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]
The Proust Questionnaire -- the renowned personal inquisition perhaps best known around these parts for concluding issues of Vanity Fair and episodes of Inside the Actors Studio -- has finally found its way to the dogs. Or at least to the dog. Trust me, you've heard of him.
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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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I had a feeling this was coming: Two years after songwriter Ryan Bingham photo-bombed his own Oscar-nominee luncheon group photo, the customary portrait once again met its match with animators Brandon Oldenburg and William Joyce. Good for them! Someone's gotta have some fun at these things.
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If you feel like whiling away the afternoon following updates about a room full of wealthy entertainers and/or movie-industry craftspeople eating, the Academy's Twitter feed might be for you.
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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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For the grand finale of Contest Week at Movieline -- which previously entailed conjuring Daniel Radcliffe-flavored fan fiction and Hunger Games haiku -- I humbly bring you the single greatest prize we have ever offered our readers. One word: Pawtograph. (UPDATE: Many thanks to everyone who played along here, on Twitter and Facebook; read on for our winners!)
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News surfaced on Wednesday that Kodak, the once-proud photography giant whose heavy-duty film shackles have tripped it into bankruptcy, has gone to court to get out of its 20-year naming agreement with the owners of the Kodak Theater. Of course, the Academy Awards can't just be held at any anonymous old auditorium in the heart of Hollywood. This calls for creative solutions, and fast. Naturally, that's where Movieline readers come in.
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File under the ever-thickening berth labeled "Dirty Oscar-Season Tricks": No sooner did the sun rise on the Academy's final-ballot mailing day than word circulated about the author and publishers of The Reader suing The Weinstein Company for undercompensation. I know, I know -- you're shocked.
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"You think if Brad Pitt wins the Oscar this year, people will say he’s had it coming since Seven Years in Tibet? Guys, let’s all say that!" [This Had Oscar Buzz]
"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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