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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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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It's been a long awards season talking about animal performances and the variations therein -- from Uggie's full-blooded canine craftsmanship in The Artist to Andy Serkis's arguably Oscar-worthy performance-capture efforts as Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. And then there's Joey, the eponymous equine stud of War Horse, played by roughly a dozen or more different horses over the course of Steven Spielberg's epic. But there's something strange about the one recently revealed in some War Horse test footage.
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In 1865, actor and Confederate loyalist John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in the balcony of Ford's Theatre, committing one of the most notorious crimes in American history. In 2013, Fox News talking head Bill O'Reilly will team up with Tony and Ridley Scott for a two-hour National Geographic documentary exploring the events surrounding Lincoln's death, adapted from Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever, co-written by O'Reilly and Martin Dugard. But with so many previous Lincoln assassination projects in the ether, what new ground can O'Reilly and the Scott brothers tread in Killing Lincoln?
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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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That DGA snub smarts all the more this morning: "IN CONCLUSION: This is a standard horse movie about projecting human ideals, emotions, and symbolism onto animals, with a decent war movie sandwiched in the middle. There are about four 'pretty horsey runs really fast' scenes, so I give it 4 out of 5 horseshoes!" [The Hairpin]
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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Happy New Year! Especially if you're among the maintenance crew members at Universal Studios Hollywood Orlando, where you will never again have to take to the murky waters of the Jaws ride to fix the perennially broken mechanical shark: The attraction honoring Steven Spielberg's blockbuster closed for good on Monday. Revisit the experience in better -- i.e. functioning -- days with an epic new video.
It was a buoyant holiday frame for the last releases of 2011, with audiences turning out in droves (and likely family-loaded minivans) to boost just about every film in theaters. Biggest congrats are in order for Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, which is indeed set to make in 17 days what Mission: Impossible III made in its entire theatrical run. And, look! A bunch more people caught the timely holiday spirit and bought a Zoo this week, along with a War Horse and, uh, Garry Marshall's New Year's Eve. Enjoy it while it lasts, Garry. Auld lang syne, 2011. Your holiday weekend receipts after the jump!
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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!
In the decade or so since Nick Frost first made a name for himself on the BBC comedy series Spaced, much has happened. For starters, he's not waiting tables at that Mexican restaurant. He's moved with ease from television to film, most famously in genre riffs Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (with Spaced comrades Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg), and in the alien geek ode Paul (which he co-wrote and stars in with Pegg). Also notably, Frost has ventured out from the fold in films like Pirate Radio and the forthcoming Snow White and the Huntsman. And, with this week's The Adventures of Tintin, he notches another milestone: Working with his hero, Steven. Steven Spielberg.
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!
I can't believe it either, but I've chosen to accept GWAR -- the satirical, Grammy-nominated heavy metal outfit -- as real film critics. In a new clip, the costume-loving dudes both praise and rip on War Horse, unleashing a fiery badinage that Ebert and Roeper would have killed for. Just watch it, dammit.
In honor of the two Steven Spielberg releases this season -- War Horse and The Adventures of Tintin -- the folks over at Fandor are paying tribute to the master filmmaker via a new photo essay that celebrates Spielberg's director trademark: The face. Not just any face though -- an expression full of wonder that has washed over all of his protagonists dating back to his 1971 television movie Duel. Relive the many faces of Steven Spielberg ahead.
Steven Spielberg is likely a man of few regrets, but even the Oscar-winning director is appearing dubious about one of his major works. In a new interview, Spielberg admits he "softened" the sensuality of one of his film's source material to preserve a PG-13 rating. And maybe the film suffered for it. Care to guess which opus he's talking about?
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