Last summer’s Cars 2 marked a notable footnote in the history of Pixar Animation, just not a good one; despite opening to the studio’s sixth-highest worldwide take to date, the sequel to 2006’s Cars earned middling reviews, prompted critics to deem it a commercial cash-grab, and eventually – maybe most shockingly, given the studio's track record – became the first Pixar film not to nab an Oscar nod for Best Animated Feature since the category was inaugurated. Could it be, as Pixar producer Lindsey Collins suggests, that Cars 2 was Oscar-snubbed because of anti-Pixar backlash?
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Break out the $5 bubbly and tuxedo tee-shirts: the 2nd Annual YouReviewer Awards are a mere day away, and our friends at ENTV are rolling out the red carpet as some of the biggest names on YouTube honor the year's best movies.
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Surely no one saw this coming: Uggie, the Jack Russell terrier and Artist wonder dog on whose behalf the Consider Uggie awards campaign has surged ever onward for nearly three months now, won the top prize Monday at the inaugural Golden Collar Awards.
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From Meryl Streep to Martin Scorsese and awards season juggernaut The Artist, Hollywood's finest came out in full force Sunday in London for the 2012 BAFTA Awards. (Get the full list of BAFTA winners here.) Hit the jump to see who dazzled on the red carpet and celebrated backstage at the last big hurrah before the Oscars.
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Stop me if you've heard this one before: The Artist made off with Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and and fistful of other hardware at tonight BAFTA Awards ceremony in London, its final stop before the silent film's Oscar express pulls into the Kodak Theater terminus on Feb. 26. Meryl Streep also won a key awards-race victory as the institute's Best Actress, while Octavia Spencer and Christopher Plummer continued their own hot streaks in the supporting categories. Read on for all of 2012's winners, and drop back by Movieline on Wednesday to find out how the latest developments affect our Oscar Index.
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"There was one particular time I knew I wasn’t going to win, and when they’d train the camera on me as one of the losers, I wanted to be able to rip open my tuxedo shirt and just have stenciled on my chest, 'Oh, shit.' But my wife wouldn’t let me do it." While he's at it, here's more vivid imagery from Hoffman recalling his days rooming with fellow Oscar winner Robert Duvall: "One time he came home when a girl and I were taking a shower, and the next thing you know he had taken off all his clothes, got in with us, put his hand out, and said, 'Hey, I’m Dusty’s roommate, Bob Duvall. Can I have the soap?'" [Maxim via Moviefone]
Despite the Consider Uggie campaign's global impact on social media, auteur awards strategies and the ever-sensitive dynamics of poster giveaways, many adversaries would just as soon see the Artist wonder dog shot into space, Laika-style, never to be seen or heard from again. I hesitate to acknowledge or dignify their numbers, but since this is news we can both use, let's all rally round one of the best Uggie-specific developments to date: Uggie is now a cookie.
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Chances are at least a few of your casual conversations about Bridesmaids have revolved around the scene in which Melissa McCarthy is forced to use a bridal shop sink as a toilet. The true beauty of that scene was Kristen Wiig’s Annie, sweat-drenched, trying to stay composed while she was berated over choosing a restaurant that caused some serious gastrointestinal horrors for the ladies. Not to suggest that McCarthy doesn’t deserve the praise; she’s a terrific actress (Sookie forever!).
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Forget Transformers TV spots and Oscar frontrunner Jean Dujardin's racy French posters; let's talk about Best Actor nominee Gary Oldman and the Jersey Shore bump he's about to get from this dramatic reading of Snooki peeing her pants. Jimmy Kimmel put the Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy star up to the stunt on his late night show -- Which is on television! That thing that Oscar voters watch!
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Yes, I just wrote the words "Transformers Oscar campaign." Sigh. It's time we come to terms with the fact that each installment in Michael Bay's robot action series has technically been nominated for one or more Academy Awards -- deservedly so, really, given the technical achievements these CG metal-on-metal bashfests have under their belt, even if everything else in these films are aggressively, brain-numbingly mediocre. But Paramount aims to take home one of them statuettes this year, by god, and so they've created an awards campaign to break through to Oscar voters in the most effective way possible: Through their TV sets.
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Oscar-winning Man on Wire director James Marsh is clearly unafraid of dropping real talk; during this month's Sundance Film Festival he unleashed a tongue-lashing on the Academy for its recent Oscar documentary nominations, which notably did not include Marsh's own well-received Project Nim. But that's not the real problem -- Marsh laments the entire class of '12 Academy Awards doc selections, which he claims overlooked the best films of the year and makes the entire branch "look stupid."
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"I wanted to run Michael Parks from Red State for an Oscar this year, and I was told I'd need $250,000 minimum to do that. We thought we were eligible for SAG Awards, but it turns out that you have to actually submit to the SAG Awards, even if you're a SAG member, which doesn't make sense to me. And then the Golden Globe people didn't want to give Michael Parks consideration because we didn't screen the movie for them specifically when the movie was out in theaters, but it never was out in theaters so it was kind of ridiculous. You have to jump through these ridiculous little rings to even be considered, and then it's a popularity contest around who has the most money to run." [Moviefone]
The most demoralizing awards season in recent memory continued over the weekend, with the Directors Guild and the Screen Actors Guild handing out their hardware to pretty much everyone you expected to receive it. I'll factor all this into Oscar Index on Wednesday for a complete-race breakdown, but here are the five basic takeaways worth keeping in mind:
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What, ya didn't know rapper/personality Ed Lover was a closet cinephile-slash-Oscar pundit? To borrow from the man himself: "C'mon, son!" In a searing video rant over at NextMovie, he reacts to this year's batch of Oscar nominees and glaring snubs (what, no Drive, Harry Potter, or "Dame Julie Dench?") and pretty much takes the words out of my mouth. "They had the Academy Award nominations the other day at like 7 o'clock in the damn morning... C'mon, son!"
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And nominations will be announced on Feb. 25, the day before the Oscars. I'll let Dan Kois, the foremost Golden Raspberry Award expert in the business, explain the significance: "At long last, after 32 years, the Razzies will take place on the day they always should have: April 1, 35 days after the Oscars and 92 days after the last movie eligible for a Razzie was released. CHECK AND MATE, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences!" Orrr not. Anyway, this happened. [Grantland]
