MBELDOG BLOG

MONTREAL - It was exactly a month ago when this cynic suggested there was no need to hold this year’s Academy Awards gala, that the biggest mystery surrounding the bash would be to see how Sunday's hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway would fare.

Nominations for the Oscars had just been announced and it appeared to many that the major winners of the recent Golden Globe Awards would all repeat on the Oscar podium as well.
And Colin Firth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale and Melissa Leo likely will, but there could be one king-sized exception. The Social Network, the Globe winner and the then-heavily favoured flick to cop the Oscar for best film, appears to be pulling a little lame entering the clubhouse stretch. The winds have changed, and it now looks like The King’s Speech will rule Sunday night.

Since losing the Globe for best film, The King’s Speech has made a royal rebound, sweeping the Producers Guild, Directors Guild, Screen Actors Guild and British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards – at the expense of The Social Network.

If it’s any consolation to Social Network’s David Fincher – and it probably isn’t – he should follow his Globe victory for best director with an Oscar in the same category. Best director and best film match up nearly 80 per cent of the time at the Oscars. But the feeling is that The Social Network, almost a unanimous pick among critics as the best film of the year, is getting the shaft for providing an all-too-honest glimpse into the realities of social networking and subsequent social alienation. Or, by contrast, it doesn’t provide the same happy ending as The King’s Speech.

So, lip-service of sorts will be paid to Fincher.

There is precedent for this. In 2003, the musical Chicago won the Academy Award for best film, but Rob Marshall, who had taken the Directors Guild Award that year, just like King’s Speech’s Tom Hooper has this year, was denied the Oscar for best director. Instead, the world’s most famed film fugitive, Roman Polanski, took the prize for The Pianist that year – also a sort of payback by Oscar voters who felt the latter film was getting shortchanged.

A similar snub took place at the Oscars in 1999. Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan had been the betting favourite to take best film and best director. But Shakespeare in Love surprised many by taking the award for best film. However, a little justice was delivered with the deserving Spielberg grabbing the Oscar for best director over Shakespeare in Love’s John Madden.

Hands up, film geeks, if you have caught some more commonality with Chicago, Shakespeare in Love and The King’s Speech.

Yup, it’s the Weinstein Factor. The same Harvey Weinstein, whose unauthorized documentary bio surfaced on HBO Canada earlier this week, was exec producer of Chicago, was producer of Shakespeare in Love and is the distributor of The King’s Speech.

The latter film’s recent success can be attributed to the headlines and hype generated by Weinstein, as well as the countless Oscar campaign cash in advertising he has put up. The man, described as “part Michael Corleone, part Orson Welles,” followed the same formula with Chicago and Shakespeare in Love.

It’s also worth noting that there is little love lost between Weinstein and Social Network producer Scott Rudin, no slouch either when it comes to creating massive Oscar campaigns. The two had worked together on The Hours – which netted Nicole Kidman an Oscar for best actress – but Rudin had his name removed from the credits prior to the film’s release. One can only imagine what kind of squabble led to that, and one can only imagine how much Rudin would love to get even with Weinstein.

Curiously, and despite all the honours the film has garnered, Weinstein, also known as Harvey Scissorhands for his penchant to re-cut films, wanted to perform a little surgery on The King’s Speech. Evidently, Weinstein felt that some of the cursing in the film should be excised to broaden its audience rating. Mercifully, director Hooper and screenwriter David Seidler were able to thwart Scissorhands, correctly arguing that the mild regal profanities uttered were integral to the film’s plotting, not to mention to the therapy employed to cure the king’s stuttering.

Hell, if it hasn’t upset the Royal Family, it shouldn’t bother King Harvey – who makes the tyrannical King Edward l look mellow.

As to why films play such an important role in our lives, frequent correspondent George Morris passes on these all-important “things you would never know without the movie industry” – which he has culled from a blog:

At least one of a pair of identical twins is born evil.
Most laptop computers are powerful enough to override the communications system of any invading alien society.

It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts, because your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessors.

If you are blond and pretty, it is possible to become a world expert on nuclear fission at the age of 22.

Honest and hard working policemen are traditionally gunned down three days before their retirement.

Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their arch-enemies using complicated machinery involving fuses, pulley systems, deadly gases, lasers and man-eating sharks, which will allow their captives at least 20 minutes to escape.

Once applied, lipstick will never rub off, even while scuba diving.

You’re very likely to survive any battle in any war unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.
Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language. A German accent will do.

The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris.
If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises in their most revealing underwear.
All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they’re going to go off.
If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will know all the steps.


Source: The Montreal Gazette