The Honoraries: Jean-Claude Carrière, Part 1

Our 2014 Honorary Oscar tribute series continues with a two-part look at the long fascinating career of Jean-Claude Carrière. Here's Amir with Part One.

Here at The Film Experience, we are normally opposed to the idea of past winners receiving honorary Oscars. This, after all, is an honor bestowed on a recipient whose career not only merits the attention, but also lacks it. When there are so many giants of the medium that the Academy hasn't recognized, why double dip with already rewarded names? But there is something incredibly satisfying about seeing three time nominee and one time winner, Jean-Claude Carrière, receive an honorary Oscar this year. His is one of the most fascinating careers in film history, and one that has lasted six decades and spanned several countries and languages. 

Carrière started as a novelist, his first work published in 1957, five years prior to winning an Oscar in the best short film category for Heaureux Anniversaire. In the intervening fifty-three years between his two golden statues, he's worked with filmmakers as varied as Jean-Luc Godard, Andrzej Wajda, Louis Malle, Jonathan Glazer and, most recently, Abbas Kiarostami who penned him a short but memorable role in Certified Copy.

His most fruitful collaboration, one that still arguably defines his career still today, was cultivated in the 1960s. [More...]

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27 Dresses (2014, Cannes)

Adele, Julianne, Fonda, Zhang HuiwenSarah Gadon, The Swankster, Jess, Marion Cotillard
Eva Green, Alice Braga, The Sparking Diamond, Chiara MastroianniSophia Loren, Juli (again), Gong Li, Our Reigning "Best Actress"
Nicole's BFF, Salma, Amelie/Audrey, Amber HeardAishwaryai Rai, Blake Lively, Marion (again), Léa SeydouxChristina Hendricks, Zhang Ziyi, and Deneuve

 27 Dresses (2014), premiered at Cannes. This has been a co-production of The United States, China, Canada, Australia, England, India, Mexico, Brazil, and France.

Link of All Media

big screen
Towleroad James Franco to plan an ex-gay activist in a new Gus Van Sant film
Guardian Russell Crowe meets with the Archbishop of Canterbury for Noah. The things people will do for movie promotion, I tell you
Empire Cake, a Jennifer Aniston movie about a pain support group, lines up a huge cast of acclaimed actors including Anna Kendrick (highly in demand lately... so many new projects)
AV Club talks to former child star Haley Joel Osment who is apparently in the next Kevin Smith picture

In Contention very minor new details emerge on Meryl Streep's Ricki & the Flash (which we were just discussing)
Empire Brad Pitt is doing yet another World War II movie after that upcoming tank drama. This will be his third in a handful of years.
THR reports on casting for Monster Truck, which is described as having a "Transformers meets Gremlins vibe". Yikes. One of those is pleasurable at least
Coming Soon Toby Kebbell wins the Doctor Doom role in the upcoming Fantastic Four
/bent rumors flying that producers of the upcoming Belushi biopic are panicking about Ellen Page's coming out. Dumb. Seriously people do not care about this. They don't. They only care in a think piece on the internet kind of way which is to say it's not going to affect anyone's ticket purchase.
Pajiba and Film School Rejects both have cute articles about body-swapping yesterday (I musta missed the memo that this was a thing connected to April Fools Day?) via Face/Off and Freaky Friday and more. Sadly there's no gif for Tom Hanks in Big but I do still remember his reaction to waking up in an adult body
Forbes on why Warner Bros/DC doesn't need to do like Disney/Marvel does with its superhero universe. This article is 4 times as long as it needs to be since you get literally all of its points in the first few hundred words (but it's good to fight against common wisdom) but maybe it's actually a satire about the repetitiveness of padded franchise culture?

no screen
Slate I don't know music theory (though, as previously noted, I can play the piano) but I thought this article about Lady Gaga's enduring "Bad Romance" was interesting. 
NME Courtney Love thinks a Kurt Cobain Broadway musical is very likely to happen
/Film Yes Wicked still wants to be a movie. Spring Awakening, too. An update.

⇐ Towleroad and can I say I'm thrilled that Harvey Milk finally got a stamp. "Forever" is right, US Postal Service! The gay rights pioneer and awesome subject of not one but two Oscar-winning films (The Times of Harvey Milk and Milk from 1984 and 2008, respectively, was super deserving thanks for asking)

small screen
i09 first commercial for Extant, Halle Berry's new TV project
Variety Peabody Award winners include Scandal, Orphan Black, and House of Cards
Sorta That Guy and The Wire and The Wrap and seemingly EVERYONE else online on the series finale of How I Met Your Mother. A lot more people in the universe seemed interested in that I could have ever imagined. I've seen only 6 or 7 episodes over the years from varying seasons and thought none were anywhere better than "okay"

Today's Must Love
This one took me a split second to get but it gave me such lol'ing joy. Hat tip to Rufus Mayhem and Hayden Wright... 

Oscar's One Hit Wonders or When Bad Nominations Happen to Good Actors

[Here's abstew to talk about a semi-annual Oscar tradition. Even if you disagree with the picks you surely recognize the curious problem. Will any of 2013's future nominees qualify for this list? -Editor]

When it comes to acting nominations, let's face it, not everyone can be Meryl Streep (17 nominations and counting). And with only 20 acting nominations to hand out each year, there's always going to be people left out. So many factors affect nominations: how well the actor is liked in the industry, whether they've been nominated (or won) before, how visible they've been promoting the movie, whether or not it's their "time". Sometimes the actual performance doesn't weigh in as heavily as it should.

Which is why the Academy gives something I like to call the "Oh, sorry we didn't nominate you for that great movie you were in a couple years ago, but let's call it even by nominating you for this instead" nomination. For many actors their body of work greatly out-weighs the single nomination. (For purposes of this list, I'm focusing only on actors who've received their nomination in the past 25 years or so but this has been happening since the beginning of (Oscar's) time.)

With so many greats yet to receive a nomination, perhaps we should be grateful that the following actors can precede their name with "Academy Award Nominee", but knowing how much better they are than this single nomination implies... 

Single Nomination: Best Actress, Catherine Deneuve Indochine (1992)

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European Film Award Wi -- what? Scorsesaywhat?

I watched a bit of the European Film Awards live streaming earlier today and the first sight that greeted me was Anke Engelke looking like she'd stepped out of the Capitol to announce the next Hunger Games. The only thing she got wrong was that her hair and makeup were too demure. Tim said she looked a "teensy bit too lindt bunny" which made me giggle.

While attempting to watch the show I was pulled into an endless twitter debate about misogyny and glorification/condemnation thereof in The Wolf of Wall Street - a conversation which I expect will rage throughout awards season unless the veritable army of Scorsese stans succeeds in stamping out open discussion about the movie's merits; they're weirdly adamant that one should only do adrenaline fueled wolf howls at it which is, I don't mind saying, one of the worst things that can happen to a movie that merits any kind of considered conversation.

SOOOOOO, while I didn't make it all the way through the EFAs and am ashamed to note that I missed Catherine Deneuve's tribute altogether (argh) here are 5 thoughts from the ceremony...

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