In Contention

Tag: True Grit

  • OFF THE CARPET: Sun came up

    Steven Spielberg couldn’t have put it more concisely during his presentation of the Best Picture category last night.  To paraphrase, he noted that whichever films did not happen to win Best Picture this year would join the ranks of numerous classics of the medium.

    Was it preemptive damage control?  I hope not.  Why be apologetic?  Was it lecturing?  Maybe a bit, and I think a great many needed to hear it again (unfortunately).  But it felt so incredibly inside baseball that it was probably completely unnecessary.  After all, a very popular film won Best Picture this year.  It seems silly to address a media concern (albeit one shared by plenty of cineastes).

    Ultimately, the season ended where many thought it might, going way back to the early days of September.  Some held out hope that David Fincher could take the lead in his field on respect and admiration alone, but Best Picture and Best Director will always be a better bet in lock-step.  The real post-show discussion focused on the ceremony itself, which was, mercifully, a short affair this year.  Just over three hours.  But they were three kind of excruciating hours.

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  • 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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  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Twas the week before Oscar

    • We made you wait for it this year, but finally: Kris’s Top 10 Shots of 2010, parts one and two.

    • This week’s Off the Carpet column surveyed where the season has brought us thus far, and began tying the loose ends…

    • …culminating later in Kris’s final Oscar predictions of the 2010 season.

    • Guy’s final Long Shot column of the season celebrated the season’s losers, while calling for a return to movie talk away from the subject of awards.

    • Our Oscar Guide feature stepped it up, covering Best Director, Actor, Actress, Foreign Language Film and Film Editing.

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  • How ‘Salt’ could surprise and win Best Sound Mixing

    I stopped researching somewhere in the 1970s, but as far as I can tell going back that far, the Best Sound Mixing (formerly Best Sound) category has never included more than three Best Picture nominees. In a number of cases there were two, a great many years saw one and often enough, there were none.

    So there’s a theory worth addressing. But before I get to that, first and foremost, the safe money in the category is on “Inception.” However, there should be a bit of pause because the film did not resonate with the Academy enough to land two key nominations (Best Director and Best Film Editing) and it flew over many heads. But it’s the loud blockbuster of the bunch and ought to be considered the frontrunner.

    That having been said, when you think of the reality of the Oscars, the winner ballots are largely filled out in blocks of support, sometimes even mandated from on high (no joke). So there are six Best Picture nominees that aren’t represented in the Best Sound Mixing category, and the last thing in-house supporters of those films will want to do is check off a box for a competitor and add to another film’s momentum. The only vote that wouldn’t put wind in anybody else’s sails? “Salt.”

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Directing

    Coming down to the wire, the race for Best Directing remains a very close one. Earlier in the year the prevailing wisdom was that a split could be in the cards, with the Oscar-bait frontrunner more likely to win Best Picture and the zeitgeisty competition likely to see its talented helmer finally noticed.

    Then things changed a bit, with the zeitgeisty choice pulling ahead as a Best Picture possibility, which left supporters feeling even more strongly that its director would find himself in the winner’s circle. At the end of the season, we’re back to that original thought process in some quarters, while in others, the anticipation of Oscar bait going hand-in-hand is taking hold.

    The nominees are:

    “Black Swan” (Darren Aronofsky)
    “The Fighter” (David O. Russell)
    “The King’s Speech” (Tom Hooper)
    “The Social Network” (David Fincher)
    “True Grit” (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen)

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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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  • INTERVIEW: Talking westerns and only westerns with ‘True Grit’ actor Jeff Bridges

    Last year was the best opportunity to do the career retrospective thing with Jeff Bridges, right at the starting gun of an Oscar-winning steamroll through the film awards season. This time around, the actor is nominated for his sixth Academy Award, for his work in the Coen brothers’ “True Grit,” and it seemed a conversation about westerns might be novel.

    So a little over a year after that hefty interview and roughly 10 months after he paid homage to his parents on the stage of the Kodak Theatre, we got together at the same restaurant to talk up the genre that sparks some of his earliest memories of the film business.

    “I was always thrilled when my dad would be doing a western,” he says, “because I knew he’d be coming through that door after work, all dressed up like a cowboy. And I’d get to put all his stuff on and I’d be smelling the horses on his clothes, all of that stuff.”

    Indeed, the actor remembers going to set and cracking up at the sight of actors sitting atop ladders and acting as if they were on horses for the camera, the veil of filmmaking totally lifted. But he also recalls an instance when his older brother and fellow actor, Beau, disrupted a take during the filming of “High Noon,” which starred their father, Lloyd Bridges.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final analysis, part one

    So this is it. Over the last seven-plus months here at Tech Support, we have tried to illuminate and analyze the craft races as they unfolded. On Sunday, the winners will be revealed, ushering some new faces into Oscar’s club.  And indeed, I expect the vast majority of the winners to make their first trip to the podium.

    I’ll be breaking down each field in a two-parter.  Check back tomorrow for the final five categories, but for now…

    Best Art Direction

    As is the case in many categories, “The King’s Speech” is, to me, the safe bet for the win here. A royal period piece and likely Best Picture winner would be difficult to beat in any year. But in all fairness, this is in many ways not a typical “royal” winner in a category where style triumphs over substance.

    Production Designer Eve Stewart (11 years after her first nomination for “Topsy-Turvy”), along with set decorator Judy Farr, immaculately filled many of the film’s sets (despite late-breaking news of one location) with intimate details that feel very much in tune with the characters. A guild win also shows industry support.

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  • 2/24 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Hanks to present two off the bat, Elton John on Best Actress, Twitter Best Pic reviews

    • Pete Hammond reports that Tom Hanks will present Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography to start the show, so we’ll know very quickly if a sweep for “The King’s Speech” is afoot. [Deadline]

    • Glenn Kenny talks up the underrated “Shutter Island” a year after its release. [The Film Talk]

    • It’s been a week of celebrity Oscar picks, more than ever.  Here’s Elton John’s call for Best Actress. [Inside Movies]

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  • The top 10 shots of 2010: part two

    In case you missed part one of this year’s top shots column, be sure to catch up before digging into the final five selections today.

    As I mentioned yesterday, it wasn’t exactly a banner year for singular images from films in 2010. And that’s certainly not a crime. But more to the point, what I learned as I set about writing this piece was how deeply my personal experience of the year was reflected in my ultimate selections. It may have been tough to find what felt right for the list, but in some ways, the intensity of that digging ultimately illuminated the year’s work for me all the more.

    How can I not be grateful for that? In the final analysis, perhaps a year that isn’t so obvious, without such a bevy of possibilities for this collective, yields a more measured and perhaps passionate consideration of the year in visual storytelling. Not to be highfalutin.  Anyway, I hope you enjoy the conclusion. Let’s dive in…

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Actor

    The 2010 Best Actor race looks to end up exactly where it started, making it the most predictable category of the evening. In fact, as of late (save for the two Oscars Sean Penn won), this has consistently been one of the easier categories to call. Generally it seems that there is a clear favorite christened before the season is over.

    Having said that, this year’s crop of nominees is truly an exceptional one. The one “surprise” of the bunch couldn’t have been more welcome, while overall it’s a nice balance of seasoned veterans, the future of screen acting and those who fall in between. So chalk that up as a big win on the Academy’s part before even casting their winner ballots.

    The nominees are:

    Javier Bardem, “Biutiful”
    Jeff Bridges, “True Grit”
    Jesse Eisenberg, “The Social Network”
    Colin Firth, “The King’s Speech”
    James Franco, “127 Hours”

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  • 2/23 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Leo speaks again on Adgate, hosts speak out on show, Burwell on ‘Grit’ score

    • Melissa Leo tells a different story on Adgate: She was doing what Parmount told her to do. [Daily Beast]

    • Telecast hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway in their first interview on the upcoming festivities. [Hollywood Reporter]

    • Meanwhile, Tom Sherak tells Susan Wloszczyna we’ll like the style of the show. [USA Today]

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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)

  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Cinematography

    The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) dished out its annual kudos this weekend, which makes for a nice segue into a discussion of the year’s nominees for Best Cinematography. But it’s important to keep a few things in mind when it comes to guessing what the Academy at large will spring for in this field.

    First and foremost, technical accomplishment doesn’t get you far with a number of people who don’t really understand what kind of a feat, say, “Children of Men” is. Or “Black Hawk Down,” for another example. It’s all about what looks like a post card, because “cinematography” so quickly translates to “prettiest movie” for a great many voters, unfortunately.

    The nominees are:

    “Black Swan” (Matthew Libatique)
    “Inception” (Wally Pfister)
    “The King’s Speech” (Danny Cohen)
    “The Social Network” (Jeff Cronenweth)
    “True Grit” (Roger Deakins)

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Sound Mixing

    I feel like we’ve done a pretty decent job of educating some of our readership on the difference between Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing over the last five years here at In Contention. It struck me that we haven’t really covered it in a focused way this season, and the Oscar Guide seems as good a place as any to recap.

    Sound editing, which we covered Friday, concerns the manifestation of artificial sound effects and the overall manipulation of the sonic identity of a film. Sound mixing concerns the balance of those various elements, in addition to music and dialogue, as well as the on-the-set maintenance of production audio. This year’s slate was an eyebrow-raising one to say the least.

    The nominees are:

    “Inception” (Lora Hirschberg, Gary A. Rizzo and Ed Novick)
    “The King’s Speech” (Paul Hamblin, Martin Jensen and John Midgley)
    “Salt” (Jeffrey J. Haboush, Greg P. Russell, Scott Millan and William Sarokin)
    “The Social Network” (Ren Klyce, David Parker, Michael Semanick and Mark Weingarten)
    “True Grit” (Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff and Peter F. Kurland)

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  • BOX OFFICE: Bieber fever

    All four at the top are new releases, but “Black Swan” will cross $100 million tomorrow or Tuesday, “The King’s Speech” will get there next weekend, and “True Grit” is at $160 million and climbing.

    (Courtesy: Exhibitor Relations)

  • 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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