Give the Academy some credit: They made awards season fun for a little bit longer. At least my mind was blown this morning as AMPAS president Tom Sherak and Jennifer Lawrence announced The Tree of Life, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Demián Bichir and a few other shocks among the 2012 Oscar nominations.
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We're a little more than half a day away from learning who and what will compete for the 84th annual Academy Awards -- an elite class through which Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics had combed for four months in its fail-safe, fool-proof and bracingly handsome Oscar Index. This calls for one last sweep through each of the Academy's categories (with the exception of live-action, animated and documentary short, about which even our pointiest-headed Oscar wonk cannot speak yet with authority); check our team's work against your own, and drop back by Movieline tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m. ET/5:30 a.m. PT as we deliver nominations, reactions, analysis and more.
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Smack in the middle of a two-week frame yielding two awards shows and a pair of nomination announcements that will culminate in this year's Oscar nods, the researchers at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics have gained minimal insight into where the Academy may take the 2011-12 awards race in next Tuesday's final nominations. Or maybe they're all just sleeping. It's been that kind of year. Let's check their work in this week's Oscar Index.
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"Weak." "Lackluster." "Underwhelming." "Less-than-stellar." Such are the general characterizations of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo's box-office earnings to date from observers, insiders and pundits around the Web. And now for an equally appropriate one-word response to those perceptions: "Huh?"
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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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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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Anyone who tells you that receiving a tattoo like the dragon design occupying a quarter of Rooney Mara's back in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo will not hurt is a liar. Nevertheless, he's a competitively priced liar, according to a new survey of tattoo artists asked the simple question: "How much would it cost to buy a dragon tattoo?"
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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!
Yeah, I can't get over Rooney Mara's Dragon Tattoo getup. It's so... dated? Swedish? Remarkably cliche? And yet entrancing? Anyway, it has alternative connotations, and that brings me to Movieline's Christmas indulgence of the day: alternative women covers of yuletide classics. I couldn't find an embed of Liz Phair's recent "Baby It's Cold Outside" cover with the band Wheat, please consider that the unofficial sixth entry on this list. Take us to the Grinch, Aimee Mann!
If Rooney Mara's fearless turn as Stieg Larsson's goth-punk hacker heroine Lisbeth Salander teaches us anything, it's that you should never, ever cross a woman with fire in her heart and vengeance on her mind. But the titular Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is just the latest in a long history of utterly human movie heroines who remind us how ferocious and unrelenting a woman wronged can be. Celebrate the fictional ladies who have helped teach society not to fuck with the so-called "fairer" sex, and let their righteous fury be a lesson to us all during this warm and fuzzy holiday season.
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 Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Tumblr Mouth Taped Shut recently unearthed a startling artifact: A vintage segment of the investigative news program Hard Copy exploring the case of one Harriet Vanger, a teenager who went missing decades ago from her family estate in Hedeby Island, Sweden. Watch the unsettling VHS-era report after the jump, complete with your favorite commercials from '80s primetime television.
It may not be Halloween but some of Hollywood's best and brightest stars dressed up as film's most notorious villains as part of a wonderful new New York Times gallery entitled "Vamps, Crooks and Killers." Click through to see Pitt, Clooney and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo star Rooney Mara channel some of the most deranged movie madmen.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo has already established itself as the perfect forum for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's haunting, crunchy musical stylings, but the full breadth of its soundtrack is a bit of a disappointment: It's only three full-length CDs! Damn it. That's barely enough music to occupy me during a four-hour flight from Los Angeles to Chicago. Underachievers. Find out where you can get the soundtrack's Karen O.-led cover of "Immigrant Song," as well as a few clips from the new package, after the jump.
Forget all that love for The Artist and Spielberg's Oscar-readyWar Horse; sometimes you need a jolt of pure Fincherian grime and menace to snap you out of the awards season doldrums. Enter these 30+ images from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, here to remind us that the Rooney Mara-Daniel Craig starrer is the feel-bad movie of the year. Shudder and shiver your way through Movieline's gallery and count down the days to December 21.
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