TFC Journal at TheFilmChair.com

Top Story: The Coen brothers are looking to draft Jeff Bridges for their upcoming adaptation of True Grit. Bridges will play Marshall Reuben J. ‘Rooster’ Cogburn, a role that won John Wayne the Best Actor Oscar for the 1969 adaptation. This will be the first time the Coens and Bridges have worked together since Bridges played Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski in the classic Coen comedy The Big Lebowski. (Variety)

In Other News: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced its honorary award winners for this year. Producer John Calley will be awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, while Lauren Bacall, Roger Corman and Gordon Willis will receive honorary Oscars.  These awards will NOT be presented at the Oscar ceremony in March, but rather during a luncheon in November. Here’s hoping the Academy is wise enough to have streaming video of the presentations. (THR)

Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page and Liv Tyler have joined James Gunn’s superhero comedy, titled Super. (Variety)

In digital cinema news, it looks like the big three motion picture exhibitors–Regal, Cinemark and AMC–have secured $525 million dollars in funding to convert 15,000 screens to d-cinema. The money will start flowing in November, and the transition will take place over the next five years. (THR)

New this Weekend:
9 (opened 9/9)
I Can Do Bad All By Myself
Sorority Row
Whiteout

Fin.

Six short months from now, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will hold the 82nd annual Academy Awards ceremony. It’s fitting then that this official end of summer is also the official start of Oscar season. Yes, now that the summer is over, the grown-ups can enjoy the cinemas again.

We’re already getting a taste of things to come with the Venice and Telluride film festivals underway. Toronto starts in just three days. The buzz is certainly building. So before we go into buzz overdrive, I though I’d post my first Academy Awards predictions of the 2009-2010 Oscar season.

Of course, the yea-round Oscar watching that goes on these days means some pictures are already on there way to Oscar. What struck me as I put together my predictions is that this year there’s a chance that we could see more than one woman nominated for the directing Oscar for the first time. Better yet, a woman has a shot at taking home the prize.

No other film this year has been as celebrated as Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker. In addition to Bigelow, Lone Scherfig has An Education, which premiered at Sundance and has carried good buzz through it’s most recent screenings at Telluride. (Can another British picture win the Oscar? Never underestimate those Brits when it comes to Oscar.) And while I’m holding off on predicting director Jane Campion and her film Bright Star, that could certainly change once the critics chime in.

This may be best chance for a woman to win the directing Oscar since the 2003-2004 season, when Niko Caro, Sophia Coppola, and even Nancy Meyer all had a shot going into the nominations. (Only Coppola was nominated, becoming the first American female to get an Oscar nod for directing.) Will the story of a woman winning the directing Oscar be what we’re talking about when we’re all basking in the afterglow of the Oscar ceremony? At this early in the game, who knows.

TFC Journal’s 2009-2010 Oscar predictions, first edition.

Top Story: Bill Nighy has let the cat out of the bag. The self-described “only British actor who hasn’t been in Harry Potter” will finally join the series. No word yet on who he is playing, but some reports indicate that he’ll be Rufus Scrimgeour, who succeeds Cornelius Fudge the Ministry of Magic at the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Price.  Scrimgeour also appears in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. (The Independent)

In Other News: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invited 134 entertainment professionals to join its ranks yesterday, including Hugh Jackman, Emile Hirsch, Emily Blunt, Jane Lynch, Melissa Leo, and Seth Rogen. (THR)

Opening Today:
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Public Enemies

Fin.

Top Story: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen brought in $201 million to score the second highest 5-day opening of all time. The critic-proof blockbuster came within $2 million of toppling The Dark Knight’s $203 million 5-day record.  Worldwide, the film debuted with $387 million. (erc BoxOffice)

In Other News: The Academy Awards ceremony is undergoing quite a makeover.  After last week’s news that there would be 10 Best Picture nominees, the AMPAS announced that it is tweaking the Best Original Song category so that there could possibly be no nominees at all. The Academy will also move the honorary Oscar presentations from the live broadcast to a black-tie gala in November. Stay tuned for more news on the Academy’s self-destructive pandering. (Variety)

Fin.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that there will be 10 nominees vying for Best Picture at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards ceremony. Not since 1944, when Casablanca was named the Best Picture of 1943, has the Academy nominated 10 films for its top prize.

From the release:

“After more than six decades, the Academy is returning to some of its earlier roots, when a wider field competed for the top award of the year,” said (AMPAS President Sid) Ganis. “The final outcome, of course, will be the same – one Best Picture winner – but the race to the finish line will feature 10, not just five, great movies from 2009.”

I just feel bad for the guys who have to build the stage for the press conference. Ten TV screens instead of five is totally going to screw up the flow.

Read the rest of this entry »

Top Story: Slumdog Millionaire won eight Oscars at the 81st annual Acadamy Awards last night, including Best Picture and Best Director. Sean Penn won his second Best Actor Oscar for Milk, while Kate Winslet finally took home the Best Actress trophy for her role in The Reader.  Supporting Oscars went to Heath Ledger and Penelope Cruz. (HP)

In Other News: Mike Myers’ The Love Guru won (lost?) Worst Picture, Screenplay, and Actor at this year’s Golden Raspberry awards, a.k.a. the Razzies.  Paris Hilton won another Razzie for her supporting role in Repo: The Genetic Opera, while Uwe Boll took home Worst Director. (Variety)

Word on the blog is that Ghostbuster 3 may finally go into production later this year. (AICN)

Tyler Perry continued his role as Lionsgate cash cow over the weekend with his Madea Goes to Jail taking in a whopping $41.1 million.  It was Lionsgate’s biggest opening ever. Holdovers Taken and Coraline remained strong with each taking in around $11 million for second and third place finishes. (HR)

Fin.

It may have taken 218 days, but The Dark Knight finally crossed the $1 billion mark worldwide on Friday.  Who needs a Best Picture nomination when you have a cool billion in the bank, right? (Charles Roven, Emma Thomas, and Chris Nolan all shoot me a dirty look.)

Okay, an Oscar nod would have been nice too, but $1 billion puts this already massive blockbuster into the elite global billion club. The Dark Knight joins Titanic, The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest as one of only four motion pictures to hit the billion dollar mark. Moreover, the only other superhero movie in this Golden Age of superhero movies to come close to $1 billion dollars is Sony’s Spider-Man 3 with $890 million.

Of course, the real joy is seeing The Dark Knight cross the billion dollar mark just two days before the Oscars. Like Barry Bonds’ all-time home run record, there will always be that asterisk next to this year’s list of Best Picture nominees thanks to the Academy’s The Dark Knight snub. More so than even the Crash Best Picture win, The Dark Knight’s absence from the final five will go down as one of the biggest flubs in Oscar history.

Top Story: Slumdog Millionaire took home the editing (ACE) and cinematography (ASC) awards this weekend underscoring its frontrunner status ahead of next Sunday’s Oscars, Variety’s Awards Central reports. It now looks like Slumdog has a chance to win in all nine categories for which it is nominated after locking in so much pre-Oscar support. The film has 10 nominations, including two for Best Song.

In Other News: Nikke at DHD reports that the wretched Friday the 13th remake brought in $42.3 million this weekend domestically helping make this the best President’s Day weekend for the box office in history.  It should come close to hitting the $50 million.  

Overseas, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button took in another $31 million bringing its foreign total to $118 million. (Variety)

Fin.

I’ve been light on posting for the past few days because the day job sent me to California. Being the responsible employee that I am, I dutifully performed my tasks. And as a reward, me and my traveling companion decided to take a short detour into Hollywood on our way to LAX.

The road closure warning signs were already up on Hollywood Blvd. There was a crew there at 10 p.m. putting up what I presume are the grandstands for the people who are not celebrities.

And here’s the Kodak Theater, the place where in just 9 days Slumdog Millionaire will win Best Picture.

I want to go back.

Now.

The Writers Guild of America gave out its awards last night, making the Best Picture race even less interesting as the inevitable Slumdog win becomes crystal clear.  Slumdog now has the DGA, PGA, SAG, and WGA (Adapted Screenplay) awards. Yes, that’s every major guild prize.

In other news, Milk took home the WGA original screenplay award, but still faces an Oscar challenge from WALL-E, which was ineligible for the WGA award.  The Best Original Screenplay Oscar, along with the Best Actress, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actress awards, will keep Oscar night interesting, as those categories are up in the air.  Meryl, Kate, maybe Anne for Best Actress. Sean, Mickey, maybe Frank or even Brad for Best Actor. Any of the above in Supporting Actress, except Amy Adams.

I’ll get to posting Oscar predictions in the next week or so, but I doubt it will be any clearer. Outside of the Slumdog wins, anything can happen.