In this morning’s roundup of Oscar news ‘n’ notes from around the web, the stars come out, and James Franco offers advice to the faint of heart.
The Hollywood Awards have their detractors, but Monday night’s gala ceremony in Beverly Hills certainly attracted a whole bunch of stars as it honored the likes of Annette Bening, Sean Penn, Robert Duvall, Helena Bonham Carter and Sam Rockwell. So if it’s stars you’re looking for, celebrity-gossip.net has the photos.
James Franco dispenses advice to viewers of “127 Hours” who are afraid they might pass out: it’s okay to cover your eyes, but if you are going to faint it’s best to stay in your seat, because you’ll fall a shorter distance. But he, director Danny Boyle and the guy Franco plays, Aaron Ralston, also tell Jada Yuan and a New York screening audience that they think too much attention is being paid to those “tiny number of people” who’ve fainted. They all insist that the film’s ending – in which Franco, as Ralston, cuts off his forearm and escapes from the remote canyon where he’s been trapped for five days – is redemptive and exhilarating. Which it is, if you can get there … (Vulture)
Guy Lodge looks at Jeff Wells’ rant about how an anti-romantic-comedy bias is working against Anne Hathaway’s Best Actress chances for “Love and Other Drugs,” and takes it one step further: what about a bias against “unadulterated comic fluff”? To him, that bias is even stronger – and it’s a shame, because he thinks Emma Stone’s work in “Easy A” is every bit as impressive as Jennifer Lawrence’s in “Winter’s Bone.” It’s “one of the year’s most complex and questioning female leads, period,” he swears. (In Contention)
In her latest discourse on the state of the race, Sasha Stone asks, What is truth? She does this in the context of this year’s films about real events – “The King’s Speech,” “127 Hours,” “Conviction,” “Secretariat,” “Made in Dagenham” – all of which, she points out, take liberties with the facts without causing problems for viewers. This leads into one of her favorite 2010 topics: “The Social Network,” and how it’s being unfairly targeted and held to a higher standard than its rivals, and its predecessors. “The question is whether truthiness will be a factor in this year’s Oscar race,” she says. “If that is the best they have against ‘The Social Network’ that isn’t much at all.” (Awards Daily)
Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” won an Academy Award back in 1962 – not for director or screenplay, for which it was nominated, but for Piero Gherardi’s costume design. So it makes sense that the Italian fashion house Gucci has teamed up with Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation to restore the film in time for a 50th anniversary celebration at the International Rome Film Festival. The festival website has some details; Scorsese will be there on October 30 for the unveiling of the new digital restoration of a film he says “brought something new to Italian cinema.” And then Scorsese and Gucci creative director Frida Giannini will host what will no doubt be a very fashionable dinner. (International Rome Film Festival)
