Hollywood’s biggest night is only two days away — do you have your special Academy Awards sweats picked out yet?
Get a head start on your Oscar weekend debates with Movie Talk with Owen and Lisa — in which EW critics Owen Gleiberman and Lisa Schwarzbaum lament how the Oscars aren’t channeling the public anymore and name their picks for who should win Lead Actor and Lead Actress. Spoiler: It’s not “this French guy no one has ever heard of”! READ FULL STORY »
And another awards season has ended. The 2010-2011 awards journey was a twisty one, with shifting Best Picture frontrunners and several colorful characters in the mix. In all, the awards themselves were a fairly predictable but classy affair. In my annual OscarWatch TV wrap-up video (filmed on the gold carpet at the Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Viewing Party in West Hollywood), I give my final thoughts on all the big winners (including F-bomb thrower Melissa Leo) and the telecast in general. (You’ll see I’m a bit kinder to the hosts than most other people seem to be.) Thanks to you all for reading all of my posts and predictions over the last several months. We’ll start up again before we know it!
We all know Elton John isn’t afraid to give his opinion on matters from music to movies to politics. So I’m always interested in what he, a past Oscar winner of course, has to say about the Academy Award contenders. For the second year in a row, EW has partnered with the Elton John AIDS Foundation to create video clips that will play inside the EJAF’s Academy Awards Viewing Party. Attendees at the event will hear Sir Elton dish on all the major Oscar races and which films and actors are his favorites. Here are two snippets in which we discuss the Best Actress and Best Song lineups. Anyone who’s been reading my awards coverage since Cannes will understand how delighted I am when he mentions his personal choice for Best Actress. READ FULL STORY »
One of the knocks on The King’s Speech (at least among some EW.com commenters) is that the story feels like it belongs on the BBC or HBO rather than in movie theaters. So when I sat down with director Tom Hooper and costar Geoffrey Rush recently, I asked them what they think about that criticism. Hooper’s answer surprised me. Check out Part 2 and 3 of my interview with the pair, in which we discuss the now-famous first day of shooting, when they knew they had a winner on their hands, and what role Hooper wanted Rush to play in his John Adams miniseries.
It’s been a month of highs and lows for The King’s Speech. The film has swept the four most important pre-Oscar prizes (Producers Guild, Directors Guild, SAG Awards, and BAFTA) and seems on track to win the Oscar for Best Picture as well. But at the same time, its front-runner status has made the film vulnerable to attacks: It takes historical liberties, it’s too obviously awards bait, giving it Best Picture would be the biggest Oscar crime since Crash, etc.
When I sat down with Speech costar Geoffrey Rush and director Tom Hooper recently, I asked them about all the criticism the movie has attracted. Watch their responses in Part 1 of our interview. READ FULL STORY »
Despite positive reviews, Mark Wahlberg was the only main cast member from The Fighter not to score an Oscar nomination for his performance in the movie. (Meanwhile, his costars Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Melissa Leo were all recognized in the supporting categories.) In Part 3 of my interview with Wahlberg and his Fighter director David O. Russell (also nominated for an Oscar this year), Wahlberg tells me why he’s actually happier to be nominated as one of the film’s producers and whether he thinks his movie has a shot at upsetting The King’s Speech for the Best Picture win.
If you can't get enough of the Oscars, play our Battle of the Ballots Oscar prediction game and see if you can top my predictions. And don't forget to follow me on Twitter (@davekarger).
It’s widely known that Darren Aronofsky almost directed The Fighter but chose to do The Wrestler instead. Ironically, Aronofsky, who’s up for the Best Director Oscar for Black Swan, is now competing with his successor, David O. Russell. So what happened when Aronofsky, Russell, and Mark Wahlberg collided during the awards season? Find out in Part 2 of my interview with the Fighter duo. Who do you think had the better one-liner? READ FULL STORY »
Mark Wahlberg and director David O. Russell have made three films together: Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees, and now The Fighter. Though some actors (George Clooney and Lily Tomlin among them) have famously battled Russell on set over the years, he and Wahlberg seem to be the perfect match for each other. In Part 1 of our three-part EW video interview, we talk about why they work well together and how Russell inadvertently helped Wahlberg come up with the concept for Entourage. Watch it below: READ FULL STORY »
Image credit: Merrick Morton
Part of the brilliance of The Social Network is that there’s no obvious character to root for in the film. Some people will come out of the movie sympathizing with Mark Zuckerberg (or at least the version of Mark Zuckerberg portrayed in the film), while others will despise him. So to finish up my interview with the cast members and their screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, I asked them where their allegiances lay now that they’ve seen the finished product. Their answers surprised me. (Particularly Justin Timberlake’s: Though the PR people surrounding us halted the interview before he could respond, he told me after the cameras stopped rolling that he felt bad for, of all people, Eduardo’s girlfriend, played by Brenda Song.) Take a look at their responses below. And if you’ve seen The Social Network, tell me: Whose side are you on?
Image Credit: Merrick MortonSo it didn’t break any box office records, but The Social Network‘s $23 million opening weekend is solid enough to keep the intelligent drama firmly in the awards hunt. In Part 3 of our 5-part cast interview, we focus on Justin Timberlake, who lets us in on a little secret to his performance as entrepreneur Sean Parker: He lost over 15 pounds for the role. Then, Jesse Eisenberg’s costars tell us how he is—and isn’t—like his big screen alter ego, Mark Zuckerberg. Click here to watch Parts 1 and 2.
