In Contention

Tag: Burlesque

  • Who would get your write-in votes?

    Here’s an easy one for serious Oscar trivia geeks: what’s unusual about Hal Mohr’s 1935 Best Cinematography win for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream?” I offer no prize, but pat yourself on the back if you knew that Mohr was the first and only person to win an Oscar on write-in votes — or in other words, that he won despite not being nominated.

    Mohr’s victory was the result of a groundswell of industry support for his work on the Best Picture nominee after he surprisingly failed to secure a nomination; the year before, Bette Davis was the beneficiary of a more famous, but less successful, write-in campaign for her acclaimed, un-nominated work in “Of Human Bondage.”

    As it turned out, she received fewer votes than two of the three actresses who beat her to the nomination, but the legend stuck — and Davis got a blatant make-up Oscar a year later.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Analyzing the nominees

    So the 83rd Annual Academy Award nominations were finally announced this week, and I did fairly well in handicapping the nominees. Outside of Best Sound Mixing, I never missed more than one nominee in a category. Unfortunately, there were no categories where I scored 100% (apart from Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay). Oh well.

    The massive overall tally for “The King’s Speech” resulted from a plethora of nominations in the crafts fields. “True Grit” and “Inception” got all but one plausible tech nomination (with one very notable exception for each, discussed below). “TRON Legacy”’s tally, on the other hand, has got to be considered a disappointment as must, to a lesser extent, those of “Black Swan” and “127 Hours.” The complete shut-out for “Shutter Island” was also somewhat of a surprise, but other branches saw fit to make Oscar nominees of some unlikely titles.

    Regardless, it was nice to see many deserving crafts artists get their due. With the throat-clearing out of the way, I’ll now give short reactions to – and previews of – each below-the-line field.

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  • Oscar nominations: the good, the good and the good

    Even when they aren’t being read out with gale-force enthusiasm by Mo’Nique, the Oscar nominations tend to attack you with breathless speed that you need at least half an hour to decide how you feel about them at all. As usual, this morning’s announcement found me bouncing from one split-second reaction to another: Yay! No! What? That? Why? Who’s missing? What did she say? That? No! Did I call that? Yay!

    As Kate Winslet would say in such situations: “Gather.” And now that I’ve stepped back, gathered and taken into account that no Oscar nomination slate in history has been without its disappointments, I can honestly say that I’m more happy than not with the list in front of me.

    Some of the day’s biggest surprises didn’t elicit much of an emotional reaction from me. My eyebrows rose as high as anyone’s over Christopher Nolan’s latest failure to secure a Best Director nomination — is he the first man in Oscar history to fall three times at this hurdle after being DGA-nominated? — though I always said he couldn’t be regarded as a sure thing.

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  • ‘King’s Speech’ leads the pack with 12 Oscar nominations

    On the face of it, the nominees for the 83rd annual Academy Awards seemed fairly unremarkable. Aside from the deafening nature of not hearing Christopher Nolan’s name in the line-up for Best Director (the only true shock of the major categories), everything seemed to be within the expected parameters (even Javier Bardem sliding in, which seemed, increasingly, like a very real possibility these last few weeks).

    But then I got to looking through the craft category nominations and the real interesting beats started to surface. First and foremost, “The King’s Speech” led the field with a whopping 12 nominations, even scoring in the Best Sound Mixing category. That’s major, to say the least. And enough, along with the PGA win, to consider it the frontrunner to win the Oscar for Best Picture.

    “True Grit” wasn’t far behind with 10 nominations, including a bid for the Coen brothers in Best Director after all. Hailee Steinfeld stayed in Best Supporting Actress and Bridges was chalked up, but again, let me go back to the more intriguing crafts fields.

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  • Razzies aim typically low

    The Golden Raspberry (aka Razzie) Awards irritate me on an annual basis, largely because they’re such a joyless, unimaginative and, worst of all, cowardly execution of a neat idea: singling out the worst cinematic achievements of the year for a bit of a ribbing.

    Except they aren’t about genuinely failed artistry nearly as much as they are about piling on whichever easy celebrity targets happened to have a film out in the past 12 months. They’re intended as a bit of fun, obviously, but how fun is it really to beat up on tween idols like Miley Cyrus and the “Twilight” team? “The Expendables” isn’t that ineptly directed — but hey, it’s Sly, so it must be bad!

    Wouldn’t it be more subversive to aim at some higher targets who flubbed in 2010? (You’d think a “Worst Use of 3D” award would have been invented for “Alice in Wonderland,” but no — works from prestige directors are above the law here, apparently.)

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  • My dream Oscar ballot, part two

    Yesterday, I began my very far-fetched (and in some cases, frankly impossible) wishlist for Tuesday’s Oscar nominations with my favorite achievements in the technical categories. Today, I offer up my picks in the top races, and I don’t mind telling you things got pretty agonizing in some categories.

    “Why can’t I have 15 nominees for Best Supporting Actress?” one half of my brain asked earlier this morning, as I once more marvelled that any pundits could once have deemed that particular race “weak.” Cooler instincts prevailed, but it bears repeating just what a staggering, and pleasingly varied, year it’s been for female performances on both sides of the category divide. I was also surprised to see how many performances stood tall from films that weren’t necessarily on their stars’ level — I like to think there aren’t too many coattail picks here.

    I’ve veered from Academy format in one respect: I’ve dispensed with a Best Foreign Language Film category. Not only do I dislike the award in principle — it’s a different language, not a different medium — but my general picks are heavy enough on foreign fare that a ghetto category seemed superfluous. Check out my picks after the cut, and share your thoughts in the comments.

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  • My dream Oscar ballot, part one

    For the past two years running, I’ve celebrated Oscar Nomination Eve by assembling my own ideal (and, usually, incredibly far-fetched) ballot, so here we go again. As well as a kind of last-ditch prayer to the Oscar gods, I also look on it as a salute to the worthy contenders who haven’t a hope in hell of hearing their names read out on Tuesday morning.

    At the request of some readers, I’ve bent the rules to accommodate several titles unfairly ineligible for Oscar consideration in any category: most of you are aware of the arcane ruling that has denied “A Prophet” the chance to ever compete in a non-ghetto category, while the TV airings of “Red Riding” and “Carlos” keep them out of the game too. I’m less clear on why the likes of “White Material” and “Fish Tank” aren’t on the Academy’s list of eligible titles, but they aren’t, and I must make my peace with that.

    Anyway, screw ’em: this ballot represents what I found most awards-worthy from all the theatrical features released in the US last year, and you can’t get fairer than that. I’ll begin, as usual, with the ten technical categories — in which I was pleased to end up with a healthy spread of 33 films across 48 slots. Jump in after the cut, and share your own thoughts in the comments. (Also, check out Kris’s very different ideal ballot here.)

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final analysis, part two

    Yesterday I began a final look at the crafts categories. Today, a look at the four remaining fields: Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design and Best Film Editing.

    BEST ART DIRECTION

    The precursors of the BFCA, BAFTA and Art Directors Guild have been fairly consistent in citing four titles in this category. Last year’s winner, Robert Stromberg, seems poised to dip again for creation of a 3D world on Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland.” Eve Stewart, on the other hand, will likely be returning to the fold after an 11 year absence for “The King’s Speech.”

    Guy Hendrix Dyas and Jess Gonchor also have got all necessary precursors, and have fashioned surefire Best Picture nominees, in “Inception” and “True Grit” respectively. It is true that they have had difficulty being nominated in the past but Gonchor has also never had such an Oscar-friendly opportunity, whereas the impressive, integral-to-the-story nature of Dyas’s work has been especially embraced by the precursors.

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  • Costume confusion

    Gerard will address this category in tomorrow’s Tech Support column, but I did want to say something about Best Costume Design — partly because the Guild dropped some rather interesting nominations today, and partly because it’s the technical category that’s still prompting the most head-scratching as I work towards my final predictions.

    We all know the Academy favors lavish period productions with corsets and hoop skirts a go-go in this category, but 2010 served up remarkably few possibilities in this vein. Even “The King’s Speech,” the year’s default well-dressed prestige title, is hardly a sartorial showcase in the vein of “Marie-Antoinette” or “The Duchess” — Jenny Beavan’s crisp 1930s wardrobe is functionally stylish rather than spectacular.

    As if to illustrate the lack of conventional historical options, the Costume Designers’ Guild found only three films to nominate in their period category, instead of the usual five — and one of them, I’m thrilled to say, is the 1990s-set “The Fighter,” whose threads I was plugging just the other day.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final analysis, part one

    It seems hard to believe that it’s been more than six months since I wrote this year’s introductory Tech Support column ( a dissection of the art direction race). Much has changed since then, naturally, as we are less than a week away from the big day when we find out the nominees for the Oscars this year. Today, I take a final look at the music categories, sound categories and the two categories that have been narrowed down to seven finalists – Best Visual Effects and Best Makeup.

    BEST MAKEUP

    In this utterly bizarre category, virtually any combination of the seven finalists would fail to surprise me as the final three. That said, I’ve had the same top two predicted all year and see no reason to change now: “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Wolfman.” The former had massive box office and very noticeable makeup, whereas the latter is exactly the sort of movie that tends to score here and nowhere else.

    Logic may put “True Grit” or “The Fighter” next in line due to their Best Picture contender status. But as much as these films are loved, they don’t have as showy makeup as the other finalists, and this is a category that often doesn’t care how films are received overall.

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  • On the costumes of ‘The Fighter’

    When the Costume Designers’ Guild announce their nominees next week, I have no doubt that Mark Bridges’ work on “The Fighter” will show up in their contemporary category — not really the right classification for a film whose lurid early-1990s threads are as meticulously era-specific as any of 2010’s more lavish period spectacles. (If you didn’t cringe and/or chuckle at the first sight of Christian Bale’s balloon pants, chances are you weren’t alive in 1991.)

    Either way, it remains perhaps my favorite costuming of the year, even if the Academy is unlikely to agree. That said, they’ve been warming to more modern work in recent years — with nods for the high-gloss couture of “The Devil Wears Prada” and the cheap 70s duds of “Milk” — even if corsets and hoop skirts invariably eke out the win.

    This year’s Costume Design field, however, is lean enough that a contemporary nominee or two could squeeze in.

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  • Watching and waiting: Guy’s best and worst of 2010

    What kind of year was 2010 at the movies? You tell me. It’s virtually impossible to find one yardstick to measure 365 days of cinema for a collective audience whose interests seem ever more segregated.

    If your film interests are covered largely by the multiplex, chances are 2010 was an unusually unrewarding year for you, challenging even Hollywood’s standard quota of déjà vu — unless, of course, you’re an animation fiend, in which case there was a broad enough range of carefully crafted work to keep you happy.

    If you tend to bypass the mall on your way to the arthouse, however, there was any amount of adventurous indie and world cinema, both newly unveiled and backlogged from previous years, to chew on — if, of course, you’re privileged enough to live in a regrettably narrow radius. And if you’re an Academy voter sifting through the crop of generously campaigned prestige fare, 2010 looks rather like the usual, only a little more so.

    For me, 2010 was both immeasurably improved and somewhat complicated by the festival circuit — access to which is a luxury I shall never take for granted, but also one that inevitably skews my sense of how the film yearbook reads in the real world. When you’ve had access to most of the big-ticket winter warmers by early autumn, and when the likes of Cannes afford you a head start of many months or even years on certain international art films, things rather lose their shape.

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  • ‘King’s Speech’ leads Globe nods, ‘True Grit’ shut out

    True to form, the Golden Globe nominations are a buffet of the good, the bad and the unconscionably hideous — with perhaps a touch more emphasis than usual on the third of those this year. I refer, of course, to those largely mortifying Comedy/Musical races, where HFPA voters solved the lack of obvious contenders this year by giving in to their randiest star-shagging urges.

    Welcome to the Best Picture race, “Red,” “The Tourist” and (pauses to cross himself and say three Hail Marys) “Alice in Wonderland.” Or, you know, not. Congratulations on your double-shot of well-deserved Best Actor nominations, Mr. Depp. Or, you know, not. Sorry, Sally Hawkins, we liked you just fine in “Made in Dagenham,” but Angelina Jolie was obviously working harder in her movie. Or, you know, not.

    Still, even as we strike down upon the HFPA with great vengeance and furious anger, I’m feeling pretty chipper about some things: reviled as it is by many, “Burlesque” is the kind of grandly gaudy goof-off that I’m happy to see livening up the category, while my biggest air-punch of the morning came when my actress of the year Emma Stone’s name was read out for “Easy A.”

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Original Song

    I guess I’ve been pretty hard on the Best Original Song category this year. It’s not like any given year tends to have a deluge of impressive fodder up for consideration or anything, but on the whole, outside of a concentration of contenders that have a fighting chance at recognition, it just seems to be an uninspired lot of tracks in the mix for 2010.

    Before diving into the fray, some quick reminding. The music branch’s rules are always in flux and over the last couple of years they have shifted, perhaps rightly, into a frame of assessing songs as they are used within the context of a given film. Let’s look at the official language from the Academy’s rules and eligibility literature:

    An original song consists of words and music, both of which are original and written specifically for the motion picture. There must be a clearly audible, intelligible, substantive rendition (not necessarily visually presented) of both lyric and melody, used in the body of the motion picture or as the first music cue in the end credits.

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  • Listen to Christina Aguilera’s ‘Bound to You’ from ‘Burlesque’

    I’ve already stated my qualified admiration for Steven Antin’s “Burlesque,” likely the only live-action musical angling for a spot in this year’s Best Original Song race. Or two spots, given that we already featured Cher’s deliriously kitsch Diane Warren power ballad “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me” a couple of weeks ago.

    Today, it’s Christina Aguilera’s turn to bust her lungs with a nine-octave belter from the film that she herself co-wrote — so while we’re unlikely to be mentioning her name much in the Best Actress race, Xtina could yet add “Academy Award nominee” to her résumé.

    The song is something of an anomaly in the gaudy, thrust-heavy production: a stately, classically arranged torch ballad that sounds rather like an offcut from Aguilera’s retro-styled 2006 album “Back to Basics.” (It’s more likely, however, to be an offshoot of her 2010 release “Bionic,” in which the song’s co-writers Sia Furler and Samuel Dixon had a heavy hand.)

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  • REVIEW: “Burlesque” (***)

    (We don’t usually post reviews after the US release, but this one got snarled up in my hard drive earlier this week and I didn’t want to waste it. I’ve noticed a number of readers posting thoughts on the film in yesterday’s Cinejabber post, so look on this as your “Tell us what you thought of Burlesque’” post into the bargain.)

    “There’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure,” a music-critic friend once told me. “Just songs that work and songs that don’t. And any song that works is a pleasure.” He may have been talking about pop music (and justifying the expense spent on some rather dubious concert tickets), but the sentiment is just as true of cinema: there are enough wholly joyless bad films out there that one needn’t feel remorse for liking those that sparkle a little.

    Or a lot, as in the case of Steven Antin’s sweetly stupid and gleefully tatty backstage musical “Burlesque,” a kind of cinematic party horn that unfurls for nearly two full hours, pausing only occasionally for wheezily abridged plot extension. Heroically spry performances adjoin rancidly inept ones, peppery one-liners encircle bat-brained narrative turns, even the music veers from choice cabaret to hoary album offcuts – and this gurning, flailing whole is held together with the irrepressibly sincere let’s-put-on-a-show enthusiasm of a high-school drama teacher given a dream budget. It’s hard to shake the suspicion that Antin is just out of shot throughout, wielding a glue gun and a spare bag of sequins.

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  • 11/26 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: The hairy task of ‘Tangled,’ Britain’s Oscar potential, Julianne Moore a best bet?

    • Steve Pond chats with “Casino Jack” star Kevin Spacey. [The Odds]

    • Rebecca Keegan writes up the hairy task of creating Rapunzel in “Tangled.” [24 Frames]

    • Marc Lee thinks it’s looking up for Britain at the Oscars this year. [Daily Telegraph]

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Fighter’ bows, Jackman bows out, Best Picture questions

    • David O. Russell’s “The Fighter” unspooled at the AFI Fest. Kris was impressed and later reported from a Q&A with the film’s stars.

    • This week’s Off the Carpet column pondered the presence of money-spinners in this year’s Best Picture race.

    • The Long Shot, meanwhile, wondered if that very race is currently looking a little flimsy.

    • News of Hugh Jackman turning down the gig prompted the annual speculation over who should host the Oscar ceremony.

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