Archive for the 'Oscar Fever' Category

PEN15 Predicktions

Published by Rob on February 21, 2008 in Films and Oscar Fever. 0 Comments

Like every other blog, website, magazine and newspaper on earth right about now, it’s time to unleash the PEN15 Club Oscar predictions and preferences, while indulging in the time-honored tradition of whining about who wasn’t nominated. “Snub,” we cry. “Snub!”

Why should you read these? Because I’m not insulting your intelligence by drawing futile comparisons between the nominees and the Presidential candidates (”if Julie Christie is Hillary Clinton, then Ellen Page is Obama!”). You’re welcome.

I’m too lazy to cut and paste the nominees, so for reference, go here.

    Best Picture

Will Win: As pundits internet-wide attempt to MacGyver Juno and Michael Clayton upset scenarios into existence, the fact is that No Country for Old Men has swept the guild awards, is the second-highest grossing nominee, is a career-best for a respected filmmaking team, and has a Best Editing nomination. It wins in a walk.

Should Win: There Will Be Blood has the kind of sick genius that usually doesn’t even make the final five, so I’m eager for it to go the distance.

Where the Hell is…: Zodiac

    Best Director

Will: Coens won the DGA and will win this.

Should: Anderson, who’s never made a less-than-great movie in five tries.

Where the Hell is…: Todd Haynes, I’m Not There

    Best Actor

Will: Day-Lewis. Insert milkshake-drinking pun here.

Should: Day-Lewis, though Jones’ towering work as a military dad whose values are shaken to the core cut through the Paul Haggis treacle of Elah.

Where the Hell is…: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

    Best Actress

Will: Christie will extend the Sexy British Ladies of a Certain Age streak to two years.

Should: Linney, who’s ridiculously overdue, for nailing the kind of role that usually goes to men like Hoffman or Paul Giamatti.

Where the Hell is…: Nicole Kidman, Margot at the Wedding; Molly Shannon, Year of the Dog

    Best Supporting Actor

Will: Bardem, like his character, appears unstoppable, although he’s shown a tendency toward loopy acceptance speeches so far this awards season.

Should: Holbrook, for making us cry like a baby during the last 20 minutes or so of Into the Wild.

Where the Hell is…: Robert Downey Jr., Zodiac

    Supporting Actress

Will: As usual, the toughest category. I think those “Blanchett scenes only” I’m Not There DVDs the Weinsteins sent out, though blasphemous, will nail it for Cate. I can’t fathom Ruby Dee winning for her five-minute, window-dressing role. Career achievement awards are nice, but Dee’s career has mostly been onstage and on television.

Should: I’m cool with anyone but Dee, but I’m partial to Amy Ryan for immortalizing that dying Boston stereotype, Dorchester-dwelling Irish Catholic white trash.

Where the Hell is…: Leslie Mann, Knocked Up

    Original Screenplay

Will: I have a feeling that everyone’s sick of Diablo Cody and the award will go, instead, to Clayton’s Tony Gilroy.

Should: Clayton is the most elegantly scripted piece of Hollywood entertainment in years.

Where the Hell is…: Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, Superbad

    Adapted Screenplay

Will: The Coens, unless people get sick of voting for them in every category and throw a bone to Anderson instead.

Should: Polley, for fleshing out a sketch of a novella with total grace.

Where the Hell is…: Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard, Gone Baby Gone. There, I said it.

You’re welcome for the office pool victory. See you on the other side of my Monday morning hangover!

Belated addition to the Heath Ledger cacophony of mourning

Published by Rob on January 27, 2008 in Celebs, Films and Oscar Fever. 0 Comments

So normally at this point in the end of January I’d have written, like, six posts about the Oscar nominations, kvetching about everything from the complete and utter shafting of my favorite 2007 movie (Zodiac) to the deafening homoerotic undercurrent of almost all of the Supporting Actor nominees (look closely, it’s there).

But Tuesday’s untimely passing of Heath Ledger harshed even my Oscar buzz, and I mean that in the most sensitive way possible. And I don’t think there’s really any way to properly reflect on it apart from saying that, even if it didn’t mark the most groundbreaking example to date of a mainstream actor plunging headlong into the role of a gay romantic lead, Heath’s Brokeback performance would be one for the ages. And that more than anything else, it really felt like the beginning of something, not only for gay audiences, but for Heath, who had lifted his game to an unexpected level.

It has been bothering me for weeks that Cate Blanchett, amazing though she is, has been receiving the lion’s share of the attention for Todd Haynes’ fucking awesome quasi-Bob Dylan fantasia I’m Not There. Ledger (as a reluctant movie star who’s playing a version of Folk Singer Dylan in a biopic-within-the-movie) brings much of the ground-level humanity that this conceptual art project of a movie couldn’t quite do without. His breakup embrace with Charlotte Gainsbourg, scored to “Idiot Wind,” is the most beautiful moment in a movie where just about every shot deserves its own undergrand semiotics seminar.

All the more reason to include the movie on your pre-Oscar Catch-Up List, I guess.

The 2007 Oscar Nominations [Movie City News]

Overdosing on Bush

Published by Rob on January 13, 2008 in Films, Oscar Fever and TV. 0 Comments

No, the title of this post does not refer to the charges in Michelle Rodriguez’s latest arrest.

It’s my reaction to foolishly watching the first 10 minutes of NBC’s misbegotten Golden Globes-but-not-really telecast, in which Access Hollywood-amatons Billy Bush and Nancy Odell announced the winners in each category. If the network had trimmed the fat and just had Bush and Odell run through the nominees and winners, it might have been a moderately tolerable 20-minute news break.

But no, somebody thought it would be a better idea to pad the telecast to a solid hour, so as to allow Bush and Odell to air their own editorial opinions on each winner. Imagine my surprise when, after announcing that Cate Blanchett had won the Best Supporting Actress award for I’m Not There, Bush announced that he was surprised Amy Ryan hadn’t won, because Blanchett “was just doing an impression of a man.”

Yeah, thanks Roger Ebert. And kindly fuck off.

The hour also included multiple airings of a home video of zaftig, 19-year-old Hairspray nominee Nikki Blonsky and her obese New Jersey family learning of her Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy nomination, in which Blonsky screams, convulses like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, and knocks over a coffee table. I’m not sure what happened next, because by the end of the video I was in the bathroom vomiting up everything I’d eaten in the last six hours. It was like 1 Girl, 1 Couch.

Eventually I realized that I could switch to E!, which was airing the somewhat-less-unbearable live press conference, which I guess was feeding into NBC’s bloated circle jerk.

Hopefully this car wreck will serve as a Worst Case Scenario quasi-olive branch that’ll put an end to the Writers’ Strike. Because, come late February, if I have to watch Mary Hart announce the winner of the Best Picture Oscar, I’m going to impale myself on one of the Cable ACE Awards available for $5 on eBay.

Global cooling

Published by Rob on January 3, 2008 in Celebs, Oscar Fever and TV. 1 Comment

I’ll be honest. The news that the striking Writers’ Guild is officially going to picket the Golden Globes, thereby scaring away all the nominees and presenters, is really bumming me out.

Obviously it makes sense within the context of the strike (although WGA members are allowed to work on Letterman and the SAG Awards? Huh?), but it still seems like yet another example of this strike’s tendency toward Audience Punishment. I say this as someone who would race to his computer for a “2 Girls, 1 Cup” marathon before watching 5 seconds of NBC’s American Gladiators revival. (Speaking of which, I love that they’re marketing that show as a 300 ripoff, rather than the sorry excavation of early ’90s dross that it is.)

The Globes are stupid and trashy and, by all accounts, easily purchased. But we need them, especially in January, when a nation of loudmouthed heterosexuals are frothing over the NFL postseason. Isn’t this year’s entire awards season kind of like a Julie Christie postseason? Casey Affleck, Amy Ryan, Ellen Page and others all had really awesome and justly celebrated career breakthroughs this year, and I want to see how they look on the red carpet, dammit. Javier Bardem got a lot of attention for that terrible haircut he had in No Country for Old Men, and he deserves the opportunity to remind people that he looks really, really good in a tux.

So, even in the spirit of complete solidarity with the writers, I have to say that this sucks.

UPDATE, 1/7/08: NBC and the HFPA have somehow MacGuyvered a way to broadcast the awards show without actually broadcasting the awards show. Is it worth me staying home and getting ‘faced on champagne? Probably. But I’ll probably be flipping back and forth to the Desperate Housewives rerun on ABC.

Golden Globes, WGA at odds again [Variety]

Champagne hangovers, caviar screams

Published by Rob on February 26, 2007 in Celebs and Oscar Fever. 4 Comments

450bad141.jpgSo out of the 12 categories I predicted, I was only right about 8. Meh.

Ellen presided over a bland show that was, as usual, padded with all the filler that everyone has complained about since the infancy of the telecast. Former Paramount head Sherry Lansing’s “humanitarian” acceptance speech showed why she never made it as an actress.

Why bring in Pilobolus if you’re going to use them for a total of 30 seconds? And the mouth-orchestra sound effect people were cool, but come on. I want to see more starlets in terrible dresses mispronouncing people’s names! More shots of a deeply uncomfortable-looking Eddie Murphy! More Mark Wahlberg!

My personal highlights… Continue reading ‘Champagne hangovers, caviar screams’

And the Oscar goes to… “trashed”

Published by Rob on February 23, 2007 in Celebs, Films and Oscar Fever. 1 Comment

2007-02-22t212822z_01_nootr_rtridsp_2_ouken-uk-oscars-scorsese.jpgThe headline, of course, refers to the category of “What will Rob’s physical/mental state be at the end of Oscar night?” In the meantime, here’s who I think is winning, along with my preferences - ’cause dammit, I took the time to see everything (even Venus and Letters from Iwo Jima, and I’m willing to bet even Clint Eastwood’s and Peter O’Toole’s grandchildren didn’t even pay to see those).

I’m not typing out all the damn nominees. If you need it for reference, it’s here.

For further Oscar reading, I highly recommend visiting the Film Experience blog, where Nathaniel has done a comprehensive job of Smart Gay Fanboy Oscar coverage - including a “visit” from tight-grinned Oscar bridesmaid Annette Bening!

Best Picture

Prediction: In years where there’s no clear frontrunner, I find that it’s safest to bet on the movie I liked the least. This year, that’s Little Miss Sunshine.
Preference: The Depaaaahted

Best Director

Prediction: They can’t deny Scorsese again. If they do, I can picture Joe Pesci sticking Eastwood’s head in a vise and gouging out his eye, like in Casino.
Preference: Marty.

Best Actor

Prediction: Forest Whitaker. Although everyone’s going to be a little sad for one-foot-in-the-grave Peter O’Toole on the night of his eighth loss.
Preference: What a weak fucking category this year. Gosling rocked, but if he wins, he’ll probably make some self-righteous speech about Darfur. Do I lose my snob card if I admit that I thought Will Smith was brilliant?

Actress

Prediction: Helen Mirren. She’s such a sure thing that Dame Judi isn’t even showing up.
Preference: Nothing beats Kate Winslet’s bleacher freakout in Little Children.

Continue reading ‘And the Oscar goes to… “trashed”’

PEN15 Drippings: Post-Oscar nod edition

Published by Rob on January 24, 2007 in Bitches, Celebs, Films and Oscar Fever. 0 Comments

_41683612_cruz_volver203.jpgROB’S NOTE: Okay, so I wrote this beautiful Oscar nomination prediction post and saved it as “private” when I thought it had been published, and didn’t realize my mistake until today. But I seriously did write it before the fact. I even got some key predictions wrong (hello, Dreamgirls). Anyway, read it now and then come back to this. Thanks. Sorry for the fuckup.

So has Beyonce’s mom put a hit out on Jennifer Hudson yet? I love the idea that Miss Knowles and Jamie Foxx’s blahness dragged all of Dreamgirls down and out of the Best Picture race. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

Can somebody explain to me what the fuck is going to win Best Picture now? The Departed is too genre, Babel is too low-grossing and Letters from Iwo Jima is too soon (as in too soon to give it to yet another movie involving Clint Eastwood and/or Paul Haggis). My money’s on (groan) Little Miss Sunshine. [Hollywood Reporter]

Salma Hayek’s “Everybody gets a car”-esque reaction to her amiga Penelope’s completely expected Best Actress nomination does little to quell rumors about their hot, Lesb-atina love affair. [YouTube]

The always-pertinent Tom O’Neil makes the point that you can’t blame the Dreamgirls omission on racism by counting the nominated minorities. Oscar is colorblind, Tom. It just hates the gays. [The Envelope]

Oscar nomination eve or, let’s get some money up in here

Published by Rob on January 22, 2007 in Celebs, Films and Oscar Fever. 1 Comment

departed-2.jpgIt’s Oscar nomination eve. And because everyone who follows the yearly blood-and-heartbreak spectacle of Oscar season knows that finding out the nominees is the fun part, I’m gonna lay it all on the line now. Hold me to these predictions, folks. Here’s who I think is getting hysterical calls from their publicists tomorrow morning at 5:30 PST (Jordan, set your alarm).

Best Picture

  • Babel - “Como se dice Crash 2?”
  • The Departed - Pissah
  • Dreamgirls - And I am telling you a grotesque whitewashing of the rise of black music in America is likely to win
  • Little Miss Sunshine - I knew Sideways, and it’s no Sideways. But people seem to love it.
  • The Queen - Who can resist a tabloid tale, brilliantly told, in a classy package?

Best Director

  • Bill Condon, Dreamgirls - Keepin’ it gay
  • Clint Eastwood, Letters from Iwo Jima - It’s Clint, it’s depressing, it’s in Japanese, it’s in!
  • Stephen Frears, The Queen - A lot of good titles on his CV
  • Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Babel - I can’t wait to hear Ang Lee pronounce this one
  • Martin Scorsese, The Departed - Who will break Marty’s heart this year?

Best Actor

  • Leonardo DiCaprio, The Departed - Competing with himself for Blood Diamond is unlikely to be an issue, since everyone hated Blood Diamond
  • Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson - Crack is whack. Voters will find a new outlet for the promise they used to see in Edward Norton.
  • Peter O’Toole, Venus - His recent personal appearances are the best argument for teetotaling since Dina Lohan
  • Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness - Who else could rock an intimate drama about life on the bread line to $150 mil and counting?
  • Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland - Idi Amin-motherfucker

Continue reading ‘Oscar nomination eve or, let’s get some money up in here’

“I didn’t call the bitch fat,” and other non-T.R. Knight-related post-Golden Globes quotes

Published by Rob on January 18, 2007 in Bitches, Celebs, Oscar Fever and TV. 0 Comments

gg06arrival_g.jpgBy now, everyone has had time to digest the scandal that took place in the Golden Globes press room, with Isaiah Washington announcing that he never, in fact, referred to co-star T.R. Knight as a jizz-vacuuming, lycra-wearing pig bottom. Or “faggot,” I forget which. Anyway, both pundits and his co-stars have called bullshit on Washington, as well they should have. But the Isaiah brouhaha has obscured some other Golden Globes press room verbal miscues that we found no less disturbing. Such as:

“I didn’t call the bitch fat. I said that I would have done just as good a job playing Effie, but I did not physically have the ability to gain the necessary 175 pounds before the shoot. That’s the only reason I was stuck with the Diana Ross role. But I never said ‘fat.’” - Beyonce

“I didn’t say that Prince was short. I said that Appollonia told me he used to go up on her.” - Justin Timberlake

“I never said I wasn’t Scary Spice’s babydaddy. I said that if she comes after me for child support, I’ll have her buried in the same desert as the post-op tranny street whores that I meet at Tom Cruise’s house.” - Eddie Murphy

“I never constructed a 20-foot wicker Oscar and lit it on fire in Hilary Swank’s front yard.” - Annette Bening

Isaiah Washington - A Terror on the Set? [TMZ]
Grey’s star: Isaiah Washington needs to f’ing zip it [TV Guide]
T.R. Knight says ‘Grey’ co-star Isaiah Washington used slur about him [International Herald Tribune]

“Children” of the year

Published by Rob on January 8, 2007 in Films and Oscar Fever. 0 Comments

childrenofmen2.jpgI don’t have much to kvetch about today, so I figured I’d direct everybody’s attention to what I think are the two best movies of 2006, both of which expanded into more cities this past weekend.

First of all, Children of Men, directed by Alfonso Cuaron, is now in wide release, and it’s as good as you’ve heard. In fact, I’m even more enamored with it than I was with Cuaron’s Y Tu Mama Tambien, and that had extended full frontal nudity by Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna. But every shot of this bleak yet gallows-funny portrait of the not-too-distant future contains so much wit, horror and sadness that I can’t wait to see it again. This YouTube montage - a last-ditch viral marketing attempt by Universal to get the movie a Best Picture nomination? - sums it up pretty well, although it’s spoiler-heavy.

Second of all, Little Children, directed by Todd Field, has finally expanded into a few more theaters after three months of steady business in the top markets (it’s in its jaw-dropping twelfth week at the Landmark theater here in Cambridge). In fact, I’m even more enamored with it than I was with Field’s In the Bedroom, and that had Sissy Spacek breaking dishes and giving Marisa Tomei a vicious face-slapping. Kate Winslet is going to get her fifth Oscar nomination for this movie, and she should win, because she reminds you of aspects of yuppy mom malaise you forgot existed in one of the best-ever cinematic portrayals of Privileged Straight Female Ambivalence. And she’s just one of the movie’s large, flawless ensemble. Plus, there’s Patrick Wilson’s ass.

I don’t think either of these movies will make the Best Picture cut at Oscar time. That Little Miss Sunshine was so darling, don’tcha know, and Dreamgirls! You go, sister! And that’s a ridiculous shame. These are both totally accessible Hollywood movies, in a way. But they challenged me to think longer and deeper about our world now - procreation and the passing on of generational anxieties is of crucial importance in both, as is the the phrase “homeland security” - than anything else in a long while.

So go see them, dammit! Yes, I know Stomp the Yard comes out on Friday. You can wait for the DVD.

Why ‘Children of Men’ should be nominated for Best Picture [YouTube]