Posts Tagged ‘The Oscars’

Nominations Sidebar

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

Toy Story 3 is the third fully animated feature film nominated for Best Picture. Previous nominees were Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Up (2009). Beauty and the Beast and WALL-E (2008) each received a total of six nominations, the most for a fully animated feature to date. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), which combined live action and animation, also had six nominations.

For only the second time since 1951, when individual producers rather than companies were first cited in the Best Picture nominations, a producer has received two Best Picture nominations in the same year. Scott Rudin has been nominated for The Social Network and True Grit. In 1974, Francis Ford Coppola and Fred Roos received Best Picture nominations for both The Conversation and the eventual winner, The Godfather Part II.

With their nominations for Best Picture, Directing and Writing for True Grit, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen join Warren Beatty, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Jackson and Oliver Stone in having been nominated in those three categories for two different films. Only Stanley Kubrick has been nominated in those categories for three different films (Dr. Strangelove in 1964, A Clockwork Orange in 1971, Barry Lyndon in 1975). The Coens were previously nominated for No Country for Old Men (2007).

In the acting categories, eight individuals are first-time nominees. Four of the nominees (Javier Bardem, Jeff Bridges, Geoffrey Rush and Nicole Kidman) are previous acting winners. Jeff Bridges, Colin Firth and Jeremy Renner were also nominated last year.

Javier Bardem’s nominated performance is in Spanish. Five performers have won Academy Awards for roles using spoken languages other than English. They are Sophia Loren (1961, Actress in Two Women), Robert De Niro (1974, Supporting Actor in The Godfather Part II), Roberto Benigni (1998, Actor in Life Is Beautiful), Benicio Del Toro (2000, Supporting Actor in Traffic) and Marion Cotillard (2007, Actress in La Vie en Rose). In addition, Marlee Matlin received the 1986 Leading Actress award for a performance almost entirely in American Sign Language. The other nominees have been Marcello Mastroianni (1962, Actor in Divorce – Italian Style; 1977, Actor in A Special Day and 1987, Actor in Dark Eyes), Sophia Loren (1964, Actress in Marriage Italian Style), Anouk Aimee (1966, Actress in A Man and a Woman), Ida Kaminska (1966, Actress in The Shop on Main Street), Liv Ullmann (1972, Actress in The Emigrants and 1976, Actress in Face to Face), Valentina Cortese (1974, Supporting Actress in Day for Night), Isabelle Adjani (1975, Actress in The Story of Adele H. and 1989, Actress in Camille Claudel), Marie-Christine Barrault (1976, Actress in Cousin, Cousine), Giancarlo Giannini (1976, Actor in Seven Beauties), Ingrid Bergman (1978, Actress in Autumn Sonata), Max von Sydow (1988, Actor in Pelle the Conqueror), Gerard Depardieu (1990, Actor in Cyrano de Bergerac), Graham Greene (1990, Supporting Actor in Dances With Wolves), Catherine Deneuve (1992, Actress in Indochine), Massimo Troisi (1995, Actor in The Postman [Il Postino]), Fernanda Montenegro (1998, Actress in Central Station), Catalina Sandino Moreno (2004, Actress in Maria Full of Grace), Penélope Cruz (2006, Actress in Volver), and Rinko Kikuchi (2006, Supporting Actress in Babel).

Alan Menken’s nomination for Original Song is his fourteenth in that category, with four wins. If he were to win a fifth award, he would move ahead of Sammy Cahn, Johnny Mercer and James Van Heusen, each of whom won four awards in the Song category. Menken also has five nominations and four wins in the Original Score category.

Best Picture Release Dates:
Winter’s Bone – June 11, 2010
Toy Story 3 – June 18, 2010
The Kids Are All Right – July 9, 2010
Inception – July 16, 2010
The Social Network – October 1, 2010
127 Hours – November 5, 2010
The King’s Speech – November 26, 2010
Black Swan – December 3, 2010
The Fighter – December 10, 2010
True Grit – December 22, 2010

15 Features in Line for 2010 VFX Oscar

Friday, December 10th, 2010

15 Features in Line for 2010 VFX Oscar

Grease is the Word at Paramount These Days

Tuesday, November 4th, 1997

Producer Alan Carr, the most popular caftan wearer ever, aside from our own Andy Jones, is back on the lot, prepping the Grease 20th Anniversary Star Wars-like re-launch, in which more than 1,500 screens will play the remastered version on the smash hit. Unlike Star Wars, there’s no extra footage highlighting new advances, like Olivia Newton-John being able to act. This could be Paramount’s one shot at cashing in on its status as The Studio of The ’70s after making little noise with re-masters of The Godfather and Chinatown. Remember, Paramount is now owned by MTV parent Viacom, so any film that requires an attention span may be out of their range.
Meanwhile, Carr, also in re-release, has finally recovered from the 1989 Academy Awards he produced. (Remember Rob Lowe and Snow White? Disney did. They sued the Academy for copyright infringement, eventually settling.) You’ve got to respect the guy. Carr was a Hollywood Queen when Queens weren’t cool and has since survived years of dialysis, multiple hip surgeries and back injuries, not to mention the ’70s themselves. And as Sondheim says, he’s still here.
Speaking of large men, has Willard Scott finally found the right movie vehicle? I hope not. Twentieth Century Fox has paid low-to-mid-six figures for Five Day Forecast, a movie pitch about an experiment that brings evil weather systems normally found only on other planets to earth. I guess they ran out of earthbound weather disasters. “Hail Storm: The Movie,” “Smog Alert” and “Seasonal Showers of Death” were all rejected by the studio. Al Roker will pull on the tights and cape to fight the interplanetary storms. Just kidding. But now that image is in your head. Mmwwwahhh-ha-ha-ha!
What, you think I’m a natural disaster? Email’s the word…