brought 200,000 conventioneers to this city, making room vacancies as scarce as Megabucks winners. Two years later, it disappeared completely. After the Summer CES, held each June in Chicago, was overwhelmed by the demands of an electronics industry in which shelf life was measured in months, not years, the only segment that continued to make things interesting spun itself off as the Electronic Entertainment Expo. That once rowdy convention, like VSDA and NATPE before it, now has deflated to the point where it could be held in a phone booth.

The only success story in the world of conventions lately has been the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, which is held simultaneous to the increasingly less fun Winter CES. Given the ready availability of freely available pornography on the Internet, though, it, too, might have gone the way of the dodo bird, if organizers hadn’t opened the exhibition floor and awards show to the public.

ShoWest became famous mostly for the largesse shown by Hollywood studios to North American theater owners. In the days before a handful of chains owned the majority of theaters and multiplexes, distributors would compete for the right to deliver the greatest number of celebrities to banquets and show the best product reels. There was nothing quite like it, even at Cannes or during Oscar week.

When video revenues began to overtake theatrical box-office, the same distributors who financed ShoWest made VSDA the best show in town. After such operations as Blockbuster and Hollywood began to dominate the mom-and-pops – and organizers became embarrassed by the growing adult-video sideshow – VSDA nearly disappeared entirely. Ditto, syndicated-television’s annual love fest, NATPE, which saw its value to broadcasters fall to Fox, UPN, the WB and the cable networks. The National Association of Broadcasters’ tech show, held each April in Las Vegas, hasn’t been the same since it let the software jockeys and post-production nerds steal the thunder from actual broadcasters.

For the last five years at ShoWest – or ever since “digital” became a buzzword in Hollywood — equipment-producing companies have attempted to assume the role once reserved for the studios. Smaller studios and production companies have partnered with such firms to put on a good show for the punters, but they couldn’t command the same star power as the larger entities. This week, the near-absence of gala studio-funded banquets and tchocke-filled goodie bags was more apparent than ever. If it weren’t for the excellent quality of movies that were previewed here, the death knell might already have sounded.

This isn’t to say, however, that that movie business is about to pull up stakes and move to some Third World country, where negotiators for SAG, AFTRA and the Writers Guilds would be shot on sight. No, as we learned this week, too, box-office revenues worldwide soared another 5 percent in 2008, bringing the grand total to $28.1 billion, and U.S. ticket sales already are tracking 8 percent better than those last year. Ducats now average $7.18 a piece and the number of screens with 3-D capability is nearing 2,000. Considering that some international markets have yet to emerge from the bedsheet-on-the-wall era of movie exhibition, the upside remains great.

Still, the MPAA seemed so embarrassed by its member studios’ willingness to overspend in the face of a worldwide economic crisis that, for the first time in 20 years, it refused to divulge industry estimates on production and marketing costs. That wasn’t the reason provided by the lobbying organization’s boss, Dan Glickman, for not revealing the every expanding numbers, of course. Last year, the average total cost was $106.6 million, up $6.3 million from 2006. Those are Bernie Madoff numbers … sometimes for the same payoff for investors.

By comparison, the estimated budget for the Best Picture-winning Slumdog Millionaire was $15 million, and its best publicity came from positive word-of-mouth. Milk was limited to the same amount of money, while Frost/Nixon and The Reader were allowed about $35 million. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 million, not taking into account what it may have cost to market the picture (the industry average in 2007 was $36 million) after it was finished. To date, Slumdog has logged a domestic box-office gross of $137 million, while Button is plugging along at $127 million.

Even so, the MPAA reportedly has been faulted by some members for not scoring the same tax incentives and infusions of money from President Obama’s stimulus package as other, more troubled industries. In the face of such a public diss by easily bought legislators – many of whom still see Hollywood as suburb of Havana — it probably wouldn’t have been prudent for the studios to lavish even more money on rubber chicken, celebrity lineups and souvenir T-shirts at ShoWest. Alas, it was fun while it lasted.

That said, though, much of the reason exhibitors continue to attend ShoWest is to get sneak previews of the movies they’ll be showing in their theaters from March until Christmas. By all outward appearances, they weren’t disappointed.

As usual, Monday night was reserved for screenings of upcoming independent pictures. Several years ago, My Big Fat Greek Wedding was introduced to exhibitors at this forum and, ever since, they’ve come here looking to re-capture lightning in a bottle. Bill Milner’s heartfelt dramedy, Is Anybody There?, in which  a retired magician (Michael Caine) mentors a death-obsessed 10-year-old boy, drew packed audiences back-to-back, and Kathryn Bigelow’s harrowing  Iraq war story, The Hurt Locker, also attracted much attention. Stephan Elliott’s lavish period adaptation of the Noel Coward rom-com, Easy Virtue was as much fun to watch for its beautiful rural setting as the all-star cast (Jessica Biel, Ben Barnes, Kristin Scott Thomas, Colin Firth). Kristopher Belman’s documentary profile of LeBron James, More Than a Game, followed the Cleveland Cavalier star’s rise from the playgrounds of Akron to the NBA Pantheon, with the accent on the friendship he forged along the way.

For the next two days, though, the future of 3-D would dominate most of the discussion … just as it had last year, after The Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour blew the hinges off the box-office. Last weekend’s dynamite numbers for DreamWorks Animation’s Monsters Vs. Aliens — 56 percent of its nearly $60-million haul came from 3-D venues, even though they represented 28 percent of the 4,000 theaters showing the movie – gave exhibitors hope that their investments in digital projection systems might pay immediate dividends.

If that report didn’t provide enough cause for optimism, Disney/Pixar introduced a slate of 17 3-D projects that had everyone in the standing-room-only crowd dizzy with anticipation. A generous preview of Pixar’s first 3-D animated feature, Up, promised blockbuster numbers, as did news of plans to re-release Toy Story and Toy Story 2 as a digital 3-D double-feature for a two-week engagement in early October (along with a trailer for next summer’s Toy Story 3). Snippets from those movies, and the dance scene from a re-formatted Beauty and the Beast, came next, as did a peek at Pixar’s new series of animated shorts, Cars Toon, and a delightful scene from the 2-D, hand-drawn, The Princess and the Frog, set for a Thanksgiving 2009 release. Also in the pipeline are animated features from Jerry Bruckheimer, Robert Zemeckis, Tim Burton and a sequel to Disney’s 1982 ground-breaker, Tron.

At Tuesday’s luncheon presentation, Sony Pictures Animation previewed its September 3-D release, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. The feature was adapted from Judi and Ron Barrett’s popular children’s book, in which a hapless scientist creates a rocket that, when shot into the sky, makes food fall from the clouds like rain.

Another stereoscopic feature, The Battle for Terra, imagined a futuristic battle for survival on a planet invaded by desperate Earthlings. The peaceful world is populated by humanoids who look like guppies, crossed with dolphins, and whose advanced technology might have been designed by Jules Verne or H.G. Wells.

Warner Bros., usually a competitor for the title of most-lavish banquet, this year was content to preview Terminator: Salvation, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, The Hangover and Sherlock Holmes, for which Robert Downey Jr. made a guest appearance.

Downey would be seen later that evening, as well, alongside Jamie Foxx and Catherine Keener, in Paramount’s The Soloist. Another full house greeted director Joe Wright and writer Susannah Grant’s already much-hyped drama, which was based on a series of columns by Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez. In addition to demonstrating that exhibitors enjoy watching movies as much as their customers – only they’re far more polite and appreciative of serious fare — The Soloist delicately alluded to the very real possibility that a decimation of newsrooms, even at the nation’s most important papers, could prevent stories like that of homeless musician Nathaniel Ayers from being published. It’s unlikely that the same impact would have been felt if Lopez were required to condense his reporting in a blog or Twitter, before it ran full in the Times, as is the current trend.

Wednesday began with a low-key presentation by Sony, during which exhibitors were teased with previews of Ron Howard and Tom Hanks’ sequel to The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons; The Ugly Truth,  a rom-com with Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler; Julia and Julia, in which Meryl Streep portrays Julia Child; the Peter Jackson-produced sci-fi thriller, District 9; Harold RamisYear One; and Tony Scott’s The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta. Attendees also were pleased to hear that the studio had committed to the resuscitation of its Ghostbusters and Men in Black franchises.

Among the live-action pictures showcased were the Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds rom-com, The Proposal, in which a much-hated publishing diva is forced, by fear of deportation, to marry her much younger assistant. The plot thickens when the city girl makes a pre-nuptial visit to his Alaskan hometown, where relatives played by Betty White, and Mary Steenburgen seriously test her resolve. Bullock looks quite a bit younger than her 44 years, so the purported age gap between her character and Reynolds’ isn’t nearly as wide as it should have been. Still, their chemistry is good, and The Proposal is the best comic vehicle Bullock has had in memory.

It was mentioned at one point during the convention that The Cove could appeal to many of the same people who made March of the Penguins such a hit. It would be a mistake to advance that theory in the documentary’s marketing campaign, though, as what happens to unsuspecting dolphins in their visits to a Japanese fishing region more accurately resembles the aquatic equivalent of genocide. In it, a group of western activists travel to the Japanese coast to reveal the deeply hidden secret of the almost daily dolphin harvests in a cove near Taiji. It’s where the country’s whaling industry has been memorialized and trained dolphins actually have been imported to entertain tourists. Also indicted and found guilty are the Japanese government officials who knowingly fed mercury-tainted seafood to students, bought votes at international trade gatherings and actively promoted the idea that whales and dolphins were “pests,” responsible for depleting the world’s fish inventory. The Cove is a powerful documentary, but I can only hope that cooler marketing heads prevail.

The week’s final screening was Woody Allen’s Whatever Works, a fractured romantic fairy tale that suggests the filmmaker’s four-picture European sojourn might have helped him see his beloved New York with fresh eyes. In it, grumpy Larry David plays a misanthropic physicist – and, of course, Allen’s newest alter ego – who gives up his research after a divorce and failed suicide attempt. After dinner, one night, he’s confronted by a blond waif who’s run away from her Mississippi home and is in desperate need of a meal and couch on which to sleep. Even though Evan Rachel Wood’s character touches all of his raw nerves, they embark on the unlikeliest of relationships. Things get even crazier when the girl’s estranged parents (Patricia Clarkson, Ed Begley Jr.) arrive in New York, a year later, separately, and experience culture shock. Often hilarious, Whatever Works is set for a June release.

Among the more entertaining aspects of any ShoWest was a tour of the exhibition floor, where theater owners could deal directly with purveyors of everything from floor polish and lighting strips, to genetically advanced popcorn and infinitely more gummy snacks. If the effects of the recession on the movie business could be seen anywhere in Las Vegas this week, it was here. Hardly any new treats were introduced by concessioners and the number of booths seemed diminished from last year’s show.

This meant the delightful cacophony of smells, sounds and tastes was sadly reduced, as well. Nowhere was the absence felt more succinctly than the booth annually maintained by Chicago’s Eisenberg Gourmet Frankfurters. In years past, people would wait in line for a half-hour for the opportunity to enjoy an Eisenberg hot dog or Polish sausage.

Last year, apparently, ShoWest organizers tried to reduce congestion around the booth, by asking the company not to offer traditional garnishes. Tragically, this week, the Eisenberg reps were manning the same location, but both the hot dogs and their magnetic aroma were missing, along with the relish and mustard. If corporate belt-tightening were to blame – “no comment” was the only explanation proffered – then, truly, the impact of the recession on show business must be more serious than box-office numbers would suggest.

– Gary Dretzka
April 3, 2009

Best Actor, Best Actress Chart

Thursday, February 19th, 2009
BEST ACTOR
Actor – Film
Comment
Sean Penn – Milk
SAG, BFCA
(45%)
Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler
HFPA
(45%)
Frank Langella – Frost/Nixon (5%)
Richard Jenkins – The Visitor (3%)
Brad Pitt – Benjamin Button (2%)



BEST ACTRESS
Actress – Film
Comment
Kate Winslet – The Reader
HFPA, SAG
in Ssppt
(30%)
Meryl Streep – Doubt
SAG
BFCA tie
(30%)
Anne Hathaway – Rachel Getting Married
BFCA tie
(25%)
Melissa Leo – Frozen River
(15%)
Angelina Jolie – Changeling (0%)



BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Actor – Film
Comment
Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight
SAG, BFCA, HFPA
Your Oscar Winner (99%)
Josh Brolin – Milk
Phillip Seymour Hoffman – Doubt
Robert Downey, Jr. – Tropic Thunder
Michael Shannon – Revolutionary Road



BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Actress – Film
Comment
Penelope Cruz – Vicky Cristina Barcelona (50%)
Viola Davis – Doubt (40%)
Marisa Tomei – The Wrestler (10%)
Amy Adams – Doubt (0%)
Taraji P Henson – Benjamin Button (0%)

Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay Chart

Thursday, February 19th, 2009
BEST PICTURE
Picture – Studio
Slumdog Millionaire
FxSch
PGA, SAG, BFCA, HFPA
Your Oscar Winner (50%)
Milk
Focus
The most passionate Phase II push… but it ain’t Crash and Slumdog ain’t Brokeback (5%)
Frost/Nixon
U
(5%)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Par
(3%)
The Reader
TWC
(2%)



BEST DIRECTOR
Director – Film
Comment
Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire
BFCA, HFPA,
DGA
Your Oscar Winner (85%)
David Fincher – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (6%)
Ron Howard – Frost/Nixon (4%)
Gus Van Sant – Milk (3%)
Stephen Daldry – The Reader (2%)



BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Writer(s) – Film
Comment
Wall-E
Andrew Stanton
Jim Reardon
Peter Doctor
(50%)
Milk
Dustin Lance Black
WGA (46%)
Happy-Go-Lucky
Mile Leigh
(2%)
Frozen River
Courtney Hunt
(1%)
In Bruges
Martin McDonagh
(1%)



BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Writer(s) – Film
Comment
Slumdog Millionaire
Simon Beaufoy
BFCA, HFPA,
WGA
Your Oscar Winner (85%)
Frost/Nixon
Peter Morgan
(7%)
Doubt
John Patrick Shanley
(5%)
The Reader
David Hare
(2%)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Eric Roth
(1%)

4 Days To Go, That Obscure Sense Of Surprise

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

And so, we are at the end.

For a year of predictable outcomes, it is actually fairly remarkable how many major awards seem to be up for grabs at this late date.

I don’t think many people expect Slumdog Millionaire to get anything less than 6 Oscars, including Picture, Director, and Screenplay. But in the Top 8 categories, Rourke vs Penn, Winslet vs Streep vs Hathaway vs Leo, Cruz vs Davis, and Stanton vs Black are all still uncertain in many minds. Add Slumdog’s three and Heath Ledger as locks and you have half the top awards in play.

It’s the rarest kind of Oscar stat these days… one that doesn’t seem to have been written about endlessly… that in five of the last ten years and in the last four years in a row, the Best Picture winner has been nominated in one or no acting categories. (Slumdog, No Country For Old Men, The Departed, Crash. Lord of The Rings)

So much for the mythology of the Actor’s Branch controlling the Academy.

It’s not just the Best Picture winner. This year, four of the five nominees have just one acting nominee or less. Only Milk managed two. The most actor-nominated film was Doubt, with four, count ‘em, four nominees… and no Best Picture nod. In fact, the only other nomination for the film was for John Patrick Shanley’s Adapted Screenplay from his own play… which was – by his reckoning- more a work of adapting as a director than as a writer.

Last year, four of the five nominees scored just one acting mod each… and the big get, three, for Michael Clayton. The big “actors’ movies” that didn’t get BP nods, besides Clayton, were Into The Wild, Gone Baby Gone, American Gangster, and The Savages… each of which managed only one acting nod.

Go back one more year and again, 3/5 of the nominees had one acting nod or less… and just two each for the other 2… all fours nods in Supporting.

It’s been nine years since a Lead Actor win for the Best Picture. And while Million Dollar Baby was just five Oscars ago, it was the only example of the Lead Actress winning in the last eleven years.

Go back a little further and the lead actors winning for best pictures is not so rare; Crowe for Gladiator, Spacey for American Beauty, Paltrow for Shakespeare in Love, Hanks in Forrest Gump, Foster in Silence of the Lambs, Tandy in Driving Miss Daisy, Hoffman in Rain Man… that’s seven times in thirteen years. The only lead male in the Best Picture to even be nominated in the last seven years was Eastwood for Million Dollar Baby.

And while Slumdog may be written off as an anomaly with its 17-year-old lead, along with the Crash ensemble and the Rings ensemble, others overlooked are nothing close to unknown: Tommy Lee Jones, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and Richard Gere.

But really… look at it… the last four years… all ensemble movies. Big stars in a couple… not so much in the other two… but ensembles have won. Is that good news or bad news for Nine? Who knows? Really, neither. It’s not really news. It’s just a curious statistic. And those change all the time.

But back to this year…

Even after you crack the Top 8, there is still a lot to ponder. Will things sway more to Batman or Ben Button… or with they come out dead even… or will they get rocked by underdogs.

Even in Foreign and Doc, there seem to be clear frontrunners in Waltz with Bashir and Man on Wire, but with a much smaller group of voters qualifying to vote for these in the finals (likely under 500 for each), you never know. Sony Classics is putting up the strongest fight against their own film with The Class, a film that’s grown in profile as we’ve come closer to a vote. And while Man on Wire was the top grosser of the five nominees and the only one to crack the MCN Top Ten List Chart’s Top 30 (at #9), the small voting group could lead to anything… and there are big emotional connections around some of the other films while Wire is a beautiful piece of filmmaking and a great story, but not a heart-tugger.

And then there is the show itself…

Which neither I nor this website is going to work to spoil for anyone.

It would be a mistake to expect too much.

And it would be a mistake to not pay close attention.

It would be a little silly of anyone to argue too intensely that the Oscars were ever a pure, innocent celebration of the best work of the preceding year. The stakes were, indeed, much, much lower. It was less of a marketing machine. But every major wanted its piece of the action and by 1936 (Year 6), there were a dozen Best Picture nominees (and the film won Best Actor and Actress). In 1945, they went to the five Best Picture format. In 1953, the show was first televised. That was two years before this year’s producer, Bill Condon was born.

And I think that is a real point to make.

Condon grew up in some realm of the modern Oscars. His memories, however rose-colored, have led to a passion for the event. He, like his entire generation, grew up on what was in the theaters and what ended up on network television and much later in its life, on local stations. I don’t know what films he watched over and over and over again on the television set. (Who knows? Maybe he didn’t watch much TV.) For me, it was The Little Rascals, the Blondie series, Penny Serenade, and, starting in my pre-teens, the Saturday night line-up on CBS, which was replaced by the ABC line-up, which was replaced by the NBC line-up, and so on…

But every year, it was the Oscars. For me, I think the first one where a Best Picture that I had seen in first run, before the show, was The Sting in 1974. I was 9. That was also the year of The Streaker. I think I missed the 1975 Oscars. The only “Best Picture” I would have seen before the show was The Towering Inferno. The other four films (Godfather 2, Chinatown, The Conversation, Lenny) would be the baseline for my film education for decades to come. I didn’t see Barry Lyndon in first run, but I did see One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest twice before it was nominated. That would become the norm. By the next year, I was deeply invested in Network winning… which it did not. The 1978 Oscars were the first group of films I remember watching over and over and over again on HBO.

There are not a lot of other things that I have done every year for 33 years.

Condon was 18 for the Oscars show I first remember watching. He probably remembers the years with no host (1969 – 1971). He surely remembers the six years after that with no fewer than 4 hosts each year. Charlton Heston and Rock Hudson in ’73, John Huston in ’74, The Rat Pack in ’75, Gene Kelly in ’76, Beatty and Pryor in ‘77. Then Carson… then Crystal. There were others in between and since, but it’s always been some form of flailing with various levels of success.

But there was something that really did feel special in those years. The hosts were real life icons. They were not just members of the industry, they WERE the industry.

Who IS the industry right now? That is one of the prime questions that Mr. Condon & Mr. Mark will try to answer on Sunday night. Is it this month’s hottest star… the senior circuit… the stars of Condon’s youth, of my youth, of a 30seomthing’s youth, of Watchmen… the stars of tomorrow?

If their answer is close enough to right, the show will be the party we all wanted to be at and got to watch on TV. If not, then it will be another show with some memorable reactions when people win, some great sets, so big moments and some disappointing moments. Respect will be paid. The thrill of the winners will be the most important drama of the night.

We all keep watching and waiting for that tingle in the spine because it matters so much and it matters not at all… but you can’t fake that tingle when it happens.

Here’s to the tingle!

– David Poland
February 19, 2009

20 Weeks to Oscar: 2 Weeks To Go, Who Let The Dogs In?

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

Ladies & Gentlemen… children of all ages… seven Oscar nominees who really didn’t go into this season expecting to be attending the Academy Awards…

Viola Davis.
Courtney Hunt.
Richard Jenkins.
Scott Hamilton Kennedy.
Melissa Leo.
Martin McDonagh.
Michael Shannon.

All deserving.

All appreciating.

With nothing much to write about, no major upsets being seriously considered by anyone who knows much, and Michael Cieply at the NY Times apparently intent in reducing the paper of record to the Paper of Gossip before Nikki Finke can get her fangs into show night spoilers, this is where we really should be focusing.

I think we can say with 85% certainty that none of these Luck-Feeling (and Deserving) Seven are going to take home an Oscar of their own this year and 98% certainty that no more than one might score an upset. But that’s not the point.

Oscar is a celebration of the cinematic form. It is, in reality, a horse race. But like watching the Kentucky Derby each year, the beauty of that massive beast running at full speed, muscles flexing, rhythmically pushing forward… forward, it is more beautiful than all the odds-making, pre-game show, mint-julip-drinking, big hat-wearing, wealth-flaunting junk that makes it feel like a Calcutta whorehouse with the best landscaping ever.

Which performing monkeys will stop these seven on the red carpet on that Sunday night? And how quickly will their interview end if Angelina Jolie is willing to say, “Hello, I’m Angie,” for a second of shoulder-bearing airtime?

It’s not to say that Angie doesn’t matter. Or that these nominees are more deserving of love or attention than any other. But do you remember how exciting Ellen Page, Casey Affleck, Amy Ryan, and Tamara Jenkins, among others, were last year? Ryan Gosling, Penelope Cruz, Jackie Earle Haley, and Michael Arndt a couple of years ago? Terrence Howard, Rachel Weisz, Amy Adams, Bennett Miller, and Josh Olsen before that?

A couple of these folks are nominated again this year. Some are working towards their next big moments. One had a small role in one of last year’s big comic book movies while another is the central character in this year’s coming comic book sensation and another has written Toy Story 3, next year’s mega-Pixar film. A couple are moody and trying to figure out what they really want from this industry. And a few have found quiet opportunities involving television to keep paying their bills as they hold out for top notch work.

These people are the industry’s future.

Not every underdog is going to become a pillar of the industry. Of course. But these are the hungry people who, while getting the highest honor in the business, are still ready to bring themselves to the work with the best intentions and the hope of even higher highs.

I know… people want pretty pictures. And Michael Shannon is not as good an interview as George Clooney. But we should celebrate him and the others all the more for their lack of artifice… not because they are “above it,” but because they are artists reaching for more in this game.

Give Viola Davis that charming role.

Get Melissa Leo in that spaceship that’s going to save the world.

Talk Martin McDonagh into writing Ocean’s 14.

Figure out how the Coens will get Shannon into a leading role.

Let Courtney Hunt make a thriller for Sony.

Give Scott Hamilton Kennedy the money for his next doc, HBO.

And let Richard Jenkins just keep working… he was doing really well before this (and deserved a nom for North Country) and should keep doing the fine work he does. May all great character actors someday find their Tom McCarthy (who also brought us Peter Dinklage, who still works in unexpectedly complex and strongly written roles all the time).

Yeah… I am looking forward to Meryl and Downey being funny, to Danny Boyle being gracious, to the moment when Kate Winslet either gets her long-deserved Oscar or waits until next time (Paul Newman isn’t such a bad landmark to emulate, Kate), to seeing how they handle Heath’s win, and surely to a surprise or two.

But my heart will be with these underdogs… and some others who will lose… and some who will win… my heart will be with the passion of it all… even the passions of those behind the scenes of this year’s show.

It hasn’t been one of the great years at the cinema, but there is never a bad time to celebrate great work, whether it wins or loses a statue. The drama that matters most is the drama that will last with us for years and years to come.

– David Poland
February 5, 2009

Best Actor, Best Actress Chart

Thursday, February 5th, 2009
BEST ACTOR
Actor – Film
Comment
Sean Penn – Milk
SAG, BFCA
(45%)
Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler
HFPA
(35%)
Frank Langella – Frost/Nixon (15%)
Richard Jenkins – The Visitor (3%)
Brad Pitt – Benjamin Button (2%)
BEST ACTRESS
Actress – Film
Comment
Kate Winslet – The Reader
HFPA, SAG
in Ssppt
(35%)
Meryl Streep – Doubt
SAG
BFCA tie
(35%)
Anne Hathaway – Rachel Getting Married
BFCA tie
(25%)
Melissa Leo – Frozen River
(3%)
Angelina Jolie – Changeling (2%)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Actor – Film
Comment
Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight
SAG, BFCA, HFPA
Your Oscar Winner (99%)
Josh Brolin – Milk
Phillip Seymour Hoffman – Doubt
Robert Downey, Jr. – Tropic Thunder
Michael Shannon – Revolutionary Road
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Actress – Film
Comment
Penelope Cruz – Vicky Cristina Barcelona (60%)
Viola Davis – Doubt (25%)
Marisa Tomei – The Wrestler (10%)
Amy Adams – Doubt (3%)
Taraji P Henson – Benjamin Button (2%)

Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay Chart

Thursday, February 5th, 2009
BEST PICTURE
Picture – Studio
Slumdog Millionaire
FxSch
PGA, SAG, BFCA, HFPA
Your Oscar Winner (50%)
Milk
Focus
The most passionate Phase II push… but it ain’t Crash and Slumdog ain’t Brokeback (5%)
Frost/Nixon
U
(5%)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Par
(3%)
The Reader
TWC
(2%)
BEST DIRECTOR
Director – Film
Comment
Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire
BFCA, HFPA
Your Oscar Winner (85%)
David Fincher – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (6%)
Ron Howard – Frost/Nixon (4%)
Gus Van Sant – Milk (3%)
Stephen Daldry – The Reader (2%)
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Writer(s) – Film
Comment
Wall-E
Andrew Stanton
Jim Reardon
Peter Doctor
(55%)
Milk
Dustin Lance Black
(40%)
Happy-Go-Lucky
Mile Leigh
(2%)
Frozen River
Courtney Hunt
(2%)
In Bruges
Martin McDonagh
(1%)
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Writer(s) – Film
Comment
Slumdog Millionaire
Simon Beaufoy
BFCA, HFPA Your Oscar Winner (85%)
Frost/Nixon
Peter Morgan
(7%)
Doubt
John Patrick Shanley
(5%)
The Reader
David Hare
(2%)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Eric Roth
(1%)



Best Actor, Best Actress Chart

Thursday, January 29th, 2009
BEST ACTOR
Actor – Film
Comment
Sean Penn – Milk
SAG, BFCA
The most competitive major award of the night… but Penn has the weight of Langella and the stunt of Rourke, which makes him a 40% frontrunner
Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler
HFPA
Just keeps winning stuff… a 30% chance
Frank Langella – Frost/Nixon Seemed like a lock early on, but suffers from being the supporting role to unnominated “Frost”… 25%
Richard Jenkins – The Visitor (3%)
Brad Pitt – Benjamin Button (2%)



BEST ACTRESS
Actress – Film
Comment
Kate Winslet – The Reader
HFPA, SAG
in Ssppt
She’s waited through 5 prior nominations… past due… but still so young that it may not turn the trick… also, her lack of support for the film doesn’t make it easier and winning 2 awards for supporting may work against her. (40%)
Meryl Streep – Doubt
SAG
BFCA tie
The veteran. Someone should be reminding the voters that she also made many love her in a silly, smash hit musical this year. (40%)
Anne Hathaway – Rachel Getting Married
BFCA tie
The strongest dark horse… but she hasn’t really asked for it (17%)
Melissa Leo – Frozen River
Wins on Saturday… looks beautiful and gracious on Sunday (2%)
Angelina Jolie – Changeling Great on the red carpet (1%)



BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Actor – Film
Comment
Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight
SAG, BFCA, HFPA
Your Oscar Winner (99%)
Josh Brolin – Milk
Phillip Seymour Hoffman – Doubt
Robert Downey, Jr. – Tropic Thunder
Michael Shannon – Revolutionary Road



BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Actress – Film
Comment
Penelope Cruz – Vicky Cristina Barcelona The big threat was Kate Winslet. After years of being “the pretty girl with a castilian lisp,” Cruz has emerged as an American star in her own right and has this one coming. (60%)
Marisa Tomei – The Wrestler Coming on strong in the second act of her acting career. Would be great if this lead to some movie leads. (20%)
Viola Davis – Doubt A great rising actor, an overnight success after a decade or so. Perhaps the best thing that will come of this nomination is that Hollywood will see her in a broader light and she will get a wider range of roles. (15%)
Amy Adams – Doubt (3%)
Taraji P Henson – Benjamin Button (2%)

Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay Chart

Thursday, January 29th, 2009
BEST PICTURE
Picture – Studio
Slumdog Millionaire
FxSch
PGA, SAG, BFCA, HFPA
Your Oscar Winner (80%)
Frost/Nixon
U
Very, very well liked… but is there enough passion? (10%)
Milk
Focus
Those who love, LOVE, those who hate, HATE (5%)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Par
Heart = Votes… Button = Admiration (3%)
The Reader
TWC
Found enough support to get here… lowest ranked film on MCN Top 10 compilation to ever get in. (2%)



BEST DIRECTOR
Director – Film
Comment
Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire
BFCA, HFPA
Your Oscar Winner (80%)
David Fincher – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Mad skills, but no momentum (55%
Ron Howard – Frost/Nixon Well loved family member, but slots with the BP race (10%)
Gus Van Sant – Milk (3%)
Stephen Daldry – The Reader (2%)



BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Writer(s) – Film
Comment
Wall-E
Andrew Stanton
Jim Reardon
Peter Doctor
By many standards, the best loved film of the year… in combo with Animation win, a consolation prize? Nomiunated once before for screenplay (50%)
Milk
Dustin Lance Black
Complex adaptation, but the robot may just be more popular… and original (45%)
Happy-Go-Lucky
Mile Leigh
Nominated 3 times before for screenplay (3%)
Frozen River
Courtney Hunt
(2%)
In Bruges
Martin McDonagh
(1%)



BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Writer(s) – Film
Comment
Slumdog Millionaire
Simon Beaufoy
BFCA, HFPA Your Oscar Winner – Nomiunated before (65%)
Frost/Nixon
Peter Morgan
Nomiunated before (15%)
Doubt
John Patrick Shanley
Won before (10%)
The Reader
David Hare
Nomiunated before (8%)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Eric Roth
Won before ( 2%)

3 Weeks To Go, D. It Is Written

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

The great irony of this year’s Oscars is the constant battle between the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other.

The Devil says, “The year is boring… we know all the answers already… is a classic Hollywood fantasia set in a poverty-stricken country of amazing colors and sights telling the tale of an underdog overcoming the odds really the best we can do?”

The Angel says, “Here is a movie from a director who had gotten typed into being a success only in x-treme cinema, set in another country, often in another language, with three sets of young, inexperienced actors playing the same kids from single-digits to 20-ish, delving into the internationalism of both human aspiration and the medium of television (which might as well be movies), unafraid to deliver some of the harshest moments in mainstream cinema this year, yet emotionally kind and compelling to its core… all of this, made for a studio Dependent that has been put out of business, sold off, in part, by the parent studio to another studio’s Dependent that passed on its first opportunity to make it, sold brilliantly, surrounded by talent that is both charming and unusually generous and kind of spirit, and now in line to win The Oscar and all that comes with that honor.”

Which story is more compelling?

For me, there is no question. The Angel has the goods.

But as usual, the perception of what a better story is, in the media, is always the more ugly story.

And now, with every competing studio, in its heart, knowing that the big prize is simply out of reach, here comes the treachery. Truly thoughtless efforts by journalists buying into the scam that there is any more discontent over this film in India – where it was the third biggest opening ever by a non-Indian film – than there is here. I have had the conversations with people who feel that the ultimate upbeat nature of the film is not in sync with the harsh realities of Mumbai. Okay. I can’t argue what you feel. But as the man said, that’s why there is chocolate and vanilla and 29 other flavors and more.

Then there is the mean-spirited bile that somehow the younger kids in the film were “used” and abandoned by the film and filmmakers. This was the attack used against The Kite Runner last year which tied that film’s marketing and publicity team up in knots for months before the film died its own form of awards season death. As it turns out, Danny Boyle and Christian Colson not only didn’t take advantage of the kids, but have been investing in the future of these two young people/actors since well before the movie’s success.

The goal of the “opposition,” which may not be able to win, but can be dogged in keeping on the attack no matter how long the odds, is to build negativity around the feel-good film and to fire up the xenophobia of older Oscar voters.

One fine publicist, sounding completely aware of how absurd the idea that was being floated was, suggested that the film they were representing was an American alternative to the “it’s good and all” Slumdog.

Then there was the effort to claim that the film’s Co-Director: India, Loveleen Tandan, was the victim of a sexist slight… though she is mentioned by Danny Boyle and cast members all the time and singled out for special thanks. This too is an old spin, based on City of God, in which Fernando Meirelles gave a co-directing credit to Katia Lund – with whom Fernando had worked with on the lead up film to C.O.G. and who found and nurtured much of the young first-time actors on the film – and got slammed for it, even though he too was completely open about Katia’s contribution when asked.

Journalists often go along with these idiotic stories because, first and foremost, there is nothing else to write about.

The problem for the studio, which makes it doubly unfair, is that responding always seems defensive, even if you are not guilty. And not responding leads to some assumption of guilt.

Now… don’t think my praise of the great stories of this year’s Oscar season is just about Slumdog, a film that I have supported without reservation from the day I saw it. The other four nominees have Angelic stories to tell too.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a film that has gone as close as pre-production before being put into turnaround again… and again… and again… for over a decade. The ultimate choice of David Fincher, an aesthete of the highest order, was seriously daring. And the combination of the unsentimental Fincher and sentimentalist screenwriter Eric Roth results in what some people see as the best and others as the worst (and many in between) of all outcomes. But daring it is, even more so at its huge budgetary price.

Frost/Nixon – This adaptation of a great stage experience centering on two big performances by Michael Sheen and Frank Langella happens to be the perfect film for the very commercially savvy and directorially skilled Ron Howard. There who don’t see Howard as an emotionally raw, lay it out there, kind of director, but he found the resonance in this material as well, I think, as anyone could have and keeps it entertaining to boot. The performances are still tremendous and I expect this film will linger with viewers much, much longer that some expect.

Milk – Another hard-to-get-made project that has been on and off production schedules for over a decade, often intimidated by the great Oscar-winning documentary by Rob Epstein, The Times of Harvey Milk, made all the way back in 1984. The resulting film, directed by Gus van Sant, seems to be more controversial in the gay community than in the straight one, as Harvey Milk means such different things to different people who actually have an investment in the man’s legacy. Sean Penn gives a career best performance as Milk, overcoming mighty fears of what he might do playing a gay man who emerges from the closet and leads a movement. In fact, Van Sant, who obviously has no fear of making films with gay themes in them, hired straight actors for almost all of the lead roles here… to an effect which, like the movie itself, leaves people in different mind sets. But here is an overt gay agenda film that reaches past any specific agenda and manages to tell the tale of what one person can do in a relatively short period of time when they are focused on a cause they believe to be all-important. (Like Che, another 2008 miracle, the “real” politics sometimes get in the way of the message of the film, and the quality of the work gets lost in those bigger, historic disagreements.)

The Reader – Love it or hate it, The Reader found its place at the Oscar table via the ballots of the first group… not with a mega-marketing campaign… not with grand emotional appeals to the film being important for Jewish Academy voters… not with tricks and subterfuge. This is a small, independent film with a last minute change in the lead actress, made by a filmmaker who hasn’t done a film in a while, with an unknown young man in the co-lead role, pushed into this year by a big name whose company ha been suffering some rough times in the last couple of years. And it made it. While Geek World screams and cries about The Dark Knight not making the cut with Academy voters (cut to Tom Rothman’s great comment that he would take his award at the bank when he had a terrific film that did a lot of business, but didn’t get the Academy love), even those who don’t love The Reader should be excited that this little engine made it up the hill for, whether we concur or not, all the reasons we all claim all the time that we want films to find Academy love… for the film and not for the hype machine.

So…

Slumdog Millionaire is about as likely to win Best Picture now as Lord of The Rings, A Beautiful Mind, American Beauty, and Titanic were at about this time in the race. Everyone knows. Brickbats are flying. But a loss at this point would be a fluke.

And from my perspective, the film deserves the win. Why? Because it is a movie movie, the way the Academy and all Americans love movie movies. Does that really make it the BEST movie of the year? That is for each person to decide. And if you are driven by a certain aesthetic, the answer is most certainly, “no.” And God bless you and be well. Nothing wrong with that.

But Slumdog takes what the great Hollywood films does and in the great tradition of this town, turns it on its ear, keeping the clean, cool lines that are so familiar, but giving it a new coat of paint that feels fresh and exciting.

Just look at what has won Best Picture over the years. Yes, there have been No Country For Old Men, The Departed, Crash, Chicago, American Beauty, The English Patient, and Unforgiven, twisting the mythology of the “good guy” past the point of obvious tradition, though decades of WB hero-gangsters suggest that they weren’t too far from certain Hollywood traditions.

But look at the winners… Maggie Fitzgerald, Frodo, John Nash, Maximus, Will Shakespeare, Jack & Rose, William Wallace, Forrest Gump, Itzhak Stern, Clarice Sterling, Lieutenant John Dunbar, Raymond Babbitt, Pu Yi, Private Chris Taylor, etc, etc, etc…

The Academy loves the underdog story. Even in the darker films listed two paragraphs up… Tommy Lee Jones chooses old age over death in the end, Mark Wahlberg gets justice in the end, Roxie Hart overcomes her anonymity even if its just to be a famous dancing/singing murderess, Kevin Spacey dies after finding an internal peace, and Eastwood, not unlike Wahlberg, sets things straight in the end. (Crash and The English Patient… not really happy journeys.)

Of the four BP contenders other than Slummy, Milk, in spite of his death, has the only really upbeat ending, a positive legacy moving forward. Frost/Nixon and The Reader leave their star villains to their ignominy. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ends with Hurricane Katrina coming and while touching, the dying tale told by a mother who has lied to her daughter for 40 some-odd years about her paternal history. This doesn’t mean that we can’t make the arguments for ambiguity a la Crash or The English Patient. But the odds are stacked against.

But more to the point… when you walk out of Slumdog Millionaire, humming or singing Jai Ho… dancing a little… talking about the kid and the outhouse… the death of a mother… the blinding of a child… trying to pronounce, “Chai Walla,” correctly, the beauty of Freida Pinto, the thrill of feeling like you are in a movie filled with darkness and danger only to be exhilarated by the power of fate and love in the end…

When I hear some people saying that Slummy will be like some of the Oscar titles that have not aged that well, I have to laugh. First, there is the arrogance of the dismissal of some of those titles. If Forrest F-ing Gump opened last month, it would have been associated with Obama instead of Reagan and swept the Oscars the same as it did in 1995. Maybe Reds and Raiders have more cultural weight than Chariots of Fire and Ordinary People did beat Raging Bull, but to kick the two winners from those two years because you prefer another one or two of the movies is not really fair or fair-minded. Chariots of Fire is a great movie. And they truly don’t make movies like Ordinary People anymore… and it was a lot better than this year’s attempt, Revolution Road. Both films were imitated and imitated and imitated to the point where the impact of the original faded into cliche’. But there is no shame in being the truthful source of the cliches of the future.

And after that first laugh subsides, I laugh again, because I think of the joy that I have seen in people after they have seen Slumdog Millionaire for themselves. And that is at least one big reason why we all love the movies.

Jai ho, y’all.

– David Poland
January 29, 2009

Ron Howard: dir. Frost/Nixon

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

Best Screenplay Chart

Thursday, January 8th, 2009
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Writer(s) – Film
Comment
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Milk
The Wrestler
Wall-E
Rachel Getting Married
The Visitor
Happy Go Lucky
Seven Pounds
Che
W.
Changling



BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Writer(s) – Film
Comment
Slumdog Millionaire G
Frost/Nixon G
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button G
Doubt G
The Dark Knight
Revolutionary Road
The Reader G


Best Actress Chart

Thursday, January 8th, 2009
BEST ACTRESS
Actress – Film
Comment
Kate Winslet – Revolutionary Road G
Meryl Streep – Doubt G
Cate Blanchett – Benjamin Button
Anne Hathaway – Rachel Getting Married G
Kristin Scott Thomas – I’ve Loved You So Long G
Sally Hawkins – Happy-Go-Lucky G
Melissa Leo – Frozen River
Angelina Jolie – Changeling G



BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Actress – Film
Comment
Penelope Cruz – Vicky Cristina Barcelona G
Kate Winslet – The Reader G
Viola Davis – Doubt G
Rebecca Hall – Vicky Cristina Barcelona G
Marisa Tomei – The Wrestler G
Tilda Swinton – Benjamin Button
Rosemarie DeWitt – Rachel Getting Married
Taraji P Henson – Benjamin Button
Debra Winger – Rachel Getting Married

Best Actor Chart

Thursday, January 8th, 2009
BEST ACTOR
Actor – Film
Comment
Sean Penn – Milk
G
Frank Langella – Frost/Nixon
G
Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler
G
Richard Jenkins – The Visitor
Brad Pitt – Benjamin Button
G
DARK HORSES
Clint Eastwood – Gran Torino
Benicio Del Toro – Che
Leonardo DiCaprio – Revolutionary Road
G



BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Actor – Film
Comment
Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight
G
Phillip Seymour Hoffman – Doubt G
Michael Sheen – Frost/Nixon
Josh Brolin – Milk
Michael Shannon – Revolutionary Road
Eddie Marsan – Happy-Go-Lucky
Liev Schreiber – Defiance
Dev Patel – Slumdog Millionaire
James Franco – Milk
Robert Downey, Jr. – Tropic Thunder
G

Best Director Chart

Thursday, January 8th, 2009
BEST DIRECTOR
Director – Film
Comment
Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire
G
Your Oscar Winner
David Fincher – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
G
Ron Howard – Frost/Nixon
G
Gus Van Sant – Milk
Stephen Daldry – The Reader
G

Best Picture Chart

Thursday, January 8th, 2009
BEST PICTURE
Picture
Studio
Director
Stars
Comment
The Frontrunners (in alphabetical order)
Slumdog Millionaire
FxSch
Boyle
Patel
Pinto
G
Frost/Nixon
U
Howard
Langella
Sheen
G
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Par
Fincher
Pitt
G
Milk
Focus
Van Sant
Penn
Brolin
The Dark Knight
WB
Nolan
Ledger
Still Hunting
Doubt
Mir
Shanley
Streep
PS Hoffman
Davis
Wall-E
Dix
Stanton
Garlin
Globes Only
Revolutionary Road
ParV
Mendes
Winslet
DiCaprio
G
The Reader
TWC
Daldry
Winslet
Fiennes
G

6 Weeks To Go, Almost There

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

This is the shortest award season EVER!

It is also one of the most predictable years ever.

It is also the season in which coverage of the awards, from start to finish, jumped the shark into an Ouroboros parade.

It is also one of the weakest years, in terms of movies, in a long time.

The truth is, the field always narrows, there are always expected award players that turn out to be misses, and there are always a few big surprises… but on that last one, not this year.

I think the lack of surprise is a combination of certain surprise tricks no longer being surprising and the films that hoped to film that place just not being compelling enough to overcome the more expected films.

Really, the fact that The Dark Knight is looking like a locked in nominee – and has for a month now – is indicative of a weak field. It’s not a reflection of the film itself, but of the simple fact that a film like that just isn’t what the Academy tends to lean towards. People’s Choice Award? Absolutely. Oscar? Are you kidding?

Gran Torino is an example of a film that lives in a slot that was once a surprise and no longer is. “The Second Eastwood Movie” thing is in its second showing. Thing is, the only movie of the four that really did deserve a Best Picture nomination was Letters from Iwo Jima.

T2EM’s life and death was organic, starting with Mystic River making no splash at all at Cannes before becoming a strong Oscar player with an October release in 2003. Could Eastwood really have a 2004 Oscar movie too? Sure! Million Dollar Baby zoomed into a December slot after Eastwood made the “go” call in late October and not only was it nominated, it beat that year’s Scorsese shot at Oscar. How to top that? Two movies! Well… they were opposite sides of the Iwo Jima story, so there was some crossover. But the big, English-language one turned out to be well made, but uninteresting. And the little, late Japanese one that virtually no one who wasn’t a critic or a voter saw… your nominee.

Cut to two years later and it is like Clint’s Greatest Hits. Changeling goes to Cannes, gets the buzz that is now expected. And dies when landing on the Mystic River slot in October. Then the second film, no longer a “late entry,” but long scheduled to follow Changeling by two months or so, stars Clint, like M$B, involves Asians, like LFIJ, and has a karate kid, though this one is a young boy with no acting experience instead of the Next Karate Kid, Hillary Swank.

What is also true for the first time since Unforgiven is that Clint brings his iconography to the table and plays hard against it. How ironic – and a little horrifying – is it that Eastwood, who lost the Oscar he should have won for Unforgiven to what was pretty much a career-achievement award for Al Pacino, is now being pushed hard to be nominated and win for work that is undeserving by his own iconic standards. But even more so, that making this comparison would be unfair to Pacino, who is often mocked for his work in Scent of A Woman, but only because he created something so powerful that it was immediately the subject of everyone’s imitations. People love Clint growling, “Get off my lawn.” But they love it much the way they loved “Go ahead, make my day,” not because it was such a fine creation, but because it was so brutally direct.

There is some talk this season about Holocaust fatigue.

Nah.

But the standards are not quite as simple as “Dead Jews Win,” which is a horrible, yet often repeated line about the awards season. But Ed Zwick making serious, popular, and awards-lite movies is not new news. And The Reader, which caught fire as a possible contender primarily because of a fight between Harvey Weinstein and Scott Rudin that made it feel, for a moment, like Harvey was back in business. He’s not.

Then there were the front runners…. ah, the front runners.

I wrote about the danger of frontrunning six weeks ago and, indeed, Australia and Revolutionary Road died a BP death before they could open. And The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has done the job of getting a nomination. But try finding someone left who thinks it can win Best Picture.

We also have the great animated movie reaching for a Best Picture nomination that has only happened once… and never with an animation category available for voting. Wall-E is one of the very best films of the year, as was Finding Nemo… but no. The last run like this was with the documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, which lost its tiny, tiny window when Bush won reelection in spite of Michael Moore not wanting him to do so.

You want a familiar, but silly stat that hasn’t come up yet and will in a couple of weeks? Ron Howard has never been nominated for Best Director and had the film nominated for Best Picture and lost. Why silly? Because the sample is just one film. A Beautiful Mind. His other nominee was Apollo 13, for which he was not nominated. (He won, however, the DGA Award that year.)

Even the leading nominees lack a certain sense of discovery. Danny Boyle is the only nominee never to be nominated for anything by the DGA or the Academy. David Fincher’s only nod from either group was a DGA win for commercials in 2004. Gus van Sant was nominated by both DGA and the Academy for Good Will Hunting. Christopher Nolan grabbed a DGA nod for Memento. And Ron Howard has been thrice DGA nominated, wining twice and Oscar nominated once, winning that time.

Will any lead actor be in any way surprising aside from Richard Jenkins, who has been a well known character actor forever? Same with Michael Shannon in Supporting?

Streep, Blanchett, Winslet, Scott Thomas… really? Does Anne Hathaway even seem like a surprise at this point? Viola Davis may well be the only unknown… virtually the only non-former-nominee in that group!

Look… I am really happy to see a lot of these people again. In the last couple of days, I have done four video interviews… with four people who I have sat down with either for past Oscar nominated work or earlier for their films this year under other circumstances. It was a great pleasure, but it’s not so much about new discoveries anymore.

I don’t know… it’s like the whole thing wants to regress back to an earlier form, perhaps not quite as owned by the studios as it was back in the day, perhaps still televised, perhaps in a bigger room. But it is supposed to be about the work. And it is all too easy to forget that.

One of my interviewees got very emotional today, talking about being in this special place at this special time. And afterwards, I talked to her about Mickey Rourke and how, even though you do get the feeling that he is a bit of a performance artist in interviews, I truly believe all the emotion he has been offering. After all, he gives this deeply emotional, pained performance and then, what? He is supposed to bottle it up? That is what we want from him? That is what we hope for? Whatever happened to an artist being an artist? Shouldn’t writers get that?

And that… that is the feeling we all want. We want to feel. We go to the movies to feel. To feel good. To feel bad. To feel excitement or fear.

In this too familiar year of awards, what is all this ennui about? We aren’t feeling it. And there is only one real solution.

Watch a great movie.

And maybe… maybe… leave Bill Condon and Larry Mark alone to do their work and to deliver an Oscar telecast that has a chance to surprise us. One can hope.

– David Poland
January 8, 2009

Page 30

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

The MCN Critics

1 Chop Shop
2 Encounters at End of the World
3 In Bruges
4 Let the Right One In
5 Man on Wire
6 Milk/Paranoid Park
7 Mongol
8 Tell No One
9 The Visitor
10 Wall-E
1 A Christmas Tale
2 Paranoid Park
3 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
4 Wall-E
5 Revolutionary Road
6 Let the Right One In
7 Doubt
8 Milk
9 Miracle at St. Anna
10 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
1 Frozen River
2 A Christmas Tale
3 Happy Go Lucky
4 Slumdog Millionaire
5 Rachel Getting Married
6 Milk
7 The Visitor
8 In Bruges
9 Chop Shop
10 Adam Resurrected
1 Frozen River
2 A Christmas Tale
3 Happy Go Lucky
4 Slumdog Millionaire
5 Rachel Getting Married
6 Milk
7 The Visitor
8 In Bruges
9 Chop Shop
10 Adam Resurrected
1 Shine A Light
2 A Christmas Tale
3 Australia
4 Wall-E
5 Gran Torino
6 Happy Go Lucky
7 Milk
8 Still Life
9 The Dark Knight
10 Miracle at St. Anna

Page 29

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
Link to the List

NP Thompson
Movies Into Film

1 Unrelated
2 Sita Sings the Blues
3 Breath
4 The Gates
5 Flight of the Red Balloon
6 The Band’s Visit
7 Persepolis
8 Trouble the Water
9 Opera Jawa
10 Priceless
Link to the List

Andy Klein
Los angeles CityBeat

1 The Dark Knight
2 Gran Torino
3 In Bruges
4 Let the Right One In
5 My Winnipeg
6 Roman de Gare
7 Stuck
8 Synecdoce, NY
9 Tropic Thunder
10 Wall-E
Link to the List

Blackfilm.com

1 The Dark Knight
2 Slumdog Millionaire
3 Milk
4 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
5 Tell No One
6 Vicky Cristina Barcellona
7 Ballast
8 Rachel Getting Married
9 Gommorah
10 Let the Right One In
Link to the List

TT Stern-Enzi
Dayton City Paper

1 The Visitor
2 The Dark Knight
3 W
4 I’ve Loved You So Long
5 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
6 Slumdog Millionaire
7 Synecdoche, NY
8 Man on Wire
9 Rachel Getting Married
10 The Wrestler
Link to the List

Lisa Miller
Imperial Valley News

1 The Dark Knight
2 Wall-E
3 Iron Man
4 Frozen River
5 Appaloosa
6 Mamma Mia!
7 The Bank Job
8 Traitor
9 Burn After Reading
10 Ghost Town
Link to the List

Chris Knight
National Post

1 Wall-E
2 Doubt
3 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
4 Synecdoche, NY
5 Encounters at End of the World
6 Man on Wire
7 JCVD
8 Son of Rambow
9 Tell No One
10 The Visitor

Blackfilm.com | Andy Klein | Chris Knight | Lisa Miller | TT Stern-Enzi | NP Thompson