In Contention

Tag: 2012

  • ‘Avatar,’ ‘Star Trek’ lead the way with MPSE

    Star TrekFor the first time I can ever remember, the Motion Picture Sound Editors have announced their list of nominees BEFORE the Academy has announced the Oscar nominees.  Because these always came a few days after the big announcement, I have to say, I have never bothered to see how often they match up with the Best Sound Editing category.

    These are the two specific fields to keep an eye on:

    Best Sound Editing: Dialogue and ADR in a Feature Film
    “(500) Days of Summer”
    “A Serious Man”
    “Avatar”
    “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”
    “The Hurt Locker”
    “Inglorious Basterds”
    “Star Trek”
    “The Stoning of Soraya M.”

    Best Sound Editing: Sound Effects and Foley in a Feature Film
    “2012”
    “Avatar”
    “The Hurt Locker”
    “Inglorious Basterds”
    “Push”
    “Star Trek”
    “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”
    “Watchmen”

    (More, including the full list of nominees, after the jump.)

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  • ‘Avatar’ leads VES nominations

    Zoe Saldana in AvatarNo surprises there.  James Cameron’s film landed 11 separate mentions from the Visual Effects Society (some more specifically indicated than others).  “2012” and “District 9” each landed three nominations, while “Sherlock Holmes” and “Star Trek” each landed two.

    The nominees in the main field, “visual effects in a visual effects driven feature motion picture,” are:

    “2012”
    “Avatar”
    “District 9”
    “Star Trek”
    “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”

    Check out the rest of the nominees (feature film categories only) at our somewhat more streamlined Circuit page.

  • Visual effects bake-off leaves seven

    AvatarAnd they are, via AMPAS press release:

    “Avatar”
    “District 9”
    “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”
    “Star Trek”
    “Terminator Salvation”
    “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”
    “2012”

    And the three I still expect to get in are in the mix, so, whew.  I think we all know what will eventually win here, but if there’s a surprise nomination waiting to happen, I’d say it’s “2012.”

    “On Thursday, January 21, all members of the Academy’s Visual Effects Branch will be invited to view 15-minute excerpts from each of the seven shortlisted films,” the release reads.  “Following the screenings, the members will vote to nominate three films for final Oscar consideration.”

    What are your visual effects predictions?

  • 12/29 Oscarweb Round-up

    Stephen Lang in Avatar• John Campea talks to “Avatar” star Stephen Lang. [AMC Entertainment]

    • Scott Feinberg spotlights 50 performances that “shoulda been contendas” in the 2009 Oscar race. [And the Winner Is…]

    • Nikki sez Warner Bros. has broken the studio’s own domestic box office record by crossing $2 billion across the States.  Wowsers. [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Let it all bleed out

    Saoirse Ronan in The Lovely BonesEvery now and then this season, I’ve sat down and taken on the fool’s errand of deciphering what 2009, the year in film, has been “about.”  It’s silly because a given film year is the result of years and years of preparation and development, so to think a collective thematic consciousness settles in is a bit of a stretch.

    This year alone we have a swift production that at this time last year saw the filmmaker still in the editing suite for his late-2008 entry, while on the other side of the spectrum, a forward-thinking director will finally see the end of a decades-long journey for an anticipated “game-changer.”  Movies come from a thousand different places and a thousand different perspectives.

    Nevertheless, I’ve always come back to one thought on this year’s slate of films: catharsis.  With expected exceptions here and there, in one way or another, the bulk of what we’ve seen on screens in 2009 has very much been about emotional purging, bleeding out the past and, not to be too on-the-nose with the zeitgeist connotations, change.

    Let me illustrate.  The most and the least compelling examples are the best place to start: Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist” and Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus,” respectively.

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  • INTERVIEW: Woody Harrelson

    Woody HarrelsonWoody Harrelson is running behind…about a half an hour behind.  This after a number of delays and schedule changes throughout the week.  When he strolls nonchalantly out onto the rooftop spread of a posh West Hollywood hotel, you can see why.  It’s not irresponsibility.  It’s not eccentric nuisance.  The guy just marches to his own drummer, and certainly, to his own beat.

    Publicity handler in tow, Harrelson moves and speaks purposefully, casual, always relaxed (though one might have fun speculating why that is).  Some may get him to say sensational things, but that’s not the M.O. of the interviewer he’s chatting with this afternoon.  So the perching hawk to my left, giving him a sharp look when he offers harmless jokes that might be seen as tasteless, isn’t exactly necessary.

    “Why don’t you let us talk alone,” he finally says, half-way through — respectfully, but sincerely.  He’s a man who seems to enjoy a chat, no matter how much it might push the rest of his schedule back.  And he’d certainly prefer to engage in one without that kind of oversight.

    Ostensibly his press rounds as of late are for the Oren Moverman film “The Messenger.” Appearances on The Colbert Report and, immediately following our encounter, The Late Late Show are popping up left and right.  He’s on the cover of this month’s Venice magazine.  But he’s also given a pair of zany performances in genre films this year that are worth discussing for the versatility they illuminate in his work.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Doc shortlist, honorary Oscars and more

    Lauren Bacall at the 2009 Governors' Awards• The shortlist of contenders for the documentary Oscar was announced, surprising many — we dug into it a little.

    • The season’s first Oscars were handed out, as Lauren Bacall, Gordon Willis, Roger Corman and John Calley were celebrated at the Governors’ Awards.

    • This week’s Off the Carpet column broke down the wide-open Best Original Screenplay race.

    • The Long Shot lived up to its name, spotlighting a few of the season’s most deserving outsiders.

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  • Something for the soundphiles

    2012Thanks to Sasha Stone at Awards Daily for a pretty sweet find this Oscar season.

    We are, of course, very proud of our dedication to the crafts categories via Gerard’s Tech Support columns here at In Contention.  It’s been a concentrated effort on our part to help carry the flag for folks who deserve as much credit this time of year as the major stars, yet don’t receive it.

    Fortunately, over the last two years or so, I’ve noticed a number of major outlets pumping up their crafts coverage.  It’s nice to see the notion taking.

    Anyway, over at SoundWorks Collection, a site “dedicated to profiling the greatest and upcoming sound minds from around the world and highlight their contributions,” according to their literature, there is a great new weekly feature spotlighting the sound of various contenders throughout the season.

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  • Listen to Adam Lambert’s ‘Time For Miracles’ from ‘2012’

    Adam LambertOkay, it’s a stretch under the new voting scheme to think that Adam Lambert’s closing credits track “Time For Miracles” from Roland Emmerich’s blow-stuff-up-good entry “2012” would be an Oscar contender, but with the film hitting theaters over the weekend (and with the just-announced news that another big sci-fi entry will have an original tune in the mix) I thought it would be worth it to showcase Lambert’s first single, as we’ve been doing the rest of the year’s Best Original Song contenders.

    And let’s face it — 10 years ago, this would be a sure-fire nominee.  And speaking personally, it’s somewhat nostalgic for that.  It has that epic, Diane Warren-like scope of songs like “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” and “How Do I Live.”  Cheese-fests, sure, but guilty pleasures are allowed in this life.

    The track was written by Alain Johannes and the late Natasha Shneider, each formerly of the Los Angeles indie rock band Eleven.  It’s positioning in the film is clearly a liability, but it’s the kind of thing that would most certainly grab more ratings for the Oscarcast, should it find itself in the mix.

    Have a listen to the song below, which we featured less formally a few weeks back, and tell us what you think.

    [display_podcast]

  • Leona Lewis to sing ‘Avatar’ theme

    Leona LewisChalk up another contender for Best Original Song. British pop diva Leona Lewis is to sing the (presumably multi-octave-scaling) theme song from James Cameron’s “Avatar.”

    Best known Stateside for her megahit “Bleeding Love,” the 24 year-old chanteuse rose to fame as the 2006 winner of “The X Factor,” the UK’s “American Idol” equivalent — thus making “Avatar” the year’s second sci-fi blockbuster (after “2012”) to turn to a reality-show star for musical duties.

    Empire reports that Lewis is currently shooting the video for the song, a James Horner-penned closing-credits effort titled “I See You (Theme from Avatar).”

    If this all sounds a little 1997, I guess that’s the idea. Lewis is, after all, a latter-day answer to Celine Dion, whose ubiquitous Oscar-winning theme for Cameron’s last film — what was the title again? — was part and parcel of its success. (Of course, times have changed since then, and the Academy looks a lot less kindly on closing-credit tracks these days.)

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  • 11/16 Oscarweb Round-up

    Lauren Bacall• Catch video highlights of Saturday night’s Honorary Oscars celebration. [Oscars.org]

    • Baltimore Ravens OT Michael Oher on his life’s inspiration for Hollywood. [CNN]

    • Hoping “Avatar” is the new face of filmmaking. [Los Angeles Times]

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  • SUNDAY CENTS: Apocalypse wow

    2012*All historical figures are adjusted to today’s dollars.

    Roland Emmerich’s still got it. And by “it,” I mean the ability to make blockbuster hits out of the same movie again and again.

    “2012” opened at the top of the box office with $65 million and the seventh-biggest opening of 2009. It’s also the 10th-biggest November opening of all time, sliding in between last year’s “Quantum of Solace” and 2002’s surprise juggernaut “8 Mile.”

    Mid-November releases have the benefit of the highly lucrative Thanksgiving holiday coming somewhere around their second or third week, so “2012” has the chance to earn three times its opening, which certainly wouldn’t be the case in the summer. I actually don’t think it will be the case here either and I think we’ll see it top out around $150 million. While that figure is less than the production budget, the film has already made $225 million worldwide after just three days, so Emmerich has free reign to make whatever disaster movie he wants next.

    Destroying the Earth four times is probably the limit for any director but luckily for Emmerich, we just discovered water on the moon, so he can go ahead and make a movie where we’ve colonized it and are living there, but for whatever reason it gets destroyed.

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  • Lenny Bruce is not afraid

    2012I’m in San Francisco through the weekend and, having missed the week’s “2012” press screenings, I headed on over to the Van Ness AMC to settle in for Roland Emmerich’s two and a half hours of global destruction, and as overwrought, cheesy, painstakingly contrived (“Where’s the map!?”) and downright BAD as the film is — and it is all of those things — I ate it up.

    Mainly, I salute Emmerich’s gargantuan, platinum cojones for giving us the exact…same…escape sequence not once, not twice, but THREE times.  And make it four if we want to go ahead and trace the roots of the by now standardized moment back to “Independence Day.” I kept waiting on someone to open a laptop with a countdown clock.  Oh wait, they’ve got one on the ark — we’re good.

    Staggering.  Every unconscionable drop of it.  And you know what?  Good.  I want this movie in the marketplace right now.  Sure, it’s a bastardized piece of “drama,” but squeezing damn near every 2012 theory into the mix, cranking the production up to 11 from frame one and STILL Tom McCarthy is able to keep a straight face?  This is high art on some level.  Has to be.

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  • FRIDAY FORECAST: ‘2012’ on the way

    John Cusack in 2012*All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.

    (This is the first of a new series of columns splitting the weekly Sunday Cents column in half. We’ll cover the weekend box office on Sundays and save the forecasts for Thursdays from here on out.)

    Roland Emmerich returns this weekend to popular landmark destruction for the fourth time in his career. He has experienced gargantuan openings in each previous attempts, so there’s little reason to think that “2012” won’t win the box office weekend by a mile.

    Sony has spent a fortune on the making and advertising of this film, although the studio seems to have saved some money by not hiring an editor as the finished product clocks in at a totally gratuitous 158 minutes. Squeezing in less showtimes may factor microscopically in the grosses, but theaters will be playing this sucker around the clock beginning tonight at midnight.

    “Independence Day” opened with $81.6 million during the fourth of July weekend in 1996 for a venue average of $28,311. “Godzilla” earned $67.4 million during Memorial Day of 1998 for an average of $20,373. “The Day After Tomorrow” also bowed on Memorial Day, in 2004. with $79.5 million and an average of $23,206. Clearly, audiences have a taste for the Emmerich touch when it comes to disaster flicks. His various attempts to make films outside this micro-genre have been met with relative shrugs at the box office (“The Patriot” and “10,000 B.C.”).

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Sound Mixing — Volume II

    Sharlto Copely in District 9As a recap from the last time we covered this field, the category of Best Sound Mixing (formerly known as merely Best Sound) rewards re-recording mixers — individuals who mix music, dialogue, effects and everything else into the soundtrack we ultimately hear — as well as production sound mixer — those responsible for capturing the sounds on set as they are recorded.

    As we’ve noted, LOUD films tend to be rewarded here. Blockbusters, either science-fiction or action-based, are also cited frequently. War films and musicals also tend to show up, especially when they are in contention in the Best Picture race.

    Two big contenders are still unseen: Rob Marshall’s “Nine” is very likely to score here, given the branch’s love of musicals. Barring the film being a disaster, I just can’t see it missing.  Last year’s winner in the category, Richard Pryke, is on board.

    The other big title that is still unseen is James Cameron’s “Avatar.” I’m still not sure how the film will ultimately perform. However, it cannot be denied that Cameron’s films have excelled here. I’m sure the film will have an interesting soundscape, and mixing legends Gary Summers and Andy Nelson are on board.

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  • 11/12 Oscarweb Round-up

    Avatar• Steve Pond shrewdly catches a Twitter leak from Oscarcast producer Adam Shankman: David Rockwell will be back on production design duties. [The Odds]

    • The Gurus o’ Gold chime in with supporting predictions. [Movie City News]

    • Charting the reasons “Avatar” will defy the odds and succeed at the box office. [Hollywood.com]

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  • 11/10 Oscarweb Round-up

    Edward Norton in 25th Hour• Deborah Sontag talks “The Messenger” with Oren Moverman, Woody Harrelson, etc. [New York Times]

    • Roger Ebert sits down with the fast-becoming new “it” girl, Gabourey Sidibe. [Chicago Sun-Times]

    • With movies still to be seen in 2009, Noah Forrest pegs “25th Hour” as the decade’s best.  Brave choice.  I’m a fan. [Movie City News]

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  • Calling the Best Picture wild cards

    Emily Blunt in The Young VictoriaTom O’Neil has pooled the thoughts of 16 awards-watchers on which 10 films will make the Best Picture cut, and the results make for ominously predictable reading.

    All 16 agree that “The Hurt Locker” and “Invictus” are in (I guess it’s just me holding out on the latter then), while there’s near-consensus on the likes of “Precious,” “Up in the Air,” “Up” … you get the idea. Yawn. At this rate, the switch to 10 nominees looks to sap any excitement from this stage of the race whatsoever.

    More interesting, then, is to venture further down the list to see what the pundits’ more out-on-a-limb picks are. One would like to think at least one of the slots has to be filled with something slightly less expected — otherwise what’s the point? So I turned my attention to the films receiving a solitary vote from one of O’Neil’s posse.

    Those hoping for a foreign-language contender in the mix (no, “Inglourious Basterds” does not count) might want to look away, as not a single punter has one on their list, while things look similarly grim for documentaries.

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