Nominations for the 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards were announced by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association this morning, with Up in the Air leading the way with six nods. In addition to Best Picture - Drama, writer/director Jason Reitman and stars George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick were also recognized.
Joining Up in the Air in the drama race is Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds and Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, while (500) Days of Summer, The Hangover, It's Complicated, Julie & Julia and Nine compete for the Best Picture - Musical or Comedy prize. (See the comments section below for a quick look at all the film nominations.)
Several actors found themselves nominated twice, including Meryl Streep in the same category (Best Actress - Musical or Comedy for It's Complicated and Julie & Julia). Other double nominees include Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side and The Proposal), Matt Damon (The Informant! and Invictus) and Anna Paquin (True Blood and the TV movie The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler). As previously announced, Martin Scorsese will be honored with the HFPA's Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement.
On the television side, Glee was tops with four nominations. In addition to a nod for Best TV Series - Musical or Comedy, cast members Matthew Morrison, Lea Michele and Jane Lynch were singled out as well. Other Movie Dearest TV faves that are up for Globes include Lost, Modern Family and the TV movies Grey Gardens and Prayers for Bobby.
In other TV award news, the Writers Guild of America has also revealed their television nominations, with more nods going to Glee, Grey Gardens, Lost, Modern Family and True Blood, plus One Life to Live and Pedro by Dustin Lance Black. Winners will be announced February 20.
The Golden Globes will be broadcast live on NBC January 17 in a ceremony hosted by Ricky Gervais. And be sure to check back with us this Saturday for the start of our annual Golden Globe-themed MD Polls.
The 2009 movie awards season kicked into high gear the past two days with the announcements from four major kudos groups of the results of their annual cinematic honors.
In a rare instance of solidarity, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Circle both chose Kathryn Bigelow's gritty war drama The Hurt Locker for Best Picture and Best Director.
They also agreed on the supporting acting races, bestowing honors on Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) and Mo'Nique (Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire). In the lead categories, LA went for Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart) and Yolande Moreau (Séraphine), while their Gotham counterparts chose George Clooney (for both Up in the Air and his vocal turn in Fantastic Mr. Fox) and Meryl Streep (for Julie & Julia but not It's Complicated).
The Hurt Locker also placed strongly in the nominations for the Broadcast Film Critics Association's Critics' Choice Awards with eight nods. But it was Inglourious Basterds and Nine that lead the pack with ten nominations apiece. Joining these three in the Best Picture race is Avatar, An Education, Invictus, Precious, A Serious Man, Up and Up in the Air. Winners will be announced on January 15 in a live ceremony scheduled to be broadcast on VH1 with Kristin Chenoweth hosting.
Meanwhile, the American Film Institute has revealed their own top ten for '09. The AFI Awards for film go to Coraline, The Hangover, The Hurt Locker, The Messenger, Precious, A Serious Man, A Single Man, Sugar, Up and Up in the Air. On the TV side, such Movie Dearest faves as The Big Bang Theory, Glee, Modern Family and True Blood were recognized. Click here for a special video tribute to all the AFI Award winners.
For a quick look at all the winners/nominees, see the comments section below. And the gold derby will continue to race on later this week with the nominations for the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild on Tuesday and Thursday, respectively.
The nice folks at Disney Records were kind enough to send me an advance copy of the soundtrack album
It kicks off with a very contemporary R & B song, "Never Knew I Needed," performed by Ne-Yo. I presume it plays over the film's end credits, as it doesn't fit in stylistically with the remainder of the songs and score composed by Oscar-winner and Disney-Pixar fave Randy Newman. Still, it's a pleasant song with a catchy hook and may prove to be a pop hit.
Within the first few notes of the score proper, anyone familiar with Newman's previous songs will be able to tell it's his work even if they don't know in advance that Newman wrote it. "Down in New Orleans" has a classic Newman beat and vocal quality to it, even though it is performed by Dr. John. The score on the whole is influenced by traditional ragtime, gospel and Creole music appropriate to the film's 1920's, New Orleans setting.
Anika Noni Rose, best known as one of the Dreamgirls in the 2006 movie, provides great vocals on her character's solo "Almost There" and other songs. Probably the biggest "name" actor contributing to The Princess and the Frog is Keith David (John Carpenter's The Thing), who voices the villainous Dr. Facilier. His song, "Friends on the Other Side," is a funny-spooky explanation of Facilier's magical abilities, supported by a great chorus of male, chiefly bass voices.
"When We're Human" is the movie's show stopping centerpiece, apparently performed by a number of former people who have been transformed into swampland critters through Facilier's incantations. But the score's best number, and a likely Academy Award nominee, is the jaunty "Dig a Little Deeper." Sung by Jenifer Lewis (as benevolent voodoo queen Mama Odie) and the Pinnacle Gospel Choir, it conveys an inspiring message of finding what's truly important in oneself via a joyfully up-tempo melody.
I'm not exactly sure how all of the songs figure into the film's storyline. For that, we'll all have to see the movie, which is getting rave reviews and was just named the year's best film by Time magazine's Richard Corliss. Frankly, I'm glad Disney has returned to the 2-D, hand-drawn animation style. It's gotten to the point where I can't distinguish most of the computer-animated features from one another. See you at the theater!
Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Orange County and Long Beach Blade.
It’s somehow fitting that I finally saw Spike Jonze’s big screen version of Where the Wild Things Are right after viewing Jason Bushman’s romantic film Hollywood, Je T’aime (now on DVD
In Where the Wild Things Are, a lonely boy named Max (Max Records) leaves his home after a devastating fight with his mother (Catherine Keener), crosses a rough ocean by boat and lands on a strange island filled with weird but lovable creatures ... who threaten to eat him. In Hollywood, Je T’aime, a lonely French man named Jerome (Eric Debets) leaves Paris after a devastating break-up with his boyfriend, crosses the Atlantic Ocean by plane and comes to a strange place filled with weird but lovable characters ... who want to sleep with him.
Max becomes the creatures’ king, due to his wit and imagination, and he brings together a wildly dysfunctional “family” of, well, wild things (voiced by the likes of James Gandolfini, Catherine O'Hara, Paul Dano, Forest Whitaker and Chris Cooper). He realizes that he can’t fix everything when the creatures’ self-destructive natures drive a wedge between them. He decides there’s no place like home. Meanwhile, Jerome becomes a working actor (a “king” in Hollywood), due to his wit and French charm, and brings together a dysfunctional family of social outcasts (a.k.a. "wild things") — Kaleesha, a homeless trans prostitute (Diarra Kilpatrick), Norma Desire, a jaded, aging drag queen (Michael Airington), and Ross (Chad Allen), an HIV-positive pot dealer, and his dog, Foxy Brown. Ross’ internalized homophobia drives a wedge between Jerome’s new friends. Jerome decides “Il n'y a pas de petit chez soi” (there’s no place like home).
Now of course, Max never visits a bathhouse, gets stoned with his new friends or discovers the mind-numbing horrors of riding mass transit in Los Angeles, or Jonze’s Wild Things would be even more controversial than it is. Jonze’s film is a visually stunning reimagining of Maurice Sendak’s beloved book that weighs down the book’s spare prose with too many unrelated plot elements, making it a hard film for kids to appreciate.
Bushman’s Hollywood, Je T’aime succeeds in showing us people who don’t get much exposure in gay cinema, through the eyes of an understated lead whose foreignness gives him carte blanche to do whatever he wants. That he can’t forget his wispy and annoying lover back home shows that he’s a flawed dreamer like the rest of his newfound family. Debets’ main charms are his resemblance to Adrien Brody and his warm French accent. Allen gives the best performance, as a medical pot permit-carrying stoner, while the rest of the cast does a fine job fleshing out their unusual roles, especially Airington, as the life-weary den mother.
Hollywood, Je T’aime (i.e., Hollywood, I Love You) is an odd name for a film that doesn’t particularly love the city, but it is a well-made character study and a bittersweet addition to the “making it in Hollywood” canon.
UPDATE: Where the Wild Things Are is now available on DVD
Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.
In 2002, director-choreographer Rob Marshall helped to revitalize movie musicals with the fantastic, Oscar-winning Chicago. Hoping to strike gold again, Marshall and most of his earlier film’s production team have reunited for an adaptation of the stage musical Nine, opening nationwide on Christmas Day. Unfortunately, the filmmakers fall short this time around.
The original Broadway production of Nine debuted in 1982 and won that year’s Tony Award for Best Musical. It had a successful revival in 2003, starring Antonio Banderas in the lead as Guido Contini, an Italian movie director patterned on Federico Fellini. Nine is actually an adaptation of Fellini’s semi-autobiographical 1963 film 8 ½.
For the new film, Daniel Day-Lewis was cast as Contini and surrounded with a bevy of international, female superstars (most GLBT faves) as the various significant women in his life. Nicole Kidman plays Contini’s favorite leading lady; Penélope Cruz assays the role of Contini’s mistress; Marion Cotillard, a previously-unknown French actress who won the Best Actress Academy Award for her turn as Edith Piaf in the 2007 film, La Vie en Rose, plays Contini’s wife, Luisa; Judi Dench serves as his devoted costume designer; Kate Hudson has a great turn as a fashion journalist out to undress the filmmaker; and pop singer Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas makes a strong impression as Contini’s first, boyhood prostitute.
Completing the roster is the perfectly cast Sophia Loren, beautiful as ever, as Contini’s mother. Loren even gets to sing, as all the women do. Few of them are trained singers or dancers, but Marshall generally works the same magic with them that he did with Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones — neither known much for their musical ability — in Chicago.
Dench, who actually started out her illustrious career in musicals and was the original Sally Bowles in the London production of Cabaret, fares best. She is in great voice during her number, which recounts her character’s early years with the Folies Bergeres. It is a glamorous evocation of the famed Parisian show.
Cruz sizzles during her sexy song, deceptively titled “A Call from the Vatican.” Most impressive — even to a gay man like myself — is her toned body and frequent, spread-eagle dance moves. Cotillard, who could barely speak English two years ago when she accepted her Oscar, reveals perfect diction and a lovely singing voice during the well-staged “My Husband Makes Movies”, even if she appears a little young for the role.
The aforementioned Hudson tears up the screen with a new song written especially for the movie, “Cinema Italiano” (the songs for both the stage and screen versions of Nine were written by Maury Yeston). While the lyrics are silly and the choreography Hullabaloo-esque, the film truly comes alive during the number.
Day-Lewis also makes a fine impression in his musical debut. The two-time Oscar winner (for My Left Foot and There Will Be Blood) conveys well Contini’s anxiety over his new film, which is due to begin filming in 10 days but lacks a script. Day-Lewis even leaps and bounds exuberantly up and over soundstage scaffolding during the first of his two songs.
Indeed, all the movie’s elements, with the exception of the irritatingly hyperactive editing during the musical numbers, are top-notch. So why isn’t Nine more satisfying in the end? Primary blame must be laid upon the episodic, predictable adapted screenplay, which is credited to Michael Tolkin and the late screenwriter-director Anthony Minghella. The film is less a cohesive character study than a collection of clichéd vignettes about an unfaithful, womanizing husband, enlivened by the occasional song and dance. If viewers become bored by the narcissistic Contini’s antics, just wait ten minutes and a lovely, more-often-than-not scantily clad woman will sing something.
Yeston’s score isn’t one for the ages either. Apart from “Be Italian,” which Fergie performs in the movie accompanied by a gang of sand-tossing harlots, none of the songs in either the stage or screen versions of Nine is particularly memorable. Actually, the tune viewers will likely find themselves humming on their way out of the movie is “Cinema Italiano,” partly due to the fact that it is reprised over the end credits.
While Nine probably won’t kill the renewed genre of movie musicals adapted from Broadway shows (Spring Awakening and a remake of Damn Yankees are reportedly up next), it is also unlikely to become either the box office hit or laurel-laden film that Chicago was. Chicago benefited from truly interesting characters and catchy songs. Nine is a melancholy tribute to a by-gone era in filmmaking and male-female relations … perhaps one better left without tribute paid to it.
UPDATE: Nine is now available on DVD
Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Orange County and Long Beach Blade.
"Hello, lover ..."
The first teaser poster for the eagerly awaited Sex and the City 2, opening nationwide May 28, 2010.
Penélope Cruz reunites with director Pedro Almodóvar for his neo-noir Broken Embraces, opening in Los Angeles this Friday.
Click here to watch the trailer.
