The Screengrab : golden globes

Morning Deal Report: Golden Globe Nominees Announced, NY Critics Sound Off

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Frost/Nixon and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button lead the way with five nominations each, as the Golden Globe nominees were announced this morning. Both were nominated for Best Drama, along with The Reader, Revolutionary Road and Slumdog Millionaire. Meryl Streep is nominated for both Doubt and Mamma Mia, matched by Kate Winslet for The Reader and Revolutionary Road. Other acting nominees include Sean Penn for Milk, Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler and Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight – the sole Bat-nomination. Check out the full roster here.

The New York Film Critics Circle drank up Milk, naming it the best movie of the year and honoring Penn and Josh Brolin for their performances. Happy-Go-Lucky earned kudos for director Mike Leigh and star Sally Hawkins. Penelope Cruz took Supporting Actress honors for Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Here's the full list.

“Ben Stiller is set to replace Mark Ruffalo in Greenburg, a comedy-drama Noah Baumbach is writing and directing,” per The Hollywood Reporter. Ruffalo dropped out after the shooting death of his brother last week. Greenburg “is expected to center on the intimacies of relationships in the manner of Baumbach's other films,” if that helps.

Related:
Globes Without Glitter
Auto-Baumbach-graphies

LA Critics Go Wacky for WALL-E

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Certainly no one will be confusing the Los Angeles Film Critics Association with the Golden Globes this morning. The LA crit pick for best picture of the year is the little-known arthouse curiosity WALL-E, with the vaguely Scandinavian-sounding The Dark Knight as runner-up. When will these artsy-fartsy dweebs in their berets and monocles figure out that they’re simply out of touch with the movie-loving public?

Perhaps you sense sarcasm. It’s true, I am tweaking my West Coast brethren a bit for picking two of the year’s most popular movies – but I should state for the record that both WALL-E and The Dark Knight are still in the mix for my own Top 10 list, so I’m not really complaining that much about their choices. If this is truly the consensus of the group, then let it be; there’s no rule that says critics can’t prefer mainstream fare to more adventurous, innovative or difficult material, particularly if the latter was in short supply this year. But I do have suspicions. Suspicions that critics, who are losing jobs by the bushel as newspapers bleed red ink, may be playing it a little safe, lest they be deemed completely irrelevant sooner than later. Not all critics, certainly – but you would expect the ones who live at show biz ground zero to be particularly susceptible to such fears. It’s no big deal, maybe, but it is sobering to recall that it was this same group that bestowed Best Picture honors on Brazil based on an unauthorized outlaw screening, and perhaps saved it from being released in butchered form or not at all. What exactly are they doing for WALL-E and The Dark Knight? What undiscovered audience are they serving?

On the other coast, the Washington DC critics have weighed in, bestowing their top honors upon Slumdog Millionaire. The Broadcast Film Critics have announced their nominations; among the ten movies contending for Best Picture are the abovementioned lonely robot and grim vigilante, along with Milk, Doubt and The Wrestler, among others. The full lists of all the awards and critics prizes announced so far can be found at Movie City News.

Related:
Roger Ebert: The Death of the Film Critic is the Death of Society
Ever-Mysterious National Board of Review's Year-End Awards

No, But I've Seen The Movie: MADAME BOVARY

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:00:00 GMT

For a book that's often referred to as one of the all-time great unfilmable novels, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary has a long and storied history on the screen. It's been adapted for the cinema no less than six times, and an additional five adaptations for the small screen. The most well-received version, however, is Claude Chabrol's 1991 adapatation. It was widely praised at the Moscow International Film Festival when it debuted; it got Chabrol his first-ever Golden Globe nomination; and it was especially beloved in France — and who better to judge the success of an adaptation of one of France's greatest novels by one of France's greatest filmmakers than the French? Then again, there's always the counter-example of Jerry Lewis to argue against their taste as a nation. It's understandable why so many moviemakers have been drawn to the story of Emma Bovary; she's one of the most fully fleshed-out characters in all of fiction, entirely believable and completely three-dimensional. Her flaws run as deep as any character in modern literature, and her personality is as recognizable today as it was when the book was published in 1857. However, it's also understandable why so many adaptations of the book go astray; Flaubert's greatest strength as a writer was not his ability to draw deep and true psychological portraits — though that was an ability of his rivaled perhaps only by Dostoevski, his true power lay in his ability to realize those portraits in cool, elegant prose unparalleled by his peers. Due to the essential difference between the media of film and literature, much of that prose, and the incomparably refined descriptions and turns of phrase that made Flaubert's work so compelling, are inevitably lost in a filmed retelling. But in Claude Chabrol, Madame Bovary found perhaps the one director who truly shared the novelist's style and sensibility. Did he deliver a film worthy of the novel? Or was it just another misstep?

WHAT IT HAD: That rarest of things, a director sympatico with the novelist. Claude Chabrol is a holdover from the first sparks of the French New Wave, but he's developed into a filmmaker with a very unique style and signature. He's often called the French Hitchcock, a lazy shorthand that's unfair to both men — his early suspense films have given way to extremely deep and adept dramas later in life. He's also exceptionally skilled at portraying female characters, especially ones who are sympathetic despite very profound moral flaws, a perfect description of Emma Bovary. The set and costume design in the adaptation are flawless (Corinne Jorry was nominated for an Oscar for the latter), and Isabelle Huppert plays the role to chilly perfection. Her performances suggests depths that the novel reveals in full.

WHAT IT LACKED: It takes an actress of Huppert's skill to suggest those depths, and not everyone in Chabrol's Madame Bovary has that level of skill. Jean Yanne, in particular, isn't quite up to the demanding task of playing M. Homais, and other members of the supporting cast attempt to suggest with noise what Huppert conjures with silence. Elsewhere, silence works against the movie: since Chabrol cannot tell, he must show, and at times, this is tremendously effective, but at other times it can slow the movie to a tedious crawl. Where Flaubert can stun with perfect description and narrative, Chabrol must hope that the image alone can overwhelm until the next progress of plot. This gambit (which, to be fair, is no fault of Chabrol's) succeeds when Huppert is front and center and fails when she's not.

DID IT SUCCEED?: For the most part, yes — albeit for entirely different reasons than the book succeeded. Madame Bovary is a pretty perfect example of why great novels are extremely difficult to transfer to great films, but Chabrol manages to make at least a very good film by sidestepping most of the requirements for making a straight-up adaptation of the book. Where the film doesn't work, it's because it is simply impossible to convey some of the complex ideas in Flaubert's prose through the medium of film, and where it succeeds, it succeeds because of his skill as a filmmaker. Chabrol's Madame Bovary plays far more to his strengths than to Flaubert's, but where the two interweave — specifically in the portrayal of strong, difficult, women morally uprooted by circumstance — the overlap makes for a fine film.

Suppose They Gave An Oscars And Nobody Came

Leonard Pierce — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:30:00 GMT

The Golden Globe Awards have come and gone with barely a whisper, except from depressingly enthusiastic media journalists who were falling all over themselves with excitement at the prospect of being on TV. But, to be fair, the Golden Globes have always been kind of a dud, occupying a nebulous funnel of quasi-respectability somewhere in between the Emmys and the Peoples' Choice Awards. The big question on everyone's lips, with the Writer's Guild of America strike entering its third month, is: will the Oscars be cancelled?

MSN seems to think they just might. With the Golden Globes allowed to rot on the vine, their analysis is that it's more likely than not that if a deal isn't reached, the producers won't be willing to risk boycotts by big stars and put on the sort of joyless press conference they did on Sunday. While industry spokesmen are wearing their hopeful faces — AMPAS executive director Bruce Davis says production plans for the Academy Awards are proceeding as usual, and "at this stage we are still making our plan as normal" — insiders are less so, and there's a more than average degree of confidence that the 80th annual Academy Awards presentation will be the biggest non-event since the 1994 World Series.

Mediaweek, meanwhile, offers no predictions about how likely the cancellation of Oscar night may be, but it does provide a fascinating breakdown of who the financial winners and losers are likely to be if the event does fall through. The networks, of course, bear the biggest brunt: estimates of lost advertising revenue from the Golden Globe fiasco ranged anywhere from $10 to $15 million, and if the Academy Awards follow suit, NBC's ad losses could be anywhere from eight to ten times that amount.

The WGA, at any rate, seem to be aiming their pickets where they'll do the most good: they've specifically targeted big money generators like the Globes and the Oscars, but, in an attempt to short-circuit criticism that their strike is hurting the little guy, they've issued waivers for their members to attend events like the Independent Spirit Awards and the NAACP Image Awards, ensuring those events won't suffer from a picket. It's a PR move that comes at a critical time for the union, as networks and media companies set to announce massive layoffs, opting out of production contracts with a 'force majeure' clause and losing, as with ABC, as much as 25% of their working staff.

If there's any good news, it's that both sides are taking the possibility of cancelling of the Oscars very, very seriously, as Tim Goodman of the SF Gate writes. Faced with the possibility of their biggest annual cash cow being led to slaughter, the WGA and the AMPTP have scheduled a negotiation session for the first time in over a month, with the possibility of the Director's Guild and the Screen Actors Guild pushing for both sides to strike a deal so that everyone has a place at the table come Feb. 24th. "If no one gets to see you win on TV," says Goodman, "it's like it didn't happen." How Zen!

Globes Without Glitter

Phil Nugent — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:43:00 GMT

The 65th annual Golden Globes were announced last night, getting the awards season off to a wobbly start. After much speculation about whether No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood might be the front runner as the Oscar race heats up, the Golden Globe for Best Drama went to the Ian McEwan adaptation Atonement, a sturdy vote for respectable literary source material, period romance, and clipped accents in these confusing times. (Another perceived front-runner competition that's been heating up movie message boards, the one between Julie Christie in and Marion Cotillard in Ma Vie en Rose, was effectively defused in this round by the Globes' method of breaking up its movie categories into as many different sub-categories as possible: Christie won the award for Best Actress in a Drama, Cotillard won for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy.) Daniel Day-Lewis did won for Best Actor in a Drama for his work in There Will Be Blood, while No Country took home prizes for Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem) and for its Coen brothers screenplay. The Best Director award went to Julian Schabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which also won for Best Foreign Language Film. Rounding out the big winners were Sweeney Todd (Best Musical or Comedy) and its star, Johnny Depp (Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy), Cate Blanchett (Best Supporting Actress for I'm Not There), and Ratatouille (Best Animated Feature Film).

Of course, as the strike by the Writers' Guild of America drags on into its third month, the big question was whether there would be any awards ceremony or not. NBC, which had the rights to this year's presentation, grimly held to its plans to broadcast something, but it wasn't until last Friday that it was announced that union picketers would not show up to protest the event. By that time, most celebrities who might otherwise have attended had made other plans. The awards were given out, but in a press-conference-style format presided over by announcers from entertainment-news shows such as and Inside Edition. The winners will have news of their glad tidings duly Incorporated into the ads for those movies that are still playing, but the general feeling is that, compared to the impact of previous years' awards ceremonies, the whole thing was a wash. Daniel Battsek, president of Miramax Films, laments that "you can’t replace having the clips and the people who made the films on television. It’s impossible to predict the impact of the lack of a full-on ceremony. But we are all in the same boat. No one will get an advantage.”

Quote of the Week

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Via the Defamer, NBC entertainment head/cartoonish supervillain Ben Silverman, whose whole vacation is being ruined by those bullying kids down at the WGA camp, pouts to the ever-sympathetic industry haircut Ryan Seacrest. Says Silverman about the cruel, heartless writers who have cancelled his beloved Golden Globes when all he wants to do is make all the nice people happy:

"It feels like the nerdiest, ugliest, meanest kids in the high school are trying to cancel the prom. But NBC wants to try to keep that prom alive."

Oh, Ben. Now we're just trying to hurt each other.

Morning Deal Report: Golden Globes Take a Fall

Peter Smith — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:05:00 GMT

Annnnd, the Golden Globes bite it. I'm all in favor of awards shows kerploding; the only concern is that the writers will get blamed for pooping the party, when they really have every reason to be striking. But this'll cost the studios a lot of money and promotion. Maybe it'd be easier to just pay the writers for their work? No?

Karyn Kusama (Girlfight. . . and Aeon Flux) will direct Jennifer's Body, ~~Brook Busey-Hunt's~~ Diablo Cody's follow-up to Juno.

Ridley Scott just never slows down, huh? His next project is The Reykjavik Summit, about Reagan and Gorbachev's '86 nuke talks. Ridley Scott made some of my favorite movies, but political acuity is not is strong suit. When this turns out to be a Reagan hagiography, I'm gonna barf.

Morning Deal Report: Will Smith = Cultural Pollution

Peter Smith — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:45:00 GMT

Earlier this month, in an attempt to stem the flow of cultural pollution from the West, the Chinese government instituted an unofficial ban on Hollywood films. Rumor suggested the ban would last three months, but it turns out The Pursuit of Happyness is on the way. How 'bout a heartwarming tale of Will Smith pulling himself up by his capitalist bootstraps, ya commies? Har!

A bigger-budget sequel to The Host is on the way.

No WGA waivers for the Golden Globes or Oscars, but the Independent Spirit Awards will go on.

Morning Deal Report: No Presents This Christmas

Peter Smith — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:00:00 GMT

. . . for awards shows, that is, from the WGA. The guild has turned down requests for waivers that would allow writers to work on the Golden Globes and Oscars. I'm all in favor of this. Stick it to 'em.

Hero Pictures Intl. is making a biopic of Albert Einstein. What, they didn't see I.Q.?

Nicole Holofcener will direct Catherine Keener in a drama about a group of women living in the same New York apartment building.