While the blogosphere debates the merits and drawbacks of Alcon hiring Ericson Core (Invincible) to direct its remake of Point Break, it's time to start asking if Kathryn Bigelow's 1987 neo-noir vampire thriller Near Dark will ever be remade. more »
It's a good morning for Harvey Weinstein, Fox and Sony Pictures Classics. Sifting through the more surprising-than-usual list of Academy nominations, these are the three big winners of the fierce behind-the-scenes campaigning that movie studios, their specialty divisions (and their consultants) do to get their pictures, directors, actors, etc. onto the hallowed Oscars short list.
The Weinstein Company has the enviable dilemma of now having to decide how to run two Best Picture campaigns for Silver Linings Playbook and Django Unchained. It also managed to get Joaquin Phoenix a Best Actor nomination for The Master despite Phoenix's slagging of the Oscars as the "stupidest thing in the world" and the picture's quick fade as a contender in the awards buzz circus. David O. Russell's nomination, after being passed over by the Director's Guild, is another sign of TWC's political muscle, particularly since the Silver Linings Playbook director is an outsider in Hollywood — like Weinstein and Phoenix, for that matter. (Okay, so Weinstein may be way more inside than he was in the Miramax days, but he's still an outsider. Fox employee and this year's Oscars host Seth MacFarlane made that clear earlier this morning, when referring to the Best Supporting Actress nominees, he cracked: "Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.")
Fox and Sony also did well in the Best Picture category: Fox 2000 has Life of Pi and Fox Searchlight has Beasts of the Southern Wild in the top category, but Sony is the more interesting story here. While the Annapurna-produced Columbia Pictures-distributed Zero Dark Thirty was nominated for Best Picture as expected, director Kathryn Bigelow's omission in the Best Director category goes down as one of the biggest snubs of this morning. On the other hand, the nominations of Sony Pictures Classics' Amour in the Best Picture and Best Foreign Picture categories and Michael Haneke for Best Director is quite a coup for the mini major given the competition this year and the film's difficult subject matter. In other words, Haneke's gain is related to Bigelow's loss.
Thoughts? Leave them in the comments section.
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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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Even as the U.S. Senate continues to inquire about what it says are misrepresentations of the use of torture in the successful hunt for Al Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden in 2011, filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal defended their Oscar hopeful Zero Dark Thirty at the New York Film Critics Circle Monday night.
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Even as Zero Dark Thirty has come under fire by key Senators criticizing its depiction of torture in the hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, the film shrugged off the pressure, at least at the box office, in its initial limited roll out Wednesday.
[Related: Golden Globes Unveil 70th Edition Nominees]
The Sony release opted for a specialty-style roll-out Wednesday, opening in limited locations in New York and Los Angeles before it heads wide January 11, not so coincidentally, the day after Oscar nominations are unveiled. The pic, which re-teams Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow and writer-producer Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker), scored the biggest Wednesday limited opening ever (without a Disney-style stage show), according to Deadline.com. The film starring Jessica Chastain grossed a tremendous $124,848 in one day from just five theaters giving it a stellar mid-week $24,969 average.
The numbers outstrip the likes of other Wednesday openers American Beauty which took in $73K with six theaters and Little Miss Sunshine with $66K from 7 runs.
The film has been an early darling for critics with prestige organizations including the New York Film Critics Circle, the Chicago Film Critics Association and the National Board of Review giving the two-and-a-half-hour-plus feature its choice for Best Film of 2012. It also received four Golden Globe noms, including Best Motion Picture, Drama though others such as Lincoln, Django Unchained and Les Misérables scored more.
Still, Zero Dark Thirty is expected to be a heavy-hitter come Oscar nomination morning. Some, however, have begun to speculate whether the percolating controversy over the film's perceived suggestions that water-boarding, extreme isolation and other techniques were useful in ultimately locating Bin Laden and how that may affect Academy voters should the story hold staying power in the headlines.
A report from A.P. yesterday said that former Vietnam War-era P.O.W. Senator John McCain slammed the film after viewing a screener earlier this week and BBC reports that McCain and two other Senate colleagues made their objections official in a letter to the head of Sony Pictures Entertainment.
The letter said the pic is "perpetuating the myth that torture is effective" and that "the fundamental problem is that people who see Zero Dark Thirty will believe that the events it portrays are facts." It goes on to say, "the film therefore has the potential to shape American public opinion in a disturbing and misleading manner," and that the "use of torture in the fight against terrorism did severe damage to America's values and standing that cannot be justified or expunged."
Also signing the letter, which was made public, were Senators Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin, all of whom are members of the Senate Intelligence committee.
Bigelow has said that her film depicts a "variety of controversial practices and intelligence methods." She and Boal have also indicated their distaste for torture in statements last week.
A front-runner in the Oscar race, Zero Dark Thirty received some harsh words from an unlikely source - Senator John McCain. The Arizona legislator who was a P.O.W. and endured torture during Vietnam watched the film by Kathryn Bigelow Monday night and said it left him sick and called it, "wrong."
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The group gave Zero Dark Thirty its top Best Picture and Best Director prizes in addition to Best Actress for Jessica Chastain, while Lincoln's Daniel Day-Lewis took Best Actor with the Chicago Film Critics Association Monday.
[Related: Golden Globes Unveil 70th Edition Nominees And 'Zero Dark Thirty' Takes Top National Board Of Review Honors]
[Related: LA Film Critics Name 'Amour' Best Picture, Boost 'The Master,' Jazz Up Oscar Race]
The wins follow:
Best Picture: Zero Dark Thirty
Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
Best Actress: Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty
Best Supporting Actor: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, The Master
Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, The Master
Best Original Screenplay: Zero Dark Thirty by Mark Boal
Best Adapted Screenplay: Lincoln by Tony Kushner
Best Foreign Language Film: Amour
Best Documentary: The Invisible War
Best Animated Feature: ParaNorman
Best Cinematography: Mihai Milaimare Jr., The Master
Best Original Score: Jonny Greenwood, The Master
Best Art Direction: Moonrise Kingdom
Best Editing: William Goldenberg & Dylan Tichenor, Zero Dark Thirty
Most Promising Performer: Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild
Most Promising Filmmaker: Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild
[Related: NY Film Critics Circle Spices Up Oscar Race With 'Zero Dark Thirty' Best Picture Pick]
"Can I be honest with you? I'm bad news. I'm not your friend. I'm not going to help you - I'm going to break you. Any questions?" are the haunting words that open the latest Zero Dark Thirty trailer spoken by actor Jason Clarke who plays Dan, a CIA interrogator.
[Related: Oscar Index: 'Zero Dark Thirty' Caught In The Cross-Hairs]
His character is at the center of a mini-controversy that broke this week by critics of the film by Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow who say it justifies the U.S.'s use of water-boarding and other "enhanced interrogation" techniques — considered torture by many &mdash' as useful tools in the eventual successful hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.
The trailer depicts the worldwide hunt from the boardrooms of the CIA in Washington, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and eventually Afghanistan and Pakistan. Jessica Chastain, who has received multiple critics awards and nominations so far, including a Golden Globe nomination yesterday, is the secret operative at the center of the hunt. The trailer hints at the slick telling of the story and ends with what sounds like a child's choir singing a haunting version of Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters."
[Related: Should Torture Controversy Blindside 'Zero Dark Thirty'?]
Zero Dark Thirty Synopsis:
For a decade, an elite team of intelligence and military operatives, working in secret across the globe, devoted themselves to a single goal: to find and eliminate Osama bin Laden. Zero Dark Thirty reunites the Oscar-winning team of director-producer Kathryn Bigelow and writer-producer Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker) for the story of history's greatest manhunt for the world's most dangerous man.
The Oscar Index’s head is spinning. What critics organization didn’t announce their nominees or award-winners this week? On Thursday it was the Golden Globes, on Wednesday the SAGs, and Monday the AFI and BFCA. The Boston, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego, St. Louis and Washington critics associations also weighed in with their picks.
But critics don’t vote for the Academy Awards, so much of this will have little bearing on who will be nominated for an Academy Award; not Lincoln’s seven Golden Globe nominations, not Dwight Henry’s Best Supporting Actor win from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association for Beasts of the Southern Wild, and not the Washington D.C. Film Critics Association’s pick of Zero Dark Thirty as the year’s best film.
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Happy Golden Globes Nomination Day everyone! While you mull over this year's crop of obvious picks ("Argo f*** yourself," Academy) and not so obvious surprises (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Hope Springs, Taylor Swift and Jon Bon Jovi? Are we really doing this, HFPA?) let's delight in the reactions of the chosen few who'll vie for Golden Globes glory on Sunday, January 13. (Updated as nominee reactions roll in...)
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Is Zero Dark Thirty pro-torture propaganda? Despite fawning praise bestowed last weekend on Kathryn Bigelow's hunt for Bin Laden thriller, that's the growing consensus among left, and left-libertarian film commentators who were deeply disturbed by the film's opening sequence.
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If American Psycho's Patrick Bateman were a film critic, he'd be Bret Easton Ellis. When he's not promoting his film The Canyons — directed by Paul Schrader and starring Lindsay Lohan — on Twitter, Ellis has been blowing shotgun-sized holes in some of the awards season's biggest films. more »
Welcome back to the Gold Linings Playbook, otherwise known as the Oscar Index, in which we take the pulse of the pundits handicapping this year’s emerging Oscar class!
Oscar handicapping began in earnest this week with The New York Film Critics Circle’s selection of Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty as Best Picture, adding further speculation that the hunt for Bin Laden drama may steal some of Ben Affleck’s Argo’s thunder. In the past decade, four of the NYFCC’s Best Picture winners have gone on to win the Academy Award: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King; No Country for Old Men; The Hurt Locker, and The Artist.
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Kathryn Bigelow's angular thriller Zero Dark Thirty begins and ends with events that have been seared into public memory — the attacks on September 11, 2001 and the death of Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011 in Abbottabad, Pakistan, two incidents that bookended a decade in which America's sense of security and place in the world were radically shaken. more »
Kathryn Bigelow’s ambitious Oscar contender Zero Dark Thirty started out as a film about the 2001 siege of Tora Bora hunting down al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but as the Academy Award-winner told a rapt audience at the picture's buzz-building debut in Beverly Hills on Sunday, it changed direction in one quick, fateful instant.
“At about 10 o’clock at night on May 1, 2011 we realized we no longer had a project about the hunt for Osama bin Laden,” Bigelow said at a packed post-screening Q&A at the Pacific Design Center, “because he was no longer living.”
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