If some of those prophets who called the nomination for Demián Bichir still see something we don't, then the whispering buzz that the actor is poised to pull the ultimate upset could indeed be true, either because the performance actually warrants it or because, as unabashed cynicism has suggested, voters feel as guilty about the help of today as that of yesteryear. But while the prospect of Bichir building support makes for a great last-minute news story, it's probably about as likely as Brett Ratner being invited to present the Costume Design contenders. And since the great Gary Oldman can't ride the love of the British contingent all the way to a win, it seems this category does come down to a three-man race after all. Continue Reading »
Less a race than a ping-pong match, this year's battle for Best Director has shifted favor from an obvious lock to a popular spoiler and back again, leaving us one more not-quite-certain category to pay attention to on February 26. Not long after The Artist stormed out of Cannes, Michel Hazanavicius established a surge of directorial momentum that hardly let up, its reach even cracking the Indie Spirit lineup, which isn't exactly known to invite the Oscar frontrunner to the party. But as the season stretched on, and a certain genre-defier (kids' flick? Biopic?) began performing exceedingly better than expected, a Picture/Director split seemed more and more probable, with Martin Scorsese potentially benefiting from Hazanavicius's lack of notoriety. A Golden Globe win strengthened suspicions about the Hugo helmer, as did a subsequent tally of 11 Oscar noms for the 3D cineaste fantasy. Could this be the year the Academy honors both men who blew the industry a nostalgic kiss? One of them certainly has the firm voter support to make the generosity possible. Still, as everyone from the DGA to the folks at BAFTA will testify, odds are the rise of Hugo was a mere bump on The Artist's fated path to glory, which now looks like it may encompass Best Actor too. Continue Reading »
At the risk of milking a joke whose teets have been sore for weeks, The Artist's musical score will do just fine without Kim Novak's vote. In the hierarchy of Oscar scandals, which have a way of surfacing every season (just ask THR subscribers), the ire of an old Hitchcock muse is meager compared to blockbuster-bashing emails and history's tackiest FYC ads. So, rest easy, Ludovic Bource, for your rape charges won't take you the way of Herman Cain, and few Academy members will be able to resist the sprightly notes subbed in for Jean Dujardin's dialogue. If anything, The Artist's perfectly legal Vertigo sampling will strengthen that skim-off-the-cream nostalgia, which has yet to relent in its ability to charm the Depends off Novak's peers. Continue Reading »
Moments after being released by the Capitol police on Wednesday afternoon, Oscar-nominated Gasland director Josh Fox told POLITICO that by arresting him at a committee hearing, Congress made it clear he is persona non grata on Capitol Hill.
Sometimes you have to put a dog in Joan Didion's name.
Head over to The Film Experience as Kurt Osenlund joins Ali Arikan, Mark Harris, Nick Davis, and Nathaniel Rogers to discuss the Oscar race for a few days.
NYPD arrest for marijuana soar in 2011, second highest on record.
What Kurt said yesterday about the Best Actress race applies to the Best Actor race in spades, only with a little more direct focus. Instead of covering the gamut of popular Oscar strategies, the two strongest locks in this category are playing variations of the same game: homecoming king. No one is going to say either Brad Pitt or George Clooney stretched their acting muscles to the point of tearing in Moneyball and The Descendants. They're mainly being rewarded for dependability and reasonably mature taste in pet projects, especially in the case of renaissance man Clooney, who at least has the wherewithal to play up his creeping schlubishness—not to mention split an onion in the palm of his hand during The Descendants's emotional high point. Continue Reading »
Seven finalists remain in the Oscar race for Best Makeup, the category that's poised to prove just how strong a frontrunner The Artist actually is, not to mention stoke the fire of the film's backlash. The tinting of Jean Dujardin's toothy mug to accommodate black-and-white cinematography is about to rob recognition from the folks who toiled away, one last time, on magically morphing Ralph Fiennes into the pasty bane of Harry Potter's existence. It's also going to beat out Ben Kingsley's carnivalesque transformation into Georges Méliès in Hugo; Vanessa Redgrave's caked-on, Elizabethan kabuki in Anonymous; and the fake ears, nose tip, and finger-weave hair that turned Glenn Close into a mouse man in Albert Nobbs. All of this says nothing of the worthy candidates The Artist already beat to the shortlist, like J. Edgar, whose old-age artistry was wrongfully knocked in reviews, and Green Lantern, which saw Peter Sarsgaard grossly mutate into the ultimate toxic egghead. Continue Reading »
[Editor's Note: Oscar Prospects is your weekly analysis of an awards contender and how it's likely to fare come Oscar nomination morning. The column is comprehensive, so beware of spoilers.]
There are still more than two months to go before 2011 closes up shop, and guys like Fincher and Spielberg deliver their latest Oscar-ready opuses, but as of now, no film this year is poised to collect more Academy Award nominations than The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius's silent movie about the silent era that has so many great things going for it, it's hard to organize them all in your head. In no way is this meant to imply that "great" and "Oscar" are linked, but rather that The Artist boasts an all-encompassing panache and irresistibility that, save the inevitable handful of backlashers and contrarians, is going to deeply enchant scads of people, Academy members especially. And yet, as easy as the accusation may be, the film—as some writers have already pointed out—doesn't seem to be actively dangling the carrot. It is genuinely that good, and it unfolds in a milieu that's bursting with an embarrassment of inherent virtues.
Set in Hollywood between the years of 1927 and 1931, when talkies began to displace silents and stars like George Valentin (Cannes Best Actor winner Jean Dujardin) found themselves dropping from A-List to extinction, The Artist offers a richly nostalgic interpretation of one of the most romanticized periods in cinema's history, an industry smooch that's bound to win it even more favor than its brilliant, timeless commentary on the ever-changing state of technology at large (not to mention its perfectly natural and logical inclusion of a certain stock market crash). It almost instantly drops itself into the canon of movies about making movies, and its universal accessibility—otherwise known as hater fuel—will provide voters with the characteristic reassurance that, not only would their endorsement reward something of great value, but something that, goshdarnit, people really like. It will absolutely be one of your Best Picture nominees. Continue Reading »
With The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius stretches a feather-light gimmick to feature-length. The writer-director's tribute to silent movies begins with a movie buff's tongue-in-cheek premise: What if we made a silent movie about the silent film era, where the stars all act the same way in their real lives as they do in their film-within-a-film movies?
It all begins at the end of Hollywood's silent film era, as star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) and aspiring starlet Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) meet cute and fall for each other. The rest of the movie chronicles their long journey to a happy ending while their careers careen in opposite directions as he laughs off the talkies as a fad, fading into impoverished obscurity, while she embraces the new technology and becomes one of its biggest stars.
The two mug like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, exaggerating the already extreme expressions and gestures employed by most of the stars of that era. George flashes his blindingly white grin on the red carpet like Dudley Do-Right, and Peppy's signature move—on screen and off—is a two-fingered whistle followed by a blown kiss. But then everyone in this world overacts, even the studio head (John Goodman) who bellows things like "the public is never wrong!" and the audience members who radiate oversized emotion at a screening, some clapping their hands to their cheeks in amazement. Continue Reading »
Hollywood is a windfall business. Stars are easily born, but once the the cracks in their public image start to show, careers can evaporate in 24 frames per second. This scenario describes many of the silent-era stars stripped of their powerful stature by the invention of talkies in the late 1920s. The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius's beguiling new silent film about these iconic personalities dumbfounded by the sound revolution, tap dances through the end of an era with effortless panache. Striking black-and-white cinematography and brilliant flourishes of sound amid an otherwise silent landscape give The Artist its stylistic identity, but this story of evolution and adaptation is all about the power of on-screen chemistry.
George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a titanic personality, hamming it up in adventure films and real life with equal measure. Despite his endless charisma, George's eyes reveal hints of loneliness, further confirmed during a Citizen Kane-esque montage of cold-shouldered breakfasts with his wife (Penelope Ann Miller). Always accompanied by a tenacious Boston terrier, his co-star in all situations, George bumps into an aspiring young actress named Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) while leaving a packed theater premiere. Their initial meeting spins into a feature-length flirtation of knowing glances, charming asides, and fateful disappointments, a dual character arc that aligns with the technological changes taking place in cinema. Classic Hollywood music becomes a crucial confidant for the characters, magnifying Dujardin's welling eyes and Bejo's lovely smile during key close-ups. Continue Reading »
To say that OSS 117: Lost in Rio is a hideously distended continuation of OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies's one-note joke would be unduly kind. Both spy spoofs assume that that the sexism and just flat-out ass-backward conservative thinking inherent in the original OSS 117 pulps and accompanying film adaptations are much more entertaining than the generic spy formula that served as the backbone for those stories. In the late '50s and the '60s, OSS 117 was France's answer to 007, Ian Fleming's inescapable rugged spy-about-town. He treats women like coat racks and minorities like adorable pet sidekicks. He's a fascist with a license to thrill, making him the perfect target for director Michel Hazanavicius's smart-ass takedown. Like Cairo, Nest of Spies, Lost in Rio is so in love with its sloppy jokes and plodding putdowns of modern-day progressivism that it never really takes off. Continue Reading »
Hollywood is a windfall business. Stars are easily born, but once the the cracks in their public image start to show, careers can evaporate in 24 frames per second. This scenario describes many of the silent-era stars stripped of their powerful stature by the invention of talkies in the late 1920s. The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius's beguiling new silent film about these iconic personalities dumbfounded by the sound revolution, tap dances through the end of an era with effortless panache. Striking black-and-white cinematography and brilliant flourishes of sound amid an otherwise silent landscape give The Artist its stylistic identity, but this story of evolution and adaptation is all about the power of on-screen chemistry. 
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