Scott Rudin | SpoutBlog

Oscar Predictions: Is Kate Winslet a Lock for Best Actress?

By Christopher Campbell posted 9 months ago

In 10 out of 14 years, the winner of the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role has gone on to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. If this year marks the 11th such congruence, Meryl Streep will take home the Oscar. Yet there is an odd circumstance with the Academy’s nominations that hurts Streep’s chances. Another one of the Academy’s Best Actress contenders also received a SAG Award Sunday night: Kate Winslet, who won the supporting actress trophy for The Reader. At the Oscars, this role has been recognized as a lead performance, one that is likely a favorite to win.

Yes, it is a strange situation, one that shocked and confused Oscar prognosticators (especially this writer) on Thursday morning. Winslet’s Reader performance was campaigned as a supporting role, and she was recognized as such by the Golden Globes, the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Chicago Film Critics Association and of course the Screen Actors Guild. A few organizations did nominate her for a lead award for The Reader, though few people take the Satellites seriously, and the BAFTA Awards are different than most in that they permit Winslet to compete against herself in the same category (she is also nominated for Best Leading Actress for Revolutionary Road).

Some now believe the Academy’s deviation will in fact cost Winslet the Oscar she could have won in the supporting field. Either voters will be confused about what film she’s nominated for (unless I’m simply less observant than elderly Academy members, which may indeed be the case), or she will now split the majority vote with Streep and thus allow Anne Hathaway or Melissa Leo to slip ahead (Angelina Jolie is believed to have no shot). Another idea is that voters will dismiss Winslet due to doubts over which category the performance belongs in. But since enough members of the Academy made it a point to nominate her as lead actress in the first place, this is hardly a reasonable theory.

12 Comments

Hollywood

The Road Not Ready. Trade Roughage 10/16/08

By Christopher Campbell posted 1 year ago

Dimension Films has “quietly” pushed back its highly anticipated adaptation of The Road from November to December, and there’s speculation that the film may be taken completely off the 2008 calendar because the film might not be ready in time.

Meanwhile, Dimension head Bob Weinstein admitted at the Media and Money conference yesterday that he and Harvey would pretty much be shit out of luck if they were trying to fund The Weinstein Co. today. Fortunately for them, they borrowed enough when they could and will continue to make it last for awhile. He also fueled the Weinstein vs. Rudin fire by taking a shot at Rudin’s Oscar chances now that he’s off The Reader.
20-year-old porn star Sasha Grey (Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge) has been cast as the lead in Steven Soderbergh’s prostitute pic, The Girlfriend Experience. A fan of the films of Godard, Bertolucci and Breillat, she reportedly told Adult Video News that she’s honored to get to work for an “auteur” like Soderbergh.
Steve Carell has been typecast into another “clueless-man” role, this time as the titular French soldier in Brigadier Gerard, based on the Arthur Conan Doyle stories set during the Napoleonic wars.
Da film! Da film! Sacha Gervasi, who scripted Spielberg’s The Terminal, is set to write and direct a biopic about diminutive actor Herve Villechaize, who starred as Tattoo on TV’s Fantasy Island.

0 Comments

Hollywood, Indies

Rudin Exits Reader. Trade Roughage 10/10/08

By Christopher Campbell posted 1 year ago

Scott Rudin is taking his name off Stephen Daldry’s The Reader after losing his heavyweight battle with Harvey Weinstein regarding the film’s release schedule. Now that Rudin has left the project, though, can we expect the producer to push his Revolutionary Road even harder for the Oscar? And will Kate Winslet be treated like a poor child of divorce who’s made to pick one parent over the other?
Confirming little more than what the movie blogs have been rumoring all week, Variety reports that super hot right now Josh Brolin is in talks to play the DC Comics gunslinger Jonah Hex. Perhaps with everyone respecting comic book characters so much these days this role will be the one that Brolin finally gets an Oscar nomination for.
I guess when your film stars George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey, you can get just any old actress to play the lead female part. But picking the most boring Lost character ever (well, the actress who plays her, anyway) to costar in Grant Heslov’s Men Who Stare at Goats seems a bit counterproductive.
Continuing the trend of making uncomfortable topics funny, Seth Rogen is producing and will co-star in a comedy about cancer from an autobiographical script by HBO producer Will Reiser.
Despite another bunch of box office contenders entering the multiplexes this weekend, including the heavily starred yet topically cursed Body of Lies, the bets are that Beverly Hills Chihuahua will stay on top for a second round.

0 Comments

Hollywood

Heavyweight Battles. Trade Roughage 09/23/08

By Christopher Campbell posted 1 year ago

Now that DreamWorks’ detachment from Paramount is officially happening, it’s time to find a distributor for the soon-to-be private company. Universal and Disney are currently the main contenders, but there just seems to be something wrong about a DreamWorks-Disney partnership, even if DreamWorks Animation isn’t part of the move.
Personally, I think Harvey Weinstein should hold off releasing Stephen Daltry’s The Reader until 2009, but I’d like to see Harv and Scott Rudin literally wrestle each other to see who wins their distribution dispute.
Who wants to see a giant whale decimate 19th century ships in bullet time? Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov is helming a visual effects-heavy reimagining of Moby Dick.
Speaking of ruining classics, there’s a Rashomon remake in the works that will update the story’s setting to a modern day rape trial. But then does it have to be an official redo, since there’s tons of Rashomon-influenced movies anyway?
This would have fit in a lot better in yesterday’s Trade Roughage: Keira Knightley signs on for her millionth period piece, wins a balloon and a flapper costume shopping spree.