Congratulations to the Kidman-Urbans

I don't know if you've heard but Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban have pulled a fast one on the tabloids. They managed to keep their plans for a second child together hidden until a month after the child was even born ! That's a rare shell game in today's 24/7 news and infotainment cycle. TMZ has the report including this amusing graphic below...

Tthe surrogacy was here in the States since the couple is even more closely watched in Australia where there's less competition for Globally Recognizable Celebrity Among Us.

Baby Faith Margaret, younger sister to Sunday Rose (pictured left when she was just a wee thing -- she's now 2), is an awards season baby. She was born on December 28th the day after the Oscar ballots went out (and we learned Natalie Portman was pregnant) and her superstar parents finally told the media only after walking the red carpet at the Globes nearly a month later. Talk about keeping your private life private whilst in public.

Congratulations to the growing family. We hope Kidman is grabbing her 3rd Oscar nomination next Tuesday, but even if she's snubbed -- and it looks like a volatile field (take the BAFTA poll) -- it's a happy time at home.

Top Ten: Surprise Nominations

Michael C. here from Serious Film for Tuesday Top Ten.

The great contradiction of awards season is that there is nothing spectators enjoy more than a surprise yet that doesn't stop anyone from doing everything but pick through the trash of Academy members looking for clues that might help in divining their choices. The truth is that film awards, like presidential elections or tomorrow's weather, are not all that difficult to predict once you know a few basics. That's what makes genuine shockers such a rare treat.

So, with the Golden Globe winners suggesting a year of easy calls across the board and the BAFTA nominees giving tiny flickers of hope to a few longshot candidates (particular in the actress categories), let's dive into past out-of-the-blue choices with the ten most surprising Oscar nominations and see if they hint at any rays of hope for this year's long shots.

     Ten Most Surprising Recent Oscar Nominations

Michael Shannon (2008) Supporting Actor

People talk a lot about momentum and popular films having coattails when it comes to supporting performances. There is truth to this, but in the end sometimes it's better to simply give a killer performance. This was the case when those predicting Dev Patel would take this slot due to Slumdog fever turned out to be wrong and the nomination instead went to Michael Shannon's brief, explosive performance in Revolutionary Road. Social Network contenders Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake no doubt hope that their film's frontrunner status is enough to keep any dark horses from sprinting past them at the finish line.

Letters From Iwo Jima (2006) Picture

Part two of Clint Eastwood's WWII double feature (immediately following Flags of Our Fathers) got nominated despite subtitles, minimal precursor attention, and tiny box office. It took the slot universally expected to go to Dreamgirls proving that all the prerelease hype in the world can't land a Best Picture nomination if voters simply don't go for a film - a lesson Clint learned three years late with Invictus. 

Ed Norton (1998) Lead Actor

In this awards race, SAG (the Screen Actors Guild) ignored Ed Norton's intense work in American History X for the more conventional choice of Joseph Fiennes in Shakespeare in Love. The switch on the Oscar ballot was undoubtedly an example of Norton doing well with Oscar's system of weighted ballots, with an extremely passionate fan base pushing him over the top of more widely seen choices. Actors like Tilda Swinton or Ryan Gosling with similarly strong supporters might find themselves the beneficiary of this system come the morning of the 25th.

Samantha Morton and Djimon Hounsou (2003) Lead Actress, Supporting Actor

In America was looking like a sentimental also-ran after neither of these actors landed SAG or Golden Globe nominations. Just goes to show that certain late bloomers can hit the Academy sweet spot without making much of a ripple in the early stages of awards season. Hopefully, that means contender's like Another Year's Lesley Manville have more of a shot than the odds suggest.

Troy (2004) Costumes

This entry could just as easily be The Village's Best Score nomination from the same year. It's to the credit of the Academy's smaller branches that they've shown a willingness to stray outside the frontrunners to pick out quality work in otherwise forgettable projects. Are there any standout elements from otherwise off-the-radar 2010 films that could pop up unexpectedly? The nicely realized costumes from Centurion spring to mind.

The Secret of Kells (2009) Best Animated Film

The nomination of this beautiful, obscure Irish animated fable is a strong reminder that when the voters actually watch all the eligible films in a category, the conventional wisdom falls by the wayside pretty quick. Imagine if actors could only vote for Best Actress if they could prove they've seen Blue Valentine, I Am Love and Another Year? I dream, I know. As far as eligible animated contenders this year, I've heard My Dog Tulip is incredibly moving and Idiots and Angels is a feature from beloved animator Bill Plympton, a guy who certainly has some fans in the animation branch. Look out for those two.

The Reader (2008) Picture

This shocker is going to have reverberations for years to come. When Stephen Daldry's sober drama side-swiped The Dark Knight out of its expected Best Picture nod the Academy panicked, expanding the Best Picture field to ensure that small independent films wouldn't lead them down the road to obsolescence. The only lesson to draw from this - Oscar voters still don't dig superheroes, especially when there's a film with Nazis available - doesn't exactly apply this year, although the snub has granted Christopher Nolan "overdue" status that can only help Inception.

Mike Leigh (2004) Director

The lone director slot has become something of an Oscar tradition over the years with the director's branch making sure to recognize deserving auteurs whose films are too out of the mainstream for the big prize. Examples range from David Lynch in '01 back to such icons as Akira Kurosawa in '85 and Fellini four separate times. I selected Mike Leigh because these lone directors are usually not that hard to spot - a couple of people, including Nathaniel right here, saw Almodovar coming in '02 - but nobody picked up on any buzz for Vera Drake outside Imelda Staunton. If voters heard how hard Blue Valentine's Derek Cianfrance fought for years to get his film made he might be the latest member of this very exclusive club.

Keisha Castle Hughes (2003) Lead Actress

Even if people generally agree that a category designation is false it still tends to stick. My guess is that most voters would rather go with the inaccurate classification than risk wasting their vote by swimming against the current. This wasn't the case in '03 when to everyone's amazement Oscar voters plucked this child actress's performance in Whale Rider out of the supporting category where it was nominated by SAG and promoted it to the big leagues. The parallel to 2010 is all too obvious so I will merely say that the leading ladies should watch their back for a precocious 14-year old armed with her father's revolver and the Coen brothers' dialogue. 

City of God (2003) Director, Screenplay, Editing, Cinematography

These four out-of-nowhere nominations for Fernando Meirelles's Brazilian crime epic are the kind that give hope to followers of the gaudy circus that is Oscar season. They suggest that voters will not only go out of their way to see small films of quality, but will remember them from early in the year and then ignore the frontrunners to vote for them in sufficient numbers to make a difference. It gives free rein to imagine your dark horse favorite isn't totally out of it. Maybe an out-of-the-blue Best Picture nod for I Am Love or Somewhere this year? I wouldn't bet on it, but look at those four nominations again before you tell me it's impossible.

BAFTA Nominations

The BAFTA nods have arrived offering us a few mild surprises. Or rather, let's be fair, enough mild surprises that their lineups may well end the season feeling slightly unique to them this year which is its own reward in a way given how predictable the winners are this year. Plus, it's nice when a film has been honored everywhere to see the continually snubbed finally get an opportunity to walk the red carpet as a nominee; Congratulations Julianne Moore and Barbara Hershey!

They've also gotten solidly behind 127 Hours which has been struggling buzz-wise and with the American guilds.

BEST FILM
BLACK SWAN - Mike Medavoy, Brian Oliver, Scott Franklin
INCEPTION - Emma Thomas, Christopher Nolan
THE KING’S SPEECH - Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Gareth Unwin
THE SOCIAL NETWORK - Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti, Michael De Luca, Céan Chaffin
TRUE GRIT - Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM
127 HOURS - Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy, Christian Colson, John Smithson
ANOTHER YEAR - Mike Leigh, Georgina Lowe
FOUR LIONS - Chris Morris, Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain, Mark Herbert, Derrin Schlesinger
THE KING’S SPEECH - Tom Hooper, David Seidler, Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Gareth Unwin
MADE IN DAGENHAM - Nigel Cole, William Ivory, Elizabeth Karlsen, Stephen Woolley

It'll win something. Since The King's Speech is in both categories, you can assume it's going to win British Film, freeing them up to be Oscar predictive in the other. Has a film ever won both prizes from BAFTA? I'm too busy to check.
Surprise? Maybe you don't think True Grit is a surprise as one of only 5 nominated "best films" but I do. The Western is such an American genre

FULL LIST OF NOMINEES with commentary after the jump

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Curio: Warren Beatty, Young Lover

Alexa here. When Annette Bening gave a shout-out to husband Warren Beatty's 1962 Golden Globe win in her acceptance speech, I was reminded of this 1962 Movieland magazine of mine.  The issue means to cover Hollywood's "hot new crop of young lovers," and features Beatty, fresh off his Globe win and still under Elia Kazan's tutelage, on its cover.  (A must-read is this recent New Yorker piece on Kazan, but I digress.) The issue also covers Troy Donahue, Dick Beymer, Gardner McKay, Horst Buchholz and George Maharis, so clearly Beatty was the right choice for the cover. The section devoted to him, excerpted below, is hilarious in its critique of his acting and its predictions for his future.  

The handsomest of Today's YOUNG LOVERS and the one who's garnering most of the critical acclaim and column mentions: Warren Beatty. Many of those admirers have likened Beatty to James Dean. But apart from a few minor mannerisms (burying his hands in his pockets, peering intently through his glasses, standing stoop-shouldered) that lots of young men exhibit, the comparison is unjustified. A better parallel, for some remarkable coincidences, is Marlon Brando.

After a few roles on television and a little summer stock, Warren Beatty appeared in the short-lived New York play, "A Loss of Roses." But the experience was no loss to him: He got fine notices and the play's author, William Inge, was much impressed with him.  Inge, who had written a screenplay called "Splendor in the Grass," introduced the young actor to the man who was to direct the film, Elia Kazan.  And here's the first Brando link: Acting Style.

Will they still be around ten, twenty, thirty years from now?

As everyone has known, lo! these many years, Brando's first big click was in the theater, in the play, " A Streetcar Named Desire" - directed by, of course, Elia Kazan. At that time, Kazan was still very involved with the Actor's Studio as a director; so was Brando, as star student. In those days, Kazan was young Brando's mentor and the same influence is apparent in Beatty now. Which brings up my only criticism of him: A product of Northwestern's School of Speech, and Stella Adler's acting school in New York, he is closer to being that which he vehemently denies being - a "method" actor.

Warren Beatty is a good actor. But he will be finer when he re-fines some of his "methodisms." Such as the too-studied movements - just rising from a chair, he spills "soul" all over. And the too-deliberate reactions - his slow smile comes muscle by muscle by muscle. Beatty is under personal contract to Kazan for four more films so his method acting may get stronger before it gets better. Yet better it will get - anyone who comes under the remarkable power of Kazan cannot help but grow into a remarkable performer.

Finally, like Brando, the first of the method actors to light up the flicks, Beatty has that which elicits sighs from ladies in the audience: A pure, unadulterated animal magnetism. Translated, that means sex appeal. (Side comment: I asked a junior staff member on MOVIELAND and TV TIME for her reaction to W.B. Her succinct reply was, "Wow!"). Again, like Brando, Beatty's effect from all reports is just as magnetic off-screen. Which is the true test of every great on-screen lover.

Red Carpet Globes: They Wear the Pants 'Round Here.

Nobody ever leads with the men in terms of awards show fashion rundowns. For good reason sure -- let me guess, a black tux?! I'm totally psychic) But why play to expectations every time? If we don't give them their due right now we'll actually forget and I'm well aware that some readers get annoyed that we only ever drool on the actresses 'round these parts.

So here ya go. Brad Pitt wasn't the only one having tie adjustment problems. Ryan Gosling didn't have Angie beside him so he had to do the dirty work himself.

Meanwhile, Joseph Gordon Levitt wore a red button. I'm pretty sure that if one were to investigate one couldfind out what the red button means . But isn't it more fun to assume he'd just been sold at a gallery prior to the show, being a work of art and all? How much would he go for at Sothebys? (Your best price estimates in the comments, please)

AFTER THE JUMP: March of the Handsome Penguins.

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