On the heels of this morning's surprising and not-so-surprising Oscar nominations, the Broadcast Film Critics Association handed their Critics Choice Awards to a rather familiar bunch as Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, and Skyfall nabbed multiple major honors. In fact, the BFCA, an organization comprised of TV, radio, and online journalists, spread the love around to cover just about every Oscar favorite and token consolation prize there is. Take your bow, Cloud Atlas!
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It's a good morning for Harvey Weinstein, Fox and Sony Pictures Classics. Sifting through the more surprising-than-usual list of Academy nominations, these are the three big winners of the fierce behind-the-scenes campaigning that movie studios, their specialty divisions (and their consultants) do to get their pictures, directors, actors, etc. onto the hallowed Oscars short list.
The Weinstein Company has the enviable dilemma of now having to decide how to run two Best Picture campaigns for Silver Linings Playbook and Django Unchained. It also managed to get Joaquin Phoenix a Best Actor nomination for The Master despite Phoenix's slagging of the Oscars as the "stupidest thing in the world" and the picture's quick fade as a contender in the awards buzz circus. David O. Russell's nomination, after being passed over by the Director's Guild, is another sign of TWC's political muscle, particularly since the Silver Linings Playbook director is an outsider in Hollywood — like Weinstein and Phoenix, for that matter. (Okay, so Weinstein may be way more inside than he was in the Miramax days, but he's still an outsider. Fox employee and this year's Oscars host Seth MacFarlane made that clear earlier this morning, when referring to the Best Supporting Actress nominees, he cracked: "Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.")
Fox and Sony also did well in the Best Picture category: Fox 2000 has Life of Pi and Fox Searchlight has Beasts of the Southern Wild in the top category, but Sony is the more interesting story here. While the Annapurna-produced Columbia Pictures-distributed Zero Dark Thirty was nominated for Best Picture as expected, director Kathryn Bigelow's omission in the Best Director category goes down as one of the biggest snubs of this morning. On the other hand, the nominations of Sony Pictures Classics' Amour in the Best Picture and Best Foreign Picture categories and Michael Haneke for Best Director is quite a coup for the mini major given the competition this year and the film's difficult subject matter. In other words, Haneke's gain is related to Bigelow's loss.
Thoughts? Leave them in the comments section.
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Whatever your Oscar nomination predictions were, you were wrong: This morning's Academy Awards announcements by hosts, Seth MacFarlane and Emma Stone, jolted Oscar-watchers awake with surprises and snubs so shocking they made everyone forget, within minutes, that MacFarlane made a Hitler joke, live, before six in the morning — setting the tone for his upcoming hosting gig.
From all the Beasts of the Southern Wild love, to the freezing-out of shoo-ins, Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty), Ben Affleck (Argo), and Tom Hooper (Les Miserables) from the Best Director race, which were the biggest shocks of the morning?
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Lincoln topped the nominees for the 85th Academy Awards Thursday morning in Los Angeles, the Steven Spielberg-directed film took 12 noms including the Best Picture and Director categories as well as Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis, Best Supporting Actor for Tommy Lee Jones and Best Supporting Actress for Sally Field.
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5 Broken Cameras won Outstanding Feature at the 6th annual Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking Wednesday night during a ceremony at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore accepted the prize for co-directors Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi whose film centers on Israeli settlements encroaching on Burnat's Palestinian village.
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Lincoln, Les Misérables and Life of Pi lead the pack Wendesday among the 2013 British Academy Film Award nominations, with Spielberg's pic on the 16th U.S. president receiving ten nominations including Best Film while Les Mis and Pi each received nine, also picking up Best Film noms.
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As terribly easy as it is to hate on the Twilight films, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II was the best of the series. (Not that it was without its share of WTFery — imprinting and vampire fistfights and every second of Michael Sheen onscreen, anyone?) But with Breaking Dawn - Part II nominated for 11 Razzie Awards in just ten categories, up against the likes of Adam Sandler's That's My Boy, Eddie Murphy's A Thousand Words, and the bizarro pop culture sensation/box office bomb The Oogieloves In Big Balloon Adventure, let's be real: Does Twilight truly deserve to win all the Razzies?
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Quentin Tarantino and David O. Russell were edged out of the pack in today's Directors Guild Award nominations announcement, giving way to a rather conservative quintet of Oscar hopefuls. So let the DGA backlash begin: Between Ben Affleck (Argo), Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty), Steven Spielberg (Lincoln), Tom Hooper (Les Miserables), Ang Lee (Life of Pi), which nominee should have gotten the shaft to make the DGA race even remotely interesting?
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Even as the U.S. Senate continues to inquire about what it says are misrepresentations of the use of torture in the successful hunt for Al Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden in 2011, filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal defended their Oscar hopeful Zero Dark Thirty at the New York Film Critics Circle Monday night.
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Oscar heavy-weights Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook are among the titles nominated for screenplay recognition by the Writers Guild. Documentary shortlisted films The Invisible Man, Mea Maxima Culpa and Searching For Sugar Man are also among the nominations in the non-fiction category for the 2013 Writers Guild Awards, which will be held Sunday February 17th in simultaneously in Los Angeles and New York.
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In five decades, James Bond has racked up many feats from babes to bombs, but one figure 007 hasn't charmed is Oscar, though that will begin to change this year. 007 will receive a full tribute at the 85th Academy Awards.
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The Producers Guild of America (PGA) weighed in with their nominations for the best of 2012 for both motion pictures and television. Oscar heavy-weights including Lincoln, Django Unchained, Zero Dark Thirty, Les Misérables, Argo and Silver Linings Playbook made the cut along with other awards contenders including Beasts of the Southern Wild, Moonrise Kingdom and Life of Pi made the list for the organization's Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures.
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Top 10s abound, but what the hell, its New Year's Eve and there are mere hours left (in the Western Hemisphere at least) to look back on the year while it's still here - Happy New Year Australia, N.Z., Japan and much of Asia.
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You can have your Top 10 lists stuffed with cold and corny prestige pics and all those “respectable” “films” headed for Oscar gold, but when I think back on 2012 I remember the movies that wrapped themselves around my heart and brain like a warm blanket made of light and sound and kick-ass jammin' electric guitars and made me feel excited to be alive, dammit!
(I can also pinpoint with a wistful pang the precise moment when Tyler Perry broke my heart. Still love you, TP.)
These are the films, big and small, ambitious and soulful, heart-rending and bone-crunching, about lovers, fighters, time-travelers, masters, closet-dwellers, hermaphrodite basketball players and friends (forever) that made my year at the movies. Join me in celebrating these magical movie moments and let's hope 2013 delivers even more awesomeness.
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According to THR's Scott Feinberg, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' newfangled online voting system, implemented this year to make it easier for members to hand Anne Hathaway that statuette and such, is doing just the opposite. Voters can't remember their passwords, web security is questionable, and important papers are being mistakenly tossed in the trash like annoying credit card offers. "It’s probably more difficult for members to log on than it is for hackers," said one Oscars voter. Wait a second guys: This could be great. Who needs a Brett Ratner — this could be just what the Oscars need to finally jazz and youthen things up!
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