In Contention

Tag: TRON Legacy

  • In praise of the modern movie soundtrack

    I generally try to ignore film opinion pieces I think are fundamentally misguided — à chacun son goût and all that, plus the fact that fighting one mind is generally more trouble than it’s worth — but Ben Walsh’s idle article in The Independent today on the supposed demise of the movie soundtrack does such an absurd disservice to the current landscape of film music that it can’t pass without objection.

    Walsh’s standpoint is a dully nostalgic one: movie scores were so much more memorable in the old days, when greats like John Williams, Ennio Morricone and Danny Elfman (who are all dead, apparently) conjured whistle-ready themes by the dozen, while scores today “seem so completely unmemorable” by comparison.

    His pool of case studies for this assertion is a shallow one — he speaks mainly of the recent Oscar winners by Best Picture, Original Score and Original Song, oddly conflating the last two categories as if the two disciplines are somehow comparable — and even through that narrow prism, his preferences are hard to justify.

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  • Forget Best Supporting Actor — it’s time to honor Andy Serkis’ “Special Achievement”

    There has been a lot of talk this week about Andy Serkis’ stirring performance-capture portrayal of ape rebellion leader Caesar in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” In many quarters, writers are calling for consideration in the Best Supporting Actor category. It’s a song and dance Serkis and those of us who follow the film awards season have heard before, but I wonder if it’s the wrong approach.

    It’s important to face facts if you want Oscar recognition for Serkis. The Academy — an actor-dominated body — is not ready to hail performance-capture outside of the effects arena. Period. Two years ago, “Avatar” showed us that there was fear there when it missed out on a Best Picture win. It was admittedly one of a handful of issues that served as a stumbling block, but the sense (amplified by competing Oscar campaigns) was that a quickly advancing technique could one day render actors obsolete. Yes, it was a ridiculous fear, but it was a fear nonetheless. And for some, I’m sure it still is.

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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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  • ‘Dragon,’ ‘King’s Speech,’ ‘TRON’ win with film music critics

    Check out the full list of winners at The Circuit.

  • Desplat leads International Film Music Critics nods

    Alexandre Desplat has enjoyed a brilliant career in U.S. features as of late (on the back of immense talent, naturally).  2010 was a grand year for the composer as he, once again, balanced scoring duties on a number of notable films.

    Today, the final announcement from the critics awards circuit has landed in the form of the International Film Music Critics Association’s picks, seven of the nominations going to Desplat for his work on “The Ghost Writer,” “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1” and, of course, “The King’s Speech.” It’s highly probably he’ll walk away with an Oscar later this month, capping of one heck of a year.

    John Powell netted five nominations for his work on “How to Train Your Dragon,” while Daft Punk and Hans Zimmer each grabbed three for their respective actioners.  Interesting to note, however, is the complete absence of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for their innovative work on “The Social Network.” Your guess is as good as mine as to why the group turned the other cheek there.  Ditto A.R. Rahman’s work on “127 Hours,” which is actually a beloved piece of work among musicians.  In any case, have a look at The Circuit for the full list of film nominees.

    [Photo: Last.fm]

  • 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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  • 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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  • CONTEST: T-shirt giveaway!

    Alright, we have our last contest of the year.  But it’ll have a quick turnaround, so don’t snooze if you’re interested.

    First, the prize.  We have T-shirts for “Animal Kingdom” (you remember the one), “TRON Legacy,” “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” and “Tangled” up for grabs.  And the contest will be predictions-based.

    This weekend I asked you all what you felt were the most difficult categories to predict for nominations this season.  Your top three picks: Best Supporting Actress, Best Actress and Best Original Score. So, that’s your task for the contest.  Give us your predictions in those three categories.  Hopefully that’ll provide enough information to steer clear of a tie-breaker, but in case we need one, also answer this question: Which film will lead with the most nominations?

    Got it?  Good.  Now, hit me with your best shot.  We’ll announce the winner tomorrow afternoon.

    [Photo: Kristopher Tapley]

  • 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 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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  • In praise of Reznor/Ross

    This year’s Best Original Score race really has me at a loss.  I freely admit that I have no idea what will happen there.  Some days I think we’ll get a small surprise like Alexandre Desplat sliding in for his best work this year in “The Ghost Writer,” others I think we could just get a massive, happy surprise like Daft Punk slipping in for their brilliant work on “TRON Legacy.”

    Other times, I kind of just bank on it being a boring assemblage of what we’ve been expecting.  Probably option “C” is the wisest expectation.

    One thing has begun to materialize lately for me, though.  And that is the fact that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who I once upon a time thought might not even get a nomination for their wonderfully woven ambient work in “The Social Network,” could be the frontrunners to win in a category that might be filled with less-singular achievements.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Guilds galore and season fatigue

    • The Directors’ Guild of America presented few surprises in their award nominations, though some raised eyebrows at “True Grit”‘s omission. (Their documentary nods didn’t move the needle either.)

    • The American Cinema Editors’ nods matched those of the directors; the American Society of Cinematographers didn’t deviate much from the formula either.

    • This week’s Off the Carpet column addressed the growing consensus around a “Social Network” win, days before Kris formally made the prediction himself.

    • The Long Shot, meanwhile, wondered how the field of contenders this season ever got quite so narrow.

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  • 1/14 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Weinstein on the “Oscar movie,” HFPA sued, more bad ‘Social’ breath

    • Former Golden Globes publicist Michael Russell sues the HFPA two days before its biggest night leveling a boatload of accusations. [The Wrap]

    • Harvey Weinstein himself admits that the stereotype of the classic “Oscar movie” is probably gone. [The Carpetbagger]

    • Still beating David Fincher up over “The Social Network”‘s bad breath. [Slate]

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The wizardry of ‘TRON Legacy’

    It’s somewhat intriguing to note how far the visual effects side of filmmaking has come in the last three decades.  When “TRON” was released in 1982, it’s FX wizardry was disqualified from Academy Award consideration.  The reason: the use of computer technology to achieve its look and environment was deemed, believe it or not, “cheating.”

    Today, hard drives and databases are considered vital tools in the filmmaker’s arsenal, and not simply in the blockbuster realm, either.  Not only that, but digital production is very much the future of the medium.  And the craftsmen and women at Digital Domain are a big part of that ever-changing equation.

    A few weeks back I trekked out to the company’s Venice, CA production facility to talk about the work put into that film’s sequel, “TRON Legacy,” with CEO Cliff Plumer, commercial division head Ed Ulbrich, visual effects supervisor Eric Barba and animation head Steve Preeg.  That new vision was very much at the forefront of discussion.

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  • ‘Shutter Island,’ ‘Social Network’ surprise with Cinema Audio Society, ‘TRON’ snubbed

    The immediately striking thing about this year’s slate of nominees from the Cinema Audio Society (which honors sound mixing) is the appearance of “Shutter Island.” This is the film’s second below-the-line guild citation in as many days (following an Art Directors Guild nomination yesterday).

    If it had managed a PGA nomination earlier this week, I’d be saying, “Watch out.”  But the crafts are what were going to help this film along, if anything.  Just remember, there’s a 10th Best Picture slot somewhat up for grabs and there is always the “steak eaters” theory (however overstressed) to consider.  People in the industry do like the film, though maybe for its parts more than their sum.

    The second thing that’s striking is “The Social Network” making it in.  Though that shouldn’t be too unexpected.  It’s an amazing mix from veteran craftsmen.  But could this be the “Finding Neverland” or “Babel” of this year’s slate?  It’s possible.  (Check back later this morning for more on that as today’s Tech Support interview includes sound mixers Ren Klyce and Michael Semanick.)

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  • ‘Scott Pilgrim,’ ‘Hereafter’ make visual effects bake-off

    As we await the USC Scripter finalists (which should drop any minute), I should pass along the Academy’s bake-off finalists in the Best Visual Effects category.

    Last month the field was narrowed down to 15 titles. Today, seven titles remain, from which five nominees will be selected in a bake-off (which is an odd extra step now, given that the ultimate nominations field was expanded to five this year). So take two off of the following list:

    “Alice in Wonderland”
    “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1”
    “Hereafter”
    “Inception”
    “Iron Man 2    ”
    “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”
    “TRON Legacy”

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