The Hurt Locker broadsides kept coming Tuesday, as the man with whom writer-producer Mark Boal was once embedded as a journalist in Iraq has filed a lawsuit claiming Locker was based on his life and work. The charges were first revealed in a press release sent out by lawyers for Master Sgt. Jeffrey S. Sarver, the bomb-defusion expert whom Boal profiled for Playboy in 2005. So wait a second: After alll that crap saying The Hurt Locker was inaccurate and disrespectful, another veteran steps forward on the last day of Oscar voting to say it was so close to life it ripped off his identity? What the hell is going on here?
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Word emerged yesterday that Sacha Baron Cohen would no longer present an Oscar at Sunday's Academy Awards. Reasons were offered and rationalizations were made, all having to do with Baron Cohen's rumored Avatar sketch and just how little tolerance James Cameron might actually have for self-deprecation. Fine. But here's another, even likelier theory to consider: The bit wasn't funny.
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You can say this for Mo'nique's reluctance to do press this awards season: It's made her upcoming Oscar night interview with Barbara Walters kind of interesting. Not only does she dish on her unshaven gams, but she also discusses her open marriage with husband Sidney Hicks: "Let me say this: I have not had sex outside my marriage with Sidney. Could Sid have sex outside of his marriage with me? Yes. That's not a deal-breaker. That's not something that would make us say, 'Pack your things and let's end the marriage.'" Former adultress Barbara Walters was scandalized, asking how often Mo' would allow that. "What if it's 20 times?" the actress responded. "So what? We've been best friends for over 25 years, and we truly know who we are." [NYDN]
From smear-mailing to blackballing to suspiciously timed LAT investigative pieces to that ugly incident in which The Blind Side's campaign headquarters were pelted with dozens of prune hamentashen launched from the window of an unmarked white van, 2010's Oscar season has been by all accounts one of the ugliest in recent history. And yet these kind of tactics are certainly nothing new, as Matt Damon reminded The Carpetbagger at The Green Zone's New York premiere:
"My first experience with that was 'Good Will Hunting,'" Mr. Damon said. "The week of the voting there was a story that came out in Variety that [Silence of the Lambs writer] Ted Tally had written 'Good Will Hunting." [...]
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Nicolas Chartier will not be made an example of! Despite being disinvited and banned from Sunday's Oscars ceremony, the aggressive-campaigning Hurt Locker producer will be the guest of honor at a party thrown by a WME boss, his wife, and producer Lynette Howell (whose Blue Valentine just sold to Harvey Weinstein at Sundance. Awkward!). Guests can expect a red carpet, French cuisine, about 100 fellow partygoers and, of course, an impassioned, hastily written, Avatar-bashing invitation via e-mail. [Deadline]
Hurt Locker co-producer and ill-advised e-mail campaigner Nicolas Chartier was banned this afternoon from attending the 82nd Academy Awards. His revoked invitation was the result of a note sent to friends and peers in the Academy urging them to vote for his tiny indie Locker and avoid the "$500M film" better known as Avatar. If the Academy wanted to make an example, mission accomplished; a few of its official comments follow the jump.
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If it's Oscar spoilers you want, the internet abounds -- but why rely on rumor and hearsay, when you can go directly to the Psychic Source for your 2010 Academy Awards predictions? An e-mail from the friendly, telepathic tarot readers at "the nation's most respected psychic service" arrived in the Movieline inbox today, and its longshot picks raised more than a few eyebrows around HQ. Among them: Morgan Freeman for Best Actor, Woody Harrelson for Best Supporting Actor, and Harvey Weinstein's best Purim-hijacking efforts would be richly rewarded, as Inglourious Basterds was pegged to take the top trophy. We were intrigued, and immediately arranged for a consultation with Maxine, their resident Oscars expert. Come now as we gaze into her crystal ball and the near, Shankman-colored future comes into focus.
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Loath as we are around here to give away free advertising, the last lunge of Inglourious Basterds' sprint to the Oscar-race finish line is something that both awards-season campaigners and observers will be studying for a while. Sure, the suspicious Hurt Locker takedowns and the rabbi-recruitment drives are one thing, maybe even kind of standard in the historical scheme of things. But this new, crunch-time banner ad wields its own scintillating magic -- the kind of magic that springs one to attention, tilts your head in curiosity and coaxes that most profound purr of reactions: "Say whaaaa?"
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There are good years for a filmmaker, and then there are great years. Sophie Barthes' 2009 was an all-out great year, beginning with the premiere and acquisition of her feature debut Cold Souls at Sundance, followed by the critical acclaim that greeted her Paul Giamatti-plays-himself dark comedy upon its release last summer. Add a new baby and three Spirit Award nominations (including Best First Screenplay) to the mix, and Barthes has a considerably tough act to follow. But as she told Movieline in the days leading up to the Spirits, she's ready to get back to work -- even if it means contending with awards madness.
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While we're facing a dreadfully slow news day ahead, don't worry: We've got comedy! Thank ABC for the laffs this morning, with the network threatening to pull the network's plug on more than 3 million Cablevision subscribers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Which isn't so funny in itself, except that after two years of haggling over carriage fees and extending its Cablevision deal on month-by-month terms, ABC has set its new contract deadline for March 7 -- you know, Oscar night?
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Even though the Oscars are taking steps to be younger and hipper this year, there's only so far they can go in making things contemporary. To that end, producers have decided on many show elements that would have been popular not this year, but in 2006; how else to explain the puzzling selection of former Good Charlotte frontman Joel Madden as "house deejay" at the show (!!!) or the Oscar.com contest to select a dress for the on-stage award escorts that's reminiscent of Project Runway?
Still, since all the acting categories at the Oscars are locked up and voting in the escort designer challenge ends today, we thought we'd try our hand at a little outfit prognostication. Meet the contenders!
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Last week's commandeering of the Oscar zeitgeist by the Inglourious Basterds team might have seemed too-little-too-late for a vote that ends tomorrow. But if you can imagine and even more obvious, desperate campaign strategy than all that troop-recruiting, Hurt Locker-slamming action of late, it would probably look and/or sound like Operation Rabbi, which apparently has been quietly underway since last fall.
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It rained hardware on the final weekend before the Oscars, when no fewer than five awards bodies deployed their year-end kudos to some front-runners you may have heard of. These may be the some of the last prizes these films receive during the Awards Season That Will Not Die, so let's sort it all out and pay appropriate tribute below.
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Are we sick of Avatar trailer parodies yet? No, we aren't. Not since the bonanza that followed Brokeback Mountain has one trailer provided so many rich opportunities for creative hacking and pop-culture gene-splicing. There was the (still the best) Team America: World Police version, the all-babies version, and now the inevitable, and yet wholly satisfying Disney's Pocahontas version. Watch now as Captain John Smith arrives to plunder a brave new world inhabited by a spiritual tribe of deadly hunters known as the Powhatan; then falls in love with Pocahontas, daughter of the tribe Chief; then joins up with them to fight off the sinister Governor Ratcliffe, whose intention is to lay waste to their homes in search of precious metals. Yes, it's exactly the same plot as Avatar -- but answer me this: Did Disney's animators commit thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars towards the development of the perfect Pocahontasian breast?! Now that you mention it, it is pretty amazing what you can do with a pencil. [via Vulture]
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As the red-carpeted terminus of the Road to Oscar comes into view, the terrain becomes far more treacherous, the journey more fraught with mortal peril. At this critical time, voters must be on high alert for campaign treachery, lest they be unfairly swayed by the unscrupulous tricks of the desperate; while those friendly seeming, pan-handling Na'Vi warriors loitering in front of the Kodak Theater might draw Academy Members close with the promise of a cheap Polaroid memento, they'll instead deliver a whispered reminder that the "silly little Iraq movie" made only $12 million domestic, a withering insinuation that the film's steel-nerved heroes couldn't defuse a poopy diaper while wearing a full-body blast suit.
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