In Contention

Tag: Easy A

  • 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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  • 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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  • Sussing out the HFPA’s comedy/musical field

    In the latest Gurus o’ Gold survey, David Poland asked us all to contribute the usual rankings for Best Picture, added in the supporting actor and supporting actress categories, then popped the question regarding the Golden Globes comedy/musical category.  It’s interesting to get perspective on the latter this (relatively) early in the season.

    A couple of things: First of all, three Gurus included “Toy Story 3” in their ranking, which with Gregory Ellwood’s #1 placement was enough for it to be chalked up at #5 on the collective.  Ever since the HFPA instituted an animated feature category, animated features have been ineligible in the Best Picture categories.  So that’s gone.

    The #6 spot went to “Get Low,” but I’ve confirmed that film as a drama consideration for HFPA, so it won’t be in the mix.  Meanwhile, only Steve Pond and myself included “Nowhere Boy,” which is a film that went over really well with the association and will be competing as a musical.

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  • INTERVIEW: Patricia Clarkson

    “I’m going to bring back the letter,” a flustered Patricia Clarkson announces as she makes her way to our lunch table, ever-so-slightly rain-mussed but otherwise immaculate in black and cream, a jaunty matching fedora astride her familiar blonde mane. “I’m never late. I blame email for this. I’m only just getting acquainted with it.”

    She is, thanks to a slight communication muddle, late only to a degree most actors wouldn’t apologise for. Together with my lunchmate, Daily Telegraph critic Tim Robey, we’ve nabbed a cosy corner spot at Mayfair’s all-day Italian bistro Cecconi’s, a humming London institution of marble, green velvet upholstery and £40 white truffle starters. (Clarkson is more excited by other things on the menu: later, one eye on the menu, she interrupts her own sentence with the jubilant cry, “Meatballs! With spaghetti sauce!”)

    “This place is fabulous,” she says—that adjective’s first of many appearances in our two-hour conversation—settling into our banquette with a tidy collapse of a sigh. Patricia Clarkson, she does not mind admitting, is exhausted, and not just from her week of jury duty at the London Film Festival, where she presided over the panel that, we’d learn the next day, selected Russia’s “How I Ended This Summer” as best in show. (All she tells us is that she’s “very happy” with the “wonderful” winner they’ve chosen, though she successfully deflects our speculation as to what it might be. “Oh, the Russian film?” she shrugs, when Tim brings it up.)

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Leading men, Halloween horror, comic contenders

    • This week’s Off the Carpet column took a roll call of this year’s Best Actor contenders.

    • Meanwhile, we interviewed one of the strongest of those contenders, “127 Hours” star James Franco.

    • With “The King’s Speech,” “Another Year” and “Made in Dagenham” all in the hunt, The Long Shot mused on Britain’s back-and-forth relationship with the Oscars.

    • In case you’d forgotten what day it is, Chad got into the Halloween spirit by counting down his ten favorite alternative horror movies.

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  • Emma Stone for Best Actress: making it look ‘Easy’

    Jeff Wells, high on Anne Hathaway’s work in “Love and Other Drugs,” recently wrote a piece bemoaning the lack of awards consideration usually granted to romantic comedy performances: “[There is a] belief,” he complains, “that to qualify for an acting award you have to solemnly suffer and pour your heart out in a somewhat doleful and non-pizazzy way.”

    Of course, this is a casual generalization. In the past decade, several women have broken through in the Best Actress for broad comedy (romantic and otherwise) vehicles, including Ellen Page, Diane Keaton, Judi Dench and Meryl Streep — twice. (Or more, depending on your take on “Doubt.”) Should “Love and Other Drugs,” with its big-name pedigree and dramatic overtones, take off with the smart adult audiences it’s being pitched to, a nomination for Hathaway is perfectly feasible.

    Unadulterated comic fluff, however, is another matter. While veterans like Streep and Keaton are given passes for lightweight fare, you have to go back to Renée Zellweger (“Bridget Jones Diary,” 2001) to find an example of a younger actress earning a nod for a purely comic film without Best Picture clout. In 2007, Amy Adams rode a wave of early buzz for “Enchanted,” but fell victim to the Academy’s faulty sense of humor. Still, she got further than, say, Reese Witherspoon in “Legally Blonde” or Jennifer Garner in “13 Going on 30” — both performances worthy of consideration that never got off the starting blocks due to their flighty commercial vehicles.

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  • BOX OFFICE: ‘The Town’ robs ‘Easy A,’ ‘Devil’ of the top spot

    I figure I’ll offer up a chart and a space for you to discuss now that Chad has moved off the box office beat for us. And by the way, I’m just now realizing “Inception” is still in the top 10 (shows how much I pay attention).

    (Courtesy: Exhibitor Relations)

  • OFF THE CARPET: The year of the woman, take two?

    It wasn’t by coincidence that the three photos decorating the season’s introductory installment of this column two weeks ago represented lead actress contenders in the 2010 Oscar race. After all the talk of 2009 being “the year of the woman,” owing much to the number of female directors who found themselves in the mix (and inevitably leading to Kathryn Bigelow’s history-making moment at the Kodak), I’m sensing an even better argument for 2010 as a singular season for the fairer sex.

    Let’s start with the performances. By my count, there are already eight nominatable offerings from lead actresses this year (which contrasts drastically with a dearth of supporting hopefuls).  This is just going by what I’ve seen, mind you.

    For starters, Natalie Portman has dazzled the early festival season with her work in “Black Swan.” Lesley Manville, meanwhile (should she remain a lead focus), sets a high bar in “Another Year.” Despite my feelings on the film, Carey Mulligan really settles into a next-level groove in “Never Let Me Go,” and Jennifer Lawrence, of course (like Mulligan last year), has already become the year’s star-in-the-making story in “Winter’s Bone.”

    Dovetailing with the performances themselves, there are also films that seem to reflect the theme in narrative. In “Secretariat,” for instance, Diane Lane capably (if a bit histrionically) portrays headstrong Penny Chenery, a woman of virtue in an era when she was expected to keep her head down and clean house. Similarly, Sally Hawkins absolutely kills as the Norma Rae-ish Rita O’Grady in “Made in Dagenham,” fighting for equal pay in a similar time (and she’s likely to be joined in the hunt by co-star Miranda Richardson for a fiery supporting turn). And we can’t forget the palpable feminism apparent in summer indie “The Kids Are All Right,” where Annette Bening and Julianne Moore both bring their “A” game.

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