Thompson On Hollywood

Oscar Watch: Foreign Branch Up for Revamp

The foreign branch of the Academy is under fire, and producer Mark Johnson, the chair of the committee, is trying to make some changes.

Here's David Ansen; Jeffrey Wells; and The Reeler. And my column on Johnson.

Here's a trailer for the controversial omitted Palme d'Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.

Strike Watch: It's Not Over 'Til It's Over

While much of the entertainment industry is holding its breath that on Saturday thousands of members of the Writers Guild in NY and LA will signal thumbs up on the tentative deal that could end the strike, there are rumblings that it could go either way.

The folks who are assuming that they can get back to work on Monday may want to cross their fingers that the WGA members actually like the deal. Some critics of the new deal say it's not much of an improvement on the DGA deal. "A lot of people want victory," is how one industryite put it. Here's Variety.

The NYT goes behind the scenes on how the impasse in the writers strike was resolved by a screenwriter, an agent and a studio chief, among others.

Logic would dictate that now is a very good time for everyone to get back to work. Staying on strike at this point will only prolong the town's misery and keep enormous numbers of people idle and without pay--with no guarantee of a better deal down the line.

There are whispers that WGA West prexy Patric Verrone is not happy with the deal and will scuttle it if he can. Others say that he will take the temperature of the room Saturday and go with the flow. Which makes sense.

There could be an argument for the writers joining forces with the Screen Actors Guild to hold out for a better deal. SAG has been historically happy to go on strike. And with no negotiations under way, SAG is a long way off from making any progress on a deal. That contract expires on June 30.

Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, it might have made more sense for the writers, directors and actors to hang tough together and fight the good fight as a unified front. Now it looks like the writers may settle for what they can get now, having paved the way for the directors' settlement, and the actors, who can shut down production again, could well go out and demand an even better deal.

The TV side of the biz has been more impacted than the movie side. Here's the LAT.

The status of writers going forward is still dicier than ever.

And Pamela McClintock details the status of projects readying for production in the wake of the strike. A full list is on the jump.

Oscar Watch: Bay Hosts Transformers Tech Show

Transformers director Michael Bay returned to the scene of the crime Thursday night at the Cary Grant mixing stage at the Sony lot to revisit the Oscar-nominated achievements in VFX and sound. The place was packed with filmmaking geeks eager to hear and see the behind-the-scenes machinations that go into a formidable FX epic like Transformers.

It was tough for Bay to go back, he admitted after the show, as he's already deep into pre-production on Transformers 2, which is set to start filming on June 2. Bay didn't let the strike stop him. "The strike was a drag," he said. "But I like to write myself. So I wrote 60 pages. I showed the writers something to look at. We'll get back to the torture chamber on Monday." Transformers 2 will deepen the different robot characters as well as the humor, he said. "There's a geriatric robot. If there's an actors strike we'll just stop and start again. We'll make our date." (The movie is scheduled to open June 26, 2009.)

After The Rock, Armageddon, and Pearl Harbor, Bay is tight with the Pentagon and thinks nothing of picking up the phone to get them to reroute a C130 gunship with Seals in it for a few hours. "We pay for the fuel," he says. "The military looks at this as a recruiting effort. The jargon is real. I told them what was happening, and that's what they said. I shot it like a documentary."

Bay, who has a reputation for being tough on crews, endured some good-humored riffing during the show-and-tell, from star Shia LaBeouf as well as his sound designers, editors, and mixers and special FX and ILM VFX artists. Bay was proud that he made Transformers "for a price" he said, in California and New Mexico. "We have the best crews."

For Bay, sound is "50 % of the movie, while the visual effects are a whole other movie unto itself." He shot as much of the film as possible in real locations with live (often dangerous) on-camera stunts and real FX supervised by the legendary John Frazier. In stark contrast to a Star Wars episode which boasts mostly blue screen shots, Transformers had only two days of blue-screen shooting (when the young leads climbed on the shoulders of the robots).

Even the famous shot of the bus that is split apart by a giant robot was a live-action bus blown in two going 60 mph on the freeway with a 30-foot CG robot added six months later. "There's one million details these guys put in the movie," said Frazier, who tried to keep enormous spaces open in the shots for the CG animators to work in.

For LaBeouf and the other actors, "acting without anything there is hard," said Bay. "It's so different when you don't have any environment to react to." LaBeouf described a P.A. holding a long big stick with a green ball on top and shaking it. "They're angry now, shake it faster," he described Bay saying. ILM VFX supervisor Scott Farrar showed the actors a pre-vis--"a cartoon of what's going on in the scene," said Bay, adding, "I always like to put my actors under duress." According to LaBeouf, hanging from a building 20 feet in the air to talk to Megatron or being surrounded by explosions while the cameras wore protective gear was the norm.

Vanity Fair Does Hitchcock

Vanity Fair's Hitchcock homage is great fun. The Psycho montage is right-on. As if we didn't already know, Marion Cotillard is game for anything.

And Emile Hirsch and James McAvoy are creepily handsome in black-and-white for Strangers on a Train.

Gwenyth Paltrow is very Grace Kelly, perfect for To Catch a Thief. And Naomi Watts, Keira Knightley, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Charlize Theron capture the period. But while their photos are gorgeous, Renee Zellweger and Jodie Foster seem too strong and modern to be Hitchcock women.

And as coolly suave as Paltrow's Iron Man co-star Robert Downey, Jr. is here (maybe he needed to shave the beard and trim the uptick in his hair), only George Clooney or Hugh Grant could come close to Cary Grant. (Or AMC's Jon Hamm?) It reminds us what a tall order that is. Seth Rogen makes a brilliant comic choice for the crop-duster sequence in North by Northwest.

Isn't it weird that Rear Window's Javier Bardem and Scarlett Johansson are not looking out the window in their Rear Window shot?

[Hat Tip to lovehater]

Scorsese Takes on Marley Doc

It's official in Berlin: Martin Scorsese will do a Bob Marley doc next.

There Will Be Oscars

Funny or Die posts this Daniel Day Lewis spoof by David Spade. Did all the pre-Oscar spoofing hurt Brokeback Mountain? Well, yes, it probably did. But I have to assume that DDL is invulnerable. This kind of attention is a sign of strength, not weakness.

Grammys: Beyonce and Turner

Marc Malkin reports that one thing we can expect at the Grammys Sunday night is a duet between Beyonce and Tina Turner. The promise of that alone will make me not miss the show.

Berlin Watch: Errol Morris Debuts Abu Ghraib Doc

Errol Morris's Abu Ghraib documentary Standard Operating Procedure, backed by Participant Productions and Sony Pictures Classics, makes its world premiere on February 12 at the Berlinale. Why not Sundance? SPC submitted it, but never heard back from the Utah fest. So Morris's Big Debut will be in Berlin. (A book comes out in April.)

Here's a piece in the Independent about truth in documentaries. Morris himself has been working overtime on this subject, mostly on this NYT blog. Slate covers Morris's photo obsession.

And on a lighter note, here's info on Morris's 2002 Oscar short and the short itself. And his 2007 short --featuring 130 nominees in four minutes--makes me choke up. I wrote a column on it.

Pirates Director Verbinski Disses Disney

Ben Fritz's new video game blog The Cut Scene is off to a flying start. Here he reports on D.I.C.E. keynote speaker Gore Verbinski's trashing of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean videogames.

VFX Pioneer Edlund Speaks

[Posted by David S. Cohen]
I dropped in Wednesday night at "An Evening with Richard Edlund," a tribute and discussion organized by UCLA and the Visual Effects Society. Edlund discussed creating the elaborate motion control systems for the original "Star Wars" and a handful of the many titles he's worked on since, from "Ghostbusters" to "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to "Charlie Wilson's War."

Edlund took questions about his long and eclectic career: he was a rock photographer ("Stone Soul Picnic" was his first album cover), an inventor (he created the Pignose amplifier), and most of all a visual effects mastermind -- with time out in between to drive cable cars in San Francisco.

One of the effects pioneers on the first "Star Wars," Edlund said that he knew as soon as he'd heard that Alec Guiness had been cast as Obi-Wan Kenobi that "this was the vehicle that would unseat the Shark" (i.e., knock off "Jaws" as box office champ). Once the movie came out, he said, "It was humbling to be involved in a movie where people would apologize if they hadn't seen it."

Of working on "Poltergiest" he said "One of the problems was who directed it, without saying." He added that there were worries of a DGA strike at the time, so "since Steven (Spielberg) was the producer, we could work on it with him even if the directors went on strike."

He noted that George Lucas had upstaged at least one of his own best scenes by adding CG characters to the background in his "Star Wars" re-release and observed that ILM in general tends to get "carried away" and put to much in the frame. Overall, he said, "There are things you shouldn't do (with visual effects), and one of them is creating actors. Unless it's something like Gollum. I think Gollum is the most important visual effect of the last ten years."

Oscar Watch: Academy Seeks WGA Waiver; AMC Books Five Best Pics

The question of what form the February 24 Oscar show will take remains up in the air. Variety editor Tim Gray talks to AMPAS president Sid Ganis, who says the Academy is pursuing both Plan A and Plan B, but is running out of time to deliver Plan A; he wants that WGA waiver NOW. With the Writers strike on the verge of being resolved (a membership meeting is scheduled for Saturday), Ganis is hopeful that the WGA will waver on its waiver.

AMC Theatres is booking all five best picture Oscar contenders on February 23, the day before the Oscars, reports The Big Picture. Check your local listings. Price tag: $30.00, which comes with a free large popcorn.

[Illo courtesy Awards Daily]

Oscar Watch: No Country Craft Panels

I'm not the only one who missed this No Country for Old Men craft panel on January 27, so Miramax has kindly put up the three-segment panel moderated by Spike Jonze on the No Country website. The program included the Coens talking about cinematography with Roger Deakins, sound editing and mixing with Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff and Peter Kurland, and production design with Jess Gonchor.

UPDATE: As if we didn't already know this, No Country producer Scott Rudin is on a roll.

Berlin Watch: Rolling Stones Scorsese Doc Shine A Light

The Berlin reviews are starting to roll in, including Marty Scorsese's Rolling Stones doc Shine a Light, which opened the festival.

Here's the trailer.

Here's The Circuit on the press conference, plus reports from Reuters and GreenCine Daily, whose editor David Hudson is based in Berlin.

Online Moviegoers Pick their Choice for Best Pic Oscar

The online market intelligence company BrandIntel recently conducted an online consumer survey measuring buzz for this year's Oscar nominees. According to BrandIntel's report, their consumers picked No Country for Old Men:

For the movie viewers, what stood out with this movie were its characters, cast (especially Javier Bardem) as well as the movie’s quiet simplicity and tension. Other movies like Juno were seen as popular among smaller audience members, but people did not feel like it was a legitimate contender.

BrandIntel will issue the report results on Monday, February 11.

Oscar Beauty Tips: The Horror!

Stars who plan to walk the red carpet are often in starvation mode at this time of year. I'll never forget how miserable and gaunt Jennifer Connelly looked when I saw her up close the year she won the Oscar for 2001's A Beautiful Mind.

Here's how the stars can deal with this lean and hungry look, according to this for-real email from environics-usa:

Celebrity's Filler "Secrets” Hide the Unhealthy Truth

As award season begins, celebrities start beauty preparations to be "red carpet ready.” For the appearance of a healthy, full, fresh face on a size 0 or less body, many celebrities turn to cosmetic facial fillers to add volume to drawn and gaunt faces. For celebrities who endure extreme diet and exercise to stay skinny, a once full, healthy face may become sunken, hollowed and less attractive. "Since the face is the first part of the body to reflect unhealthy eating habits and dieting, celebrities are requesting fillers to 'naturally' plump up sunken facial features,” says Rhoda Narins, MD, past president of the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery (ASDS) and dermasurgeon to several celebrity clients.

Dr. Narins explains that extreme weight loss thins the skin, while decreasing the amount of fatty tissue, making the face appear narrow, empty and aged. New filler products and techniques allow celebrities to turn a thin face into a full, healthy looking face with just a few treatments and minimal downtime. She describes the most popular fillers currently used by celebrities:

Ledger Died of Accidental Overdose

Heath Ledger died of an accidental drug overdose, says the medical examiner. As if we didn't know already, abusing--and mixing--drugs is not good.

Why whitewash what happened here? I agree with Michael Musto, who writes, "the truth can only heal." Ledger, probably depressed, exhausted and ill, mixed himself a potent cocktail--which, added to whatever was already in his system, killed him. The hazards of drug abuse are best publicized, not hidden.

Here's what he was taking, from the A.P.:

The cause of death was "acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine," spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said in a statement.

The medical examiner's office only provided generic names, so it is unknown whether he took generic or brand-name drugs. Police had said they found six types of prescription drugs, including sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication, in Ledger's apartment.

Oxycodone is a painkiller marketed as OxyContin and used in other painkillers such as Percodan and Percocet; hydrocodone is used in a number of painkillers, including Vicodin.

Diazepam and alprazolam are the generic names for the anti-anxiety drugs Valium and Xanax, and the other two drugs are sleep aids commonly sold under the brands Restoril and Unisom.

It's a sad, sad loss.

Oscar Classics: Best and Worst Actors

Edward Copeland has posted his annual Oscar survey, this time on best and worst Best Actor Oscar wins; I participated. The results are fascinating. Who best stands the test of time? Who gets punished for winning for the wrong, hopelessly dated movie? Lots of folks. Movies that seemed fine at the time don't look so good in the here and now.

Still top of the world? Jimmy Stewart in Phaldelphia Story, Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, and character actors Alec Guinness, Anthony Hopkins, Paul Scofield, and F. Murray Abraham.

Cruise Career Stalls: The Stats and the Mouth

The late lamented boxofficejunkie delivered an overview of the Tom Cruise career before he hung up his blog; and Peter Bart addresses the downside of Cruise's big mouth.

Vanity Fair Party Cancelled

I'm shocked! Graydon Carter has cancelled the Vanity Fair Oscar party in deference to the ongoing--but on the verge of resolving--Writers Strike. Folks will definitely be in a party mood. Wonder who will step into the breach for post-Governor's Ball action? Elton John anyone?

Oscar Watch: L.A. Seminars

'Tis the season for panels and seminars with the artists who helped to craft the Oscar-nominated movies. These American Cinematheque panels on Saturday, February 23 are free; tickets are available on the day of the seminar at the box office only.

10:00 AM, the INVISIBLE ART, VISIBLE ARTISTS seminar offers an open discussion with this year's Oscar-nominated editors:

"The Bourne Ultimatum" (Universal): Christopher Rouse; "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" (Miramax/Pathé Renn): Juliette Welfling; "Into the Wild" (Paramount Vantage and River Road Entertainment): Jay Cassidy;"No Country for Old Men" (Miramax and Paramount Vantage) Roderick Jaynes [the Coens]; "There Will Be Blood" (Paramount Vantage and Miramax): Dylan Tichenor.

2:30 PM, the OSCAR-NOMINATED ART DIRECTORS seminar will be moderated by Art Directors Guild president Thomas A. Walsh with this year’s Academy Award-nominated art directors and set decorators, with clips from the films.

"American Gangster" (Universal) Art Direction: Arthur Max Set Decoration: Beth A. Rubino "Atonement" (Focus Features) Art Direction: Sarah Greenwood Set Decoration: Katie Spencer "The Golden Compass" (New Line in association with Ingenious Film Partners) Art Direction: Dennis Gassner Set Decoration: Anna Pinnock "Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" (DreamWorks and Warner Bros., Distributed by DreamWorks/Paramount) Art Direction: Dante Ferretti Set Decoration: Francesca Lo Schiavo "There Will Be Blood" (Paramount Vantage and Miramax) Art Direction: Jack Fisk Set Decoration: Jim Erickson