Oscar Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Moon has been the little movie that did, thanks to director Duncan Jones's tireless traveling, interviews, audience Q&As, fan interaction, and, of course, because it's a kick-ass sci-fi movie. Jones has even gone so far as to create an online petition to get Sam Rockwell nominated for a Best Actor Oscar – heck, it even has its own Twitter hashtag. You can also follow Jones on Twitter for more Moon news, and keep track of his campaign for a Rockwell nom on his blog.

Earlier tonight at a screening for Gentlemen Broncos, there was an audience Q&A session with actors Sam Rockwell, Michael Angarano, Halley Feiffer, and Mike White, and writer/director Jared Hess. (Jemaine Clement, I'm sad to say, was not there.) As for Duncan Jones's campaign, Rockwell said, "Well, you know, dreams are nice. It's very flattering. Very, very flattering. Very nice. I mean it's obviously the director so he has an agenda [audience laughs] but it's nice to see that. We worked really hard on that film." (The audience, by the way, clapped hard at the mention of Jones's campaign.)

It's a thorny dilemma, both legally and morally -- fittingly, the kind of story that, were it turned into a movie, might win a couple Oscars itself. The question is this: Does the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have the legal right to buy back an Oscar winner's statuette if he or she (or his or her heirs) decides to get rid of it? What if the Oscar winner wants to sell it at auction and donate the money to charity? Can the Academy in good conscience demand return of the statuette and deprive the charity of those funds? See? Thorny!

For Academy Award winners since 1950, the legalities are fairly uncomplicated. The minute you win the sucker, you have to sign a contract saying that if you or your heirs ever decide you don't want the trophy anymore, the Academy has the right to buy it back for $10. That's the Academy's way of preventing the devaluation of the statuette. If any old schmo with a few hundred thousand dollars could "win" an Oscar at Jack Nicholson's garage sale, the prize would lose all meaning. As it is, of course, winning an Oscar is the single greatest achievement that a human being can ever hope to accomplish -- and the Academy wants to keep it that way.

The issue that's about to go before a Los Angeles judge and jury is what should happen to the best actress Oscar that Mary Pickford won for 1929's Coquette. (That's Pickford and the troublesome trophy in the picture.) The Academy didn't have the first-dibs rule back then -- but when Pickford won an honorary Oscar in 1976, she signed the agreement, and the Academy says that contract was retroactive to include her earlier trophy, too.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in their continued efforts to avoid awarding Oscars to deserving efforts in film scores, has apparently disqualified Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard's work on The Dark Knight. According to Variety (by way of In Contention), the same stipulation as to how many composers are technically listed on the cue sheet similarly screwed over their Batman Begins score -- the stipulation being that listing multiple names helps to award royalties to music editors and designers as well.

I'd argue that the film -- which is bound to crack a billion bucks worldwide any day now, and likely to rack up considerable awards nominations regardless -- owes a great deal of its sustained visceral thrills to this rousing score, and in an ideal world, the December 9th release of the DVD would be enough for the Academy to whip around and shape up their bureaucratic brouhaha. To them, I simply ask this: why so serious?

Well, the day has finally come. No, you can't go see The Dark Knight in theaters yet ... but you can start reading what the critics had to say about it. First one in the batting cage is Peter Travers from Rolling Stone, who opens his review with: "Heads up: a thunderbolt is about to rip into the blanket of bland we call summer movies." Yeah! Where's your exclamation point at the end of that sentence, Travers? Get those troops fired up, dammit! (Bored? Try saying "Peter Travers Travels to Transylvania" ten times fast. Bet ya can't do it ...) Anyway ...

He continues to say nothing but great things about the movie, calling Heath Ledger -- and this is my favorite quote of the year so far -- "mad-crazy-blazing brilliant as the Joker." Of course, if someone is "mad-crazy-blazing brilliant," only one word can follow something like that up: Oscar. Travers says, "If there's a movement to get him the first posthumous Oscar since Peter Finch won for 1976's Network, sign me up." He gave the film itself three and a half stars out of four, and summed it all up by saying, "It's full of surprises you don't see coming. And just try to get it out of your dreams."

All kidding aside, I'm stoked to see a very, very positive review right out of the gate -- and I, for one, seriously hope The Dark Knight goes down as one of the best summer movies ever. But I do try not to hype it up too much, because that's always a bad thing. So forget we ever said anything. Dark Knight? What's that?

Even though a lot of fans of The Coen Brothers haven't been all that happy with the results of their collaborations with George Clooney (I think I was one of the eight people in the world who actually enjoyed Intolerable Cruelty.), I've still got a good feeling about their CIA comedy, Burn After Reading. The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Focus Features will release the dark comedy on September 12th of this year.

Burn has an all-star cast including Clooney, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, and Tilda Swinton. I would guess that it's been like 'old home week' on set; we all know that Clooney and Pitt are buddies, and Swinton could be an honorary member of the boys club after her Oscar winning performance in Michael Clayton (and judging by her acceptance speech, she seems comfortable with a little verbal rough-housing).

The comedy stars Malkovich as Ozzie Cox, a CIA vet who gets fired for being an alcoholic, and writes out his revenge in a memoir. His soon-to-be ex-wife (Swinton) accidentally leaves the memoir at a gym, where it falls into the hands of a trainer, Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), and the gym's owner Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), who want to exploit the discovery. It sounds like a pretty 'fluffy' flick, but I think we could all use a break from the Coens' more "intense" point of view, wouldn't you agree, friendo?

Call me an optimist, but I'm always hoping for Oscar reform. I've been rather excited about recent rumblings that the Academy is finally, finally considering changing its rules regarding foreign film consideration. I saw one of the new nominees last week, The Counterfeiters, and I have to say that there were at least 20 or 30 other, better foreign language films last year. In fact, I'd have to say that The Counterfeiters is a contender for my worst list of 2008; it takes on an interesting story, but cinematically it's sheer amateur hour. The only reason it got nominated is because it takes place in a concentration camp. I also need to mention that the director, Stefan Ruzowitzky, made one of the worst films I have ever seen, All the Queen's Men (2002), starring Matt LeBlanc and Eddie Izzard as soldiers who go undercover as drag queens in WWII.

Did anyone notice that though La vie en rose earned three nominations (Best Actress, Costume, Makeup) it didn't get nominated for Foreign Language Film? Likewise, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (205 screens) -- filmed almost entirely in French -- was nominated for four awards (Best Director, Editing, Screenplay, Cinematography), but not Best Foreign Film. Why? Diving Bell doesn't count as foreign because it has an American director. Not to mention that each country is only allowed to submit one film, and France's choice, Persepolis (100 screens) was not nominated either. Instead, it was nominated for Best Animated Film! This type of thing happens all the time. In 2002, the foreign film committee rejected the Brazilian film City of God. It was released in 2003 to great critical acclaim and success, and was nominated the following year for four Oscars in other categories. In 2000, Taiwan chose to submit the hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, rather than arguably the greatest film of the past decade, Edward Yang's Yi Yi. Why couldn't both be nominated?

The Toronto International Film Festival is over, we have a couple months respite before Sundance, so naturally thoughts turn to the Oscar race. While I'm as curious as anyone else which films will end up garnering the big nod (and I will be really surprised if Juno doesn't get a few noms, especially for screenwriting), as an indie girl I'm most interested in the docs and foreigns. I'm a documentary dork, and one of the things I most look forward to covering at any given film fest is the doc slate -- which, as both David Poland and Anne Thompson have noted in post-Toronto columns, have been weak this year relative to the past couple years. No one really seems to be sure why this is, exactly, although the surprising success of March of the Penguins in 2005 fueled an interest in documentaries that led, perhaps, to a bit of a glut.

The trouble with documentaries is that, penguin love aside, docs are not something your average person is going to go out of their way to shell out ten bucks to see at a theater. Rent from the video store or add to your Netflix queue, perhaps, but when you're looking for a film to see on date night, the depressing topics that tend to make up much of the available documentary fare are not really the first thing that comes to mind. When's the last time you said, "Hey, honey, I know what to do tonight -- let's get dinner at that place over in Little Italy we like, and then let's go see that new Iraq war doc!" Given a choice between a bummer doc and, say, Superbad, most folks are going to opt for the laughs over the conscience-pricking dose of reality.

The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Jamie Foxx is returning to the genre that brought him loads of acclaim and an Academy Award -- he has signed on for another musical biopic. Foxx will be portraying Nathaniel Anthony Ayers in The Soloist, the true story of "a homeless musician with schizophrenia who dreams of playing at Walt Disney Concert Hall." Wow. A 1) Homeless 2) Musician with 3) Mental Problems and 4) A Dream? Foxx is pretty much demanding the award here, isn't he? Can't we just give him the Oscar before production begins? They're probably polishing it up for him right now.

So how does this movie differ from all the other schmaltzy musical biopics? Producer Gary Foster tells the Los Angeles Times: "Midnight Cowboy is a perfect example of what we want this movie to feel like. It won't be slick and glossy. It's going to be emotional and real." He says that now, but I'll bet you $100 the movie ends with a teary-eyed audience jumping to its feet and bursting into applause. Joe Wright (director of the surprisingly non-boring Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice as well as the upcoming Knightley film Atonement) will direct the film. Susannah Grant (writer of a very solid run of chick flicks that includes 28 Days and Erin Brockovich) wrote the script, which is based on a 12-part series of articles by Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez. The film will focus on the relationship between Ayers and Lopez. Lopez has yet to be cast, and his photo doesn't have any casting choices leaping out at me. Any ideas?

It's always tricky for an Oscar winner to pick their next projects. You can either follow in the footsteps of Tom Hanks and win yourself two in a row, or you can end up in Catwoman and only have a Razzie to show for it. Variety has reported that Forest Whitaker, fresh off his win for the role of dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, is in talks to star in The Night Watchman with Keanu Reeves. Directed by David Ayer (Training Day) and written by novelist James Ellroy (LA Confidential) the story follows a LAPD officer in the midst of a crisis of conscience about what he has done in the name of "law and order". Whitaker will be joining the cast as the chief of the elite squad that Reeves is a part of -- although I can't say I am exactly sold on the idea of Reeves as a battle hardened cop.

It seems that Whitaker is steering clear of any other big-budget productions though, as his next two projects are independent features. He will be starring with Kate Beckinsale and fellow Oscar nominee Jackie Earle Haley in the upcoming Winged Creatures, and has also signed for the Tim Bui drama Powder Blue. Production on The Night Watchman is set to begin this May.

After appearing in a string of thrillers and superhero flicks, it looks like Halle Berry is itching to get back to where she was after winning a best actress Oscar for her role in Monster's Ball. Though it's been sitting in a vault for some time now, Lionsgate is finally ready to move forward on Tulia with Berry attached to star. Essentially a courtroom drama, Tulia is based on real-life events surrounding the arrests of 46 black men during a Texas drug bust -- a sting operation where, in the end, no money, drugs or illegal weapons were found. However, the men were convicted solely on the testimony of one crooked cop.

Berry will play the lead attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense; a group that immediately got involved and helped to ultimately free the wrongly accused. Based on the Nate Blakeslee's book Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town, Carl Franklin (Out of Time) is in talks to direct while Karen Croner penned the script. Tulia isn't the only straight-up drama Berry is working on; in fact, two of her next three films are potential awards contenders. In Things We Lost in the Fire, Berry plays a widow who invites her troubled best friend to come live with her and her children; Class Act find Berry portraying another real-life figure -- this time, it's a Nevada school teacher who uses her sixth-grade students to help boost her congressional campaign. While it's a bit premature for us to say Berry is officially back, it's nice to see she's adding a bit more meat to her roles instead of settling for the big paycheck and a Catwoman franchise.