The weeks of punditry and teary talk-show performances are over! Seth MacFarlane is about to take the stage and Movieline is about to liveblog the Oscars. Grab your favorite cocktail, enable your hand-held device and join me for Hollywood's most holy night. Let the pageantry and snarky comments begin!
Two weeks after carrying home the big prizes from the Critics’ Choice and Golden Globe Awards, Argo firmly established its Oscar front-runner status with another one-two punch in the form of the PGA's Motion Picture Producer of the Year honor and the SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast. And in a season of confusion and contradiction, that front-runner status gives Argo traction that none of its Best-Picture rivals have. more »
Argo maintained Awards momentum Sunday night, winning the best ensemble prize at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. The feature, directed by Ben Affleck who also stars, won the top film prize at the top film prize at the Golden Globes earlier this month and Saturday night at the Producers Guild Of America, taking the group's Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures prize for producers Affleck, George Clooney and Grant Heslov.
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It’s one month before the Academy Awards: Do you know where your Oscar buzz is? This week has been rife with distractions from the main event, including the Sundance Film Festival and the presidential inauguration, not to mention the public spectacle of admitted liar Lance Armstrong and online hoax victim Manti Te’o. And then there’s the little matter of new Academy rules that prohibit campaigning following the Oscar nominations. more »
“It just doesn't matter,” Bill Murray pep-talked to his misfit campers in Meatballs. You've got to think that Teams Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook similarly rallied the troops in the wake of Argo’s surprise Best Picture and Best Director wins at the Golden Globes. Go home, they might have said, it’s the Golden Globes. It just doesn’t matter.
Except that it does, contends In Contention’s Kris Tapley: “Anyone who dismissively calls it a non-issue doesn't get it. With six weeks, every little nuance and acceptance speech will be grist for the mill. It matters.”
That means that Tommy Lee Jones better start smiling, Golden Globe-winner Anne Hathaway better keep all her acceptance speeches as gracious and humble, and Jennifer Lawrence better recover from her rivals-slamming turn hosting Saturday Night Live.
But what matters more are the major Guild award ceremonies in the offing: The Producers Guild Awards on Jan. 26, the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Jan. 27, and the Director’s Guild Awards on Feb. 2. These should give a clearer picture of the Oscar race. Or not. A DGA award, one of the most reliable Oscar indicators, will come to naught should either Ben Affleck or Kathryn Bigelow, neither nominated for an Oscar, win.
As Times-Picayune critic Mike Scott noted on NOLA.com, “Usually the Golden Globes at least do a little to clarify an Oscar race or two, but in what is shaping up to be a more difficult-than-usual year in which to predict the Oscar winners, Sunday's Globes only clouded things… many of the Oscar races would appear to be coin-flip races at this point.”
One thing is irrefutable after Sunday night: After Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s hosting triumph at the Globes, Seth MacFarlane needs to have better jokes than his Hitler gag on nomination morning.
No Best Picture-nominee had a better week than Argo with its seven Oscar nominations and Critics Choice and Golden Globe wins for Best Picture and Best Director. No Oscar nomination for Best Director; no problem. Writes Tom O’Neil on GoldDerby.com:
“There is a clairvoyant member of the academy's producers' branch whose judgment I've learned to trust through the years. He's never been wrong about Best Picture as far as I know, not even when Crash pulled off an upset over Brokeback Mountain. Now he's backing Argo and feels very strongly about it. Right after Oscar noms were announced and before Argo pulled off those jaw-droppers at the Critics Choice Awards and Golden Globes, he roared at me, ‘Mark my words, Argo is going to win the Oscar. I don't give a damn that Affleck isn't nominated for Best Director. That only makes me more hellbent to vote for his movie!"
But despite Argo being “back in the mix,” wrote Steven Zeitchik and Glenn Whipp in The Los Angeles Times, Lincoln, leading the pack with 12 nominations, remains the frontrunner.
Or not. Silver Linings Playbook, like Lincoln, had a disappointing night at the Globes, but it is the first film since Reds at the 1982 ceremony to have received nominations for Best Picture, Director, all four acting categories, and screenplay. Plus: “People love Silver Linings Playbook; they respect Zero Dark Thirty,” write Michael Hogan and Christopher Hogan for their For Your Consideration blog on Huffington Post.
Silver Linings Playbook producer Harvey Weinstein catered an Italian lunch for members of the Hollywood Foreign Press, the New York Times reported. Lincoln director Steven Spielberg pulled off the coup of getting the services of “Hillary Clinton’s husband” to introduce his film at the Golden Globes. Advantage: Spielberg. Like Tapley said: It matters.
Meanwhile, Kathryn Bigelow, mired in the controversy surrounding her film’s depiction of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” gamely reiterated her “depiction is not endorsement” line of defense in a self-penned article in Wednesday’s The Los Angeles Times.
1. Lincoln
2. Silver Linings Playbook
3. Argo
4. Zero Dark Thirty
5. Life of Pi
6. Beasts of the Southern Wild
7. Les Miserables
8. Amour
9. Django Unchained
With Affleck and Bigelow out of the Best Director race, Spielberg's chances for a third Academy Award for Best Director are looking good, unless David O. Russell benefits from all that Academy love for Silver Linings Playbook. But don’t count out Ang Lee, noted Anne Thompson on her Thompson on Hollywood blog:
“Lee survived the brutal directors derby that left Kathyrn Bigelow, Ben Affleck and Tom Hooper hanging, and he commands serious respect inside the Academy, which gave him the Oscar for Brokeback Mountain. Remember, these 5700 voters are people who know what goes into making movies and this gorgeously executed heart-tugger with worldwide appeal ($400 million and counting) had a high degree of difficulty.”
1.Steven Spielberg (Lincoln)
2. David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook)
3. Ang Lee (Life of Pi)
4. Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild)
5. Michael Haneke (Amour)
Last night’s Golden Globes cemented Argo as the People’s Film from an awards season stand-point, setting the scrappy underdog to stand toe-to-toe with the monolithic Lincoln. Theoretically, the “People’s Film” would be The Hunger Games, which won Favorite Movie at the People’s Choice Awards, but in the context of the Oscars, the populism is relative to the awards — and none of the elite awards are more populist than the Golden Globes.
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Argo won the Best Motion Picture, Drama, while Les Misérables took Best Motion Picture Comedy or Musical Sunday night at the 70th Golden Globes at the Beverly Hilton. Looking surprise when his name was called, Ben Affleck took Best Director for Argo. He was snubbed for an Oscar nomination last week, but Affleck, who also stars in the film, took Best Director at the recent Critics Choice Awards.
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Welcome to Movieline's live coverage of the 70th Annual Golden Globes Awards. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler should be out any minute now, and we'll keep you updated on the good, the bad and the ugly after the jump.
Argo received eight Oscar nominations and has grossed over $166.4 million at the box office worldwide and now Iran wants in on the action. But don't expect the Islamic Republic to toe the line of how events transpired in the version directed and starring Ben Affleck.
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"I would like to thank the Academy… I'm kidding, I'm kidding. This is the one that counts," joked Ben Affleck Thursday night at the Critics Choice Awards, accepting his Best Director prize at the event hosted by the Broadcast Film Critics Association. If Affleck was more than simply disappointed by being passed up by the Academy in the Best Director category for Argo in yesterday's Oscar nominations, he didn't show it at last night at the event.
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On the heels of this morning's surprising and not-so-surprising Oscar nominations, the Broadcast Film Critics Association handed their Critics Choice Awards to a rather familiar bunch as Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, and Skyfall nabbed multiple major honors. In fact, the BFCA, an organization comprised of TV, radio, and online journalists, spread the love around to cover just about every Oscar favorite and token consolation prize there is. Take your bow, Cloud Atlas!
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Quentin Tarantino and David O. Russell were edged out of the pack in today's Directors Guild Award nominations announcement, giving way to a rather conservative quintet of Oscar hopefuls. So let the DGA backlash begin: Between Ben Affleck (Argo), Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty), Steven Spielberg (Lincoln), Tom Hooper (Les Miserables), Ang Lee (Life of Pi), which nominee should have gotten the shaft to make the DGA race even remotely interesting?
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This is getting exciting — not so much the Oscar race; but the recent spate of news about the Academy Awards telecast on Feb. 24. Things are shaping up for a evening that may be less cringe-worthy than usual and that could improve on last year’s slight ratings boost. You’ve got Adele to perform Skyfall" you’ve got the 50th anniversary James Bond tribute, and now comes confirmation that Barbra Streisand will perform for the first time in 36 years. (Just please, God, not with Seth MacFarlane.) Plus, the “In Memorium” segment should feature some especially beloved character actors (Andy Griffith, Ben Gazzara, Ernest Borgnine and Jack Klugman). more »
Oscar heavy-weights Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook are among the titles nominated for screenplay recognition by the Writers Guild. Documentary shortlisted films The Invisible Man, Mea Maxima Culpa and Searching For Sugar Man are also among the nominations in the non-fiction category for the 2013 Writers Guild Awards, which will be held Sunday February 17th in simultaneously in Los Angeles and New York.
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The Producers Guild of America (PGA) weighed in with their nominations for the best of 2012 for both motion pictures and television. Oscar heavy-weights including Lincoln, Django Unchained, Zero Dark Thirty, Les Misérables, Argo and Silver Linings Playbook made the cut along with other awards contenders including Beasts of the Southern Wild, Moonrise Kingdom and Life of Pi made the list for the organization's Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures.
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