Oscars @ Home

There are over 40 different films nominated for Oscars this year and less than 30 days before the actual telecast. Let's be real here. Unless you've been thoroughly preparing for this throughout the year, you will not get a chance to see all the nominated films in time. Even if you did prepare, or are a film critic like myself and have seen 30 of the nominated films already, there are some selections, like the surprise animated feature nominee, THE SECRET OF KELLS, which won't reach theatres until after the awards are handed out. And so I suppose the goal is to do the best we can with what time we have and with the resources available to us.

This is where I come in. I will help you make sure you see as many of the right films possible before the big night. To make it easier on you, I'll start with all the nominated films that you can get at the video store or on demand or delivered to your door. Believe it or not, there are 16 films available to rent before the telecast airs, five of which are nominated for Best Picture. You can start your journey comfortably in your living room and work your way up getting out of the house and into the crowds to see the rest. I will rank them in order of importance and list the awards they are nominated for so that you can see why I consider them important.

1. THE HURT LOCKER
Nominated for:

PICTURE
DIRECTOR
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
ACTOR
FILM EDITING
CINEMATOGRAPHY
ORIGINAL SCORE
SOUND MIXING
SOUND EDITING


Tied for the most nominations with AVATAR, THE HURT LOCKER is your first stop. Unfortunately, as it only pulled in $13 million or so in theatres, it is a lot of people's first stop so it might be hard to find. If you're a fan of the war genre and appreciate the tension that only dismantling bombs can carry, you should just buy it. It's a gorgeous film. THE HURT LOCKER has a great chance to win in all of its categories, except the acting (sorry, Jeremy Renner), so this is a must if you want to follow on the big night.

2. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
Nominated for:

PICTURE
DIRECTOR
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
SUPPORTING ACTOR
FILM EDITING
CINEMATOGRAPHY
SOUND MIXING
SOUND EDITING

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS has only one less nod than THE HURT LOCKER but not as much buzz. I would say it would be a surprise Best Picture winner but if anyone has a shot at a directing upset, it's Quentin Tarantino. Christoph Waltz is a lock for Supporting Actor and Tarantino might take the screenplay nod instead of the directing award. This one is also a must see.

3. DISTRICT 9
Nominated for:

PICTURE
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
FILM EDITING
VISUAL EFFECTS

DISTRICT 9 is a long shot in all of it's categories but the fact that it managed that much attention in such big categories makes me think a lot of people liked this one. It is a must see before the telecast just because of what it is nominated for but as it won't likely win, it won't be the end of everything if you miss it.

4. UP
Nominated for:

PICTURE
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
ANIMATED FEATURE
ORIGINAL SCORE
SOUND EDITING


UP has a very good chance to beat FANTASTIC MR. FOX for Animated Feature and an off chance at the screenplay bid so it is a contender but I don't see it as a Best Picture threat. Composer Michael Giacchino could grab another award for his score but I don't know how many people watch the Oscars for the music category. If you haven't seen UP, you should. You'll be happy to see it win whatever it does.

5. A SERIOUS MAN
Nominated for:

PICTURE
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Two biggies there but no support in any other category suggests people liked A SERIOUS MAN but weren't floored by anything in particular about it. Personally, I loved everything about it and still think Michael Stuhlbarg was robbed in the Best Actor category. It comes out tomorrow and Black Sheep's full review will be up then.

6. JULIE & JULIA
Nominated for:

ACTRESS

JULIE & JULIA only has the one nomination but it happens to be a record-breaking one for Meryl Streep and people are saying that it is going to come down to her or Sandra Bullock in THE BLIND SIDE. If you want to get in on that race, you need to start here.

7. IN THE LOOP
Nominated for:

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY


Although I was sad not to see Tom Ford pick up a nod for writing A SINGLE MAN, I am thrilled to see the screenplay for IN THE LOOP up for it instead. This is definitely one of the sharpest, dirtiest, most hilarious films I've seen in years. You likely have never heard of it but if you are debating watching it because of the nomination, good for you! You will laugh very hard at this British political satire. It is brave and shocking and again, so funny!

8. STAR TREK
Nominated for:

VISUAL EFFECTS
SOUND MIXING
SOUND EDITING
MAKEUP

STAR TREK may have missed out on the bigger prizes but these four nods tie STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME for the most Oscar nods for any Star Trek film. You don't need to see this beforehand but you should definitely see it.

9. THE COVE and FOOD INC.
Each nominated for:

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

You don't always get to see the nominated documentary features that easily and THE COVE and FOOD INC. are two that you don't want to miss. Both will change your life and just imagine how smart you'll look at your Oscar party when you can say you've seen two of the nominated documentaries.


THE REST ...

The following films are nominated here and there and also available to watch before the telecast, in case you wanted to be thorough. Once you're done with the first half of this list though, you should probably get to the theatre before the rest of these. Priorities, people!



BRIGHT STAR
(Nominated for Costume Design)

COCO AVANT CHANEL
(Costume Design)

CORALINE
(Animated Feature)

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE
(Cinematography)

IL DIVO
(Makeup)

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN
(Sound Mixing)

Black Sheep @ The Box Office: Yo Joe!

I don’t think anyone can say they didn’t see this coming. G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA has debuted atop the North American box office chart, just as everyone presumed it would. When it comes to an obvious blockbuster like this one, the real question is not whether it will come out on top but really more so by how much. With a $56 million start, Hasbro and Paramount can rest peacefully knowing they’ve launched another successful franchise. And knowing is half the battle …


G.I. JOE solidified its success on Friday when it debuted to a single day gross of over $22 million, the fifth highest of any film this summer. This amount was also almost more than last week’s box office champ, FUNNY PEOPLE, brought in all weekend. This weekend, the firs official Judd Apatow disappointment stumbles more than 65% for a fifth place finish. So with this weekend looking much brighter than last, there was even room for audiences starved for movies to spread the money around. This week’s second debut gives Meryl Streep her third $20+ million summer opening in the last four years. JULIE & JULIA, which co-stars Amy Adams, brought in just over $20 million for a second place opening. While this is a solid start, it is about $7 million lower than Streep’s other summer hits, THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA and MAMMA MIA!


The week’s only other wide release, the Steve Zahn thriller, THE PERFECT GETAWAY, wasn’t the perfect anything for viewers this weekend. It opened in seventh place and, despite mostly positive reviews, will likely disappear very soon, with very little mystery left to be solved. The Top 10 did see one other debut; in its fourth week, (500) DAYS OF SUMMER expands to over 800 screens and finally earns enough to be seen amongst the elite. The expansion may have eroded its average to about $4.5K per screen but this is still the third largest in the Top 10. Elsewhere in the art-house world, the Charlene Yi/Michael Cera mockumentary, PAPER HEARTS, debuted to an average of $5.4K on 38 screens. It seems to me it should have been higher but there hasn’t been very much publicity for this quirky little film (Black Sheep review coming this week). Two other Black Sheep favorites continued their limited runs with limited success. THE COVE, a must see documentary, added 52 screens and saw its gross balloon by 174% by its average dropped from $17K to under $3K. Don’t miss the Black Sheep interview THE COVE director, Louie Psihoyos. Faring better was the Asperger’s Syndrome romantic comedy, ADAM. It added 16 new screens and maintained an average of $5.2K per screen. This touching film gets the Black Sheep treatment very soon.


NEXT WEEK: It’s a biggie, folks! PAPER HEARTS will commence its expansion next week, hoping to spread the love across the nation. A couple of lower brow comedies hit with modest runs, POOL BOYS starring Matthew Lillard on 400 screens and the Jeremy Piven vehicle, THE GOODS: LIVE HARD, SELL HARD hits 1500 screens. The latest from Hayao Miyazaki, PONYO, enlists huge names in hopes of crossing over on 800 screens. I’m not sure what kind of hard times Lisa Kudrow and David Bowi have fallen on but they are both in the Vanessa Hudgens teen rock comedy, BANDSLAM (2000 screens). Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams travel through time with love in THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE (2700 screens). And finally, one of my favorite movies of the year, DISTRICT 9 unleashes all its alien gooey goodness on 2900 screens. See it!

Source: Box Office Mojo

THE COVE

An interview with director, Louie Psihoyos and dolphin activist, Ric O'Barry


THE COVE – It sounds an awful lot like a horror movie to me. In reality, it is a new documentary that it so much more horrific than any horror film I’ve seen in ages. There is a cove in a national park in Taiji, Japan. Every September, thousands of dolphins pass by this cove as part of their natural migratory pattern. Japanese fisherman, knowing full well that dolphins operate primarily with their sense of hearing, send noises under water that drive the dolphins into the cove. Once there, a net surrounds them so that they cannot just swim back into the ocean. A small selection of these captured dolphins, mostly female and more adorable than the rest if you will, are shipped from there to seaquariums around the globe for anywhere between $150K and $200K per dolphin. The rest are brought around the corner to a second cove. This cove is not accessible to the public and what goes on there in secret would turn your stomach in as many knots as it turns the water red with blood. The mercury-ridden dolphin meat is then sold in shops and passed off as whale meat to the innocent Japanese people, making this not only a crime against the animals themselves but also one against humanity itself.


World renowned photojournalist, Louie Psihoyos (pictured below up front and in camouflage), has been traveling the globe taking pictures for the likes of National Geographic, Newsweek and Time, to name but a few, since he left college. THE COVE is his first feature and, while well intentioned, he had no idea what was actually in store for him to make this movie happen. “A real filmmaker would have turned and run from this project,” Psihoyos tells me when we meet in Toronto, just days before the Canadian release and just days after the successful American launch. “Making the movie was actually a lot scarier than what you see on screen. We were exposing the dolphin trade; it’s not the kind of thing you tell your government about in advance.”


Even if they had alerted the American government, it isn’t likely they would have been any help. The Japanese government is so entrenched in the dolphin trade and billions of dollars would be lost if it were to be shut down. That said, THE COVE, if it continues on its successful path, actually has great potential to bring down this decades old trade. “The Japanese government is starting to feel it. It is sort of like a tsunami is rising up around them,” Psihoyos claims when asked if THE COVE has had any impact yet. “They’re hoping it just goes away but I’m hoping it crushes them.” As the film rolls out into theatres around the world and it motivates all those who see it to reach out to their own governments for change, it seems that all of the painstaking effort that went into the film might actually pay off in the best way imaginable.


Psihoyos had to assemble a team of filmmakers and non-filmmakers alike to make THE COVE possible. As the cove in Taiji was heavily watched by a number of mysterious interested parties, and Psihoyos and his crew were constantly followed wherever they went, they had to ditch the eyes on them and go in at night in order to set up cameras and sound equipment to capture what no one had been able to prior. To do this, he enlisted the help of cinematographers who knew how to hide cameras in rocks so that no one would notice them, divers that could place these cameras underwater and the world’s leading dolphin activist, Ric O’Barry (pictured just below), as a guide to the area and its dangers. Second of course to the atrocities regularly carried out in Taiji, O'Barry’s story is an oddly compelling secondary focus. O’Barry was responsible for the capture and subsequent training of the five separate dolphins that played Flipper in the popular 1960’s television program of the same name. Before “Flipper”, dolphins were not nearly as popular with the masses as they are now. It wasn’t until ten years after their capture that O’Barry had realized what he had done.


When the most prominent dolphin playing Flipper died in his arms in what Barry described as dolphin suicide (dolphins are conscious breathers, unlike humans, and decide each time they take a breath to do so; this dolphin decided not to take any more), he realized that dolphins were not meant for captivity. He has spent the last 38 years trying to correct his great wrong. “I used to operate from a place of guilt about 20 years ago,” O’Barry confides to me the same day I meet with Psihoyos. “Now, it is just like breathing. Someone calls me to rescue a dolphin and I just do it. And now, with this film, I feel vindicated.” In fact, O’Barry got an e-mail while we spoke about another dolphin in need and he yearns to get back to work after the film’s promotional tour. He is happy to help get the word out but he cannot wait to get back to Japan, even if it means being arrested for lying about his involvement with the film. “Arresting me in Japan would be like arresting Flipper. It would draw a lot of attention.” It almost sounds like he wants it.


With THE COVE generating some very early Oscar buzz in the documentary category, it seems that Psihoyos has a budding film career ahead of him and he could not be happier for himself or the film and its cause. “I think I’ve found my calling 52 years into my life and this is what I want to do from now on.” Let alone changing paths at that age, I am most impressed by how excited Psihoyos seems to be about this change and how surprised he is that it actually came about. “I want to make films that inspire other people to make films and create a whole legion of activists. When I see the audience reactions,” something Psihoyos was not always privy to as a photographer, “it brings tears to my eyes because I feel like its ok to dream.”

His is a dream that has already changed his life and now has the chance to change the world. Before Psihoyos and I part and he breaks for what will certainly be a dolphin free lunch, he shares one last note about the film. “I feel THE COVE is really quite hopeful. The audience now has to finish the story for themselves.”

For more information on the dolphin trade in Taiji and how this story can be finished, visit TakePart.com. For more information on THE COVE, visit thecovemovie.com