Oscarwatch‘s Sasha Stone has asked me to send her my choices for the five most likely DGA Best Director nominees, which are being announced tomorrow. I started to write them out but quickly devolved into hemming and hawing because…
I can’t figure which of the well-celebrated Three Amigos (Inarritu, Cuaron, del Toro) are the most steady and venerated in the membership’s eyes, for one thing, and which is the most vulnerable? They obviously all deserve to be nominated — if nothing else, ’06 has truly been the Year of the Three Amigos — and I really don’t know which way to turn because of the Children of Men surge of the last week or so. (Did it take off too late?)
The Queen‘s Stephen Frears is a likely nominee, I suppose, but I haven’t been feeling great inevitable power surges coming out of the Queen camp. I’ve been presuming all along that Bill Condon will be nominated for Dreamgirls, and good for Bill and Larry Mark and the gang if this happens, but I don’t know. The gotta- salute-the-big-musical herd mentality will probably put him over, but I wonder.
And I’m figuring United 93‘s Paul Greengrass has to be nominated…no? The most highly regarded film of the year according to the critics?
Here are my five choices plus reasons for each: (1) Martin Scorsese (The Departed) — slam dunk, no question, in the bag. (2) Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Babel) — the Producers Guild and SAG ratifications make this more likely than it was two or three weeks ago; (3) Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine) — because everyone loves their film, and they’re little guys from the indie/MTV world; (4) Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) — herd mentality; and (5) Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) — because he’s the master.
It depends on how many DGA voters have seen Children of Men and how many of these have picked up on the growing support for this film, but something tells me that helmer Alfonso Cuaron might just make it into the top five. And if he doesn’t make it — or even if he does — Greengrass might step in also. Dunno, can’t figure it….stumped.
Flash…yesterday afternoon’s news!…Guillermo Del Toro‘s Pan’s Labyrinth was voted Best Picture of 2006 by the National Society of Film Critics. This is a huge boost for Pan’s and del Toro — the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Feature seems all but assured. Labyrinth edged out Christi Puiu‘s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and Clint Eastwood‘s Letters from Iwo Jima, which came in second and third, respectively.
The Best Director award, however, went to United 93‘s Paul Greengrass. (I say again to Academy members who’ve refused so far to see this film — don’t buckle!) Del Toro and The Departed‘s Martin Scorsese were first and second runners-up.
Forest Whitaker, the Manchurian Candidate nominee for Best Actor who controls the minds of critics from coast to coasts through an implanted chip, was named best actor by the NSFC for The Last King of Scotland. The only consolation in this corner is that Whitaker “eked out that victory only after an extra tie-breaking vote,” says the Hollywood Reporter‘s Gregg Kilday, “which left Peter O’Toole in second place for Venus, followed by Ryan Gosling for Half Nelson.”
The Queen‘s Helen Mirren was named Best Actress for the 89th time.” Mark Wahlberg took the Best Supporting Actor honors for his motor-mouth, “ya-muthah-fucked-me” cop in The Departed. Meryl Streep was named Best Supporting Actress for her performances in both A Prairie Home Companion and The Devil Wears Prada — does this mean Jennifer Hudson‘s Dreamgirls performance is slipping just a bit? (I’m not saying it is — I’m just asking.)
The Queen‘s Peter Morgan won the Best Screenplay prize, with The Departed‘s William Monahan and The Good Shepherd‘s Eric Roth the top two runners-up.
Emmanuel Lubezki, naturally, won the Best Cinematography Oscar for Children of Men.
Fearless Manhattan journo Lewis Beale has passed along his ’06 superlatives — here are a few: (a) The Best: Inside Man, United 93, Little Miss Sunshine, Half Nelson, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Proposition, Babel, The Departed, Casino Royale, Children of Men; (b) The Worst: The Notorious Betty Page, London, Freedomland, Talladega Nights, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Fast Food Nation; (c) Underrated: Brick, Find Me Guilty, Hollywoodland, Clerks II, Miami Vice, The Fountain, Apocalypto, Come Early Morning; (d) Overrated: Volver, Borat, Dreamgirls; (e) Full Disclosure: Beale has not seen Letters From Iwo Jima; (f) Guilty Pleasures: Glory Road, Slither, Invincible, Something New.
On top of (g) Best Doper Movie: The Fountain; (h) Best Pre-Columbian Chase Film: Apocalypto; (i) Best Film I Saw In 2006 Which Won’t Be Released Until Later This Year: The Lives of Others, a brilliant German movie about East Germany’s Stasi security system, in which a rigid spy becomes humanized after he is assigned to get information on a noted playwright and his actress lover; (j) Patti Labelle “I Can Sing Really Loud and Shatter Glass” Award: Jennifer Holiday; (k) Great-Looking Grunge: The Proposition.
Beale’s Favorite Scenes: (1) The highway chase in Children of Men; (2) The construction site chase in Casino Royale; (3) The awesomely trippy final 15 minutes of The Fountain; (4) Martin Sheen thrown off the roof in The Departed; (5) Abigail Breslin dancing to “Super Freak” in Little Miss Sunshine; (6) The Motown dance number in Clerks II; (7) A female cop telling a white supremacist what a bullet from a high-powered rifle will do to his head in Miami Vice; (8) Any time Meryl Streep gets bitchy in The Devil Wears Prada; (9) Newark air traffic controllers watching as one of the lethal planes passes [a mile or so] in front of them, heading for the Twin Towers, in United 93; and (10) Ashley Judd not knowing how to deal with a lover who just wants to caress her in Come Early Morning.
The Hollywood Reporter‘s Nicole Sperling, writing on Anne Thompson‘s Riskybiz blog, feels that Universal “is spending considerably less energy and marketing dollars on an Academy campaign for what many are calling the best film of the year, Alfonso Cuaron‘s Children of Men.
“The film was just released on Christmas Day, so it’s understandable that much of their work is dedicated to the film’s theatrical release.” (It expands to 1200 runs today.) “Still, shouldn’t more of an effort be made to promote this dramatic work of art to the Academy?”
A voice from the “other side of the aisle” has written the following in response:
“The United 93 ad push is a tactic in one [Los Angeles] paper only, whereas Children of Men is getting a nationwide marketing push right now, with both significant print (double trucks today) and television. Also, Children of Men is in the middle of its theatrical publicity campaign, whereas there’s next-to-no residual publicity on United 93.
“The United 93 awards campaign is designed to bring attention to a picture that has been out of the public consciousness for awhile. Children of Men is peaking following a many-months revving up. Sperling didn’t consider (at all) the whole picture.
“As to your first talkbacker, I don’t know what organization he might be in but Children of Men screeners were made available (in plenty of time) to full AMPAS and BFCA membership.”
Hollywood Wiretap‘s Pete Hammond is saying with yesterday’s Babel-favoring Producer’s Guild nominations and this morning’s SAG noms, “it may be time to jump on the Babelwagon.”
“In Munchkinland when The (Lollipop) Guild spoke, Dorothy listened. In Hollywoodland when The Guild speaks, everyone listens, at least during awards season because, to put it bluntly, the PGA, DGA, SAG and WGA noms and awards — more than all the seemingly hundreds of critics groups awards and top-ten lists combined — are by far the best indicators of where Oscar is heading in any given year.
“Quite frankly they are the only things that matter (of the pre-Oscar indicators),” one prominent awards consultant told us yesterday.
“The reason obviously is that all these unions are made up in part of Oscar voters as well. Of course they all have an even larger contingent of TV people on their membership rolls but that hasn’t kept the strong correlation between a guild nom and an Oscar nom from occurring year after year. 2005’s eventual Oscar champ, Crash, was barely on the map just 12 months ago when the Producers Guild gave it a surprise Best Picture nomination and all the others followed suit.
“Now with the PGA and SAG noms in, the race further tightens but what these nominations have told us is basically what we already know. Four Best Picture slots, most prognosticators seem to believe, will go to Dreamgirls, The Departed, The Queen and Little Miss Sunshine — and indeed they appear to be headed just that way.
“The coveted fifth slot, previously conceded to be a contest between the darker dramas like Babel, Little Children, Letters From Iwo Jima and (because of critical support) United 93, is now edging closer to a lock for — drumroll, please — Babel following up its combined 14 Golden Globe and Broadcast Critics noms with a PGA Best Picture nod and its tie for a leading 3 SAG nominations including Outstanding Cast.
“The latter [is] the guild’s version of a Best Picture prize (won last year by Crash). Perhaps most surprisingly, Clint Eastwood’s dual achievement of Letters From Iwo Jimaand its counterpart Flags Of Our Fathers, was completely overlooked by both groups. Did they cancel themselves out?
“But before we all jump on the Babelwagon, we should note that in fairness to Universal’s struggling-to-be-seen, and star challenged United 93, it was expected to get no action from the actors and little from the PGA. United 93‘s major test comes with the WGA and, especially, DGA nomination announcements next week.
“Right now [the Paul Greengrass film] has won several critics group Best Picture awards and has hit more top-ten lists than any film other than The Departed and The Queen, which are both heavily favored to repeat their success with the Academy.”
The Online Film Critics Society has put forward Babel, Children of Men, The Departed, Pan’s Labyrinth and United 93 as its top five Best Pictures of the Year, with a winner to be announced on Monday, 1.8.06. Four days hence — why don’t they just announce the winners now? What do they think they’re doing, generating suspense? This is not an Alfred Hitchcock film.
Two good things: they nominated The Departed‘s Mark Wahlberg ias Best Supporting Actor, and they nominated Emmanuel Lubezki for his cinematography of Children of Men.
The Best Foreign Film nominees omitted The Lives of Others….what’s that about? The five are The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, L’Enfant, Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo’s film is obviously doing double-duty), Volver and Water.
The Best Director noms went to Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men), Paul Greengrass (United 93), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Babel), Martin Scorsese (The Departed) and Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth).
I can’t list any more….my heart’s not in it. Here’s the Variety story link.
The Producers Guild of America today improved the Oscar odds of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Babel, which had been seen by some handicappers as somewhat pummelled and rope-a-doping over the last three or four weeks, by naming it as one of the PGA’s five Best Picture nominees.
The other four, no real surprises, are Martin Scorsese‘s The Departed, Bill Condon‘s Dreamgirls, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris‘s Little Miss Sunshine and Stephen Frears‘ The Queen.
The obviously stellar and worthy United 93, Children of Men and Letters From Iwo Jima haven’t necessarily been hurt by being excluded, but let’s face it — they haven’t been helped. For what it’s worth, 11 of the previous 15 PGA winners have won the Best Picture Oscar.
The 3,000 member-strong org will announce the winner on 1.20 (while ev erone’s up at Sundance) at L.A.’s Century Plaza hotel.
Nominated producers are Inarritu, Steve Golin and Jon Kilik for Babel, Graham King for The Departed, Laurence Mark for Dreamgirls, Marc Turtletaub, David T. Friendly, Peter Saraf and Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa for Little Miss Sunshine and Andy Harries, Christine Langan and Tracey Seaward for The Queen.
The Best Picture Oscar is The Departed‘s to lose at this stage, most likely. Martin Scorsese has it in the bag for Best Director, and the certainty of this call will probably carry the film to Oscar victory. I think. A bit more than perhaps.
The Queen is admired and respected, but it has no headwind. (None that I can sense, at least.)
Dreamgirls will be nominated (I presume) but the little weasel nip-nippers won’t stop nip-nipping with their razor-sharp teeth…despite the fact that I’m okay with several portions of it, plus the fact that I’m hearing that suburban ticket-buyers are having a good time it and “getting their money’s worth,” etc.
Alfonso Cuaron‘s Children of Men is gaining ground — the notion that it may in fact be the Best Picture of the Year has actually caught on here and there — but it will never be nominated because of its overly-realistic (and therefore overly distur- bing) dystopian visions and how these are apparently affecting the Academy conservatives who voted to give Chicago the Best Picture Oscar. You know…that crowd.
Babel was big with the Golden Globers and ought to slip through — it damn well should in my book but that and $1.75 will get you a bus ticket.
Little Miss Sunshine is the only film that everyone loves without reservation, and may therefore be some kind of plucky Dark Horse.
The “too soon” emotional mules who won’t see United 93 may be heavily dug in…or not. (I strongly suspect that they are.)
Letters From Iwo Jima has been dying in its limited run so far, and it will probably continue to die when it expands, which will give those who don’t like its doomed-Japanese-solder gloominess and its all-caves, all-the-time milieu reason to back away.
The ace-level Pan’s Labyrinth, Volver and The Lives of Others — the latter is my choice for the second Best Picture of the Year — have been relegated to the Best Foreign Language Film category, World Trade Center has been out of the game for weeks; ditto Flags of Our Fathers.
The thrust of this N.Y. Times box-office analysis piece by David Halbfinger, which I read yesterday but was unable to respond to due to the lethargy it inspired, is that audiences always go for movies that seem to promise a fluttery, quaalude-like emotional high — especially when there’s a sense that the usual chaos and uncertainty of life (9/11, Iraq War, increasing global warming) is more acute and/or bothersome than usual.
When Jack Haley, Jr.‘s That’s Entertainment! came out in June 1974, after years of ’60s-style social turmoil plus the ongoing Vietnam War backdrop plus two heavy years of Watergate scandal, the slogan that sold the movie was, “That’s Entertainment — boy, do we need it now!”
The age-old old theory is that mainstream moviegoers are emotional alcoholics in normal times, but if the headlines seem more disturbing than usual their choices tend be more reactionary. Give them a film that promises some kind of agreeable emotional beer-buzz and they’ll probably give it a shot. Give them a movie that smacks of herbal tea, strong coffee, mineral water or some other non-alcoholic ingredient, and chances are they’ll either steer clear or adopt a wait-and-see approach.
“What worked was classic, get-away-from-it-all entertainment,” Rob Moore, Paramount’s marketing and distribution chief, tells Halbfinger “What didn’t was things that were more challenging and esoteric.”
“They showed no appetite for a critique of their eating habits in Fast Food Nation,” Halbfinger writes. They weren’t ready to fly along on United 93, no matter how skilled its expose of homeland insecurity. They didn’t care to see combat or suffer its after-effects in Flags of Our Fathers. And even Leonardo DiCaprio couldn’t interest them in touring the ravaged Africa of Blood Diamond.
“While Al Gore‘s prophecies in An Inconvenient Truth produced a respectable $24 million for Paramount, it was the message-movie exception that proved the rule. The big money was to be made making people laugh, cry and squeeze their dates’ arms — not think.”
That said, I don’t blame anyone for avoiding Blood Diamond, although it appears that reviews weren’t the main reason, and I can understand why GenY moviegoers were averse to seeing the boomer-oriented Flags of Our Fathers.
The lead graph introducing USA Today‘s “Oscar Oracle” chart begins as follows: “If the Academy Awards were given out based on what the nation’s film critics think, at least two of the races would be over right now: best actor and actress.” And then it goes blah, blah, Forest Whitaker, blah, blah, Helen Mirren (The Queen)….we’re bored, we need something to fill space with, we’re just running another Oscar chart based on critics like Movie City News, blah, blah…it’s the end of the year and we’re plotzing.
The critics have gone good things by celebrating United 93 and Emmanuel Lubezki and Half Nelson, etc., but they’ve also bored everyone to tears with the uniformity of their choices, the result being that nobody wants to hear about them any more. They’re done. The Hollywood guilds — Screen Actors Guild (1.4.07), DGA (noms on 1.9.07), Producers Guild (1.20.07), etc. — are next on the agenda. They’re being announced within the next two or three weeks or so, culminating with the announcement of the Academy Awards nominations on Tuesday, 1.23.07. (The DGA hands its awards out on 2.3.07; the WGA bestows its awards on 2.11.07.)
The Utah Film Critics Association gave United 93 its sixth critics group win as the 2006 Best Picture of the Year. Paul Greengrass‘s gripping docudrama was also a runner-up in the Best Screenplay and Best Director categories. And yes, naturally, of course, The Queen‘s Helen Mirren won for Best Actress while her costar Michael Sheen won for Best Supporting Actor. (I wholeheartedly admire Mirren’s performance as Queen Elizabeth II — I just find it oppressive that she’s won the damn Best Actress award from critics groups 16 or 17 times now and that no other actress has won a damn thing.) Sacha Baron Cohen was namd Best Actor for his performance in Borat, and Babel‘s Rinko Kikuchi was named Best Supporting Actress.
The fascist dictatorship awards mindset known as Mirren-Whitaker prevailed again with yesterday’s Oklahoma Film Critics Circle Awards. Why do I seem to be the only one who’s admitting to feelings of being irked — i.e., almost but not quite “sick of” — this oppressive and monotonous dominance?
There were other actresses (Penelope Cruz, Kate Winslet, Judi Dench, Sienna Miller) who gave beguilingly crafty and affecting performances besides The Queen‘s Helen Mirren, but you’d never suspect it to judge by the 14 critics groups who’ve handed out Best Actress awards this month. It’s been Mirren, Mirren, Mirren, Mirren, Mirren, Mirren, Mirren, Mirren, Mirren, Mirren, Mirren, Mirren, Mirren and Mirren. The Last King of Scotland‘s Forrest Whitaker has been the Best Actor choice with twelve critics groups, losing out to Borat‘s Sacha Baron Cohen two or three times.
The Oklahoma posse otherwise did well by handing Paul Greengrass’s United 93 its fifth Best Picture award (on top of the New York Film Critics Circle and critics groups from Dallas-Forth Worth, Phoenix and Washington, D.C.).
And cheers (again) to Martin Scorsese winning the Best Director award for The Departed, and Little Miss Sunshine winning for Best First Film (award going to co-directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris). And to Guillermo del Toro for Pan’s Labyrinth winning the Best Foreign Film.
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