While they’re far from surefire harbingers of things to come, preliminary results for the entertainment industry awards show season merit attention, perhaps indicative of how the Oscar ballots might look next month. (Nominations for the 83rd annual Academy Awards will be announced on January 25).
The story of how a website was conceived that changed our social fabric, The Social Network, for example, scored impressively with the Los Angeles Film Critics Association which this past Sunday (12/12) voted it as the best picture of 2010, and picked David Fincher as best director (tied with Olivier Assayas who directed the L.A. Critics’ choice for best foreign film Carlos). Furthermore the L.A. Critics honored Adam Sorkin for best screenplay on the strength of The Social Network. Last year the L.A. Film Critics went big in a similar way for The Hurt Locker, which went on to Oscar glory.
The L.A. Film Critics Association’s recognition of The Social Network comes on the heels of the film being named last week as the best of 2010 by the National Board of Review, which also honored director Fincher, screenwriter Sorkin and lead actor Jesse Eisenberg who portrayed Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Meanwhile the film festival circuit has yielded Oscar contenders as well. For example, back in September, The King’s Speech was named the fan favorite at the Toronto International Film Festival. Previous recipients of the audience award at the Toronto fest include Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire and Slumdog Millionaire, which both went on to score multiple Academy Award nominations. The King’s Speech debuted at the Telluride Film Festival immediately followed by a screening at the Toronto Fest.
Directed by Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech tells the story of King George VI (Colin Firth stars as the World War II monarch) whose stammering is treated by a speech therapist (portrayed by Geoffrey Rush). While a period piece, the film centers primarily on the friendship that develops between the two characters and the life’s lessons that come from confronting and overcoming obstacles. The therapist gets to the psychological roots of the stuttering as we ultimately see King George VI put his fears aside to formally address the U.K. people, informing them of the nation’s declaration of war against Germany. Firth, Rush and Hooper are all generating Oscar contender buzz.
The aforementioned L.A. Film Critics bestowed best lead actor distinction on Firth. Earlier this month The King’s Speech earned best picture, screenplay, lead actor, supporting actor and actress honors at the British Independent Film Awards. There’s also been much talk that Fincher and Hooper could be among the select nominees for the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award in the feature film category. Neither is a stranger to the Guild competition.
Hooper earned a DGA Award nomination for the lauded HBO miniseries John Adams.
Fincher won the DGA Award as best commercial director of 2003. And last year he scored what is believed to be a precedent-setting accomplishment in the storied history of the Directors Guild–earning nominations in both the feature film and commercial categories in the same year. The dual honors went to Fincher for his theatrical feature The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and for three spots: Nike’s “Fate” out of Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), Portland, Ore.; Stand Up To Cancer’s “Stand Up For Something” out of Laura Ziskin Productions, Los Angeles; and Apple’s “Hallway” from TBWA/Media Arts, Los Angeles. Fincher’s commercialmaking home is bicoastal Anonymous Content.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button incidentally went on to earn 13 Academy Award nominations in 2009, including for best picture, director and lead actor.
While Fincher is well entrenched in commercials, Hooper recently re-entered the spotmaking arena after a lengthy absence. Between the Telluride and Toronto film festivals came the announcement that he had signed with bicoastal Smuggler for U.S. representation in commercials.
SHOOT caught up with Hooper shortly thereafter to get his reflections on The King’s Speech. He explained that as a self-described history buff he was drawn to the project. Indeed his penchant for history is evident in a filmography that includes not only The King’s Speech but the aforementioned John Adams, which won a record high 13 Emmy Awards in a single year, including for best miniseries and outstanding directorial achievement in movies for TV or miniseries.
Hooper described part of his approach to The King’s Speech and period pieces in general as using historical accuracy to dispel viewers’ preconceived notions of what a particular era was like. He cited a speech at Wembley Stadium made when Firth’s character was a prince, not yet a king. The popular notion today might picture the prince decked out in sartorial splendor, replete with royal family trappings, separating him from those who surround him. But the historical record shows that the prince wore a black suit, black tie and black hat, as did those in the stadium audience.
“The scene looks like he’s going to a funeral,” related Hooper. “So the film starts out by subverting the idea of what a movie about the royal family should be. I’m not a subversive person. But subversion is in my work.”
The director explained that this subversion can become a critical dynamic to building successful drama. “How do you create suspense over who is going to win the Revolutionary War?” he asked in relation to his John Adams miniseries.
“Viewers know the outcome. But if you can show historically how that world, that period, actually was–making it quite different from cliches envisioned by the audience–you create an unfamiliarity that is more helpful to generating a viewer’s sense that he or she doesn’t quite know where the story is going.”
Hooper noted that for The King’s Speech he began to start his closeups on wider lenses to center on “the central spine of the film–the relationship between the speech therapist and the King. I didn’t want to go with the conventional closeup shot with an out of focus background and not being able to use the space the two characters are in to help tell the story.”
Additionally for Firth as King George VI, Hooper continued to strive for the perfect storytelling shot.
“I almost exclusively put him against negative space when the camera was focused on him–big distressed walls where the wallpaper was almost falling apart. His face was floating in negative space, much like stammering can cast a person into isolation and a world of nothingness.”
Spotmaking ties
Other directors with commercialmaking affiliations also figure prominently in Oscar prognostications, including Lisa Cholodenko for The Kids Are All Right, Derek Cianfrance for Blue Valentine, Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan, and Davis Guggenheim for Waiting For Superman.
The latter is a documentary that puts a human face on the failure of the U.S. public education system, while offering innovative approaches that are addressing the problem. Guggenheim, who is repped by Santa Monica, Calif.-headquartered Bob Industries for commercials, directed the 2007 best feature documentary Oscar winner An Inconvenient Truth. The film–based on the book by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore– helped to raise public awareness of global warming.
Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right kicked off Film Independent’s 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival earlier this year. Recently the film received five Film Independent Spirit Award nominations, including for best picture and best director–for Cholodenko who is repped for commercials by bicoastal/international Partizan.
(Film Independent is a non-profit arts organization.)
The Kids Are All Right is based on an original screenplay penned by Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg, and sports a stellar starring cast that includes Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Mia Wasikowska, and Josh Hutcherson.
Two teenaged children (Wasikowska, Hutcherson) conceived by artificial insemination get the notion to seek out their birth father and introduce him into the family life that their two mothers (Bening, Moore) have built for them. Once the donor (Ruffalo) is found, the household will never be the same, as family ties are defined, re-defined, and re-re-defined.
Also in the running for the best director Spirit Award is Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan.
Aronofsky is handled for commercials by Alturas Films, the Santa Monica-based house headed by president Marshall Rawlings.
Black Swan, the horror-ballet movie additionally earned nominations for best picture, best female lead (Natalie Portman) and best cinematography (Matthew Libatique, ASC). Libatique won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association honor for best cinematography on the basis of Black Swan.
Runner-up in the L.A. Film Critics competition was cinematographer Roger Deakins, ASC, for True Grit directed by the Coen Brothers.
Meanwhile Michelle Williams earned a Spirit Award nomination for best female lead on the strength of her performance in Blue Valentine. The movie is an honest portrait of love found and lost between a couple played by Ryan Gosling and Williams. Gosling is also widely considered an Oscar contender.
Blue Valentine additionally explores such dualities as youth where aspirations and opportunities abound, and adulthood during which options often become limited and opportunities can turn into entrapment. Blue Valentine was directed by Derek Cianfrance whose spot home is bicoastal/international @radical.media.
Cianfrance was among the first directors to make an impact in the branded content arena on the strength of such @radical.media efforts as the 2004 and ’05 seasons of Nike’s Battlegrounds series on MTV and MTV2, and the quirky offbeat Meet The Lucky Ones online serialized shorts in ’04 for Lincoln Mercury.
Winter’s Spirit
Leading the Spirit Awards nominations derby with seven–including best picture, director (Debra Granik), screenplay, female lead, supporting female actress, supporting male actor and cinematography (Michael McDonough)–was the rural crime thriller Winter’s Bone.
This came on the heels of the film earning best feature honors at the Gotham Independent Film Awards. Earlier Winter’s Bone won the grand jury prize for American dramas at the Sundance Film Festival.
Rounding out the field of Spirit Award nominated directors are: Danny Boyle for 127 Hours, the real-life story of a man’s battle for survival which results in his severing his own arm; and John Cameron Mitchell for Rabbit Hole, which deals with a couple coping with the accidental death of their young son.
Boyle won best motion picture and best director Oscars for 2008’s The Slumdog Millionaire.
The best picture/best director Oscar dual accomplishment also was earned by the Coen Brothers for 2007’s No Country For Old Men. There’s Oscar predictions this season for their True Grit, which goes into wide release in late December.
The picture in one respect is bucking history. No remake of an Americal film has ever won the Acaademy Award for best picture.
The original True Grit (1969) earned John Wayne his only career best actor Oscar.
The Coen Brothers, incidentally, are represented for commercials and branded content by Los Angeles-based production house Company.
Another late release also generating Academy Award interest is The Fighter directed by David O. Russell and starring Mark Wahlberg.
The latter is generally regarded as a strong lead actor Oscar contender., as is James Franco for the aforementioned 127 Hours.
Also on the radar are Inception, the surreal heist film directed by Christopher Nolan, and The Town, the crime drama helmed by Ben Affleck. Affleck scored an Academy Award earlier in his career for screen writing on Good Will Hunting.
Many felt that Nolan should have received more Oscar consideration earlier for The Dark Knight, which earned the late Heath Ledger a posthumous best supporting actor Oscar for his portrayal of Batman’s arch villain, the Joker. Nolan accepted the Oscar on Ledger’s behalf. Earlier, Nolan won an Oscar for his winning Memento screenplay.
The DP on Inception was Wally Pfister, ASC, who’s diversified successfully into commercial directing via Santa Monica-based Independent Media., which recently opened an office in London.
Pfister has a track record of Oscar nominations for his lensing of Nolan-directed films. Pfister has earned Academy Award best cinematography noms for Nolan’s Batman Begins, The Prestige and The Dark Knight.
Animation
This year there are just 15 eligible films for the best animation feature Oscar. This means that there will only be three nominations in the category, with Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon considered strong contenders for two of those slots.
This leaves the race for the third animation feature nomination to such films as Tangle, Despicable Me, and The Illusionist.
If there had been one more eligible film, bringing the count to 16, then the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would have expanded the field to five nominations.
A total of 16 is the minimum required to grow the field of animation feature nominees in a given year. according to Academy rules.
The Los Angeles Film Critics Association selected Toy Story 3 directed by Disney Pixar’s Lee Unkrich as the feature animation winner of 2010. L.A. Critics picked The Illusionist directed by Sylvain Chomet as the runner-up in the category.
AFI
As final food for speculative thought, as announced this past Sunday, consider the 10 films pegged by the American Film Institute as being the best of 2010: Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, 127 Hours, The Social Network, The Town, Toy Story 3, True Grit, and Winter’s Bone.
The AFI also issued two Special Awards®one for The King’s Speech, the other for Waiting for Superman; both films were ineligible for the AFI’s Top 10 because they fell outside of AFI guidelines. The King’s Speech was a British production while Waiting For Superman is a documentary and not a narrative film.
The Special Awards were formulated to recognize worthwhile work that wouldn’t otherwise be singled out by the AFI.
Bob Gazzale, AFI president and CEO, explained, “As AFI Awards entered its second decade of documenting excellence across the century, it became clear from the scholars, critics and artists who come together for the American Film Institute that acknowledging outstanding work outside the traditional AFI criteria would provide greater context to our goal of recording a true history of the art form. This year and moving forward, in addition to honoring American storytelling in the narrative format, the juries may name Special Awards and it is AFI’s honor to shine a proper light on these artists and their achievements.”
The AFI Awards are made through a jury process where scholars, film and television artists, critics and AFI trustees determine the most outstanding achievements of the year, and provide a detailed rationale for each selection
Timetable
The Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2010 will be presented on Sunday Feb. 27, 2011, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center, and televised live by the ABC Television Network.
The 83rd annual Oscar presentation will also be televised live in more than 200 countries worldwide.
The Academy Awards ceremony takes place a day after the 26th annual Film Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica. The afternoon Spirit Awards proceedings will be televised that evening on IFC.
