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?

Box Office: Cowboys, Smurfs, Soldiers, Aliens, Beginners

Confession: I loved The Smurfs when I was young though I knew that they drew scorn from many corners. I would sing "la la laLALALA la la la la la" loudly whenever I wanted to annoy my older brother. That said, the movie looked a-tro-cious so I felt roughly zero in the way of nostalgic pull. I don't know how you cast talents as comedically strong as Hank Azaria and Neil Patrick Harris and then rely on fart jokes but apparently they did since "Who smurfed?" is supposed to be a joke therein. I was discussing this on Twitter last night with strangers lamenting that their kids liked it and Miyazaki would have to wait. I just returned from a vacation week with close friends and their children (including my goddaughter) and I'm happy to report that Miyazaki is well loved by the tween / early teen set. So there's hope for all disheartened parents of toddlers out there! Some of your children will grow out of their bad taste. Some of them won't and will grow up to rush to movies like Zookeeper wtih Kevin James on opening weekend. It's not the end of the world. It only feels like it to the devoted cinephile.

Weekend Showdown. Cowboys vs. Tiny Blue Aliens

box office top ten
01 COWBOYS AND ALIENS new $36.4
02 THE SMURFS new $35.6
03 CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER [review] $25.5 (cumulative $117.4)
04 HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART TWO [review] $21.9 (cum $318.5)
05 CRAZY STUPID LOVE [your take] new $19.1
06 FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS $9.2 (cum $38.1)
07 HORRIBLE BOSSES $7.1 (cum $96.2)
08 TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON $6 (cum $338)
09 ZOOKEEPER $4.3 (cum $68.8)
10 CARS 2  $2.3 (cum $182.1)

Items of Note: HP 7.2 passed the difficult $300 million barrier domestically and the even rarer billion mark globally placing it at the #2 position for 2011 just behind #1s Transformers 3 (domestic) and Pirates of the Caribbean 4 (global). Given that "It All Ends!" has only been in release for two weeks, it'll easy defeat both of those films any day now. In ten days Captain America has earned about $116 here in its home country which means its already falling behind Thor despite a similar opening weekend draw. Thor was an even bigger hit across the Atlantic which doesn't seem likely for Cappy due to his homeland hero specificity. Cars 2 is running out of fuel, and may become the first Pixar release since A Bug's Life to fall short of $200 million domestically. Ah well, they'll always have their merchandising bonanza. Wasn't that the whole point of the sorry film to begin with?

poll by twiigs.com

other films we thought we'd check in on...
18 SARAH'S KEY $.3 (cum. $.5)
20 THE TREE OF LIFE [overheard / thoughts] $.3 (cum. $11.6)
25 BEGINNERS [review]  $.2 (cum. $5)
39 THE DEVIL'S DOUBLE new $.09
53 THE FUTURE new $.02 

Sarah's Key a Holocaust drama starring TFE favorite Kristin Scott Thomas has been surprisingly robust with ticket sales thus far at only 33 theaters. Should we have been considering this one long ago?

I included The Devil's Double and The Future because I missed critics screenings but I'm totally curious about both (would love to hear your thoughts if you've seen them). Plus, we hadn't checked in on the lower ranks of the charts in some time. Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, keeps puttering along in arthouses (widest release peaked at 237 theaters) and it might even eventually gross as much as the first two days of Zookeeper (!) which, as one friend soberly notes, '...is why we can't have nice things.'

'Sarah's Key' and 'Beginners' are arthouse hits

Beginners has been a small and sturdy arthouse attraction itself, roughly akin to Winter's Bone at this point in its life (2 months) in terms of both gross and theater count. But can a 5 million grosser summon up enough energy to grow legs and stride through the often brutal precursor awards season without, one presumes, a lead performance and director with similar awards hopeful traction? Do you think Christopher Plummer has a good shot still or did the film need to catch on with more fervor for what might be a lone supporting bid?

Why, O Why, Don't I Love "Paris"?

Hallo folks! Ester here. You might remember me from such previous forays into Film Experience as my "Reader Spotlight" and my Two Stars, One Slot tribute piece, "Waif vs. Waif: Mia Wasikowska vs. Saoirse Ronan." Today I come to you with a feminist chip on my shoulder and a spark of rage in my eye, and my target is Woody Allen -- specifically his tepid time-travel fantasy, Midnight in Paris.

It's not surprising that Hollywood, the quintessential vehicle of nostalgia, is obsessed with landmarks. Jack Nicholson has only to get up in the morning and put his shoes on the right feet four shooting days out of five to get nominated for an Oscar, because Hollywood is just so gosh darn grateful an old-school movie star like him is still gracing films with his presence. Similarly, Woody Allen has only to make a movie that is not truly godawful terrible to make every film critic in the US sigh happily about how the maestro has done it again. 

Even then, by the way, he still makes several insufferable stabs at cinema for every Vicky Cristina Barcelona (or Scoop, which I actually kind of enjoyed).  

I understand the impulse to make ourselves hoarse praising the man. After all, we're talking about Woody Allen, auteur extraordinaire, Oscar-winner, redefiner of comedy, granddaddy to a thousand less-talented copy-cat narcissists. He's so prolific he probably doesn't even remember making one of my favorites of his films, the wistful and imaginative Purple Rose of Cairo. (Such small, delightful movies are often called "gems," which confuses me as gems come in all sizes; in fact, a woman I know recently received one that may weigh more than she does. But that's neither here nor there.)

Friends, a mediocrity is a mediocrity, whether it comes from Shakespeare or Dan Brown. Why do we insist on grading Woody Allen on a curve?

Click to read more ...

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"

Shouldn't "Best" Mean Something?

By now you've heard that the Producers Guild, one of the true Oscar precursors, will stick to 10 Best Picture Nominees thank you very much. I'm sure we'll be hearing more of this from all precursor voting bodies. Many of them had ten nominees / honorees before Oscar even went there, hewing close to the critical "top ten" system. Since most precursors have a weird desire to predict Oscar that is equal to or even sadly greater than their desire to name "best" we assume most of them will stick to ten.

This way all of them can be 100% accurate in predicting the golden boy -- just have more nominees than could ever make it to Oscar's shortlist and you'll always be 100% accurate! The Hollywood Reporter thinks this will make the Oscars look elitist as the PGA is bound to honor Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two (a franchise they've already nominated if you'll recall) and Oscar probably won't. They write:

And the Academy will find itself back where it was three years ago, fending off accusations of elitism.

They say "elitism" like it's a bad thing! 

OUR HONEST QUESTION: Shouldn't you be elitist when you're naming "BEST"? Isn't that part of the deal?