Category: External Movies (Page 275 of 336)

Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger

February 22, 2009 / Gerardo Orlando

People will be discussing Heath Ledger’s performance in “The Dark Knight” long after we’re all gone. His tragic death adds to the drama surrounding his Oscar, but the performance speaks for itself. It was stunning and completely original. He deserves the Academy Award, and it’s a shame he wasn’t around to accept it. It was heartbreaking to watch his family accept the Oscar with such grace and dignity.

Here’s the take from Bullz-Eye’s Jason Zingale.

For all the Oscar buzz surrounding Heath Ledger in the past few weeks, there still aren’t enough hours in the day to gush about his knockout performance as The Joker. It’s beyond phenomenal – a villainous turn so good that you never know what to expect next – and it puts Jack Nicholson’s cartoonish rendition from the 1989 version to shame. Ledger’s Clown Prince isn’t a one-dimensional goofball who listens to bad 80s music while parading around a museum – he’s a diehard anarchist who’s both smart and incredibly dangerous. Dressed like a bum with dirty green hair, smeared-on white and red makeup, and a hand-me-down purple suit, the Joker truly is the wild card he’s supposed to be. One minute he could be playfully entertaining his guests with one of many versions of how he received the smile-like scars on his face (when in reality, he probably just did it himself), and the next, he’s a nightmarish psychopath with the laugh of a rabid hyena.

Action Movies, Actors, Celebrities, External Movies, Movies, News

Best Supporting Actor Heath Ledger Heath Ledger Best Supporting Actor Heath Ledger The Joker Heath Ledger wins Academy Award Heath Ledger wins Oscar The Dark Knight The Joker

The ultimate Oscar acceptance speech, by Denis Leary

February 20, 2009 / John Paulsen

Variety has the best acceptance speech…ever…as written by “Rescue Me” star Denis Leary. (Keep in mind this is from the POV of an actress, not an actor.)

Okay. First of all — I’d like to thank God for just taking time out of His busy schedule curing cancer and feeding the hungry and solving the crisis in Darfur with George Clooney and helping so many different wide receivers and quarterbacks to throw and catch footballs and instead making sure that I got singled out of such a wonderful group of actors like Meryl and Mary-Louise and Cate Blanchett and Angelina and Marcia Gay and Kate Winslet and just – all the Kates and the Kevins and the two name and the three name people I feel so honored just to be up here while they are all down there and I’d like to just thank the Academy and the people who hated me and treated me like such dirt and who made me stab them in the back just to get here and now you can suck it and Botox! I almost forgot Botox! And Restylin and Cosmoderm and Prestocheek and Instatit and all the other animal agents I’ve had injected into my face and stuff. Oh my god my agents — I almost forgot the entire squad of agents and managers and hangers-on whose asses I have kissed and coddled for so many long B and C movie years now and also — it would be so bad not to thank my team of surgeons who have stretched and sculpted and pulled and pressure-pointed every aspect of my face, neck and armfat until I look so young and ripe and yet somehow still able to move my forehead and eyebrows just enough to frown and laugh and look focused which is a huge part of why I just won this!

And that’s just about a third of it…

External Entertainment, External Movies, Humor, Movies, Rescue Me

Denis Leary Denis Leary acceptance speech Oscar acceptance speech Rescue Me The Oscars

10 Minutes and 10 Questions with Christian Kane

February 17, 2009 / Will Harris

Tonight brings the first of the two parts of the first-season finale of TNT’s “Leverage.” We’ve commented on the show in the past here on Premium Hollywood, but after a slight false start in the early days of the series, it’s become an enjoyable blend of action, drama, and comedy that allows the viewer to escape into a world where the little guy actually gets to win once in awhile. We had a chance to talk to Christian Kane, who plays the rough-and-tumble Eliot Spencer on the show, and quizzed him about how the show’s gone for him. (We also snuck in a quick “Angel” question and checked on the status of his music career, too.)

1. If you can approach “Leverage” as a viewer rather than a fan for a second, are you surprised that “Leverage” was able to find an audience? Because a lot of series are in, out, and done in just a couple of episodes, but you guys found an audience quickly.

Yeah, we did, man. Y’know, it’s always surprising to me what works and what doesn’t work. I mean, I can’t believe that some of the stuff that’s on right now is on, and I can’t believe that “Arrested Development” ever went off the air. (Laughs) But it wasn’t surprising to know the track record of the people behind it. I mean, it was Tim (Hutton)’s first series (since “Kidnapped”), and I felt comfortable with that, but also John Rogers is an unbelievable writer, and Dean Devlin has had unbelievable success in the entertainment world, so we came in with a couple of big guns pulled out, unlike maybe some of the other people. So I felt confident in that. And then I started watching, and I got more confident. But then I remembered that, with the economy the way it is and the way the entertainment business is going… (Laughs) …it got a little bit scary for awhile, y’know, because you start thinking of stuff. But then when I went back to the economy stuff, and I went, “Y’know what? In this day and age, when The Man is sticking it to everybody, I think people are really going to want to sit back on the couch and really be part of the team and watch some people go out and stick it back to The Man.”

2. The “Ocean’s Eleven” comparisons that were being thrown around in the beginning were obviously really, really apt. Do you think the series has found its own identity yet, or is it still finding it?

Action Movies, Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External Movies, External TV, Interviews, Movies, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas, Video

Angel Anthony Delongis Arrested Development Bones Christian Kane David Boreanaz Dean Devlin Doctor Who John Rogers Joss Whedon Kane Kevin Tighe Leverage Michael O'Connell Mr. T Ocean's Eleven Roadhouse Sam Anderson Saul Rubinek Secondhand Lions The A-Team Timothy Hutton TNT

Using statistics to predict the Oscars

February 16, 2009 / Gerardo Orlando

Movie buffs love predicting Oscar winners, but stats guru Nate Silver decided to look at hard data and trends to come up with his own predictions. Political junkies are familiar with Silver, as his blog became one of the top resources for interpreting polls and predicting election results in the last cycle.

After spending most of 2008 predicting the success of political actors—also called politicians—it’s only natural that Nate Silver (FiveThirtyEight.com) would turn his attention to the genuine article: the nominees in the major categories for the 81st Annual Academy Awards (Feb. 22 at 8 p.m. on ABC). Formally speaking, this required the use of statistical software and a process called logistic regression. Informally, it involved building a huge database of the past 30 years of Oscar history. Categories included genre, MPAA classification, the release date, opening-weekend box office (adjusted for inflation), and whether the film won any other awards. We also looked at whether being nominated in one category predicts success in another. For example, is someone more likely to win Best Actress if her film has also been nominated for Best Picture? (Yes!) But the greatest predictor (80 percent of what you need to know) is other awards earned that year, particularly from peers (the Directors Guild Awards, for instance, reliably foretells Best Picture). Genre matters a lot (the Academy has an aversion to comedy); MPAA and release date don’t at all. A film’s average user rating on IMDb (the Internet Movie Database) is sometimes a predictor of success; box grosses rarely are. And, as in Washington, politics matter, in ways foreseeable and not. Below, Silver’s results, including one upset we never would have anticipated.

Check out the article for his predictions. There aren’t many surprises, but it’s interesting to see the probability percentages he allocates to each category.

External Movies, Movies

2009 Academy Awards 81st Annual Academy Awards Best Actor Best Actress Best Picture Danny Boyle Heath Ledger Kate Winslet Mickey Rourke MPAA Nate Silver Oscar history predicting Oscar winners predicting the Oscars Slumdog Millionaire Taraji P. Henson The Oscars The Oscars 2009 Using statistics to predict the Oscars

New York Comic-Con 2009: The Wrap-Up

February 12, 2009 / Will Harris

You know you’re on the right bus for Comic-Con when a guy comes aboard wearing a Flash t-shirt…and he’s followed a guy toting two enormous bags in which to carry swag…and then that guy is followed by Darth Vader.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe Lord Vader wasn’t actually on the bus with me, but he was most certainly present – and in various heights, weights, shapes, and sizes, no less – during the course of the New York Comic-Con, which took place at New York’s Javitz Center from February 6th through the 8th.

Our man Jason Zingale has been our resident San Diego Comic-Con attendee for the past couple of years, but Bullz-Eye was also in the house for last year’s NYCC, thanks to our man in New York, Jonathan Flax. (Granted, he’s often a quiet man, but he’s still there for us when we need him.) This year, however, I couldn’t resist the chance to take in Comic-Con for myself. The San Diego event takes place immediately after I’ve already spent two-and-a-half weeks in L.A. for the July TCA Press Tour, and by that point, I just can’t be away from my wife and daughter any longer; fortunately, the NYCC takes place long enough after the January TCA tour that I was able to feel comfortable heading out of town to attend. It was disappointing that I had to take in all of the sights, sounds, and events all by my lonesome, but lord knows there were plenty of other people with whom I was sharing the experience. I might’ve come by myself, but I was in no way alone.