Oscars Bosses Change The Rules
Bosses at the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have changed the voting rules for the Academy Awards – to help make the polling for the coveted Best Picture Oscar more accurate.
The changes mean members will now be asked to rate the ten nominees in order of preference, rather than picking one outright winner.
The news comes after Academy executives extended the final shortlist from five to ten movies, starting with the 2010 ceremony.
Oscar 2009 Live!
After last year’s Oscars delivered their worst TV ratings ever, producers this time say they aim to liven up the show with some surprises and new ways of presenting awards.
While some details have surfaced in the past week (the major stars could be Jack Nicholson, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, and Kate Winslet, turned down the chance to present awards) presenters names are being kept top secret. Some stars will sneak backstage, not enter on the red carpet.
Their efforts were complicated by the fact that this year’s main Oscar contenders, led by the British-made “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” starring Brad Pitt, are hardly the big box office blockbusters that tend to pull in viewers.
The host is Hugh Jackman, who has hosted Broadway’s Tony Awards three times, to emcee the Oscars for the first time.
“If I hadn’t done the Tonys, I think I’d be a lot more nervous than I am,” Jackman said.
A major criticism of the ceremony is that, at three and a half hours, it drags on too long. Jackman admitted that he hoped it could be cut shorter. But winning speeches are limited to 45 seconds!
The ceremony airing live on ABC, features a mix of fresh faces and old Oscar hands in the acting categories. Two-time winner Meryl Streep extended her record to 15 nominations, this time for best actress in “Doubt,” while other past Oscar recipients and nominees include Sean Penn (best actor for “Milk”), Kate Winslet (best actress for “The Reader”), Robert Downey Jr. (supporting actor for “Tropic Thunder”) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (supporting actor for “Doubt.”)
Newcomers include a rush of veteran performers, among them best-actress contenders Anne Hathaway (”Rachel Getting Married”) and Melissa Leo (”Frozen River”) and best-actor candidates Mickey Rourke (”The Wrestler”), Frank Langella (”Frost/Nixon”) and Richard Jenkins (”The Visitor”).
Kate Winslet Will Enter Academy Award History
Kate Winslet will either win her first Oscar for her performance as a woman with a secret Nazi past in “The Reader,” or get the title of biggest loser for having been nominated for the coveted honor, and lost, six times! Winslet was nominated for “Sense and Sensibility” (1995), “Titanic” (1997), “Iris” (2001), “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004), “Little Children” (2006).
One more loss and she will be tied at six as Oscar’s biggest losing actress with Deborah Kerr (nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role) – “Edward, My Son” (1949), “From Here to Eternity” (1953), “The King and I” (1956), “Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison”, (1957), “Separate Tables” (1958), “The Sundowners” (1960) and Thelma Ritter (nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role) – “All About Eve” (1950), “The Mating Season” (1951), “With a Song in My Heart” (1952), “Pickup on South Street” (1953), “Pillow Talk” (1959) and “Birdman of Alcatraz” (1962).
Winslet, has already picked up two Golden Globes for her role as a German woman with a teenage lover and a secret in “The Reader” and as a frustrated 1950s American housewife in “Revolutionary Road.” She has also won BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild Awards, and in emotional speeches, she has expressed shock at her wins after smiling bravely from her seat so often in the past.
The betting in Hollywood ahead of the February 22, 2009 ceremony for the world’s top film awards is that Winslet should be getting her acceptance speech ready.
“I think it is her time. When Academy members are voting, they are going to be thinking not just of “The Reader” but of “Revolutionary Road,” said Hollywood.com movie critic Pete Hammond, when talking about the two movies starring Winslet that were released within weeks of each other in 2008. “That is pretty daunting when you have two great performances like that back to back,” Hammond said.
The four other best actress nominees are Anne Hathaway as a resentful sister in “Rachel Getting Married,” Melissa Leo in border smuggling drama “Frozen River,” Angelina Jolie playing a mother searching for her child in “Changeling” and Meryl Streep for her role in “Doubt.”
“Kate has a solid lead. She is in a Holocaust movie, speaking with a foreign accent, she ages dramatically and she looks great naked – all key elements for a win,” said Tom O’Neil of awards website TheEnvelope.com.
Judd Apatow Bringing New Short Film to Oscars
Academy Award producers Bill Condon and Laurence Mark have revealed that comedy writer-director-producer Judd Apatow (Knocked Up) will appear on stage during the Oscar telecast on Feb. 22, and will bring a short film that will serve as a tribute to comedy.
“We’re thrilled to say that our contemporary comedy master Judd Apatow is contributing both a film and live material to that part of the show,” Condon said Wednesday.
“Judd was truly a prince to hop on and truly whip up special shooting for it,” Mark added. “It’s a big deal.”
According to the AP, director Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge, Australia) has also created a production number featuring Oscar host Hugh Jackman, and Capote director Bennett Miller will also be contributing a short film sequence. There is even a hint that other big filmmakers will also be participating in the show, although the producers refuse to divulge any further details.
Oscar Buzz – Gran Torino And Two TV Spots
Warner Brothers recently debuted two short TV spots for “Gran Torino” and here they are. You can also see some images from the movie.
Movie critics were not so thrilled by Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling,” but numerous early reviews of “Gran Torino” put Eastwood’s second movie in 2008 into Oscar consideration.
In “Gran Torino” Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, an iron-willed veteran living in a changing world, who is forced by his immigrant neighbors to confront his own long-held prejudices.
The Dark Knight – For Your Consideration
As we know Oscar season is approaching and Warner Bros. has been putting out their “For Your Consideration” ads featuring a shot of Heth Ledger as The Joker to remind the Academy for best picture category and best supporting actor. Check them out below.
In addition to running their ad on the cover of Variety, the studio also bought two full page ads in the magazine, one for Ledger and one for “The Dark Knight” to win Best Picture.
“$9.99″
Fourteen features have been submitted for consideration in the Animated Feature Film category for the 81st Academy Awards. One of them is “$9.99” a stop motion animated movie for grown-ups based on the Short Stories of Israeli writer Etgar Keret. Tatia Rosenthal is director and co-writer.
Despite the low budget constraints of the production, the filmmakers and casting agent Nikki Barrett decided to aim high with the casting of the puppet’s voices. Sending the script out to a number of internationally acclaimed Australian actors, the filmmakers were gratified by the response.
“Actors just wanted to be part of this project. We ended up with a fantastic cast…our dream list of actors to play the roles,” said the producer Emile Sherman.
Departing from the more usual practice in the animation industry of recording voice performances in isolation from each other, director Rosenthal preferred to record the actors in the configurations they appeared in the script.
“I insisted on getting everybody together in the booth. This became possible because we required them for such a short time. As a first-time director I needed to have that immediate sense of whether a scene was going to work. I didn’t want to imagine it. I wanted to hear it.”
WALL-E For Best Picture Nomination!
Disney have started their campaign pushing “WALL – E” – the cutest robot ever – for a nomination in both Best Animated Feature and Best Picture Oscar, an award never won by an animated film, at the upcoming Academy Awards starting with a campaign this week.
Walt Disney Studios Chairman Dick Cook told the New York Times, “If we didn’t do it, I don’t think we’d be giving the movie its due.”
Only one animated film has ever had the honor to be nominated in the Best Picture category, Disney’s 1991 film “Beauty and the Beast,” before the Academy started the Best Animated Picture award in 2001.
Check out great images at our Wall – E Gallery and read more at PixarPlanet Blog
67 Countries Vying for 2008 Foreign Language Oscar
Last year winner in this category was “The Counterfeiters” directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky (Austria).
The race for the best foreign-language film Oscar is the most crowded one yet. It’s a new record – 67 countries, including first-time entrant Jordan, have submitted films for consideration in the Foreign Language Film category for the 81st Academy Awards.
You’ve probably seen or heard of some of them.
And they are:
Afghanistan, “Opium War,” Siddiq Barmak, director;
Albania, “The Sorrow of Mrs. Schneider,” Piro Milkani and Eno Milkani, directors;
Algeria, “Masquerades,” Lyes Salem, director;
Argentina, “Lion’s Den,” Pablo Trapero, director;
Austria, “Revanche,” Gotz Spielmann, director;
Azerbaijan, “Fortress,” Shamil Nacafzada, director;
Bangladesh, “Aha!,” Enamul Karim Nirjhar, director;
Belgium, “Eldorado,” Bouli Lanners, director;
Bosnia and Herzegovina, “Snow,” Aida Begic, director;
Brazil, “Last Stop 174,” Bruno Barreto, director;
Bulgaria, “Zift,” Javor Gardev, director;
Oscar 2009 – The Earliest Oscars Ever
What’s more significant: the inauguration of a new U.S. president or the announcement of the year’s Oscar nominees?
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided politics takes precedence, announcing Monday that it has delayed the nominations announcement by two days.
Oscar nominees are usually revealed on a Tuesday about four weeks before the big show, which is typically held the last Sunday in February. For 2009, though, the targeted Tuesday, Jan. 20, is Inauguration Day.
“It didn’t make any sense for us to try to compete with (the inauguration) from a news point of view,” academy Executive Administrator Ric Robertson told The Associated Press.
“Ballots are due Jan. 12, and nominations are announced 10 days later, so that’s getting pretty close to the minimum,” he said. “The most critical path is the balloting-voting process. Since we remain committed, for security reasons, to paper balloting, and all Pricewaterhouse Coopers tabulating is done by hand, it’s not done by computers. … They can turn things around quickly but they still need time.”
The 2009 presidential inauguration isn’t the first event that prompted the academy to alter its calendar. The Oscar show was moved from the last Sunday in February in 2006 so it wouldn’t conflict with the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics, Robertson said.
So the 81st annual Oscar nominees will be revealed Thursday, Jan. 22, and the Academy Awards will be presented Sunday, Feb. 22, the earliest Oscars ever.
Update:
