Reeling

National Board of Review announces its 2009 winners

Up in the Air has been named Best Picture of the Year by the National Board Review. Founded in 1909, the group of film critics and historians is the oldest in the U.S. and is often dismissed for its supposedly safe and stodgy choices. But its last two Best Picture winners, No Country For Old Men and Slumdog Millionaire, have gone on to win big at the Oscars, too. And they put Star Trek on their list of the year's ten best, so maybe they are getting a little hipper.

Up in the Air's George Clooney shared the Best Actor award with Morgan Freeman, who plays Nelson Mandela in Invictus. Up in the Air also won the Best Supporting Actress (for Anna Kendrick) and Best Adapted Screenplay, for Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner.

The Best Director prize went to Invictus' Clint Eastwood. An Education's Carey Mulligan was named Best Actress. Other noteworthy winners: The Cove (Best Documentary), A Serious Man (Best Original Screenplay) and Best Foreign Language Film (A Prophet).

Notable omissions: The Road, Nine and The Lovely Bones, all of which are being pushed heavily for Oscar consideration.

The NBR awards will be handed out Jan. 12. With Golden Globe nominatins due on Dec. 15, the Oscar season has officially begun.Here is the complete list of NBR winners. They give out a lot of awards:

Best Film: Up in the Air
Best Director: Clint Eastwood, Invictus
Best Actor(s): George Clooney (Up in the Air) and Morgan Freeman (Invictus)

Best Actress: Carey Mulligan (An Education)
Best Supporting Actor: Woody Harrelson (The Messenger)
Best Supporting Actress: Anna Kendrick (Up In The Air)
Best Foreign Language Film: A Prophet
Best Documentary: The Cove
Best Animated Feature: Up
Best Ensemble Cast: It's Complicated
Breakthrough Performance by an Actor: Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker
Breakthrough Performance by an Actress: Gabourey Sibide, Precious

Spotlight Award for Best Directorial Debut:
Duncan Jones, Moon
Oren Moverman, The Messenger
Marc Webb, (500) Days of Summer

Best Original Screenplay: Joel and Ethan Coen, A Serious Man
Best Adapted Screenplay: Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, Up In The Air
Special Filmmaking Achievement Award: Wes Anderson, The Fantastic Mr. Fox

The National Board of Review's Ten Best Films of 2009 (in alphabetical order):

An Education
(500) Days of Summer
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Invictus
The Messenger
A Serious Man
Star Trek
Up
Where the Wild Things Are

Those Oscar betting pools just got a little more interesting

 The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has announced next year's Oscars will have ten - count 'em, ten - Best Picture nominees instead of the traditional five.

The number of Best Picture contenders used to vary from year to year in the Oscars' early days. For example, there were 12 nominees in 1934 and 1935.

Academy President Sid Gannis said that "having 10 Best Picture nominees is going to allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize.”

  In other words, popular movies like The Dark Knight, which many people felt should have been a Best Picture contender, will no longer be shut out of the race. That will hopefully translate into higher ratings for the Oscar telecast, which airs March 7 next year.

Oscar Poll: Best Supporting Actor

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"Slumdog Millionaire" wins at DGA awards

Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle took home the big prize at last night's Directors Guild of America awards, the latest step in that movie's road to a big Oscar night showing.

Since 1948, when the group gave out its first awards, only 13 films have not gone on to snag the Best Picture Oscar after winning the DGA prize.

Here's the complete list of the evening's winners. It's great to see HBO's The Wire getting some recognition, something the bone-headed Emmy voters never managed to do.

Feature Film
Danny Boyle
Slumdog Millionaire

Movies for TV/Miniseries
Jay Roach
Recount

Documentary
Ari Folman
Waltz With Bashir

Dramatic Series (Night)
Dan Attais
The Wire

Musical Variety
Brent (Bucky) Gunts
Opening Ceremony
Beijing 2008 Olympic Summer Games

Comedy Series
Paul Feig
The Office, ''Dinner Party"

Reality Series
Tony Croll
America's Next Top Model, "1002"

Daytime Serials
Larry Carpenter
One Life to Live, Episode #10,281: "So You Think You Can Be Shane Morasco's Father?"

Children's Programs
Amy Schatz
Classical Baby (I'm Grown Up Now), ''The Poetry Show''

Commercials
Peter Thwaites
Production Company: Gorgeous Enterprises

Before and after

Spotted at Jeffrey Wells' site (a daily read for me):

 

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Oscar poll: Best Supporting Actress

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One step closer to Oscar glory

Last night's 15th annual Screen Actors Guild awards confirmed what everyone suspected: Sean Penn, Heath Ledger and Kate Winslet are practically locks to win in their respective categories when this year's Oscars are handed out Feb. 22. Slumdog Millionaire's win in the Best Ensemble category also translates into a likely victory in the Best Picture competition.

The only category that remains too close to call is Best Supporting Actress since last night's winner in that category (Winslet) is in the running for the Best Actress Oscar. Right now, I'm leaning towards Vicky Cristina Barcelona's Penelope Cruz, although Viola Davis makes an indelible impression in Doubt with only one scene, and Academy members obviously loved the movie, considering how many nominations it received.

So I don't know what to think, other than it's time for another Oscar poll!

Oscar poll: Best Picture

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Analysis of this morning's Oscar nominations: Surprises, snubs and oddities

For every thing today's Oscar nominations got right - chief among them the two nods for Frozen River's Melissa Leo (Best Actress) and Courtney Hunt (Best Original Screenplay) - there were at least two things the voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences got wrong.

How, for example, could The Curious Case of Benjamin Button score a whopping 13 nominations (just one short of the record shared by Titanic and All About Eve) but not include Cate Blanchett, whose performance in the film was arguably more important to the drama than Brad Pitt's leading turn?

The wildly popular The Dark Knight, a movie that audiences and critics agreed transcended the comic-book genre and attained the stature of dramatic art, snagged eight nominations, including the anticipated Best Supporting Actor nod for the late Heath Ledger, whose performance as the villainous Joker is one for the ages.

But the rest of The Dark Knight's nominations were in technical categories: No Best Picture, Director or Screenplay recognition. The same went for Pixar's magnificent Wall*E, the guaranteed winner of the Best Animated Feature award, which at least managed to snag a Best Original Screenplay nod among its six nominations.

But Wall*E, too, was shut out of the Best Picture and Director races, replaced instead by Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon and Stephen Daldry's The Reader, two middling, Oscar-baiting dramas that landed five nominations apiece - and were driven primarily by Hollywood's desire to congratulate itself on making serious, "important" movies.

Richard Jenkins' Best Actor nomination for The Visitor was, like the Frozen River recognitions, a testament that Oscar voters are still willing to pay attention to small pictures made outside the behemoth studio machinery. But Jenkins' well-deserved nod knocked out of the race Clint Eastwood, whose swan song performance in Gran Torino deserved to have been commemorated by the Academy.

Gran Torino was completely shut out of the Oscars, although the Eastwood-directed Changeling fared better, scoring three nominations including Best Actress for Angelina Jolie and an Art Direction nod for its superb 1920s period setting.

Eastwood's acting snub was one of the biggest disappointments of the morning's announcements, although it was soothed by the inclusion of The Wrestler's Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei in the Best Actor and Supporting Actress races. Rourke is the only one who stands a real chance of derailing Milk star Sean Penn's Best Actor chances: Theirs will be one of this year's most exciting competitions, although if Frost/Nixon's Frank Langella swoops in to steal it, I'm chucking my TV set out the window in protest.

Slumdog Millionaire's 10 nominations should help keep that movie chugging along on its path to mainstream-hit status. The film is also, at this moment, apparently the movie to beat for Best Picture. But how to explain the two Best Song nominations it received (for Jai Ho and O Saya), while Bruce Springsteen's moody, melancholy tune for The Wrestler got nada? 

Other surprising and/or bewildering Oscar calls: Revolutionary Road's Michael Shannon was duly recognized for his electrifying performance in that film with a Best Supporting Actor nomination, but Kate Winslet's turn in the film as a frustrated housewife - easily the best work she's done to date - was ignored in favor of her more conventional turn in The Reader.

Rachel Getting Married's Anne Hathaway received a Best Actress nomination for her portrayal of a recovering addict wreaking havoc on her sister's wedding, but hers was the sole nomination in a film that was carried by an ensemble. Same went with Vicky Cristina Barcelona, whose Penelope Cruz got a Supporting Actress nod, but deserving co-stars Javier Bardem and Rebecca Hall got zilch.

At least everyone in Doubt received a nomination for their performance, including Supporting Actress contender Viola Davis, who grabbed Oscar's attention by appearing in just one scene, and Best Actress nominee Meryl Streep, who extended her lead as the most nominated actor in Oscar history with 15 in the bank (Katharine Hepburn and Jack Nicholson trail her with 12 apiece).

Perhaps the most surprising nomination of the day was the Best Supporting Actor mention for Tropic Thunder's Robert Downey Jr.  Although his performance in the film as a Method actor who alters his skin pigmentation in order to play a black man was admittedly brilliant, it isn't the kind of thing the Oscars usually pay attention to. Downey's success in Iron Man probably played a big part in bringing him the nomination, since between the two movies, the actor cemented his Hollywood comeback in a major way.

But Iron Man was a comic-book movie, so Academy members opted to celebrate Tropic Thunder instead, because we know how Oscar voters feel about superheroes. Just ask the makers of The Dark Knight.

Here's the complete list of Oscar nominees

Here's a list of the nominees in the major categories of the 81st Academy Awards, to be handed out Feb. 22.

I'll have more thoughts after I've had some coffee, but some early reactions:

- Benjamin Button leads the pack with 13 nominations, followed by Slumdog Millionaire with 10 nods

- Bummed that The Dark Knight and Wall-E both got shut out of Best Picture and Best Director

- Very happy to see Frozen River's Melissa Leo and Courtney Hunt got some well-deserved attention

- Psyched that both Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei were recognized for The Wrestler

- Strange that Kate Winslet's clearly superior performance in Revolutionary Road was snubbed in favor of her fine but lesser work in The Reader

- Annoyed that the overrated Frost/Nixon received five nominations

- Sad that Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino got completely shut out, although at least Changeling got some love

Best Picture

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Frost/Nixon

Milk

The Reader

Slumdog Millionaire

 

Best Actor

Richard Jenkins, The Visitor

Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon

Sean Penn, Milk

Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

 

Best Actress

Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married

Angelina Jolie, Changeling

Melissa Leo, Frozen River

Meryl Streep, Doubt

Kate Winslet, The Reader

 

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Adams, Doubt

Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Viola Davis, Doubt

Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler

 

Best Supporting Actor

Josh Brolin, Milk

Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt

Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight

Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road

 

Best Director

David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon

Gus Van Sant, Milk

Stephen Daldry, The Reader

Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire

 

Best Original Screenplay

Courtney Hunt, Frozen River

Mike Leigh, Happy Go Lucky

Martin McDonagh, In Bruges

Dustin Lance Blank, Milk

Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, Pete Docter, Wall-E

 

Best Adapted Screenplay

Eric Roth, Robin Swicord, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

John Patrick Shanley, Doubt

Peter Morgan, Frost/Nixon

David Hare, The Reader

Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire

 

Best Foreign Language Film

The Baader Meinhof Complex (Germany)

The Class (France)

Departures (Japan)

Revanche (Austria)

Waltz With Bashir (Israel)

 

Best Animated Film

Bolt

Kung Fu Panda

Wall-E

 

Best Cinematography

Changeling

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Dark Knight

The Reader

Slumdog Millionaire

 

Best Editing

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Dark Knight

Frost/Nixon

Milk

Slumdog Millionaire

 

Best Art Direction

Changeling

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Dark Knight

The Duchess

Revolutionary Road

 

Best Documentary Feature

The Betrayal

Encounters at the End of the World

The Garden

Man on Wire

Trouble the Water

 

Best score

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Defiance

Milk

Slumdog Millionaire

Wall-E

 

Best song

Down to Earth, Wall-E

Jai Ho, Slumdog Millionaire

O Saya, Slumdog Millionaire

 

Best Makeup

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Dark Knight

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

 

Best Sound Editing

The Dark Knight

Iron Man

Slumdog Millionaire

Wall-E

Wanted

Best Sound Mixing

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Dark Knight

Slumdog Millionaire

Wall-E

Wanted

 

Best Visual Effects

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Dark Knight

Iron Man

 

Best Costume Design

Australia

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Duchess

Milk

Revolutionary Road

Foreign-language film Oscar contenders - the short list

  The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has narrowed down the pack of foreign-language films competing for an Oscar nomination to the short list below. The nominees (and eventual winner) will come out of this bunch:

- 3 Monkeys (Turkey)

- The Baader Meinhof Complex (Germany)

- The Class (France)

- Departures (Japan)

- Everlasting Moments (Sweden)

- The Necessities of Life (Canada)

- Revanche (Austria)

- Tear This Heart Out (Mexico)

- Waltz with Bashir (Israel)

I haven't seen any of these, although I'm finally going to get to see Waltz with Bashir, which looks fantastic, Friday morning. In case you're wondering, Let the Right One In wasn't eligible for this year's competition. It'll be in the running in 2010, as long as Norway Sweden submits it as their official Oscar entry.

Oscar feud!

According to this story posted at The Daily Beast, the always-outspoken Mickey Rourke is seizing every opportunity to trash-talk next year's Best Actor Oscar favorite Sean Penn.

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Gerald Posner reports that during his appearance on the David Letterman show on Dec. 23, Rourke told someone backstage he was surprised about Penn being the early favorite, since "I'm not even sure he'll get a nomination."

Posner also claims a Hollywood executive showed him the following text message, presumably sent by Rourke:

"Look seans an old friend of mine and i didnt buy his performance at all—thought he did an average pretend acting like he was gay besides hes one of the most homophobic people i kno" [sic]

Regardless of whether any of this is true, the damage has been done. Rourke gives a fantastic performance in The Wrestler, but no one is going to keep Penn from winning that statuette (although I'd love to see it go to this guy).

The only thing Rourke may have accomplished with his unsportsmanlike candidness is ruined his chance at a nomination. The Best Actor field is extremely crowded this year, and the nomination ballots just happened to have gone out this week. Keep a lookout for a retraction/denial from the Rourke camp in three ... two ... one ...

Hugh Jackman to host next year's Oscars

Wolverine himself will preside over the 81st annual Academy Awards on Feb. 22, 2009. I'm disappointed Ricky Gervais, who was once rumored to be in the running, didn't get the gig.

Viewing log (catch-up edition)

I'm like two weeks behind and have forgotten when I saw what, so I'm just gonna list all the movies I've watched since the last log entry. Busybusybusy.

Che (2008)

Gran Torino (2008)

Europa (1991)

*Romeo is Bleeding (1993): I love this movie.

The Furies (1950)

Pale Rider (1985)

* Mamma Mia (2008): For DVD review purposes only. I swear.

White Dog (1982): Sam Fuller was a crazy bad-ass.

* Heartbreak Ridge (1986): Thematic precursor to Gran Torino.

* The Shawshank Redemption (1994): I still don't get why people love this movie so much.

* Blue Velvet (1986)

The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)

* Wall*E (2008)

Revolutionary Road (2008): Like watching your parents fight for two hours. If your parents looked like Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)

*Gran Torino (2008): Even better the second time around.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008): Best movie of the year.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008): First hour is OK, if a bit Forrest Gump-ish. But the second hour and 40 minutes: Whoa. David Fincher can make grown men cry.

Valkyrie (2008)

Fearless Oscar prediction: Best Actor

Clint Eastwood already has four Oscars on his mantle, but none of them are for acting. That will change next year, when he wins the Best Actor prize for his performance in Gran Torino as a racist, prickly misanthrope who begrudgingly befriends the Hmong family that moves in next door.

Eastwood also directed the film, and it's a terrific piece of work, done in his reliably slow, steady and utterly absorbing style. But it is his performance as the perpetually cranky Walt Kowalski that is the picture's main draw.

The character is, in essence, a career summation of all the iconic, world-weary men Eastwood has played, from Dirty Harry to William Munny. Gran Torino is a drama, but it's often extremely funny, just because it's Eastwood in the role. I know the Golden Globes didn't show him much love this morning, but I can't imagine Academy members not giving Eastwood serious consideration.

Gran Torino opens in South Florida on Christmas Day. I was supposed to talk to Eastwood via telephone on Tuesday, but he postponed due to laryngitis. The interview is now tentatively scheduled to take place some time tomorrow. Over the next 48-72 hours, I'll also be talking to David Fincher, Tom Cruise, Bryan Singer and Gabriele Muccino by phone. End of the year crunch time.

Hailing the Oscar-winning "Taxi"

Taxi to the Dark Side, which upset Sicko and No End in Sight to win the Best Documentary Oscar last night, will air on HBO this fall. ThinkFilm had released the film to a handful of theaters last year, but South Florida didn't get it.