What a week at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics, where the pundits' hustle harmonized with the guilds' bustle to create a heavy-duty wake-up call for some otherwise dormant awards-season underdogs. They also telegraphed danger for a few juggernauts once thought unassailable. What does it all mean as we head into the Critics Choice and Golden Globe Awards weekend? To the Index!
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So much awards news! And it's not all good for J. Edgar, the latest high-profile Oscar hopeful to see its balloon deflate as the Academy rolled out its Best Makeup short list. High-fives are in order, meanwhile, for the teams behind Albert Nobbs, Hugo, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 and four other awards contenders. Read on for the complete list.
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The New York Times reported Sunday that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' documentary branch is tweaking its qualification rules once again, allowing only theatrical nonfiction feature films that have been reviewed by the NY or LA Times to be considered for Oscar nominations. Furthermore, voting on nominees will be expanded to the entire 166-member Documentary Branch (as opposed to individual committees), and the Academy as a whole can vote for Best Documentary, regardless of how or where members saw the nominated films. The revisions have prompted more than a little hand-wringing around the doc community -- for no especially good reason, alas. Here's why:
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ABC released a cutesy trailer for the 2012 Academy Awards telecast that speaks loads to the youthful new direction the show's makers were going in when they brought Brett Ratner aboard, before his untimely exit; in a slick parody of globe-trotting Hollywood fare, two heroes are tasked with tracking down wizened Billy Crystal for hosting duties on the Big Night. Those heroes? None other than Transformers castmates Josh Duhamel and Megan Fox, because of course. Nothing says current like the girl who was the hottest thing on earth three years ago! Watch the trailer and see if it entices you with its "Hey kids, check us out!" hip comedy stylings.
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"'Can you wrap your mind around someone throwing you into the ring with Meryl Streep?' [Viola Davis] marvels.'I just don’t understand the competition thing. How can you compare two actors' performances? How do you say one is better than the other?''I know how you do it,' Clooney says to Davis. 'You have to play Margaret Thatcher and she has to play the maid.'" Your move, Harvey! [EW]
The first Oscar Index entry of 2012 finds Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics a little hungover from the holidays and lot bored from the protracted inertia of awards season. Not even this week's Producers Guild Award nominations could do much to shake up a contest that appears to be both wide open and solidifying into place at the same time. Let's investigate...
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Well, this should go pretty fast: The holiday week has offered a dearth of new narratives to trace and pulses to take, with only one film demonstrating any significant mobility in the studies coming out Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics. Let's get to it!
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released the poster for the 84th Academy Awards, and it's... nice? I mean, Oscar looks sexy as ever, and all those foggy images of awards-night glories past recall both the champagne-fueled afterparties and the preponderance of white folks who take this hardware home every year. But isn't something missing? Like, the host?
Screw Christmas. Forget Hanukkah. To hell with New Year's. There is only one holiday we celebrate in the dank, windowless labs of Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics, and that is Oscar Night. Thus the latest edition of Oscar Index, offering all the festive year-end joy you can possibly stand. Let's get to it!
The exhaustion levels are high and the confusion levels are even higher at Movieline's Institute For the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics, where the white-coated minions responsible for the Oscar Index have struggled to assay the state of the awards race through this week's persistent turbulence. Read on for their results.
It's the little things that get us through one otherwise interminable awards season after another: Oscar-nominee trading cards, #ConsiderUggie, The Daldry... That kind of stuff. But perhaps the most remarkable development of the current awards cycle sprung immediately, kind of miraculously from the previous most remarkable development of the current awards cycle. And it all benefits Drive scene-stealer (and recent SAG Award snubbee) Albert Brooks.
What do you get for the cinephile who has everything? Start with a six-figure loan, I guess, and then check out the ongoing auction for "[t]he finest and most desirable item in Hollywood collecting -- the original Oscar awarded to Orson Welles for best 'Original Screenplay' for Citizen Kane. This Oscar statue, awarded by The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is the very same statue presented to Orson Welles on 26 February 1942 at the Biltmore Hotel. [... F]or years it had gone missing and the Academy issued a replacement to Beatrice Welles, Orson's youngest daughter and sole heir. The original had all along been in the possession of cinematographer Gary Graver, who tried to sell it in 1994." [Nate D. Sanders via THR]
We've officially crossed the halfway point of this year's Oscar Index -- a bittersweet milestone where the team at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics takes a deep breath, orders a stiff drink, and then... orders another eight or so stiff drinks. While they slam their ways over the awards-season hump, join me for a quick run-through of where things stand this week.
What a difference two days makes: Less than 48 hours after the launch of Movieline's "Consider Uggie" crusade, the movement's Facebook page has acquired 1,100 followers and counting, its honoree has his own Twitter page, and Uggie himself joined trainer Omar Mueller for a campaign stop on E! News. Crazy! And overdue.
Good news and bad news this week from Movieline's Institute For the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics -- the good news being that a handful of critics organizations and awards bodies have helped to draw the year's noteworthiest (i.e. Oscar-baitiest) titles and talent of the season into their sharpest relief yet. The bad news: Sharp relief remains a total mess, with the fields in most major categories wide open heading into December. Which is the way we like it, right? Right? Ugh. To the Index...
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