In this morning’s roundup of Oscar news ‘n’ notes from around the web, the non-televised Governors Awards hits the web, and Godard proves that it’s probably good he didn’t show up.
Saturday night’s Governors Awards weren’t televised – that’s one of the reasons the show is loose and enjoyable – but the Academy has made it easy to see clips from the evening, with almost two dozen videos that encompass most of the highlights. My personal favorites: Lynne Littman and especially Phil Alden Robinson on Jean-Luc Godard, Josh Brolin’s toast to Eli Wallach (sadly truncated though it is), Tony Bennett’s second song, Kevin Browlow’s acceptance speech tweaking the American film industry, and Robert De Niro’s guided tour through the winemaking of Francis Ford Coppola (above; photo by Richard Harbaugh/AMPAS). What’s missing is the sight of most of the “Godfather” cast reuniting, or of “The King’s Speech” director Tom Hooper telling Kathryn Bigelow he’s a fan, or of a good chunk of this year’s Oscar competitors mingling. For that, you had to be there. (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)
While the Academy continues to insist that Jean-Luc Godard was happy to receive his honorary Oscar and cordial in all of his communications with AMPAS president Tom Sherak, Matthew Flanagan prints Frederik and Andy Rector’s edited translation of a week-old interview with the elusive filmmaker in which Godard says the Oscar means “nothing” to him. “If they Academy likes to do it, let them do it,” he says. “But I think it’s strange.” He also disowns the auteur theory he’s credited with developing, criticizes the work of onetime colleague Francois Truffaut, dismisses Picasso and says it’s “nonsense” to call him anti-Semitic. His take on the Jews in Hollywood, though, is bound to raise some eyebrows: “The Jews were neither authorized to be bankers nor doctors, nor lawyers or professors. That’s why they concentrated on something new: cinema. The Jews also came to an arrangement with the mafia quite quickly. But if you say this, immediately you are accused of being an anti-Semite.” From the sound of it, the Academy is lucky he chose not to attend. (Landscape Suicide)
It starts out as a story about film-festival buzz, and how the word out of Toronto and Telluride in particular can impact awards season: Christy Grosz singles out “The King’s Speech,” “Biutiful,” “Black Swan,” “Blue Valentine” and “127 Hours” as examples of films that came out of the fests with strengthened awards potential. But at some point the piece mutates into a piece of promotion for John Cameron Mitchell’s dark but compelling “Rabbit Hole,” which receives six paragraphs of praise after almost every other film mentioned is lucky to get a sentence or two to itself. (The Envelope)
Sasha Stone, who’s written paens to Annette Bening and Natalie Portman in the last week, looks at the year in film and how it’s made the Best Actress race unexpectedly deep and competitive. She thinks it’s probably Bening vs. Portman, but delves into 30 years of past winners to find patterns. It’s clear that Stone’s heart is with Portman (“probably the best performance by any actor this year, male or female”), but she’s not ready to call this race quite yet. (Awards Daily)
While I’m on the subject of Stone, Natalie Portman and “Black Swan,” it’s worth pointing out her review of the film from last Friday, with some lines that nicely sum up the Darren Aronofsky film’s insane and exhilarating final half hour: “It just gets more and more intense until it pushes itself to the edge of absurdity and you think: what in god’s name is happening to this woman? And in a moment of true genius, the film rises in climax, hits its mark perfectly and ends, just like the ballet Swan Lake.” (Awards Daily)
From the self-promotion department: Gold Derby’s Tom O’Neil and I did a video chat over the weekend, in which I told some backstage tales from Oscar shows over the years. Mostly it’s about the divas: Madonna, Whitney and Barbra. (Gold Derby)
