Oscar Week in Review: December 5-11, 2010

Oscar News

The Academy announced the fifteen finalists for the Visual Effects Oscar this week. That list will be narrowed down to seven in January and then five nominees. Among the films in the running are Inception, Tron: Legacy and Alice in Wonderland.
How To Train A Dragon led the pack of Annie Award Nominees with 15 nominations, far ahead of second place Despicable Me with 7 nods. The small turnout for Toy Story 3 could be due to the riff between Disney and the awards body, which can be read about here.
The King’s Speech won its first Best Picture award of the year, taking the top prize at the British Independent Film Awards. Among the acting award winners were Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter and Geoffrey Rush (all from The King’s Speech) and Carey Mulligan in Never Let Me Go.

Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer, a film all but forgotten about by American awards bodies so far, won the Best Picture prize at the European Film Awards last weekend. The film took 6 awards overall. The Illusionist won Best Animated Film.
The Washington Film Critics Association added another award to the growing cap of Colin Firth and The Social Network, naming them the Best Actor and Best Picture of the year respectively. Christian Bale took another Best Supporting Actor prize for The Fighter, while other winners included Jennifer Lawrence (Best Actress – Winter’s Bone), Melissa Leo (Best Supporting Actress – The Fighter) and David Fincher (Best Director – The Social Network).
The Detroit Film Critics announced their nominees for this year, and The King’s Speech and Winter’s Bone each lead the pack with 6 nominations, followed by The Social Network and The Fighter.
The MPAA overturned its NC-17 rating for the upcoming Blue Valentine, instead giving the film a more accessible R rating. This should alleviate some of the concern that the racier rating could have turned off some voters, although the graphic nature of the sex scenes could still be off-putting to some.

The Fighter is picking up reviews that equal its early awards buzz, garnering a 74 on Metacritic and 84% on Rotten Tomatoes. The cast, including Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Melissa Leo, are all garnering rave reviews that cite their award-worthiness, as well as director David O. Russell.
Once considered a possible awards candidate, The Tourist is not getting award worthy reviews at all. Metacritic lists the film as a 38, and the more pessimistic Rotten Tomatoes has the film at a 24%. The most commonly found word in the reviews is “forgettable.”
The Tempest is getting Julie Taymor the worst reviews of her film career (ironically just as her Broadway production of SpiderMan: Turn Off the Dark is plagued with disaster), bringing in a 27% on Rotten Tomatoes and a better, but still not good, Metacritic score of 41. Almost all of the reviews cite the visual beauty of the film however, and it could still contend in categories such as Costume Design and Art Direction.

Disney’s Tangled took over the top spot at the box office last weekend, displacing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I.
Black Swan had a very strong opening, bringing in over $80,000 per screen for a total over $1 million in only 18 theaters.