Curio: Oscar Unsheets, Part I

Alexa here.  Announcement of the Oscar nominations brings about a flurry of poster creations by design geeks around the net, something I love to follow.  Screenwriter John August has called them unsheets (a play on the term onesheet), and the label seems appropriate, especially since so many of these indie designs are now influencing real onesheets (like those Iron Lady campaign posters, for one).  With so many great designs out there, I'm devoting my Curio posts leading up to the Oscars to unsheets made from the nominated films.  This week I'm focusing on designs from films nominated outside of the Best Picture category, say for acting, Best Foreign Language Film, etc.  Enjoy the design candy!

Beginners by Sondy Bojanic.
A Separation by Pendar Yousefi.

click for more, including Albert Nobbs and Marilyn...

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"Dream Big, Dream Fierce" This Oscar Season

The SAG Awards are receding in the review mirror, but the afterglow remains. How much power can emotional narratives have within our seasonal awards journey? Viola Davis has been a major actress for a long time within the showbiz community -- this very website first handed her two gold medals way back in early 2003 for her gobsmackingly great single scene in Antwone Fisher and her breakthrough year of smart character work in Far From Heaven and Solaris -- but it's only in the past few years that the mainstream has begun to learn her name and key in to her potent gift.  There's nothing like a 'who's that?' Oscar nomination (Doubt), A List friendship (Streep) and a big fat juicy hit (The Help) to boost your profile.

So I wasn't surprised but was definitely delighted to see her receive a standing ovation when she walked up to accept Best Actress for The Help.

Perhaps the standing ovation is an annual occurence and I've merely forgotten.

In some ways our relationship with the awards circus is a long one with deep pockets of memories, held grudges and fond crushes. In other ways it's as if we're goldfish swimming round the bowl and we're surprised by that little plastic castle every time.

But I think the true indicator that Viola Davis is the likely winner of the Best Actress Oscar is not the win itself with SAG, which has a much wider more diverse voting body than Oscar, but the crowd response. Reducing co-stars to tears is probably no great achievement. They were in the trenches with you so naturally Jessica Chastain, Octavia Spencer and Cicely Tyson were crying their eyes out. But making Zoe Saldana and Angelina Jolie all misty? Boosting Dick Van Dyke's mood when he was already high on life? 

What is going on here? (More after the jump)

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Links: Dujardin Sings, Madonna Votes, Camp Dies

Cats on Film Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) as experience by Jonesy the ginger tom.
New York Observer Good piece on 'the death of camp' and the new Broadway musical TV series "Smash" (which I do mean to write about soon).
Socialite Life teaser for Season 5 of True Blood. Ugh. If it really is about the return of King Russell, I think my love for the show will die. Repetition is so dangerous for good television and the show FINALLY wrestled its way out of the endless Sookie/Bill/Eric loop.
Empire Online has their annual "Done in 60 Seconds" competition. One minute amateur films spoofing on famous movies. Watch some and vote! Film Experience reader Jack made #20 on The King's Speech. Congrats for making the semi-finals, Jack! I haven't had the chance to watch any of this yet but they're 60 seconds long. I can squeeze a few in.

Boy Culture Magic Mike's Matt Bomer and Joseph Mangianello were friends in college (who knew?) and give great advice for male cast bonding.  
Serious Film top 10 overlooked performances of the year
Antagony & Ectasy doles out The Antagonists. I live for personal ballots. They're so much more interesting than consensus nominations. Yeah, yeah. I know I need to finish my awardage.
Vulture Best TV news ever? Shirley Maclaine joining the cast of Downton Abbey!
The WOW Report Channing Tatum signin' autographs and looking good 

24 Frames Madonna's vote for Best Picture (yes, she's an AMPAS member) sounds like it's going to The Tree of Life. Who knew?

I think it’s a spiritual, deeply profound movie. My mouth was hanging open the entire time I was watching it"

Flavorwire Harvey Weinstein's own take on The Artist. You win no points for predicting that he loves it! 
Focus on Women's Filmmakers has a Streep Oscar Chart that plays into all of my biggest pet peeves about awards season including the implict suggestion that it's wrong that she's the only thing ever recognized from her movies (um, what if the movies aren't good?) and including my #1 pet peeve, suggesting that she was the supporting actress in several movies. The modern awards campaign circus has completely destroyed collective understanding of narrative and now if you aren't the movies POV , you suddenly aren't a lead? Soon people will be --- NO, I CAN'T. MUST STOP TALKING ABOUT THIS TOPIC EVERY YEAR. [Breathe, Nathaniel. Breathe]
Guardian Awww, happy face. The original Eponine and Jean Valjean are joining the cast of Les Misérables... albeit not in their starring roles. 

Jean Dujardin sings after the jump!

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Say What Shai'?

Last night when The SAG Award for Ensemble cast was announced ("And the actor goes to... The Help")  Shailene Woodley turned to a shrugging George Clooney and held up two fingers. 

What was that conversation? 
Amuse us by transcribing it in the comments.

Burning Questions: What Explains the Extremely Loud Nomination?

Michael C. here to take a shot at one of the curious questions that came out of the Oscar nominations. 

A little over a year ago I published a post in which I tried to determine just how bad could a film be and still make the big category. In an attempt to squeeze popular opinion into chart form I subjected the last decade of nominees to an extremely unscientific examination wherein I averaged their Metacritic rating with their Rotten Tomatoes rating to come up with a rough measurement of a film’s critical reception. You can read the full post here but one of the main conclusions I reached was that the Best Picture minimum was set right about the 60% mark. This was the average Blind Side and The Reader, the two worst reviewed nominees, had received. It was a result that jibed pretty well with intuition. It’s tough to think of a nominee that received a resoundingly negative reception. 

But this then begs the question: How exactly did Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close manage a Best Picture nomination? I know critics don't get a vote but rarely, if ever, has the gap between the two been this glaring.

more after the jump

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