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The 84th Oscars: Aftermath and Postgame Coverage
As I watched the telecast of Sunday’s awards, going over the mixture of predictably safe choices, three words kept circling through my head, like scrolling text on the side of a blimp: BUSINESS AS USUAL. It’s been known for a while that the French silent film “The Artist” was scheduled to take home many of the top awards including Best Picture and Best Director. However, what was not expected was that the sweep would be split between it and Martin Scorsese’s family film (I feel like my hatred towards it spawns mostly from having to join those four words together), “Hugo,” which matched “The Artist’s” total of five wins. In simplest terms, I’d describe these wins as safe, mundane and boring, but honestly, what else is new? Read more…
New “War Horse” Trailer and Poster
Over the summer, everyone questioned what I said when I declared that what we had seen of Steven Spielberg’s “War Horse” was only a teaser and there would surely be more to come. Well, here I stand on my own high horse with a new trailer for the upcoming film. Unfortunately, the new trailer doesn’t really seem to do much more than rearrange and expand on a lot of the footage shown in the last preview.
Many pundits, at the moment, are calling this film the frontrunner for Best Picture. While it definitely has a boatload of nominations in line, I would not put it at the front of the gate. The Oscars seem to enjoy Spielberg most at his grittiest, and this appears to be perhaps one of the most sentimental ventures he has ever made. One thing’s for sure about the film, however. It looks absolutely gorgeous. If all plays out, one award we can definitely say that “War Horse” is leading the field in is Best Cinematography. Should it win, my favorite active DP, Janusz Kaminski, would have three Oscars on his mantel, putting him among a group you could count on one hand, including Robert Surtees and the great Conrad L. Hall.
Recently, Dreamworks bumped up the release date to Christmas day. This now puts it within four days of “The Adventures of Tin Tin”‘s official opening. Mr. Spielberg does love to face off against himself. Not that he has anything to lose, really. Both films are sure to gross well over the 100 million mark. Combined with the success of “Super 8,” “Transformers 3,” “Terra Nova,” and all coupled with his reception of the David O’Selznick award from the Producers Guild, this will be a pretty good year for one of Hollywood’s greatest sons. And “Lincoln” hasn’t even started shooting yet.
Check out the new trailer, below:
NEW “Tree of Life” Poster
Wow. This film either has to be god’s gift to mankind, or it shall be the biggest disappointment in recent cinematic history. I don’t think any film aside from “Inception” has gained such a heavy base of anticipation among bloggers, fanboys and cinephiles, in general.
They seem to be putting a lot of emphasis on the visual images of the film (which are honestly quite gorgeous). Highly respected cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki could be looking at his fifth Oscar nomination, or perhaps even a win. Nothing will ever offset the snub of his loss for “Children of Men,” however, so a reward is irrelevant in my eyes.
One has to wonder whether or not the story is going to come anywhere near close enough to measuring up to the film’s brilliant eye candy. One has to wonder how a film that contains both Brad Pitt as an abusive, overbearing father and dinosaurs make it into the same screenplay. Yes, that’s right. I said dinosaurs. I remember hearing the rumors years ago, which I didn’t truly believe until I noticed the center square on the poster, fourth from the bottom. That looks quite a bit to me, and a lot of other people on the web, like a dinosaur standing the middle of some kind of river. Also, the top left corner appears to feature some kind of asteroid impact, that one could only guess is the rock that killed off life on Earth sixty-five million years ago.
Will this movie make any kind of discernible sense, or will it be a big visual mess of a film. I’m ready for just about anything at this point, and I hope you all are, too.
Check out the full poster after the cut:
The Edge of the Frame 