You’re the Kanye West of old white women.
Roger Ross Williams has been dreaming of this moment his entire life, and you just stole it from him. He had a speech ready and everything, but nope, you had something you just had to say. He may never get another chance to say what he had prepared, all because of you. I hope it was worth it.
May you never work in this town again.
This hasn’t been a very good year for people who like awards surprises. And, so, this year’s most high profile indie film, say it with me — “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” — has won the lion’s share of the more high-profile awards at Film Independent’s Independent Spirit Awards, this year hosted by Eddie Izzard.
To be specific, “Precious” nabbed “Best Feature” from a field that included the very popular “(500) Days of Summer,” Berkeley-bred Cary Joji Fukunaga’s surprisingly assured directorial debut, “Sin Nombre,” and “The Last Station.” Director Lee Daniels, whose work on “Precious” has been the single most criticized aspect of the somewhat controversial film, nevertheless beat the Coen Brothers work on “A Serious Man,” Fukunaga, James Gray of “Two Lovers,” and Michael Hoffman of “The Last Station.” “Precious” also took the Best First Screenplay. The best not-first screenplay went to Scott Neustader and Michael H. Weber of “(500) Days.”
In the acting categories, Gabourey Sidibe received the Best Female Lead for playing Precious herself and, naturally, Mo’Nique proved to own her category fully across all award shows and won the Best Supporting Female category. Among the males, Jeff Bridges, took the Best Male Lead award that is deemed pretty much his due this year for the country music drama, “Crazy Heart.”
Since the $40 million dollar budget of “Inglourious Basterds” presumably put it beyond the realm of the Spirits, Christoph Waltz was not nominated for Best Supporting Male. Instead, he cut a deal in which he collected the award anyway in return for helping the show to end early. Just kidding. Woody Harrelson in his non-zombie-thwacking mode took the award for his work in the low-key stateside wartime drama, “The Messenger.” (My sympathies to Christian McKay of “Me and Orson Welles” — so much critical praise and so few awards even when this year’s male 500 pound gorilla is safely out of the room.)
Best Foreign Film went to a film that doesn’t feel so foreign now that England is our 52nd state, “An Education.” Best Documentary went to one some of you might actually have seen and found fun rather than upsetting, “Anvil! The Story of Anvil” defeated a list that included the highly praised “Food, Inc.” (For whatever reason, “The Cove” was not nominated.) Roger Deakins took the cinematography award for “A Serious Man.”
Among the special awards, the John Cassevettes Award, which goes to a film with a budget of less than $500,000, went to a favorite around these parts, Lynn Shelton’s “Humpday,” edging out another film we’ve kind of taken to our breast here, “Big Fan.” The latter film looked, literally, like a million dollars to me, so kudos to the penny-saving producers on that one. “A Serious Man” won the Robert Altman award for its acting ensemble.
You can see a complete list of nominees and winners here. You can also check and see if Indiewire ever corrects their typos here.
Well, depending on how long this takes.
* The Oscar voting deadline passed today and the big story ’round the town was on the punishment meted out to producer Nicolas Chartier, whose over-aggressive e-screeds against “Avatar,” and in favor of his own, “The Hurt Locker.” He’s banished from the ceremony. Still, as Nikki Finke reports, don’t feel too bad for him, if you feel bad at all, and I’m not sure why you should.
Wouldn’t it be nice — and naive — to think that stuff like this actually affected no one’s vote, in any direction?
* I like Tim Burton‘s work and dislike Timur Bekmambetov’s films, but the two nevertheless insist on working together to produce “Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter” based on the book by the author of the also soon to be filmed “Pride and Prejudice with Zombies.” The reportedly erratic but extremely talented writer-director David O. Russell, who infamously got into a scuffle with George Clooney over the treatment of extras while making 1999’s “Three Kings,” is “circling,” Mike Fleming says.
* Hef on Bogie. And, when you think about the Playboy mansions, almost everybody really does come to Hef’s, or wants to, anyway.
* James McAvoy leaves a “cancer comedy” for mysterious reasons and Joseph Gordon-Levitt jumps on board, reports THR‘s Gregg Kilday. McAvoy’s pretty good, but that still might be an improvement.
* Martin Scorsese is so busy these days I get tired just reading about him. Oh, and that gangster film with De Niro is starting to take shape, alongside at least three documentaries about Fran Lebowitz, George Harrison, and the history of British cinema, including much, I’m sure, about his old friend and mentor/influence, Michael Powell — the greatest director even many cinephiles barely know. Oh, and elsewhere he discusses the possibility of making films “like ‘Precious‘” in 3-D. I see his point about how the technology could theoretically be used to enhance intimate stories. I guess. Maybe.
* I meant to mention this days ago, but this lawsuit over the fictional destruction of the “Christ the Redeemer” statue in “2012” is based on the fact that the statue is covered by copyright — something one usually doesn’t think about for iconic statuary. In any case, I really just wanted an excuse to quote Matthew Belloni‘s opening to the story:
With apologies to the Coen brothers, Columbia Pictures is learning the hard way not to f— with the Jesus….
The Writers Guild and the Sound Editors gave out their awards last night and it’s safe to say that, winners aside, no one’s world was too terribly rocked.
Journalist-turned-screenwriter Mark Boal was rewarded for his hard-earned real-world experience as an embedded reporter with a Best Original Screenplay nod for “The Hurt Locker.” In another completely unsurprising award, the well-liked and respected Jason Reitman was similarly rewarded for his critically acclaimed work on the adult-aimed topical comedy, “Up in the Air.” The documentary category wasn’t much of a surprise either, with the muckraking “The Cove” picking up yet another award.
This isn’t quite on the level of a statistical study, but it’s worth noting that, for the last couple of years at least, the WGA awards and the Oscars have been lining up 100% in the writing categories, so Oscar betters should take note. This is a bit of a blow to any fans of Quentin Tarantino“Pulp Fiction” screenplay and the writers tend to be a bit more openminded about offbeat films than Oscar voters as a whole. who might have been hoping for some Oscar wins, as Best Original Screenplay has been “his” category in the sense that his only Oscar win so far has been for his
Still, older and/or less geeky fans of old-school post-war (as in WWII) realism are likely impressed by the real-life underpinnings of Boal’s work and Kathryn Bigelow’s film is just edgy enough, while not marred in the minds of some by being a “fun” war movie, and “Inglourious Basterds” is definitely fun. It’s also controversial to some degree, perhaps not the best combination if all you want out of a movie is award wins.
In the adapted screenplay category, I personally wouldn’t have minded seeing the award go to the brilliant and scabrous “In the Loop,” but that film was less widely seen and it’s humor might be bit too nasty (in a good, cleansing way) and British for some.
[UPDATE: Aren’t you people supposed to correct me when I write complete nonsense? If I had bothered to check a bit more carefully this morning before I wrote this, I would have noted/remembered that “Basterds” was not nominated for a Writers Guild award and therefore might have somewhat better Oscar screenplay chances than I initially thought. The same applies to “In the Loop.” These scripts were not eligible under the WGA’s rather arcane rules which also disqualified such worthy films as “An Education.” If you’re curious about the reasons why, Steve Pond, via Anne Thompson, had a partial explanation back in January. Anyhow, thanks to Anne Thompson, whose post on this showed me the error of my ways, or whatever. We now resume our regularly scheduled blog post.]
It might be a national holiday, but movie news hasn’t been taking anything like a break.
* It’s not really even movie news in the usual sense, but Kevin Smith has been making big Internet news by making a big Internet stink about being ejected from a Southwest Airlines flight for being “too wide for the sky.” The latest: He might go on Larry King or “The Daily Show” to prove his point. Of course, this is movie news if it helps out the grosses for this upcoming buddy police comedy, “Cop Out.”
* This is really interesting and weird. All weekend, we’ve been hearing that Martin Scorsese has announced that he and old friend Robert De Niro would be revisiting the world of the mob in an upcoming film. Secondarily, there are numerous stories — actually not much more than written down rumors that he, together with cinema bad boy Lars von Trier, would be doing a series of remakes of some sort of his classic early collaboration with De Niro, “Taxi Driver,” possibly with the participation of the actor.
If anyone out there has seen “The Five Obstructions” they’ll have some clue what is supposed to be going on here. It’s a highly entertaining documentary in which the director challenged his filmmaking mentor, Jørgen Leth, to remake an experimental short film of his that von Trier admired five times, each time with some creative limitation thrown in the way. The idea being that creative obstacles can sometimes lead to more interesting work.
Of course, Scorsese and De Niro aren’t going to make five full-length “Taxi Driver” remakes based on the Danish director’s whims, but if there’s anything to this, it’s certainly something I’d pay to see. Peter Hall at Cinematical has the most concise version of this confusing story or non-story that I’ve seen, and likes the idea as much as I do.
* And that’s not all on the Scorsese speculation front. The Playlist passes on word from the paywall encrusted Variety that he may be contemplating making his next film, a movie about movies called “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” in 3-D. It was good enough for Alfred Hitchcock in “Dial M for Murder,” so I wouldn’t be surprised and, for this particular project, it might make sense.
* Can you imagine the Oscars — or any award show — without innumerable thank yous? I can’t. Still if what Peter Sciretta at /Film reports turns out to be for real, it would prevent any more unpleasantness like this.
* Another Oscar institution really does seem to be on its way out: Barbara Walters’ post show interviews.
* Patrick Goldstein quizzes Quentin Tarantino on influences, why he likes them and why he doesn’t like them being used against him.
* The estimates for the entire three-day weekend are out. No huge surprises based on what I wrote yesterday.
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