Thompson on Hollywood

Live at Oscars: Makeup Goes to The Wolfman, Costumes to Alice in Wonderland

Best makeup, not surprisingly, goes to The Wolfman's Rick Baker--it's his seventh Oscar--and costume designer goes to Colleen Atwood for Alice in Wonderland, her second after Room with a View. It's a good night for Tim Burton, who has not done well at the Oscars in the past. The movie also won best art direction. Atwood thanks Burton's "imagination."

By Anne Thompson
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February 28, 2011 2:55 AM
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Mark Your Ballots: Anne Thompson Predicts Oscar Winners

The Oscar polls closed on Tuesday at 5 PM. No more campaigning, lobbying or pitches for attention will make a difference now. It's all in the hands of the PriceWaterhousecooper counters, and will be revealed Sunday. Meanwhile the rest of us want to win our respective Oscar pools. This year, I must warn you, is tough to call. As Kris Tapley and I discuss in our latest Oscar Talk, there are plenty of sure-calls, but also several impossible-to-predict categories: documentary and foreign film, which are voted on by small groups who must prove that they've seen all the films, and supporting actress. The shorts are always a bit of a crap shoot too. Warning: I'm going out on a limb in a few categories, so when in doubt, choose the perceived frontrunner.

By Anne Thompson
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February 25, 2011 8:17 AM
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Oscar Watch: The King's Speech's Helena Bonham Carter Could Win Best Supporting Actress

The King's Speech is an Oscar favorite, and depending on how strong it is, the Brit drama could carry some awards on its coattails. While Inception, The Social Network, True Grit and Alice in Wonderland could steal some wins from The King's Speech in the technical categories, recent BAFTA winner Helena Bonham Carter could score a supporting actress nod--in a wide open field including The Fighter's dueling Melissa Leo and Amy Adams, True Grit's young newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, and Animal Kingdom's 48-year Australian veteran Jacki Weaver--for her high-brow yet low-key performance as the future Queen Mum in The King's Speech.

By Anne Thompson and Sophia Savage
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February 16, 2011 7:22 AM
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Directors Keep It In the Family: Dark Knight Rises, Dark Shadows

Tim Burton is eyeing Michelle Pfeiffer and longtime girlfriend Helena Bonham Carter to join his Dark Shadows cast, which includes leading man Johnny Depp, Jackie Earle Haley, Eva Green and Bella Heathcote.

By Sophia Savage
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February 16, 2011 6:16 AM
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BAFTAs Go to King's Speech, Social Network, Inception, Black Swan, Alice, Dragon Tattoo UPDATED

The BAFTA Awards are under way at the Royal Opera House in London. Safe to say The King's Speech is winning many awards but is not sweeping; Inception and Alice in Wonderland are grabbing many of the technical categories. I predict that the Oscars will follow this trend.

By Anne Thompson
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February 13, 2011 7:48 AM
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Oscar Watch: Tim Burton and VFX Master Ken Ralston Talk Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland presented a high degree of difficulty for veteran VFX master Ken Ralston and director Tim Burton, who tends to prefer live action FX to digital ones. He clearly wrestled with the huge volume of CG effects—the film used far more green screen than he’s ever dealt with. “It starts freaking you out after a while,” he said at Comic-Con, admitting that Alice in Wonderland was “the most difficult” movie he’s ever done. Burton insisted on avoiding motion-capture as much as possible (the effects team did mo-cap some actors, for reference). Burton wound up favoring “pure animation and using actors in mysterious ways,” he said.

By Anne Thompson
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February 11, 2011 9:29 AM
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Burton's Dark Shadows Gets Green, Winterbottom's Hardy Trishna Reinterpretation

- Tim Burton's reworking of 60s gothic soap opera Dark Shadows centers on vampire Barnabas Collins (to be played by Johnny Depp) and his escapades with witches, monsters, ghosts and the like. Eva Green will play the powerful witch Angelique, with whom Collins enjoys a love/hate relationship. Since her breakout role in Casino Royale, the French actress has gone somewhat unnoticed (she had a supporting role in 2007's The Golden Compass). Now, she has Perfect Sense (see trailer below), boarding school drama Cracks (March 18), a Maria Callas TV biopic and more to come. Vampire expert Seth Grahame-Smith adapted Dark Shadows; he also wrote Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (fitting, since he wrote the novel).

By Sophia Savage
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February 4, 2011 9:28 AM
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Oscar Watch: The Makeup Final Seven

Seven films are competing for the final three nominations to be announced January 25 in the makeup category for the Oscars. The Academy’s makeup branch will vote on January 22 after seeing ten-minute excerpts from each of the seven shortlisted films. These prizes are about live-action makeup, often involving non-digitally enhanced wounds, aging and transformation. The final three in all likelihood will be Alice in Wonderland, The Fighter and The Wolfman.

By Anne Thompson
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January 10, 2011 11:20 AM
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Three Critics: Are Sequels Killing Hollywood?

In our latest column at Moviefone, indieWIRE critics Eric Kohn and Leonard Maltin and I take on Hollywood's bad case of sequelitis, from Saw to Harry Potter, which seems only to be getting worse each year.

By Anne Thompson
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December 14, 2010 6:57 AM
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Oscar Talk: Diane Lane vs. Annette Bening vs. Julianne Moore, Inception, Hereafter, The Way Back

There's still a long way to go in the Oscar race. Kris Tapley and I debate whether Secretariat is this year's mainstream Blind Side, Diane Lane is this year's Sandra Bullock, Julianne Moore and Annette Bening will both make it for The Kids Are All Right, and if Chris Nolan's Inception, John Cameron Mitchell's Rabbit Hole, Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, Pixar's Toy Story 3, Peter Weir's The Way Back, and Clint Eastwood's Hereafter have a shot at the top ten.