academy of motion picture arts and sciences Tagged Articles at Cinematical

"Oh, good grief, it's Oscar."
--Lucille Bluth, "Arrested Development"

(The following post is written to the tune of Bruce Springsteen's "The Wrestler," which was not among those nominated for Best Original Song when the 81st Academy Award nominations were announced earlier today.)

Have you ever seen a one trick pony in the field so happy and free?
We'd call 'em by another name, the Academy
Have you ever seen a piece of pap that they all wouldn't eat?
If you've ever seen that Crash, then you'd agree.

Then you'd agree, The Dark Knight should've had more of a shot
Then you'd agree, Gran Torino deserved to go home with naught
Then you'd agree, I'm struggling to come up with just one more bon mot
Tell me, friend, can you ask for anything more?
We sure as hell would've asked for a whole lot more

Couldn't Let the Right One In have been recognized outside of Foreign?
If they'd even seen that movie, then they'd agree
Didn't The Reader leave most of these guys snorin'?
If they'd stayed up for this movie, then they'd agree

Then you'd agree, Dear Zachary... shouldn't have been snubbed from the start
Then you'd agree, The Fall was a tremendous work of art (direction)
Then you'd agree, they left off Gommorah too, old fart after old fart
Tell me, friend, can you ask for anything more?
We really would've asked for a whole lot more

Those nods that have comforted me, I drive away
For all of Milk's attention, I just cannot feel gay
The snubs here and there have caused far too much dismay

Have you ever seen a year where AMPAS actually got it right?
I'll plan to watch something else that February night...

There's a reason that us critics tend to hold certain films in excessive regard -- because after seeing hundreds and hundreds of them every year, to champion one or two or a dozen across those fifty-two weeks is a chance to bring attention to something that deserves it, something distinctly non-mediocre and perhaps unconventional.

Dear Zachary: a letter to a son about his father falls into that category. Erik praised it effusively from its Slamdance premiere and beyond; soon joining his ranks would be Monika; and it currently lingers second to only one on my own tentative top ten list for 2008. We get it. According to Rotten Tomatoes, 33 out of 34 critics get it. In fact, it seems like the only ones who don't get it just happen to make up the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

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?

In New York we have the Museum of the Moving Image. I just assumed there was a similar kind of museum on the west coast, but I guess in all these years Hollywood never established something so obvious. Now, though, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has finally announced a plan to build a museum dedicated to cinema, or at least cinema through the eyes of the Oscars. Apparently it will be called The Academy Museum and is set to be open in 2012, three years after construction begins in 2009. So far the plan has no plans, or budget, but the Academy has hired French architect Christian de Portzamparc, best known probably for designing Paris' "Cite de la Musique (City of Music)" and NYC's LVMH Tower. The site for the museum has been chosen as a two-block, eight-acre plot near the Kodak Theater (home of the Academy Awards show) in Hollywood, which will allow the building to face the famous Hollywood sign.

According to Reuters, the museum is being planned as the world's largest and most ambitious of its kind. The report also has an interesting quote from de Portzamparc, who claims he's the perfect choice because he has "a true passion for cinema and often link this art to architecture: the art of motion, art of light, editing, sequencing of the time and the life, celebration of the living." Over at AP, there's another great quote from Academy president Sid Ganis, who wants the museum to be a "monument to the art of film." He told the newswire: "I want people to understand how film relates to the world around us, how storytelling in the film sense is accomplished and how, through film, we move ahead in our lives to some degree. I hope that's not too highfalutin', but that's what I'm hoping for." We'll have to wait and see if the museum is more dedicated to the history of film in all its glory or more dedicated to the history of the Oscars and the glory it thrusts upon specific films and branches of cinematic technique.

According to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, they're totally changing their Oscar advertising approach this year. Which is good, because I don't think anyone has ever said "Man, that Oscar ad was GREAT! I wasn't planning on watching the ceremony, but seeing footage that little bald statue with a dramatic music behind it has totally changed my mind!"

Instead of frantically pulling things together after the host is announced (which has been the policy in the past), the Academy has already hired Spike Lee -- yes, that Spike Lee -- to direct this year's campaign. Since the campaign will actually be shaped by ad agency TBWA\Chiat\Day -- a group that has been pursing the Oscars gig for three years -- it's unclear whether "direct" means "supervise," or actually be the man behind each of the spots. Whatever Lee's role, we can only hope it will lead to Mars Blackman shaking off the mothballs, and pushing Oscars instead of Nikes.

Folks like MPAA Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman, Joaquin Phoenix, Felicity Huffman, The Brokeback Boys (Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal) and little Dakota Fanning are among 120 filmmakers and executives who have been invited to join The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). For those of you who have no idea what that means (Trust me, if you don't, you're not missing much), these are the folks who will be participating in the voting process for next year's Academy Awards.

Come Oscar time, the voting membership is normally up around the 6,000 range, with this past year clocking in around 5,798. Each yeah, as members pass away or retire, new slots then become available. For one reason or the other, the Academy decided to start going public with this list back in 2004, making it so you know exactly who to blame after losing a bet that Brokeback Mountain would win Best Picture. Bastards! After scrolling down the list, only 39 people were nominated for an Oscar in 2005, and eight of them won. One of the more puzzling moves finds 12-year-old Dakota Fanning landing an invite. Um, not for nothing, but the girl can't even watch a PG-13 film -- how in the world is she supposed to vote? I suppose her parents can let her watch an R rated film if necessary, but what would Dan Glickman think about that? This poses an interesting question: Should the Academy enforce a rule that states an invitee must be over the age of 18 before becoming a member?

• Of the five features that Jean-Pierre Jeunet has directed, three place high on my list of favorite films. Therefore I am very happy to hear that he has just been knighted by France's Legion of Honor. The ceremony took place on Wednesday, where Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres called Jeunet, "an atypical, unusual filmmaker, who created more than just a style -- an entire universe."

• Two-time Oscar-winner Olivia de Havilland is being honored this evening with a tribute by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The actress, who will be 90 on July 1, is the last surviving star of Gone with the Wind and was named Best Actress by the Academy for To Each His Own and The Heiress. She will be only the fourth person to be given such a tribute.

• Neil Simon will be awarded the Mark Twain Award for humor by the Kennedy Center in a ceremony on October 15. The Center's officials cited Simon as America's foremost playwright, but the honor will also be in recognition of his contributions to film and television. Proving himself still funny at age 78, Simon joked about the award by saying, "It makes up for my losing the Samuel Clemens Prize." Simon was one of my idols in high school, when I was writing my own semi-autobiographical plays and performing in scenes from his works, such as The Prisoner of Second Avenue. We could use more writers like him on Broadway and in Hollywood.

• It may not be an award, but I would call it an honor to be named head of the jury for The Venice Film Festival (Aug. 30 - Sept. 9), and Catherine Deneuve is the person given that honor this year. The actress is familiar to the fest, as she starred in the 1967 Golden Lion winner Belle de Jour and won the Volpi Cup Award for Best Actress in 1998 for Place Vendrôme. American filmmakers in competition might hope for the best from Deneuve, as she was on the Cannes jury in 1994 that awarded Pulp Fiction the Palme d'Or.

 

Did you know that the people who win Scientific & Technical awards from the Academy (aka the "Awards given earlier" shown in video montage during the actual Oscar ceremony) don't get statuettes? They get plaques, or certificates instead. Certificates!

While the specifics of last night's Scientific & Technology ceremony are over most of our heads ("Much of the evening was devoted to honoring developers of various remote camera heads and systems, including Skycam inventor Garrett Brown and Cascade crane inventor Anatoly Kokush"), the concrete details are not: 30 people received certificates (sigh) recognizing their individual technical achievements, and 13 more were awarded Scientific & Engineering plaques. Among the honorees were six from Pixar, who were recognized for achievements as diverse as "developing...software that's widely used for rendering...human limbs...in CG animation," and "work...on the mathematics used for realistic rendering of cloth with computer animation."

Seriously, why do these people not get actual Oscars? The amount of science and inspiration that is behind the CGI images to which we've become accustomed is mind-blowing - why isn't it as worthy of recognition as, say, editing, or set design?

Though it's generally accepted that to put the text of the over 30,000 scripts help in six different California archives on the internet would be a giant experiment in copyright violation, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has done the next best thing: a searchable index of the scripts is now available online. All six of the archives are public, and all of their scripts - the earliest of which is from 1910, and the most current come from this year - can be read by anyone, but none of can leave the facility in which they are held. So now, instead of having track to down the paper index (which, obviously, can't be updated very frequently), those researching specific films or writers can instantly find out where they need to go to read a given script.

That is, of course, assuming the index doesn't crash their computer and mysteriously refuse to return results for anything that doesn't involve Wes Anderson. But I'm sure that's only me.