HE Golden Globe predictions: Best Drama — The Departed; Best Musical or Comedy — Dreamgirls will probably eke out a win — I have a feeling that Little Miss Sunshine and Borat aren’t strong enough to take it away; Best Director — Martin Scorsese; Best Actress, Drama — Helen Mirren; Best Actor, Drama — Forest Whitaker (although I’d rather see Leonardo DiCaprio take it); Best Actress, Comedy/Musical — Meryl Streep; Best Actor, Comedy/Musical: Sacha Baron Cohen; Best Supporting Actor: Eddie Murphy (although it really ought to be Alan Arkin…really); Best Supporting Actress — Jennifer Hudson (locked); Best Screenplay — Babel; Best Animated Feature — Cars; Best Foreign Film — Pan’s Labyrinth or The Lives of Others.
I…uhm…half-apologize for saying earlier today that David Poland is a member of the Dreamgirls “team.” Poland answers to no one but his own voice, apparently, and he has no particular ties to Dream- girls that results in his being a “member of the team.” (I’m vomiting on my rug as I say this.)
Poland obviously supports the idea of Dreamgirls winning the Best Picture Oscar, of course, but he’s not in the pocket of or unduly allied with anyone on the DreamWorks/Dreamgirls posse. I thought that was thud-obvious, but a certain party wants this pointed out anyway.
This said, let me make something very clear. I am a member of the United 93 team in the sense that I admire that film like few others, and I have no concerns about admitting this at all. I believe in people’s willingness and ability to understand this statement in the right way. I’m also a member of the Children of Men team, the Lives of Others team, the Departed team, the Little Miss Sunshine team, the Babel team, the Pan’s Labyrinth team and so on. And proud of it. I believe in solidarity, in teams, in standing together with the right films and the right people for the right reasons.
I had a chance to grab a dinner last night in Venice with Fox news guy Bill McCuddy, and it was a full-out pleasure to kick back and ignore the BFCA Critics Choice Awards shebaggle going on at the Santa Monica Civic, about a mile north of Hal’s. Is the BFCA breathing the same pollen as the Hollywood Foreign Press? Or the Oscars, even? (Consider this Oscarwatch.com comparison.) Do they even have the same kind of lungs?
If either is the case, or simply if the wind continues to blow in the direction it now seems to be blowing, then The Departed, Babel, Borat and, most importantly, Little Miss Sunshine may end up with most of the Golden Globes glory on Monday night.
It wasn’t a matter of how many Critics Choice Awards Dreamgirls, Little Miss Sunshine and The Departed won last night — it was what kind of wins.
Dreamgirls and Little Miss Sunshine took four trophies each, but Sunshine‘s were more substantial (or they seemed so to me) — Best Original Screenplay and an acting ensemble award (important) along with two minor performance awards (for Paul Dano and Abigail Breslin). Dreamgirls took two significant acting awards — Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy for Best Supporting Actress and Actor — plus best song and soundtrack wins. Due respect, but these last two don’t matter a whole lot. The soundtrack award is especially what-the-fuckish.
The Departed, by contrast, ended up with the two biggest and meatiest awards — Best Picture and Best Director (Martin Scorsese).
I’m not saying that the BFCA wins are HFPA or Oscar bellwethers, but if they are…
This is on the tip of everyone’s tongue, so I may as well just say it: if Sunshine or Borat take the Best Comedy-Musical Golden Globe Award, people are going to be saying that Dreamgirls is really on the ropes. Obviously the Academy and the HFPA are separate equations — they have their own filters and standards, and choose what they damn well prefer. And to hear it from some who’ve been around a few years (a certain New York-based columnist, for one), a portion of the HFPA membership is thought to harbor certain attitudes regarding African-American culture, so a Dreamgirls turndown, if it happens, will be, at the very least, tainted by this suspicion.
I’m not supposed to say this, and I don’t want to say this because Dreamgirls has a lot of enjoyment and punch and pizazz. I have no major beef with it except for my view that it doesn’t really flow and seep in, but it’ll be Huge News if the Golden Globes go for LMS or Borat in the comedy-drama category. It’ll be Holy Shit time …the big brassy presumptive front-runner tackled and brought down behind its own line of scrimmage. David Poland has been a good hard-charging linebacker, but…
Then again, a prominent Oscar strategist who’s not on the Dreamgirls team thinks it’ll win on Monday night. And maybe it will. If this happens, fine. It’s best not to say anything more, but it’s going to be a helluva dramatic moment either way.
My own prediction is that the Best Picture Oscar is going to be won by either The Departed or Little Miss Sunshine or Babel. I think Dreamgirls, for all the spunk and flash, is almost certainly out of the running because it doesn’t have that emotional schwing. Nobody in it falls in or out of love in a way that makes you hurt for them, nobody tragically or bravely dies, it doesn’t make you cry. It doesn’t even titillate with sex. And if I turn out to be wrong, cool…whatever.
Here’s a rundown of all the BFCA winners. MCN’s Laura Rooney did the posting last night…good fast work
Guillermo Arriaga‘s The Night Buffalo, a novel about an intense love triangle, intense sex, betrayal, death, schizophre- nia and stabs at redemption, has been made into a sharply-honed drama with the same title — produced by Arriaga and directed by Jorge Hernandez Aldana.
Night Buffalo writer-producer Guillermo Arriaga at United Talent Agency headquarters — Thursday, 1.11.07, 4:20 pm
It’ll have its debut at the end of next week at the Sundance Film Festival. This, obviously, is mainly what this article is about — bringing attention to Arriaga’s film and (perhaps) helping him to land a U.S. distribution deal, as well as catching up with a guy I regard as a friend.
In Arriaga’s words, The Night Buffalo is the story “of a man named Manuel (Diego Luna) and a very good friend named Gregorio (Gabriel Gonzalez), who is schizophrenic, and about Gregorio’s great love for his girlfriend Tania (Liz Gallardo). Manuel and Tania are the people Gregorio trusts the most, but while he’s going in and out of the mental asylums, they begin having a relationship until they fall in love. Obviously the relationship between Gregorio and his girlfriend is broken and the friendship is broken.
“When these friends seem to reconcile, Gregorio kills himself, and he leaves Manuel a box with secret messages after being dead, with letters, photographs, tapes, and slowly Manuel begins to get into the spiral of madness that his friend has been living. So this is a story of madness, of love, of a sense of being lost, of guilt, and how in the end you have to realize and assume the consequences of your acts and the valued importance of love.”
Arriaga is best known as the guy who penned Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s three films — Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel — as well as Tommy Lee Jones‘ The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Arriaga is also known for the big creative split that happened between himself and Gonzalez Innarritu sometime early last year (but not revealed until last May, during the Cannes Film Festival).
Just before I left I snapped this shot of Arriaga and Night Buffalo co-producer Jimena Rodriguez — Thursday, 1,11,07, 5:45 pm
I’ve been friendly with Arriaga since the time of 21 Grams (i.e., three years ago). We’ve been talking about sitting down and discussing The Night Buffalo for a long while now. We finally did this in a conference room at the United Talent Agency building yesterday afternoon. Here’s what resulted.
Our chat went on for the better part of an hour. It’s a bit quieter than the Sienna Miller conversation. I wasn’t in a journalistically pushy frame of mind. The gentle, soft-spoken Arriaga had that effect on me.
At the end of our chat I also met Night Buffalo co-producer Jimena Rodriguez, who will be with Arriaga in Park City along with the rest of the team.
Sundance honcho Geoffrey Gilmore says that “male culture, the fickleness of love, and desperate searching by lost souls are only some of the subjects this highly erotic, superbly photographed depiction of young lovers touches upon.
“As despicable as the behavior of this very dysfunctional community is, the need for love and absolution is relentless. As a treatise on the cognitive dissonance of romance, The Night Buffalo is pure and powerful storytelling. It may show us things that we don’t want to see, but it will eventually lead us to a fuller understanding of the mysterious power of love.”
The first Night Buffalo screening will be at 9 pm on Friday, 1.19.07, at Park City’s Egyptian theatre. Then comes a midnight screening on 1.20 at the Holiday Village followed by a 3:15 pm the next day (Sunday) at the same venue. The screening at the Tower theatre in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, 1.24, at 9 pm doesn’t count because nobody goes to Salt Lake City during Sundance and the festival is essentially over anyway by that day.
Stephen Frears‘ The Queen corralled 10 BAFTA (i.e., British Academy of Film and Television Arts) nominations this morning, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay (Peter Morgan) and Best Actress (Helen Mirren). And Casino Royale tallied nine nominations, including a deserved Best Actor nom for Daniel Craig. Wait….could all this have a little something to do with nationalistic solidarity?
The winners will be named on a BBC telecast of the London award ceremony on Sunday, February 11.
The Queen has it in the bag, of course, but for the sake of phony suspense The Departed, Babel, The Last King Of Scotland and Little Miss Sunshine have also been nominated for Best Film. And the other Best Director nominees besides Frears are Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Babel), Martin Scorsese (The Departed), Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine) and Paul Greengrass (United 93).
Morgan’s Queen script aside (i.e., another slam-dunk), the other Best Original Screenplay noms are for Paul Greengrass‘s United 93 script, Guillermo del Toro‘s Pan’s Labyrinthand Michael Arndt‘s Little Miss Sunshine.
The Best Adapted Screenplay noms are for Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis‘s Casino Royale script in the adapted screenplay section, with William Monahan (The Departed), Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada), Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock (The Last King Of Scotland) and Patrick Marber (Notes On A Scandal) rounding out the pack.
The Best Actor noms are Craig, Peter O’Toole (Venus), Leonardo DiCaprio (The Departed), Richard Griffiths (The History Boys…forget it), and Forest Whitaker (The Last King Of Scotland) .
Best actress will be won by Mirren, of course, but for appearances sake the great Penelope Cruz (Volver), Judi Dench (Notes On A Scandal), Meryl Streep (“The Devil Wears Prada”) and Kate Winslet (Little Children) have also been nominated.
“When I first meet Guillermo del Toro, writer/director of Pan’s Labyrinth, one of the true masterpieces of the decade, he is not promoting his own movie,” begins Sasha Stone‘s just-up profile. “He is there, along with his friend Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu to hold a special screening for their friend Alfonso Cuaron‘s new film, Children of Men.”
“Del Toro, Cuaron and Gonzalez Inarritu together have produced some of the year’s best offerings, even if Children of Men and Pan’s Labyrinth hit almost too late for Oscar voters or guild voters to catch up with them. Running the awards circuit can do wonders for films that were difficult to get made, namely in the money department. Being nominated for an Oscar at least doubles your profit out of the gate, which can mean life or death for a labor of love like Pan’s.
“While Babel is a strong best picture contender, and Pan’s the frontrunner for the foreign language Oscar, Children of Men is a highly acclaimed film yet so few Academy members, and perhaps guild members, seem to have seen it. It seemed odd to me that these two lauded directors would be doing anything but trying to gain recognition for their own work, but what you get immediately from them is that they aren’t like the typical Hollywood players.
“The Universal lot was not easy to get to on a Wednesday night. With all of the screenings and parties and voting, how can any Academy voter keep straight all that needs to be seen and done. This is why Del Toro and Gonzalez Inarritu went to the trouble of holding a special screening — in hopes of giving Academy members a chance to see it on the big screen, which greatly enhances the experience of Children of Men.
“Friendship, collaboration and relationships are important to them. The question isn’t why were they doing this for their friend but rather, how could they not do it?”
David Poland vs. various Hot Blog commenters on the fluctuating condition of the Oscar chances of Dreamgirls — a truly fascinating debate with some shrewd analyses. A few commenters have tried to nail Poland for backpedaling on having said Dreamgirls “will win the Best Picture Oscar” with Poland responding he never quite said that but what he said was actually this and blah, blah.
Phantom of the Opera, Munich and now this. Poland is deflecting, sweating… swinging his flintlock like Fess Parker‘s Davy Crockett fighting off Santa Ana’s troops at the Alamo. And for all of it, Dreamgirls might stilll win the Best Picture Oscar.
Poland: “The only tangible problem Dreamgirls is actually having right now is with the same half-dozen press members and a couple of awards consultants who have been gunning for it — with various motives — since November 15th or earlier. The fact is, if I suddenly claimed that I didn’t think Dreamgirls was going to win, based on what’s happened in the last two weeks, I would be a hypocrite and a fool… because nothing but positive things have happened…except in the press and on some blogs.”
“Is there anyone else…with daily spin as unbelievably malicious and stupid as what we’ve seen on Dreamgirls in the last week? Do you think that is a coincidence?”
This is really good reading. I love it. High drama, sharply worded posts….read it all.
And it continues: David Carr (a.k.a. “the Bagger”) has been Poland-swatted for passing along a purported linkage between Gail Berman’s departure and the general Dreamgirls slowdown, and he responded to this early today: “Mr. Poland gets so riled that the Bagger worries he might open up the HotBlog and see nothing but red mist where the headshot used to be. As for all the zigs and zags he ascribes to the Bagger, that’s a bit of overthinking. The Bagger has been out doing events, lots of them, and the lack of sleep and reporting time makes him needy and gullible, not riven by agendas.
“Yes, the Bagger picked Dreamgirls as a favorite to win early on, but he has no real rooting interest other than the running story, which grows more interesting every day. The Golden Globes take place Monday and many smart people don’t know which way the dramatic category is going to go: Departed or Babel? And the comedy/musical award is a three-way jump ball: Little Miss Sunshine, Dreamgirls and yes, Virginia, Borat.”
Oscar strategist Tony Angelotti tells Variety pinch-hitter Sasha Stone that “being a front-runner can be a blessing and a curse. It’s nerve-rattling on one hand, because a front-runner can lose, an underdog can’t.” A prime example — certainly the most recent — is last year’s defeat of Brokeback Mountain in the Best Picture category by Crash, “proving once again that even the most formidable frontrunners are vulnerable.”
“And thus Crash joined the ranks of what are considered the biggest spoilers in recent Oscar history: An American in Paris, Chariots of Fire, Shakespeare in Love and Braveheart — all films that, for whatever reason, captured the hearts of Academy voters when everyone was convinced it would go the other way,” Stone writes.
An anonymous producer and Academy member says that “the Academy is a very middlebrow group, and they’re uncomfortable with homosexuality.” My own much-better quote follows: “The over-60, over-65, over-70 group in there just couldn’t roll with the idea of gay men in a Western setting. There are leaps that certain generations just can’t make. It’s not them. It’s not their history.”
Which ’06 film is the vulnerable frontrunner right now? Are qwe speaking of an obvious Best Picture contender startign with the letter “D” and, according to some, a Best Picture lock that’s starting to look — ask David Carr — like it has feet of clay? Or another D movie that’s looking stronger right now, but may lose out in the end of Little Miss Sunshine and/or Babel? You know the names, look up the numbers.
“With both the PGA and DGA nominations listing exactly the same films — The Departed, Dreamgirls, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen and Babel — many pundits have written off the chances of any other movie having a real Best Picture chance now,” Hollywood Wiretap‘s Pete Hammond says in his latest column.
“The fact that all but one of those films have been widely screened since early fall and the other one, the December-released Dreamgirls, started its extensive screening program on 11.15, should bury the idea once and for all that coming out in the last month of the year is an advantage.
“As with everything else in Hollywood, the importance of being seen is key. Lions Gate, which scored so heavily with it√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s May opening strategy of Crash in 2005, is starting its campaign for the Julie Christie Alzheimers drama, Away From Her, which opens May 5th. Look for others to follow suit.”
The Writers Guild of America has nominated the screenplays for Babel (cheers and salutations for Guillermo Arriaga), Little Miss Sunshine, (go, Michael Arndt!), The Queen, Stranger Thank Fiction and United 93 for its original screenplay award.
Wait a minute…Zach Helm‘s Stranger Than Fiction screenplay made no sense! It didn’t attempt to figure out, much less explain, the metaphysical system of the movie, and this results in a WGA nomination? Gimme a break.
The Best Adapted Screenplay nominations were for Borat, The Departed, The Devil Wears Prada, Little Children and Thank You for Smoking.
Winners will be announced 2.11.07 in simultaneous ceremonies in Los Angeles and New York.
I spoke this morning to Jesse Heistand, assistant director of communications at Directors Guild of America, and after some checking he confirmed that Babel helmer Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is the first Mexican director ever to be nominated for a DGA Best Director award.
The five DGA Best Director nominees, announced just a few minutes ago, are Bill Condon (Dreamgirls), Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine), Stephen Frears (The Queen), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Babel) and, naturally, Martin Scorsese (The Departed).
In their wisdom, the Directors Guild members blew off two of the Three Amigos — Pan’s Labyrinth‘s Guillermo del Toro and Children of Men‘s Alfonso Cuaron. Rather xenophobic of them, no? Seems that way from this corner.
I have to say I’m particularly shocked that the DGA-ers did this to Cuaron as well as United 93‘s Paul Greengrass’. These are stunning, historic, legendary films, and the voting DGA rank-and-filers have now shown themselves to be a bunch of Academy mainstream go-alongers…people with no particular conviction beyond the safety of received party-chatter wisdom.
Five, ten, fifty years from now, people who truly care about films will be occasionally watching and talking about United 93 and Children of Men with great feeling. The DGA members drinking orange juice and walking their dogs and driving their SUVs to work this morning know this…and it didn’t matter to them. If I were one of them, I would be having mixed feelings, at best, and indigestion, at worst.
But congratulations to the nominees….really. Everyone on this list should feel proud. And safe. The five films directed by the five nominees will almost certainly be the Best Picture Oscar nominees that’ll be announced in a couple of weeks.
Clint Eastwood was passed over because the guild members didn’t agree with the critics, and (maybe) because their wives wouldn’t watch Letters From Iwo Jima, or perhaps because they felt it was somehow out of the realm because of the Japanese language factor. (More xenophobia!) Clint may get a nomination fom the Academy despite this. The people who vote in the craft guilds tend to skew a bit younger — only about 400 of them are movie directors, most of them work in commercials and on TV shows and whatnot. They may not relate to Eastwood’s language as much as the older Academy crowd…we’ll see.
I guess I was the only one on Sasha Stone‘s Oscarwatch prediction chart to go for Dayton and Faris, Well, they’re certainly on the map now.
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