Hey, you know who works out a lot? Oscars producer/choreographer/tweetaholic Adam Shankman! And you know who's noticed? Lane Brown from Vulture, who's compiled every tweet relaying Shankman's comings and goings to his "gym." This guy just loves going to the gym and talking about it -- sometimes twice in a day, even! In fact, Oscar night isn't going to have any spectacular musical numbers at all; it's just going to be Shankman with an iPod on a naked stage, sweating it out to Level 8 on an elliptical cross-trainer and singing Lady Gaga really loudly over the Best Supporting Actress nominees. [Vulture]
The minds at Movieline are reeling today after a tipster sent us a collaboration between Oscar-nominated exes James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow that we never knew existed: a 1988 music video called "Reach" that Cameron directed for Bill Paxton's short-lived rock band Martini Ranch (!), in which he cast imminent wife and future Hurt Locker director Bigelow as a sexy, Wild West gunslinger. Look, we know that description alone is enough to whet your appetite, so do you need me to say that this INCREDIBLY, DELICIOUSLY 80's music video also features "credited whistler" Judge Reinhold, lady-bodybuilder beefcake, a capuchin monkey, anachronistic computers for some reason, and cameos from Lance Henriksen, Paul Reiser, Jenette Goldstein, and Adrian Pasdar? Just watch and be blown away:
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One of my most delightful memories of an otherwise hit-or-miss 2009 at the movies was how much August had going for it for a change. Sure, Hollywood dumped plenty of stinkers in the late-summer wasteland, but for a change, it also unveiled some of the year's most acclaimed releases in a month customarily left for dead while America is presumably on vacation. And now, in an unprecedented turn of events, three of those movies will compete next month for Academy Awards. Coincidence? Or is it actually realistic to ask the film industry: "More like this, please?"
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A couple days after Movieline wondered aloud what the hell ever happened to one-time Oscar shoo-in Carey Mulligan, some blowback emerged from the folks at Sony Pictures Classics. "We have several weeks of voting after the Oscar nominations are announced," an SPC insider protested to another blogger, "so the Best Actress game is not over. It's not even half-time yet." Well, OK. But while no one here really doubted Mulligan would get nominated yesterday, skepticism persisted about just how much of an impact -- if any -- she'd have on the "Best Actress game," and just what Sony Classics had in mind to get her back in playing shape. At least part of that answer is cleared up this morning: How about a 900-percent theatrical expansion?
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How do you know when you've hit the saturation point of Oscar coverage? Probably when you instinctively draw parallels between a banner year for Austria (three nominations total for natives Christoph Waltz, Michael Haneke and Christian Berger) and a miserable year for Australia, which, for the first time since 1998, failed to supply a single acting nominee. (The country's beloved Foreign-Language hopeful Samson and Delilah was snubbed as well.) In fact, the only Aussies headed to the Kodak Theater in contention are Luke Doolan and Drew Bailey, nominated for their live-action short Miracle Fish. Down under, indeed. [THR, ABC]
The Oscar reaction carousel spins anew at Movieline HQ, with Precious screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher paying a visit this afternoon to talk about his newly announced nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. His is one of six nods sent Precious's way today, and Fletcher spoke with me about the lingering shock of hearing one's name on Nomination Morning, the challenge of adapting the unadaptable, and how filming action figures innocently enough launched him on a 25-year journey to the Academy Awards.
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The reactions, commentary and eminently quotable humility of Oscar Nomination Day is an age-old tradition in Hollywood, and one in which Movieline is happy to be involved since this morning's Academy finalists were announced. After all, what more could any film lover ask from such an occasion than a Beastie Boy and upstart film distributor calling out Harvey Weinstein, or first-time nominee Jeremy Renner liken today's recognition to a "blazing stamp in the passport of an artist"? The verbiage from these contenders and others -- including Colin Firth, Penelope Cruz, Wes Anderson, Neill Blomkamp and Quentin Tarantino -- has poured into Movieline HQ over the last few hours; find a representative sampling after the jump.
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If things weren't trending Sandra Bullock's way before today, the Best Picture nomination for The Blind Side and her endlessly quotable Oscar reactions may do the trick. Not only has Bullock confirmed that she'll head to the Razzies to pick up her sure-fire win for Worst Actress in All About Steve, but she dished on her rivalry with fellow nominee Meryl Streep: "With Meryl, when this whole thing started, I left her a voice mail going, 'You've got to watch your back. I'm gonna cut you. I'm gonna take you down,'" Bullock said. "And then she sent me dead orchids and told me to die, so I sent her a case of liquor and told her to toast to white trash." [Yahoo]
Movieline's first stop on the Oscar-reaction rounds is Armando Iannucci, the In the Loop director whose caustic political satire today earned an Adapted Screenplay nomination for him and his co-writers Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell and Tony Roche. However, more than just being rewarded for the innovation of its characters and story -- which focuses on how one press-office zealot engineers a multinational war effort -- the Academy may very well have nominated Iannucci and Co. for their exhaustive efforts in developing Loop's stirring new lexicon of profanity. Their side-splitting effort is the only comedy recognized in its respective category -- no doubt an underdog against the likes of Up in the Air and Precious, but one that will be happy just to be in the Kodak Theater March 7.
Iannucci spoke with us this afternoon about his reaction to being nominated, Loop's improv factor, and taking Oscar to the outer limits of screen vulgarity.
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While this was supposed to be the year that the Academy Awards opened their uppermost tiers to America's favorite popcorn entertainment, there were some blockbusters that even the long, accommodating arm of Oscar declined to touch. And optimistic as I tried to be about Michael Bay's bloated, spray-tanned Razzie darling Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the Academy this morning issued a damning referendum on the $200 million-plus technical exercise by granting it exactly one measly Oscar nomination for Best Sound Mixing. That's right: No Visual Effects nod, no Sound Editing nod... Bay is no doubt kicking his tiger this morning at the realization that even Precious got a Best Editing nomination before his 150-minute action spectacle was considered. If you will, let's take a brief moment for consolation's sake.
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Just when ABC thought it was done with Adam Lambert, along comes Ryan Seacrest to rain on the network's parade. The American Idol host and E! newsman tweeted this morning that nominee Anna Kendrick told him she might bring old pal Adam Lambert (who knew?) as her Oscar date, though I'm guessing Seacrest actually asked, "Who are you bringing," Kendrick responded, "My mom," and Seacrest replied, "But will you acknowledge a 5% chance of Lambert so we can make this our top story on E! News?" Nevertheless, we'll get Lambert there by hook or by crook; if he can't be Kendrick's date, at least we know he'd be perfect for the Adam Shankman-choreographed, oral sex-miming "Make Mama feel good" musical number from Precious. [Twitter]
Most people had never even heard of The Secret of Kells when it was shortlisted in December by the International Animated Film Society's Annie Awards. The Irish-Belgian-French co-production immediately caught our eye for its highly stylized 2-D look and medieval subject matter, and lived up to the promise of its trailer when we caught its one-week qualifying run back in December.
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If you thought Avatar would be the only bona fide blockbuster to get a Best Picture nomination today, think again. John Lee Hancock's unstoppable Sandra Bullock juggernaut The Blind Side made its way into the mix, shocking most industry observers but not the folks here at Movieline, who called this back in November (for the record, S.T. is planning to douse his football cleats in Caesar salad dressing and cheese -- lots of cheese). What signs were there all along that this was a done deal? Let's take a look.
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If you're a Movieline reader, you've probably been following along with us the Twitter updates of Oscars producer Adam Shankman, the vivacious Hairspray director and So You Think You Can Dance panelist who once polled his followers, "So weird question; would u watch the oscars with more exitement [sic] if I cast some sytycd dancers if there are musical #s?" The answer to that question, of course, is a big, disco-ball-shaped YES. Assuming, then, that these tireless reality TV gypsies will be there Oscars night to translate the ten Best Picture nominees into something Generation Gaga can understand, we've now dipped into the SYTYCD vaults for a preview of what to expect.
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Get excited! The nominations for the 82nd annual Academy Awards were just announced, with a cascade of mostly foregone conclusions rolling over the cliffs at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater. A few upsets bubbled to the surface, meanwhile, as Anne Hathaway and Academy boss Tom Sherak delivered this year's nominees. Find those names (Maggie Gyllenhaal?) and films (The Blind Side?) after the jump, look for plenty more Oscar news and commentary as the day goes on, and congratulations to the nominees!
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