Awards Leftovers: The Editors, The DPs, The Gays

The Editors
Do you have any thoughts you need to get off your chest about the ACE Eddies? They barely received any play coming as they did on the heels of the Oscar nominations but I wanted to mention them anyway since I love 'the invisible art' and it's what I think I would have done had I gone into filmmaking (if not casting). This year their drama nominees Argo, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, Skyfall, all received Oscar nominations but for the latter which was bumped to make way for Silver Linings Playbook, the only Comedy recipient to transfer with AMPAS. Also nominated in comedy or musical: Les Misérables, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Moonrise Kingdom, and Ted.

"I know this will sound batshit crazy but your editing is just not as good as the editing in Silver Linings Playbook! which is also better than Skyfall"

This is not meant as a knock on Playbook since I know its fans are sensitive about my generally "meh" reaction to it (and distaste when pushed) but I actually have no problem with its nomination here in comedy. But that it should be the one chosen over the impeccably odd combo of razor sharp pathos and cool comic timing of Moonrise? And then bump out the action stylings of Skyfall? Me no understand.

Seamus McGarvey photo courtesy of the IECThe DPs
Likewise I forgot to mention the American Society of Cinematographers who chose Seamus McGarvey from Ireland  for Anna Karenina, Danny Cohen from Britain for Les Misérables, Claudio Miranda from Chile for Life of Pi, Janusz Kaminski from Poland for Lincoln, and Roger Deakins from Britain for Skyfall. All of these men went on to Oscar nominations but for Cohen who was replaced by Robert Richardson of Massachusetts for Django Unchained.

The Gays
Another group that waited to announce their nominees until Oscar time was The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association or "GALECA" who hand out the Dorian Awards. Full disclaimer: I became a member this year. I'm happy to be a part of it but, as with my BFCA membership, I don't always want to be associated with the results ;) That said, I joined this group because I like the presence of groups who, by their very nature, are forced to step outside the Oscar pool. You can't exactly nominate Argo and Lincoln for your LGBT FILM OF THE YEAR prize you know? Well... maybe 'Argo Fuck Yourself' and Lincoln. (haha. i'm here all week) But of course they also have a FILM OF THE YEAR prize which finds room for the titles you'll be totally sick of by Oscar night.

LGBT FILM OF THE YEAR 

• Any Day Now (interview!)
• Cloud Atlas (I can't escape this movie. Argh. That's the true true)
• Gayby (interview!)
• Keep the Lights On (capsule)
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower (interview)

I assume Keep the Lights On can't lose since it's the only LGBT film that's also nominated for Film of the Year but I'm personally trying to decide between Gayby and Perks for my vote. Both are so adorable I just want to cuddle with them. 

Complete Gayness after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Is Skyfall's Oscar Buzz Real or Just Really Convincing Hype?

Though each new James Bond film lands with a media frenzy of sorts, Skyfall's box-office crushing tour of the Globe has even come with Oscar buzz. As an Oscar pundit, at first I felt I needed to do my killjoy duty and remind Bond-fans that the Academy has never been eager to have a martini with Bond, no matter how he orders it. But lately I've begun to wonder if, should the hype not subside much, the world's favorite super spy might finally win a nomination or two again. Two nominations would be a major win for Team Skyfall though the current hype would have you perceive that as a disappointing haul since it suggests that multiple nods and even a Best Picture citation are just around the corner. 

It's this overreaching by fans and the more excitable pundits that keeps forcing me back into Killjoy Corner. But let me repeat: a Best Picture nomination is not happening; Ten spots is not Twenty. And Bond Films aren't even close to the top of Oscar's Favorite Franchises heap anyway. Even with the fast Oscar-dream fade of The Dark Knight Rises and the artistically suspect decision to make The Hobbit into three films, history suggests that AMPAS is more likely to join Bruce Wayne or Gollum in the shadows again than James Bond. 

I should explain with facts (after the jump) before they go out of style again...

Click to read more ...

Oscar Horrors: A Shark in the Edit Suite

Oscar Horrors looks at nominated contributions to this non-Oscar bait genre. Here's Craig on Jaws.

HERE LIES... a beautifully cut shark by the name of Bruce. Oscar-winning editor Verna Fields did the celluloid slicing and dicing...

Spielberg made it a star of fearful proportions. John Williams gave it an iconic theme tune. Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw obsessively stalked it. And Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown looked on, clutching the purse strings, as they all went about their blockbusting business. But the person who gave Amity Island’s Great White unwanted visitor fierce presence and a sinister personality most could arguably be the editor Verna Fields. Alongside Spielberg and Co. she was instrumental in terrorizing the world with Jaws, summer 1975’s maiden blockbuster movie. She manoeuvred the shark’s arrival and departure – in tandem, of course, with Williams’ score – helping to create cinema’s scariest PG-rated, non-human villain.

Fields worked wonders with Jaws’ spatial particulars. The film is a feast of horizontal expanse and vertical depth cut with sharp attention to the terrors evoked by the mysteries of distance. When poor Chrissie (Susan Backlinie) – in the instantly memorable and terrifying first, post-titles, scene – feels the pull of (mechanical) death on her water-treading legs, we vicariously retract ours. The endlessness of the ocean is reason enough to inspire terror, but Fields mercilessly positions us alongside, then below, Chrissie to establish instant fear: she’s a gliding silhouette on the surface, Bruce’s first victim; a meal. And we’re right there with her.

Click to read more ...

NYFF: "Frances Ha" Dazzling Brooklyn Snapshot

Michael C. here to report on the first home run I've seen at the New York Film Festival. Frances Ha is the type movie experience I’m hoping for every time I plunk down my ticket money. It knows exactly what it wants to do and how it wants to do it and as a result it grabs you by the sleeve and pulls you right in. It is Noah Baumbach’s finest film to date and the big breakout due for Greta Gerwig for some time now. 

Frances (Gerwig) is a dancer who shares a Brooklyn apartment with her bestest buddy Sophie (Mickey Sumner). Pushing thirty and stalled professionally and personally, she is right at the age when spending her nights flitting around the city getting wasted with her girlfriend stops being cute and starts being a cause for concern. When events transpire to threaten Frances' holding pattern the wheels quickly come off her cushy existence.

With this film Baumbach has not expanded his style so much as smashed it into a thousand pieces and arranged them into a collage. [More...]

Click to read more ...

Yes, No, Maybe So: "Django Unchained"

If Quentin Tarantino can make us wait an average of 2 years and ten months between each movie (I'm counting Kill Bill as one and assuming Django Unchained will arrive on schedule. But will it?) than you can all forgive me for not jumping on every piece of Tarantino news-- even the excitement of a trailer -- the minute it arrives. 

What's your name?"

His name is Django. The D is silent. Let's stay silent no more about the trailer ... or the teaser the teasler... the traiser? Aren't teasers support to be 1 minute long? We'll break this traiser into three pieces as we do.

YES

• Things that are off the chain: the shot of the blood sprayed cotton, the self-aware zoom-in on Leonardo DiCaprio casts gleefully against type, Django throwing off his coat, the shot reverse shot of Jamie Foxx and Kerry Washington in the water (dream sequence?). More after the jump...

Click to read more ...