Congrats to Lynne Ramsay, Tilda Swinton and the rest of Team We Need to Talk About Kevin, which knocked off the awards-y likes of The Descendants, The Artist and Shame to emerge as best in show at this year's BFI London Film Festival. "We were struck by the sheer panache displayed by these great storytellers," said jury chief John Madden. "In the end, we were simply bowled over by one film, a sublime, uncompromising tale of the torment that can stand in the place of love." Yowza! Sounds like my Friday nights. Someone give me a trophy! [THR]
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Welcome to week six of Oscar Index, your regular reading of buzz, hype, speculation and crippling myopia in and around the 2011-12 awards beat. This installment brings some rather momentous determinations from the wonks at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics -- let's get right to them!
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Benicio Del Toro, Jimmy Smits and Esai Morales are among the stars named in a protest of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' new rule to block Puerto Rico from competing in the Foreign-Language Oscar race.
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Awards screeners have yet to really start coming in (a few have already been sent out, including Sony Pictures Classics' Take Shelter, The Guard, and Higher Ground, and Summit's A Better Life), but this week's arrival of Attack the Block DVD screeners is a surprise entry to the season. The Sony/Screen Gems-released sci-fi pic was sent out to members of the L.A. Film Critics Association this week, although it's unclear how much of a campaign the studio plans, if any. Does the British kid-oriented genre film have a shot at awards season, anyway?
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Welcome back to week five of Movieline's 2011-12 Oscar Index -- week five! Already! We're entering the second month of this sucker, and our scientists and the Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics remain hard at work uncovering new hints and implications every passing day. Well, not every passing day. OK, like, maybe a couple times a week. What can I tell you? It's still early! Let's have a glimpse at the latest -- if light -- movement this week.
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This is interesting: The New York Film Critics Circle announced today that it has moved up its 2011 awards-voting conference to Nov. 28 -- two full weeks prior to its usual mid-December vote and right to the front of the line in terms of awards-season tone-setting and influence.
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The Artist, the silent film that has emerged since Cannes as one of the year's presumptive Oscar front-runners, finally makes landfall in the States this weekend: Following tonight's East Coast premiere at the New York Film Festival, Michel Hazanavicius's tribute to old Hollywood rolls out for audiences at the Hamptons Film Festival. And if today's early reactions at the NYFF press screening were any indication, all signs point to success.
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Another week of awards-season data, developments and all-around deconstruction result in this latest edition of Oscar Index. Movieline's bleary-eyed researchers at the Institute for the Advanced Study for Kudos Forensics have been working overtime studying the news and speculation around the awards punditocracy, observing a few major bumps here and there but a fairly steady week overall. Let's check it out.
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It's week three of the 2011-12 Oscar Index, and the latest measurements, readings and conclusions are in from Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics. And aside from a few startling exceptions, they don't look that different than the ones disseminated here last week. But make no mistake: Like it or not, stuff is happening! Read on for the latest developments.
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A week after its stirring season debut, Oscar Index returns to the scene with the latest scientifically observed developments in the 2011-12 awards race. Indeed, Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics has issued the results from its latest zeitgeist biopsy, and they look... inconclusive. Naturally! It's September.
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Believe it: It's awards season. Very early in awards season, to be sure, but time nevertheless for Movieline's Institute For the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics to reopen its doors and initiate the algorithmic sequences and other complex formulas resulting in the latest edition of our annual Oscar Index.
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So there's good news and bad news about Madonna's W.E., whose Venice/Toronto festival coming-out parties made more of a splash for the Material Girl's attitude toward hydrangeas than for being the type of classy, prestigious filmmaking breakthrough its principals had anticipated. Critics, including Movieline's own Stephanie Zacharek, were cool toward W.E. at best, with some beating it apart like a glossy piñata. That's the bad news. The good news is that we know what that calls for, especially with Harvey Weinstein at the domestic-distribution reins: Recut!
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Congratulations to Mary Tyler Moore, the TV icon, Oscar nominee, humanitarian firebrand and all-around screen legend who was announced this morning as the recipient of the Screen Actors Guild 2011 Life Achievement Award. Moore will get her hardware at the SAG Awards ceremony to be held Jan. 29, 2012; the fight to get Six Weeks quietly scrubbed from her tribute reel begins now. Kidding! Or... not. Anyway, congratulations to Ms. Moore! Read on the SAG's full press release.
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Ready or not, the Oscar Equinox is upon us: The Venice Film Festival is underway, the Telluride Film Festival launches this weekend, and the Toronto International Film Festival commences a week from tomorrow. Amid that crop of movies will be the bulk of this year's awards-season contenders, which will compete against an elite class already having opened in theaters and another fistful yet to come this winter. Same game, new players. And Movieline's redoubtable Oscar Index has the preliminary breakdown of who to watch.
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It's almost that time again: The fall movie season, when critics sharpen their wits, audiences sniff through Hollywood's fetid miasma of hype, and awards-beat observers recalibrate their Oscarometers for the most precise reads on the encroaching horde of late-year releases. But as recent years have shown us, you don't necessarily need to debut after Labor Day to be taken seriously as an awards contender. In fact, August may as well be the new December where some major categories are concerned. Which brings us to Rachel Weisz.
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