In Contention

Tag: The Kids Are All Right

  • 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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  • 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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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Actress

    Early in the season the lead actress category appeared to be more competitive than ever. An easy list of 10 contenders could be drawn up, many of them admittedly sight unseen, and it was anyone’s guess as to which lady could insinuate herself as the odds-on favorite to win.

    Then the critics began narrowing things down, while certain films began to underwhelm and fall to the wayside. With them went a few of those potential contenders. The critics also began to mold a frontrunner, one who would eventually prove to have the vote of the industry before having that status challenged in the final lap. Indeed, it’s been a wild ride for Best Actress.

    The nominees are:

    Annette Bening, “The Kids Are All Right”
    Nicole Kidman, “Rabbit Hole”
    Jennifer Lawrence, “Winter’s Bone”
    Natalie Portman, “Black Swan”
    Michelle Williams, “Blue Valentine”

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 52 — Nominees Luncheon, Bening vs. Portman to a photo finish, WGA and Scripter awards, Melissa Leo’s personal campaign, BAFTA preview with Guy Lodge

    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.

    Anne is calling from New York today, later on in the show we drop in on Guy in London and I’m in Los Angeles as always, so we’ve got quite the international episode for you today. And with plenty happening between last weekend and today, we’ve got tons to cover, so let’s see what’s on the docket today…

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Supporting Actor

    Very few of the 20 actors nominated for Oscars this year (if any) feel like egregious calls. As usual, the lead actor race is the most impressive, but the Best Supporting Actor slate isn’t too shabby, either. Each performance is masterful in its own way, and each serves its respective narrative to the fullest.

    Two of the nominees this year are depictions of real life individuals and three are complete manifestations. But all five of the below actors owned their roles and then some, finding the right flow of eye-catching showmanship without dominating the narrative arc. And though some might argue, I’d say each is perfectly representative of “supporting” in the truest sense of the word.

    The nominees are:

    Christian Bale, “The Fighter”
    John Hawkes, “Winter’s Bone”
    Jeremy Renner, “The Town”
    Mark Ruffalo, “The Kids Are All Right”
    Geoffrey Rush, “The King’s Speech”

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  • Predict the WGA and Scripter winners

    This weekend brings a couple of screenwriting competitions: the WGA Awards and the USC Scripter Award ceremony.  I might as well give you some space to predict.

    My bet on WGA is “The Kids Are All Right” for original, but it does seem like an open race.  I consider it the spoiler possibility for Oscar, but if “The King’s Speech” were eligible here we all know it would likely win.

    Meanwhile, the adapted field is a little easier.  I think Aaron Sorkin will coast to a win for “The Social Network.” These are writers voting, after all (and not a mish-mash of disciplines like the DGA).  It won’t be as easy on Oscar night, given the broader spectrum of voters, but I think tomorrow night should be simple enough.

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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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  • What will be this year’s Sundance story?

    I must confess, this year’s Sundance Film Festival kind of passed me by. Admittedly, I’ve been distracted by a busy couple of weeks on the awards circuit, but the Sundance coverage I did follow suggested a high-quality if nonetheless rather quiet festival, one with fewer noisy breakout films than usual.

    In the last few years, it’s been worth keeping an eye (or an ear, rather) on the Sundance buzz, as the festival has birthed a number of future critical hits, and even awards-season success stories: recent Best Picture nominees “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Precious,” “An Education” and now “The Kids Are All Right” and “Winter’s Bone” all premiered there, as did “Frozen River,” “Blue Valentine” and a plethora of Oscar-nominated documentaries. (No fewer than four of this year’s Best Documentary Feature nominees are Sundance babies.)

    So it’s easy to assume at least one film from this year’s Sundance crop is something we’ll still be talking about a year from now — but where the crossover potential for a film like “The Kids Are All Right,” or a performance like Jennifer Lawrence’s, was immediately evident, this year’s potential Sundance “stories” don’t seem quite as obvious.

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Writing (Original Screenplay)

    The race for Best Original Screenplay is full of worthy competitors this year.  Four Best Picture nominees and the year’s best screenplay period make up the field, and even if there are a few that should have been in the mix, I find it difficult to argue with what squeaked through in the end.

    The writing categories can sometimes be interesting to watch on Oscar night.  The Academy can mix things up, but only within the Best Picture landscape, as these awards have gone to a non-Best Picture competitor just six times in the last 20 years.  Nevertheless, all signs seem to be pointing to one film to dominate the show, and this category is no exception.

    The nominees are:

    “Another Year” (Written by Mike Leigh)
    “The Fighter” (Screenplay by Scott Silver and Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson; Story by Keith Dorrington & Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson)
    “Inception” (Written by Christopher Nolan)
    “The Kids Are All Right” (Written by Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumberg)
    “The King’s Speech” (Screenplay by David Seidler)

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  • SANTA BARBARA: Bening receives American Riviera Award

    The 26th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival kicked off a week of tributes tonight with the presentation of the American Riviera Award to “The Kids Are All Right” and “Mother and Child” star Annette Bening (with hubby Warren Beatty in tow). The award is given annually to an American actor “who has had a strong influence on American Cinema,” as the literature states.

    Bening, it turns out, is a very good choice for such an honor. And in the year of an Oscar-nominated performance in Lisa Cholodenko’s “The Kids Are All Right,” it’s just the sort of stop along the circuit that could help steer the momentum away from a certain critically-favored young starlet.

    Festival director Roger Durling offered a lovely introduction to Bening, one of his most heart-felt to date, before turning it over to a package featuring her work over the last three decades. The reel was cut to Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” and Robert Palmer’s “Simply Irresistible,” with a pivotal scene from Cholodenko’s film dividing the two different assemblages. And it did a great job of reminding you just how versatile Bening is, but also how many of the characters she has portrayed on screen are cut from the same frail cloth.

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  • Ruffalo finally gets the nod

    Amid the assorted geeky stat-studies I made in the wake of yesterday’s Oscar nominations, I noticed that it hasn’t been a vintage year for first-time nominees in the acting categories. Of the 20 actors selected, 12 are repeat nominees — the highest number since 2002. But among the eight thesps making their Oscar debut are some very gratifying choices indeed.

    The unusually robust Best Supporting Actor category is particularly pleasing in that regard. It’s always cheering when a long-serving character actor identified by most moviegoers as “oh, that guy” finally gets the spotlight, so amid the range of reactions to yesterday’s news, I haven’t heard a single person who isn’t happy for John Hawkes — an actor who deserved more individual plaudits than he got for his 2005 lead turn in “Me and You and Everyone We Know.”

    And Christian Bale’s high-end choices and hard-graft technique placed him on many an Oscar-watcher’s “overdue” list, so I’m glad he finally got the nod for what I regard as his finest hour.

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  • 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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  • Five things I learned from the Golden Globes

    Appropriately enough for the occasion, I watched last night’s Golden Globe awards in a celebratory alcoholic fog (the night having coincided with a friend’s birthday) so thick it took most of today to sleep it off — hence the apologetically late posting.

    My memory of the evening’s finer details is therefore about as clear as, say, Ricky Gervais’s, though I do recall cheering so manically for “Carlos”‘s win in the TV Miniseries category (even if the film is, by its director’s own admission, a work of cinema) that I inadvertently tossed red wine in my hair. That, and so many green dresses on screen that I briefly wondered if the collected stylists of Hollywood had been roped into a particularly gratuitous product placement scheme for the weekend’s box office champ.

    The awards themselves, meanwhile, were both well-judged and helpful, tying (or at least tidying) up a few loose ends remaining on the circuit — and even allowing me some minor bragging rights for calling the widely unfancied Paul Giamatti. (For an hour, at least, until my inevitably doomed prediction of a Best Picture upset missed outright — awards season giveth, and it taketh away.)

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  • Frontrunners stay strong at the Golden Globes

    Zzzzz…huh?, wha?  Oh…

    First and foremost, I have to note Ricky Gervais’s work as emcee. Last year’s stint was a bit stale, I thought, but this year the gloves were off. Way off. Which, for whatever reason, I was okay with tonight. The difference between Gervais and Armond White, though, if you want to go there, is that one is expected (and paid) to act like a clown. The other is not.

    And I have to think “That was my favorite film of the year” was a subtle joke. Not that subtle was in his toolbox.

    Anyway, kicking things off, Christian Bale’s speech in acceptance of yet another Best Supporting Actor trophy slid off the rails a bit toward the end as he rushed an impromptu shout-out to actor Robert De Niro. Apparently in the press room he said the legend was “the shit,” so maybe that’s similar to what was censored from the telecast. Earlier in the speech, though, he paid lovely homage to “The Fighter” actor and producer Mark Wahlberg. “You can only give a loud performance like mine when you have a quiet, stoic anchor,” he said.

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  • Golden Globes: who will win, and who should

    My predictions for tonight’s Golden Globe awards have been in black-and-white over at Gold Derby since the nominations were announced, but I thought I’d make them clear on these pages — along with a note or two on my personal favorites in each category.

    The Globes may get a lot of flak from journos and pundits, but even if they’ve failed to steer the Academy’s eventual Best Picture selection for five of the past six years, they can hold more sway than most people like to credit them with — particularly in races with no clear frontrunner yet. (Case in point: Rachel Weisz’s widely unexpected win at the 2005 Globes, which certainly set the narrative for the rest of season.)

    Bottom line, however: they’re a fun evening, and should be taken as such. I may or may not be Twittering on the evening’s developments — though it seems only right to have a few drinks in solidarity with the stars, so that plan may fall away. Meanwhile, check out my picks after the jump, Kris’s here… and those of many far wiser pundits over at Gold Derby.

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  • Focus, Paramount also set to issue SAG screeners via iTunes

    Last week it was announced that Fox Searchlight would be issuing screeners of its Oscar contenders to SAG voters online via iTunes.  A brave step forward.  Today comes the news that two other studio have followed suit.  The press releases, in part:

    Focus Features is inviting the nearly 100,000 Screen Actors Guild eligible voting members to screen its movie The Kids Are All Right in HD on iTunes for viewing on an iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Mac or PC, or with Apple TV on their HD TV.

    The Kids Are All Right, which is nominated for 3 Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards®, is available to SAG members – pending confirmation of valid current ID – for a complimentary 24-hour rental any time from Friday, January 14th through Friday, January 28th, when voting for the SAG Awards closes.

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  • Predict the DGA nominees

    Monday the guild circuit continues — at the start of what will be a very busy week — as the Directors Guild of America (DGA) unveils its list of nominees.

    The age-old rule of thumb has been that this is perhaps the most consistently foreshadowing precursor, as the five DGA nominees tend to have a good shot at Best Director recognition, and the Best Director nominees tend to line-up with the Best Picture nominees, give or take (though with the 10, I think it might be safe to say that the idea of a “lone director” has been lost to the realities of probability).

    Last year the five DGA nominees represented the perceived top five films of the Oscar race: Kathryn Bigelow, James Cameron, Lee Daniels, Jason Reitman and Quentin Tarantino. The year before that, we all thought it did the same, but alas, Christopher Nolan and his film ultimately missed the mark with Oscar.

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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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