Golden Globes gives most nods to 'Slave,' 'Hustle'

If the New York Film Critics Circle is Team American Hustle, having named David O. Russell's manic, crowd-pleasing dramedy its Best Film of the year, and the Screen Actors Guild is Team 12 Years A Slave, having nominated Steve McQueen's lauded period piece for the most number of awards, then the Golden Globes is neutral Switzerland. The Globes is the latest organization to sound off on those films and performances it believes outshone the rest of the film industry's output in 2013. At seven each, American Hustle and 12 Years A Slave have walked away with the same number of nominations.

Clearly these two are the frontrunners, but what about the rest of the nipping-at-their-heels contenders? Forest Whitaker is notably absent from the below list, while Kate Winslet is a new addition to the conversation. There's still over a month before the Oscars announce their bids, however, leaving plenty of time for the players (or rather, their studio handlers) to rearrange themselves on the great awards chessboard.

2014 Golden Globe Nominations: Motion Pictures

Best motion picture, drama
12 Years a Slave
Captain Phillips
Gravity
Philomena
Rush

Best Actor in a motion picture, drama
Chiwetel Ejiofor,12 Years a Slave
Idris Elba, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
Tom Hanks, Captain Phillips
Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
Robert Redford, All is Lost

Best Actress in a motion picture, drama
Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Sandra Bullock, Gravity
Judi Dench, Philomena
Emma Thompson, Saving Mr. Banks
Kate Winslet, Labor Day

Best Director – motion picture
Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity
Paul Greengrass, Captain Phillips
Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave
Alexander Payne, Nebraska
David O. Russell, American Hustle

Best Screenplay – motion picture
Spike Jonze, Her
Bob Nelson, Nebraska
Jeff Pope Steve, Philomena
John Ridley, 12 Years a Slave
David O. Russell and Eric Singer Warren, American Hustle

Best motion picture, musical or comedy
American Hustle
Her
Inside Llewyn Davis
Nebraska
Wolf of Wall Street

Best Actress in a motion picture, musical or comedy
Amy Adams, American Hustle
Julie Delpy, Before Midnight
Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Enough Said
Meryl Streep, August: Osage County

Best Actor in a motion picture, musical or comedy
Christian Bale, American Hustle
Bruce Dern, Nebraska
Leonardo DiCaprio, Wolf of Wall Street
Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis
Joaquin Phoenix, Her

Best Animated Feature film
The Croods
Despicable Me 2
Frozen

Best Foreign Language Film
Blue Is The Warmest Color (France)
The Great Beauty (Italy)
The Hunt (Denmark)
The Past (Iran)
The Wind Rises (Japan)

Best supporting Actress in a motion picture
Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine
Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle
Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave
Julia Roberts, August: Osage County
June Squibb, Nebraska

Best supporting Actor in a motion picture
Bradley Cooper, American Hustle
Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave
Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
Daniel Bruhl, Rush
Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips

Best Original Score – motion picture
All Is Lost - Alex Ebert
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom - Alex Heffes
Gravity - Steven Price
The Book Thief - John Williams
12 Years a Slave - Hans Zimmer

Best Original Song – motion picture
"Atlas," The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
"Let It Go," Frozen
"Ordinary Love," Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
"Please Mr. Kennedy," Inside Llewyn Davis
"Sweeter Than Fiction" One Chance

Kate Winslet tries on role in 'The Dressmaker'

The Cannes Film Festival isn't just about showing movies, but finding investors for current projects. Embarkment Films announced that it is shopping international distribution rights to Kate Winslet's The Dressmaker at the festival. Jocelyn Moorhouse (How to Make an American Quilt, Proof) is directing the 1940s-set movie, which will start production in the fall.

Winslet will play a woman who returns to the small town she grew up in, clad in the sharpest outfits the 1940s had to offer. She was accused of murder there years earlier. Many of the townspeople
shun her, while others find themselves intrigued by her outfits and start adopting her style. After transforming the townspeople, she also exacts revenge on those who implicated her in the terrible crime. Variety calls her character an "avenging angel," which suggests there may be some supernatural elements.

Seeing a sleepy town with backwards values open itself up is fun to watch, even if it's been done many times before, in movies ranging from Pleasantville to Chocolat. There's also a sense that The Dressmaker may include a feminist awakening similar to how The Help had a racial awakening, as characters were satisfyingly brought up to a more modern sensibility.

Winslet's last big roles were in Contagion and Carnage, back in 2011. She'll be seen again in Labor Day, coming out this fall, and is currently filming a role in Shailene Woodley-led Divergent, an adaptation of a Hunger Games-style novel for young adults. She's also appearing with Stanley Tucci in a movie about landscape designers competing for a contract in Versailles, A Little Chaos.

Moorhouse, who also wrote the script for the project, doesn't have as many directing credits as I would expect for someone who made American Quilt a modest success. Whether that's by chance or design, who knows, but I certainly am looking forward to a work that combines the talents of Moorhouse and Winslet.

James Cameron previews footatge of 3D 'Titanic'

By Sarah Sluis

"Are you ready to go back to Titanic?" In advance of the movie's spring re-release, director James Cameron and producer Jon Landau previewed eighteen minutes of 3D-converted footage in New York City today for journalists. Cameron is currently shepherding the film through a sixty-week, $18 million, 2D to 3D conversion process. Set to open April 7, 2012, the re-release will commemorate the hundred-year anniversary of Titanic's voyage and sinking (April 10th-14th, 2012). But what about the 3D? The answer may be that it's beside the point.

As the re-release of The Lion King in 3D has shown, audiences went to the theatres primarily to revisit a classic, beloved movie. The 3D was an afterthought, and a significant percentage of ticket-buyers opted for 2D. I think viewers will approach Titanic in 3D the same way. While I mostly enjoyed seeing the footage in 3D, what I most connected to was the movie itself. I had forgotten what an immersive, emotional experience the film was--and how much of a difference it makes to see it on the big screen. Cameron hopes the movie will be a success because of its "nostalgia component," people remembering who they saw it with at the time, "the relationships they were in," and otherwise connecting to where they were when the movie came out. He said that the teen girls who saw Titanic multiple times (that would include me and all the other girls in my 7th grade class) were in the minority, maybe "only $200 million" of the movie's $1.8 billion box office. If the movie played from "eight to eighty" the first time around, Titanic should have similar broad appeal in the re-release.

Cameron noted that increasingly, people are making choices about which movies they want to see in theatres and which ones they want to see on Netflix. It's a "contract with yourself" to see a movie in a theatre, because it means you're deciding that film deserves to be seen with your full attention and no multitasking. It's also a social experience. People saw Titanic twelve weeks in because they were making a point to see the movie with valued friends and family, and it "takes time" to coordinate schedules. I agree that Titanic played best in theatres. I myself bought the two-VHS box set but couldn't bring myself to rewatch the movie more than a few times. Each time I saw the future Oscar winner in theatres, once with a friend and a few weeks later with my Mom, the theatre was sold-out, packed with ooh-ing audiences. That kind of experience makes going to the theatre worthy.

Cameron, who has long been an advocate of 3D, also commented on the direction the medium has been taking. He was fine with Titanic queuing up behind a number of other re-releases. In early 2012, Disney tries its luck again with Beauty and the Beast 3D (Jan. 13) and George Lucas re-releases Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (Feb. 10), all before Titanic's April re-release. Cameron's in favor of 3D re-releases of library titles--they're the "only reason" to choose conversion. He lambasted "Hollywood bean counters" who would opt for an $8 million conversion over the $10 million to shoot native 3D when the first would be only "half as good." He also gave a nod to director Martin Scorsese's upcoming 3D Hugo, citing it as an example of an "auteur" who sees 3D as just another color to paint with.

Will Titanic see the same success as The Lion King? I think the movie should do at least as well. We're talking about the #6 domestic movie of all time, using adjusted box office figures. The movie will be marketed with at least as much energy as a new release, according to Cameron and Landau. The campaign will also have to correct for the vagaries of people's memories. For example, he mentioned that a lot of people remember the movie as a sappy love story (I'll put myself in that category), but the marketing will remind people of how much was at stake: This is also a disaster movie in which people die terrible deaths, freezing and drowning in the icy waters. During the clips, I was reminded of just how suspenseful the original movie was. The scene where Rose frees Jack from his handcuffs as the icy waters rise, for example, had me on the edge of my seat. During other sequeneces, I had to hold back tears--from one-minute scenes! Cameron has heartstring-pulling down to a science.

The re-release of Titanic will definitely reignite nostalgia for the movie and introduce a whole new audience to the romance-disaster epic. Some of the effects may look dated, and Kate Winslet's black-undertoned dye job looks more 1990s than 1920s, but their performances show why they're still top actors today. If Lion King could do $80 million, it would be a tragedy if Titanic's re-release reaches port before earning at least $100 million.

Golden Globes Recap: Brit takeover

By Sarah Sluis

The Hollywood Foreign Press gave out its Globes last night, and the winners were decidedly global. Brits in particular seemed to rule the night, with Kate Winslet winning both Lead Actress (Drama) and Supporting Actress categories, Sally Hawkins and Colin Farrell topping the Female and Male Lead Actor

(Comedy) categories, and late Australian actor Heath Ledger winning the Best Supporting Actor. Mickey Rourke was the only American of the bunch to win a motion picture award, taking home a statue in the Best Actor (Drama) category. Slumdog Millionaire, directed by Brit Danny Boyle and shot in India, won four awards: Best Drama, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Original Score.

Winslet's double win in the acting category, the first of its kind, came as the result of a bit of finagling by production company/distributor Weinstein Company. Kevin Lally wrote earlier about lead roles being recast as supporting ones twice this year (how, exactly, did The Priest in Doubt count as a supporting role?). Certainly if Winslet were nominated in both categories as "Lead," voters might have split their vote between her two performances, giving her a majority of the votes without winning enough to carry either of her performances, which also seems unfair. If the Globes miraculously magnified her presence by giving her two awards, could the Oscars move in the opposite direction, viewing her as "overexposed" and looking closely at the other top performances of the year?

While the Kate Winslet double coup seems unlikely to be repeated at the Oscars, Slumdog Millionaire's quad-win bodes well for its Oscar reception. The win most likely to be repeated is that of A.R. Rahman for Best Original Score. With over 109 credits to his name, calling him the Bollywood John Williams doesn't really do him justice. His prominent, easily applauded score in Slumdog (and collaboration with hip artist M.I.A.) made me wonder why I haven't heard him in more Hollywood films.

Director Danny Boyle's cross-genre filmmaking sets him apart from most other filmmakers. Whether he's

working in horror, romantic comedy, crime, fantasy, or drama, his films are packed with motion--"lots of running," a friend noted, one eyebrow raised. Like all great genre filmmakers, he makes a point to subvert our expectations. His characters achieve a goal (like getting on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?", the compound in 28 Days Later, the Beach in The Beach, the bag of money in Millions) but find their needs still unfulfilled, their goals still out of reach.

I applaud Danny Boyle, and hope the Academy will second the Globes and give Boyle Oscar recognition. A true crowd-pleaser, Slumdog Millionaire, which I saw months ago, gave me a warm feeling that actually held up, without descending to maudlin sentimentality (the one critique I see levied against the film). Compare that to my initial shock-sadness of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which turned sour a few weeks out--EW calls it "Honey, I Gassed the Kid"

Academy members turn in their ballots today, if they haven't already (making a Globes influence, at least during this round, less probable)--to be tallied and announced January 22, 2009 at 5:30 a.m. PST--which, like every year, will lead to stories of nominees peeking out from under their sleeping mask to answer a phone call from an agent or publicist.