Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, and Mary-Louise Parker are back for the sequel to the action/comedy film, Red. In Red 2, the returning gang will be joined by Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Brian Cox. I think anyone who has seen the first film knows what to expect, and this snippet from the synopsis pretty much says all you need to know: “Retired black-ops CIA agent Frank Moses reunites his unlikely team of elite operatives for a global quest to track down a missing portable nuclear device. To succeed, they’ll need to survive an army of relentless assassins, ruthless terrorists and power-crazed government officials.” Watch the teaser after the jump.
Does it every cross your mind what persuaded someone to pick a certain outfit to wear on the red carpet? Over the years I’ve grown to love fashion, and if I had the money to dress better I would, but alas I do not. Although, it’s free to judge our many famous celebrities on what they choose to wear. Sunday at the Golden Globes the stars sported many different trends. Take a look at my list of the Worst Dressed women at the Golden Globes.
With the Oscar nominations being announced tomorrow morning and all other nominations revealed, it’s that time folks where we all wonder and debate who will be honored with a nomination Oscar morning.
The stars have aligned for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. They announced their nominations for the 70th annual Golden Globe Awards. For the first time, their nominees don’t seem as blatant for trying to have the biggest stars in Hollywood join together for a dinner party. Of course, there are some glaring omissions from a few categories but many of the films and performances cited were for the most part, respectable.
Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln leads the tally with seven nominations including Best Picture and Director. Daniel Day-Lewis nabbed his seventh nomination along co-stars Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones. Lincoln remains a definite favorite to win in nearly every category. To some surprise, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained was able to grab five nominations including a double Supporting Actor citation for Leonardo DiCaprio and Christoph Waltz. Tarantino was also nominated Best Director and Screenplay. Missing in the director’s field, Tom Hooper for the dynamite musical Les Miserables, which did grab four nominations in total. Read more on Analysis of the Golden Globe Nominations…
Sacha Gervasi’s much-anticipated Hitchcockwas supposed to deliver a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the Master of Suspense’s masterpiece (Psycho) and its improbable success. Instead, this disaster became an outlandish fantasy around the film’s crazed director (Anthony Hopkins) and the strained relationship with his wife (and uncredited collaborator) Alma Reville (Helen Mirren, in one of the film’s few bright spots), as it fabricates that their marriage was saved only by working together on the film.
With two (really one) contender left to be unveiled, this is the most exciting awards race I’ve covered in all my years of Oscar prognosticating. Every category is competitive and with races like this, anything can happen. Along with updating the official Oscar Predictions, I’ve updated the major precursors such as the Golden Globe Awards and the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
As New York gets ready to lift on Monday, which I’ve attempted to take a stab at, the National Board of Review and Los Angeles Film Critics will start the chain reaction of the awards season. Before anyone knows the winners, I’m seeing this as a three-horse race between Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, and Ben Affleck’s Argo, more particularly the first two films. Currently I’m foreseeing Hooper’s film to lead the way on Oscar nomination morning with 13 nominations, assuming lead Hugh Jackman and standout Eddie Redmayne can plow through some of the veterans in their categories. Read more on Oscar Circuit – Music vs. History…
One of the more intriguing additions to the slate of Oscar contending films in 2012 is Hitchcock, a quasi-biopic which focuses on the legendary Alfred Hitchcock’s process in creating the most storied horror film of all time, Psycho. With truly little left to be said about Psycho, the idea of a look behind the curtain at Alfred Hitchcock, the chance to learn about what propelled his genius forward and a glimpse into the risks he took to make the film that still defines his legacy to this very day, seems like a wonderful idea for a film. If anyone deserves a cinematic tribute of sorts, it is indeed Alfred Hitchcock.
What better way to start off the extended holiday weekend than stranded on with boat with a tiger in the visual and spiritual journey that is Life of Pi?We can also be thankful for the Rise of the Guardians as they band together against a world-wide threat. Then, be sure to avoid the Black Friday rush by ducking into a theater for a slice of Hitchcock. Read more on Weekend Openings: (11/21-11/23)…
Press junkets are a strange animal, to say the least. Sometimes they’re a lot of fun, but sometimes they can frankly be a mess. Luckily, late last week I was privy to one of the good ones, a morning in New York City spent in an upscale hotel interview just about everyone involved with the new film ‘Hitchcock’. I gave the film my thumbs up in a recent review (found here), but I freely admit that it’s not perfect, so I was interested in seeing why some of the talent made the choices that they did. The day consisted of several 1 on 1 interviews as well as a live press conference with a number of people, plus a video press conference with Anthony Hopkins. The interviews I conducted were with director Sacha Gervasi, stars James D’Arcy, Michael Stuhlbarg, Toni Collette, and Danny Huston, along with writer John McLaughlin, costume designer Julie Weiss, and production designer Judy Becker. Gervasi, D’Arcy, Stuhlbarg, Collette, and Huston were joined for the press conference by Helen Mirren and Jessica Biel, with Hopkins coming last. I didn’t get the chance to talk personally with Biel or Mirren, but I did wind up having Hopkins talk with me. That’s a funny story, and I’ll get to it momentarily, but for now sit back and enjoy the highlights of my ‘Hitchcock’ press junket coverage! I may wind up posting the entire interviews at a later date, but at the moment I’ve got a collection of the choice remarks from each individual. The time was very short with each one, but I’ll try and give a sense of what we talked about in those brief periods. Here we go.
There’s a lot of different ways that one could approach a biopic of legendary filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock, but director Sacha Gervasi has certainly found a unique one here. ‘Hitchcock’ is a surprisingly whimsical and amusing tale of the director struggling to make ‘Psycho’ as he goes through a rough patch with his wife. That’s going to come as a surprise for a lot of viewers, and while it possibly hurts the flick in terms of its Oscar chances, it doesn’t keep the film from being enjoyable. I definitely wish that the focus had been different for ‘Hitchcock’, but a combination of good acting and solid direction keep this completely watchable. Much like ‘Hyde Park on Hudson’, this is another would be Oscar player that’s likely not going to be much of a contender and compares to ‘My Week with Marilyn’, but it’s another one that I liked a bit more than the average critic. I laughed much more than I expected, and while I’m aware of its flaws, this is still a pleasing work that will have an appeal to older viewers especially. Anthony Hopkins is amusing as Hitchcock and Helen Mirren is very good as his wife, but both, along with the entire supporting cast (which are all solid), could have been better.
As the awards season is underway, multiple scenarios are playing out in my mind suggesting what can occur for the remainder of the year. Films like The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and Zero Dark Thirty are still sight unseen with Django Unchained and Promised Land about to get their first set of eyes. Last week Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables debuted a full-length trailer featuring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Eddie Redmayne, and Amanda Seyfried all showing some singing skills. Supporting Actress frontrunner Anne Hathaway was shown singing “I Dreamed a Dream” for the third time in the Universal Pictures marketing, which leads me to my point of the Oscar Circuit.
The trailer for Les Miserables didn’t do the film any favors. The clunky production design, unnecessary wide-angles, and even the live singing on set didn’t seem as great as I’d thought it’d be. In this latest round of Oscar Predictions, I’ve decided to back from Tom Hooper’s film a little bit. Where momentum and prestige is on the side of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and Ben Affleck’s Argo, big stage musicals transferred to film aren’t always safe bets. What makes this notion of the film failing to impress even more compelling is Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master. If Anne Hathaway were to fall out of the Supporting Actress race, who could win the award in her absence? There are arguably three slots taken in Supporting Actress with Amy Adams (The Master), Sally Field (Lincoln), and Helen Hunt (The Sessions). If it’s between those three for the win, Adams will be on her fourth nomination with the other two ladies having Oscars already. Field herself would be 3 for 3 for Oscar nominations, something hard to envision happening. Hunt has had a hard time post-Oscar win and isn’t as beloved as her competitors. This could all work out for the young Amy Adams. Read more on Oscar Circuit – “Master” of Networking?…
Sacha Gervasi’s Hitchcock is a curious creation. Adapted from Stephen Rebello’s biographical novel, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, this biopic of “The Master of Suspense” unravels the director’s complex nature through the discourse of popcorn-munching entertainment. Whether Hitchcock sends you into fits of laughter (guilty!) or glues you in by reliving some of Psycho’s most viscerally memorable moments from a unique, behind-the-scenes perspective, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a dull or lifeless moment in the film. In fact, the consistently high output of energy surrounding the narrative makes revisiting Psycho a new experience altogether, with equal measures of suspense, drama, horror, comedy and romantic intrigue – just as Hitch would have wanted!Most biopics often stick to the same banal formula: “larger-than-life” presentation of the subject, pretentious dialogue that tries to be clever but ends up painfully drab, and an elongation of the film’s running time because “there’s just so much to tell” about the figure of importance. Read more on Hitchcock (***½)…
I’m back once again ladies and gentlemen to do some more Sizing Up! This time around I’m going to be tackling the somewhat slight Best Actress field. For many, this is the worst category of the majors this year and for some the hardest to figure out, especially in terms of a victor. The ultimate winner won’t be of my concern too much now, but I’m seeking to try and make sense of the category and see which ladies can actually get to the final 5. Lots can change between now and the nominations, but this is where I think things currently stand, and it’s certainly a rather fluid list now. At the very least, it’ll be interesting to see how this matches up to the eventual slate of nominees, since so much is sort of guesswork with Best Actress.
The Oscar race is beginning to formulate itself. As it stands the Academy Awards have positioned themselves to be the wildest of wild cards of the Oscar season. Since Oscar ballots are due January 3rd, the nominations will be one of many awards ceremonies coming down like wildfire.
The Screen Actors Guild Awards announce their nominee choices first beginning on December 10th. The Broadcast Film Critics Association will name their best of the year with the Critics Choice Movie Awards being announced the next day on December 11th. The Hollywood Foreign Press will follow-suit with their Golden Globe nominations on December 13th. Mark my words; those four days will likely be the most important and telling aspects of the awards season. If you start hearing the usual suspects, back-to-back and over and over, Oscar will be referring to these groups for citations for their own nominees when they’re announced on January 10th. Read more on Oscar Circuit: “10 Weeks to Go”…
A new poster has dropped for Sacha Gervasi’s heavily anticipated new film, Hitchcock, which will share the love story between the famous titular director (played by Anthony Hopkins) and his wife Alma Reville (Helen Mirren) during the making of Hitch’s masterpiece. The film is based on the book “Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho” by Stephen Rebello. After the jump, check out the new poster (courtesy of Entertainment Weekly) and how it compares to the original 1960 theatrical poster for Psycho.
Attempting to keep a pulse on the season has presented some challenges as of late for the 2013 Oscars and its predictions. It can be argued that we don’t have a front runner in any category despite some films having strong showings at festivals.
Best Picture has presented real challenges. Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln finally had its trailer début and all I could think about was War Horse (2011). The film didn’t scream high quality and I still believe Spielberg and the film aren’t rewarded unless it stands next to Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Schindler’s List (1993). The film doesn’t look to be of that caliber. I’ve dropped Spielberg from the Directing predictions for now until some praising reviews come. A “secret” screening in New Jersey suggested that the film is good, not great.
Because this year has looked like a question mark thus far, I’ve been saying to some of my colleagues, we could be in store for something unprecedented. This would be something like Michael Haneke’s Amour winning Best Picture, becoming the first foreign language film ever or Silver Linings Playbook, first dramedy to win the top award since Shakespeare in Love (1998). I’m not ready to go there yet though. I don’t know how the Academy will respond to Amour, a film all too real in this stage of their average 62-year aged life. Perhaps Oscar will listen to the critics for the first time in a while. This could work well for something like Ben Affleck’s Argo or Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, two films that could be critics’ darlings throughout the season. What if our Best Picture winner has already been released? Read more on Oscar Circuit: “If I Had a Magic Lamp…”…
As you all know, this year, like almost every other awards season, we’ve had a few party-crashers looking to shake up the slow march to the Oscar nominations by coming out a few months early. Sometimes they hit, like “Million Dollar Baby,” “Crazy Heart,” or “Slumdog Millionaire” but plenty of the time they wind up not making a big mark on the race. This awards season has two surprise entrants hoping to be more like Clint Eastwood’s Oscar winner than another in a long line of films that should have waited an extra year. The titles in question for 2012 are “Hitchcock” and “Promised Land.” Both are possibly big contenders, though both could easily wind up shut out in the race. Gun to my head, I think the former has a stronger appeal than the latter, but both are clearly aimed straight at the Academy’s wheelhouse. Both have a lot of potential, but let’s not have a coronation them as Oscar winners just yet. What we should be doing is considering them in a way we’ve only briefly done before. What are the awards prospects for both films? Read more on Battle of the Late Contenders – Hitchcock vs. Promise…
The Awards Circuit Editor and Staff is joined by the great Scott Feinberg this week in our Awards Circuit Power Hour! Keeping track and discussing all the possible contenders, we also get into some in-depth discussion along with some segments.
Fox Searchlight has announced a November 23rd release date for The Sacha Gervasi-directed film, Hitchcock, starring Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins in the titular role. Hitchcock is adapted by John J. McLaughlin from Stephen Rebello’s bookAlfred Hitchcock And The Making Of Psycho. Along with Hopkins stars Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson, Danny Huston, Toni Collette, Jessica Biel, Michael Stuhlbarg, James D’Arcy, Michael Wincott, Richard Portnow, and Kurtwood Smith.
A remake that seems to miss the point of what made the original a success, Arthur is a big misfire that completely wastes the gonzo talent that is Russell Brand. What seemed like brilliant casting at the onset is revealed to be flawed as the movie progresses. Brand is an incredible supporting player, but his man-child persona wears thin when in the lead. He was one of the best supporting performances of the year in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and he was still lovably insane in last year’s Get Him to the Greek. Here, with no real lead besides him to take the focus off, he comes off more irritating than endearing. The other issue is that director Jason Winer and writer Peter Baynham have delivered a watered-down (no pun intended, considering the story) movie that takes the edge off of Brand. The original Arthur isn’t a classic in my eyes, but it was still a lot of fun and had a winning lead performance by Dudley Moore. This version is only barely on par with Arthur 2: On the Rocks. Read more on Arthur (**)…
The stars have aligned for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. They announced their nominations for the 70th annual Golden Globe Awards. For the first time, their nominees don’t seem as blatant for trying to have the biggest stars in Hollywood join together for a dinner party. Of course, there are some glaring omissions from a few categories but many of the films and performances cited were for the most part, respectable.
