In Contention

Tag: Toy Story 3

  • The In Contention Readership Ballot

    Today’s the big day. No more Oscar Guide, no more polls, just a few choice hours left in the season and then, the 83rd annual. (And not a moment too soon.)

    I appreciate everyone participating in the daily polls this month and last, which accompanied each of our Oscar Guide entries. It offers us a nice glance at the majority opinion of how the race SHOULD go down, so I’m happy to offer up, for the second-straight year, the In Contention Readership Ballot.

    There were a handful of frisky choices this year, though not too many. Your big winners were Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” and David Fincher’s “The Social Network” (which is owed Best Picture by your estimation).  Both films racked up five of your wins.  Nothing else was close. And, interestingly enough, the film likely to walk away with the most awards tonight? It only deserves one prize in your book: Best Actor.

    Check out the ballot after the jump, and good luck to your favorites tonight.

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Picture

    And so we come to the end of this year’s Oscar Guide, and the category that has been the cause of more conversation than ever this year: Best Picture. And that can’t be overstated. I can’t recall the last time the debate around a Best Picture winner was so heated, and I’m tempted to say it was, in some way, good for us all.

    There was a lot of passion around favorites this season. A LOT. In some cases, it might even be considered oppressive passion, but it’s worth it to have such strong opinions about the films we love. We may choose to convey those opinions in different ways, modest or broad, but that the pulse of film adoration is this strong at a key moment in the medium’s progression is, indeed, heartening.

    The nominees are:

    “Black Swan” (Mike Medavoy, Brian Oliver and Scott Franklin)
    “The Fighter” (David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman and Mark Wahlberg)
    “Inception” (Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan)
    “The Kids Are All Right” (Gary Gilbert, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte and Celine Rattray)
    “The King’s Speech” (Iain Canning, Emile Sherman and Gareth Unwin)
    “127 Hours” (Christian Colson, Danny Boyle and John Smithson)
    “The Social Network” (Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti, Michael De Luca and Ceán Chaffin)
    “Toy Story 3” (Darla K. Anderson)
    “True Grit” (Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen and Joel Coen)
    “Winter’s Bone” (Anne Rosellini and Alix Madigan-Yorkin)

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  • Just walk away: final predictions

    While Guy is pulling his hair out (I know the feeling), I’m backing off.  At some point you have to put your pencil down and step away, and so I am.

    For me, the most difficult categories to pick — and the ones I found myself flip-flopping on down the stretch — were Best Supporting Actress and Best Documentary (Feature).  Interestingly, both proved nerve-racking for completely different reasons.

    In the case of supporting actress, you have a race that felt fluid (easily a three-way sprint) coming into phase two, and a situation later complicated by an advertising hiccup from the frontrunner and the charm factor going way up for a contender in the expected Best Picture winner.  In the case of documentary feature, you have five stellar films that are — no kidding — evenly favored among the committee voters.

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  • The five categories giving me hell

    With a little over 48 hours until the big night, I find myself in an uncommon state of disarray — my crammed Oscar weekend “To Do” list includes viewing all 15 short nominees in order to make an informed dart-throw of a prediction (stickler that I am, I held out for a theatrical screening), preparing copious supplies of food and alcohol for my second annual hotel-suite Oscar party (sorry, the guest list is full) and somehow finding time to write a final predictions piece.

    Before I can check off that last task, however, I actually have to settle on some final predictions — and despite the presence of solid frontrunners in most key categories, this year is giving me more trouble than most. For a race that, only a couple of weeks ago, seemed smothered in blanket affection for a single film, other possibilities have opened up that unusually equalize the possibilities of both a titanic sweep and a widely splintered share-a-thon.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final analysis, part two

    Yesterday we began our final look at the 10 crafts categories.  Check out part one here.  Today, the conclusion.  Meanwhile, you can find my final predictions in all categories here.

    Best Music (Original Score)

    Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, despite their atypical approach to film music composition, are very much contenders in this race. Having won the BFCA award and Golden Globe for their work on “The Social Network,” they must be taken seriously. The fact remains, however, that this is not a typical Oscar-winning score.

    Alexandre Desplat has had an amazing run since he broke onto the American scene in 2003 with “Girl With a Pearl Earring.” Four Oscar nominations later, it seems he is poised to win his first statuette for another Colin Firth film, “The King’s Speech.” Being behind the Best Picture frontrunner is a huge advantage. Moreover, its subtle elegance managed to win the BAFTA. Even so, a win is hardly assured as subtlety is actually not frequently awarded here.

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  • THE LONG SHOT: A toast to the douchebags

    (Not-quite-final predictions here.)

    176 days from the unofficial opening of my Oscar season — a breakfast-hour press screening of “Black Swan” on the first day of the Venice Film Festival — it’s fair to say I’m ready for the endgame.

    Aren’t we all? Whether you’re delighted or disappointed by where the awards trail has led us thus far, it’s fair to say it offers little further room for discovery. Back in the golden days of September, pundits whittled the race down to “The King’s Speech” versus “The Social Network,” past versus present, comfort versus cred, That Was Then versus This Is My Now. And as much as I clung to the idea that it couldn’t be that simple, they were right.

    The axis may have swung in this narrative across the season, and the side-taking may have become more heated in the post-nomination phase, but the fact remains that the increasingly small world of Oscar blogging has largely revolved around two films for the better part of six months. If you want to know what this looped conversation has done to our collective brains, look no further than the fact that I just quoted Jordin Sparks lyrics in the paragraph above.

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  • BOX OFFICE: ‘Swan,’ ‘Speech’ cross $100 million

    The headline says it all. The two films join “Toy Story 3,” “Inception” and “True Grit” as the only Best Picture nominees to reach that mark this year. “The Fighter” has slowed too much to get there and a re-release of “The Social Network” didn’t go as well as planned in that regard.

    (Courtesy: Exhibitor Relations)

  • ‘Social,’ ‘Alice’ win ACE awards

    Alright, so I should have gone with what I said was the safe bet for the ACE drama Eddie.  Rather than making history by awarding a film not nominated for the editing Oscar and giving it to the truly deserving contender, “Inception,” the editors decided to rethink it and go with “The Social Network” instead.  Fair enough.

    I was, however, correct in assuming “Alice in Wonderland” had a better play on the win than the other comedy hopefuls.  “Toy Story 3” triumphed in the animated field as expected, while I was also on the money with “Exit Through the Gift Shop” winning in the doc category.  I’ll take three out of four.

    “Inception” could, however, take the Cinema Audio Society award for sound mixing, which is what most are expecting.  More on that when those awards wrap up shortly.

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: ‘Toy Story 3’ composer and songwriter Randy Newman

    When the Oscar nominations were announced last month, composer Alan Menken almost tied Randy Newman for third-most nominations among living artists.  But Newman inched away, nabbing his own nomination for the song “We Belong Together” (listen) from “Toy Story 3” and thereby maintaining a firm grip on the designation.

    It was Newman’s 20th nomination to date, a healthy run by anyone’s measure.  But it was extra special given his recent history with Pixar Animation Studios, and the voice he has given to the “Toy Story” franchise since its 1995 beginnings.

    He was able to put a bow on the series in his own special way, and should he win the Oscar next weekend, it’ll be his second trophy.  His first also came for a Pixar entry, “Monsters, Inc.,” which netted him the gold in this very same category.

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  • Bingham wins a Grammy, set for Bonnaroo

    I didn’t see the Grammys this weekend.  In fact, I tend to avoid them like the plague.  But it was nevertheless an impressive slate of winners, so that’s a unique start.

    In any case, it’s worth pointing out that Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett’s “The Weary Kind” wrapped up a long awards march by taking the award for Best Song Written for Motion Picture, Television, or Other Visual Media.  So add that to a list of accolades that includes an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a Critic’s Choice Movie Award, and the Americana Music Association “Song of the Year” honor.  A great ride indeed.

    “It’s incredible,” Bingham said to press backstage at the Grammys. “It’s been a hell of a ride. All this stuff flies by so fast and happens so quick. Afterward you look back on it, let it soak in, and see what it’s all about.”

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Sound Editing

    A few years back the sound branch did away with the bake-off process of determining its nominees for Best Sound Editing and the field was expanded to five. The visual effects branch followed suit this year and, maybe some day, the makeup branch will do the same.

    The sound branch is unique in that it nominates in two discipline-specific fields. Often there is a considerable cross-over between Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing as a result. The unfortunate thing is that the Academy at large doesn’t understand what quality editorial and mixing is when it comes to these aural areas. Typically they just pick their favorite film and move on to the next category.

    The nominees are:

    “Inception” (Richard King)
    “Toy Story 3” (Tom Myers and Michael Silvers)
    “TRON Legacy” (Gwendolyn Yates Whittle and Addison Teague)
    “True Grit” (Skip Lievsay and Craig Berkey)
    “Unstoppable” (Mark P. Stoeckinger)

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  • Pixar on growing up, and playing for the big Oscar

    As Kris noted in our Oscar Guide for Best Animated Feature (and whatever the Annie Awards would have you believe), the category doesn’t promise much of a race this year — as has been the case for the last three years running, Pixar faces an obstacle-free path to the award, despite quality competition. And with two-thirds of your votes in our “should win” poll, most of you are okay with that.

    But the thrill of winning the ghetto category year after year has to get old, and as their rather aggressive campaign for “Toy Story 3” has made clear, Pixar has designs on more substantial recognition. They certainly aren’t afraid to say so in this New York Times profile of the studio by Melana Ryzik:

    The Pixar team would dearly love to win a best picture Oscar. “I would be overwhelmed with emotion, I think, that our peers recognized how we make our films, and that we use the same tools and that we take ourselves so seriously,” said Darla K. Anderson, a producer of “Toy Story 3” who has been with Pixar for 18 years. Their painstaking approach “has been with this ferocity of intensity,” she added, “to make a great movie, plain and simple — not a great animated film, but a great film.”

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

    This year’s race for Best Adapted Screenplay has seemingly been the most predictable of the year. One script has dominated the precursor circuit and the name behind that script is as worthy as ever given his contributions to the medium over the years.

    I’m not particularly a fan of this slate. One script is an interesting experiment that doesn’t fully land as a piece of screenwriting, another is a near word-for-word adaptation of a novel (which is fine, but credit where it’s due) and another, frankly, made for the most overrated film of the year. But the two that seem to be duking it out for the win are worthy and deserve to be here, in my opinion, so I have little room to complain.

    The nominees are:

    “127 Hours” (Screenplay by Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy)
    “The Social Network” (Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin)
    “Toy Story 3” (Screenplay by Michael Arndt; Story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich)
    “True Grit” (Written for the screen by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen)
    “Winter’s Bone” (Adapted for the screen by Debra Granik & Anne Rosellini)

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  • Clean sweep for ‘Dragon’ at Annie Awards

    (Sorry we’re a bit late getting to this — Kris had more exciting plans for the evening and I like to sleep sometimes.)

    It’s a shame one can’t talk about “How to Train Your Dragon”‘s success at the Annie Awards without dragging politics into it. There are those of us who think it legitimately deserves to beat “Toy Story 3” on its own merits, and the sense of entitlement that comes from many of the protests on Pixar’s behalf isn’t appealing.

    But as when DreamWorks’s “Kung Fu Panda” upended “WALL-E” at the awards two years ago, there’s no way not to view this, to a large extent, as an anti-Pixar vote. If you’re not aware of the behind-the-scenes drama, this is it in a nutshell: last summer, Disney and Pixar withdrew from the International Animation Film Society-Hollywood, which organizes the awards, in protest at the voting procedures that enabled that aforementioned 2008 upset. (That Disney/Pixar had still taken the top prize in 13 out of 18 years, including last year’s win for “Up,” didn’t make them any less huffy.)

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 51 — The new frontrunner, Santa Barbara tributes and panels, potential Oscar upsets

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    It’s been a little over a week since last we left you, and to say the least, plenty has happened in that stretch. We’re both back in Los Angeles after some festival bouncing and have a number of things to chew on so let’s see what’s on the docket today…

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  • Phase two campaign messages give it their best shot

    I’ve been, unintentionally, taking note of the various tactics this year’s Best Picture hopefuls have been using as phase two barrels ahead and members have ballots in hand.

    The smartest stroke, I think, was The Weinstein Company following up the “Some Movies You See, Others You Feel” campaign with a “Find Your Voice” push for “The King’s Speech.” It’s obviously two-fold.  Yes, it indicates the narrative of the film, but it also works wonderfully in a “don’t let anyone tell you what to vote for” kind of way.

    Meanwhile, Sony is perhaps reaching a bit to find its own campaign voice for “The Social Network,” as “One Movie Connects Us All” is a bit faux-profound.  Show of hands of who’s mother isn’t on Facebook?  But that making-of documentary (which is available online, on demand and came in disc form in the trades this week) was certainly a smart play.

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  • Best Original Song performances are back

    The Academy’s Twitter feed just noted the following:

    You heard it 1st: Best Song performances are back for 83rd #Oscars! Gwyneth Paltrow set to sing…more on the way.

    To which I say: Great.  It was grossly disrespectful, I thought, to suddenly jerk them from the telecast last year (and if you heard some of the things being said of the nominees — by the telecast’s producers — behind the scenes last year, you might have been riled up a bit, too).  I think Ryan Bingham missed out on a great opportunity to reach a global audience with one of the best winners in that category in some time.

    But anyway, obviously they see having someone like Gwyneth Paltrow perform on the show (as she did recently on the CMT awards) as a ratings asset.  Ditto Mandy Moore (who will be performing “I See the Light” with Zachary Levi and Alan Menken).  A.R. Rahman will do “If I Rise” with Florence + the Machine (no Dido) and Randy Newman will be there to belt out “We Belong Together.”

    Check out the Oscar Guide to Best Original Song here.

    [Photo: Screen Gems]

  • Could there be another ‘Network’ dagger lurking?

    I’m really not trying to drop another grenade on the season here, but I was wondering recently about surprises this year and whether there are more in store.  And one undeniable shock would be an upset in the Best Adapted Screenplay race.

    Some would point to “True Grit” or “Winter’s Bone” as the likely runner-ups to Aaron Sorkin’s all-but-assured win, but if members are voting with their heart in the Best Picture field, why not in the screenplay races, too?  In “Toy Story 3,” I think you’ve got the makings of a real spoiler.  It’s a wonderful close to a beloved series and, look at that, it has “story” right there in the title, waiting to be capitalized upon in advertising.  (That one’s free, Disney flacks.)

    In all likelihood, the Academy will feel comfortable sticking with the Best Animated Feature (and potentially Best Original Song) fields as a way to recognize this film and franchise, but if they wanted to spring for more, this would be the place.  And Michael Arndt, an Oscar already in tow, isn’t some unknown newbie making his way through the season.  When it comes to screenplays, the Academy at large simply thinks about dialogue before all else.  That’s the extent of sweeping understanding of the form.  And Sorkin has that in spades, so the smart money, no question, is on “The Social Network.” I’m just saying the smart money was also on David Fincher once upon a time.

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