Oscar Guesses: Let the Darts Fly

March 1st, 2010 | Oscars, wimgo movies | 0 Comments

Jeremy Renner in a scene from "The Hurt Locker."

BY DENNIS KING

Having earned a living for a couple of decades by babbling on about movies, it is perhaps impolitic to admit that I’m not very good at guessing Oscar winners. The average popcorn Joe predicting in the average Oscar office pool probably has as good a track record at picking winners as me.

It’s not a function of movie knowledge or keen insight or anything like that. It’s just that quirky tastes in movies often lead to quirky predictions when it comes Oscar time (I’d much rather vote the low-budget underdog than the fabulous front-runner). That, and the fact that reading the tea leaves on how 6,000 or so official Oscar voters will vote (they are indeed a fractious bunch) is sheer folly.

My favorite axiom on Oscar expertise is drawn from that grand screenwriter and two-time Oscar-winner William Goldman, who famously wrote, “In Hollywood, nobody knows anything.”

Early on in my tenure as a professional “film cricket” (Homer Simpson’s term), I concocted an admittedly goofy experiment in which I tacked lists of Oscar nominees on a dart board and let fly a dart at each of the Big Six categories (supporting actor, supporting actress, actor, actress, director and best movie). Then I compared my own furrow-browed prognostications with the whims of the dart.

And the dart’s random picks were more successful than mine. D’oh!

So anyway, after that long-winded prelude, here are my best guesses at statuette winners of the 82nd Academy Awards to be presented Sunday evening in an overstuffed ceremony airing on ABC from Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre.

Best actress in a supporting role: Maggie Gyllenhaal, “Crazy Heart.” (The Academy’s actors’ branch is the largest and most politically fragmented voting body, and it’s often in supporting categories that upsets and surprises occur. But Gyllenhaal, so good in this gritty, naturalistic serio-comedy, is a popular candidate who’s compiled an impressive body of work. So it just feels like her time.)

Best actor in a supporting role: Woody Harrelson, “The Messenger.” (The movie, one of several fine meditations of late on the terrible toll of war, is perhaps too grim and little seen to attract voters. But the sometimes erratic Harrelson proves himself a serious acting force in this tightly contained yet volatile performance. It is indeed Oscar-worthy.)

Best actress in a leading role: Sandra Bullock, “The Blind Side.” (Another popular – and populist – actress who is finally nominated for a role weighty and inspirational enough to attract lots of sympathetic voters. It just feels like she’s due.)

Best actor in a leading role: Jeff Bridges, “Crazy Heart.” (Call it the Lebowski Effect, but Bridges inhabits broken-down, psychically damaged roles like Bad Blake as if he were born on a barstool in a bowling alley. He’s another actor whose body of superb work should win him loads of popular support among fellow actors, even in a shaggy-dog movie such as this.)

Best director: Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker.” (All indicators – previous awards ceremonies – point to a breakthrough Oscar for Bigelow. First woman ever to win and all that. Aside from the juicy satisfaction of seeing her beat out James “King of the World” Cameron, her ex-husband with his monumental ego, Bigelow simply deserves to win for a superior piece of film storytelling – rich in detail, complex human dimension and thrumming dramatic impact.)

Best picture. “The Hurt Locker.” (With all the hoopla about expanding the best picture category to 10 nominees, in the final run it seemed to narrow down to a two-picture race between “The Hurt Locker” and “Avatar.” Low-budget indie grit versus big-budget special-effects razzle-dazzle. Gut-level storytelling versus high-tech eye-candy. Art versus commerce. Perhaps setting up this David-and-Goliath dynamic will succeed in drawing in more viewers to the Oscar telecast, but if Oscars are in truth about celebrating some mythic “best” in the year’s movies, then all 10 nominees are winners. But “The Hurt Locker” should be first among equals.)

Oscar goes green: Oklahoma City native Suzi Amis Cameron and her husband try to ‘save the world’

March 1st, 2010 | wimgo movies | 0 Comments

James and Suzi Amis Cameron

BY GENE TRIPLETT

Suzy Amis Cameron’s husband may be crowned “king of the world” for a second time on Oscar night, and for that glittering occasion, the Oklahoma City native will make a very special fashion statement when she walks the red carpet on “Avatar” director James Cameron’s arm.

Of course, every woman attending the 82nd annual Academy Award ceremonies March 7 will be dressed to the utmost nines, as always, in original creations from the most exclusive glad rag makers in the world, while Amis Cameron will be wearing a number made out of sustainable, environmentally friendly materials and designed by Jillian Granz.

And right now, fashionistas are going, What? Who?

“To give you a little bit of background, I actually started a school with my sister Rebecca Amis out here in California,” Amis Cameron said in a recent phone interview from Malibu.

“And it’s an environmental school with a very large component of global citizenry, and it’s a nonprofit, so we’re always looking at ways to raise money. And one of the ideas that we came up with last year was creating a dress contest.”

The “Red Carpet Green Dress” competition was open to entrants from all around the world, affording aspiring garment stylists the opportunity to design an environmentally conscious red-carpet dress and have it showcased in front of millions during filmdom’s most prestigious event.

“We had (entries) from all over the globe,” she said. “Italy and Australia and Spain, South America; they just came flooding in.”

As the sole judge of the contest, Amis Cameron settled on a design by Granz, an apparel and textile design senior at Michigan State University. Granz has been brought to Los Angeles to consult with Deborah Scott, who won an Academy Award for the costume designs seen in “Titanic,” Cameron’s previous blockbuster, which inspired him to proclaim himself “the king of the world” (a quote from Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in the film) at the 1998 Oscar ceremonies after collecting a record-tying 11 statuettes (1959′s “Ben-Hur” and 2003′s “Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” each won 11, too).

“I have had my first fitting for it just to get my exact measurements, and I’ll be going back in a couple of days to have a muslin fitting,” Amis Cameron said. “So we’re in the thick of it. The thing that we’re doing right now is sourcing the fabric.”

She declined to describe the dress before its unveiling at the annual Global Green pre-Oscar party, which she’ll co-host with her husband four days before the Oscar ceremonies.

“It looks like I’m probably going to be wearing the dress twice, which is a definite fashion faux pas, but it is also, I think, the epitome of recycling,” she said.

Amis Cameron should know about fashion propriety. During her junior year at Heritage Hall High School in Oklahoma City, the slender blonde took modeling lessons from Patty Harrison-Gers and started doing local fashion shows to help pay for her passion — English-style horseback riding. This led to a job with the Eileen Ford modeling agency in New York, where her exquisitely chiseled, patrician features made her an instant success.

She managed to find the time to graduate from Heritage Hall before modeling led to an acting career and a string of films that included the Steven Spielberg-produced “Fandango” (shot in Texas and Oklahoma in 1984, with Kevin Costner), “Rocket Gibraltar” (1988, with Burt Lancaster), “Rich in Love” (1993, with Albert Finney), “Blown Away” (1994, with Jeff Bridges), “The Usual Suspects” (1995) and “Titanic” (1997), where she met Cameron.

“I couldn’t be more proud,” she said of Cameron’s producing, directing and editing nominations for “Avatar.” “He’s an amazing man.”

And it doesn’t bother her a bit that her husband is competing with his ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow, in the best picture and best director categories for her work on “The Hurt Locker.” In fact, they’re all good friends.

Amis Cameron said it was Cameron who recommended the script for “The Hurt Locker” to Bigelow.

“And we were actually at the premiere,” Amis Cameron said. “I’m a huge fan of Kathryn. I think that not only is she an incredibly talented filmmaker, but she’s an incredible woman. She had done some amazing things in her life, being a woman, which I really, really admire. She’s been over to the house many times, met the children. We’re all very close. But I think more than anything, in this particular moment, she is an incredible role model for every little girl in America, and I really admire her for that.”

As for her own career in film, Amis Cameron said she made a conscious decision to give it up a decade ago. Her last film was the action-thriller “Judgment Day” (1999) with Ice-T and Mario Van Peebles.

“Jim and I had a discussion about it when we first got together, and I told him that I felt that if our relationship was going to hold strong that one of us needed to quit working, and it wasn’t going to be him. And, oh, by the way, I wanted to have a bunch of kids.”

She’s had three with him so far.

But Amis Cameron had other ambitions in mind, such as starting the MUSE elementary school in Topanga, and dedicating it to empowering children to realize the full potential of their lives through academics, personal responsibility, compassionate relations, global consciousness and environmental awareness.

The school welcomes children from across the socioeconomic spectrum, offering education through the fifth grade. The school’s scholarship fund provides financial aid to about 50 percent of its students.

Through MUSE Global, the institution has partnerships and shares projects with the Mana Tamariki school in New Zealand and the Good Morning School on the Thai-Burma border. The latter school educates children of migrant workers who have escaped genocide in Burma, officially known as Myanmar.

“We actually support that school a hundred percent, and all of the children who go to it,” Amis Cameron said. “We share curriculum with those schools. We connect these children through e-mail and video, and they’re able to do projects together and grow together.

“And my long-term dream is that these children will never have to use the word ‘tolerance’ or ‘diversity’ in their life. It will just be a reference point that those are their friends. They just happen to be from another country.”

The entry fees from the “Red Carpet Green Dress” competition will do a little bit to help achieve the goals of MUSE, which strongly resemble the themes of peace and environmental responsibility found in James Cameron’s science-fiction epic.

“It’s interesting, because the same month that he decided to go forward with ‘Avatar’ was the same month that I decided to start MUSE with Rebecca,” Amis Cameron said. “And so we were both out there trying to change the world, save the world at the same time.

Oscars spark movie punditry aplenty

February 9th, 2010 | Movie business, Oscars, wimgo movies | 0 Comments

Now that the 82nd Academy Awards nominations have been announced, the silly season of movie punditry is in full swing.

Everywhere – from blogs such as this, to slick magazine layouts, to TV talk shows, water-cooler conversations, coffeehouse bull sessions and barroom arguments – movie “experts,” film buffs and popcorn junkies alike will fill up the days until the March 7 awards broadcast with nitpicky analyses of all things Oscar.

Already, we’ve seen floated these bits of Oscar arcana:

– Meryl Streep’s nomination for best actress for “Julie & Julia” is her 16th, an all-time high. Following are Katharine Hepburn and Jack Nicholson with 12 each. Wow!

– Kathryn Bigelow, nominated as best director for “The Hurt Locker,” is only the fourth woman ever nominated for directing. And how can you miss the fact that she’s competing against her ex-husband James Cameron, who’s nominated for “Avatar?” Juicy!

– The field of 10 nominees for best picture is a first in decades for the staid old Academy and opens up a whole field of debate concerning the artistic merit of tasteful, low-budget art films and big-budget studio juggernauts. Hmm. Interesting.

– “Up” is only the second full-length animated feature nominated for best picture. The first was “Beauty and the Beast” in 1991. Zowie!

– And this really obscure bit of trivia: “The White Ribbon” (“Das Weisse Band”) from Germany is the ninth predominantly black-and-white film to be nominated for cinematography since 1967, when a separate category for black-and-white was eliminated. Woo-hoo!

It’s all in good fun and helps generate some interest, excitement and heat through the dankest weeks of winter. But it’s always worth noting at this time of year that all our deepest insights and brainiest prognostications are just so much babble. All that really counts is the voting tally of 6,000 (give or take) elite members of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences.

They’re a pampered gaggle of Hollywood insiders consisting of artists and professionals who work in the film industry. The Academy is made up of 15 branches representing a range of crafts vital to creating and marketing motion pictures.

Those branches and their membership numbers are: Actors (1,205), Art Directors (374), Cinematographers (200), Directors (366), Documentary (151), Executives (437), Film Editors (221), Makeup Artists & Hairstylists (118), Music (234), Producers (452), Public Relations (368), Short Films and Feature Animation (340), Sound (405), Visual Effects (279) and Writers (382).

In addition, there are various life and at-large members not assigned to specific branches, and all Oscar winners each year are automatically afforded Academy membership.

So, try as we might to read the tea leaves and divine some logic or pattern in the process, predicting Oscars is a futile exercise. Given a business that’s rife with political intrigue, boardroom wheeling and dealing, closely held loyalties, fierce grudges and fragile egos – not to mention an arcane voting process – it’s all about as precise and fair as voting for high-school prom queen.

But the Oscar babble goes on, and we’ll join in the blah-blah-blah occasionally from way out here in the cheap seats. So pass the popcorn, please.

– Dennis King