Cannes Curse?

As you've no doubt read or heard by now, Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon took home the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival after 4 previous nominations (though he took the Best Director award for Caché in 2005). The win places the film as one of the early contenders for Foreign Language Film, but a Palme d'Or win doesn't necessarily carry all the way to the Oscars. Indeed, only 5 films since the beginning of the Festival went on to win the Foreign Language Film Oscar, the last one being over 20 years ago : Pelle The Conqueror from Bille August (only one film won both the Palme d'Or and the Best Picture award, Marty in 1955). The movie will undoubtely be seen by many moviegoers in months to come and it will be interesting to see if it ends in the top 5 come Oscar season. What do you think?

The Road Trailer

Shortly after announcing an October release, Dimension Films releases the first trailer for Cormac McCarthy's rendition of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road. Enjoy!

Nine Trailer

Here is the trailer premiere for Rob Marshall's next musical starring no less than 6 Oscar winners in the main cast. Daniel Day-Lewis headlines in this remake of Fellini's 8 1/2 as Guido Contini and posing as the women are Nicole Kidman, Pénelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Judi Dench, Oscar nominee Kate Hudson, Stacy Ferguson and Sophia Loren as Guido's mother. A heavy contender... What do you think?

The Road

Sorry for the long absence from the blog, but now that the summer season has kicked off with an 87M$ opening from X-Men Origins: Wolverine, it seemed fitting this piece of news would be my first article back. After the film was pushed from last year's Oscar season, it has been announced that The Road starring Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron and Kodi Smit-McPhee will finally be released on October 16th of 2009. This film will probably be one of the favorites heading into this year's season pending positive reviews, but fans of the book will be ravishing for this adaptation from director John Hillcoat. Will you go see it?

Public Enemies Trailer

Here is the first trailer from one of the early favorites for next year's awards, the John Dillinger biopic starring Johnny Depp (another Oscar nom, who knows?), Christian Bale and Oscar winner Marion Cotillard. From director Michael Mann. What do you think?

2009 Box Office Champs

This is a little thing I always love to do when Oscar season is over and it's time to look to the films due this year, and that is to predict who will be the biggest draws at the domestic box office. I'd like to invite my fellow colleagues to participate in predicting the top 10 at the box office this upcoming year, and for you to offer a list as well. Here are my picks:

10. New Moon
9. Angels & Demons
8. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
7. Night At the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
6. Star Trek
5. Up
4. Terminator Salvation
3. Watchmen
2. Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince
1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

What do you think?

2008 Academy Awards Recap

These Academy Awards saw the film nobody saw coming until its release, Slumdog Millionaire, dominate the ceremony taking home 8 Oscars out of 10, the most by a film since Return of the King. Hugh Jackman was a very warm and charming host giving us so many dance and song numbers we're bound to see again on YouTube. A very good call by the Academy on that front. No big surprises on the Acting awards. Some people will be upset Mickey Rourke did not win, but Sean Penn was wonderful as Harvey Milk. By the time Hugh started his first number we have forgotten The Dark Knight was not in contention for Best Picture, but everyone stood on their feet when Heath Ledger's name was called for Best Supporting Actor and his family gave a very moving speech of his memory. Jerry Lewis was very humble in his speech for the Jean Herseholt Award. Perhaps a slight problem in this year's ceremony might have been its predictability for the winners. Indeed I'm sure a lot of critics and bloggers will have a very high score in predicting the award recipients. I had a score of 17 out of 24 myself, but I missed 2 of the categories I usually have no idea who'll win, being Animated Short and Documentary Short Subject. I did however miss 2 of the acting categories, predicting Viola Davis instead of Cruz and prefering Rourke to Penn. A nice concept was born tonight, with 5 winning actors presenting the nominees and giving a short description of their performances. I hope this will continue for many years to come. I hope next year's ceremony will be as entertaining as this year's.

Well, what did you think?

Best Picture

And the Oscar goes to... Christian Colson for Slumdog Millionaire

Best Actor

And the Oscar goes to... Sean Penn for Milk

Best Actress

And the Oscar goes to... Kate Winslet for The Reader

Best Director

And the Oscar goes to... Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire

Best Foreign Language Film

And the Oscar goes to... Departures (Japan)

Best Original Song

And the Oscar goes to... 'Jai Ho' (A.R. Rahman & Gulzar) - Slumdog Millionaire

Best Original Score

And the Oscar goes to... A.R. Rahman for Slumdog Millionaire

Best Film Editing

And the Oscar goes to... Chris Dickens for Slumdog Millionaire

Best Sound Mixing

And the Oscar goes to... Ian Tapp, Richard Pryke & Resul Pookutty for Slumdog Millionaire

Best Sound Editing

And the Oscar goes to... Richard King for The Dark Knight

Best Visual Effects

And the Oscar goes to... Eric Barba, Steve Preeg, Burt Dalton & Craig Barron for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Best Documentary Short Subject

And the Oscar goes to... Megan Mylan for Smile Pinki

Best Documentary Feature

And the Oscar goes to... James Marsh & Simon Chinn for Man on Wire