In this morning’s roundup of Oscar news ‘n’ notes from around the web, are two wonderful performances enough to help Rosamund Pike enter the awards race?
On Thursday, I linked to Jeff Wells’ declaration that British actress Rosamund Pike (left) deserved to be in the Best Supporting Actress conversation because she was the best thing in both “Barney’s Version” and “Made in Dagenham.” At the time, I had seen the former film (in which she is indeed terrific) but not the latter. But now I’ve seen “Dagenham” too, and I can’t resist reprising the link and saying that while I love Sally Hawkins in the film, and I know that Miranda Richardson is no doubt the smarter Supporting Actress call, Wells is right: Pike has the best scene in the movie, she's tremendously moving in it, and she fully deserves to be in the mix. (Hollywood Elsewhere)
Since it first started screening around the time of the Toronto Film Festival, “The Social Network” has been exerting a near-dominant hold as the movie of the moment. We’ve heard critics extol its praises, Facebook insiders talk about its accuracy, interested parties debate its treatment of women, pundits assess its significance and its awards chances, and Maureen Dowd compare it to Wagner’s Ring. But have you read about it from the perspective of its three rowing scenes? You have if you’ve been following Dan Boyne’s series, a look inside the production by an oarsman who worked on the crew. Among the tidbits: the phrase “Boy in Blue,” the name of a Nicolas Cage movie that apparently did a particular lousy job of depicting rowing, was code for anything that didn’t look right; all the real oarsmen who worked as extras loved actor Armie Hammer; and, in the latest lesson, “you don’t mess with the grips.” (row2k)
The Broadcast Film Critics Association generally does a pretty good job predicting (or at least coinciding with) the Academy’s choices, so Awards Daily has come up with a chart ranking contenders in the major categories with the scores given by BFCA members. The list is incomplete because films like “The King’s Speech,” “Black Swan” and “Another Year” haven’t yet been rated. But among the ones that have, “The Social Network” scores high with a 95 – just not high enough to topple top dog “Toy Story 3,” with its score of 97. “Inception” is the only other Best Picture contender to score in the 90s (it got a 94), followed by “127 Hours” and “The Town” (87s), “Hereafter” (86), and “The Kids Are All Right” and “Winter’s Bone” (85). “Inside Job” tops the documentaries with an 88, followed by “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” “The Tillman Story” and “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.” (Awards Daily)
With the Academy’s Foreign-Language screenings about to start, Anne Thompson looks at the 65 qualifying films and picks out 11 frontrunners to make it to the shortlist of nine. She’s rounding up the usual suspects: the four that are being distributed by Sony Classics, the high-profile Mexican entry “Biutiful,” the Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.” The big problem with predictions, hers or anybody else’s, is that this is one of those Academy categories where you can only vote if you actually see the movies, a key requirement that always complicates things for us pundits. (Thompson on Hollywood)
