DreamWorks is going all out to make this An Event:
A press release:
ONE WEEK ONLY! 'DREAMGIRLS' SET TO DEBUT IN EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED ENGAGEMENT 'ROAD SHOW' IN NEW YORK, LOS ANGELES, SAN FRANCISCO
HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Nov. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Before "Dreamgirls," the highly anticipated motion picture from DreamWorks Pictures and Paramount Pictures, makes its nationwide debut, the film will roll out in a "road show" in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The three exclusive
one-week engagements begin December 15.
"'Dreamgirls' is a special film, the kind that comes around once in a generation," said Jim Tharp, president of theatrical distribution for Paramount Pictures. "We wanted to bring it to audiences in a special way and we think this 'road show' does the film justice. Bill Condon has delivered a very entertaining movie -- this is a film that is every bit as memorable as the legendary Broadway production that inspired it."
New York's Ziegfeld Theater, Los Angeles's Cinerama Dome, and San Francisco's Metreon will host the special engagements of "Dreamgirls." Each theater will hold displays on the making of the movie, including designs from Academy Award®-winning production designer John Myhre and Academy Award®-nominated costume designer Sharen Davis. In addition, moviegoers will have the opportunity to purchase exclusive merchandise and the film's soundtrack in the lobby. The $25 reserved-seat ticket also includes a
limited edition program. Following the limited engagement, the film will open in theaters everywhere on December 25.
Twenty-five years after it first brought Broadway audiences to their feet, the Tony Award-winning musical sensation "Dreamgirls" comes to the big screen starring Academy Award® winner Jamie Foxx, Beyonce Knowles,
and Eddie Murphy, with Danny Glover, newcomer Jennifer Hudson, and Tony Award winner Anika Noni Rose. Set in the turbulent early 1960s to mid-70s, "Dreamgirls" follows the rise of a trio of women -- Effie (Jennifer Hudson), Deena (Beyonce Knowles) and Lorrell (Anika Noni Rose) -- who have formed a promising girl group called The Dreamettes. At a talent
competition, they are discovered by an ambitious manager named Curtis Taylor, Jr. (Jamie Foxx), who offers them the opportunity of a lifetime: to become the back-up singers for headliner James "Thunder" Early (Eddie Murphy). Curtis gradually takes control of the girls' look and sound, eventually giving them their own shot in the spotlight as The Dreams. That spotlight, however, begins to narrow in on Deena, finally pushing the less attractive Effie out altogether. Though the Dreams become a crossover phenomenon, they soon realize that the cost of fame and fortune may be higher than they ever imagined.
The film has been rated PG-13 by the MPAA for Language, Some Sexuality and Drug Content.
Dreamgirls or: How to Stop Discussing It and Talk - About Something Else
-
99-1100896887
-
anonymous1980
- Laureate
- Posts: 6383
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 10:03 pm
- Location: Manila
- Contact:
Finally, a site featuring Jennifer Hudson's rendition of "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going."
http://www.rickey.org/blog/2006/10/jennifer_hudson_and_i_am_telli.html
(you need firefox to hear it).
Wow! I can't wait to see this movie!
http://www.rickey.org/blog/2006/10/jennifer_hudson_and_i_am_telli.html
(you need firefox to hear it).
Wow! I can't wait to see this movie!
From the New York Times:
After Conquering ‘Chicago,’ It’s On to Motown
By JAMES ULMER
Published: September 10, 2006
IT’S the opening night of the director Michael Bennett’s musical “Dreamgirls” at the Imperial Theater on Broadway, December 1981. In the last row of the top balcony, a young screenwriter leaps to his feet and cheers along as the actress Jennifer Holliday — playing a girl-group singer who has just been dumped by the man who is her manager and lover — delivers her tear-your-heart-out torch song, “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.” In a stunning moment that gives the lie to her lyrics, she vanishes behind a wall of rotating mirrors that dazzle and shift to reveal three fabulously dressed women who have stolen her place on the stage and are singing up a Motown storm as the curtain falls for intermission.
Dissolve to April 2006. On a shaggy street in South Central Los Angeles, Bill Condon, still boyish after 25 years and now a director and Oscar-winning screenwriter, savors the memory of that night as he takes a break from shooting his $70 million version of “Dreamgirls,” starring Beyoncé, Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy, Danny Glover and an “American Idol” finalist, Jennifer Hudson, as Effie White, the character originally played by Jennifer Holliday.
“I was really in awe of Michael Bennett’s talent, because you could see him pushing the form in a work that was completely cinematic and never stopped moving,” said Mr. Condon, who adapted the stage musical’s book by Tom Eyen. “There are so many uncanny mirror images and parallels involved in our production, but the most important for me was to reflect the soul of the original stage version, yet still make it our own unique thing that speaks to younger audiences who had never seen the Broadway show.”
Much like the group whose ghetto-to-glam rise it tracks, “Dreamgirls” became a sensation at its opening. And it kept its Motown-inspired musical motors revving through six Tony Awards and 1,521 performances. (In his review in The New York Times, Frank Rich declared that “Broadway history was made at the end of the first act.”)
Mr. Condon and the producers, DreamWorks Pictures and Paramount Pictures, hope to replicate that sensation when the movie opens in selected cities on Dec. 21, 25 years to the month after the show’s opening night. Toward that end, they have cast the pop star Beyoncé as Deena Jones. Like the musical, she is 25, and like her character, who is based on Diana Ross of the Supremes, she was the lead singer in a black female trio, Destiny’s Child, before moving on to solo stardom.
Beyoncé, however, politely insists that the similarities stop there. “Initially, I was afraid audiences would think this is my life story,” she said. “But I don’t see myself at all in this performance, which is exactly what I wanted. My own vocal style isn’t nearly as laid back as Deena’s, and it was amazingly difficult for me to sing so restrained and poised and still deliver all that soul. Every blink had to be perfect.”
She says she “pored over” tapes of Ms. Ross in performance to prepare for the role. “It was really strange how sometimes I felt I was channeling Diana Ross,” she said.
With its marquee touting three black actors who are among the most bankable figures in the entertainment world, the casting of “Dreamgirls” mirrors the crossover phenomenon its story tells. The movie follows Curtis, an ambitious Detroit manager, played by Mr. Foxx, who hustles a local 1960’s black singing group from obscurity to the top of the charts.
“This movie is living proof that what was once the black counterculture has now become the music and movie mainstream,” Mr. Condon said, adding, “We’re at the moment now when the promise of the black Motown explosion of the 60’s has been fully realized.”
Or, as Randy Spendlove, the film’s music supervisor, put it: “There is no longer black music or white music. There’s just music that makes you feel.” The popularity of Motown also helped paper over the industry’s earlier days, which were rife with backstage bribery, payola and dirty tricks — a period depicted in the choreography of one of the film’s main dance numbers, “Steppin’ to the Bad Side.”
WITH its A-list cast and Broadway pedigree, “Dreamgirls” is aiming to reprise the success of the original production by Bennett, whose biggest Broadway triumph was “A Chorus Line” and who died of AIDS in 1987 at 44.
David Geffen, a founder of DreamWorks and one of the producers of “Dreamgirls” on Broadway, holds the rights to the show. Over the years, he has rebuffed numerous offers to adapt it to film, and perhaps with good reason. The musical-to-movie highway is littered with misfires by respected directors like Richard Attenborough (“A Chorus Line”), Sidney Lumet (“The Wiz”) and John Huston (“Annie”). One offer he accepted — a production in the late 1990’s that was to be directed by Joel Schumacher and to star Lauryn Hill as Deena — came to naught.
So how did Mr. Condon, who cut his teeth writing genre scripts back in the 80’s and 90’s (“Strange Invaders,” “FX/2”) and who had never directed a musical before, win Mr. Geffen over?
Cut to a Hollywood Christmas party in 2002, shortly after the opening of the hit film “Chicago,” for which Mr. Condon was about to earn his second Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay. (He won for “Gods and Monsters” in 1998). The producer Laurence Mark, who was at the party, recalled that Mr. Condon had been “asked to write every Broadway musical that hadn’t been filmed, or so it seemed.” He continued, “So my question to Bill was, is there any musical you’d love to direct?”
Without hesitation, Mr. Condon remembered, he replied that “the great unmade musical was ‘Dreamgirls,’ ” but that Mr. Geffen would apparently never release the rights. Mr. Mark offered to telephone Mr. Geffen, a longtime friend.
“And when I did,” Mr. Mark said, “David, of course, spent 15 minutes telling me very nicely how it was just never going to happen for lots of reasons, one of which was that he had the legacy of Michael Bennett to protect.” Nevertheless, Mr. Mark accepted an invitation for Mr. Condon and himself to lunch with Mr. Geffen the next day. (A spokeswoman for Mr. Geffen said he declined to be interviewed, preferring that Mr. Mark speak for him.)
“And during that lunch — somewhere between the baked salmon and the poached pear — Bill did his eight-minute spiel on his vision for the film,” Mr. Mark said. “When he finished, David simply said, ‘O.K., why don’t we give this a whirl?’ The next thing you know, we were talking to business affairs at DreamWorks.”
But Mr. Condon still had the small matter of directing his next film, “Kinsey.” It would be a year and a half before he could rustle up the time to write “Dreamgirls.” After he did, in January 2005, Mr. Geffen telephoned him — twice — the afternoon that he read the script to say “he was moved by it,” Mr. Condon said.
Four days later, Mr. Geffen announced the production in Variety. “That’s the kind of one-man shop this movie is,” Mr. Condon said. “Because of the backing of Geffen, I’ve been able to make this movie exactly the way I wanted to make it.”
What did Mr. Condon tell Mr. Geffen at that fateful pitch? “I said I wanted the story of ‘Dreamgirls’ to mirror its larger historical context of the turbulent 60’s and 70’s — the peace marches, the riots and the real decimation of the inner cities,” Mr. Condon recalled.
And so, in a departure from the original, Mr. Condon depicts Motown as a catalyst not only for a musical movement but for social change, too. The film includes montages of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, echoed later by images of the dream gone sour in the Detroit race riots.
Mr. Condon said he also offered Mr. Geffen a solution to a stylistic challenge: “Paradoxically, what makes backstage musicals more cinematic is to set them close to their theatrical roots. I wanted to keep the film of ‘Dreamgirls’ as much in the world of theater as possible.”
It was a lesson the director had absorbed on the film “Chicago.” “Working on that show was like going to a college for musicals,” he said.
So, to further fuel the project’s theatrical motor, Mr. Condon decided to move some scenes that originally took place offstage back onto the boards, using theatrical styles to enhance his film in a mirror-image of the way that Bennett — who dazzled Broadway with his use of rapid-fire cross-cuts, fades and dissolves between scenes — summoned cinematic techniques to power his staging.
For Effie’s gut-wrenching Act I finale, Mr. Condon moved the scene from its original setting in a dressing room directly onto the theatrical force field of a bare stage. The scene was shot over three days during the last week of the five-month production, “to give Ms. Hudson the time needed to grow into the role,” according to Mr. Mark, one of the movie’s producers. “And she nailed it.”
Inevitably, the movie will be judged in part by the emotional punch of that one scene. But it presented the filmmakers with a conundrum. How do you top a showstopper that arrives only halfway through the movie? Mr. Condon said he felt that the Broadway show seemed “almost over” at intermission, so he asked his music team, led by Henry Krieger, the show’s composer, to create a new and equally moving song to energize the second act.
The answer was “Listen,” an 11 o’clock number that Deena sings just before she escapes the heavy hand of Curtis, her manager, to find her own voice as a newly independent woman. Written by Mr. Krieger, Scott Cutler, Anne Preven and Beyoncé, the song is one of four composed for the movie and is included as a bonus track on Beyoncé’s “B’Day” album.
“Even though it takes place in the 70’s, this is a song that you can play on the radio and that my generation of fans can relate to today,” Beyoncé said. “And it has soul, which is really the legacy of Motown.”
As for the legacy of “Dreamgirls,” Beyoncé, like others in the movie, said Mr. Condon’s preparation and focus were responsible for finally bringing the musical to the screen. “It’s odd, but both Jennifer Hudson and I were born while Michael Bennett was rehearsing this show,” she mused. “Maybe, like Bill, we feel that making this movie was our destiny.”
After Conquering ‘Chicago,’ It’s On to Motown
By JAMES ULMER
Published: September 10, 2006
IT’S the opening night of the director Michael Bennett’s musical “Dreamgirls” at the Imperial Theater on Broadway, December 1981. In the last row of the top balcony, a young screenwriter leaps to his feet and cheers along as the actress Jennifer Holliday — playing a girl-group singer who has just been dumped by the man who is her manager and lover — delivers her tear-your-heart-out torch song, “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.” In a stunning moment that gives the lie to her lyrics, she vanishes behind a wall of rotating mirrors that dazzle and shift to reveal three fabulously dressed women who have stolen her place on the stage and are singing up a Motown storm as the curtain falls for intermission.
Dissolve to April 2006. On a shaggy street in South Central Los Angeles, Bill Condon, still boyish after 25 years and now a director and Oscar-winning screenwriter, savors the memory of that night as he takes a break from shooting his $70 million version of “Dreamgirls,” starring Beyoncé, Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy, Danny Glover and an “American Idol” finalist, Jennifer Hudson, as Effie White, the character originally played by Jennifer Holliday.
“I was really in awe of Michael Bennett’s talent, because you could see him pushing the form in a work that was completely cinematic and never stopped moving,” said Mr. Condon, who adapted the stage musical’s book by Tom Eyen. “There are so many uncanny mirror images and parallels involved in our production, but the most important for me was to reflect the soul of the original stage version, yet still make it our own unique thing that speaks to younger audiences who had never seen the Broadway show.”
Much like the group whose ghetto-to-glam rise it tracks, “Dreamgirls” became a sensation at its opening. And it kept its Motown-inspired musical motors revving through six Tony Awards and 1,521 performances. (In his review in The New York Times, Frank Rich declared that “Broadway history was made at the end of the first act.”)
Mr. Condon and the producers, DreamWorks Pictures and Paramount Pictures, hope to replicate that sensation when the movie opens in selected cities on Dec. 21, 25 years to the month after the show’s opening night. Toward that end, they have cast the pop star Beyoncé as Deena Jones. Like the musical, she is 25, and like her character, who is based on Diana Ross of the Supremes, she was the lead singer in a black female trio, Destiny’s Child, before moving on to solo stardom.
Beyoncé, however, politely insists that the similarities stop there. “Initially, I was afraid audiences would think this is my life story,” she said. “But I don’t see myself at all in this performance, which is exactly what I wanted. My own vocal style isn’t nearly as laid back as Deena’s, and it was amazingly difficult for me to sing so restrained and poised and still deliver all that soul. Every blink had to be perfect.”
She says she “pored over” tapes of Ms. Ross in performance to prepare for the role. “It was really strange how sometimes I felt I was channeling Diana Ross,” she said.
With its marquee touting three black actors who are among the most bankable figures in the entertainment world, the casting of “Dreamgirls” mirrors the crossover phenomenon its story tells. The movie follows Curtis, an ambitious Detroit manager, played by Mr. Foxx, who hustles a local 1960’s black singing group from obscurity to the top of the charts.
“This movie is living proof that what was once the black counterculture has now become the music and movie mainstream,” Mr. Condon said, adding, “We’re at the moment now when the promise of the black Motown explosion of the 60’s has been fully realized.”
Or, as Randy Spendlove, the film’s music supervisor, put it: “There is no longer black music or white music. There’s just music that makes you feel.” The popularity of Motown also helped paper over the industry’s earlier days, which were rife with backstage bribery, payola and dirty tricks — a period depicted in the choreography of one of the film’s main dance numbers, “Steppin’ to the Bad Side.”
WITH its A-list cast and Broadway pedigree, “Dreamgirls” is aiming to reprise the success of the original production by Bennett, whose biggest Broadway triumph was “A Chorus Line” and who died of AIDS in 1987 at 44.
David Geffen, a founder of DreamWorks and one of the producers of “Dreamgirls” on Broadway, holds the rights to the show. Over the years, he has rebuffed numerous offers to adapt it to film, and perhaps with good reason. The musical-to-movie highway is littered with misfires by respected directors like Richard Attenborough (“A Chorus Line”), Sidney Lumet (“The Wiz”) and John Huston (“Annie”). One offer he accepted — a production in the late 1990’s that was to be directed by Joel Schumacher and to star Lauryn Hill as Deena — came to naught.
So how did Mr. Condon, who cut his teeth writing genre scripts back in the 80’s and 90’s (“Strange Invaders,” “FX/2”) and who had never directed a musical before, win Mr. Geffen over?
Cut to a Hollywood Christmas party in 2002, shortly after the opening of the hit film “Chicago,” for which Mr. Condon was about to earn his second Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay. (He won for “Gods and Monsters” in 1998). The producer Laurence Mark, who was at the party, recalled that Mr. Condon had been “asked to write every Broadway musical that hadn’t been filmed, or so it seemed.” He continued, “So my question to Bill was, is there any musical you’d love to direct?”
Without hesitation, Mr. Condon remembered, he replied that “the great unmade musical was ‘Dreamgirls,’ ” but that Mr. Geffen would apparently never release the rights. Mr. Mark offered to telephone Mr. Geffen, a longtime friend.
“And when I did,” Mr. Mark said, “David, of course, spent 15 minutes telling me very nicely how it was just never going to happen for lots of reasons, one of which was that he had the legacy of Michael Bennett to protect.” Nevertheless, Mr. Mark accepted an invitation for Mr. Condon and himself to lunch with Mr. Geffen the next day. (A spokeswoman for Mr. Geffen said he declined to be interviewed, preferring that Mr. Mark speak for him.)
“And during that lunch — somewhere between the baked salmon and the poached pear — Bill did his eight-minute spiel on his vision for the film,” Mr. Mark said. “When he finished, David simply said, ‘O.K., why don’t we give this a whirl?’ The next thing you know, we were talking to business affairs at DreamWorks.”
But Mr. Condon still had the small matter of directing his next film, “Kinsey.” It would be a year and a half before he could rustle up the time to write “Dreamgirls.” After he did, in January 2005, Mr. Geffen telephoned him — twice — the afternoon that he read the script to say “he was moved by it,” Mr. Condon said.
Four days later, Mr. Geffen announced the production in Variety. “That’s the kind of one-man shop this movie is,” Mr. Condon said. “Because of the backing of Geffen, I’ve been able to make this movie exactly the way I wanted to make it.”
What did Mr. Condon tell Mr. Geffen at that fateful pitch? “I said I wanted the story of ‘Dreamgirls’ to mirror its larger historical context of the turbulent 60’s and 70’s — the peace marches, the riots and the real decimation of the inner cities,” Mr. Condon recalled.
And so, in a departure from the original, Mr. Condon depicts Motown as a catalyst not only for a musical movement but for social change, too. The film includes montages of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, echoed later by images of the dream gone sour in the Detroit race riots.
Mr. Condon said he also offered Mr. Geffen a solution to a stylistic challenge: “Paradoxically, what makes backstage musicals more cinematic is to set them close to their theatrical roots. I wanted to keep the film of ‘Dreamgirls’ as much in the world of theater as possible.”
It was a lesson the director had absorbed on the film “Chicago.” “Working on that show was like going to a college for musicals,” he said.
So, to further fuel the project’s theatrical motor, Mr. Condon decided to move some scenes that originally took place offstage back onto the boards, using theatrical styles to enhance his film in a mirror-image of the way that Bennett — who dazzled Broadway with his use of rapid-fire cross-cuts, fades and dissolves between scenes — summoned cinematic techniques to power his staging.
For Effie’s gut-wrenching Act I finale, Mr. Condon moved the scene from its original setting in a dressing room directly onto the theatrical force field of a bare stage. The scene was shot over three days during the last week of the five-month production, “to give Ms. Hudson the time needed to grow into the role,” according to Mr. Mark, one of the movie’s producers. “And she nailed it.”
Inevitably, the movie will be judged in part by the emotional punch of that one scene. But it presented the filmmakers with a conundrum. How do you top a showstopper that arrives only halfway through the movie? Mr. Condon said he felt that the Broadway show seemed “almost over” at intermission, so he asked his music team, led by Henry Krieger, the show’s composer, to create a new and equally moving song to energize the second act.
The answer was “Listen,” an 11 o’clock number that Deena sings just before she escapes the heavy hand of Curtis, her manager, to find her own voice as a newly independent woman. Written by Mr. Krieger, Scott Cutler, Anne Preven and Beyoncé, the song is one of four composed for the movie and is included as a bonus track on Beyoncé’s “B’Day” album.
“Even though it takes place in the 70’s, this is a song that you can play on the radio and that my generation of fans can relate to today,” Beyoncé said. “And it has soul, which is really the legacy of Motown.”
As for the legacy of “Dreamgirls,” Beyoncé, like others in the movie, said Mr. Condon’s preparation and focus were responsible for finally bringing the musical to the screen. “It’s odd, but both Jennifer Hudson and I were born while Michael Bennett was rehearsing this show,” she mused. “Maybe, like Bill, we feel that making this movie was our destiny.”
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
-
OscarGuy
- Site Admin
- Posts: 13668
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 12:22 am
- Location: Springfield, MO
- Contact:
Here's a new trailer (they call it a montage...bah)
Trailer
Trailer
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
I've seen a rough cut of Dreamgirls, and the quality of the filmmaking -- combined with the pedigree of the prokject, the intense interest in the film and the huge publicity push that's been rolling since the picture was in pre-production -- leads me to be convinced it's going to be very much a major player in this year's Oscars.
Of course, however, I saw a rough cut of Kinsey months before its release and was sure it would have multi-nominations, so there you go . . .
I never like making predictions until December because it's all so pointless. Informed predictions have to take into account the critical and public response to a film, not the pre-release hype. Another reason why Tom O'Neil is pointless.
================
Nik, I did write back to you a few weeks ago. Did you not get my e-mail? I'll resend it.
Of course, however, I saw a rough cut of Kinsey months before its release and was sure it would have multi-nominations, so there you go . . .
I never like making predictions until December because it's all so pointless. Informed predictions have to take into account the critical and public response to a film, not the pre-release hype. Another reason why Tom O'Neil is pointless.
================
Nik, I did write back to you a few weeks ago. Did you not get my e-mail? I'll resend it.
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
-
The Original BJ
- Emeritus
- Posts: 4312
- Joined: Mon Apr 28, 2003 8:49 pm
I'm with Mister Tee. When I read, "For those who don't want either film to win, get ready to panic," my jaw hit the floor.
Have people really made up their minds which films they want to win already??!?! We haven't seen a frame yet! As far as I'm concerned, Eastwood and Condon are both on as good a role as anybody, but Jeezus Christ, people. Let's not declare the race a done deal just yet, and please let's not rejoice or pout because a certain film's "going to win an Oscar." A lot will happen between now and then. A LOT.
In August 2005, Munich was going to sweep the Oscars.
In August 2004, The Aviator was going to sweep the Oscars.
In August 2002, Gangs of New York was going to sweep the Oscars.
In August 2001, uh, Gangs of New York was going to sweep the Oscars.
With the exception of an incredibly rare Return of the King-like behemoth, THE ANNOINTED FRONTRUNNER loses more often than not. Who thought Crash, Million Dollar Baby, Gladiator, American Beauty, and Shakespeare in Love (and perhaps even A Beautiful Mind) would win the Oscar when they opened?
I think I'm going to wait until I actually see some of these movies before I even begin making predix.
Have people really made up their minds which films they want to win already??!?! We haven't seen a frame yet! As far as I'm concerned, Eastwood and Condon are both on as good a role as anybody, but Jeezus Christ, people. Let's not declare the race a done deal just yet, and please let's not rejoice or pout because a certain film's "going to win an Oscar." A lot will happen between now and then. A LOT.
In August 2005, Munich was going to sweep the Oscars.
In August 2004, The Aviator was going to sweep the Oscars.
In August 2002, Gangs of New York was going to sweep the Oscars.
In August 2001, uh, Gangs of New York was going to sweep the Oscars.
With the exception of an incredibly rare Return of the King-like behemoth, THE ANNOINTED FRONTRUNNER loses more often than not. Who thought Crash, Million Dollar Baby, Gladiator, American Beauty, and Shakespeare in Love (and perhaps even A Beautiful Mind) would win the Oscar when they opened?
I think I'm going to wait until I actually see some of these movies before I even begin making predix.
Yup Damien that's the one! And in the moron parade you cited, Tom O Neil is the one twirling the flaming baton.Damien wrote:Nik, what is Tom O'Neil's website these days? Is it that silly envelope thing? Got I could never bear looking at that site: Morons On Parade.
(Sidenote: Damien, did you get my e-mail a while back? Are you in London with your mom still or back in the US?)
-
Mister Tee
- Tenured Laureate
- Posts: 8648
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 2:57 pm
- Location: NYC
- Contact:
Look, I have huge respect for both Condon and Eastwood, and both of their projects have a positive vibe (though, am I alone in wondering why Eastwood is making two movies, instead of combining the two perspectives into one truly sweeping epic?).VanHelsing wrote:Looks like DreamWorks has won the Oscar race? Dreamgirls AND Flags Of Our Fathers. Kinda like ABC when it had Desperate Housewives and Lost in the Emmy race.
Desperate Housewives = Dreamgirls
Lost = Flags Of Our Fathers
It really looks like one of them is gonna get Best Picture. For those who don't want either film to win, get ready to panic.
But, good god, people -- has everyone forgotten Munich and Alexander already? (To say nothing of the dread final prize given on Oscar night last March) What is this reflex to declare the race over before hardly anyone's seen any of the films? How do we know there's not a Schindler's List or Million Dollar Baby sitting anonymously in the pack of movies to be released between now and December?
Something of a paradox: excitement about the Oscars has created a multitude of sites (like this one in intent, though most not in quality) whose sole purpose now seems to be to remove the spontaneity/sense of surprise that can be the best thing about the Oscars. It's like a site full of baseball enthusiasts wanting to declare the World Series winner in mid-June -- it not only negates the fun of the chase; it ignores the role the odd bounce or lucky break can have in any contest.
It's old-fashioned, I guess, but I'm going to watch films as they're released this fall (and, yes, get more hyped for some than for others) -- but I'm going to wait till we reach December, see what the field looks like, and only then make major judgments about what's likely to happen when the prizes are given out.
-
anonymous1980
- Laureate
- Posts: 6383
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 10:03 pm
- Location: Manila
- Contact:
I actually lurk in those boards from time to time. Most of the smart/sensible posters have already left and the ones who are left are largely idiots.Damien wrote:Nik, what is Tom O'Neil's website these days? Is it that silly envelope thing? Got I could never bear looking at that site: Morons On Parade.
Tom also managed to get a few celebrities to chat occasionally only to be embarrassed when one of them starts spewing profanity of rage towards his celebrity guest in the chatroom. Apparently, Tom doesn't have the program to monitor what is being said.
-
VanHelsing
- Assistant
- Posts: 745
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2004 1:24 am
- Contact:
Looks like DreamWorks has won the Oscar race? Dreamgirls AND Flags Of Our Fathers. Kinda like ABC when it had Desperate Housewives and Lost in the Emmy race.
Desperate Housewives = Dreamgirls
Lost = Flags Of Our Fathers
It really looks like one of them is gonna get Best Picture. For those who don't want either film to win, get ready to panic.
Desperate Housewives = Dreamgirls
Lost = Flags Of Our Fathers
It really looks like one of them is gonna get Best Picture. For those who don't want either film to win, get ready to panic.
With a Southern accent...
"Don't you dare lie to me!" and...
"You threaten my congeniality, you threaten me!"
-------
"You shouldn't be doing what you're doing. The truth is enough!"
"Are you and Perry?" ... "Please, Nelle."
"Don't you dare lie to me!" and...
"You threaten my congeniality, you threaten me!"
-------
"You shouldn't be doing what you're doing. The truth is enough!"
"Are you and Perry?" ... "Please, Nelle."