Movies reigned where once music videos played... MTV hosted its annual Movie Awards in L.A. over the weekend from the Gibson Amphitheatre, morphing the venue into a futuristic drive-in of sorts. Russell Brand MC'd the show, which featured four "Golden Popcorn" wins for The Hunger Games, an on-stage performance by Johnny Depp and a roasting for Trailblazer award-winner Emma Stone.
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When one reporter caught up with Michelle Rodriguez at Cannes, the Fast & Furious star waxed ecstatic about Lee Daniels' Southern potboiler The Paperboy — but she's not holding out hopes for a Nicole Kidman Oscar nod. And she's definitely not worried about making controversial statements explaining why. "I fucking loved it," she told Vulture. "One of my friends said, 'She’s going to get nominated for an Oscar for that.' I was like, 'Nah, man. She’s not black!' I laugh, but it’s also very sad. It makes me want to cry. But I really believe. You have to be trashy and black to get nominated. You can’t just be trashy." [Vulture]
The annual pageant of youth, taste and class hardware bacchanal known as the MTV Movie Awards has announced its nominations for 2012, with this year's most formidable blockbuster to date, The Hunger Games, doing battle against the most formidable blockbusters of last year's calendar, including Bridesmaids, Breaking Dawn: Part I, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, The Help, and others. And Drive loyalists rejoice! Your favorite head-shattering action-drama of 2011 has been honored with three nominations as well. Read on for the full list of contenders who will go at it in a fully-product placement-optimized Gibson Amphitheater on June 3.
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Every year, studios, exhibitors and press gather in Vegas for the annual hype harvest that is CinemaCon (née ShoWest), glimpsing first looks, clips and other previews of hotly anticipated movies to come. Surprises invariably appear, for better or worse, and conversations naturally ensue. Fine. What is not fine — at all — is grounding an Oscar frenzy in 10 minutes of footage from an unfinished film with a release date eight months away.
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From the people who brought you 16 & Pregnant, Date My Mom, A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila and Jersey Shore where once you found proud, pioneering music videos roaming free on the TV plains: Five new categories for this year's MTV Movie Awards! Including "Best Music"! This should turn out great. And there's more.
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Are the Central Park Five the next West Memphis Three? The teenagers wrongfully convicted in the vicious 1989 rape and beating of jogger Tricia Meili — and only released after the actual attacker came forward in 2002 — will be showcased in a forthcoming Ken Burns documentary entitled, appropriately enough, The Central Park Five. And while the film was funded in part by Burns's longtime patrons at PBS, the two-time Oscar nominee and four-time Emmy winner (who co-directed the project with his daughter Sarah Burns and son-in-law David McMahon) is taking the film to Cannes next month with the hope of finding a theatrical distributor: "We want to do it [theatrically] because the running time makes it manageable, and there's something urgent about it," he told TV Guide this week. This sounds... familiar?
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Or the, uh, "Wocka Wocka" fame: "Several Muppets were on hand to receive the star including Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Gonzo, Animal, Pepe, Sweetums, and Walter, the newest Muppet, who made his debut in Disney's 2011 film," reports a press release just over the transom at ML HQ. "The Muppets' star is the 2,466th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is located in front of the historic El Capitan Theatre." Nice real estate! And nice timing — The Muppets is out on DVD and Blu-ray today. The honor comes 57 years after Kermit's first TV appearance. No rush! And congrats to all.
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Who does the most accomplished canine performer in Hollywood have to lick to get some hardware around here? "He's the toast of this year's award season, now Uggie, the Jack Russell star of this year’s Academy Award-winning silent film The Artist, will walk the red carpet and serve as a presenter at the only major award show where animals take center stage - The Humane Society of the United States' 26th Genesis Awards. [...] 'The Genesis Awards are about honoring the animal protection message, not the performance, but if we had an award for a dog who’s become a poster animal for people not giving up on their unruly companion animals, we’d give it to Uggie... now, there’s a thought!', says Beverly Kaskey, senior director and executive producer of the annual Genesis Awards." [Genesis Awards]
It's on! Responding to yesterday's unveiling of the inaugural Movieline Soily Awards, an eagle-eyed commenter pointed out this brief note posted to the Golden Raspberry Awards official message board — a reply apparently from "Head RAZZberry" John Wilson himself:
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I have no idea how this concept eluded me for two years, but there it is: The 3rd annual 20/20 Awards were announced recently, honoring the best films of 1991 after two decades worth of distance and hindsight. Great idea — even though the event turned out just about as anticlimactically as this year's real thing. That's what happens when Oscar apparently gets it right.
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"She knows that I know that she knows that I know the whole scene is deliberate, right down to the supporting players -- assistants, various friends, family -- arranged here and there around the pool, ready to do a star's bidding... That Lopez has dared to try and pull off such a time-honored Hollywood gambit as Rising-Star-Interviewed-By-The-Pool is in keeping with her overall strategy of playing Big. Big is Jennifer Lopez's forte." The jury may be out on Lopez's maybe-wardrobe malfunction onstage at the Oscars, but you can treat yourself with Stephen Rebello's full 1998 Movieline must-read, stat.
Late night host Jimmy Kimmel's tradition of filming a post-Oscar movie-related spoof continued Sunday night with a "trailer" for Movie: The Movie, the ultimate star-studded epic to end all epics. In addition to featuring a host of stars, from Taylor Lautner to Helen Mirren to Tyler Perry (er, "Daniel Day-Lewis as Tyler Perry as George Washington"), the Kimmel-produced gag covered just about every genre and trope known to the movies. I give it a few years before some suit turns this into a reality.
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Any great awards show monologue skewers the nominees and sets the tone for the festivities to come, and this weekend's awards tour didn't disappoint -- if you were watching the Film Independent Spirit Awards and not the Oscars, that is. Host Seth Rogen trumped Billy Crystal the day before the Academy Awards when he roasted Hollywood's brightest along with Spirit Award nominees (like "creepy" -- and apparently good humored -- Michael Shannon). As for Rogen's best joke? It's got to be a toss up between his Ratner snipe ("Without awards season we wouldn't know how much of a horrible bigot Brett Ratner is") and his Lars von Trier hiding-in-Argentina bit. Hit the jump to watch the magic.
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Some folks out there may have enjoyed Billy Crystal's ninth outing as host of the Academy Awards last night, but his turn was as tepid as James Franco's 2011 "performance" was bizarre. Crystal's Oscars-themed song and dance routine? Dated. The weak banter and soft barbs at Hollywood's gathered illuminati? Snoozeville. Given that the previously and frequently great Crystal was upstaged by the night's random moments (Angelina Jolie's leg, J. Lo's boob, those Cirque du Soleil acrobats) and young, actually funny presenters (the Bridesmaids crew and Emma Stone) it's time to start anew and refresh what's already known as the fussiest night in the film calendar. In other words: Who would make the ultimate, charismatic, hilarious, non-sucky Oscar host?
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The champagne's been tippled, the winners are all celebrating, and somewhere Uggie's getting a LOT of sausages. So let's relive the highlights of the 2012 Academy Awards show! Click through for Movieline's gallery and name your favorite moment from the big night. Was it Best Supporting Actress Octavia Spencer's emotional acceptance speech? Or Descendants co-scripter Jim Rash's impromptu Angelina Jolie impersonation? Those bits and more in vivid photographic detail after the jump!
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