Just last week we told you about Duncan Jones’s concentrated grassroots effort to nab Sam Rockwell an Oscar nomination for his tour de force performance in “Moon.” It is a film that, unfortunately, came and went at the marketplace, yet was one of the best films of the summer. And Rockwell, as he’s proven time and again for years now, has the chops and deserves the props.
Jones has chimed in once again one the matter at his blog, Man Made Movies, and lays out all the Tweeting and petitioning goodness. You can even buy a T-shirt for the cause. Don’t you have a new movie to be preparing, Duncan!?
Seriously, though, it’s worth noting that, in the wake of this, Sony Pictures Classics, as well as Rockwell’s own representation at the publicity firm I/D Public Relations, are getting serious about an Oscar campaign. It will be an uphill climb because, due to the film being a British production, it isn’t eligible for a number of the awards that might have put it on the domestic radar, such as the Gothams or the Independent Spirits. The film did, however, show up in a number of high-profile categories when the British Independent Film Award nominees were announced earlier in the week.
Whether Rockwell nails the honor or not is ultimately beside the point. “He deserves to be in the conversation,” Sony Classics honcho Michael Barker told me. “He’s one of these guys like Philip Seymour Hoffman, who we had in films like ‘Love Liza’ and ‘Owning Mahowny,’ where you just said, ‘One of these days [he’ll be nominated].’”
Almost all critics and bloggers are guilty of it at some time or another — when one is suitably impressed by a particular film or performance, they often express their approval in Oscar-related terms. “So-and-so is Oscar-worthy,” “Start the Oscar buzz now for such-and-such,” and so on. It’s a lazy and fate-tempting practice, and I confess I fall into the trap occasionally myself.