The Ghost Linker

Filmmaker Magazine a brief video interview with Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know) on her new project about a couple adopting a cat. EEEEeeee. Adopting a cat sounds like an EPIC story for a movie*. I cannot wait to see this.
Movie|Line Oscar buzz for Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) at Sundance. Hey, lots of Oscar hopefuls kick off there. Here's to next year!
In Contention Guy Lodge's dream Oscar ballot. Other than Oscar, I *so* prefer to read people's individual ballots than see group choices.
The Wrap Like Crazy a romantic drama starring Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones sells big at Sundance. Hmmm. Could mean big things for both leads.
Inside TV What the hell is going on with Mad Men? I'm so nervous. Give us that fifth season. With Matthew Weiner.

Ghost Writer keeps showing up in European Awards . Could surprise Oscar noms await?

Finally as much as I lie to myself and pretend that each day has 57 hours in it, I need to face facts that there will never be enough time to do a whole post on the Asian Film Award Nominations or France's Cesar Nominations because they're happening during my own awards (which are running much later than usual -- it was building this damn website!) AND just a few days prior to Oscars. I love movie awards so much but I do so wish the calendars were spread out. Let it suffice to say for now that Of Gods and Men and The Ghost Writer did very well with the Cesars and South Korea's Poetry (which I've already raved about), Japan's Confessions (an Oscar finalist) and Thailand's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (already snubbed by Oscar) did well with the Asian awards nominations.

*It sounds like that to me because I am a crazy cat lady.

Best Actors (Lead and Supporting), My Ballot

As is my annual perogative I went back and forth between lead and supporting designations on several of those "co-lead" roles until I tied myself in knots and could not come undone. I'm more strict about these things than most so just deal. Every year people give me a hard time about it. But for every clear cut case of category fraud (Hailee Steinfeld is a lead in True Grit. Duh!) there are areas so gray one can't make out blacks or whites (I'm still not sure what to make of Lesley Manville in Another Year) and one just has to call it like one sees it and be okay with how other people are calling it too. No biggie. So for what it's worth I consider the couplings of Firth & Rush (The King's Speech) and Wahlberg & Bale (The Fighter) to be power duets within films specifically about their relationship with one another - therefore leads just like Scarlett & Rhett in Gone With the Wind only without the sex and with more of a damn given.

Lead Actor
I regret to inform that I have not seen Javier Bardem's much lauded performance in Biutiful. I tried! (Screener didn't work. Didn't realize that til after one week qualifier had passed, etcetera) Do I feel bad about thus dissing him? Yes and No. I love Bardem but it's no secret that I disdain the "one week qualifier" Oscar tactic and part of me -- a small petty part but a part nonetheless -- wishes even the worthiest of performances and films would be ignored every year IF attempting this until the studios and/or the Academy put a kabosh on this absurd practice which is bad for moviegoers and bad for dramatic films in general, as it teaches audiences to shun them or not care a whit about them unless or until they are Oscar-stamped. That's no way to build or keep an audience for adult entertainment. After all, not every film can be Oscar nominated.

So for my best actor list I had to choose between a sweaty former boxer, a sweaty federal agent, a sweaty rock climber (what's going on here) and several other men who were sweating out really difficult situations like an illiterate inmate, an innovator beset by lawsuits, a king on the verge of war, a man who'd just lost a child and so on.

Supporting Actor
So many wonderful performances and I'm still debating a couple of also rans with myself. Self: "He was better." Also Self: "No, you're crazy. Him." But in the end I'm happy with the settled ballot which includes a chill sperm donor, a hardened criminal, two men with mysterious motives with their lead actress, and one man, Andrew Garfield who I would have nominated twice over if I could have. Subtract The Social Network from the 2010 calendar and he'd still be a Film Bitch Award nominee for Never Let Me Go... (a film I didn't much care for overall).

READ MY BALLOT

Who is on yours?

Frank Rich on True Grit & The Social Network

Illustration by Barry BlittThe invaluable Frank Rich has a great op-ed on the success of True Grit in the age of The Social Network. It's beautifully written and interesting in the context of both awards season heat and our current political and economic climate. If I have one gripe with it it seems to downplay the fact that TSN is quite successful financially. Just not as successful.

I won't spoil the expert finale of the piece which shifts to The Social Network but here's a part I liked about True Grit which he correctly identifies as both elegaic and escapist for left and right wing Americans.

More than the first “True Grit,” the new one emphasizes Mattie’s precocious, almost obsessive preoccupation with the law. She is forever citing law-book principles, invoking lawyers and affidavits, and threatening to go to court. “You must pay for everything in this world one way or another,” says Mattie. “There is nothing free except the grace of God.”

That kind of legal and moral cost-accounting seems as distant as a tintype now. The new “True Grit” lands in an America that’s still not recovered from a crash where many of the reckless perpetrators of economic mayhem deflected any accountability and merely moved on to the next bubble, gamble or ethically dubious backroom deal. When Americans think of the law these days, they often think of a system that can easily be gamed by the rich and the powerful, starting with those who pillaged Lehman Brothers, A.I.G. and Citigroup and left taxpayers, shareholders and pensioners in the dust. A virtuous soul like Mattie would be crushed in a contemporary gold rush even if (or especially if) she fought back with the kind of civil action so prized by the 19th-century Mattie.

The whole piece is well worth a read.

20:10 Truer words were never spoken (by Toys)

Screen capture: 20th minute and 10th second of Toy Story 3 (with the dialogue immediately preceding this image).

It's nice. See! The door has a rainbow on it.

Tee hee. Love the basic causal evidence cited (rainbows -- duh!)  and the line delivery is also rich. Don't you love Wallace Shawn as "Rex"? Def' one of the best Toy Story characters. And isn't it fun that the screaming monkey is first introduced so innocuously while Bonnie pours love at him?

Speaking of Bonnie, our first glimpse of Sunnyside is also her introduction.

Is this BONNIE!?

She is beyond adorable. Plus she plays well with toys. They do a lot of improv. (Tangent: Why is shyness so endearing in kids and pets and so annoying in adults?) How can anything/anyone be so cute rendered in pixels?

poll by twiigs.com

(Are you enjoying this return freeze frame series?)

Producer's Guild Loves Bertie, Disses Zuck

True Blood's Joe Mangianello presents an awardThe PGA (the producers not the golfers) have chosen The King's Speech as the best produced film of 2010. [Dumb joke] No word yet on which film the golfers prefer... maybe True Grit with all those wide open spaces or The Kids Are All Right with its landscaping subplot? [/Dumb joke] Stammering Bertie's win may come as a surprise to the producers of The Social Network who are very used to winning things for their exciting film about the billion dollar rise of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. Why it's almost as if the Producers Guild have been reading all these speculative premature blog pieces "can TKS take it from TSN?" and decided that since they were producers of entertainment... they ought entertain by raising the stakes.

I'm not sure that this makes it a dead heat but it definitely raises one eyebrow. Que?

This Year's Prizes:
Theatrical Motion Picture: THE KING'S SPEECH
Animated Feature: TOY STORY 3
Documentary Feature: WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN'
Episodic Television Comedy: MODERN FAMILY
Episodic Television Drama: MAD MEN (third consecutive win)
Longform Television: THE PACIFIC
Non-Fiction Television: DEADLIEST CATCH
Live Entertainment and Competition: Television THE COLBERT REPORT

and the honorary non-competition prizes
Milestone Award: JAMES CAMERON
Norman Lear Achievement (Television): TOM HANKS and GARY GOETZMAN
David O. Selznick Award (Film): SCOTT RUDIN
Visionary Awards LAURA ZISKIN
Stanley Kramer Award (which usually goes to a film, not a person): SEAN PENN

Amy Adams and Helen Mirren presenting...

For what it's worth...

here are the last 20 PGA winners and how they fared with Oscar
2009 The Hurt Locker (won)
2008 Slumdog Millionaire (won)
2007 No Country For Old Men (won)
2006 Little Miss Sunshine (lost)
2005 Brokeback Mountain (*sniffle*)
2004 The Aviator (lost)
2003 The Lord of the Rings The Return of the King (won)
2002 Chicago (won)
2001 Moulin Rouge! (lost which we knew it would but god bless them for going there.)
2000 Gladiator (won)
1999 American Beauty (won)
1998 Saving Private Ryan (lost)
1997 Titanic (won)
1996 The English Patient (won)
1995 Apollo 13 (lost)
1994 Forrest Gump (won)
1993 Schindler's List (won)
1992 The Crying Game (lost)
1991 The Silence of the Lambs (won)
1990 Dances With Wolves (won)
1989 Driving Miss Daisy (won -- this was the first year of the PGA prize)

Or, in the past 21 years, Oscar lines up 66% of the time. If you can find a pattern with the losers, you're my god. I can't see any patterns. All kinds of films win or lose, from big to small to American to British.

In other news: Amy Poehler and Justin Timberlake were there. Funny thing is, this is EXACTLY what happens when I talk* to Amy Poehler.

* ...and by "talk to" I mean watch her on Parks and Recreation. Aren't you glad that show is finally back?

What do you make of The King's Speech win here? A fluke or a real and present danger for Zuck and company come Oscar night?