It’s already September, and this means it’s officially awards season. Well, maybe not officially, but the Oscars seem to be a hot topic of discussion all of a sudden. On the one hand, the big fall film festivals kick off tomorrow with the opening of the Venice Film Festival. And Telluride and Toronto are about to begin, too. This means awards contenders will begin to be seen by critics and other buzz-makers.
Prematurely putting things into perspective, Vulture posted some Oscar nomination predictions Sunday evening, despite not yet seeing the majority of their picks, and bloggers at the Los Angeles Times responded with either continued analysis or the complaint that it’s too soon.
Meanwhile, those who aren’t necessarily excited or annoyed with the sudden arrival of the season at least have something to say about the Academy’s latest change of rules. This time they’ve revised the voting process for the Best Picture category — which now will include ten nomineees — in a way that could hurt a lot of films’ chances. The interesting thing is, some people believe the change is bad for The Hurt Locker, while other people think it’s beneficial to the film.
Check out what the film blogs are saying about the season and the new rules after the jump:
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I don’t watch American Idol, not even when it features Quentin Tarantino or the singing of “movie songs.” And from what I can tell, I didn’t miss much last night when the show brought the filmmaker back on as a mentor while the finalists sang a terrible selection of soundtrack hits. Apparently Tarantino was wasted on the broadcast, and I don’t mean intoxicated; I mean he was pretty much useless to the way the show works. But here’s one thing: the AI episode got people on the film blogs talking, and that might give the show attention it doesn’t normally receive — not that it really needs any additional viewers or coverage, of course.
Oh well, here’s another thing: in connection with the show (though really not seen until today), we got a new clip from Inglourious Basterds featuring Mike Myers, which seems to be a joke — or a deterrent for some of us if it’s not a joke.
After the jump, the internerds weigh in on their opinion of the episode, the filmmaker and the clip:
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Will this year’s presidential election be determined by which candidate is more hip? Barack Obama is younger, listens to Jay-Z and Kanye West and is something of a trendy choice among college students. McCain, on the other hand, is older and (now) less athletic but is still considered to be hip in a cool grandpa kind of way. Like the grandpa who has exciting war stories to share. Have you seen the video footage of him jumping from an explosion during the USS Forrestal fire? That’s pretty cool.
So, the outcome of the race may depend on what the majority of Americans think is cool. Charisma or Muscle. It reminds me of an election for high school class president. Who is more popular, the preppy basketball player or the more jockish captain of the wrestling team?
But do we really want a cool president? Let’s take a look at some of the coolest fictional presidents from the movies and decide if it’s truly a good idea to base our vote on which candidate we’d prefer to hang with.
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Every year it seems we see the same post-Oscars article about how the ratings for the telecast are down. But this year’s show may have been the worst ever. The Associated Press has called it a “dud” and reports that preliminary ratings point to this being the least-watched in history — 14% worse, in fact, than the previous least-watched telecast, in 2003. There was a lot of speculation going in that it would receive a poor viewer turnout, mostly because the nominated films weren’t as well-known or seen and because the writer’s strike allowed for little definite planning. Aside from the lack of mainstream appeal, though, this year’s ceremony is also being considered a bore, whether due to its predictability or its shortage of interesting, exciting or hilarious moments.
So, I’ve been wondering how the Oscars could both draw more viewers and be more entertaining to those of us who tune in every year, no matter what. I have my own ideas, I’ve asked friends and family and I’ve searched the blogosphere for what the people want. Hopefully the Academy will pay attention:
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UPDATE 12:58 PM: We received a phone call from a publicist informing us that the trailer that was posted to iKlipz this morning was “leaked,” and we’ve been asked to take the video down until March 1. But even if you didn’t get to see it, I pretty much summed it up below.
Big––sorry, JOHN JAMES PRESTON––dumps Carrie via cell phone ON THE DAY OF THE WEDDING! So she hires an American Idol castoff with unrealistic expectations about New York relationships as her personal assistant, then goes on vacation somewhere where she’s free to drink pina coladas and laugh hysterically at a 100-year-old drag queen’s jokes about pubic hair. Wouldn’t you?
Also, remember when Sex and the City was pure lifestyle porn (and, sometimes, sort of actual porn) and not a Lifetime movie with swear words? 1999 was awesome. But somewhere along the line, as the actresses got older and I guess and someone decided that it was really weird for a bunch of unmarried 40 year old women to be going out drinking together every night (note to someone: in New York, that’s not that weird at all), all the sex (even the metaphorical sex, the commodity fetishism and the status porn) got washed away. And now it’s movie time, and it seems like a more appropriate title than Sex and the City would be Men Will Always Disappoint Us, So Let’s Just Go Back To Our Fantasy Of Boozy Female Co-dependence While Jennifer Hudson, Who At Age 26 Has Had More Success As An Actress Than Any of Us Will Ever Know, Sings Don Henley. Also: The City.
(Also, I just accidentally let the trailer play in another window while I was typing this, and I noticed that the foley sound of Samantha biting into that cracker is mixed REALLY loud. Like, as if to signal that the sight of a woman eating when she sees something she wants to fuck is not only a joke in and of itself, but that we’ll be alerted to this and other moments of high comedy in this movie by sound effects. Classy.)
Via FilmDrunk.
Remember way back in June, when clips of that Fox sitcom starring Parker Posey hit YouTube? Yeah, that’s not going so well. According to Variety, although The Return of Jezebel James is still on Fox’s midseason schedule (meaning it’ll premiere alongside American Idol and 24 in early 2008), the network has cut their order of episodes in half. Fox is basically like, “It’s cool, we love the show, we’ve just got SO MUCH QUALITY PROGRAMMING planned that we’re only gonna have room for 7 episodes!” The realists at The Culture Czar suspect it has something to do with the fact that the show is “only so-so funny,” and I’m with them.
