Norma's Jewels and Other Shiny Film Objects

FourFour on Andrew Haigh's Weekend, one of this year's must-sees. I'll have an interview about this one up tomorrow. It opens in extremely limited release (for now) on Friday.
Gold Derby wonders if Brad Pitt has two Oscar nominations in him this year.
Moving Image Archive Someone stole Norma Shearer's jewels! OMG there are a ton of 30s stars in this short film: Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Gary Cooper, Irene Dunne, Loretta Young, Laurel and Hardy and the list goes on and on.... Fun! with terrible jokes !! 

The First Lady of MGM in "The Stolen Jools" (1931)

Nicks Flick Picks chooses his favorite Best Actors and Actresses thus far this year. Strong choices but even stronger twitter length writeups; I don't know how he does it.
The Self Styled Siren has some words on NYFF films and a few interesting one in extremely measured defense of I Don't Know How She Does It? but I love this prickly bit on the casting...

...offers nothing to much to look at except Christina Hendricks and Pierce Brosnan (who are wasted with prodigal carelessness)

Just Jared first pics from the set of Steven Soderbergh / Channing Tatum stripper drama Magic Mike. For some reason I never believed this movie would actually happen (just like I didn't believe The Avengers would happen) but they're both always snapped on set now so... what do I know?
Monkey See on why you should all be watching the sitcom Raising Hope 
L Magazine Dan Callahan (always worth a read) on the worlds of Vincente Minnelli, one of TFE's favorite directors!
Mission Hot Mama uses Michelle Pfeiffer to illustrate makeup tips to help you look younger. (Another thing that helps people look younger is using photos from a few years ago like that one. I kid. I kid. She's amazing at 53. Now, if only she'd get out more.) 
Awards Daily You may have been surprised as I was to learn last year that the majority of visual effects artists in Hollywood aren't unionized like so many other craftsmen. They don't have great working conditions and things have been getting worse. Even though most of the top grossing films are visual effects driven they aren't paid all that highly (relatively speaking) either. Here's the press release of a Bill of Rights from the Visual Effects Society. 

Oscar Predix Updates: Costumes, Make-Up, Visual F/X, Sound

Have you seen the Vanity Fair gallery of costumes from Madonna's W.E. designed by Arianne Phillips? Will she be Oscar nominated this year? Hmmmm.

James D'Arcy and Andrea Riseborough modelling the costumes

That's always a tough call given that the costume branch of the Academy sometimes goes their own way entirely, embracing films no one else cares about or have forgotten, and sometimes they just stick with general Oscar buzz or their default choices (Seriously you won't find someone who loves Sandy Powell more than me but that Tempest nomination was ri-dic-u-lous).

Here are my newly updated predictions in the visual categories.

Testify Leo!You'll notice that I've also added J. Edgar to the predicted Make Up Nominees but it wasn't because of this official still of Leonardo DiCaprio. Why then? Well, it was the accompanying text in Entertainment Weekly which read. 

The movie traces Hoover's life from his childhood in Washington, D.C., through his ascent to power in the 1920s, his 50-year reign over the FBI, and his death in 1972 — with Leonardo DiCaprio donning prosthetic makeup to portray the man well into his bulldog-like elderly years.

Prosthetic makeup. Bulldog-like. Elderly. DingDingDing. Though, really before I get to settled on this prediction I need to recall my own words on the Make-Up branch within the Academy. I just copy and paste this every year onto my charts because it never ceases to be true.

About the Make Up Category

Nearly impossible to predict... even up until the last moment. They like werewolf movies except when they don't. They love Rick Baker except when they don't. They admire old age makeup except when they don't. They eliminate films with extensive CGI work except when they don't. They never vote based on awesome period hairpieces and makeup (though that's part of the equation) except when they do. They disapprove of multiple nominations for the same series except when they don't. It's almost as if their membership is entirely dismissed and reformed from scratch each year.

 But back to J. Edgar. I must say that synopsis signals that I have official worry for the movie.  Covering fifty years in someone's life usually means the very traditional kind of biopic. The kind that is all "....and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened", the Greatest Hits Biopics. Those are always the least focused and the most boring kind of biopics. 

Visual Category Prediction Updates
Aural Category Prediction Updates
Unfortunately there's still many films that have not announced their composer so Original Score punditry is still nothingness.

You'll notice that Rise of the Planet of the Apes suddenly, well, rises in Sound categories and Visual FX. (Once films start showing themselves these things always change.) In visual effects in particular it's obviously become the instant frontrunner. You know that Andy Serkis's trailblazing motion capture acting will help the FX team win, though the FX team will not help Andy Serkis get recognition. It doesn't go both ways, though I think we can all agree that they make a beautiful team. 

Superman and the Spit Curl

Another week, another "first look!" at another superhero. This is Henry Cavill as Superman in Zach Snyder's upcoming film Man of Steel (2013). Cavill looks fine but for the lack of eyebrows. I don't remember Cavill or Superman being eyebrow free in previous incarnatians. And of course I miss that dangly lock of Super hair that Kal-El is always rocking. There are some classics you just don't mess with... like spit curls. I can't prove it but I think that if you lop off the spit curl that's as good as making his cape out of a polykryptonite blend. He'll be down for the count in no time.

Spit Curls forever! Is what I'm saying.

Shouting, actually.

On Oscar's Honorary Statues: Who Gets Them, Who Still Waits?

... mogul OPRAH WINFREY (The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award), actor JAMES EARL JONES (Honorary Oscar) and makeup artist DICK SMITH (Honorary Oscar).

I heard this in the wee hours of the AM this morning but didn't have time to ponder it whilst collapsing from a day spent swooning over Judy Garland (♥♥♥♥) and then Sufjan Stevens at "Celebrate Brooklyn". 

Several hours later after a good night's sleep the news makes much more sense to me because last night I thought they'd given Oprah a regular honorary Oscar -- most of the headlines are saying just that -- and I was pissed. For the record, though a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award looks just like an Oscar, it's actually a statue commemorating your humanitarian endeavors rather than your screen work. And few would argue that Oprah isn't deserving once you make that distinction. I think the Jean Hersholt statue shouldn't look the same as a regular Oscar so it gets confusing.

The Color OprahAnd really a regular Honorary Oscar wouldn't have surprised me. The Academy, much like the rest of the world, tends to think that celebrity = deserve. But really fame should have much less to do with who gets Honorary Oscars than that person's contribution to the cinema. And really what has Oprah ever done to warrant a regular Oscar? If you say The Color Purple I'd have to smack you upside the head with a Margaret Avery (The Color Purple) or an Anjelica Huston (Prizzi's Honor) and then if you're still trying to say "The Color Purple" a mandatory viewing of The Kiss of Spider Woman is in order. Brazil's non-nominated Sonia Braga was AMAZING thrice over (multi-part performance) in that film. Can I get an amen?

The makeup artist Dick Smith already has an Oscar for Amadeus (1984) but maybe they felt he needed an honorary since just maybe he was the one on the makeup team that put cotton balls in Marlon Brando's mouth for The Godfather and he also did fine comic work on Death Becomes Her which we love and which Oscar mostly ignored.

Though really, should a previous winner ever get an honorary? 

Here's why the repeats are problems. In the past 30 years only 4 actresses have won honoraries and one of them, Sophia Loren, already had a competitive statue. The Academy has screwed over a lot of female screen icons over the years so why double reward someone when so many greats are still denied? Oscar's contempt for women -- remember they rarely let them present Best Picture either -- seems to be getting worse. Since the glorious early 90s when Sophia Loren, Deborah Kerr and Myrna Loy won them in quick succession, only Lauren Bacall has been so honored. ONLY ONE ACTRESS SINCE 1994. In that same time span, 1994 to now, 5 actors have been so honored and one of them (Sidney Poitier) already had an Oscar. We complain about this every year but there's a long list of actressy screen icons who never won an Oscar and whose screen contributions and legacies are undeniable. Chief among them I'd argue are Catherine Deneuve and Mia Farrow. They'll both turn 70 soon -tick-tock, tick-tock.

One of the greatest filmographies in the business. Still challenging herself well into her 60s. Deneuve for the Honorary Gold.

But there are also other past nominees with rich Hollywood histories -- names in bold are still alive -- including (Angela Lansbury, Doris Day, Natalie Wood, Ava Gardner, Irene Dunne, Gena Rowlands, Eleanor Parker) and some with rich filmographies who were never so much as nominated (Maureen O'Hara, Marilyn Monroe) and there's the current working aging crop who they're obviously going to pass on competitively (Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Michelle Pfeiffer ...maybe Glenn Close if it doesn't happen this year) and who are more than deserving of these "thank you for your career" prizes.

Come to think of it, if AMPAS was smart about honoraries they could stop voting for competitive prizes as cumulative honors and just reserve those 'you were never THE best of any particular year' people for the honorary statues. You know Meryl Streep is more likely to get an Honorary than any of these women and she already has two!

Congratulations to this year's recipients! Honestly, I'm not throwing shade on them. Don't misunderstand. It's just the Academy has so many blind spots with their honorary prizes we'd like them to see the eye doctor before they lose their sight entirely.

WHO WOULD YOU GIVE AN HONORARY TO?

Review: Captain America The First Avenger

Exhausted by superpowered heroics yet? The summer has already brought us Norse gods (Thor review), dangerous mutants (X-Men review), and intergalactic policemen (Green Lantern review) and we still haven't reached the finish line. Here comes Captain America: The First Avenger, the last superhero to storm the box office beach. Summer's end goal: total world domination by the spandex nation. 

Cappy might be arriving a month too late for his own good, if he was hoping to be greeted by cheers and patriotic parades. The new would be blockbuster would've made a great fit for Fourth of July opening -- damn those giant robots! Given that the studios like to frontload the summer they didn't do this on purpose but I'm pleased to report that they saved the best hero for last. No, really. Cappy is just swell. 

And not just because of that spectacular literal swelling that you've already seen in the TV spots when Chris Evans emerges newly muscled from that sci-fi silly metal cocoon.

... read the rest at Towleroad

P.S. OSCAR POSSIBILITIES?
I didn't discuss this in the review but Oscar hopes for genre pictures are always based on the perceived merits of said pictures only after they're multiplied by box office success. If the film isn't a substantial hit, you can probably count only on Best Original Song, a fun pastiche "Star Spangled Man" by Oscar favorite Alan Menken, which I've included below for your listening pleasure, and some random technical nod. But if it is a hit AND they prefer it to Thor (which I'd bet they will given the World War II period angle IF it's a hit) you could see Make Up due to the Red Skull (that category though... anything goes... impossible to know from year to year what they're actually looking for), Visual Effects if they like Chris Evan's transformation and the shield action... and maybe Sound or even Costume Design. Anna B Sheppard is a true wizard with this time period -- though they weirdly ignored her for Inglourious Basterds -- and the evolution of the good Captain's look is well handled. Can't wait to see how they update this look for The Avengers next year. "Avengers Assemble" and so on. Carry on.

"Star Spangled Man"