Rocky knocking out Taxi Driver with one atomic upper-cut; a trio of Gangsta Americans collecting statuettes for their fanfare for the common pimp; one billion people asking in unison, "Marisa who?" Every year, we're promised the unexpected at the Academy Awards, but it's only when a dark horse nominee manages a stunning upset that the truly unexpected occurs. Here then, we examine four nominees with microscopic odds whose surprise triumphs could liven up this year's proceedings:
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Revealed! It's this year's Academy Awards set, albeit in tiny model form. Just picture this bigger and better-lit, with Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin standing in the wings as this year's Best Actor crop is given a heartfelt tribute from five legendary presenters: Channing Tatum, Taylor Lautner, Taylor Swift (whoa guyz! how did that happen?!?!), Alexander Skarsgard, and Snooki. It will be one historic night! [THR]
When your name is The New York Times, you have the kind of pull to convince a dozen or so A-listers to share their favorite performance of the decade, filmed in artful black and white. Some choose lazily ("Anything Meryl Streep has done in the past 50 years," Morgan Freeman? Don't strain yourself too much!), some chose surprisingly weird (Jeff Bridges: Mike White in Chuck and Buck), and some chose we have no clue because we were TOO PREOCCUPIED STARING AT THEIR GIGANTIC MOUND OF HAIR.
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With his Best Actor nominee A Single Man suffocating at the bottom of the box-office pile, and with Nine having arrived stillborn in both theaters and the Academy consciousness, Harvey Weinstein is down to Inglorious Basterds as his last major play for this year's Oscars. And in various calculated moves around the press, he's playing hard. You'd expect nothing less, but does he have a chance? You bet! It just depends on his chance at what.
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While the cutting-edge, youth-friendly innovations being cooked up at the Academy's OscarLabs are being kept under tight wraps, one major change has leaked to Deadline, and it's one that will rock Beyoncé's foundation garments: The Best Song performance has been eliminated from the festivities, to make room for the 10 Best Picture nominees; instead, the songs will play under clips of the films they're from. (Pictured, the members of Oscar-winning Three Six Mafia flash a grill of disappointment.) This decision comes in a year boasting a particularly uninspired crop, including "Loin de Paname" from the obscure Paris 36, three Randy Newman tunes from The Princess and the Frog, Marion Cotillard's Nine song called "Take it All" and "The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)" from photobombing outlaw, Ryan Bingham.
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Ryan Bingham's ridden some highs and lows during this awards season: He was nominated for an Oscar for writing the song "The Weary Kind" for Crazy Heart (a good thing!), but failed to make his Golden Globes acceptance speech because he was just chillin' in the bar (perhaps, on the whole, not a good thing). You can see how the Verge alum might have wanted to get noticed at this weekend's luncheon for Oscar nominees, and by God, he did it -- principally through managing the impressive feat of photo-bombing a picture he was supposed to be in anyway. Kudos, sir. Click through to expand the full-sized photo.
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There's one awards show that will never be hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, and that's the Academy's Scientific and Technical Awards, otherwise known as the tech part of the Oscars. The emcee gig always goes to a gorgeous B-list actress like Jessica Biel (because, you see, these nerds need something to look at!) and this year, the honor's been bestowed on Elizabeth Banks. Between her 30 Rock and Letterman stints last night, this is turning out to be a pretty good weekend for La Banks. Buy a lottery ticket, lady! [People]
Like the tearful, chanting throngs amassed outside the Vatican during a papal conclave, Oscar Nation awaits those puffs of white smoke indicating that Precious executive producer Tyler Perry has finally acknowledged the film's six Academy Award nominations. Then this afternoon, after nine days of waiting, my favorite e-mail subject line -- "A Message From Tyler Perry" -- set my inbox alight.
Click! Then the opening line: "Hey, I didn't want to forget to tell you this -"
Swoon! And then... at last...
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Good news, Oscar winners! No longer will you be expected to schlep alllll the way to Academy HQ to get your hardware personalized! This year, for the first time, engravers will add your name backstage at the Kodak Theater. The Academy has ordered 197 blank nameplates -- the maximum possible permutation of winners -- and unused plates will be recycled. That should be a fun line to wait on. For the record, this does not diminish the hell that will ensue if Mo'Nique's Oscar isn't already engraved when she wins. [AP]
The trick to Oscar campaigning this season is to go on talk shows to underline the disparity between you and the character that you play. Best Actress nominee Gabourey Sidibe has taken great points to point out that the title character in Precious is nothing like the bubbly, Justin Timberlake-loving Sidibe in real life, while Best Supporting Actor contender Stanley Tucci has subtly reminded interviewers that he is not actually a molester, because do you see a molester mustache on him anymore? In that vein, I can only assume that Jeremy Renner went on The View today to prove that he is not really a sexy bomb tech but instead a piano-playing Ed Helms from The Hangover, or something.
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After stirring festival crowds at Sundance and elsewhere over the last year, the recently Oscar-nominated animated short film Logorama has finally made its debut online. No one was sure if and/or when this day would ever come, if only because the nature of the short -- set in a world composed entirely of unlicensed corporate logos -- opened itself up to more than 2,500 potential lawsuits from the represented brands. (What, McDonald's might not approve of Ronald McDonald as a psychopathic, potty-mouthed fugitive?) And for all anyone knows, the two NSFW clips after the jump still might disappear shortly -- which is all the more reason to get a look now and find the David Fincher cameo hiding in plain sight.
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After four previous tries at Oscar glory and even more seminal roles the Academy overlooked (seriously, how did The Dude ever miss the cut?), Jeff Bridges is finally the presumptive front-runner for this year's Best Actor prize. His turn in Crazy Heart as Bad Blake -- a broken-down country singer on the slow rebound to redemption -- has stimulated both the awards cognoscenti and moviegoers alike, and the film enjoyed a successful expansion in its first weekend after its nominations (also including Maggie Gyllenhaal) were announced.
Foreseeable as Bridges's selection was and his likely win remains, Movieline nevertheless caught up with the busy 60-year-old hustling on the Oscar trail. There, he enlightened us on how campaigning has changed over four decades, the difference a great director makes, the tech-y allure of Tron and why reporters sometimes sleep with their subjects -- in the movies, anyway.
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The Oscar-nominated documentary The Cove hasn't been so warmly received by the Japanese commercial fishing industry, members of which the film features brutally, secretly slaughtering scores of dolphins off the country's coast. And now, after a year of battling threats and intimidation, the film's producers have released a statement announcing a deal to take the film directly to the Japanese people in April. It's the first time many Japanese will have heard about the mercury-poisoned dolphin meat that results from the annual "dolphin cull" in Taiji; the country's Flipperburger market will never be the same. Oh, and awards oddsmakers take note: This is the kind of real-world impact that stretches Oscar leads to virtually insurmountable lengths.
Are you a Movieline reader based in New York City? Not quite up for crashing the Academy's official Oscar fête at the St. Regis yet again? You're in luck! Movieline is happy to announce its inaugural Oscar Viewing Party, scheduled to overtake Tribeca on March 7. Please join us and a few special pals as well -- more details after the jump! Operators are standing by!
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No shortage of ink, of both the virtual and finger-staining varieties, has been spilled discussing the Academy's move to ten Best Picture nominees this year, a change that marks the first time since the wild, experimentation-happy period of 1932-1943 that we've had more than five films in contention for Hollywood's most prized statuette. (One day, when the story of this paradigm-exploding Oscar season is written, the eureka moment when new AMPAS president Tom Sherak squealed, "Let's nominate evvvverrrytthhhing!" to a mixture of thunderous applause and joyous weeping by the Academy's inner circle, will be its most moving chapter.) As you probably know, the decision to double the Best Picture field has necessitated the adoption of a "preferential voting" system, a safeguard for avoiding a mathematical nightmare scenario in which so many contenders split the vote that the Oscar is handed over to a winner that's earned a scandalously low percentage of check-marks. But how exactly does this preferential voting system work?, you are probably asking yourself, if you care way too much about how famous people are handed shiny trinkets. It sounds very complicated! Well, it is!
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