By ALEX
FUNG
Last updated: 2002/01/30
Press
Wow, this article which appeared in today's Toronto Star is the best bit of press I've ever received. Awfully flattering and far too generous, but still -- kewl. But more importantly, to avoid any possible confusion I just wanted to mention for the record that the Best Picture Oscar nomination predictions I listed for the purposes of Peter Howell's profile article is not my final list; I'll run with that in a later column. At this point, though, I am (obviously) leaning towards that published quintet to comprise the final five.
Quick AFI-related Mailbag Interlude
In yesterday's Oscar Column #6, I briefly discussed the results of the inaugural AFI Awards held earlier this month. Several reader(s) also weighed in with their thoughts:
Q: "I'm sure you'll comment on this, but didn't Christopher Nolan seemingly shoot himself in the foot during his AFI Awards speech when he proclaimed that his screenplay was based on his brother's story and, therefore, wouldn't have been written at all without the original source material? It gives AMPAS members food for thought, I think."
- Michael T. Schuyler
A: I don't really think so -- it isn't as if it's some dark secret that Memento's genesis arose from Jonathan Nolan's short story; this fact is proclaimed in the film's press kit and has been mentioned numerous times in the media. That Christopher Nolan acknowledged the contributions of his brother Jonathan was to be expected, I'd think, and I'm not overly concerned that this comment in Nolan's AFI acceptance speech would necessarily jeopardize or cause confusion with the screenplay's classification. We'll see.
Q: "Irony: Robert Altman wins for Best Director for a film the AFI didn't even deem was one of the top 10 of the year. I'm starting to think that Altman isn't winning for his work on this film (he's done much better work), but it's for career achievement. If so, I expect the Golden Globe and DGA to follow suit."
- Anonymous
A: Many have mentioned the pecularity of Altman's AFI Best Director victory despite the fact that Gosford Park wasn't even listed as one of the ten 'nominated' AFI Movies Of The Year, and I fully concur that on the surface, this doesn't completely add up. (However, I do fall into the camp that winces when people claim that the Best Picture and Best Director Oscar nominees must match and trot out the tired "Oh, that film must've directed itself!" chestnut when they don't.) I'm not fully familiar with the AFI Awards guidelines -- they're new prizes on the scene; give me some time -- but I wonder whether Gosford Park's absence in the AFI Movies Of The Year scene may pertain to an insufficient amount of U.S. content; as you'll remember, in the various AFI "100 Years ... 100 Stupid Lists" exercises, only films with "significant creative and/or financial production elements from the United States" were eligible for consideration. Gosford Park, of course, is famously Brit-heavy, with only a few American actors in the mix -- Bob Balaban and (arguably) Ryan Phillipe among them -- so I wonder whether the film failed to meet this requirement and hence was not eligible for consideration in the AFI Movies Of The Year category. It's also worth noting that none of the Gosford Park supporting players, including the much-lauded Helen Mirren and the crowdpleasing turn of Maggie Smith, managed to score AFI nominations, which does make one wonder. As for how Robert Altman managed to get nominated and go on to win, well, he is an American director; perhaps the rules apply differently in his category. Mind you, this is all conjecture -- aside from the more straightfoward possibility that the AFI jury liked Altman but just didn't care for Gosford Park, this is the best I could come up with.
I'm not a big fan of chalking things up to 'career achievement' sentiment for Oscarless veteran performers and filmmakers, but in the case of Altman, I have to concur that this will probably play a notable role in terms of any Oscar support he receives. While I did think he did fine work in Gosford Park -- in my book, this is definitely his best film since Short Cuts -- one cannot ignore the fact that this celebrated actor's director is now 77 and has never won the Best Director Academy Award; he will have sentiment on his side. Still, I'm pleased that he's refusing to play the game and court voters, instead persisting in his characteristic cantankerousness, as per his recent slam of Helen Hunt and his cheerful declaration about his daily marijuana usage.
More Altman...
Q: I'm writing for two reasons: first, to let you know that your site is a pretty wonderful resource; second, to ask you what you think of Roger Ebert spilling the beans on his website? By which I mean: three days before the AFI awards were given out, Ebert published an article he'd written on Robert Altman, and in the article he revealed that Altman had already been named Best Director for Gosford Park by the American Film Institute and the New York Film Critics Circle. All three days before the AFI unveiling! So two things: 1.) how did Ebert know, and 2.) why the monumental indiscretion? I was pissed as all get out when I read his article. I wasn't looking to have the AFI awards spoiled for me. I should've took a thousand bucks to Vegas and put it all down on Altman winning...
- Jason Cooper
A: I hadn't noticed this at the time, but Mr. Cooper is absolutely correct -- in a feature on director Robert Altman which was published prior to the AFI Awards ceremony, Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert mentioned "As I write, it is December and Gosford Park has gotten [Altman] named as the year's best director by the American Film Institute..." Ebert was a member of this year's AFI Motion Picture Nominating Committee, so I wonder whether his remark mistakenly referred to Altman's success at capturing an AFI Best Director nomination, or that the director might've received the most support in the initial round of tallying, as opposed to the final vote. I certainly hope so, at least -- I'm admittedly grasping at straws here, but I don't see any reason why Ebert would intentionally want to let the cat out of the bag regarding Altman's eventual AFI Best Director victory. Curious, very curious.
Q: Jill Bilcock, Editor of the Year? Moulin Rouge would've been mediocre without her editing; with it, it's the worst movie of the year. Does she seriously have a chance at an Oscar? Do professional editors really think that cutting every 1.5 seconds without rhyme or reason is good work?
- kza
A: In the wake of both her AFI Best Editor prize and her American Cinema Editor nomination (yes, I'm cheating by pointing to a development occuring after kza's letter -- sorry), I'd say that Bilcock definitely has a chance at an Oscar nomination. As for the statuette itself, I think it's a pretty wide-open race with a daunting number of editors standing reasonable chances at capturing the Academy Award -- I'd say that all five of the Dramatic Feature Film Eddie nominees are viable contenders, and couldn't rule out any of the Comedy or Musical Eddie nominees in good conscience, save for probably Jim Stewart's editing of Monsters, Inc..
Q: I couldn't disagree more with the complaint about the AFI awards. The comments by critics, scholars and filmmakers were the best part of the show and just about the only thing that distinguish it in a positive way from other awards shows. Granted, a lot of the comments made were uninstructive gushing but occasionally somebody said something that was actually pretty insightful. For instance, Roger Ebert's observation that the "find an umbrella in the stars" scene in "A Beautiful Mind" foreshadows John Nash's "compulsion to find patterns where none exist" was a little bit random and obscure but isn't it refreshing to hear such an obscure moment explicated in, of all things, an awards show? When was the last time you actually heard substantive discussion on an awards broadcast about why the honored films deserve to be so honored?
I also loved the fact that they showed extensive clips from the films. The clips are always one of my favorite things about awards shows -- it's a chance to revisit fine moments from some of the year's best films -- and I am always disappointed when the Oscars skimp on the clips or make poor choices.
- "Iggy"
A: As I mentioned in Oscar Column #6, I also did not mind the snippets of commentary from jury members interspliced with the various film clips -- like you, I'm interested in hearing why the voters supported the films they did -- but I will grant that this is almost assuredly a minority opinion; substantive discussion on films seems to appeal only a specific niche market and appears to be thoroughly unwelcome in mainstream broadcasts like awards shows. Let's face it -- for every person who listened with interest to Richard Schickel or Roger Ebert discussing Mulholland Dr. or some other film, there were probably fifty people who were thinking "Hey, where's Russell Crowe? Where's Nicole Kidman? What's Jennifer Aniston wearing?", and network television is a numbers game. Honestly, how many television programs out there cover film in any substantive manner as opposed to all the tabloid-esque Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight-type shows? Two words: Joan Rivers.
I enjoy seeing film clips, but I do wish that those assembling footage for the various montages would take care to avoid using excerpts which include spoilers; I recall that the In The Bedroom footage was particularly egregious. I had the opportunity to go into Todd Field's film completely free from any familiarity with its plot, and regret that the picture's main turning points have since become semi-common knowledge. (Is my memory playing tricks with me, or didn't they actually include an interview segment with Roger Ebert where he effectively gave away turn #1? Argh. I don't blame Ebert -- I blame the producers who left in these roundabout spoilers.)
A Beautiful Lead Actress?
Okay, I'd initially planned to discuss the results of the Golden Globes in this column, but due to time constraints I'm going to postpone it to the next (tomorrow's) column in order to do it justice.
Instead, I'll wrap up today's column on the topic of Jennifer Connelly's unexpected SAG Best Actress nomination for her performance in Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind. The New Yorker has received much acclaim for her work as the fancifully faithful Alicia Nash, but all of it has come in corresponding supporting actress categories -- Connelly has already taken the AFI Featured Actress prize, the Golden Globe Supporting Actress trophy, and is being officially promoted by Mind domestic distributor Universal as a supporting actress candidate for the purposes of the Academy Awards. Consequently, there was much confusion and consternation in award-watching circles when Connelly was announced by Ted Danson as one of this year's five Screen Actors Guild Best Actress nominees.
It turned out that Universal reportedly accidentally filed Connelly as a lead performer when filing the official submission form for the Screen Actors Guild prizes, and consequently the SAG nominating committee accordingly considered her as a lead actress and mustered up enough support for a nomination in this category. While this is a rather unorthodox development, category confusion isn't unprecedented -- consider that last year's SAG Best Actor winner, Traffic's Benicio Del Toro, went on to snare the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance in the Steven Soderbergh film.
I received an letter on this issue from an annoyed reader:
"Universal's major screw-up means one's gain is another one's loss. Naturally, one of the five actresses in the supporting category won herself a nomination that she shouldn't have receieved. Would you like to ponder who the "sixth" actress is? Also, there is a lead actress who didn't receive the nomination she earned. Would you like to guess who this poor unfortunate may be? And which movie she was nominated for?It may very well be that Nicole Kidman was robbed of a nomination because of Universal's stupidity and incompetence. (Of course, the SAGs could've also helped matters by asking Universal, "What's going on here?") Kidman's snub may not hurt her too much -- but it would have clarified which movie she is likely to receive a nomination for. Would it have been for Moulin Rogue or The Others?
Then again, it's possible had this incident not happened, Kidman might not have been nominated anyway. Perhaps the vote-splitting was so great, that Connelly's nomination wouldn't have made a difference. In that case, another actress was unfairly snubbed. Could it have been Tilda Swinton? Is it possible that the SAGs effectively killed her chances for an Oscar nomination? Or how about Universal's own Naomi Watts? Did Universal ruin what might've been Mulholland Drive's most high-profile nomination?
Doesn't anyone else out there find this as outrageous as I do?"
- Michael S. Gilman
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not particularly perturbed about this matter -- ignoring the fact that Universal's classification of Connelly as a lead actress for the purposes of the SAG awards was allegedly accidental, I wouldn't really have an issue with her being intentionally promoted as a lead actress Oscar candidate; Russell Crowe's John Nash is obviously the central character in A Beautiful Mind, but Connelly's character is a crucial foil and plays an important role in the picture, and the actress has a lot of screen time. I've yet to see Kate Winslet in Iris -- the Eyre film has yet to open in Canada; geez, get going, you guys -- but for the purposes of comparison, note that Connelly has vastly more screen time than any of the other non-Winslet Golden Globe Supporting Actress nominees (Vanilla Sky's Cameron Diaz, Gosford Park's Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith, and In The Bedroom's Marisa Tomei). In fact, while I didn't put a stopwatch to Connelly's screen time in A Beautiful Mind (although perhaps I should've in order to help pass the time during the screening), I wouldn't be surprised if she was in the same range as In The Bedroom's Sissy Spacek, a top Best Actress candidate. I would not have any major objections if Jennifer Connelly was being touted by Universal as a Best Actress candidate.
Putting all this aside, I don't really agree with the argument that anyone was robbed from a nomination they 'earned'; if it is agreed that Connelly was being promoted for the SAG Awards in the wrong category, it doesn't speak well of candidates that failed to topple this misplaced entry. That she received a SAG Best Actress nomination over, say, the aforementioned Nicole Kidman for, say, Moulin Rouge simply indicates that Connelly's performance, when construed as a lead performance, was more valued by the SAG nominating committee than Kidman's. I couldn't even begin to guess which actress placed sixth in SAG Best Actress ballotting, or which of the five SAG Supporting Actress nominees placed fifth when all the votes were tallied, but I think this Connelly situation is reasonably fair; if, say, Touchstone decided to try to promote Gwyneth Paltrow for Best Actress for her work in the ensemble The Royal Tenenbaums, more power to 'em -- odds are that nobody would buy it and the bid would fall flat on its face, but if they somehow made it pay off, good on them. I definitely don't think that SAG should play Category Police and question any of the submitted classifications -- these, as they should be, are at the discretion of the studios and subject to strategizing where deemed necessary.
A Kidman SAG nomination would've definitely clarified the question of which performance holds the best chance of taking her to a career-first Oscar nomination, but it was not to be. Despite the SAG shutouts, I don't think Swinton's or Watts' hopes are dead yet.
(Rather than being irked by Connelly's nomination in SAG's lead actress category, I'm mostly unsettled by her being nominated, period -- she was fine in the film, but she wasn't that good.)
Okay, Golden Globe talk in tomorrow's column, etc., etc.
Feedback or inquiries are welcome and may be reproduced (and edited where necessary) in subsequent columns -- e-mail me. (Please indicate if you wish to remain anonymous; pseudonyms are also acceptable.)
Alex Fung (aw220@freenet.carleton.ca)
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