Tag: oscars

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The Force Awakens strikes out at the Oscars

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There were no wins for Star Wars at the Academy Awards tonight, but at least The Force Awakens lost (mostly) to fellow genre films. Mad Max: Fury Road pretty much swept the technical categories at the Academy Awards, shutting out The Force Awakens in Editing, Sound Mixing and Sound Editing. Star Wars’ best chance was considered to be Visual Effects, which was instead won by Ex Machina in a surprising upset. John Williams lost out to The Hateful Eight’s Ennio Morricone, who paid tribute to 5-time winner Williams in his speech.

But hey, we did get an appearance by Threepio, Artoo and BB-8. Later, Daisy Ridley was joined by Dev Patel to present Best Documentary, and J.J. Abrams presented Best Director to The Revenant’s Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

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5 Oscar nods for The Force Awakens include music, VFX

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The Force Awakens received five Oscar nominations this morning, all in technical categories. John Williams got his 50th nomination for the score. ILM’s Roger Guyett, Patrick Tubach, Neal Scanlan and Chris Corbould are up for the film’s Visual Effects. Matthew Wood and David Acord are nominated for sound editing, with Andy Nelson, Christopher Scarabosio and Stuart Wilson for sound mixing. The biggest surprise is Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey for editing.

the 88th Academy Awards will be given out Sunday, February 28.

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Felicity Jones, Lupita N’yongo on Star Wars (barely) at the Oscars


So it’s pretty much a sure thing that Felicity Jones is going to be one of the stars of the upcoming spin-off at this point, and we can agree if this counts as a ‘confirmation – but she told MTV’s Josh Horowitz that she “can’t talk about it.” (Lupita N’yongo says she’s sure it will “change her life even more.”)

Naturally that’s about all we’re going to get for anything upcoming, but Star Wars had a couple moments in the opening act. Bib Iger’s wife even wore one of the Rodarte Star Wars dresses on the red carpet.

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David Oyelowo, The LEGO Movie big snubs of Oscars

SelmaOscar nominations came out this morning (with a little help from J.J. Abrams as a presenter) and the main story seem to be how very, very male and white they are. The most noteworthy snub? Civil rights drama Selma, which earned a Best Picture and Best Song nomination, despite nothing for director Ava DuVernay or the cast, led by Rebels’ David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. The saddest thing, maybe? Shutting out one movie is all it took to whitewash the acting nominations.

The other big snub? The LEGO Movie, which is up for Best Song (‘Everything is Awesome’) but totally shut out of Best Animated Feature. At least one of the directors has a good attitude about it.

But as usual, the only field that’s heavy in genre is Visual Effects, which sees nods for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Guardians of the Galaxy, Interstellar, X-Men: Days of Future Past.

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Oscars nominations boring as ever for genre fans

Not a whole lot of love for genre pictures at the Oscars this year.  The Avengers got just one nomination, for Visual Effects, where it was joined by online punching-bag Prometheus.  Both of them will probably lose to Life of Pi.

May the odds be ever in her favorThe good news is that some fan-favorite actors scored big.  Jennifer Lawrence was nominated for Best Actress — not for The Hunger Games, but rather for her work in Silver Linings Playbook.  She plays a woman suffering from a variety of mental illnesses so who knows, maybe she’ll even win.  And though The Dark Knight Rises was shut out, Anne Hathaway got a Supporting Actress nod for playing Fantine in Les Misérables, and she’s pretty much a lock.  Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackman, was also nominated for Les Misérables, but let’s face it, he has no chance.

The Hobbit got three nominations, for Visual Effects, Makeup, and Production Design.  Not bad until you remember that the last Middle-earth epic nabbed eleven nominations, and won all of ’em.

Plus we have to mention: John Williams picked up his 48th nomination for Lincoln.  Pretty sure that’s a record.  And weirdly enough, the Simpsons are now Oscar nominees.  Something called Maggie Simpson in “The Longest Daycare” is up for Best Animated Short.

At least we can always look forward to making fun of the fashions.  This year the Academy Awards air on February 24th.

Edit: Thanks to Pablo for pointing out that new Lucasfilm head honcho Kathleen Kennedy (along with Steven Spielberg) was nominated for producing Lincoln!  It’s the front-runner for Best Picture, too.

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Rango gets best animated film at lackluster Oscars

Per usual, the Academy Award had little accolades for genre, though Industrial Light & Magic Rango took advantage of the Pixar-free spread to take the Oscar for Animated Feature.

Martin Scorsese’s Hugo – one of the few lead nominees that had any (tentative) connection to genre – swept the technical awards, with Oscars for Cinematography, Art Direction (beating Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow Part 2,) Sound editing (over Potter and Transformers 3,) Sound Mixing, and Visual Effects (over Potter, Transformers, Real Steel and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.)

Harry Potter also lost out in Makeup, to The Iron Lady. One bright spot: The Muppets took Original Song.

As for the show itself…. It seemed like they just gave up on the younger demographic entirely. The whole show had a tone of ‘Remember how great movies used to be? Before blockbusters and computers? When we, the voting members of the Academy, were young?’ (Nothing, perhaps, says this better than The Artist wins: Old stuff and Hollywood self-absorption.) Billy Crystal may be ‘classic’ but about halfway through his painful song melody I was checked out of his performance and wishing for someone new. (Tom Hanks? Everyone loves Tom Hanks. And he doesn’t sing!) Or just bring back Jon Stewart, who made the montages actually fun. (Also, blackface? How far we’ve come, America.) Hell, let the Muppets host the whole damn thing. Last year may have been a disaster but is the answer really to pretend that anyone who’s clocked less than half a century cares? The Oscars have never been known for being populist, but this year the gap was especially glaring.

I’m glad the Oscars haven’t gone the Grammy route of rewarding their industry’s biggest moneymakers (no offense to Adele, but that path would lead to Oscar nominations for Twilight) but just… Mix it up a little, will ya?

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Genre makes a showing in Oscar nominations

We’re generally not used to seeing a lot of science fiction and fantasy films up for the big prizes at the Academy Awards, but this year does hold a few suprises. Although neither the final Harry Potter film or Andy Serkis’ motion-capture work failed to procure any major nods, there are still a handful of genre films in the big spots.

Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, a steampunk-tinged story of early film based on Brian Selznick’s novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, is one of the 9 nominees for best picture, along with Woody Allen’s time-travel comedy Midnight in Paris. (Allen’s Annie Hall beat out Star Wars for the same prize in 1977.) Hugo scored 11 nods, including best director, making it the most-nominated film.

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 got a nod for Visual Effects, where it will compete against Hugo, Real Steel, Rise Of The Planet of The Apes and ILM’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

ILM can also celebrate an Animated Feature nomination for Rango, which is up against Shrek spin-off Puss and Boots, Kung Fu Panda 2, A Cat in Paris and Chico & Rita.

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The catchup: Jedi and Sith in love, Vader in Ukraine

A very Star Wars engagement. This unnamed Bay Area Jedi/Sith couple put aside their differences for a Star Wars themed photo shoot by photographer Michael James. We have every faith those crazy kids will make it work, one way or another. (via)

Stunts. ‘Darth Vader’ submits a claim for 1,000 square meters of Ukraine. Good luck with that.

TV. Why is Chewbacca hanging out with the Glee folks? On second thought, having finally given up on the show this season, I don’t want to know.

People. James Earl Jones received an honorary Oscar.

Blast from the past. The internet has unearthed a 1978 interview with Mark Hamill.

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Oscar, briefly: Inception takes VFX, Portman Best Actress

There were few surprises at tonight’s Oscars: Lone genre Best Picture nom Inception was awarded mostly in technical categories (including Visual Effects… Sorry, ILM.) And Natalie Portman did indeed win Best Actress for Black Swan.

For the rest, The King’s Speech cleaned up with 4 awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Colin Firth. Batman Jesus Christian Bale took home Best Supporting Actor for The Fighter. But perhaps most mind-blowing to this former teen of the 90’s: Trent Reznor now has an Oscar (for The Social Network score.)

As for the ceremony itself… It was pretty standard; All the real fun was (of course) partaking in all the snark on Twitter. I did greatly enjoy the auto-tune, though.

And yes, Irvin Kershner did make the In Memoriam reel, as did modelmaker Grant McCune.

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No Best Picture Oscar for Avatar

The Hurt Locker beat out Avatar for Best Picture (and director – Kathryn Bigelow is the first woman to win) but the sci-fi extravaganza did take statues for visual effects, cinematography, and art direction. I don’t find this particularly heartbreaking: Avatar might have been a fun movie to watch, but Best Picture? Ehh.

Best Picture was really the only uncertain prize going in, so there weren’t many surprises for the genre winners: Pixar’s Up took Animated feature and Music, while Star Trek got Makeup. (District 9 will always have this, I suppose.)