BAFTA Long List Losses

I've said it before and I'm forced to say it again. I'm *so* glad that the American Academy does not publish a long list. i.e. the semi-finals. You see, It's so much more bearable / engaging when you can imagine that straight up great achievements or achievements you really responded to personally but you knew might have trouble rallying huge swaths of support were in 6th or 7th place or 10th place in voting. The way BAFTA does it, however, you are forced to understand that Oscar buzz is everything and Super Size Mediocrities will always triumph over critical darlings or more challenging Art.

Take the Best Picture categories for a prime example. Notice that Weekend for example, a very British and very acclaimed film is not one of their "outstanding" homegrown products (they might want to check the reviews again) and notice that auteurist films frequently called masterpieces by their fans (The Tree of Life and Melancholia) are also absent. Other films ignored because you have to have space for The Lukewarmly Reviewed Biopics About Lady Actresses and Lady Politicians are... no, no. It's too horrible to start listing them!

Best Film The Artist, The Descendants, Drive, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Help, Hugo, The Ides of March, The Iron Lady, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, My Week with Marilyn, Senna, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, War Horse, and We Need to Talk About Kevin 

Outstanding British Film Arthur Christmas, Attack the Block, Coriolanus, The Guard, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, The Iron Lady, Jane Eyre, My Week with Marilyn, Senna, Shame, Submarine, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Tyrannosaur, War Horse, and We Need to Talk About Kevin 

BAFTA voters went crazy 4 My Week With Marilyn, longlisted many many times

Film Not in the English Language  Abel, As If I Am Not There, The Boy Mir – Ten Years in Afghanistan, Calvet,  Dhobi Ghat (Mumbai Diaries), Incendies, Little White Lies, Pina, Post Mortem, Potiche, Le Quattro Volte, A Separation, The Skin I Live In, Tomboy and The Troll Hunter

More long list looniness with commentary after the jump...

Click to read more ...

BAFTA Guru: Tilda & Meryl

Have you heard of the BAFTA Guru initiative? It's a new venture from the British Academy meant to benefit young actors and filmmakers (target market: 18-30) who are just starting out though surely any creative who hasn't yet "made it" (whatever that means) can learn from the people who have. BAFTA Guru interviews stars on their early years in the business and they'll also have lectures from filmmakers. It seems like it's less about practical advice at this point and more about eliptical impressions... early sense of cinema and acting, or anecdotes about lucky breaks. 

Neverthless we love to hear actors talking about their careers. Here's Tilda sharing a moment when she was 11 realizing she was faking emotion (and the mystery that keeps her interested in acting) and Meryl talking about how she got the part in The Deer Hunter.

Meryl Streep's career start suddenly makes so much more sense. Of course DeNiro would go for her admittedly  shameless moment ;) He has the ham actor's spirit himself. 

Love Tilda's bit on what keeps her interested in cinematic performance:

You can never ever know what someone else is really thinking. What they're going to tell you or what they're going to show you may not be everything, you know? There's always a reason to go looking."

Tilda Swinton is endlessly fascinating... as is the art of acting.

Podcast: Sexy Interlopers. Oscar Role Play

New Podcast!
The gangs all here. Nathaniel, Nick, Katey and Joe were too full of the Awards Season spirit to squeeze into the alloted time so this one comes to you in two parts (part two tomorrow). We're bursting with chatter about the nominated actors in particular and the post BAFTAs King's Speech climate. So we decided to play The Film Experience's favorite hypothetical award season game: Which nominated roles do you think would have been interesting or totally different with the another nominated actors playing them? But that's not all...

Topics covered include

• Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell in The Eagle
• Queens of (Reaction Shot) Shade: Miranda Richardson and Anjelica Huston
• Nicole Kidman at the Grammys
• David Fincher "behind enemy lines"
• Aronofsky's homage to Natalie Portman
• Supporting Actress free for all. Who to predict?
• Role Play Switcheroos. Which actors would be most interesting in each other's roles? Helena Bonham Carter gets quite a vocal/psychological workout and Mark Ruffalo's Sexy Interloper in The Kids Are All Right finds plentiful sperm-donor competition.

Recent articles briefly cited: Nick's Annette Bening piece, Nathaniel's review of The Eagle, Joe's 1990 Oscar retrospective.

 LISTEN IN. We'd love to hear your comments. Especially about the annual Film Experience Oscar game. Switch the roles around. What'cha got?

Podcast: Post Bafta Climate and Sexy Interlopers

16 BAFTA Moments. Helena Was Queen.

Since we all saw the BAFTAs on tape-delay, live-blogging seemed pointless. So SAG will have to stand as the last live-blog of the season. But here are my ___ favorite moments from BAFTA in chronological order. What were yours?

01.  Helena Bonham Carter on the red carpet, when the red carpet reporter describes her as Brit Movie Royalty (which she is).

In fact, this is the year of queens for me. I do big headed queen, then medium sized, maybe next year I'll do pinheaded queen. It's always fun to play queens because people do start treating you like royalty, it's a bit hilarious.

Helena is the only person alive that doesn't make me cringe when they're referencing Alice in Wonderland. She uses this joke again in her acceptance speech but it works both times.

02. Emma Stone on the red carpet joking that Andrew Garfield has been trying to kill her on the set of Spider-Man (2012). I still think it's pointless to reboot that movie but at least the principle cast is heaven.

03. Yay for Useless Trivia: Hailee Steinfeld reveals that the BAFTAs are one year to the day of her True Grit audition. And Darren Aronofsky reveals that Black Swan wrapped one year and one day before the BAFTAS.

04. Paul McCartney saying "I get to the pictures quite often". I love calling movies "the pictures."  It feels so Old Hollywood Magical. The Social Network is McCartney's favorite.

05. Amy Adams LOLing heartily at a joke about Sex & the City 2. The joke went like so:

Two of my favorite movies of the year aren't even nominated. Sex and the City 2 and The Expendables. What's not to love there. A band of old mercenaries get back together taking no prisoners -- you know where I'm going with this don't you? --  laying waste to everyone standing in their way. And The Expendables was great, too.

06. Discovering that Alexandre Desplat is a winker. He winked at no less than three people on his way up to the stage to accept Best Score.

07. The hokey joke of playing Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" instead of The Inception score when it won Best Visual Effects.

08. Helena's acceptance speech. Pretty great. I'd quote it but they let her talk for five minutes.

09. Jessica Alba's intro to Best Supporting Actor just because it's so illustrative of the "supporting" problem.

Robert DeNiro in the Godfather Part 2. Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspect. Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction. Time and again history remembers the supporting actor as much as the lead. Sometimes more so.

And then she goes on to list 5 nominees only one of whom, Pete Postlethwaite (The Town), is in a purely supporting role. The rest you can argue till the end of the day about whether they're leads in their films or not. OF COURSE THEY'RE REMEMBERED AS MUCH AS "LEADS" heh.

An Education reunion: Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike flubbing their lines.

10. Rosamund Pike and Dominic Cooper having MULTIPLE problems delivering the Original Screenplay. It just keeps getting worse. Pike almost reads the winners before the nominees .  As it cuts to clips, Dominic mumbles  "It's gone well"

11 Stephen Fry, a national treasure in Britain but basically an international treasure to those paying attention, introduces the Harry Potter tribute. He does a stunning job of balancing effusive praise with cutting wit so as not to make the tribute a total "HarryPotter!ZOMG!!!" gag-fest. And the plug for his audio readings of the same was pretty funny.

12 The intro to Aaron Sorkin's Adapted Screenplay acceptance speech.

Under more normal circumstances I would be very excited about this but sitting in the seat in front of me is one of the Beatles. Sitting in the seat in front of him is Julianne Moore and in the seat in front of her was Annette Bening so I'm maxed out.

Awwwww. Don't you love it when celebrities get all thunderstruck by otehr celebrities? I know I do. 'Stars! They're just like us!!!'

13 TILDA SWINTON.

...wait, you didn't need anything more specific than that did you? She's always a favorite moment.

14. The cognitive disconnect I felt when Andrew Garfield and Jesse Eisenberg accepted for David Fincher "He's busy making his next gift for all of us in another country." I experienced it as "He's busy making his next gift for all of us, Another Country" which would be quite quite something else entirely. Could you imagine a David Fincher remake of that homo-laced British Boarding School drama? But Andrew Garfield and Jesse Eisenberg... who gets to play Colin Firth and who would gets to play Rupert Everett? The other option would be an adaptation of James Baldwin's novel which would be something else, too! Especially since Jesse and Andrew would be all wrong for that one.

15 Gerard Butler introing Best Actress without commas

a lesbian couple with a dragon tattoo take up ballet to avenge their father's death.

Speaking of movies one could have fun inventing in one's head!

poll by twiigs.com

16. It was wonderful to see 88 year old Christopher Lee getting a tribute, and from one of his own directors too (Tim Burton, who he has worked with four times). He seemed genuinely touched and even moreso than many honorary winners of such things. Plus he was amusing: "I'm grateful that I don't follow in the steps of the great Stanley Kubrick whose award was posthumous."

That's it!

P.S. By the way Darren Aronofsky calling Natalie Portman the most focused committed actor he'd ever worked with kind of weirded me out. Not that I don't think it could be true but EVER? His films aren't exactly lacking for great performances or great actors.

P.P.S. How are YOU doing out there, quiet people in the dark? Speak. And by speak I mean type.

P.P.P.S. all the BAFTA posts in case you missed the nominees, fashions or winners.

BAFTA Penguins (and Grammy Diversion)

A few of the BAFTA tuxes for you. Tuxes are so amusing. Everyone looks good in them but everyone looks related.

Nicholas Hoult Did you know he is 6'2"? He is now 3 inches taller than Hugh Grant, his About a Boy co-star! How weird is that? All growed up. In other news, all of these men ('cept the Ruff) are over 6' feet tall.
Mark Ruffalo and his wife Sunshine Coigney. She's looking fab / diva-esque so I had to include her. Did you know that she was in In The Cut? The one where the Ruff got naked with Meg Ryan. Well, now you do. #freeinformation
Colin Firth. WINNER. [This Just In: Did y'all see that Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes (what a bizarre Grammys lead-in) loved The King's Speech? This is why it will win Best Picture. He told a story about meeting King George VI with a friend of his who was also a stutterer.]
Gerard Butler Do you think he's embarrassed going to these awards shows considering the kind of movies he makes? If not... he should be.
Ricky Martin was... oh, whoops. I've moved over to the Grammys. I'm very distracted tonight. I'm watching The Grammys. How stereotyped is it that Ricky Martin was chosen to introduce Lady Gaga's "Born This Way".? Get it? Because he is gay. G-A-Y.

Every once in awhile I try to watch the Grammys (which I'm sorta tweeting) and then I remember why I don't watch. The problem illustrated: Nicole Kidman just joined a standing ovation... for Justin Beiber.