Results tagged “thehours”

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:

As part of our continuing effort to create entertaining content, we have decided to implement a series of interviews with people who are more famous than we are. A lot people qualify under that definition- celebrities, other bloggers, that guy who works at M&O deli on Prince Street, etc. Still, we thought we should warm up by interviewing each other. Here is my interview with Jen Chung:

In previous Gothamist Oscar coverage, Stephen Daldry's half-gay status was noted. Page Six has this quote from the Advocate where Stephen Daldry, Oscar-nominated director of The Hours clear things up...a little: "I REFUSED to be boxed into the idea that, 'Oh, no, I can't have kids 'cause I'm gay.' I can have kids if I'm gay. And I can also get married and have a fantastic life. To all questions with my marriage, the answer to everything is yes. Do I have sex with my wife? Yes. Is it a real marriage? Yes. Am I gay? Yes"

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.

As a hopeless cinephile, I feel that the year I spend watching movies is like having a crush on some unattainable person. It makes me feel alive, with all the planning and dreaming and effort I put into it, and somehow, even when I see a bad movie, it’s okay, because it’s one of the knocks I take in wishing that maybe this in time, after paying $10+ for a movie, it might reward my desperate passion with an enlightening moment that can transcend time and place. (For the record, that includes Owen Wilson’s goofiness, Katharine Hepburn trying to hit Cary Grant, and the way Christopher Doyle moves a camera.)

I saw the new film, Spider, from the strange yet compelling David Cronenberg last night, with Cronenberg giving a Q&A afterwards. He's very smart and funny, two important qualities in a director. He was talking about his technique and then confessed "I only get to say this now in hindsight - I don't know what I'm doing while I'm filming." Yes, charming is another important quality, though not necessary - just critical if one wants to get the film financed. He seems a little unhinged too, or at least enough to write Dead Ringers among other things and put the fear of gynecologists into many women. Anyway, he also praised Patrick McGrath's screenplay from McGrath's own book because there's "no direct translation for books to screen." Which makes sense and is probably why I hated The Hours - too literal a translation. Anyway, Spider itself subtly sucks you into the main character's fevered mind. Ralph Fiennes does a fine job playing insane and Miranda Richardson needs more high-profile gigs - she's too good not to be seen more.

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