Consider This Sh*t: James Franco’s SPRING BREAKERS Oscar Campaign
If this was any other movie, I wouldn’t even believe it was real. But it’s James Franco and Harmony Korine, so a hyper-real Oscar campaign is about right. Franco’s long-shot campaign for Best Supporting Actor in Korine’s Spring Breakers was released to THR over the weekend, making it one of the first For Your Consideration ads of the Oscar season. It’s also the first and likely only campaign to ever include word “shit” in its messaging. While there’s no better way to win attention than to create a campaign that gets right to the heart of the character/actor it’s supporting, this Spring Breakers ad won’t likely win over the old, white male Academy voters. Still, as Harmony Korine’s only consistently watchable movie and his likely masterpiece, Spring Breakers deserves some recognition come the end of the year. Maybe, just maybe, some brave critics group will...
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The Contenders: Telluride Buzz For 12 YEARS A SLAVE, GRAVITY And PRISONERS
Just as Labor Day weekend marks the official end of summer, the Telluride Film Festival, which wraps up today, marks the official start of Oscar season. Coming out of the festival, it looks like three movies have gained the most momentum. First, Steve McQueen’s follow-up to Shame, 12 Years a Slave, is being called a masterpiece, with Chiwetel Ejiofor scoring big buzz as the film’s star. The no-hold-barred slavery drama is already being touted as the Oscar front-runner, albeit prematurely. If there’s one thing we know about Oscar it’s that movies that sound this good are hard sells to the Academy. I’m saying this sight unseen, of course, but that’s how the Oscar season works, isn’t it? In addition to 12 Years a Slave, the festivals biggest surprise appears to be Prisoners, a missing child drama from French Canadian...
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The Contenders: Matthew McConaughey Starrer DALLAS BUYERS CLUB Moves To November
If Matthew McConaughey doesn’t win an Oscar this year, it will be a travesty of epic proportions. Between his spectacular performance in Mud, his role in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street and what looks to be the role of his career in Dallas Buyers Club, the often underappreciated actor has more routes to an Academy Award this year than even a Weinstein movie. Well, Focus Features much see Oscar gold in McConaughey’s future, too. The distributor is moving up the release date of the AIDS drama Dallas Buyers Club from Dec. 6 to Nov. 1, putting it in prime Academy Awards territory. Dallas Buyers Club, directed by Jean-Marc Vallee, tells the real-life story of Texas electrician Ron Woodroof who took on the US medical establishment by smuggling antiviral meds in to the US at the height of the AIDS crisis. The new release...
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The Contenders: Jennifer Lawrence Goes For Supporting In AMERICAN HUSTLE
Oprah Winfrey, your competition for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar just got a little steeper. On the heels of the announcement that Meryl Streep will be campaigned for Supporting Actress in August: Osage County, now we officially know that last year’s Best Actress winner is going supporting as well. In American Hustle, Jennifer Lawrence plays the wife of Christian Bale’s character, one of two con men who work with the Feds to bring down mobsters and criminal politicians. Instead of competing with co-star Amy Adams in the Best Actress category, a representative from the film told Gold Derby that Lawrence would be placed in the supporting actress category alongside frontrunner Oprah Winfrey (Lee Daniels’ The Butler) and perennial contender Streep. This could work out for Lawrence in the end because both Oprah and Streep in the mix for The Weinstein Company...
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14 Movies From 2013 That Could Strike Oscar Gold
Sure the Oscars may be seven months away, but once the Telluride Film Festival opens a month from now, Oscar season will officially begin. With both Venice and Toronto announcing their line-ups this week, as well, the contenders are starting to take form. So here’s a very early look at some of the movies that could be up for Oscar on March 2, 2014, at the 86th Academy Awards. 1.) The Butler If I had to pick one movie most likely to win Best Picture today, Lee Daniels’ The Butler would be it. It just looks like an Oscar movie. The Weinsteins are 100 percent behind it, they stirred up a controversy to make it look like a movie worth rooting for, and it has the Precious team behind it. With Oprah poised to lock in Best Supporting Actress...
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The Contenders: Is Oprah The One To Beat In The Best Supporting Actress Oscar Race?
As we move from the summer movie season into Oscar season, speculation on just who and what will win Oscar next February is heating up. While I’m confident that Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba are in the race for their roles in Mud and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, respectively, one name that just got a major boost into the Oscar race is Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey plays the wife of White House butler played by Forest Whitaker in Lee Daniels’ upcoming movie The Butler. And Roger Friedman over at Showbiz411 reported that Sasha Stone’s May 2013 assumption that this could be Oprah’s year for Oscar was spot on. Friedman, writing after a SAG screening of the film, was basically handing Oprah the statue. We’ll know more in a couple weeks when Lee Daniels’ The Butler hits theaters. But given that Daniels almost directed Nicole...
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