"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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Backstage at the Film Independent Spirit Awards, Christopher Plummer (who vies for the Oscar tomorrow) celebrated his Best Supporting Actor win for Beginners and gleefully stoked the fires of a pup vs. pup beef between his own co-star in the film, Cosmo, and The Artist's award season favorite Uggie. "We had a little private talk," he explained of scene-stealer Cosmo. "Now that you mention it, I think our Cosmo was much more human than Uggie. Uggie was just a trickster. Our dog had soul." Fighting words!
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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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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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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*: As determined by Movieline's Institute For the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics after crunching 23 weeks of data from the awards cognoscenti and beyond. Thank you for reading; our work here is done.
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The Academy Awards are not a contest, the humble nominees might demur, taking the high road through the gory scrum that is awards season. But do you really think, say, Glenn Close wouldn’t cut a bitch for an Oscar? Alas, the odds are against her, literally; online books have her at as much as 100:1 odds to win her first statuette for Albert Nobbs. Take a peek at how the internet’s enterprising bookies have handicapped the 84th Academy Award nominees and adjust your bets accordingly.
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Minutes ago came this terrible reminder from Moviefone: "Good news and bad news: awards season only lasts another five days — which means you've only got five more days to bask in the glow of Uggie the dog. [...] He's the dog you love to love; after all, despite Martin Scorsese's campaigning, you don't see Blackie from Hugo with a Facebook fan page numbering nearly 12,000 members." Or with his own cookies! Anyway, this calls for a slideshow. Bring Kleenex. [Moviefone]
Academy Awards ballots are due today at 5 p.m. PT, and procrastinators in the actors' branch might do well to take note: One of your eldest peers has an upset or two in mind.
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The Writers Guild of America gave out its annual awards on Sunday night, bestowing its hardware to the year's most accomplished film and television scribes... whose work was developed and produced under WGA rules and conditions, which disqualified Artist writer-director (and Oscar frontrunner) Michel Hazanavicius among a few others, but whatever. Congrats to all!
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Noooooooooooooo: "But get this — there's another MIA actor that's getting far more attention for the fact that he'll be missing the ceremony this year. In fact, our source says it's who most inquiries are about these days: The Artist's Uggie. Yep, our sources confirm the pooch is out for the grand ceremony. And that breaks our hearts! Heck, the dog probably is more deserving of a Best Supporting Actor nomination that Jonah Hill, but that's just our humble opinion." Preach it, boys, preach it. [E!]
You know that when two of the most respected pundits in all of Oscardom argue (within days of each other!) for curtailing both the epic Academy Awards season race and the ceremony in which it culminates, patience for all this crap is wearing thin. With that in mind — and also considering that the "race" for most of these categories ended weeks or months ago — who's up for an Oscar Index lightning round? (The entire staff at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics raises its hands.) OK, then — to the Index!
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Today, of course, we know Bérénice Bejo as The Artist's irrepressible movie sensation Peppy Miller and as a contender for this year's Best Supporting Actress Oscar. But back in 1997, she was just another young actress paying her dues in France. Which apparently led to... this.
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