The Screengrab : bruce springsteen

Academy Awards Show Cuts Best Song Nominee "Down to Earth" Down to 65 Seconds; Peter Gabriel Vows Silent Protest

Phil Nugent — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Tom Hanks once confided that, while watching the big musical production numbers is often the lamest part of the Academy Awards telecast, "when you see them live, they look kind of cool." As with so much else in life, we'll have to take Tom Hanks's word for it. Unfortunately for those in the audience at this year's Oscars show, the musical component of this year's event started out downsized and is getting smaller by the minute. In previous years, the people in charge of picking out five "original songs" to nominate for that treasured category have rolled up their sleeves and worked with what God gave them, forcing the people onstage to read out words that were never meant to fgo together, such as "Love Theme from The Towering Inferno." (It's also because of the Best Original Song category that such movies as The Karate Kid, Part II, Yes, Giorgio, Mannequin, and Whiffs can truthfully claim to have been Oscar nominees and so may well turn up on Turner Classic Movies during their annual "Thirty Days of Oscar" celebration, while Robert Osborne smiles into the camera and wishes he were dead.) This year, though, the category consists only of three nominees. There's a precedent for this: it happened in 1988 (when Carly Simon's theme song for Working Girls beat out a Phil Collins tune from the Phil Collins movie--you see what I mean about words that were never meant to go together?--Buster and something from Bagdad Cafe), and again in 2005, when the relative lack of competition turned out to be windfall for those musical craftsmen Three 6 Mafia. (They won for their contribution to the soundtrack of Hustle & Flow, "It's Hard Out There for a Pimp", a sentiment calculated to get Hollywood agents and studio chiefs standing on their chairs screaming, "Can I get an amen?") But this year, the three songs were selected from a grand total of two movies: Slumdog Millionaire and WALL-E. This in spite of the fact that anyone who's been to the movies more than a couple of times in the past few months has had Bruce Springsteen's song from The Wrestler imprinted permanently in their brains, even if they haven't seen the movie. Now comes word that Peter Gabriel, whose WALL-E theme "Down to Earth" has already won a Grammy for Best Song from a Motion Picture, has pulled out of the ceremony to protest the decision that he would only be allowed to perform a brief snippet of the song as part of a medley. Gabriel will be in the audience in case he wins; "I’m an old fart," he says, "and it’s not going to do me any harm to make a little protest. But the ceremony will be fun and I’m looking forward to it." So anyone who volunteers to take his place and perform part of the song on stage will do so knowing that the composer is staring at him trying to kill him with hate rays.

Gabriel, who discusses his gripes with the Academy in a video posted at his website, co-wrote "Down to Earth" with Thomas Newman, the son of the legendary film composer Alfred Newman. (He and Randy Newman are cousins.) It's the first Oscar nomination of Gabriel's career, though he has composed three well-regarded original film scores, for Birdy, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Rabbit-Proof Fence. And he has a special place in Oscar history for his appearance at the 1998 awards, where he sang Randy Newman's theme song for Babe: Pig in the City. Some of us have never fully recovered from seeing the smartly dressed and coiffed Gabriel, his eyes damp with emotion, pour all his soulful reverence into a love song to a pig that featured the refrain, "That'll do, babe, that'll do." (It crowded out the space in my head that I'd been using to store Bonnie Raitt's bluesy cover of the mama elephant's song from Dumbo.) There is speculation that this move will leave the evening bereft of music-scene stars, especially since the big draw related to the Slumdog numbers is M.I.A., may still be recovering from the rigors of giving birth when Oscar night rolls around. On the other hand, anyone who saw the very pregnant young thing a-wigglin' and a-jigglin' at the Grammys show a week ago knows that she is a trouper. But does she do inspirational barnyard love ballads?

Screengrab Predicts The Oscars: Winners (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:30:00 GMT

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

"Down to Earth" from Wall-E – Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman (music), Peter Gabriel (lyrics)
"Jai Ho" from Slumdog Millionaire – A. R. Rahman (music), Gulzar (lyrics)
"O Saya" from Slumdog Millionaire – A. R. Rahman and M.I.A.

Paul Clark Predicts: "Jai Ho"

Some might be predicting vote-splitting among the two Slumdog nominees, but I’d say the dance number clinches it for the song, giving it a level of goodwill with audiences it doesn’t necessarily deserve.

Andrew Osborne Predicts: "Down to Earth"

What the hell is going on with this category? What do they actually base this nomination on? Why does the Academy consider the unmemorable “Down To Earth” better than that unmemorable Bruce Springsteen song from The Wrestler? MSNBC.com has some theories...but as for my prediction, I’m assuming the two Slumdog songs cancel each other out, leaving Wall-E with the prize.

Nick Schager Predicts: "Jai Ho"

Scott Von Doviak Predicts: "Down to Earth"

SCREENGRAB CONSENSUS: NO CONSENSUS!

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

And the nominees are...

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – Alexandre Desplat
Defiance – James Newton Howard
Milk – Danny Elfman
Slumdog Millionaire – A.R. Rahman
Wall-E – Thomas Newman

Paul Clark Predicts: Thomas Newman

Newman’s been nominated ten times so far without winning (take that, Kate Winslet!), and his Wall-E score is one of his finest yet. Of its strongest competitors, Slumdog will have to settle for a win for Best Song, and Button’s Alexandre Desplat will have plenty of other chances to win.

Andrew Osborne Predicts: Alexandre Desplat

There are categories people have strong opinions about. This is not one of those categories. As such, I’m just marking down Benjamin Button, in the same way I suspect many Academy voters (or their assistants) will. Plus, the funny name rule applies again, because the nominated composer is Alexandre Desplat and I just like saying “Desplat.”

Nick Schager and Sarah Clyne Sundberg Predict: A.R. Rahman

Scott Von Doviak Predicts: Danny Elfman

I don't know why The Dark Knight isn't nominated in this category. That's a tremendously exciting score. I could clean my apartment in about twelve minutes with that music playing.

SCREENGRAB CONSENSUS: A.R. RAHMAN, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

And the nominees are...

Revanche (Austria) in German - Götz Spielmann
The Class (France) in French - Laurent Cantet
The Baader Meinhof Complex (Germany) in German
Departures (Japan) in Japanese
Waltz with Bashir (Israel) in Hebrew - Ari Folman

Paul Clark Predicts: Waltz With Bashir

With no dramedies about cranky geriatrics or Holocaust epics in the mix, the voters will have to get creative. This is the highest-profile of the bunch, and the one that seems most like the health food they generally go for in this category.

Andrew Osborne Predicts: The Class

I’m not up on my foreign films this year, though I’ve heard a lot of swoony buzz on The Class. But riddle me this: if Waltz With Bashir is good enough for a nomination here, out of all the world’s films, how come it wasn’t good enough to compete with Bolt and Kung Fu Panda in the Animated Feature category?

Leonard Pierce Predicts: Waltz With Bashir

The Baader Meinhof Complex is far too controversial to take an Oscar back to Germany. It’s likely to come down to a battle between The Class, which has crowd-pleasing, voter-appealing qualities, and the overrated Waltz with Bashir, which is gimmicky and thin but has a sort of immediacy that voters are prone to like. I’m guessing the voters will make the wrong choice in this case.

Should Win: The Class
Will Win: Waltz with Bashir

Nick Shager Predicts: Waltz With Bashir

Sarah Clyne Sundberg Predicts: Waltz With Bashir

Because it's done for documentary film what Maus and Persepolis the book did for memoirs. Also it could hardly have come at a better (or worse, depending on how you look at it) time in terms of current events in Israel.

Scott Von Doviak Predicts: Waltz With Bashir

SCREENGRAB CONSENSUS: WALTZ WITH BASHIR

Stay tuned for a bunch of editors, make-up artists and writers nobody cares about while all the cool kids go out for a cigarette break as the Screengrab 2009 Oscar Special continues!

Contributors: Paul Clark, Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Nick Schager, Sarah Clyne Sundberg, Scott Von Doviak

Thursday Poll for January 29, 2009

Paul Clark — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:00:00 GMT

With Oscar nominations, there of course comes the second-guessing. While many of our favorites made the cut this year, it seems like just as many got the shaft. But which was most egregiously snubbed? In a shocking turn of events, the Best Picture omission of fanboy favorite The Dark Knight was narrowly edged out by Academy voters’ lack of love for Happy-Go-Lucky’s persistently positive Poppy, Sally Hawkins. Hawkins’ non-nomination brought in 37% of the vote (compared to Dark Knight’s 32%), and prompted Steve C. to ask how the Academy could honor the screenplay for Mike Leigh’s film but not Hawkins herself. Astute question, Steve, and I’d add that it’s doubly odd considering that, this being a Mike Leigh film, Hawkins would no doubt have had a good amount of input on the screenplay, given his methods. Coming in third and fourth place, respectively, were Clint Eastwood’s growly star turn in Gran Torino and The Boss' title track from The Wrestler. Finally, only 5% of the voters found Woody Allen’s inability to procure a fifteenth Best Original Screenplay nomination for Vicky Cristina Barcelona to be the Academy’s biggest oversight this year. I guess that makes sense, since after all, it’s not like he’ll show up for the ceremony anyway…

Moving on to the movies that were nominated, I find myself surprisingly unmoved by this year’s crop of Best Picture nominees. Maybe it’s just that we’re coming off a year in which not only did I actually like all five nominated movies, but I thought that two of them- including the eventual winner- were out-and-out masterpieces. This year, on the other hand… yeesh. Of the five nominees, I can only claim to have liked two of them, and I wasn’t even all that keen on those. How about you? How many of this year’s Best Picture nominees did you like?

(In case you’ve forgotten, and I wouldn’t blame you if you have, the Best Picture nominees are: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, and Slumdog Millionaire)

How many of this year's Best Picture nominations did you LIKE? | BuzzDash polls

Bonus poll: much has been made of how this year’s Best Picture nominees are the least box-office-friendly in years, with only one having played in more than 1,000 prior to nomination day. So, just for curiosity’s sake, how many of this year’s Best Picture nominees have you seen?

How many of this year's Best Picture nominations have you SEEN? | BuzzDash polls

As always, the comments section is open. Please keep death threats addressed to non-Dark Knight nominating Academy members to a minimum. See you next week!

Trailer Review: The Wrestler

Paul Clark — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:00:00 GMT

When I first heard about Darren Aronofsky’s latest, it sounded like an odd mix of director and subject material, though the casting of Mickey Rourke in the title role had me intrigued. But the buzz from the fall festival circuit (it took the top prize in Venice) was pretty deafening, so I’ve been eager to get a peek of it myself. And this trailer certainly doesn’t disappoint. Following the disappointing reception for his dream project The Fountain a few years back, it looks like Aronofsky has adopted a more low-key style for this project, with emphasis on character study and the working-class milieu (dig the Springsteen song) over visual pyrotechnics. But what has me most excited is Rourke, who was a fine actor who lost his way for some time there, but has worked his way back with impressive work in films like The Pledge and Sin City before landing this plum of a leading role. Will the Academy take notice? Let the entertainment rags worry about that. It’s just nice to have the big lug back.

Yesterday's Hits: Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991, Kevin Reynolds)

Paul Clark — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:00:00 GMT

What made Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves a hit?: As with other oft-filmed tales like Dracula and The Three Musketeers, every era seems to get the Robin Hood it deserves. The silent era got Douglas Fairbanks, in a role that highlighted his formidable athleticism. In the 1930s came The Adventures of Robin Hood (still the version to beat), in which Errol Flynn turned the classic hero into a dashing rogue. The elegiac seventies brought Robin and Marian, which starred Sean Connery as an older and somewhat sadder version of the character. And by the early 1990s, Robin had morphed into the sensitive-hunk archetype that was in vogue at the time, played by one of its biggest stars, Kevin Costner.

In addition to making adjustments to the title character to suit the era, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves also added some politically correct touches, including making Marian more fierce and less of a damsel, as well as keeping with the recent tendency to include a Moorish character in Robin’s Merry Men. Likewise, director Kevin Reynolds was able to juice up the action scenes using then-advanced special effects, including the famous shot in which the camera mimics the point of view of an arrow shot from Robin’s bow. And a full-out marketing blitz ensured that the film appealed to a wide audience, from kids who might be experiencing the story onscreen for the first time to adults who grew up on the older versions but were curious to see a new take on the tale. The strategy worked, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves became the second-highest-grossing blockbuster of 1991, bringing in $160 million in the United States alone and another $225 million internationally.

What happened?: Audiences flocked to Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, but even on its original release, the movie was plagued by a good amount of negative buzz. For one thing, there was the issue of Kevin Costner’s accent- he begins the film attempting a British accent, but within the first reel it disappears altogether, and neither of these solutions proved especially pleasing to audiences. But a bigger problem was that the film was more violent than its advertising had led audiences to believe. Warner Bros. had pre-sold the film to the family audience with such promotions as children’s toys and a breakfast cereal that was heavily advertised during Saturday morning cartoons. But when parents took their kids to the film, they were faced by such scenes as a man’s hand being severed, a number of people getting burned alive, the possible hanging of a young boy, and the attempted rape of Marian by the Sheriff of Nottingham. Both of these factors, combined with the film’s middling critical reception, helped the keep the film from enduring in the public’s esteem.

Does Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves still work?: Not very well. There’s a popular adage that a blockbuster is only as good as its villain, but Prince of Thieves put that wisdom to the test. This isn’t to say that Alan Rickman isn’t a blast as the Sheriff of Nottingham. But while Rickman- who was given more or less full creative control of the character as a condition of taking the part- makes a sneering, perfectly odious bad guy, he’s so committed to making Nottingham evil that he ends up overwhelming the story. A little of Rickman’s Nottingham goes a long way, but Reynolds structures the story like a cross-cutting tennis match, volleying scenes back and forth between Robin Hood’s antics and Nottingham’s over-the-top reactions to them.

Not helping matters is Costner’s performance, in which his accent issues were the least of his troubles. More damaging is Costner’s laid-back persona, which makes Robin Hood feel something less than heroic despite his good lucks and gift with a bow. In his salad days, Costner’s appeal was that he felt like a working-class everyguy, like a character from a Bruce Springsteen song personified. But when called upon to play a leader of men, Costner doesn’t have what it takes. This quality also makes it difficult to buy Robin’s past as a spoiled rich kid, which is mentioned at several occasions in the film. Perhaps Mel Gibson, who turned down the role before Costner signed on, could have pulled off the character as written, while making him more charismatic and entertaining besides.

But then, entertainment value is in relatively short supply in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The high spirits one normally associates with Robin Hood is largely absent from this telling of the story, replaced by- well, not much of anything. The Merry Men aren’t merry enough, Will Scarlet (Christian Slater) is too bogged down with a secret resentment for Robin Hood to function as a full-fledged character, and Marian (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) has no chemistry whatsoever with Robin, thereby making their romantic subplot less inevitable than obligatory. Practically the only good guy who makes much of an impression is Azeem (Morgan Freeman), the Moor who bound himself to Robin after Robin saved his life. And the battle sequences, ambitious and violent as they are, are neither exciting nor especially clever. In short, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves isn’t much fun. And really, shouldn’t a Robin Hood movie at least be fun?