Oscar Updates: Rule Changes, Germany's Submission, Child Stars

Oscar, continually bewildering himself with rule changesRULE CHANGES & THE BIG SHOW
If you thought you heard paradoxical wild-mild applause at Oscar's new rule changes that was, uh, me. The Art Direction category will now be called Production Design which is all well and good since it's the Production Designer (aka the boss) that wins the prize, not the Art Director (who reports to him/her). The Best Original Song category finally gave up its horrifically unfair voting procedures where you could sabotage competitors rather than voting for them (yuck) by scoring them with low marks and now it'll be a simpler process with a standard five nominees and ranked nomination ballots like all the other categories. I'm going to pretend that this is The Film Experience's fault for our years of bitching about how screwed up that voting process was. Oh shush. It's possible we talked some sense into them... especially since every other site seems to have been asking them to just cancel the category already. I'd rather stick with history and keep the same categories, but treat them fairly. Too bad we can't use a time machine to get Cher her rightful performance time at the 2011 ceremony.

Meanwhile, I know you've heard that Craig Zadan and Neil Meron of Chicago and Hairspray fame will produce this year's ceremony. If they're true to their roots maybe they'll rescue the newly reformed Song category with big ass production numbers? Or maybe they'll hire Hugh Jackman to host again since they'll need a song & dance man to move the High Holy Night along. Yes, Jackman hosting might get awkward if Les Miz is in the (major) running but the Tonys do that all the time (nominees as hosts). Not that we approve...

Oh and while we're on the Oscar topic, I have finished updating the charts. Just in time to alter them again when film festival season [Venice, Telluride, TIFF and NYFF comin' atcha] give us more info on the competition to come.

BARBARA (2012). Germany's new Oscar submission

GERMANY'S OSCAR
The drama Barbara, from director Christian Petzold of Yella fame, will represented Germany in the Foreign Film competition. Can the drama about a doctor in trouble with the government in East Germany become their 17th nominee? Their 16th nominee last year was the 3D dance documentary Pina. Barbara stars Petzold's regular muse, the award winning actress Nina Hoss.

Ewan holds his family in the poster for THE IMPOSSIBLECHILD STARS FOR LEAD OSCARS?
Meanwhile Kris Tapley at In Contention weighed in on the somewhat suddenly buzzy tsunami family survival drama The Impossible and Summit's plan for a lead actor campaign for its 11 year old boy star Tom Holland (who plays the child of Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts). With both Quvenzhane Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild) and Holland's camps planning lead campaigns, might it be time to reinstate the Juvenile Oscar?

Frankly, I don't much like it when children win acting prizes (I know Kris considers this objection "nonsense" but the world would be dull if we all agreed), for a variety of reasons. It's not because they aren't sometimes worthy but because they...

a) ...are usually fraudulently campaigned
b) ...often have an unfair advantage based on general cuteness (nothing wrong with voting with your heart so long as your head is allowed a word in edgewise)
c) ...accidentaly reveal Hollywood's ugly sexism since time and again the Academy has shown that they don't mind snubbing unOscared mature actresses for "thank heaven for little girls" moments but would never ever dream of giving an Oscar to a little boy when there are men who have paid their dues waiting -- don't believe me? Just look at how few little boys have won acting Oscars (i.e. never competitively) compared to little girls.
d) ...are unschooled in acting so it's hard to know how much of their performance we must credit to the director and how much they found on their own in the role.

I think the occassional juvenile Oscar for performances that are just too wonderful to ignore might be the way to go.

How are you feeling about the rule changes and the presence of child thespians in this year's race?

Kiki's Melancholia (& Other Saturn Triumphs)

Though I haven't yet seen any photographs of the Saturn Award event, held in Burbank this week and the last of the 2011 Film Awards -- arriving even later than the MTV Awards each year  -- we must rush to congratulate the one and only Kiki for her Best Actress win for Lars von Trier's apocalyptic arthouse amazement Melancholia. You may recall we also honored her right here in our Best Actress list. The Saturn Awards don't have anything like a prestigious reputation (often a problem with awards organizations voted on by fans) but they do have a long history (38 years!) which counts for something and you have to hand it to them this year that they're the only large non-critics awards group to honor Kirsten Dunst for her indelible embodiment of Planet Sized Depression though she did win the top Actress prize at a few film festivals (including the very definition of Prestige Reputation: the Cannes Film Festival) and was also honored by two critics orgs one minor and one major: Kansas Film Critics and the National Society of Film Critics. 

A complete list of winners after the jump but if you're too lazy to click, please note that they seemed to love Super 8 best even though it didn't win any of their four Best Picture prizes. Wins and commentary if you...

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Twins: Michelle's Blonde Brood

We're celebrating twins daily at 2:22 pm while we're in Gemini

Gratuitous Anecdote! I've always loved to draw and in my high school years it's what people knew me for. I won the High School's Departmental Award in Art (Do they still have departmental awards? Hell, do they still have art classes?) in that heady stretch of graduation celebrations where they keep honoring star pupils. One day early in my senior year or maybe it was at the end of my junior year, the art teacher asked one of the students to pose for the class. A guy I didn't know volunteered and I felt totally inspired. Instant crushing helps. He loved my drawing and we became fast friends after the class. The first day I went to his house after school I was stunned to see a whole house full of doppelgangers. He had one of those families where virtually every kid looked like a clone of the previous one and since he was the oldest they were all mini hims. And, yes, there was an actual set of twins to drive the point home. Have you ever met an identical family like that? It's kind of freaky.

Michelle Pfeiffer's first scene in THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK. She's buried in offspring

I flashed back to that memory while screening The Witches of Eastwick for its 25th anniversary week and smiling at Michelle Pfeiffer's introduction where a whole stream of authentically blonde children follow after like a trail of baby ducklings. There are two sets of siblings amongst these child actors who never worked again (perhaps they were locales?). The three towhead girls were played by sisters, surname "Ditmar" -- I couldn't find any information about them as they never acted again but if they're not triplets, there's a twin set in there!

Michelle Pfeiffer is so fertile ...onscreen. In real life the movie legend has only two children but onscreen her progeny number two dozen plus. For such a legendary beauty, Pfeiffer was never scared of screen parenting despite the widespread belief that you risk aging yourself out of leading lady roles when you start playing moms onscreen. La Pfeiffer didn't just dip her toe in to test the water but dove in headfirst becoming a mom onscreen for the first time in The Witches of Eastwick (she was only 28 years old while filming) not once not twice not thrice but six times over. And at the end of the movie Sukie Ridgemont had even had a seventh child, her first boy.

Daryl: Sukie, at last we meet.
Sukie: Hi. Hello. How are you?
Daryl: Let me look at those eyes of yours. My! You are a fertile little creature, aren't you?
Sukie: [uncomfortable laughter] Thank you... I think."
              -The Devil meets Sukie in The Witches of Eastwick. 

Pfeiffer's 27 Screen Children in the order I tend to remember them
Fertile indeed. 

• Alison Lohman - White Oleander (2002)
• Jonathan Jackson & Cory Buck - The Deep End of the Ocean (1999)
• Saoirse Ronan - I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007)
• Six Blonde Girls (Michele Sincavage, Nicol Sincavage, Heather Coleman, Carolyn Ditmars, Cynthia Ditmars and Christine Ditmars)- The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
• Claire Danes - To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday (1996)
• Brittany Snow - Hairspray (2007)
• Anthony J Nici - Married to the Mob (1988)
• Katharine Towne - What Lies Beneath (2000)
• Ryan Merriman & Michael McElroy - The Deep End of the Ocean (1999)
• Chlöe Grace Moretz - Dark Shadows (2012)
• Alex D Linz - One Fine Day (1996)
• Casey Boersma & Dylan Boersma (twins!), Daniel Henson & Jake Sandqiv (1999)
• Colleen Rennison & Tara Blanchard - The Story of Us (1999)
• Chase McKenzie Bebak - I Am Sam (2001)
• infant - The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
• Elisabeth Moss and Michelle Williams - A Thousand Acres (1997)
• infant - Amazon Women on the Moon (1987, her scene is a hospital delivery sequence if I recall correctly?) 

the only one I haven't seen

• Spencer Hudson - Personal Effects (2009) 

 upcoming

• Chris Pine - People Like Us (2012). Yes, she's technically old enough to have a 32 year old son. But her real children are not yet 20.
• Who will play her children in in the upcoming comedy Malavita (2013) ?  

Leigh, Farhadi, Jake & Jury Name Berlinale Winners

Remember a couple of days ago when we shared the video of Jake Gyllenhaal handing Meryl Streep her Honoary Golden Bear in Berlin for a stellar career? Apparently he's making a habit of handing over Best Actress prizes. Here he is at the closing night ceremony with Best Actress winner Rachel Mwanza.

This 14 year old Congolese actress played a child soldier in a brutal sounding movie called War Witch.

MAIN PRIZES
The jury this year was headed by the brilliant Mike Leigh. The jury included Jake Gyllenhaal, Anton Corbijn, Charlotte Gainsbourg, François Ozon, Boualem Sansal, Barbara Sukowa and last year's Golden Bear recipient Asghar Farhadi (A Separation) who will now presumably have to jump on a Berlin to Los Angeles flight to prepare for the Oscars.

Prizes, Gay Films and a Possible Danish Oscar Submissions after the jump

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What's Going On At Sundance?

Parker Posey in "Price Check"If you're anything like me, you have trouble paying attention to Sundance unless you're actually there. It's not that it isn't a great festival. It's that it arrives during the explosion that is the Oscar Nominations. But nevertheless, a few crumbs about what's going on there, before they hand out their awards (the festival ends tomorrow). These are a few bits I found interesting from the vast amount of information that's pouring out of Park City. 

Parker Posey is baaaaack. She's starring in the dark comedy Price Check as an ambitious marketing head of a grocery store chain.  IndieWire talks to her about her various Sundance journeys which just gives me one more excuse to tell you that my fondest memory of Sundance ever was the time she danced with me on the dance floor at a party. That really happened. I sometimes think I dreamed it. She was as fun in person as she is onscreen.

Marc Webber's The End of Love is getting a lot of press by way of casting. The director -- who you'll know as an actor from Scott Pilgrim vs. The World -- cast his own two year old son Isaac as his co-star in this film about a widower and his son. Though it's based somewhat on his own life, Webber's is not a widower, he's a divorcee. Apparently people are l-o-v-i-n-g the toddler. Consider this tweet from Josh Dickey at Variety:

Awards season 2013 prediction: a viral supporting-actor campaign for 2-year old Isaac Love."

I could see that working in an Uggie for Best Supporting Actor kind of way. At the very least it's publicity.

One of TFE's favorite character actresses Melanie Lynskey (who recently shared her memories of Heavenly Creatures with TFE readers) has a lead role for once in Hello I Must Be Going. The film has been well reviewed, especially when it comes to her performance as a 30something divorcee who falls for a younger man. We'll see it the first chance we get. Go Melanie!

One comedy getting plentiful laughs and attention is the debut film Bachelorette which is a mean girls comedy starring Kirsten Dunst, Lizzy Caplan, James Marsden and Isla Fisher. I don't only bring this up because the cast sounds perfect/delicious.

I bring this up because the writer/director, first timer Lesley Headland is an old frienquaintance from here in NYC. She invited me to a workshop of one of her first plays here in NYC five years ago and I gave her one of her first quotes.

Hilarious. Forceful. Insightful. As a character (Leslye writes and acts the part) "Arden" has an infectiously raucous energy with that fascinating sexy and/or terrifying aura of a young Sandra Bernhard."

The play later opened in LA and then returned to New York. She even guest blogged for The Film Experience! And now she's directed a movie starring Kiki Dunst and I am still blogging. Oh christ. What have I done with my life?

The Surrogate is the film that's garnering the most Oscar buzz thus far but it's always hard to know with Sundance hits if they'll transfer once they're in lower altitudes. The film stars Winter's Bone Oscar nominee John Hawkes as a man with no movement below his neck (Oscar loves a disability) who loses his virginity to a sex therapist played by Helen Hunt. Fox Searchlight will distribute the film but since it's an Oscar hopeful, it might be 11 months until it's in theaters. (Sigh)

Helen Hunt and John Hawkes in "The Surrogate"

A Sample of The Deals from the Wintry Slopes of Park City
The Weinstein Co, usually a buyer, is mysteriously absent. But they have a ton of big name films already planned for 2012 including the latest from Tarantino so perhaps their schedule was already locked up. 

•Robot and Frank, "a sci-fi crowdpleaser" according to EW, stars Frank Langella as a man who develops an odd relationship with the robot his children gift him with. Sony Pictures and Samuel Goldwyn will partner on the release.
• How to Survive a Plague, an AIDS doc, purchased by Sundance Selects 
•For a Good Time Call... went to Focus Features.
•Beasts of the Southern Wild, a debut from Benh Zeitlin, purchased by Fox Searchlight
•Red Lights, a psychological thriller, will be distributed by Millenium Entertainment.
•Celeste and Jesse Forever was bought by SPC. It's a romantic comedy starring Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg.
• Liberal Arts is from writer/director/star Josh Radnor following up his happythankyoumoreplease with a romantic comedy costarring Elizabeth Olsen. I'm beginning to think she'll be the Jessica Chastain of 2012 or 2013. So so so so so so so many films.
•Arbitage, a financial drama starring Richard Gere that's been likened to Margin Call, jointly purchased by Roadside and Lionsgate
•Wish You Were Here, an Australian thriller starring Joel Edgerton, purchased by Entertainment One
•Simon Killer, from the collective that brought you After School and Martha Marcy purchased by IFC . Brady Corbet moves up to leading position after supporting roles in their other films.
•The Words starring Bradley Cooper, Dennis Quaid, Jeremy Irons, Olivia Wilde and Zoe Saldana is about a writer and a genius manuscript he finds. It went to CBS Films