Seven Link Paths
Saturday, January 26, 2013 at 2:00PM Pop Matters excellent piece about the Oscar snubs - were they just "body blind" this year?
Pajiba 30 brain bleaching moments from Movie 43 that you can't unsee -- i'm so glad I read a third of this post so that I know that i'll have to avoid this like the plague despite it having so many great stars in it that I've otherwise been a completist about
Daily Mail oh so Jessica Chastain speaks sign language too with adoring fans? Will her wonders never cease?
In Contention Kathryn Bigelow continues to defend Zero Dark Thirty, this time on the cover of "Time"
Playbill Phantom of the Opera celebrates its 25th birthday TODAY on Broadway. Will it ever close? That is too long for a show to hog one theater!
Awards Daily the costume designers in the Academy finally get their own branch
Carpetbagger The Weinstein Co would like to pull a Streep for Robert De Niro's third Oscar. I doubt this "living legend who hasn't won in 30+ years" thing is going to work for him though. If you compare what he'd been doing for those non winning years to what Streep had been doing in hers. Yeesh. You sure you wanna go there?
Reader Comments (18)
I love De Niro as much as the next guy, but I really don't think he's deserving this year. I saw Silver Linings Playbook, mainly for Jennifer Lawrence.I like all the actors and they do fine, but the movie was only fair to middling, and could have been so much better, especially given the talent involved. I really didn't get the Oscar attention... then I saw Jennifer Lawrence's speech at the Globes, "Thanks Harvey for whoever you had killed to get me this." Oh yeah, now I get it
Jessica Chastain: She's like Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street! Maybe she was signing "Sinterklaas Kapoentje." Either way, I believe in her.
Strangely after reading that list now I ABSOLUTELY MUST see Movie 43. I had no desire to before but I really just can't believe that these things exist. I must see it with my own eyes. Also, I hate myself.
I suppose I'm a sucker for my heartbreaking during the scene where De Niro pummels his son after his boy accidentally striking his wife. It's not a masterclass moment in acting but a beautiful real telling of what happens often in physically family domestic disputes.
Should he win a third Oscar? Arkin doesn't deserve his first. Tommy Lee has Lincoln and Hope Springs on his side for a second. Philip Seymour Hoffman has several chances for a subsequent win. Waltz the nomination is the reward. Robert De Niro, just wants a third statuette. He'll take Supporting, since it's the old man's category. Why not?
Streep was competing for a second Lead Actress prize, not a 3rd statuette. It was always about the inscription for her. This is why she category fraud-ed her way through her record breaking 14-nominations for Best Actress. Ironweed and One True Thing, being an actual Lead in Adaptation, while assuming herself to be superior over Kidman in The Hours, being Meryl Streep can make one delusional.
Personally after seeing slp i think de niro deserves it more than the others!!!
"If you compare what [DeNiro]'s been doing for those non winning years to what Streep had been doing in hers. Yeesh."
Hey now - if I may speak up in DeNiro's defense, let's not pretend King of Comedy, Midnight Run, The Untouchables, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, Heat, Jackie Brown, and Wag the Dog - among many others - didn't happen just because Showtime, 15 Minutes and Hide and Seek did. DeNiro has often appeared asleep at the wheel in the last decade or so, but I'd stack his body of work over the last 30 years up against Meryl's any day of the week. Plus, I think DeNiro's legitimately hacky early-2000s paycheck roles have semi-blinded people to the fact that he's actually been doing interesting work again in the past few years - Stone, Being Flynn and now Silver Linings.
Roark: I agree with you but I feel Nathaniel is right when pointing out that DeNiro can't make a claim for the Oscar based on 'hasn't won in over 30 years, like Streep' simply because while Streep tried to stay relevant for the last 30 years (mixing mainstream with more auteurial choices - plus getting more nominations, which I agree isn't the most important), DeNiro gave in and lost interest in being challenged.
It's not like he couldn't refuse to do stuff like Analyze This or The Fockers. He's ROBERT DE NIRO. I'd bet the majority of directors would come flocking to him with parts, if they knew he'd sign.
Roark: And Limitless. Don't forget that.
Wow. I actually was not aware that the Costume Designers DIDN'T have their own branch until now. Does that mean the same people were voting for Art Direction and Costumes all these years, and is that why the category has had so many overlaps?
Remember when Weinstein told everyone he was going to get Leo his Oscar this year? There was someone who actually deserved the Best Supporting Actor award.
Just saw Movie 43 without knowing what I was letting myself in for. Really patchy, but it knocks some of the self-consciously outrageous humour out of the park. I've never liked Halle Berry or Josh Duhamel better, and Kate Winslet is really funny. The Naomi Watts/Liev Schreiber/Michael Angarano section is a fantastic short film in itself.
The frame narrative, however, is just painful.
Jorge: Meryl Streep is a balance of mainstream and prestige work. (Even the one truly freaky auteur piece on her resume (Adaptation.) probably only got managed to get her due to the prestige element of playing a real person.) For someone who balances mainstream, prestige and auteur work, you'd be looking more at a Nicole Kidman.
Just went and read the pajiba/movie 43 article and realised that whole sections of the movie appear to be different - particularly the framing narrative, which in the version I saw involved three teenage boys trying to pull practical jokes on each other, only to accidentally trigger the apocalypse. Where did this version come from? Is it an international release rejig? Or did I just hallucinate the whole thing?
Oh, and it wasn't Michael Angarano, it was Jeremy Allen White.
Reading the article also reminded me of all the bits of the movie that really are terrible, particularly the endless superhero/speed-dating bit and the Anna Faris scat skit.
Laika: Hopefully they include the original frame story (which is what every other country gets) on the DVD, just to get a sense of how it was originally intended to play, which seems like it might be one or more random people clicking on gross internet videos.
Volvagia: Yes what I meant was prestige, not auteur. Yes Nicole is a good example, both of mixing auteur with mainstream (mainstream with terrible results but yes) and of crafting an Oscar story for body-of-work (relevancy in the last 10-15 years, many many Oscar-worthy perfs, etc).
I think the last time the Weinsteins pulled this sort of campaign was when they pushed Martin Scorsese for Gangs of New York—"Give him Best Director, he's overdue (but still vote for Chicago for Best Picture, please)." And you remember how that turned out: Roman Polanski FTW.
A successful Weinstein push for another acting god's third Oscar would make a nice story: reward De Niro for his best performance in years after rewarding Meryl for her worst performance in years.
To be fair to Meryl the script and direction of "The Iron Lady" was so shallow and incompetent that even Meryl-I made "Julie & Julia" worth watching-Streep couldn't do anything with it.
I heard Chastain also cured a little boy from cancer just by kissing his forehead ! She really is America's Sweetheart !