Congrats aren't just in order for the winners of tonight's Film Independent Spirit Awards; major props go to Adam Sandler for an outstanding showing in today's Razzie nominations announcement, which found the Jack & Jill/Just Go With It star breaking the previous record for most personal Razzie nominations earned in a year. (Sandler won 11 nominations, while Jack & Jill itself earned 12.) Eddie Murphy, guess you're off the hook for the Year of Norbit. See the full list of fairly obvious nominees vying for Golden Raspberry (dis)honors after the the jump and leave your predictions below.
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"Nothing will come from this if you win!” joked Seth Rogen as he opened his hosting gig at the 2012 Film Independent Spirit Awards. “Absolutely nothing. This won't help you get paid anymore -- if anything, it proves you'll work for nothing.” That may be painfully true for many of the indie film nominees honored today at the annual Spirit Awards, held in a tent on the beach in balmy Santa Monica. But what does it mean that the night’s big winner was the Harvey Weinstein-backed awards season juggernaut The Artist?
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Movieline's backstage at the Film Independent Spirit Awards, where Seth Rogen is hosting (and absolutely killing it) at the annual celebration of indie filmmaking, held in a tent on the beach in Santa Monica. Want the irreverent, no holds-barred celeb-skewering monologue that Billy Crystal most certainly will not deliver tomorrow night? Stay tuned for clips of Rogen to hit the airwaves tonight. Meanwhile, follow along on Twitter (at @movieline) and check back here to see this year's winners updated as they happen!
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Forty-eight hours to Oscar. Gut-check time — or maybe make that "gut-instinct check" time, a moment to break away from the meticulous zeitgeist-combing science of Movieline's Institute For the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics and make a few choices for myself. Not that they'll be so different, but if you can't go with a hunch where 5,765 fickle, insular industry minds are concerned, then what can you go with? We can't all be be Otis the Oscar Cat, you know. Anyway, let's make this quick:
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Kevin Tent had been nominated for three ACE Eddies before winning this month for The Descendants, which the American Cinema Editors deemed Best Edited Feature (Drama). Tent’s work in the cutting room played an important role in placing The Descendants firmly in the drama category. The longtime collaborator with Alexander Payne — Tent's other Eddie nods were for Sideways, About Schmidt and Election — says that much more comedy from the King family was shot than what we see onscreen and that removing it just felt right. In a few days, Tent will vie for the Best Film Editing Oscar for the first time. Movieline spoke with him about how the movie’s dramatic story came together, the attention from the Academy and his plans for Oscar night and beyond.
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When the Academy announced its nominations last month for Best Animated Feature, two waves of surprise washed over Oscar watchers: Not only was Pixar left out in the cold for the first time in its history, but also two lesser-known films from abroad made the cut in the category: the noir-y French entry A Cat in Paris and the Spanish-language jazz-romance Chico and Rita. The directors of those films, along with Kung Fu Panda 2 helmer Jennifer Yuh Nelson, one of few female directors nominated this year, spoke with Movieline about the recognition from the Academy, technologies such as 3-D and motion capture, and their Oscar night excitement.
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Meet Otis the Oscar Cat, Movieline's resident feline awards prognosticator. Like the majority of Academy members, he's white, male, and owns a black tie; his tastes tend toward the traditional, although he'll bite at the occasional tasty treat. To get an inside line on Sunday's Best Picture winner, we consulted Otis for his Oscar picks -- will the Academy Award go to The Artist, starring that rascally pup Uggie? Or perhaps War Horse, by a nose?
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The Academy Awards telecast stopped being a one-screen experience years ago. An Oscar viewing party is all well and good, but with a computer or phone nearby, a virtual theater full of people will enhance the experience from the first red-carpet arrivals to the music playing over the Best Picture winner’s speech. Yes, your friends are witty and can also fetch you a beer, but the best jokes about the winners, losers and everything in between are on Twitter. Some professionals make watching the Oscars simply worth the hours (and hours) spent. Doug Benson is one of them.
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Each Wednesday for the past five months, my colleague S.T. VanAirsdale has fearlessly navigated the ever-shifting Academy Awards tides with his weekly Oscar Index, a gig that’s enough to make even the most intrepid seafaring mortal long for dry land. It’s in sight, Stu! By this coming Monday morning, all of our meticulously calibrated predictions, as well as our wayward hopes for our own personal favorites, will amount to little more than scraps of speared whale blubber, receding in the distance as we move toward next year’s Oscar broadcast. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There’s still time to savor the last-minute glitter wave. To that end, here are my own Oscar predictions for each category, followed by the candidates I wish would win.
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I have neither this decal nor a car to which I could apply it, but the genius of this backlash to the Artist backlash makes me desire both. [The Hot Blog]
And why? Because they're based on hype. But that's OK, Ben Zauzmer — Harvard freshman, analytical whiz kid and proprietor of the new "matrix algebra"-based awards prognostication site Ben's Oscar Forecast! Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics has the science down and is soliciting interns for next year's awards-season death march. Inquire within.
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Woody Allen, whose Midnight in Paris is competing at this Sunday's Academy Awards, will be bringing his Oscar-nominated 1994 comedy Bullets Over Broadway to the Great White Way in 2013, reports the New York Times. The adaptation has long been rumored to be in the works; Allen himself is writing the book, with songs culled from existing 1920s-era music. Cue obligatory Dianne Wiest quotes! [NYT]
As the big night fast approaches, it’s time for another of Movieline’s virtual awards roundtables. Our Oscar nominees this time are up for Best Costume Design. They are (in alphabetical order):
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It's been known to galvanize everybody from the upper echelons of Academy leadership to the vexed likes of Corey Feldman. But regardless of the politics and passions, it's ultimately the all-too-rare equalizer for folks looking to play the odds at any Oscar party: The In Memoriam montage.
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Drive sound editor Lon Bender, up for the Oscar against The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Hugo, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and War Horse, on director Nicolas Refn's unusual sound requests: “In the sound world, there often is a propensity to want, at least for things like car chases, guns or weapons, to use sounds of the real weapons or the real cars. But when I went to Nic to talk about car engines and the specificity of the kind of cars they were, he said, ‘I don’t even have a driver’s license and I’ve never driven a car. I don’t care what they sound like! They just have to sound exciting.’” [NYT]
