There's good news and bad news to begin this post-nomination, next-to-next-to-next-to-next-to-last installment of Oscar Index. The good news? It's kind of almost over! The bad news? Oy. Please don't make me repeat it.
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This trenchant observation press release just over the transom at ML HQ: "You’ve probably seen the news by now –- Ryan Gosling has been snubbed by the Academy. Once all the hoopla and cries of injustice die down, you’ll find that Ryan Gosling, the supposed darling of hearts everywhere, really wasn’t all that popular. In a recent survey conducted by Badoo, the world’s largest social network for meeting new people, when asked which male celeb they would like to hang out with, people overwhelmingly chose Tim Tebow (31%) and not Ryan, who brought in only 6% of the vote. Even amongst women, Ryan did poorly against the likes of George Clooney, garnering a meager 9% to Clooney’s 24%." Now you know. [Press release]
Thanks to the wonders of Twitter, we already know how Albert Brooks feels about this morning's brutal Oscar-nomination snub. But how is the rest of the Academy's snubculture faring? We may never know entirely, but at least their unofficial ambassador Patton Oswalt has the fan-fiction angle covered -- and it sounds like this group has the Governors Ball beat.
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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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As yet another incredible season begins to gradually wind down, we're roughly 48 hours away from one of the year's most closely watched, hotly competitive high-stakes all-star showdowns to date. But enough about the New York Giants' journey on Sunday to battle their NFC-rival Green Bay Packers. We've got the 69th annual Golden Globe Awards to predict!
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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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Not to be terribly negative at the start of the new year – because any year that gifted us the Fassboner had to be a pretty good year, amirite? – but there were a handful of recurring trends in the movies of 2011 that could stand a rest as we charge ahead through 2012. First let’s list the good ones, the motifs in otherwise disparate films, from a wide range of filmmakers indie and studio-backed, new and established, that were actually kind of awesome to marinate in this past year. (Goslingmania comin' atcha!)
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As everyone looks back on the year that was, I've found myself returning to a few moments in the movies that resonated especially well thanks to a phenomenon that achieves soul-stirring status so rarely, though not for lack of frequency: Song choice. I'm not talking about dropping the latest Kelly Clarkson/Natasha Bedingfield ditty into a crap rom-com. I mean the special, skin-tingling magic that occurs when a song is married so perfectly to a character, story, or feeling that the music and the moment swell within us with new, layered meaning. Join me and let's hash it out: Which movie(s) used music the best in 2011?
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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!
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!
If you worship at the altar of tabloid courtships, you know that Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes have been linked romantically since working together on Derek Cianfrance's crime drama The Place Beyond the Pines earlier this year. But thanks to a new Funny or Die video, gossip hounds won't have to wait until 2012 to see the rumored couple together onscreen. Check out the pair's first official collaboration below, appropriately titled "Drunk History Christmas."
Drive fanaticism is still in (groan) overdrive. The team of Bruno et Tom have created an alternative trailer for Drive featuring The Driver's silver scorpion jacket, well-lit stoicism, and a bit of musical mimicry. He's an animated hero! And an animated human being! Coming soon to the Fox Kids lineup. Check all out the cartoon facestomping after the jump.
If there's one thing we still need to discuss, it's the 2011 Oscars and how co-host James Franco bungled them up. (If you believe that, I have bunch of leftover Sarah Palin jokes I'd like to fly for you.) Fellow Freaks and Geeks alum Seth Rogen responded to a question regarding Mr. Franco, and he finally weighed in on the Oscars' decision to hire young hosts. Specifically, he thinks the Academy screwed James Franco over.
For some moviegoers, Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive was the movie of 2011 (ditto that soundtrack). Nevertheless, over at Nerve, Jett Wells echoes the sad realization of many a Drive-loving Oscar-watcher: Academy Award nominations are about as unlikely for the stylish crime pic as a clean getaway is for Ryan Gosling's boyish, near-mute anti-hero.
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