Satellite Nominations (FWIW)

The Satellites have announced their nominations for this film year that's still in progress. As per usual there are so many nominees that it's hard to be generous about their award meaning much of anything to anyone outside of the actual nominees. With 12 nominees for both Actor and Actress there's room for everyone (including a double nomination for Mark Ruffalo??? I wasn't even truly cognizant that he was in two movies this season and I pay attention) When they get to the supporting categories that's where things get really wacky. Beyoncé Knowles for Cadillac? Really? Does this mean she agreed to show up? Penelope Cruz for Elegy (a lead role) instead of Vicky Cristina Barcelona in which she's the obvious and truly supporting highlight. Strange. Frozen River and The Visitor, two early-ish releases that will probably do well at the Indie Spirits scored big too.

Next up: The National Board of Review kicks things off all official like (at least in terms of standard Oscar precursor chronologies) this Thursday.

Tilda Swinton and Texas ???

...strange bedfellows but god bless. Someone finally gave the alien acting goddess a prize for her inspired work in Michael Clayton and that someone was the Dallas/Ft Worth Film Critics. Never have I been so proud of Texas.

The Southeastern Film Critics Association also spoke up today, slathering themselves with the sweet lotion of conformity: Bardem, Ryan, No Country... all zee usual suspects.

In other awardage news those HFPA apostates over at the Golden Satellites gave prizes to a whole slew of people who were willing to show up. Nah, I shan't be mean. Some good choices there: Viggo, Tom Wilkinson, etcetera... But here's what I don't get. If you're going to separate drama from comedy as the Globes also do, why would you name the supporting category "Best Supporting in a Drama"? if you aren't going to have a comedy counterpart just call it "Supporting" like the Globes do... otherwise it looks like you're saying "you comic supporting players suck! No category for you" Either that or you're just saying "our website sucks. we forget to include all the categories" I also think its lame that all these groups let themselves have six nominees in every category when they already have more categories. What is this, the Saturn Awards? The BFCAs? The Tonys? The Academy is like a model of restraint and sober tough love in comparison.

Golden Globe Nominations Are Here

DRAMA

Best Picture
American Gangster, Atonement, Eastern Promises, The Great Debaters, Michael Clayton, No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood
Seven nominees !? Really Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Are you eager to become The Golden Satellites? How embarrassing... get it together. The surprise snub would have to be Into the Wild.

Best Actor
George Clooney, Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
James McAvoy, Atonement
Viggo Mortenson, Eastern Promises
Denzel Washington, American Gangster
Bad news for Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild) but I'm so glad my Viggo is in... and perhaps the extra push they give the film (in Picture) might be the boost he needed to stay in the race for someone who a) refused Academy membership and b) is a great performer but doesn't take truly Baity roles.

Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth The Golden Age
Julie Christie, Away From Her
Jodie Foster, The Brave One
Anelina Jolie, A Mighty Heart
Keira Knightley, Atonement
Just as I suspected but it wasn't hard. Most of the heat was in comedy. Still, one has to wonder now if Cate will get her default double dip with Oscar after all. ayiyiyiyi.

COMEDY/MUSICAL

Best Picture
Across The Universe, Charlie Wilsons War, Hairspray, Juno, Sweeney Todd
Say what? And I don't speak of Charlie (which if it was going to do well it would be here) but of Across the Universe. Snubbed: Knocked Up, Superbad, The Savages

Best Actor
Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd
Ryan Gosling, Lars and the Real Girl
Tom Hanks, Charlie Wilsons War
Phillip Seymour Hoffman, The Savages
John C Reilly, Walk Hard
Reilly is the only surprise and he's got the December fresh-in-the-memory thing happening for him. But I'm still sad that Linney keeps getting shunned for The Savages when it's clearly her film.

Best Actress
Amy Adams, Enchanted
Nikki Blonsky, Hairspray
Helena Bonham-Carter, Sweeney Todd
Marion Cotillard, La Vie En Rose
Ellen Page, Juno
wow. I predicted this 5/5... and it was a tight field. They had to leave out Heigl (a typical Globe type girl), Nicole Kidman a favorite, Laura Linney for The Savages etcetera. I continue to be angry though that Cotillard is dubbed comedy/musical when she neither sings nor cracks jokes.

OTHER...

Best Director
Tim Burton, Sweeney Todd ,The Coen Bros, No Country For Old Men , Schnabel, The Diving Bell and Butterfly , Scott, American Gangster , Wright, Atonement
Good news for all of these best picture bids with Oscar

Best Supporting Actor
Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Javier Bardem, No Country For Old Men , John Travolta Hairspray, Tom Wilkinson Michael Clayton
Almost the list I predicted. Not quite. Could it be the Oscar list? Why isn't von Sydow getting any traction?

Best Supporting Actress
Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There , Julia Roberts, Charlie Wilson's War , Saoirse Ronan, Atonement, Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone, Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton
Will the Oscars also pull the genuflection to the return of Julia Roberts? I hope not but you never know.

Screenplay
Juno, No Country For Old Men, Atonement, The Diving Bell and Butterfly and Charlie Wilson's War
The only surprise her would be Diving Bell. Previously more honored for directorial and cinematographic choices

Score
Into the Wild, Grace Is Gone, The Kite Runner, Atonement, and Eastern Promises
Interesting. Not that Oscar will follow suit.

Foreign Film
4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days, The Diving Bell and Butterfly, Persepolis, Lust Caution and The Kite Runner
Won't look a thing like Oscar's list (different criteria) although I do expect that 4 Months is in... and possibly Persepolis (though they might not double dip there since it's also up for animated with Oscar voters

For complete nominations, go to the Golden Globe site. The Film Experience home base will be updated tomorrow. I've got screenings tonight. But discuss the bizarre Globe findings here.

FYC: Gretchen Mol as "Bettie Page"

Next week @ The Film Experience I'll be counting down the 5 most likely Oscar Nominees from the releases we've seen from January to Jun. At week's end I'll do a revamp of my "year in advance Oscar predictions" to mark the halfway point. But as a preview let's talk about a performance that didn't make that list.

For Your Consideration:
Gretchen Mol as The Notorious Bettie Page
I think that Gretchen's people and the folks at Picturehouse ought to plop some money down on this as an early campaign. Some of you may be chuckling 'He's really lost it now!' so perhaps I should explain. You'd be smart to dispel any foolish notions that a film released in April that grossed under $2 million and that didn't win rave reviews has too many strikes against it for Oscar consideration. That just doesn't happen. At least not for a star without a built in Academy fanbase.

Silly to imagine, right?

So why do I think they should waste their promotional dollars? Longterm investment in her career. Short term investment in the film's DVD rental/sales life. You need buzz to get traction in the year-end awards races and with the right campaign Gretchen Mol could harness the power of her "career changing performance" into at least some Golden Satellite / Independent Spirit style action. And think of how fun a campaign could be for the right brilliant strategist....

Read the Rest...

Return and discuss in the comments.

tags: Oscars, Academy Awards, Bettie Page, Gretchen Mol, Awards, film, cinema

The Satellites! Try to Contain Yourselves.

Some thoughts on the Golden Satellite nominations (thanks to Oscarwatch for the link):

In terms of Oscar predicting, these don't matter much. Usually I just tend to enjoy the instances where they nominate someone awesome who doesn't have a chance anywhere else. Last year, they nommed Mark Wahlberg for I Heart Huckabees, and that's all I needed. This year, they win my heart over with a Kristen Bell nomination for Veronica Mars. Love!

But, really, these are hardly influential precursors. They're generally the awards you go to after the entire season is over and go "Oh, look, they nominated so-and-so. Glad to see they got something."

The beauty of the Satellites is that they nominate roughly seven hundred thousand actors and actresses – separate drama and comedy designations; six-plus noms per category -- so the law of averages says you can find more than half of your eventual Oscar nominees contained therein, if you're just patient enough to sift through all the names. It's like the $7 DVD bin at Wal-Mart, except way fewer copies of The Italian Job.

So, in the Oscarwatching equivalent of getting blood from a stone, I will try and glean some predictive insights from this year's crop of Satellite noms. First some tendencies: Going by the wholly unscientific data of the past three years, the Satellites average 3/5 (that is, 3 out of the 5 eventual Oscar nominees get a Satellite nom first) in every acting category, except for Best Actress, in which they average close to 5/5 (understandable given the usual dearth of baity actress performances).

So, if the averages were to hold, which names are the most likely to hold up?

Best Actor: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, David Strathairn, Heath Ledger, and Joaquin Phoenix look like the best bets. Viggo Mortenson, Terrence Howard, Tommy Lee Jones, and Jake Gyllenhaal are the dark horses. If we had to pick three, you'd figure: Hoffman, Ledger, and Phoenix. But right now I'll bet Strathairn gets in, too.

Best Actress: Again, this category usually rounds up all five, so: Charlize Theron, Felicity Huffman, Ziyi Zhang, Judi Dench, Joan Allen, Reese Witherspoon, and Kiera Knightley could be called our finalists. To paraphrase Heidi Klum, five will be in, and two are out. (Right now, I'll wager Zhang and Allen are out. As is Daniel Franco … again.)

Best Supporting Actor: Here's where it gets odd, because among the Satellites' twelve nominees, I only see Jake Gyllenhaal, Craig T. Nelson, and Peter Sarsgaard as remotely nominatable. And Nelson and Sarsgaard would be pushing it, I think. This is the weirdest category I've seen in a long time. [Side note: how cool is it that Edward Norton got a nod for Kingdom of Heaven here? He was the best part of the movie, and you never saw his face.]

Best Supporting Actress: This category is looking fuller by the minute: Frances McDormand, Maria Bello, Laura Linney, Gong Li, Amy Adams, Diane Keaton, Rosario Dawson. [Loved the Rosario Dawson nod. I just saw Rent and she was stunning. They also nommed Rachel McAdams for The Family Stone, which I approve of, sight unseen.] Out of those seven, you'd figure Keaton, Bello, McDormand, and Li would be the heavy hitters. But Amy Adams' name keeps popping up, which is very, very good for her. If I have to pick only three: Keaton, Bello, and Li.

I won't get into Best Picture, though suffice it to say that Satellite noms for Brokeback Mountain, Walk the Line, Capote, Memoirs of a Geisha, and (*sigh*) Cinderella Man all bode well. Also: A History of Violence. Don't give up on that until the critics have had their say.