At last night's chilly Los Angeles premiere of Crazy Heart, Jeff Bridges's ebullience was apparent and for good reason: The 60-year-old actor will almost certainly earn his fifth Oscar nomination for his role as Bad Blake, an alcoholic country musician who regains purpose after falling for a young journalist (Maggie Gyllenhaal). For a man who was first nominated in 1971 for The Last Picture Show, the buzzy premiere reminded Bridges of his father's sage Oscar advice and the first director who guided him to gold.
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Blame it perhaps on Oprah, who famously called Mo'nique after first seeing Precious and declared, "So what are you wearing to the Oscars, girl?" Or maybe it was another female figure from her more distant past, a strong-willed grandmother who sat a 7-year-old future superstar on her lap and instructed, "One day, they'll be expecting you to dance for your gold prize. Don't do it, Mo'mo. When that day come, you let them dance for you." Whatever the case, when it comes to the awards derby, Mo'nique is not having any of it. Absent from most of the early Precious campaigning and film festival premieres, the comedian and actress's first direct acknowledgment of the race came in the form of this pragmatic and much-quoted kiss-off:
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Adam Shankman's Twitter followers, that's who. The Oscarcast producer last weekend solicited show-planning suggestions from his 48,000 devotees, sparking a torrent of feedback and burgeoning transparency that -- according to at least one report -- isn't making the Academy terribly comfortable. But with the downmarket promise wielded by solicitations like, "So weird question; would u watch the oscars with more exitement [sic] if I cast some sytycd dancers if there are musical #s," who wouldn't want to see just how far the hoi polloi can influence Hollywood's grandest show?
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It took some work, but four days after the National Board of Review's list of '09 winners left the distinct, chalky aftertaste of WTF in America's collective mouth (Two Lovers among the year's 10 best independent films? Come again?), a crisp, refreshing glass of alternative awards news helped rinse the flavor away over the weekend:
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Kyle: So, Stu, now that The Blind Side has wildly outpaced everyone's box office expectations, there's talk of Oscar buzz. And I don't just mean, "That line in the commercial that says there's Oscar buzz and we all laughed at it then but now we're not so sure."
S.T.: Well, I'm not so sure. In fact, if The Blind Side gets a Best Picture nomination, I will eat a pair of football cleats.
Kyle: At least there would be a silver lining, then! Video content, and whatnot.
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Reviews were mixed on last year's Oscars opening number, hampered by an on-the-nose "recession" theme (remember the Craigslist dancers?) but memorable for Hugh Jackman's consummate showmanship and a fearless eagerness to please, even when having to sing lyrics like "I would swim a sea of human excrement" directly to Kate Winslet. That number won an Emmy for Best Music & Lyrics. This year, however, Academy Awards producers Adam Shankman and the other one have asked Marc Shaiman to return to the glittery platform that has previously netted him three Emmys for his efforts.
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The Academy's shortlist for Best Documentary Feature was issued late Wednesday, containing a robust mix of snubs, surprises and headscratchers. That list, along with a lightning round of initial impressions, follows the jump.
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There's "in demand" -- like admitted workaholics Willem Dafoe or Tilda Swinton -- and then there's "in demand." Take Alexandre Desplat, for example, the twice-Oscar nominated composer who has worked on seven films in 2009 alone, not counting his contributions to date to Terrence Malick's delayed The Tree of Life. It's an eclectic resume as well, grouping the brilliant score to Cheri with two love themes to New Moon and a pair of French films we won't even see until 2010 at the earliest. And while Variety has a nice, friendly introduction to Desplat in today's composer roundelay, it's the recent smackdown for the film he didn't score -- and its director, Quentin Tarantino -- that might leave the biggest impression.
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Fox Searchlight isn't wasting any time getting over its slumpy fall trifecta of Whip It, Amelia and Gentlemen Broncos, choosing instead to play its ace in the Oscar hole with next month's Crazy Heart. A few strategic early screenings resulted in exactly the buzz the studio intended for Best Actor hopeful Jeff Bridges, and now the film's trailer reveals to the rest of us a few slivers of the folksy woe and redemption that the Academy is likely to reward next spring.
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Congratulations to Roger Corman, Lauren Bacall and Gordon Willis, who received honorary Oscars Saturday night at the Academy's Governors Ball. The trio (plus producer John Calley, who was too ill to attend and accept his Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award) was the first to be so honored outside the regular Oscar ceremony.
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Gordon Willis is the best cinematographer America ever produced. There. I said it. If he'd only shot the Godfather trilogy, Manhattan, Zelig and All the President's Men (let alone Pennies From Heaven, Interiors, Klute and Broadway Danny Rose), he'd have at least earned consideration among the greats like Gregg Toland and Billy Bitzer and his Oscar-winning contemporaries Conrad Hall and Haskell Wexler. And very few would argue against Willis being the best American cinematographer to never win an Oscar -- until tomorrow, that is, when Willis will join Roger Corman as a recipient of a long, long over lifetime-achievement Academy Award. In a series of clips after the jump, see some of what the Academy missed (and is finally making up for) all these years.
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It's that time of year when even the police blotter isn't immune to scouring for Oscar-news nuggets. And so we have this: Mike Tyson was arrested Wednesday at LAX after an altercation with a photographer. The former heavyweight champ was charged with battery and released on his own recognizance after he allegedly punched the photographer in the face. Seeing as both men are fine, let's now get to the real issue: What does all this mean for Tyson's Oscar chances?
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Every Oscar season, pundits bemoan the preponderance of films that are so safe, they seem to have been designed with an awards blueprint in mind. You'd think then, that the chattering class would be excited by this year's crop of contenders; whether by virtue of the expansion of the Best Picture race or by simple coincidence, some of 2009's nominee hopefuls are over-the-top, outlandish, and, well, as far from Frost/Nixon as can be.
Yet I've read reviews and gotten in countless debates about movies like Precious, A Single Man, and even Inglourious Basterds where the films' wild natures seem to be held against them. Their fantasies are too campy! Their flights of fancy are too popcorny! It's funny, because I agree -- only I think those are good things. Here's a spirited defense of each movie's "excess is best" raison d'être:
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Congratulations, awards bloggers! You made it happen! (Or maybe you were just flattered into thinking you made it happen, and this was in the works for some time now.) In any case, Jeff Bridges Oscar-shot Crazy Heart is getting an accelerated, qualifying release date: December, 16 2009. "As he struggles down the road of redemption," the press release goes, "Bad learns the hard way just how tough life can be on one man's crazy heart." In the meantime, you can get your Bridges fix this weekend in The Men Who Stare at Goats, in which he plays a different sort of long-haired burnout.
The screening was cloaked in secrecy -- the Fox Searchlight rep wasn't even allowed to say the film by name in her e-mail invitation. But by the time I got to the Fox lot for the 6 p.m. show, the cat was out of the bag. Bloggers at an earlier screening of Crazy Heart -- a film starring Jeff Bridges as alcoholic country singer Otis "Bad" Blake, that the mini-major plans to rush into theaters to qualify it for an Oscar run -- had begun to buzz. They claim the film pushes four-times-the-bridesmaid nominee Bridges to the front of the Best Actor pack, and in doing so save Searchlight some awards season face after Amelia barely managed to get off the ground.
And they might be right.
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