2014 Academy Awards nominees revealed

And they’re here! After months of speculation, campaigning and enduring those obnoxious for-your-consideration pop-up ads (all of which will now, unfortunately, only intensify) the nominations for the 2014 Academy Awards have been announced.

If you haven’t read through them already, odds are, you’ll be able to guess the major categories.

Nine features earned nods for Best Picture: American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Her, Nebraska, Philomena, 12 Years a Slave, and The Wolf of Wall Street.

Not a dark horse among the aforementioned. This year, who and what got snubbed is a much more interesting topic of conversation than who and what made the cut. The award for Most Glaring Omission goes to the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, which not only failed to receive a nomination for Best Picture, but which was also shut out of the Best Actor (Oscar Isaac) and Best Director categories. A friend of mine may have inadvertently expressed the general sentiment when he explained his reasons for disliking the feature: The Coen Brothers made a very beautiful film about a very unlikable guy. He felt it lacked personal resonance. It was a movie he could appreciate for its technical and aesthetic mastery, but which ultimately left him cold. The Academy may have felt similarly.

Others may be surprised favorites Tom Hanks and especially Emma Thompson were left out of the Best Actor and Actress groups. Captain Phillips director Paul Greengrass failed to impress members of The Academy as well, and, although we’ve known for some weeks that, having been left off the shortlist for Best Foreign Language Feature, Iran’s The Past wouldn’t receive a nomination, the snub of Asghar Farhadi’s complex drama is still a shame.

Having acknowledged the fallen, however, the focus must now land on those left standing. It’s a mighty strong group of contenders that features American Hustle and Gravity at the front of the pack with their 10 nominations each, and 12 Years a Slave following close behind with nine nods.

Without further vamping, then, here is the complete list of nominees for the 2014 Academy Awards (slated to air March 2, on ABC):

Best Picture
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
Her
Nebraska
Philomena
12 Years a Slave
The Wolf of Wall Street

Performance by an actor in a leading role
Christian Bale, American Hustle (Sony Pictures Releasing)
Bruce Dern, Nebraska (Paramount)
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street (Paramount)
Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave (Fox Searchlight)
Matthew McConaughey,  Dallas Buyers Club (Focus Features)

Performance by an actress in a leading role
Amy Adams, American Hustle (Sony Pictures Releasing)
Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine (Sony Pictures Classics)
Sandra Bullock, Gravity (Warner Bros.)
Judi Dench, Philomena (The Weinstein Company)
Meryl Streep, August: Osage County (The Weinstein Company)

Best performance by an actor in a supporting role
Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips
Bradley Cooper, American Hustle
Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave
Jonah Hill, The Wolf of Wall Street
Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club

Best performance by an actress in a supporting role
Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave
Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle
June Squibb, Nebraska
Julia Roberts, August: Osage County
Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine

Best Animated Feature
Frozen
The Croods
The Wind Rises
Despicable Me 2
Ernest & Celestine

Achievement in cinematography
The Grandmaster, Philippe Le Sourd
Gravity, Emmanuel Lubezki
Inside Llewyn Davis, Bruno Delbonnel
Nebraska, Phedon Papamichael
Prisoners, Roger A. Deakins
 
Achievement in costume design
American Hustle, Michael Wilkinson
The Grandmaster, William Chang Suk Ping
The Great Gatsby, Catherine Martin
The Invisible Woman, Michael O’Connor
12 Years a Slave, Patricia Norris
 
Achievement in directing
American Hustle, David O. Russell
Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón
Nebraska, Alexander Payne
12 Years a Slave, Steve McQueen
The Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese
 
Best documentary feature
The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer and Signe Byrge Sørensen
Cutie and the Boxer, Zachary Heinzerling and Lydia Dean Pilcher
Dirty Wars, Richard Rowley and Jeremy Scahill
The Square, Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer
20 Feet from Stardom, Nominees to be determined
 
Best documentary short subject
CaveDigger, Jeffrey Karoff
Facing Fear, Jason Cohen
Karama Has No Walls, Sara Ishaq
The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life, Malcolm Clarke and Nicholas Reed
Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall, Edgar Barens
 
Achievement in film editing
American Hustle, Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers and Alan Baumgarten
Captain Phillips, Christopher Rouse
Dallas Buyers Club, John Mac McMurphy and Martin Pensa
Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón and Mark Sanger
12 Years a Slave, Joe Walker
 
Best foreign language film of the year
The Broken Circle Breakdown, Belgium
The Great Beauty, Italy
The Hunt, Denmark
The Missing Picture, Cambodia
Omar, Palestine
 
Achievement in makeup and hairstyling
Dallas Buyers Club, Adruitha Lee and Robin Mathews
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, Stephen Prouty
The Lone Ranger, Joel Harlow and Gloria Pasqua-Casny
 
Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)
The Book Thief, John Williams
Gravity, Steven Price
Her, William Butler and Owen Pallett
Philomena, Alexandre Desplat
Saving Mr. Banks, Thomas Newman
 
Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)
“Alone Yet Not Alone” from “Alone Yet Not Alone”
Music by Bruce Broughton; Lyric by Dennis Spiegel
“Happy” from “Despicable Me 2”
Music and Lyric by Pharrell Williams
“Let It Go” from “Frozen”
Music and Lyric by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez
“The Moon Song” from “Her”
Music by Karen O; Lyric by Karen O and Spike Jonze
“Ordinary Love” from “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom”
Music by Paul Hewson, Dave Evans, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen; Lyric by Paul Hewson

Best motion picture of the year
“American Hustle” Charles Roven, Richard Suckle, Megan Ellison and Jonathan Gordon, Producers
“Captain Phillips” Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti and Michael De Luca, Producers
“Dallas Buyers Club” Robbie Brenner and Rachel Winter, Producers
“Gravity” Alfonso Cuarón and David Heyman, Producers
“Her” Megan Ellison, Spike Jonze and Vincent Landay, Producers
“Nebraska” Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa, Producers
“Philomena” Gabrielle Tana, Steve Coogan and Tracey Seaward, Producers
“12 Years a Slave” Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Steve McQueen and Anthony Katagas, Producers
“The Wolf of Wall Street” Nominees to be determined
 
Achievement in production design
“American Hustle” Production Design: Judy Becker; Set Decoration: Heather Loeffler
“Gravity” Production Design: Andy Nicholson; Set Decoration: Rosie Goodwin and Joanne Woollard
“The Great Gatsby” Production Design: Catherine Martin; Set Decoration: Beverley Dunn
“Her” Production Design: K.K. Barrett; Set Decoration: Gene Serdena
“12 Years a Slave” Production Design: Adam Stockhausen; Set Decoration: Alice Baker
 
Best animated short film
“Feral” Daniel Sousa and Dan Golden
“Get a Horse!” Lauren MacMullan and Dorothy McKim
“Mr. Hublot” Laurent Witz and Alexandre Espigares
“Possessions” Shuhei Morita
“Room on the Broom” Max Lang and Jan Lachauer
 
Best live action short film
“Aquel No Era Yo (That Wasn’t Me)” Esteban Crespo
“Avant Que De Tout Perdre (Just before Losing Everything)” Xavier Legrand and Alexandre Gavras
“Helium” Anders Walter and Kim Magnusson
“Pitääkö Mun Kaikki Hoitaa? (Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?)” Selma Vilhunen and Kirsikka Saari
“The Voorman Problem” Mark Gill and Baldwin Li
 
Achievement in sound editing
“All Is Lost” Steve Boeddeker and Richard Hymns
“Captain Phillips” Oliver Tarney
“Gravity” Glenn Freemantle
“The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” Brent Burge
“Lone Survivor” Wylie Stateman
 
Achievement in sound mixing
“Captain Phillips” Chris Burdon, Mark Taylor, Mike Prestwood Smith and Chris Munro
“Gravity” Skip Lievsay, Niv Adiri, Christopher Benstead and Chris Munro
“The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” Christopher Boyes, Michael Hedges, Michael Semanick and Tony Johnson
“Inside Llewyn Davis” Skip Lievsay, Greg Orloff and Peter F. Kurland
“Lone Survivor” Andy Koyama, Beau Borders and David Brownlow
 
Achievement in visual effects
“Gravity” Tim Webber, Chris Lawrence, Dave Shirk and Neil Corbould
“The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton and Eric Reynolds
“Iron Man 3” Christopher Townsend, Guy Williams, Erik Nash and Dan Sudick
“The Lone Ranger” Tim Alexander, Gary Brozenich, Edson Williams and John Frazier
“Star Trek Into Darkness” Roger Guyett, Patrick Tubach, Ben Grossmann and Burt Dalton
 
Adapted screenplay
“Before Midnight” Written by Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke
“Captain Phillips” Screenplay by Billy Ray
“Philomena” Screenplay by Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope
“12 Years a Slave” Screenplay by John Ridley
“The Wolf of Wall Street” Screenplay by Terence Winter
 
Original screenplay
“American Hustle” Written by Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell
“Blue Jasmine” Written by Woody Allen
“Dallas Buyers Club” Written by Craig Borten & Melisa Wallack
“Her” Written by Spike Jonze
“Nebraska” Written by Bob Nelson

‘Furnace’ to fall behind ‘Frozen’ & ‘Fire’

The weekend after Thanksgiving is typically a quiet one for the nation’s box office, and this year, only one new release is opening wide. That would be Out of the Furnace, a gritty, bleak revenge drama starring the gritty, bleak Batman, Christian Bale, as well as Casey Affleck, Zoe Saldana, and Woody Harrelson. Expectations aren’t quite as dour as the film’s subject matter, location and production stills, but they’re not overly hopeful. To compare, Killing Them Softly was in the same position this time last year, as a new release bowing after the holiday weekend. It boasted a big movie star, Brad Pitt, but failed to leverage the actor’s perceived wide appeal. Softly opened to $6.8 million. Furnace isn’t tracking great with critics, either, (52% rotten on infallible taste barometer Rotten Tomatoes), though it’ll likely fare better than Brad’s failed bet. Screening in 2,101 theatres, odds are, it’ll earn around $10 million.

That kind of haul would likely place it at No. 3, behind last weekend’s reigning champions Frozen and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. General consensus has Games finally slipping from the top slot, to the gain of family friendly Frozen. This will be the action flick's third weekend in theatres, while Frozen, now in its sophomore outing, has youth and a bit more novelty on its side. Comparable franchise series Twilight and Harry Potter both experienced a significant downturn in sales over this same weekend, on average dropping about 60%. Games, however, has consistently done better business than either of its blockbuster peers, meaning its dip shouldn’t be quite as severe - probably about 50%. Both the princess and the provocateur (there’s a college term paper for you) should earn figures in the mid-to-high $30 million range, with Frozen gaining the edge.

Art-house aficionados have been edge-of-their-seats with anticipation over the new Coen brothers’ film, Inside Llewyn Davis, opening in four locations in LA and New York today.  The film, allegedly inspired by the experiences of folk singer Dave Van Ronk in 1960’s Greenwich Village, has been earning rave reviews (95% fresh on RT). Not to mention, its hooky, ridiculous protest song “Please Mr. Kennedy” has steadily been making its viral way into the hearts, and that part of your brain that’s like fly paper to a catchy tune, for a few days now. It doesn’t have the foot-tapping appeal of a “Man of Constant Sorrow,” from the brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? But it does have “Girls” actor Adam Driver as a real-life space cowboy.  Between the siblings’ cachet, the film’s positive buzz, and the below clip, Davis should significantly out-earn its predecessor, A Serious Man, which opened to $41,890 in 2009.

 

Check out the trailer for Cannes Grand Prix-winner 'Inside Llewyn Davis'

The trailer for the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis just released, months after the folk music drama was awarded the Grand Prix by the jury of the Cannes Film Festival this spring, so its release is by no means a first look at the '60s-set musical drama. If anything, the trailer is a bit lackluster compared to the more enthusiastic reviews that came out of the festival.

What's most striking about the trailer isn't how the Coens' lay out the struggles of the title character (Oscar Isaac), a young folkie breaking into the Greenwich Village musical scene, but the visual choices. The movie appears to have been color corrected to give it a washed-out, vintage feel, but the palette felt off to me. Normally I like movies more after the colors have been amped up beyond their natural look, but the feature also had a soft-focus look that bothered me. That said, Variety's review mentions the feature has "playful, evocatively subjective reality," which allows the filmmakers to "[avoid] the problems endemic to most period movies." Maybe that's where the soft, washed-out cinematography comes in.

The trailer gives a nod to the major actors: Carey Mulligan, almost unrecognizable, as a dark-haired woman impregnated by Davis; recurring Coen Brothers player John Goodman; and Justin Timberlake. About a minute into the trailer, Marcus Mumford (of Mumford & Sons) sings a cover version of Bob Dylan's "Fare Thee Well." The CBS Films release comes out Dec. 6, and if its Cannes reception holds, the Coen Brothers will be making another trip to the Academy Awards in early 2014.

Coen Brothers to write script for Angelina Jolie-directed 'Unbroken'

I feel a little protective over Laura Hillenbrand's nonfiction tour de force, Unbroken. She works with amazing material--the endurance against all odds of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic track star who survived first in a lifeboat for 47 days and then in a Japanese POW camp--but it's what she does with that life story that makes it special. In her hands, Zamperini's story is about his will to
survive. In the face of complete and utter hopelessness, he summoned and directed that will, and that's what helped him make it through. Powerful stuff.

Angelina Jolie wouldn't be my first choice for director of this movie, but she's taken an interest in the Universal project. Even more curiously, she and her fellow producers hired Ethan and Joel Coen to write the script for the adaptation of the 496-page novel. It's a bold decision. The Coen Brothers' works often have a style that distances the work from reality (see: Raising Arizona), turning their main characters into darkly comic figures with distinctive accents. But they also have works that, absurd as they are, feel intensely real and true to their genre, like Fargo and No Country for Old Men. Although not particularly
prominent in the book, there is plenty of ambient dark and gallows humor. How else can one survive without food on a lifeboat, or while under the thumb of fickle and cruel wardens of POW camps? I imagine that the Coen Brothers' screenplay will bring these elements to the forefront.

As adaptations go, this one has a number of major challenges. First, there's the length of the book, 496 pages. Then there's the fact that there are four distinct parts: Zamperini's childhood (likely to be elided) and time as an Olympic track star, his work in the army, his plane crash and survival in the lifeboat, and his years in the POW camp. The latter two are the most important, but couldn't be more different. It will be like watching Life of Pi and then seeing the same characters segue into Schindler's List. Seriously. Apparently, Universal has been trying to adapt the Zamperini story for decades, even before Hillenbrand's book came out. Her take on events combined with the Coen Brothers' script may be enough to finally crack this incredible tale that you would never believe if it hadn't actually, in fact, happened.

 

Casting underway for Coen Bros.' 'True Grit'

By Sarah Sluis

The Coen Bros.' remake of True Grit, a classic Western follow-up to their modern Western hit, No Country for Old Men, has lined up two more actors. Matt Damon is in talks to take on the Texas Ranger role, and Josh Brolin is in talks to play the hunted man. In the movie, a fourteen-year-old girl (who has not been cast) enlists the ranger and a U.S. Marshal to help her track down her father's killer. The role of the marshal, an Oscar-winning role for John Wayne in the 1969 original, will be taken on by Jeff Bridges (The Dude in The Big Lebowski). With top producers Scott Rudin and Steven Spielberg behind the film, and a fast-track from Paramount, this movie is scheduled to head into production this spring, for a release the following year.

Why has the 40-year-old film, based on the novel by Charles Portis, interested the filmmaking duo? Let's consult the archives.

1. Weird, affected dialogue. In Roger Ebert's review of the original, he notes that "Portis wrote his dialog in a formal, enchantingly archaic style that has been retained in Marguerite Roberts' screenplay." The Coen Bros. are known for utilizing accents and unusual speech, which is already present in the original work.

2. The Eye Patch. George Clooney has his pomade in O Brother, Where Art Thou? Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men has his bowl cut hairstyle. The Dude has his bathrobe and his white Russian in The Big Lebowski. This irresistible bit of costuming (working in tandem with Wayne's star image) just amplifies the characterization of Wayne as an "unwashed, sandpapered, roughshod, fat old rascal with a heart of gold well-covered by a hide of leather" (from Ebert's review).

3. Cash, Crime, Cover-ups and Complications. The U.S. Marshal and the Texas Ranger are both in it for the money. According to Ebert's review, the ranger "claims he has a reward for the killer (who also, it appears, plugged a state senator in Texas)." Sounds like an ulterior motive could come in play--a complication--in Coens' treatment.

Many of the Coen Bros.' films include journeys to either find the booty or hide it (the baby in Raising Arizona, the buried treasure in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the kidnapping/money in Fargo, the money in No Country for Old Men). Inevitably, things do not go according to plan, and Coen Bros. take pleasure in piling on the complications and twists to make things interesting.

The Challenge: According to many reviews, John Wayne makes the movie. The absence of Wayne's star presence could be a problem. In fact, both Roger Ebert and the Variety review use the same word, "tower," to describe Wayne's presence. Ebert notes that "one of the glories of True Grit is that it recognizes Wayne's special presence...He is not playing the same Western role he always plays. Instead, he

can play Rooster because of all the Western roles he has played. " He also mentions a parodic scene that works because of Wayne's star image. Making this movie without Wayne will require screenwriting and directing magic.

Roderick Jaynes is 'A Serious Man'

By Sarah Sluis

A Serious Man is the latest from the Coen Brothers. It's a maddening look at Jewish life in the Midwest in 1967, and our critic Ethan Alter called it "one of their very best...films to date." It opens tomorrow in

New York, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis (where the film was shot).

I went to a screening myself last night, and was amused to find the following bio in the press pack for the Coen Brothers' editing pseudonym:

RODERICK JAYNES (editor)

Roderick Jaynes began his career minding the tea cart at Shepperton Studios in the 1930s. The U.K. native eventually moved into the editing department, where he worked on some of the British film industry's more marginal features from the 1950s and '60s.

With the demise of the Carry On series, he retired from film editing, only to emerge from retirement to work on Joel and Ethan Coen's first feature Blood Simple. He has since worked on most of their films.

Mr. Jaynes resides in Hove, Sussex, with his chow Otto. He remains widely admired in the film industry for his impeccable grooming and is the world's foremost collector of Margaret Thatcher nudes, many of them drawn from life.

As a footnote, Roderick Jaynes also holds the distinction of receiving an Oscar nomination for editing in 1997 with Fargo and in 2008 for No Country for Old Men.

As for A Serious Man itself, it's another classic Coen Brothers movie, with its characters panting to keep up with the break-neck pacing, their misfortunes piling up higher than they can deal with them. In this case, it's middle-class Jewish professor Larry Gopnik, whose wife has just left him for another

man. He also has self-absorbed kids, is burdened with a criminal, mildly insane brother, and faces mounting professional problems. The movie is pesteringly elusive (the Coens certainly love to torture their audience--or at least viewers like me), and in the end we're left asking the same questions as Larry. Why did this happen? Did he do something wrong? Was there some kind of curse?

One of my favorite parts of the Coens' movies are the supporting characters. They're always given specific character traits and pieces of business that add a bit of the absurd to the goings-on: in A Serious Man, for example, the uncle is always draining his sebaceous cyst, hogging the bathroom or using his portable suction unit in the living room, a detail which I'm sure will inspire many more people to see the movie--so watch the trailer instead, which is the best one I've seen in awhile (read about the making of the trailer here).