Pre-Awards Season Begins 2010

The announcement of the National Board of Review's picks on December 2nd, as is tradition, will bring down the checked flag for the start of Awards season. Here at One Line Review, Pre-Awards season begins with the simultaneous publication in the first weekend of November of the Los Angeles Times's "Holiday Movie Sneaks," Entertainment Weekly's Holiday Movie Preview Issue [see note, however] (which contains their early guesses in Oscar's Best Picture, Directing, and Acting races), and Awards-Season Previews in the trades.  However, this year, The EW Holiday Movie Preview issue was pushed a week throwing the whole system off.  I think next year my blog entry for "Pre-Awards Season Begins" will be for the L.A. Times/ EW/ or the announcement of the Cecil B. DeMIlle— whichever comes out first.  But with all three out now, on Monday, I feel we can safely stand around the water cooler and say the word "Oscar" without fear of "already?" (These year-round Oscar websites, though, to me, are the equivalent of playing Christmas music in July.  There is a chart of Oscarists' predictions of what will WIN Best Picture currently online... this is SO weird.)

EW lists their Oscar nominations predictions, separating a "top five" for Best Picture (lest we forget AMPAS in their infinite wisdom decided to expand BP to ten noms) in their Holiday Movie Preview.  This year, curiously, four of the five are not upcoming releases: Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The Social Network, Toy Story 3.  The lone upcoming title is: The King's Speech.

There are several acting "locks" it seems coming into the season, leaving little wiggle-room for surprise.  Take Best Actor, for example: Leonardo DiCaprio (Inception), Robert Duvall (Get Low), Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network), Colin Firth (The King's Speech), and James Franco (127 Hours)... that's five... but of course, we'll see how it all pans out.

Films I look forward to seeing this holiday season include: Black Swan, How Do You Know, The King's Speech, Narnia: Dawn Treader.

Robert De Niro to Receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has announced the recipient for this year's Cecil B. DeMille Award: Robert De Niro. After a two year director hiatus from actors (Scorsese, Spielberg) the HFPA is getting back to honoring the actors.  The press release was posted early this morning on the HFPA website... glad they are prompt (even though it's PST, sorry New York). 

De Niro was certainly among the most probable picks (especially given that Scorsese received it last year), and, of course, deserving. They're so many great De Niro performances: The Godfather, Part II; Taxi Driver; Raging Bull; The King of Comedy; Goodfellas; Cape Fear; Jackie Brown; Analyze This; Meet the Parents; and Machete... to name a few.

Who Will Receive this Year's Cecil B. DeMille Award?

This year "Pre-Awards" season won't begin for me with Entertainment Weekly's Holiday Movie Preview issue which presumably will come out on Thursday (it's generally the first issue of November— but oddly wasn't this year).  So the flip-flop will have Pre-Awards start with the announcement of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Golden Globe Award for lifetime achievement, the Cecil B. DeMille Award. The timing of the announcement has changed a lot recently— it was traditionally on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving week, and last year, it was the Thursday of the second week of November.  This year it will be tomorrow, Tuesday, November 9th.

The Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Golden Globe was first given in 1952, to namesake Cecil B. DeMille himself. Producer/Director DeMille was one of the most successful filmmakers of Hollywood's Golden Age and in 1952 he made the film that would win Oscar's Best Picture, The Greatest Show on Earth. Who won the second DeMille award? Walt Disney.

In the early years of the award, the recipient was generally a producer/studio head, but starting with Maurice Chevalier (1959's recipient) performers have worked their way up, to the point that the award has been given exclusively to them since 1978 (with a few "hyphenates" among them, such as Clint Eastwood), until Steven Spielberg's 2008 win.

So, who do you think will be given this year's Cecil B. DeMille Award? The most likely candidate of the last several years has certainly been Meryl Streep. Streep has received the most career nominations (at 25). Plus she's had a string of high profile hits as of late critically and commercially, too.

Here is a link to the Cecil B. DeMille Award on the HFPA's website.

And here is a handy one-page list on Wikipedia.

What is your guess for this year's DeMille?

Notables who have yet to receive the honor include: Woody Allen, Julie Andrews, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Caine, Glenn Close, Tom Cruise, Daniel Day-Lewis, Robert DeNiro, Gerard Depardieu, Robert Duvall, Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Jodie Foster, Morgan Freeman, Tom Hanks, George Lucas, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole, Michelle Pfeiffer, Julia Roberts, Sylvester Stallone, Meryl Streep, John Travolta, and Denzel Washington.

... My perennial guess is HFPA favorite (12 noms, 3 wins) Michael Caine, but the wind has blown toward non-actors.   When Spielberg won in 2008/09, my pick for '09/10 became Francis Ford Coppola, however the HFPA went with Martin Scorsese. With Coppola as one of this year's Honorary Oscar recipients, it's unlikely that he'll get it due to the double-up factor... Therefore, I'm going to go with Woody Allen (if they can convince him to accept) as my prediction for this year.

Summer Box Office 2010 Top Ten Champs

Now that the dust has settled and the fall is upon us, and with the release of summer blockbusters Iron Man 2 and The Karate Kid on DVD (Toy Story 3 gets released on November 2), it's time to take a look at how things wrapped up.








Here are the Top Ten Moneymakers of Summer 2010:

1. Toy Story 3- 412.0 million (to date) (#9 domestic of all-time [unadjusted for inflation])
2. Iron Man 2— $312.1 million
3. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse— $300.5 million
4. Inception— $289.3 million (to-date)
5. Despicable Me— $246.6 million (to-date)
6. Shrek Forever After— $238.4 million
7. The Karate Kid— $176.6 million
8. Grown Ups— $161.8 million
9. The Last Airbender— $131.6 million
10. The Other Guys— $118.0 million/ Salt- 117.9 million (both to-date)

The summer sleeper award goes to The Karate Kid (honorable mention to The Expendables, with a $102.8 haul to-date). On the list of box office fizzles: Robin Hood ($105.3 million), Sex and the City 2 ($95.3 million), Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (a very low [especially these days] $90.8 million), The A-Team ($77.2 million).... and the big dud: Knight & Day (just $76.4 million).

Eight 1950s Oscar Nominated (Male) Actors Left

Today came the news that Tony Curtis and Joe Mantell died, Best Actor nominee 1958 and Best Supporting Actor nominee 1955, respectively. This leaves just eight (male) actors left among 1950s Oscar nominees, as follows— Best Actor nominees (three): Ernest Borgnine [the last male '50s Oscar winner; photo], Kirk Douglas, and Sidney Poitier. Best Supporting Actor nominees: Don Murray, Mickey Rooney, Russ Tamblyn, Theodore Bikel, and Robert Vaughn. Surprising how few remain.

New "At the Movies": The Return of Roger Ebert

Good News!  At the Movies is back.  The piece of the pilot that's available online (below) is very encouraging.  If you get Ebert's annual, you see that he's extremely well-informed as to what movie fans spend their time doing/thinking, in addition to the latest in moviemaking techniques.  That's suggested in this new program which combines various features to the usual movie reviewing.



My only question is why isn't Ebert using the computerized voice that matches his own (as he demonstrated on Oprah) and instead has that Stephen Hawking-like "voice."

Show starts in January... I'll be watching!

Four Surviving Cast Members (Speaking Parts) Remain From "Gone With the Wind"

With the passing of Cammie King at the age of 76, just four cast members with speaking parts are left from the all-time classic Hollywood epic Gone With the Wind (according to all available sources online).  As "Bonnie Blue Butler," she was Scarlett and Rhett's daughter.  She first appears at 187 minutes into the film [1 hour 19 min into DVD 2] Cammie King obit at pressdemocrat.

Although in previous blog entries, I noted Mary Anderson as living (per her IMDb and Wikipedia pages), it seems less and less likely that she is alive.  No one is actually claiming she is and when genarians.com didn't list her on their comprehensive living people born in 1920 list, I decided to drop my own claim herein.)

The surviving actors are as follows:

Alicia Rhett (b. 2/1/15) as "India Wilkes."  She is the young daughter from the Twelve Oaks Plantation.  She can be seen at 18 minutes into the film (using the 4-disc Collector's Edition DVD version of the movie as a guide).



Olivia de Havilland (b. 7/1/16) as "Melanie Hamilton."  De Havilland was fourth billed and received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Gone With the Wind.   She's first seen at 19 minutes into the film.



Ann Rutherford (b. 11/2/20) as "Carreen O'Hara."  She is the youngest sister of Scarlett.  She is first seen at 14 minutes into the film.




Mickey Kuhn (b. 9/21/32) as "Beau Wilkes."  Playing Ashley and Melanie's son, he appears toward the very end of the film (216 minutes into the approximately 223 minute film [1 hour 48 min into DVD 2])


Among the non-speaking parts is cast member Patrick Curtis who appeared at a screening of GWTW at the Motion Picture Academy last year— he played Beau Wilkes as a baby (and was therefore born c. 1938-39).