Results tagged “bestpicture”

Drawing on his roots in the fecund 1970s East Village avant-garde film scene, critic J. Hoberman has spent his three decades at the Village Voice introducing readers to the more adventurous cinematic worlds awaiting beyond the realm of Hollywood. He is the author of nine books, most recently The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties, which was described by Slate as "an extraordinary publishing event." To commemorate his thirty years at the Voice, BAMcinématek has invited Hoberman to select films that have sparked some of his most stimulating reviews and articles, as well as a few personal favorites.

The Oscars are in town! Well, at least some 8-foot Oscar statues for the official New York Oscar night celebration at the Carlyle hotel, where east coast industry folk will come together Sunday night as the show goes down in Hollywood.

• Perhaps the big surprise (besides Juno getting nominated for Best Director and Best Picture) was Ruby Dee for her work in American Gangster (its only other nomination was for art direction)

The New York Film Critics Circle met yesterday to vote on their “Best of” list for 2007; widely viewed as a barometer for the upcoming Academy Awards, the critics pride themselves as “a principled alternative to the Oscars, honoring esthetic merit in a forum that is immune to commercial and political pressures.” But if one anonymous member is to be believed, the meeting sounds more like a “principled” excuse for an Aint It Cool News-style...

On Wednesday night Tim Burton gave the Film Society of Lincoln Center a 17-minute taste of Sweeney Todd, his film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s macabre musical. The 1979 Broadway hit was inspired by Victorian folklore about a crazed London barber who slits his customers’ throats and, in some versions of the story, colludes with his lover to bake the corpses into meat pies – which become wildly successful! (Ah, the culinary possibilities before rogue...

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A pedestrian struck at 12th Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan, a homicide in Brooklyn, and a water rescue in Forest Park in Queens
• Mathieu Eugene showed NY1 his new apartment and says that he was sleeping there before the election; if that's really true, why didn't he say so earlier and why won't he show NY1 the lease?
• In order to avoid any parking ticket squabbles, the city has suspended Monday alternate side of the street parking in anticipation of snow

If things have seemed quiet at the usual New York haunts of movie folks like Film Forum or Grey Dog Coffee this last week, it's because practically the whole community is in Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival. The annual launching pad of many subsequently huge independent features (see this year's Best Picture Oscar nom and last year's festival break out, ), Sundance is a crazy week. Parties, swag, deal-making and oh yeah, some screenings are jam packed into the proceedings.

There is tons of speculation all over the Internet about the Oscar nominations for films released in 2006. As an Oscars fiend, we're not going to digress about the calculus of vote-splitting. Instead, we'll point out a couple things we noticed:

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association voting pool for the Golden Globes only consists of 83 members, but every year their mainstream tastes become one of the potential early prognosticators for the Emmys and the Oscars. Over in Beverly Hills today, the stylists are putting the finishing touches on the stars' couture, that long red carpet is being laid and some assistant is double checking the seals on the envelopes. Here in New York of course, we get to play the more enviable armchair critic job hashing out who might be taking home this year's statues after tonight's telecast [8 - 11 pm on NBC].

NYC Sunset by Sidewalk Story.

It's the itch we can't scratch - the Academy Awards. We make sure we see the announcements at 8:30AM and then rush to work, thinking about the nominations while on the train. This morning, Academy President Sid Ganis and Mira Sorvino (who isn't doing anything else, anyway) announced the nominations. As expected, Brokeback Mountain, Good Night and Good Luck, and Capote earned many nominations, and Crash made a surprising showing with Best Picture, Best Director and even a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Matt Dillon. Other surprises/interesting things:

The obvious 800-pound, 2000-pound or even 20-ton gorilla in the room is anyway. Just brave the crowds and get it over with already.

It's all about Brokeback these days: This morning, Kate Beckinsale, Mark Wahlberg, and Steve Carrell announced the 63rd Annual Golden Globe nominations, and Brokeback Mountain walked away with 7 nominations, including Best Picture (Drama), Director, Actor, Supporting Actress (Michelle Williams). Match Point, the unreleased Woody Allen movie, also got nods in Picture and Director, plus Supporting Actress Scarlett Johnanssen. As for the TV nominations, the ladies of Wisteria Lane took four leading actress nominations, giving Weeds' Mary Louise Parker a good shot of winning, though Felicity Huffman and Marcia Cross were fierce this year. We do want to say this, though: Kristen Bell, you were robbed!

At this point, Gothamist will speculate about the Best Picture Oscar nominations. We expect to see "Seabiscuit" to fall out; technically excellent but less than full blooded. "Mystic River" might be too dark, but Clint is Hollywood royalty. The 8 nominations gives "Cold Mountain" some momentum, but if audiences don't respond, it's unlikely that it will be nominated for as many. It seems a given that "Lord of the Rings" will be the top nomination getter, as it will be nominated for pretty much every single technical category. So for Best Picture come Oscar time, we expect to see "Lord of the Rings," "Master and Commander," most likely "Cold Mountain," probably "Mystic River," and fifth slot is a wild card: "Lost in Translation" is a possibility (could be too precious for some), as is "Finding Nemo" even though it's a cartoon (it's one of the few consensus good films of the year). Gothamist will continue to look at different categories leading up to the Globes and Oscars. Stay tuned.

Many wonder what is the use of following these critics' awards, since they are only directionally useful in wondering who will win the Oscars, an imperfect process also. Gothamist ventures to say that when things move us, we want to talk about it, think about it, tell others about it. Movies are a reflection of who we are and become calling cards of ideas and dreams to other places, whether it's to a rural farm town in Nebraska or an emerging metropolis like Shanghai. Sure, there's an amount of unspeakable crap, but it's also nice to see that some exceptional work is being recognized.

In America opens on November 26th, but with the screener ban, there are sneak peeks all over the country. Check here to see if there's one near you (so far, it's looking at LA for the 20th).

Oscar Commentary
Oscar is celebrating its 75th anniversary, I'm celebrating my 25th anniversary of watching Oscar.

The evening is over, while Gothamist will be following up with extensive commentary about the actual Oscar telecast, here are the winners and some post-game analysis:

If the Oscars do go on tonight, I'll be glad because then everyone can shut up about it. It may seem strange for me to say this, given my love for movies and the Oscars and how I generally live for movies and love the day the Oscar nominations come out...but there's no Best Picture film I'm really behind this year...the only category I'm interested in Original Screenplay, and it's highly doubtful Almodovar or the Cuaron brothers will win. And after the litany of prizes and awards shows so far, I could care less about the acting categories and wondering if this is Harvey Weinstein's year. Just shut up already.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards, the Orange BAFTA Awards, were handed out yesterday and the big winner was The Pianist, Best Picture and Best Director Roman Polanski. Other winners included Daniel Day-Lewis for Gangs of New York, Nicole Kidman for The Hours, Catherine Zeta-Jones for Chicago, Christopher Walken for Catch Me If You Can (I wonder what he'd rather have done - been in London to pick up his award or in NY hosting SNL as he was last night), Charlie and Donald Kaufman's adapted screenplay for Adaptation, and Pedro Almodovar's original screenplay for Talk to Her. What's funny about British awards these days is that they have corporate sponsors - Orange is a mobile phone communications company. The Booker Prize is now the Man Booker Prize, Man is an investment company. The Mercury Prize, the most prestigious music award in the UK and arguably the US, too (though the US created the Shortlist award), is the Panasonic Mercury prize.

Let the games begin. The Directors' Guild has announced their nominees, and they are Stephen Daldry for "The Hours," Peter Jackson for "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," Rob Marshall for "Chicago," Martin Scorsese for "Gangs of New York," and Roman Polanski for "The Pianist." The most likely nominees for the Academy Awards' Best Picture of the bunch are "The Hours," "Chicago," and "Lord of the Rings." Photos above and an article(registration required) from Variety. "Gangs" and "The Pianist" are possibilities, but Scorsese and Polanski are polarizing figures. However, as these projects are labors of love for them, especially with Polanski's personal experience with the Holocaust and Hollywood's love of reliving the Holocaust in film (see "Schindler's List" and "Life is Beautiful"), they may be nominated for Best Picture. Good will for Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks may make "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" a Best Picture contender, but I personally am done with the big fat Greek hype. Back to the directors, the DGA awards are usually good indicators of who will win Best Director at the Oscars, but more recently, there's been discrepancy: Ang Lee winning the DGA award for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," while Steven Soderbergh won the Oscar for "Traffic"; Ron Howard winning the DGA for "Apollo 13", Mel Gibson the Oscar for "Braveheart".

Tania and I had been discussing Dick Clark earlier today and I felt he was a consummate professional, infinitely smarter and classier than Nancy O'Dell and Lisa Ling during the pre-show...Virginia Heffernan agrees