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Awards Round-Up: London Film Critics Give Non-British, Non-Foreign Film Prize To 'United 93'

Seth — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 16:15:46 EST

· The London Film Critics' Circle awarded The Queen its top British film and director awards, United 93 best film and director, and Volver best foreign film, rendering us completely and utterly lost. [Variety]
· This just in: The Carpetbagger thinks Swedish people are "genetically cool." (Hey, you try meeting your post quota for an Oscars-only blog.) [The Carpetbagger]
· The 21st Genesis Awards—the Humane Society's Oscars!—announced its nominees. Movies like Charlotte's Web, Eight Below, and Over The Hedge are nominated in the family feature categories. [THR]

· Our audiophiliac cousin Idolator will be liveblogging this Sunday's Grammys, where we encourage you to vent about your elation and/or disappointment over James Blunt's showing. [Idolator]
· Peter O'Toole fondly recalls the days Katherine Hepburn called him "Pig" and he'd call her "Old Nags." [The Envelope]
· Many very famous movie stars will be presenting Oscars. [GoldDerby]
· "Hollywood Stars Get Facelift For Oscars" Oh, cheeky AP, you got us once again! You just mean stars on the Walk of Fame. [AP]
· Noticed those Oscars posters and billboards around town featuring famous lines of dialogue? Now, Netflix features a page that allows you to click on the quote to find out all about where it came from. Yeah, it's crass marketing...but it's also kind of fun! [Netflix]

Awards Round-Up: 'Pan's Labyrinth' Wins Fantasy-Nerd Film Critics Society's Hearts

Seth — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 16:24:22 EST

· The National Society of Film Critics have a few surprises, including naming Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth as their best picture, and awarding best supporting actor to Mark Wahlberg for The Departed—rendering that creepy thing with eyeballs on his palms crushed for being overlooked once again. [Backstage]
· The Visual Effects Society Awards announced their nominees, with Best Single Visual Effect of the Year category going to sequences from Children of Men, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Poseidon, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Borat's nude wrestling scene, which, suprisingly, was accomplished by placing thousands of mapping nodes all over Sacha Baron Cohen and actor Ken Davitian's naked bodies, then later adding folds of hairy, lifelike manflesh through cutting-edge CGI techniques. [THR]
· The Palm Springs International Film Festival cannily presented an "ensemble" award to the cast of Babel, meaning for the price of one award, they got a Brad Pitt, a Cate Blanchett, and a Rinko Kikuchi and Adriana Barraza thrown in free of charge. [Desert Sun]
· The Online Film Critics Society named United 93 best picture, Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker best actors, and Little Children's Jackie Earle Haley and Little Miss Sunshine's Abigail Breslin rounding out the supporting categories for their pedophile/pageant-princess-pedophile-bait roles. [Variety]
· The National Board of Review will award Deepa Mehta their vaguely named Freedom of Expression Award tomorrow for her film Water. [CBC.ca]

President Ford's Death: The Awards Season Impact

Mark — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 13:19:26 EST

The NY Times' David "The Carpetbagger" Carr explores the heart-stopping, bowel-loosening effect that yesterday's national day of mourning (and postal service interruption) to recognize former President Gerald Ford's passing had on studio publicists anxious to get their screeners into awards voters' hands on the first work day of the new year, who spent a jittery, mail-free Tuesday contemplating the cruel "purgatory" in which their precious DVDs languished because of the utterly inconvenient death of a former President:

Those studio folks with skin in the game were spending the day freaking out a bit, wondering what the rare three-day shutdown of the postal system would mean.
Even on weeks when the national holiday falls on Monday, the postal service is only out of action for two days. The fact that the president died when he did meant that a third day was tacked on. Studios who sent out screeners last Wednesday or Thursday - "Dreamgirls" was scheduled to land all over the Academy - in the hopes that it would be in the hands of voters the day after the new year began were instead confronted by three days of postal purgatory. [...]

And the screeners? One Oscar marketer said it was the talk of the office: "Every day counts right now and you want to have it in their hands as soon as you can. But most of the people around here were just hoping that they didn't have to work when they heard the news. No such luck."

Hopefully, those delayed Dreamgirls screeners will find their way into voters' mailboxes today, sparing Paramount's publicists another torturous day of concoting paranoid fantasies that rival Universal was somehow behind Ford's death, knowing that they could use the ensuing postal holiday to hand-deliver copies of United 93 to Academy members and gain a crucial edge in the cutthroat awards race.

The Day the Earth Stood Still [The Carpetbagger]

Awards Round-Up: Oklahoma! Where They Like The One About The Plane

Seth — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 16:38:22 EST

· The Oklahoma Film Critics Circle name United 93 last year's best film, Martin Scorsese best director, and Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker best actress and actor. They stray from the pack with the addition of two unusual categories, "Obviously Worst Film," and "Not So Obviously Worst Film," which go to Basic Instinct 2 and Bobby, respectively. [Oklahomafilm]
· Utah Film Critics Association also award United 93 their best film prize, but opt to give Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón the best director nod for Children of Men. Best actor goes to Sacha Baron Cohen—the only category not to feature a runner-up, proving Cohen had unanimously astounded Utah's tastemaking elite with his Jew- and Gypsy-leery character's picaresque adventures. [Variety]
· The African-American Film Critics Association lavishes their love upon Dreamgirls, naming it best picture, Bill Condon best director, and giving best supporting acting awards to Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson. Forest Whitaker wins best actor, and in the "one of these things is not like the other" slot is Helen Mirren for her work in The Queen. [The Envelope]

Awards Round-Up: The San Diego Critics Have Spoken

Seth — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 16:42:39 EST

In our ongoing effort to bring you the best of year end movie lists and awards—no critics' circle too far or too small!—another round-up:
· Chargers fans also love Clint Eastwood, as Letters From Iwo Jima is awarded best picture and Eastwood best director from the San Diego Film Critics Society. And while Helen Mirren once again gets top actress honors (her certificate, suitable for framing, is in the mail), they then proceed to throw several curveballs in the other acting categories, including Lili Taylor as best supporting actress for Factotum, Ray Winstone as best supporting actor for The Proposition, and Ken Takakura as best actor for his work in Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles. From the title alone, that sounds to have been a lot more demanding a role than Mirren's, which mainly required her to sit around in a palace, sip tea, and act bitchy. [Variety]
· The Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards gave United 93 best picture, Mirren best actress, Forest Whitaker best actor, and Little Miss Sunshine best screenplay, proving stretching out Blind Melon's "No Rain" video into 100 minutes of indie movie quirk clichés was an idea whose time had come. [OscarWatch]
· indieWIRE's first annual Critics Poll—a descendant of the Village Voice poll— asked 107 North American film critics to assess the year's best, with a special eye to movies that may have been overlooked. Number One, and far ahead of the pack, is Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. [IndieWire.com]
· The Onion A.V. Club gives their top honor to Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men, with special mentions to the underrated Brick (#4), and Half Nelson (#6), which succeeds in its inner-city high school inspirational teacher story despite a lack of a Coolio song on the soundtrack. [AV Club]

Awards Round-Up: SF Critics March To Beat Of Their Own Adulterous, Suburban-Dwelling Drummers

Seth — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 15:02:26 EST

· The mavericks of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle give their top honors—picture and directing—to Todd Fields' Little Children. Helen Mirren wins best actress for The Queen, a status quo concession they make up for by awarding Sacha Baron Cohen best actor for his Pamela Anderson-stalking work in Borat. Screenplay honors go to the hardboiled, Raymond-Chandler-meets-Degrassi indie, Brick. [SFFCC.org]
· Time's Richard Corliss gives us yet more insight into the shadowy goings on behind the closed doors of the New York Film Circle's annual gang bang ("The job is simple: tear yellow-lined paper into cracker-size bits; write a name or three on one piece; wait while the names are read out and tabulated," he writes, grippingly), and does some actual math to figure out if these lists actually predict Oscar results. Answer: Yes, they do! Occasionally. [Time.com]
· Clint vs. Clint. Leo vs. Leo. Peter vs. Peter. (Morgan: he wrote The Queen and Last King of Scotland.) In a bounty year of award-worthy output, will ceremonies like the Golden Globes (nominations out this Thursday) see multiple nods for single artists who did double-duty, or will vote-splitting end up cancelling them out? [LAT]
· Letters From Iwo Jima and United 93's strong showing in critics' polls puts the underhyped downer movies high on Academy members' radars; Ellen DeGeneres and her writers are already salivating at the hilarious opening montage sequence in which she single-handedly foils the plans of a group of 9-11 terrorists, only to jet-pack to the ground and find herself trapped in a Japanese internment camp. [Reuters]

Critics Expose The Steaming Awards Season Entrails To Be Read By Blind Oscar Soothsayers

Seth — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:24:25 EST

Once a year, our nation's most esteemed movie critics lock themselves inside smokey, windowless rooms, and heatedly debate, Twelve Angry Men-style, the relative merits of what they have seen over the previous twelve months. It can often escalate into full-on violence—at the New York Film Critics Circle deliberations this year, for example, The New Yorker's David Denby reportedly had The Observer's octogenarian critic-in-residence Andrew Sarris in a half nelson in a dispute over Ryan Gosling's performance in the film of the same name—but inevitably, a consensus is reached, giving obsessive Oscar prognosticators key pieces of evidence to jot down on index cards and affix in perfectly aligned columns to their bedroom walls. A round-up of the results of four major critics' lists:

· The AFI list gets happy, including such lighthearted fare as Borat, The Devil Wears Prada, Dreamgirls, Happy Feet and Little Miss Sunshine. To even things out a bit, United 93 and Babel are singled out as having impressively maximized the depressing potential of their "doomed 9/11 aircraft" and "randomly shot American tourist on a marriage-salvaging bus tour of Morocco" subject matter. [Variety]

· The NY Film Critics Circle names Paul Greengrass's United 93 as the year's best picture, instantly sending Oliver Stone into a spiral of self-doubt over whether he should have maybe told a less uplifting 9-11 story, and not had it star the guy from Ghost Rider. Forest Whitaker and Helen Mirren both take the top acting awards, he for playing bloodthirsty, psychotic despot Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, and she for playing bloodthirsty, psychotic despot Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen. [THR]
· The Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. names the non-Ryan-Phillippe -starring-chapter of Clint Eastwood's ode to World War II couplet, Letters From Iwo Jima, as the year's best picture. Mirren makes it two and two, as does Whitaker, though in a stunning upset, he ties Sacha Baron Cohen in the best actor category. Instantly, the specter of the overexposed Kazakh correspondent showing up to the Oscars to compliment the "hilarious man in charge of ceremony, Ellen DeGeneres" looms ominously. [The Envelope]
· The Boston Society of Film Critics gives their top honors (picture and directing) to local favorite The Departed, and Whitaker and Mirren make it a hat trick. Best supporting actress went to Shareeka Epps for Half Nelson, which, along with Jennifer Hudson's NY Film Circle win in the same category, indicates that this is shaping into the year of young, unknown African American actresses who can both steal a movie and break your heart, all with a single, mournful look and/or high note held for approximately two-and-a-half minutes. [Boston Globe]

Trade Round-Up: Pirates Rejoice As China Pushes M:i:III Release

Mark — Mon, 01 May 2006 16:04:49 EDT

· China won't allow Mission: Impossible III to open on the same day as the rest of Asia, pushing its release date to mid-July, giving pirates an opportunity to flood the market with bootleg copies before the premiere. Chinese authorities say they're ensuring that the country is portrayed in an acceptable light, but secretly wanted extra time to take precautions protecting its population-controlled citizens from Tom Cruise's recently unleashed virility. [Variety]
· Fox's new, low-budget teen division, Fox Atomic, hires Kyle Newman to direct a profoundly unnecessary remake of Revenge of the Nerds. How about they just release a special edition of the DVD and we forget all about this folly? [THR]
· New York audiences were "polarized" by United 93 this weekend as they decided whether or not it was too soon to pay $14 to a Hollywood studio to relive the trauma of 9/11. [Variety]
· E! continues its mission to reach ever deeper into the darkest reaches of semicelebrity for programming, giving a reality show to Nick and Aaron Carter. [THR]
· A Catholic Archbishop calls for a boycott of the The Da Vinci Code film, denouncing its source material "full of calumnies, offenses and historical and theological errors regarding Jesus, the Gospels and the church," but admits that despite his stance, he "can't wait to see how Ron Howard dumbs it down." [Variety]

Trade Round-Up: 'United 93' Fulfills Mission Of Salting Still-Fresh Wounds

Mark — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 16:52:34 EDT

· The NY premiere of United 93 is a huge success! Reports Var: "After the film's devastating final scene, the screen abruptly went dark and a cacophony of loud, uncontrollable sobs could be heard coming from the back of the theater, where many of the nearly 100 family members of 9/11 victims were seated." Universal explores the possibility of rotating the still-grieving family members through theaters across the country, allowing non-NY-based moviegoers the chance to feel the film's full impact. [Variety]
· Former William Morris agents Steve Glick and Gregory Liptsone sue WMA for "artificially reducing the value of the company's stock" by labeling executive bonuses as operating expenses, leading to underreported profits. It's always sad when agents lose sight of why the got into the business in the first place: to fuck over other people, not their own employees. [THR]
· Will Smith signs up for his seemingly tenth job in the last two weeks, will star in the perpetually-in-turnaround project I Am Legend for Warner Brothers. [Variety]
· Casting genius must be acknowledged: Jason Lee will be the voice of Underdog in Disney's live-action adaptation. Still no word on what role will be offered to Lee pal and fellow Scientologist Giovanni Ribisi. [THR]
· Ben Stiller re-teams with the Farrelly Brothers, the zipper-wielding genital torturers who made him a big star in There's Something About The Mary, in Seven Day Itch, a "loose remake" of The Heartbreak Kid. [Variety]

'United 93' Terrorist So Convincing They Won't Let Him Into The Country

Seth — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 14:26:57 EDT

Almost too predictably for a movie that prides itself on its gut-churningly realistic reenactment of one of the most horrific events in recent history, one of United 93's stars is being denied entry into the U.S. to see some of his best terrorist work at the New York premiere next week:

[T]he U.S. embassy in London said Lewis Alsamari, who has lived in Britain since 1995, had not given sufficient notice about his planned trip. [...]
"I think this was because I am still an Iraqi citizen and fought in the army — but that was only because I was forced to," he told London's Evening Standard newspaper. [...]

"I hope I am not going to have to wait until the film comes out in Britain to watch United 93. It seems strange that I cannot go over for the premiere."

It's almost too rich an irony that the same eerily authentic qualities that won Alsamari the part in the first place are what are keeping him from attending the premiere. Hopefully, the diplomacy will be sorted out in time and he'll still be able to make it. It seems unfair that he'd be denied every actor's fantasy of having starry-eyed fans approach, saying, "Amazing performance! You brought out the Arab-hater in me all over again!"

Actor in September 11 movie says denied entry to U.S [Reuters]

'United 93' Message Boards Hacked

Mark — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 14:49:12 EDT

Over the weekend, a reader tipped us that someone had hacked (screenshot of Turkman_69's handiwork above or here) the message boards at the promotional site for Universal's cinematic test of America's willingness to relive a still-fresh tragedy, United 93. It seems that the boards have been somewhat restored, but now there's only a single post looking to discuss the hacking:

Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006 5:10 pm Post subject: Who hacked this forum over the weekend? I can't wait to see the conspiracy kooks tackle this one. So, what's your "theory?" Who hacked this board and why? Who is "turkman_69" and what are his/her motives/intentions? Who has a vested interest in shutting down this board? Who doesn't want us to see (let alone discuss) the upcoming United 93 movie? Discuss:

Since the poster is inviting "conspiracy kooks" to hold forth with their theories (not so fast, Charlie Sheen!), we'll float the idea that Paramount's crack viral marketing team is behind the defacement, and that translating the "Turkish" on the hack page yields the message, "Oliver Stone's World Trade Center promises to be both a more visceral and more compassionate treatment of the tragic events of 9/11. In theaters August 11th!"

United 93 [united93movie.com]

Universal Pretty Sure We're Ready For Their 9-11 Movie

Mark — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 15:25:13 EDT

A theater in New York City has yanked the trailer for Universal's United 93 over concerns that people aren't ready for Hollywood to lend its trademark delicate touch to a national tragedy still fresh in people's minds, even if the movie is being released later this month one way or the other. The studio, however, isn't planning to recall or alter the preview footage, feeling it's a "responsible" and "fair" representation of the totally non-exploitative entertainment product to follow. Reports the NY Times:

"The film is not sanitized or softened, it's an honest and real look" at the events on United Airlines Flight 93, Mr. Fogelson said. "If I sanitized the trailer beyond what's there, am I suggesting that the experience will be less real than what the movie itself is? We as a company feel comfortable that it is a responsible and fair way to show what's coming."

Concerns about the trailer aside, the most important question isn't really if America is "ready" for a movie about the terrorist attacks—it's if we're ready for what will inevitably follow if the movie's box office reveals mainstream acceptance of the industry's 9-11-centered projects. Should United 93 open big, prepare yourselves for a romantic comedy about the unlikely chemistry between a charming conspiracy theorist (played by Charlie Sheen, naturally) and Reese Witherspoon's young, spunky widow of the attacks.