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The 82nd Academy Awards telecast starts with a total waste of time: intro-ing the Best Actor nominees. This is how the show begins? Ohmygawd, what a long and boring night this will be.
TOLDJA! Deadline|New York editor Mike Fleming already tipped you that Neil Patrick Harris ("What am I doing here?" the TV star asked aloud) would open the show with a musical number. Martin Short was supposed to join him, but a family emergency kept him away. Meanwhile, Harris lied to his fans by Tweeting that he wasn't doing the Oscars.
As one of my commenters noted about Doogie Howser’s opening: "The first two minutes of the 82nd Academy Awards included a pot joke, a joke about prison anal rape, puns about masturbation, drinking, and sex. WAY TO KEEP IT CLASSY, Hollywood!"
Out come the two over-the-hill white guys who are hosting, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. Meryl Streep jokes? Didn't Saturday Night Live already exhaust that lame material?
Have you laughed yet? I haven't. Not once. Kill me now.
So Meryl Streep is the new Jack Nicholson? The person every Oscars host has to personally address and point out to home audiences? Meryl can play anyone, but not even she can do Jack.
Steve Martin just made a reference to one of ... Read More »
By Nikki Finke | Category: Movies | Wednesday March 3, 2010 @ 9:22am PST
So let me get this straight; Nicolas Chartier who financed The Hurt Locker and is one of the 4 officially credited producers can't attend the Academy Awards because he sent a mass email that never even mentioned Avatar by name? And the Oscars governing body thinks his badmouthing is so much worse than what nearly everyone in the Best Picture category has done year after year? I find it ludicrous that the Academy of shame has made a decision so lame. So I must ask: is it mere coincidence that Academy president Tom Sherak (at one time a bigtime Fox movie exec), Oscars producers Bill Mechanic (at one time a bigtime Fox movie exec) and Adam Shankman (currently a bigtime Fox Broadcast talent), and Academy Board Of Governors member Jim Gianopulos (currently a bigtime Fox movie exec) all have strong ties to the Avatar studio? The Academy should have leaned over backwards not to appear Fox-sympathetic because of this. (Especially when I have emails from the studio accusing "the Hurt Locker people of running the dirtiest campaign and getting away with it".) And would this draconian action have been taken if Chartier's name had been Grazer or Rudin or some other Hollywood insider? I think not. Know that I ask these questions as someone who thinks Avatar should win Best Picture (because it changed the way Hollywood makes movies) and James Cameron Best Director (because he changed the way Hollywood makes movies). So, please, no baseless accusations that I'm biased.
By MIKE FLEMING | Category: Awards | Tuesday March 2, 2010 @ 8:47pm PST
EXCLUSIVE: Just because he's been banished from Sunday's Academy Awards doesn't mean Hurt Locker producer Nicolas Chartier won't have any place to watch. Instead. I've learned he'll be with a crowd of people who'll make him feel like a winner. The Voltage Pictures chief and his family will be the guests of honor at a viewing party that is being put together by WME Global chief Graham Taylor and Blue Valentine producer Lynnette Howell, who is Graham's wife. Taylor wasn’t involved with the film, but I understand he hated the prospect of an indie filmmaker getting ostracized for being overly enthusiastic about his film.
At a recent lunch, Taylor promised Chartier to provide the fallback plan should the Academy take back Chartier’s 5 Oscar tickets, one of whose recipients were to include the producer's mother whom he had flown in from France for the big night. Once today's Academy announcement came down barring Chartier, he e-mailed Taylor and the party was on.
Taylor and Howell will host the bash in their Venice home. They’ve hired a bartender, they're ordering French food, they're renting a red carpet for their entryway, and they’re putting together a guest list of 100 who’ll dress casually so Chartier will shine in his tux. Taylor is even looking for a beret for the dog.
It will be interesting to see if others rally around Chartier. Several Oscar vets have told me in recent weeks of others' lobbying transgressions that seemed worse than Chartier’s overheated memo. So perhaps he deserves ... Read More »
By Nikki Finke | Category: Awards | Tuesday March 2, 2010 @ 5:15pm PST
Beverly Hills, CA — The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today that, should “The Hurt Locker” be announced as the recipient of the Best Picture award at Sunday’s ceremonies, only three of the picture’s producers will be present for the celebration. The fourth of the film’s credited producers, Nicolas Chartier, has been denied attendance at the 82nd Academy Awards® as a penalty for violating Academy campaigning standards.
Chartier had recently disseminated an email to certain Academy voters and other film industry figures in which he solicited votes for his own picture and disparaged one of the other contending films. Academy rules prohibit “casting a negative or derogatory light on a competing film.” The executive committee of the Academy’s Producers Branch, at a special session late Monday, ruled that the ethical lapse merited the revocation of Chartier’s invitation to the Awards.
The group stopped short of recommending that the Academy governors rescind Chartier’s nomination. If “The Hurt Locker” were to be selected as Best Picture, Chartier would receive his Oscar® statuette at some point subsequent to the March 7 ceremonies.
Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2009 will be presented on Sunday, March 7, 2010, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center®, and televised live by the ABC Television Network beginning at 5 p.m. PT/ 8 p.m. ET. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 200 countries worldwide.
By MIKE FLEMING | Category: Actors, Awards | Tuesday March 2, 2010 @ 10:29am PST
UPDATE: Neil Patrick Harris tweets, “I will not be performing a duet with Martin Short to open the Oscars. Misinformation, I’m afraid. Should I maybe pull a Kanye, mid-show?”
EXCLUSIVE: Stop reading if you want to be surprised, but I know how the Oscarcast will get underway Sunday night. (That is, if Bill Mechanic and Adam Shankman don't change their minds because of this spoiler.) The first 2 men on stage won’t be hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. Instead, the show will open with a silhouette of a pair of guys only … wait for it ... they're Neil Patrick Harris and Martin Short. Anything can change, but that unlikely duo has been rehearsing an original opening song and dance routine that is one of 2 big production numbers choreographed by executive producer Adam Shankman. (The other involves extreme street dancers who’ve performed on So You Think You Can Dance where Shankman is a judge and who’ll hoof to samplings from the Best Original Score nominees.) Though Harris is predominantly a TV star, he's an awards show regular. Short also is a TV regular these days, but he has a long relationship with the broadcast’s musical director Marc Shaiman, who put together the opening number. In fact, Shaiman/Short collaborations go back to Saturday Night Live, and include The Martin Short Show and the one-man stage show Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me. I heard the producers had approached Robin Williams, but he declined.
By Nikki Finke | Category: Cable | Monday March 1, 2010 @ 5:40pm PST
BREAKING NEWS! First it was the Food Network/HGTV. Now WABC-TV, Channel 7 in New York, beginning today is running messaging on-air to alert local Cablevision subscribers in Long Island, Westchester, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and selected suburbs of Connecticut and New Jersey, that as of 12:01 a.m. ET on Sunday, March 7, 2010, they may no longer have access to the station due to another ridiculous impasse in retrans negotiations. WABC-TV will also be running ads in local print, radio and online media on the situation. This mess is going to piss off a lot of Cablevision viewers. And do I need to remind anyone that the Oscars will be broadcast live on Sunday night?
Here's the statement from Rebecca S. Campbell, President & General Manager, WABC-TV:
“With the help of our viewers, we’ve built ABC7 into the most watched station in the country, and have been trying for two years to get Cablevision to acknowledge the station’s value to their business. Despite our best efforts, it has now become clear that Cablevision has no intention of coming to a fair agreement. We can no longer sit back and allow Cablevision to use our shows for free while they continue to charge their customers for them. We’ve worked too hard
Oy, now there's even more about Oscar badmouthing, and this is even more unimportant. I've learned that Hurt Locker financier and producer Nicolas Chartier today admitted to Summit Entertainment he sent more emails about Avatar. But these weren't mass mailings to Oscar voters; rather, they were simply individual messages sent to personal acquaintances, including one that specifically said Avatar should be placed No. 10 on the Best Pictures list. Sources tell me that Chartier copped to it when Summit's Rob Friedman today picked up the phone to question the producer about a new allegation from a Los Angeles Times blog that there were more Chartier emails. That prompted Summit to send out the following statement just now: “Summit and our consultants were completely unaware of any emails that were sent until we were alerted by the Academy earlier this week. Thus we also had no additional knowledge of different text that may have been sent by this producer.”
Summit through its flacks have asked LA Times blogger Pete Hammond to forward even one of the emails mentioned today, but the blogger has refused. His reason? It would "violate the confidentiality" of the recipient who is the producer's personal acquaintance "so Chartier would know who it is" if made public. I have not seen these personal emails myself. I do think, however, that the Los Angeles Times should have explained in its posting that there was no other mass mailing to Oscar voters by Chartier. It makes a ... Read More »
Some snarkster sent this to me a few days ago. I think it deserves equal time since Nicolas Chartier's email has gotten so much publicity:
From: Jake Sully
I hope all is well with you. I just wanted to write you and say I hope you liked Avatar and if you did and want us to win, please tell (name deleted) and your friends who vote for the Oscars, tell actors, directors, crew members, art directors, special effects people, if everyone tells one or two of their friends, we will win and not a film that grossed $6M at the box-office, we need movies that people actually see to win, like the movies you and I do, so if you believe Avatar is the best movie of 2010, help us!
I'm sure you know plenty of people you've worked with who are academy members, in fact many of them likely worked on Avatar which employed hundreds of people (many from Los Angeles) and did not make the movie with 6 Brits and a number of Jordanians, please take 5 minutes and contact them. Please call one or two persons, everything will help!
best regards,
Jake Sully, Pandora Films
If you never saw Nicolas Chartier's email, Read More »
Aren't you shocked, shocked, that there's badmouthing during awards season? And don't you love how some media are pretending this is the end of Hollywood as we know it? Today, Summit Entertainment issued the following statement: "An enthusiastic and naive young producer made a mistake. When we found out, we asked him to stop immediately and let the Academy know and he is making amends." I hear Summit's Rob Friedman is pissed this is now a cause celebre. (I bet he now wishes financier Nicolas Chartier had been shut out of a producing credit altogether. See 'Hurt Locker' Oscar Credits Controversy.) Already today rumors are flying that the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is holding an "emergency meeting" about how to discipline the pic's filmmakers. Boo-hoo: all AMPAS ever does anyway is take away some Oscar tickets.
So what if on Feb 19th Chartier sent out that e-mail message asking for Hurt Locker votes and not that "$500M film". When it appeared in my email, I laughed. Not only because the Voltage Pictures partner didn’t have the guts to even mention Avatar by name. But for months now I have been sent so many emails from so many studios and filmmakers and flacks and insiders badmouthing every rival nominee this Oscar season and talking up their own. How the hell am I to tell them apart? Or tattle on them all? This is the ... Read More »
By NIKKI FINKE AND MIKE FLEMING | Category: Actors, Awards, Breaking News | Friday February 19, 2010 @ 9:43am PST
UPDATE: The producers are even warmer to this idea than we previously thought, thinking this would give "added resonance" if the presenter actually had a personal/professional connection to the nominee. And no, no one would “announce” the connection: the fun supposedly would be letting the viewers connect the dots for themselves.
EXCLUSIVE: Among the ideas that the producers of the Oscarcast are tossing around is a unique variation on last year's innovation when elite cliques of past actor category winners of all ages showed up to announce the winners. I’m told that this time around exec producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic are leaning towards keeping the multiple presenters concept. But, instead of bringing onstage talent who in most cases didn't personally know last year's nominees, the producers are seeking multiple presenters who have a direct connection to each of this year's actor nominees. In other words, it's the Oscar version of the popular trivia game, "Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon".
No doubt this opens the opportunity to pack the stage with even more starpower, which is the oscarcast's top priority this year. With tenured talent like Jeff Bridges, George Clooney, Colin Firth, Morgan Freeman, Sandra Bullock, Helen Mirren, and Meryl Streep in the Best Actor/Actress mix this year, the roster of presenters would consist of a Hollywood “Who’s Who.” Take just Meryl Streep, for instance; the pool of her many co-stars includes Robert De Niro (Deer Hunter, Falling In Love, Marvin's Room) Leonardo DiCaprio (Marvin's Room), Jack Nicholson ... Read More »
In a new interview with Charlie Rose, Jim Cameron said he wants Avatar to win Best Picture for his team and Academy voters to give Best Director to Kathryn Bigelow, his ex-wife and helmer of The Hurt Locker. I can't tell if this brazen campaigning hurts or helps his Oscar chances:
By Nikki Finke | Category: Awards | Wednesday February 17, 2010 @ 12:23pm PST
More than 120 Academy Award nominees gathered at the Beverly Hilton Hotel when the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences honored this year’s crop of contenders at its annual luncheon. Look at the image of Jon Landau: he wasn't there but someone held up his picture... For close-ups,Read More »
The death of John Hughes last year touched Hollywood in a way that only a very small number of talent can. In addition, Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Tom Sherak and Oscarcast producer Bill Mechanic both worked with Hughes. As did this year's hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. So there was no way because of these personal connections they'd relegate him to just a brief clip within the usual montage of people who've passed. (Not that the other dead people didn't deserve their own tributes, too.) Instead, the Oscars are planning a separate and special tribute to the writer-director-producer, complete with film and cast members. Steve Martin, of course, did the classic Planes Trains & Automobiles with Hughes, while Baldwin made the less well received She's Having A Baby. But I'm surprised that Alec has such fond memories. Years ago I did an interview with Baldwin, and he railed against Hughes for cutting most of his storyline from that pic. But time heals all wounds, I guess.
By Nikki Finke | Category: Awards | Wednesday February 17, 2010 @ 9:38am PST
Beverly Hills, CA — The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and 82nd Academy Awards® production designer David Rockwell unveiled the set for the upcoming Oscar show today. This marks the 2nd consecutive year that Rockwell has designed the set for the Oscar telecast. Rockwell said all the producers had been "dreaming up sets that embrace all the reasons we love movies: the glamour, the lights, the colors, the technique and the emotion!” Light and movement, the most basic components of moviemaking, will be integrated into this year’s sets to create an immersive, transformative environment.
Rockwell Group has reprised one of the most dazzling elements of the 81st Academy Awards design – the Swarovski Crystal Curtain – but with new and unexpected features for an even greater theatrical effect. The overall design is intended to evoke a classic but modern glamour, with white, platinum, topaz and smoky bronze hues. This year’s set also features three circular, revolving platforms that work in combination with rotating LED panels and architectural metalwork screens for film projection. Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2009 will be presented on March 7 at the Kodak Theatre.
By MIKE FLEMING | Category: Awards | Tuesday February 16, 2010 @ 9:02am PST
EXCLUSIVE: Oscarcast executive producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic have dropped a bombshell, telling artists nominated for Best Original Song that they won’t be invited to perform the usual big production number. The decision has hit a sour note for the nominated performers. Instead of the Academy Awards' long-held tradition of staged musical performances of the five nominated songs, the music from those songs will be interspersed with footage from each movie to provide more context. I’m told that some of the nominees and filmmakers are outraged, feeling that the Oscar producers are tossing aside tradition and costing musical artists their well-deserved moment of global TV glory. What the Academy Awards telecast producers will certainly do is shave time that can be spent doting on twice as many Best Picture nominees as in years past. And this year in particular, that is a big priority. Never mind that the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences already decided this year to limit the number of Original Song nominees to speed up the Oscar broadcast.
Mechanic's and Shankman's more recent decision appears equally pragmatic. Explanations include that the songs never delivered ratings, and that is what this Oscarcast is all about. That not having the big production numbers will move the show along. That it will save money for distributors, who eat most of the costs (up to 7 figures) of schlepping singers in. That unless a song by Bruce Springsteen, Celine Dion, Sting or U2 were nominated, most of the worldwide audience is hearing the tune for the ... Read More »
Beverly Hills, CA — Actress Elizabeth Banks will host the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Scientific and Technical Awards on February 20 at the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills. Banks will present 15 awards to 45 individual recipients during the evening.
By Nikki Finke | Category: Awards | Wednesday February 10, 2010 @ 11:50am PST
Beverly Hills, CA — Final ballots for the 82nd Academy Awards® were mailed today (February 10) to the 5,777 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Completed ballots must be returned to PricewaterhouseCoopers by 5 p.m. Tuesday, March 2. Ballots received after the deadline will not be counted.
Listed on the ballots are nominees in 19 Awards categories. Separate ballots for 5 categories (Documentary Feature, Documentary Short Subject, Foreign Language Film, Animated Short Film and Live Action Short Film) will be distributed after verification of mandatory member attendance at screenings.
Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2009 will be presented on Sunday, March 7, 2010, at the Kodak Theatre.
Beverly Hills, CA — Nominee credits for Best Documentary Feature nominee "The Cove" have been determined by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Documentary Branch Executive Committee. Credits are as follows:
"The Cove" – Louie Psihoyos and Fisher Stevens
Academy rules for the documentary feature category state that a maximum of two persons may be designated as nominees, one of whom must be the credited director, and the other of whom must have a producer or director credit. Psihoyos is the film's director, Stevens has a producer credit.
By MIKE FLEMING | Category: Awards | Monday February 8, 2010 @ 11:41am PST
Who's kidding whom? We know that almost all the marquee categories are virtually decided. Which leaves only Best Picture and Best Director (and maybe Best Actress) nominations with any suspense at all. There's tension galore, for once. The studios, and their majors and minors and distributors and marketers, all had an extra two weeks to campaign until the Oscar broadcast March 7th. But is anyone spending like the good old days (i.e. the Weinsteins' heyday)? I've called around and seasoned Oscar observers say no, resoundingly.
Gone are the days when ego and bragging rights prompted studios and studio-backed indies to cough up tens of millions of dollars just to sway Academy members. It's estimated that spending campaigns this year will range from a pittance of $500,000 to a middling $5 million. "And most of us are going to play in the low end," one top studio exec told me. Contrast that to the routine $15-plus million spent in the late 1990s-early 2000s.
This year, there's a sober reality among contenders like Alcon Entertainment, whose nominee The Blind Side was nearing a $240 million domestic gross when the noms arrived. Andrew Kosove, Alcon partner and one of the film's three producers, expects to spend 6-figures for a race he doesn't feel he will win.
“I believe we deserved to be nominated, but in my personal opinion, this is between Avatar and The Hurt Locker,” Kosove told me. “Just being nominated, and having Sandra Bullock emerge as a possible winner for ... Read More »
Heading off a potential Crash controversy in the Best Picture category, the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences this afternoon cleared the way for the 4 credited producers of The Hurt Lockerto stand onstage and receive Oscars if the film should emerge victorious on March 7th. Academy rules limit Best Picture nominations to three producers, except in extreme cases. I've learned it was decided after deliberations today that Greg Shapiro, Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal and Nicolas Chartier all pulled their weight and deserve the honor. A spokesperson for Summit told me all the producers were relieved by today's decision. Read More »