The 94th Academy Award Winners

Well, it was more eventful than last year's show.

They gave eight awards out ahead of time, then edited the acceptance speeches into the show. A little awkward, but I didn't hate it as much as I thought I might. This led the producers to think we had enough time for two musical numbers from Encanto.

The three hostesses (Wanda Sykes, Regina Hall, Amy Schumer) juggled comedic duties. I thought Hall's bit about privately testing the singles actors like Bradley Cooper and Tyler Perry backstage for COVID was funny, and Schumer had some good lines in her own monologue. ("Being the Ricardos is like if they did a Michael Jordan biopic but only showed the bus rides between games.") Sykes's pre-recorded detour of the new Hollywood museum should have been cut in half or dropped.

But the one they're going to be talking about is the Will Smith altercation. Chris Rock poked fun at a couple celebs but then joked about Jada Pinkett Smith preparing for G.I. Jane 2. At first Will laughed along but then he saw the look on Jada's face. Some back-story: Jada has alopecia. Smith marched up to Chris Rock and gave him a full slap on the face. American audiences didn't see the next ten seconds but clips from other broadcasts have gone viral to show that Smith stayed upset ("Keep my wife's name out of your f---ing mouth!") Rock then introduced the nominees for Best Documentary.

And then a half-hour later, Will won. It's quite something to behold his speech. He did ultimately apologize to the Academy, but not to Chris Rock. I'll be fascinated to see what tomorrow's headlines are like.

The winners:

BEST PICTURE - CODA

BEST DIRECTOR - Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog

BEST ACTOR - Will Smith, King Richard

BEST ACTRESS - Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR - Troy Kotsur, CODA

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS - Ariana DeBose, West Side Story

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY - Sian Heder, CODA

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY - Kenneth Branagh, Belfast

BEST ANIMATED PICTURE - Encanto

BEST DOCUMENTARY PICTURE - Summer of Soul

BEST FOREIGN PICTURE - Drive My Car (Japan)

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY - Dune

BEST COSTUNE DESIGN - Cruella

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS - Dune

BEST ORIGINAL SONG - "No Time to Die", Billie Eilish

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE - Hans Zimmer, Dune

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN - Dune

BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING - The Eyes of Tammy Faye

BEST EDITING - Dune

BEST SOUND - Dune

BEST ANIMATED SHORT - The Windshield Wiper

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT - The Queen of Basketball

BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT - The Long Goodbye

SAG Award Winners

The SAG Awards are on of my favorites. Not too many categories, so it's all done in two hours. In Memorium is only actors, so no agents or attorneys in there. Many shout-outs to Ukraine, whose president is a "fellow actor". Just about every acceptance speech was good; had some real teary-eyed gratitude come from Will Smith, the Squid Game crew, the CODA crew, and most moving was Michael Keaton, who lost his nephew to a drug overdose.

MOVIES

Best Cast - CODA

Best Actor - Will Smith, King Richard

Best Actress - Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Best Supporting Actor - Troy Kotsur, CODA

Best Supporting Actress - Ariana DeBose, West Side Story

Best Stunt Ensemble - No Time to Die

TV

Best Cast Drama - Succession

Best Cast Comedy - Ted Lasso

Best Actor Drama - Lee Jung-jae, Squid Game

Best Actress Drama - HoYeon Jung, Squid Game

Best Actor Comedy - Jason Sudeikis, Ted Lasso

Best Actress Comedy - Jean Smart, Hacks

Best Actor Miniseries - Michael Keaton, Dopesick

Best Actress Miniseries - Kate Winslet, Mare of Easttown

Best Stunt Ensemble - Squid Game

Lifetime Achievement Award - Helen Mirren

Random Movie Stuff - 9/6/13

- Matt Damon's the latest to join Christopher Nolan's Interstellar.  Not much is known about it, but rumors are leaking out that it takes place in the near-future when climate change has killed off most of agriculture, but a wormhole has opened, and scientists journey to try to find a sustainable planet in different dimensions.  It stars Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Topher Grace, David Oyelowo, Ellen Burstyn, Wes Bentley, Mackenzie Foy and John Lithgow.

- Roland Emmerich is planning on rebooting Stargate, and to do so as a trilogy. The 1994 original starred Kurt Russell, James Spader and Jaye Davidson and spawned several successful TV series.

- Al Pacino and Holly Hunter will star in Manglehorn, about a man living with the regrets of a past crime that cost him the love of his life.

- Tom Hiddleston (Thor) has joined Guillermo Del Toro's Crimson Peak, a haunted house movie that also stars Jessica Chastain, Charlie Hunnam and Mia Wasikowska.  He replaces Benedict Cumberbatch, who dropped out last month.

- Rupert Grint (Harry Potter) has joined the cast of Enemy of Man, a new spin on Macbeth starring Game of Throners Sean Bean and Charles Dance.

- The new RoboCop trailer is online:

Random Movie News - 3/8/13

- George Lucas has confirmed that Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher are all on board for Star Wars Episode VII.

- Keri Russell (Dark Skies) has joined the cast of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, starring Andy Serkis, Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke and Kodi Smit-McPhee.  Most of humanity has been wiped out, but the film centers on a resistance group in San Francisco, and Caesar's attempt to maintain order in his new ape society.

- Liam Neeson and Giovanni Ribisi have join the cast of A Million Ways to Die in the West, a western comedy starring Seth MacFarlane as a cowboy training to be a gunfighter.  Charlize Theron and Amanda Seyfried co-star.

- Michael Keaton will star in Birdman, about an actor once famous playing a superhero who is now trying to mount a Broadway play.  Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Zack Galifianakis, Amy Ryan and Naomi Watts.  Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Babel) will direct.

- Jessica Chastain tops Warner Bros' wish list to play Jane in their upcoming live-action Tarzan movie.

- Christopher Nolan's next movie will open November 7, 2014. It's called Interstellar, and plot details are currently under wraps.

Mama - Movie Review

Starring Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Megan Charpentier, Isabelle Nelisse and Daniel Kash.  Directed by Andres Muschietti.

★★★

It's this year's Insidious.

A harried father rushes his two girls, ages 3 and 1, into the car and drives away as fast as possible. We hear on the news about a shooting, and we gather this man is responsible.  He speeds down a snowy highway, worrying the 3-year-old.  The car spins out of control, off the road, down a slope.

He staggers through the woods with the girls and comes upon an abandoned cabin.  It's there that they meet "Mama"...

The movie has great pace and atmosphere.  The girls, now ages 8 and 6, are found and given to their uncle Lucas (Game of Thrones' Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his live-in girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain).

Seems odd to see Chastain (The Help, Zero Dark Thirty) here, but her agent was smart in getting her in this movie.  Not only is it doing good box-office, but it deserves to for being one of those rare scary movies.  Director Andres Muschietti expands his 2008 short to a satisfying full-length feature, and if I had quibbles, it would be the ending.  It's not bad; it's just okay.  But the suspenseful journey's worth traveling.

Weekend Box Office - 1/20/13

1.  Mama - $28.12 million - 1 wk (U)
 . . . 2647 screens / $10,624 per screen
2.  Zero Dark Thirty - $17.6 ($55.95) - 5 wks (Sony) -28%
 . . . 2946 / $5974
3.  Silver Linings Playbook - $11.35 ($55.31) - 10 wks (Wein) +126%
 . . . 2523 / $4499
4.  Gangster Squad - $9.11 ($32.22) - 2 wks (WB) -46.6%
 . . . 3103 / $2936
5.  Broken City - $9 - 1 wk (Fox)
 . . . 2620 / $3435
6.  A Haunted House - $8.33 ($29.98) - 2 wks (OR) -54%
 . . . 2160 / $2856
7.  Django Unchained - $8.24 ($138.36) - 4 wks (Wein) -25.3%
 . . . 2516 / $3276
8.  Les Miserables - $7.81 ($130.37) - 4 wks (U) -19%
 . . . 2579 / $3030
9.  The Hobbit - $6.41 ($287.4) - 6 wks (WB) -30.1%
 . . . 2323 / $2757
10. The Last Stand - $6.3 - 1 wk (LG)
 . . . 2913 / $2163
11. Lincoln - $5.39 ($160.53) - 11 wks (BV) -14.8%
 . . . 2174 / $2482

Jessica Chastain is enjoying the top two spots, with Mama and Zero Dark Thirty.

Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe couldn't combine their star-power to get people interested in seeing Broken City.  And no one cared to see Arnold Schwarzenegger's comeback vehicle The Last Stand.

Zero Dark Thirty - Movie Review

Starring Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Ehle, James Gandolfini, Chris Pratt, Mark Strong, Edgar Ramirez, Harold Perrineau and Stephen Dillane.
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow.

★★★★

The ultimate procedural.

This movie offers a straight-forward account of a chain of events that culminates in the killing of Osama bin Laden.  Not much is said of Bush or Cheney or Obama.  When we meet Leon Panetta, he's never called by his name. James Gandolfini is simply credited as "the CIA Director."  This is about the boots on the ground and the middle-management above them.  And pushing it all is the single dogged determination of Maya (Jessica Chastain).

We don't get any backstory on Maya.  She just shows up at Guantanamo Bay in 2003, where the story begins.  We see some harsh interrogation techniques being used against a detainee.  There's no grand Sharpee to highlight how effective or ineffective torturing is/was.  It's something that happened.  Maybe bin Laden would have been caught five years earlier or never had torture never happened; we'll never know.

Chastain's central performance of Maya is crucial and captivating.  We want her to catch "UBL" as much as she does.  I marveled over and over at the different cuts, angles and subtleties of Bigelow's direction, too.  Absolute crime she was snubbed for a Best Director nom for this.

Lawless - DVD Review

Starring Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Guy Pearce, Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman and Dane DeHaan.
Directed by John Hillcoat.

★★½

Tom Hardy has star power and he exudes it here.  He's Forrest, one of the three Bondurant brothers, hillbilly moonshiners who refused to pay off the law during Prohibition.  Forrest is the brains of the bunch.  Brawn, too, though older brother Howard (Jason Clarke) is capable of delivering his own psycho butt-whippin'.

But the main protagonist is the sensitive youngest brother (Shia LaBeouf), who wants to be part of the business.  He idolizes gangsters and puts up their newspaper clippings like a 10-year-old girl and her One Direction posters.  Gary Oldman makes an appearance as one such gangster, but his part's so small, it's more of an extended cameo.

The villain here is Guy Pearce as a creepy federal officer from Chicago who wants his piece and who will kill to get it.

There's a stop-and-start lurching to the pace that subtracts from the enjoyment.  I really wanted to love this movie but must admit it was merely okay.

2012 Golden Globe Nominations

Best Motion Picture — Drama

Argo
Django Unchained
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Zero Dark Thirty

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture — Drama
Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
Richard Gere, Arbitrage
John Hawkes, The Sessions
Joaquin Phoenix, The Master
Denzel Washington, Flight

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture — Drama
Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty
Marion Cotillard, Rust & Bone
Helen Mirren, Hitchcock
Naomi Watts, The Impossible
Rachel Weisz, The Deep Blue Sea

Best Motion Picture — Comedy Or Musical
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Les Miserables
Moonrise Kingdom
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Silver Linings Playbook

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture — Comedy Or Musical
Emily Blunt, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Judi Dench, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
Maggie Smith, Quartet
Meryl Streep, Hope Springs

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture — Comedy Or Musical
Jack Black, Bernie
Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook
Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables
Bill Murray, Hyde Park on Hudson
Ewan McGregor, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Best Performance by an Actress In A Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Amy Adams, The Master
Sally Field, Lincoln
Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables
Helen Hunt, The Sessions
Nicole Kidman, The Paperboy

Best Performance by an Actor In A Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Alan Arkin, Argo
Leonardo DiCaprio, Django Unchained
Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master
Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln
Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

Best Director — Motion Picture
Ben Affleck, Argo
Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty
Ang Lee, Life of Pi
Steven Spielberg, Lincoln
Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained

Best Screenplay — Motion Picture
Argo, Chris Terrio
Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino
Lincoln, Tony Kushner
Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell
Zero Dark Thirty, Mark Boal

Best Original Score — Motion Picture
Anna Karenina, Dario Marianelli
Argo, Alexandre Desplat
Cloud Atlas, Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimet & Reinhold Heil
Life of Pi, Michael Danna
Lincoln, John Williams

Best Animated Film
Brave
Frankenweenie
Hotel Transylvania
Rise of the Guardians
Wreck-It Ralph

Best Foreign Language Film
Amour
The Intouchables
Kon-Tiki
A Royal Affair
Rust & Bone

Best Television Series — Comedy Or Musical
The Big Bang Theory
Episodes
Girls
Modern Family
Smash

Best Performance by an Actor In A Television Series – Drama
Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire
Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad
Jeff Daniels, The Newsroom
Jon Hamm, Mad Men
Damian Lewis, Homeland

Best Performance by an Actress In A Television Series – Drama
Connie Britton, Nashville
Glenn Close, Damages
Claire Danes, Homeland
Michelle Dockery, Downton Abbey
Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife

Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Kevin Costner, Hatfields and McCoys
Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock
Woody Harrelson, Game Change
Toby Jones, The Girl
Clive Owen, Hemingway and Gellhorn

Best Performance by an Actress In A Mini-series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Nicole Kidman, Hemingway and Gellhorn
Jessica Lange, American Horror Story: Asylum
Sienna Miller, The Girl
Julianne Moore, Game Change
Sigourney Weaver, Political Animals

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Max Greenfield, New Girl
Ed Harris, Game Change
Danny Huston, Magic City
Mandy Patinkin, Homeland
Eric Stonestreet, Modern Family

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Hayden Panettiere, Nashville
Archie Panjabi, The Good Wife
Sarah Paulson, Game Change
Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey
Sofia Vergara, Modern Family

Best Performance by an Actress In A Television Series — Comedy Or Musical
Zooey Deschanel, New Girl
Lena Dunham, Girls
Tina Fey, 30 Rock
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep
Amy Poehler, Parks And Recreation

Best Performance by an Actor In A Television Series — Comedy Or Musical
Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock
Don Cheadle, House of Lies
Louis C.K., Louis
Matt LeBlanc, Episodes
Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory

Best Television Series — Drama
Boardwalk Empire
Breaking Bad
Downton Abbey
Homeland
The Newsroom

Best Mini-Series Or Motion Picture Made for Television
Game Change
The Girl
Hatfield & McCoys
The Hour
Political Animals

Cecil B. DeMille Award
Jodie Foster

Random Movie Stuff - 5/8/12

- Sharlto Copley (The A-Team), Miranda Richardson (Harry Potter's Rita Skeever), Imelda Staunton (Harry Potter's Dolores Umbridge), Lesley Manville (Another Year) and Sam Riley (Control) are joining Angelina Jolie in Walt Disney's live-action Maleficent.  Elle Fanning (Super 8) will play Aurora.


- Jessica Chastain will not be joining Iron Man 3 after all, saying she couldn't work it into her busy schedule but hoped she could be in a Marvel movie in the future.

- George Lindsay, best known as Goober from The Andy Griffith Show, has died at age 83.


- Maurice Sendak, children's author best know for Where the Wild Things Are, has died at age 83.

Random Movie Stuff - 4/25/12

- Some updates regarding Disney & Pixar. James Bobin will be back to direct a sequel to The Muppets. Pixar has three new titles on its slate. The Good Dinosaur is set to be released May 30, 2014, and it features a modern story set in a world where the cataclysmic asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs never actually hit the Earth. Inside the Mind is set for June 19, 2015, and it takes place inside the human mind. Dia De Los Muertos doesn't have a release date but it will center on the Mexican holiday. Pixar's Brave opens in June.

- Jessica Chastain (The Help, The Debt) is in talks to join Iron Man 3. She'd play a sexy scientist whose brain rivals Tony Stark's. She'd be joining Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Ben Kingsley and Guy Pearce.

- Ben Kingsley will also star in the indie film Cut Bank. It's about two men trying to escape a town frozen in time. Armie Hammer (Mirror Mirror), John Malkovich, Michael Sheen and Teresa Palmer co-star.

- Gina Carano (Haywire) is in talks to join Fast & Furious 6, starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Dwayne Johnson. She'd play a member of Johnson's team, seeking to take the car thieves down.

- Owen Wilson will star in the thriller The Coup, about a family visiting southeast Asia who get caught in the middle of a violent military coup of the government.

- Mel Gibson will be joining the cast of Machete Kills. The sequel will star Danny Trejo and be directed by Robert Rodriguez.

Take Shelter - DVD Review

Starring Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Shea Whigham, Kathy Baker, Ray McKinnon and Lisa Gay Hamilton.  Directed by Jeff Nichols.

★★★


Michael Shannon has always been an interesting actor to me. His blocky features tend to get him cast as weird characters (Bug, Revolutionary Road) but he's been able to carve out some memorable, complex performances in films like Shotgun Stories, and then this one.

Here he plays Curtis, a man who keeps having apocalyptic nightmares, and with each one, he starts to wonder if they're prophetic visions, if he and his family and his town are truly in danger.

This plays against the backdrop of the working poor, where he already struggles to make ends meet, but against the wishes of his wife (Jessica Chastain) he builds a storm shelter. As the movie progresses, we realize we're not watching a supernatural thriller, but rather a drama about a man who's losing his grip with reality as he descends into mental illness.

Shannon's tremendous here, one of those movies where an Oscar nomination would have been well-earned.

The Tree of Life - DVD Review

Starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken and Sean Penn.
Directed by Terrence Malick.

"THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES!"

There is no doubt Malick is a master of visual poetry. But 138 minutes of montages and scene fades doth not a movie make.

This very personal, ambitious work calls to mind Stanley Kubrick's 2001 as its closest comparison, but even Stanley got around to telling a story. Here we swim through a cubist flipbook of life for the three O'Brien boys in small-town 1950's Texas. Brad Pitt plays the domineering father; Jessica Chastain the angelic mother.

Malick shows his hand in the first few minutes. We gets beautiful shots of birds, wind, trees, blades of grass, shadows, children running, a woman smiling, whispered voice-overs, and it keeps going and going... I was grateful when it spins off into a 20-minute sequence of the Earth being formed, through the dinosaur age, until it all comes back to the O'Brien family. We get a couple scene of the oldest boy grown up, played by Sean Penn, but it's really more of a cameo.

I know of Malick's tendencies and I was braced for a non-linear story, ready for an artist to expose his palette. But this is from an artist who knows he's an artist, who acts and thinks like an artist, and if we don't get it, well, I guess we're too bourgeois. He knows what story he's telling, but he makes it inscrutable. There are lasting images and impressions, and yes, he is very talented. But it's not as profound as he thinks it is, and large sections of it are boring. That is its ultimate crime. I wanted it to wash over me, but after a while, when it became clear this was all Malick had up his sleeve, it was laborious. Gorgeous shot after gorgeous shot, and yet, what is the sum of these parts?

I wanted to love this movie, to get swept up by it, but would it kill the director to just let two characters have a conversation, to have something happen and then have the next scene be the reaction to what just happened? It's the longest 138-minute movie I've ever seen.

Random Movie News 9/15/11

- Robert DeNiro and Diane Keaton will star in The Big Wedding, about a long-divorced couple who are forced to pretend they're still happily married at their son's wedding. It co-stars Katherine Heigl, Amanda Seyfried, Topher Grace, Ben Barnes, Susan Sarandon and Robin Williams. It's slated to open October 19, 2012.

- Hugh Grant has joined the ensemble Cloud Atlas, starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Jim Broadbent, Susan Sarandon, Ben Whishaw and Bae Doona. It's about people from different time periods, narrators that "hear each other's echoes down the corridor of history."

- Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones) will join Jessica Chastain (The Help, The Debt) in Mama, a horror movie from producer Guillermo Del Toro.

- Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (28 Weeks Later) is close to signing on for the remake of Highlander.

- Seth Rogen will co-write, co-producer, co-direct The Apocalypse with longtime partner Evan Goldberg. It'll star Rogen as well as James Franco, Jonah Hill and Jay Baruchel, playing themselves locked in a house while the apocalypse happens outside, but the longer they're holed up, the more they get on each other's nerves.

The Debt - Movie Review

lll

Starring Helen Mirren, Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, Marton Csokas, Tom Wilkinson, Jesper Christensen and Ciaran Hinds. Directed by John Madden.

There are three Mossad agents in 1965 known as Rachel (Jessica Chastain), David (Sam Worthington), and Stephen (Marton Csokas). Their mission is to capture a Nazi war criminal named Fogel (Jesper Christensen), now posing in East Germany as a harmless gynecologist. They plan to take him to Israel and try him for his crimes.

Flash-forward to 1997. Rachel (Helen Mirren), David (Ciaran Hinds), and Stephen (Tom Wilkinson) are still dealing with the repercussions of that mission, and new light is shed that may have a dramatic impact on them.

(Although I have to pause here and say I thought that Hinds looked more like an older Csokas than Wilkinson did; it threw me off a bit. Anyway...)

This is a tense thriller than jumps back and forth between the time periods with ease, and Mirren and Chastain do remarkable jobs as Rachel. Chastain especially demonstrates that she has a bright future ahead of her.

This was at 3-1/2 stars for me until the last five minutes. I'll leave it there.