Thompson on Hollywood

Oscar Watch: Visual Effects List of Seven Led by Avatar

Seven movies have made the short list of the Academy Visual Effects branch. They will vote for the final three nominated films on January 21 at the annual bake-off, where 15-minute reels of each film are screened for the VFX voters. I'm always at Sundance for this; I'd love to go one day.

By Anne Thompson
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January 6, 2010 7:17 AM
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Holiday Winners and Losers: Avatar, Sherlock Holmes, Streep, Bullock and Nine

Where are we, after the record-breaking holiday? There were many winners.

By Anne Thompson
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January 5, 2010 2:00 AM
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Avatar's VFX Master: Weta Digital's Joe Letteri

People in Hollywood tend to put film directors up on pedestals, and as far as Avatar is concerned, Jim Cameron deserves to be up there. I'm calling nine Oscar nominations for Avatar. But its one sure-shot win will be Peter Jackson and Joe Letteri's Weta Digital team for Avatar's visual effects. What they accomplished in the The Lords of the Rings trilogy and King Kong changed the way movies are made. And so does Avatar, which will have a huge impact on movie FX to come, from Tintin to Gemini Man. Nothing, it seems, will be impossible to put on film anymore.

By Anne Thompson
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December 23, 2009 11:16 AM
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Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh Talk The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones presented a fascinating challenge for a movie adaptation of a book. But finally, the realities of commercial filmmaking may have been unmanageable in this case---much as they were with John Hillcoat's film version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. What works on the page and in our imagination, no matter how harsh, can be too much to handle on the screen.

By Anne Thompson
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December 14, 2009 11:06 AM
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Broadcast Film Critics Give Ten Nominations to Inglourious Basterds and Nine

The Broadcast Film Critics Movie Awards nominations in a whopping 25 categories are dominated by Inglourious Basterds and Nine, with ten nominations each, followed by Avatar, with nine and The Hurt Locker and Up in the Air with eight and The Lovely Bones with six. While not every category will match up with the ultimate Oscar nominations (some have six slots), this list of ten best picture nominees could be close to the final Oscar list--no District 9, The Lovely Bones, Star Trek or The Last Station (which got savaged by At the Movies).

By Anne Thompson
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December 14, 2009 10:29 AM
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20 Questions for District 9's Sharlto Copley

One Oscar long-shot is South African actor Sharlto Copley, who made an astonishingly assured acting debut in District 9, written and directed by his old friend Neill Blomkamp. Historically, the Academy has been biased against science-fiction. (I assess the Peter Jackson-backed film's Oscar chances.) But the film played well at a recent Screen Actors Guild screening, where I conducted a Q & A with Copley:

By Anne Thompson
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December 6, 2009 3:13 AM
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Oscar Talk Episode Thirteen: Avatar, Lovely Bones, Crazy Heart, Parties

Kris Tapley and I discuss the week's frenetic doings: National Board of Review, parties for The Hurt Locker, Crazy Heart and The Lovely Bones, and the upcoming sci-fi monster Avatar.

By Anne Thompson
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December 6, 2009 12:30 AM
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Friday Night Cocktails and Docs

Friday I interviewed It's Complicated writer-director Nancy Meyers by phone, Hurt Locker's Jeremy Renner by Flip Cam, and went to a Paramount Lovely Bones cocktail party at the Four Seasons. There I talked to Stanley Tucci and photographed him with Peter Jackson, who I will talk to later this weekend. Then I ran off to the International Documentary Awards, which were taking place at the same time as the first screening of Avatar (Arrggh) for the Hollywood Foreign Press. Word on the street at the IDA party: Avatar's a 161-minute movie with fab visual effects and adolescent story. I won't see it until the 10th, alas.

By Anne Thompson
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December 5, 2009 8:36 AM
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Oscar Talk Episode Twelve: Nine, Invictus, The Lovely Bones

In Contention's Kris Tapley and I have actually seen most of the Oscar movies now, and even though we're not supposed to write about all of them yet, we do talk about the sexy musical Nine, Clint Eastwood's Invictus and the mixed reaction to Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones. We also get into the rising fortunes of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and the marketing behind the last movie to be unveiled in coming weeks, James Cameron's Avatar.

By Anne Thompson
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November 28, 2009 4:25 AM
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Oscar Watch: Precious, Up in the Air Lead Pre-Holiday Guru Vote

You can assume that most of the voters on Gurus 'O Gold have seen all the movies at this point except The Lovely Bones, Avatar and It's Complicated. So, these press people believe that Invictus (Newsweek's David Ansen reviews it) and Nine are in the race. Here's the new top ten. Keep in mind that in some ways what this list represents is 1) best marketing to date and 2) voting pre-critics groups, National Board of Review, Gothams, Indie Spirits, BAFTA, Golden Globes and Guild nominations and awards. Also, many Oscar campaigns this year are breaking late, for whatever reason. Screeners are just arriving this week.