Tag: Oscars 2013 (1-10 of 22)

Mar 22 2013 09:54 AM ET

Oscar-winning, blockbuster-fronting Jennifer Lawrence seems to have the odds ever in her favor

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Jennifer-Lawrence

Image Credit: Jeff Vespa/WireImage

Jennifer Lawrence didn’t just win the Oscar for Best Actress last month. She basically won the whole Oscars. (Apologies to Ben Affleck.) She charmed late-night hosts — and Academy voters — with a disarming blend of bawdy humor and compulsive oversharing in the weeks before the ceremony. She rocked the red carpets with a variety of gorgeous gowns. More importantly, she was the only nominee who arrived at the Dolby Theatre currently fronting a $400 million blockbuster franchise. Certainly, she was wonderful and deserving of the Academy Award for her performance as a dispirited young widow in The Silver Linings Playbook, but as she accepted the Oscar, there was also a palpable recognition that she is The Future: a young, beautiful indie-film queen who can also carry and sell an action franchise.

At only 22, with an Oscar and central roles in The Hunger Games and X-Men, Lawrence appears to be the right actress in the right movies at the right time. “Everyone wants to work with her, whether it’s another actor or actress or a director or a studio,” says David Glasser, COO of The Weinstein Company, which distributed Silver Linings. “I think everybody right now wants to find that great Jennifer Lawrence Project.” READ FULL STORY »

Mar 18 2013 09:30 AM ET

What's going on with the troubled VFX industry?

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Image credit: Marvel, New Line Cinema, Lionsgate

Image credit: Marvel, New Line Cinema, Lionsgate

The buzz around the state of the visual effects industry reached a fever pitch this winter when prominent effects house Rhythm & Hues filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in mid-February. Further attention was pointed at the men and women who create whole worlds from a blank green canvas during the Oscars, when VFX artists held a protest near the ceremony, which honored Life of Pi – a movie with effects by Rhythm & Hues – with an Academy Award in the visual effects category. The complaint? Movies like The Avengers, The Hunger Games, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy have scored big at the box office, grossing millions, sometimes billions worldwide, but the VFX industry that brought Asgard, Panem and Middle-earth to life doesn’t reap the same benefits as the studios.

The movement has spurred supporters to change their Facebook and Twitter profile photos to a green box, representing the green screen that would appear in movies were it not for VFX. Blogs have popped up that feature photos of what movie shots looked like before visual effects turned Andy Serkis into Gollum, before Mark Ruffalo was turned into the Hulk.

And more and more visual effects artists and their colleagues are speaking out about their financial woes and the changes to the business that they want to see. Last Thursday visual effects artists gathered for a meeting dubbed Pi Day VFX Town Hall (the name dually referencing Life of Pi and the March 14 holiday, as well as the artists’ frequent call for their “piece of the pi”). Panelists spoke to and took questions from a group of industry members at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Los Angeles, and VFX artists from around the world (including Vancouver, B.C., London, San Francisco, Austin, Tex. and New Zealand) connected via Google+ Hangout for the international discussion.

To help sort out the issues at hand in all this, EW talked to several Hollywood visual effects artists as well as with Roland Emmerich, director of visual effects-driven disaster movies Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012, as well as the upcoming White House Down. We also reached out to several other directors of effects-driven films and representatives for major Hollywood studios and for the Directors Guild of America. None returned EW’s request for comment for this article.

Just how bad are the financial woes of the visual effects industry?

READ FULL STORY »

Mar 5 2013 09:35 AM ET

Geena Davis calls Seth MacFarlane's Oscars disrespectful and 'tone-deaf' towards women

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geena-davis

Image Credit: Mike Coppola/Getty Images

Academy Award winner Geena Davis on Monday waded into the ongoing controversy over this year’s Oscars ceremony by saying host Seth MacFarlane’s routine was disrespectful to women, particularly the performers who were being honored.

The Thelma & Louise star said MacFarlane’s much-criticized routine last month overshadowed the win of an animated film with a strong female character.

“It’s a shame that that triumph was enveloped in an awards ceremony containing disrespect for women,” Davis told members of the California Assembly during a ceremony in Sacramento. “But it helps illustrate how tone-deaf we can still be regarding the status of women.”

She commended Brave, which won best animated picture, as setting a positive example for girls. READ FULL STORY »

Mar 1 2013 09:10 AM ET

Michelle Obama not shocked by criticism of her Oscar cameo

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flotus-oscars

Image Credit: Pete Souza/The White House

Michelle Obama says it was “absolutely not surprising” to her that her satellite appearance at the Academy Awards ceremony provoked a national conversation about whether it was appropriate, after some conservative critics accused her of selfishly crashing the event in an attempt to upstage it.

She attributed the chatter to a culture shift that has spawned legions of bloggers, tweeters, and others who talk about anything and everything all the time.

“Shoot, my bangs set off a national conversation. My shoes can set off a national conversation. That’s just sort of where we are. We’ve got a lot of talking going on,” the first lady said only somewhat jokingly Thursday before an appearance in Chicago, her hometown. “It’s like everybody’s kitchen-table conversation is now accessible to everybody else so there’s a national conversation about anything.” READ FULL STORY »

Feb 26 2013 09:00 AM ET

'Inocente': An artist's journey from homelessness to the Academy Awards

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INOCENTE-OSCARS

Image Credit: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Affleck and Hathaway, Lawrence and Day-Lewis may have been the most notable winners on Sunday night, the artists who cemented their Hollywood legacies at the 2013 Academy Awards. But no one’s life has changed more this year from starring in an Oscar-winning movie than Inocente Izucar. The name might not ring a bell, but you’ll remember the acceptance speech for Best Documentary Short, when Inocente‘s co-director Sean Fine introduced her to the world. “We want to thank this young lady who was homeless just a year ago and now she’s standing in front of all of you,” he said. “She’s an artist and all of you are artists and we feel like we need to start supporting the arts. They’re dying in our communities. And all of us artists, we need to stand up and help girls like her be seen and heard. It’s so important. Thank you.”

Fine and his wife and collaborator, Andrea Nix Fine, discovered Izucar in San Diego four years ago, when the Oscar-nominated duo (War Dance) were searching for subjects for a documentary about homelessness. Then 15, Izucar and her family moved 30 times in the previous nine years, never living in the same place for more than three months. Her father, who’d illegally brought his family north of the border when Izucar was a child, had been deported back to Mexico, and her mother struggled to support her four children, toiling at a series of low-paying odd jobs. But it wasn’t her plight that made Izucar so compelling a subject; it was her talent and her spirit. She is a promising artist who starts each day painting bright and extravagant makeup on her face, and after the filmmakers connected with her through a San Diego non-profit called ARTS: A Reason to Survive that supports at-risk youngsters, they spent the next two years documenting her life. “I don’t even want to imagine where I would be if there wasn’t the documentary and everything that’s going on with it,” says Izucar. “I’m really thankful to Sean and Andrea.” READ FULL STORY »

Feb 25 2013 12:33 PM ET

Oscars: Visual effects artists protest outside Dolby Theatre

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Image Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Protestors are no rare sight outside Hollywood awards shows — members of extreme religious groups often set up camp near events like the SAG Awards and the Oscars. But at this year’s Academy Awards, a protest of a different kind was taking place; It came from inside Tinseltown. A reported 400 or so visual effects artists gathered outside Dolby Theatre Sunday to pronounce their grievances with their place in the industry.

The protest followed the announcement earlier this month that visual effects house Rhythm & Hues is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Protesters on a street corner near Dolby held aloft signs that read “Will matte paint for food,” “Respect for vex” and “We want a piece of the Pi.” Rhythm & Hues worked on Life of Pi, which took home the award for Best Visual Effects Sunday. READ FULL STORY »

Feb 25 2013 11:50 AM ET

Oscars 2013: The best acceptance speeches, starring Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck & more -- VIDEO

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From Christoph Waltz’s surprise Best Supporting Actor win to Ben Affleck’s emotional, heartfelt remarks after Argo snagged Best Picture, last night’s Academy Awards were filled with memorable acceptance speeches — and notable pre-speech journeys to the stage. (How’s your knee, Jennifer Lawrence?)

Relive the night’s best post-win soliloquies below. Think any will eventually reach “You like me! Right now, you like me!” status? READ FULL STORY »

Feb 25 2013 09:44 AM ET

EW's Jess Cagle goes backstage with Oscar winners -- VIDEO

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Jess-Adele-Interview

What were Oscar winners Anne Hathaway, Adele, Jennifer Lawrence, Daniel Day-Lewis, Ben Affleck, Grant Heslov, and George Clooney thinking when they heard their names announced at last night’s ceremony? EW managing editor Jess Cagle was on the scene to find out — thankfully, with a video camera in tow.

Watch below to see his backstage interviews with some of the night’s biggest winners — and don’t forget that if you missed the show, you can watch the whole thing on ABC.com, the ABC Player for iOS, and Hulu Plus through Wednesday night.

READ FULL STORY »

Feb 25 2013 09:35 AM ET

Iran disses 'Argo,' calling Oscar wins 'politically motivated'

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affleck-clooney

Image Credit: Joe Klamar/AFP Photo

Iran’s state TV dismissed the Oscar-winning film Argo on Monday as an “advertisement for the CIA” and some Iranians called the award a political statement by America for its unflattering portrayal of the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

And while Argo has not appeared in any Iranian cinema, there has been no shortage of buzz from those who saw the movie through bootleg DVD networks.

The discussions over Argo in Iran have often pried open a generational divide: Iranians who took part in the 1979 Islamic Revolution picking apart the portrayals of Tehran during the time, and Iranians too young to recall the events getting a different view of the upheavals.

“I want to know what the other side is saying,” said Shieda, a 21-year-old University of Tehran student, who gave only her first name to avoid possible backlash for speaking with foreign media. READ FULL STORY »

Feb 24 2013 05:21 PM ET

Why the Oscar-nominated animated shorts were pulled from YouTube

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Paperman

Image Credit: Disney

Remember when Cinemark theaters threatened to boycott Tower Heist because it would be available on VOD during its theatrical release? Imagine if a film were available in full, not only on pay-per-view, but online for free during its theatrical release. That’s what happened with this year’s Oscar-nominated animated shorts, which cable channel ShortsHD, in conjunction with the Academy, has been screening around the country since Feb. 1.

After free versions of all five animated shorts cropped up on websites like YouTube and Hulu, theaters showing the films threatened to stop screening the animated slate if the films remained online for free. So ShortsHD asked the nominees to pull their films from the web, as first reported by Deadline. READ FULL STORY »

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