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The Crowded Animated Feature Problem

Posted by Michael Dance

Kris Tapley over at In Contention has alerted me to an interesting problem: there's too many good animated films out there this year.

With so many -- sixteen eligible altogether -- the field will probably be expanded to five nominees and not the typical three (there was also five in 2002, but that was the only other year). The sixteen are:

9
A Christmas Carol
Astro Boy
Battle for Terra
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Coraline
Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Mary and Max
Monsters vs. Aliens
Planet 51
Ponyo
The Princess and the Frog
Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure
Up

The ones that you think can be ruled out probably can be: Astro Boy, Battle for Terra, Planet 51, whatever Evangelion and Mary and Max are, and Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure (which is getting a qualifying run in L.A. but is otherwise strictly direct-to-DVD stuff). And despite Ice Age and Monsters vs. Aliens both being massive hits, critics responded with a resounding "meh" to both of them. So that narrows it down to eight:

9
A Christmas Carol
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Ponyo
The Princess and the Frog
Up

But where to go from there? Here's a rundown of each film's strengths and weaknesses...

9: great animation, adapted from a short that was nominated for the Best Animated Short Oscar. OK but not great box office; more negative reviews than anticipated.

A Christmas Carol: Robert Zemeckis's latest 3D animation movie, with Jim Carrey as Scrooge.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: the fall's surprise animated hit, getting great responses, momentum on its side.

Coraline: Released early in the year but one of the best films of the year. I'll be extremely pissed off if they forget this.

Fantastic Mr. Fox: unlike all the other films, directed by Wes Anderson, star-studded.

Ponyo: small box office, but it was directed by Hayao Miyazaki, and he won for Spirited Away.

The Princess and the Frog: if it were the early 1990s, this would be the frontrunner: a hand-drawn Disney animated epic. Those days are over, but how can you not nominate this?

Up the out-and-out frontrunner, this one may even get nominated for Best Picture.

Conclusions:

9 seems a little weak; voters will probably go for Coraline instead. A Christmas Carol just looks kind of...not great. Gut feeling. On the other hand, Princess and the Frog will be forefront on everyone's mind thanks to its holiday release, so I bet it stays. Ditto for on-the-fence Fantastic Mr. Fox, but if the reviews are bad, it's out. So what are my final predictions?

Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Ponyo
The Princess and the Frog
Up

Why no Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs? If the Academy voted right now, they'd include it, no problem. But voting is a long ways off, and I think when push comes to shove they'll go with more "prestige" movies. If Fantastic Mr. Fox disappoints, switch them. But right now, those are my five.

TAGS: 9, A Christmas Carol, Animated Feature, Animated Feature Film, Animated Film, Astro Boy, Battle For Terra, Best Animated Feature, Category Predictions, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, Coraline, Evangelion 10 You Are Not Alone, Fantastic Mr Fox, Ice Age Dawn Of The Dinosaurs, Mary And Max, Monsters Vs Aliens, Oscar Hopefuls, Planet 51, Ponyo, Predictions, The Princess And The Frog, Tinker Bell And The Lost Treasure, Up
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'An Education' Heats Up

Posted by Michael Dance

An Education has played in at least ten film festivals over the past year and has gotten rave reviews out of each one. A coming-of-age drama about a sixteen-year-old British girl (Carey Mulligan) who falls for a charming but less-than-morally-sound man in his early thirties (Peter Sarsgaard), it's considered a major Oscar frontrunner, especially for Mulligan, who's currently twenty-four in real life.

Given the subject matter -- and the fact that sex between older men and teenagers has been in the news a lot recently -- some outlets have begun to question whether or not people will be turned off by the premise.

Speaking to Mulligan, Entertainment Weekly asked her what her take on the reactions has been:

It really varies from audience to audience. Sometimes people will be shocked by the scenes where it's more intimate. Sometimes completely grossed out. Peter, here in Toronto, is getting this 'creepy' thing a lot. Everyone's like, 'He's so creepy!' Which he doesn't see himself as being at all. [...]
Fathers come up to me and say, 'I really want my daughters to see this.' As if it's sending some message. And that's really nice, even if it's not our intention. Everybody's going to see different things in it, which is why I think it's got a nice group of people to watch it."

You can watch the video of the interview here. I'm getting more and more interested in this movie by the day -- seems like the classic example of a pretty basic concept with a great execution -- and we'll see what mainstream American critics and audiences think when it opens (in limited release) on the 16th of this month.

TAGS: An Education, Best Actress, Carey Mulligan, Interviews, Oscar Hopefuls, Peter Sarsgaard, Videos
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Roman Polanski's Arrest Makes Everyone Go Insane

Posted by Michael Dance

Funny how controversies that are thirty years old can come back with such a vengeance.

As you probably know, over the weekend Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland in a sting set up by L.A. prosecutors. He'll very possibly be brought to the U.S. for the first time since '77 to face sentencing for raping a 13-year-old girl.

It's a complicated story, but basically, he was about to get off on a petty lenient plea deal, but the judge was prepared to renege on the deal, so before sentencing he fled the country to France. Since he has French citizenship, France could refuse his extradition back to the U.S. So he's been living over there ever since, still making films and even winning an Oscar for 2002's The Pianist.

But please, don't start gearing up your talking points until you look a little bit further into things. Here's a longer recap, and here's his Wikipedia page. And you also might want to check out the pro-Polanski documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.

But now Hollywood's coming to his defense, which Salon is presumably super-duper pissed off about (their op-ed: "Reminder: Roman Polanski raped a child"). Polanski's own victim has forgiven him and wants to drop the whole thing, but Movie City News points out the weakness of some of the forgive-Polanski side's arguments. And if you really want to dive right into the line-in-the-sand public opinion brawls, read through a few of the 181 comments on this AwardsDaily post.

Overall, it's a mess and I'm sick of it. And I'd rather not take a stand here, because I don't want to get called (a) a maniac out for Polanski's blood or (b) someone who encourages rape along with the rest of those Hollywood liberal elites.

Unfortunately, it's the biggest story to hit the awards circuit in a while, given Polanski's status as one of the great living directors. His upcoming film The Ghost, by the way, was scheduled for a 2010 release but isn't entirely finished, leaving its fate up in the air.

TAGS: 1970s, Best Director, Controversies, Roman Polanski, Roman Polanski Arrested, The Ghost, The Pianist
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First Best Picture Predictions

Posted by Michael Dance

Awards Daily's currently running a poll on what folks think will be nominated for Best Picture. So far, the top ten results are:

-The Hurt Locker (8%)
-Nine (8%)
-Up in the Air (8%)
-An Education (7%)
-The Lovely Bones (7%)
-Precious (7%)
-A Serious Man (6%)
-Up (6%)
-Inglourious Basterds (5%)
-Invictus (5%)

Not a bad list, not bad at all. But presented with so many options (the poll lists 57 films), I was so inspired by the possibilities that I've decided to make my own list.

The first step, in my mind, is to understand that even with ten nominees instead of five, the Oscars are still the Oscars. The Academy still voted for A Beautiful Mind over The Fellowship of the Ring. They still voted for The Reader over The Dark Knight. And they still voted for Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan.

Thus, I doubt something like A Serious Man -- which from its trailer looks like one of the Coen brothers' patented weird comedies, in other words, not an awards-style Coen film -- will make the cut. On the other hand, Inglourious Basterds seems like the kind of film that might. The story has appeal with the Academy, and the movie was an out-and-out hit in the U.S.

And some you just have to go with because they scream Oscar. We do this every year and a few always get shaved off, always look like stupid choices in retrospect -- but how can I bet against Nine, with Daniel Day-Lewis and Rob Marshall, or Invictus, with Clint Eastwood, Matt Damon, and Morgan Freeman? Damon already faltered with The Informant, and his Green Zone got pushed to 2010. Invictus has got to be the one, right?

Anyway, enough. Here's my first, rough, inaccurate prediction list:

-Up
-Nine
-Invictus
-Get Low
-Precious
-Up in the Air
-A Single Man
-An Education
-Inglourious Basterds
-Where the Wild Things Are

First: what am I snubbing from the first list? The Hurt Locker, A Serious Man, and The Lovely Bones. Some people would say I'm foolish to count out Peter Jackson -- The Lovely Bones might very well be huge, and the guy even got nominated for a Golden Globe for King Kong -- but I don't think it will make it. Ditto for Avatar, which has a lot of support that I think is misguided. I've seen the sixteen-minute sneak peak, and while the visuals are arguably special (emphasis on arguably), the story, tone, and acting is not.

The Hurt Locker is a lot of folks' favorite, which is why it's sticking around these lists. But what will the Academy think? Some will see it as just another action movie; some won't see it at all. Besides, there's got to be a few things people get pissed about when the nominations are announced. It's not the Oscars otherwise.

So what do I include? A Single Man, which the Weinstein Company picked up from the festivals despite barely having any money, because they believe it can bring home awards; Get Low, a dark horse period dramedy starring Robert Duvall and Bill Murray; and Where the Wild Things Are.

Yes, Where the Wild Things Are. That's my big, very foolish gamble at the moment. I just think it will be a lot bigger and a lot more beloved than everybody in Hollywood is assuming at the moment. We'll see whether or not I'm right in a month.

TAGS: A Serious Man, A Single Man, An Education, Best Picture, Best Picture Nominee Predictions, Best Picture Predictions, Get Low, Inglourious Basterds, Invictus, Nine, Precious, The Hurt Locker, The Lovely Bones, Up, Up In The Air, Where The Wild Things Are
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David Fincher. Aaron Sorkin. Justin Timberlake?

Posted by Michael Dance

It's official: Justin Timberlake has been cast in "The Facebook Movie."

Actually, the tentative title is The Social Network, but it will always, always be known as "The Facebook Movie." Timberlake will play Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster, who was one of Facebook's early advisers and served as its first President.

He'll star alongside Jesse Eisenberg (Zombieland), who will play Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's dorky antisocial CEO, and Andrew Garfield (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus), who will play Eduardo Saverin, another co-founder who had a falling out with Zuckerberg that apparently serves as the central drama of the film.

In other words, Timberlake is at best the third lead. One thing I'll say about Timberlake's film career is that he's never been afraid to be overshadowed. He's taken small supporting roles in pretty much all of his movies, good and bad -- Alpha Dog, The Love Guru, Shrek the Third, Black Snake Moan. Pretty much everything.

Movie Cultists has comparison photos of each actor with their real-life counterpart, and Sean Parker looks like just the kind of smarmy know-it-all that Timberlake could excel at.

The film will be directed by The Curious Case of Benjamin Button's David Fincher, who I consider to be a huge "get" for Sony in what could've easily been a made-for-TV movie. Aaron Sorkin (Charlie Wilson's War) apparently wrote a very smart script, so consider me excited.

Obviously, it won't come out until 2010, but we might be looking at an Oscar contender given the pedigree...or at least a high-quality guilty pleasure.

TAGS: Aaron Sorkin, Andrew Garfield, David Fincher, Facebook Movie, Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake, Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker, The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus, The Social Experiment, The Social Network
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Roger Ebert Weighs in at Toronto

Posted by Michael Dance

Roger Ebert, writing more than ever, has been posting a ton of articles on his blog about his experiences at the currently-in-progress Toronto Film Festival. So what's he had to say?

On Creation, the Charles Darwin movie starring real-life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly:

This will adamantly not be a review of "Creation," which will await its opening. It will be a discussion of some of the thoughts it inspires. I expected the film to be focused on Darwin's theory of the origin of species and the controversy it provoked in mid-19th century, but it is primarily about his domestic life, centering on Down House, Bromley, where he and his wife Emma lived from 1842 until until his death in 1882. There they had ten children, three of whom died young. The film is much concerned with his grief at the loss of Anne (1841-51) who was one of the brightest and most delightful, and whose direct questions perhaps helped embolden him to publish On the Origin of Species in 1859, after a 20-year delay.

On Pedro Almodovar's new film, Broken Embraces:

"Broken Embraces" (Los Abrazos Rotos) is the much-awaited new Pedro Almodóvar collaboration with his recent muse, Penelope Cruz. It's about an old man remembering a woman he loved. Lluis Homar ("Bad Education") plays a director who went blind in an auto accident that killed his love (Cruz), who was his secretary, and who he met as a call girl. Now he works as a successful screenwriter, using touch-typing. One day he's approached by an ambitious young filmmaker named Ray X (Ruben Ochandiano), who he suspects is the son of the evil millionaire he holds responsible for the woman's death.
As always with Almodóvar, it isn't nearly as simple as that. Using interlocking flashbacks, the film reconstructs what actually happened in a combination of overwrought Sirkian melodrama and Hitchcock. The music, indeed, pays homage to Bernard Hermann's work, particularly his score for Hitchcock's "Vertigo," and the film's romantic entanglements pay homage to Almodóvar's own pansexual stories. Cruz is a life force, but Homar's work is the film's engine.

This next film, Enter the Void, I hadn't heard anything about but sounds...icky:

"Enter the Void," by Gasper Noe of France is a nearly unendurable in-depth investigation of a very shallow idea. The camera positions itself close behind the head of a callow youth, jug-eared and crew-cut, as he films with his video camera and then becomes the camera as the remainder of the film is seen from his POV. The hero, an orphaned American, lives with his sister in Tokyo, where she is a nude dancer and possibly a booker, and he is a druggie and possibly a dealer. If they don't practice incest, you could have fooled me...The visuals might have been juicier if [Noe] had known abut fractals. The film includes obligatory genitals of both genders, and one of the voids the POV plunges into is the mess in a stainless steel pan after an abortion.

On Precious:

"Precious," one of the best films of the autumn, is Lee Daniels' story of a physically and mentally abused poor black girl from the ghetto, who summons the inner strength to fight back for her future. It contains two great performances, by Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe, in the title role, and Mo'Nique as her pathetic mother...I think it's a plausible winner of the Audience Award--which is sort of like the grand prize at a festival without any juries or any prizes.

I think Darwin could land some Oscar nominations (possible controversy from creationist Christians can only help), and Precious looks like it could grab Original Screenplay and Supporting Actress (Mo'Nique, who knew?) Almodovar always has a shot at an Original Screenplay nomination as well.

TAGS: Broken Embraces, Darwin, Enter The Void, Jennifer Connelly, On The Origin Of Species, Paul Bettany, Pedro Almodovar, Precious, Push Based On A Novel By Sapphire, Roger Ebert, Toronto Film Festival
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'Up in the Air' Teaser Trailer: Poetic?

Posted by Michael Dance

Slashfilm landed a web-exclusive teaser trailer for the Jason Reitman/George Clooney movie Up in the Air, and it looks surprisingly...poetic:

Combining Clooney's soothing voice with the terrific cinematography just plain works. I think Reitman knows what he's doing. The movie opens December 4th, and I'm looking forward to it a lot now. Do you think it works as well as I do?

TAGS: Anna Kendrick, George Clooney, Jason Reitman, Up In The Air, Vera Farmiga
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All About the Movies

Posted by Michael Dance

AwardsDaily has posted a great rundown article describing the upcoming Oscar fever and listing the major contenders coming up at September's Toronto Film Festival.

When you’re an awards watcher it all becomes about whether the film lives up to its promise or whether it fails and its failure, again, is so subjective — its success such a matter of personal opinion, all at once we are caught up in an endless cycle of the Emperor’s New Clothes. This person doesn’t feel anything. He tells everyone else this. They agree that they didn’t feel anything – ergo, the movie is bad. Vice versa, they are “rocked to their core,” and that enthusiasm is catchy.
Before you know it, a masterpiece is born. But here’s the dirty little secret: nobody ever really knows for sure. Time proves a film’s greatness or lack of, but that’s the one thing we don’t have in the four months of Oscar: time.

A ton of news will come out of Toronto: we'll be getting the first word on possible contenders like The Damned United, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Bright Star, Broken Embraces, Capitalism: A Love Story, An Education, The Informant!, The Road, A Serious Man, and Up in the Air. While a festival like Sundance tends to hype films that subsequently go nowhere, Toronto is different, more tapped into what actual audience responses will be; Juno is one big example of a movie that got kick-started there.

TAGS: A Serious Man, An Education, Bright Star, Broken Embraces, Capitalism A Love Story, Juno, Oscar Season, The Damned United, The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus, The Informant, The Men Who Stare At Goats, The Road, Toronto Film Festival, Up In The Air
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