Filmmakers Upset 'The Hurt Locker' ...

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Big Magilla
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Post by Big Magilla »

It's official:

As a result of his now infamous email campaign in which he urged friends to contact Academy members and tell them to support his film movie over that "$500M film" (an obvious reference to "Avatar"), "The Hurt Locker" co-producer Nicolas Chartier will be denied admittance to the Academy Awards on Sunday March 7, meaning should his film win Best Picture he will not be joining the other producers Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal and Greg Shapiro on stage to accept. Academy rules prohibit "casting a negative or derogatory light on a competing film." The Executive Committee of the Producer's branch, which met in a special late night session on Monday, stopped short of stripping him of his nomination so should "Locker" win the Academy's says "Chartier would receive his Oscar statuette at some point subsequent to the March 7 ceremonies".

Since I broke this story in Notes on a Season one week ago, speculation has been building as to just what penalty the Academy might impose. In the past violations of strict Academy rules regarding Oscar campaigning usually has resulted in the loss of some allotted tickets for the studio. It's hard to remember another instance in which a potential Oscar recipient was actually denied entrance into the building. In 2005, the Academy ruled that four of the six "Crash" producers including chief financier Bob Yari (who later sued the Academy and lost) were ineligible for a nomination as producers of the Best Picture, but denying entrance to an actual nominee is virtually unprecedented.

Winners of this award who aren't already Academy members are usually asked to join the Academy the next year. It's also highly unlikely though Chartier will getting that invitation anytime soon

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Post by rolotomasi99 »

Big Magilla wrote:The Academy has a rule in which only three producers are given credit unless an exception is made. The Hurt Locker has four - Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Greg Shapiro and Chartier. The story is that Chartier was only given credit after Biglow and Boal wrote a letter requesting his name be added.

The "punishment" will probably be to remove Chartier as one of the producers in the Academy's records.
Sounds fair to me.

Not since the charges of anti-semitism against the main character in A BEAUTIFUL MIND have I seen such a dirty Oscar campaign. I highly doubt this issue with the email will effect anyone's vote, especially coming so close to when ballots are due.

I will just be happy when this Oscar season is over. My intense interest in seeing THE HURT LOCKER win combined with the protracted Oscar timeline and vicious attacks have made this the most stressful Oscar season since BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN won.

Not that Monday morning will be any better. Either I will be unhappy with THE HURT LOCKER winning, or I will have to endure several months of folks bad-mouthing the film for beating their beloved AVATAR or INGLORIOUS BASTERDS. I fully expect the fanboys to unite on imdb and vote-down THE HURT LOCKER's imdb score if it wins Best Picture. I never thought the Academy Awards could get so ugly.
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Post by Hollywood Z »

At this point, I don't think The Hurt Locker's chances have been slighted. I mean, how many years have there been mud-slinging around this time when it comes to the awards? (Can anybody say "Harvey leaking information against A Beautiful Mind"?) Right now, the sentiment for the voters seems to be the same as it has been for decades now, in that they aren't always swayed by the biggest production or the highest gross. They seemed to go out of their way to do that last year and passed up movies like E.T. and Star Wars., why not Avatar?
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Post by Big Magilla »

The Curious Case of the ‘Hurt Locker’ Attacks
By MELENA RYZIK

Timing counts in everything but horseshoes, as the saying doesn’t go, and some awards-watchers are finding the timing and placement of several Oscar-related stories mighty suspicious. “This matter has the distinct smell of awards-season dirty tricks,” S.T. Vanairsdale writes in Movieline, about a Los Angeles Times article –reported from Baghdad, Los Angeles and Washington — in which veterans and military personnel criticize “The Hurt Locker” as inaccurate and disrespectful. (It also smells pretty familiar.)

“The criticism, coming just before Oscar ballots are due Tuesday, highlights the delicate relationship between ‘The Hurt Locker’ and the nation’s armed forces,” Julian E. Barnes, Ned Parker and John Horn write in The Times. “Members of EOD” – Explosive Ordnance Disposal — “teams in southern Iraq said in interviews arranged by the Army that ‘The Hurt Locker’ is a good action movie if you know nothing about defusing roadside bombs or the military.”

Mr. Vanairsdale writes: “I’m not about to second-guess anyone in Iraq. But I’ll totally second-guess the editors who seem to have left the ‘Additional reporting by Harvey Weinstein in Baghdad’ credit off this story.”

He goes on to point out that The Times has done several other “takedowns” of “The Hurt Locker” while piling on more positive coverage of “Inglourious Basterds.” “Seriously,” Mr. Vanairsdale writes. “Why is this just coming out now?”

A lot of reasons probably, among them dearth of other things to write about in an already-stretched awards season, the piling on to other, similar coverage and yes, dirty pool. Or perhaps this was the response of some military folks to the slight ratcheting up of anti-war sentiment that Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker” writing-directing-producing team, have injected into their acceptance speeches – which, the whispers go, were themselves a response to the charge that the movie lacked a point-of-view. Are you following? Not only were its characters not real military men, it suddenly didn’t even take a stand on war. For a full-throttle action movie filmed cheek-by-jowl to a war zone, “The Hurt Locker” sure seems pretty emasculated now, right?

Whatever. Anyway, that’s not the only suspiciously timed story circulating in the final throes of the Oscar season. Some are speculating that reports about Quentin Tarantino saving a revival movie theater in L.A. – which he has been underwriting since the mid-2000s– are also a bit iffy, coming as they do on the heels of the Weinstein Company’s campaign to remind people that Mr. Tarantino really, REALLY loves movies. In any case, Mr. Tarantino is the landlord of the New Beverly Cinema, where Jason Reitman has been programming his favorite films this week, skipping the Baftas on Sunday (where his “Up in the Air” won best adapted screenplay) to introduce “Shampoo” and “Boogie Nights.” DOES THIS MEAN THAT HARVEY, QUENTIN AND JASON ARE IN CAHOOTS?

Who cares? It’s Friday, everybody. Go see a movie.
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Post by Big Magilla »

The Academy has a rule in which only three producers are given credit unless an exception is made. The Hurt Locker has four - Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Greg Shapiro and Chartier. The story is that Chartier was only given credit after Biglow and Boal wrote a letter requesting his name be added.

The "punishment" will probably be to remove Chartier as one of the producers in the Academy's records.
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Post by OscarGuy »

And the gossip column has it wrong. As I understand it, the "Academy Bosses" have said they won't reveal the punishment until after BALLOTING is closed. So, there will still be a punishment, it just won't be revealed until after they close ballots so as not to influence the voting (though it probably has).
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Post by Sabin »

Hmmm. Could this be a Harvey/Quentin plot to get Inglourious Basterds the vote by having the competition knock each other off?

Yeah, this is the year the Oscars got screwed up.
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Post by Big Magilla »

Old news. Supposedly Chartier told his friends to rank Avatar no. 10 on their ballots so that in the convoluted balloting process votes for Avatar as no. 2 wouldn't overtake The Hurt Locker for the win. The latest, however, is that Chartier claims he was reacting to Cameron's lackeys telling their friends to rank The Hurt Locker as no. 10 on their ballots.

Hmmm. Could this be a Harvey/Quentin plot to get Inglourious Basterds the vote by having the competition knock each other off?

It's a bit late in the game for this nonsense to have much of an effect on the outcome.




Edited By Big Magilla on 1267247596
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Post by Sonic Youth »

Since there isn't a single filmmaker cited in the article, and since there is only one unidentified filmmaker (which is hardly "filmmakers" in the plural sense), and he/she is quoted in a newspaper's gossip column... how, exactly, are we expected to respond to this?

And why should "The Hurt Locker" be punished? What did "The Hurt Locker" do?

I can't wait for newpapers to go out of business.
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Post by Hustler »

Filmmakers Upset 'The Hurt Locker' Not Given Punishment Add CommentFebruary 27, 2010 02:28:24 GMT

Hollywood moviemakers are shocked after learning that Academy Award bosses refuse to punish 'The Hurt Locker' producer Nicolas Chartier for his voting campaign.
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Hollywood film-makers have reportedly been left reeling after Academy Award bosses refused to punish "The Hurt Locker" producer Nicolas Chartier over his voting campaign until after March ceremony. Chartier emailed colleagues on Friday, February 19 in a bid to rally support for the war movie, urging them to cast their votes in favor of the film in the Best Picture category before ballots close on March 2.

He seemingly took aim at rival Best Picture nominee "Avatar" by writing, "Please tell your friends who vote for the Oscars, if everyone tells one or two of their friends, we will win and not a $500 million film, we need independent movies to win." Officials at The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - who choose the Oscar winners - ban campaigns to boost votes, and Chartier immediately apologized once his email went public.

Academy bosses organized an emergency meeting, in which they discussed how to deal with Chartier's rule-breaking - but their decision not to dish out a punishment until after the March 7 event has infuriated fellow moviemakers, according to New York Post gossip column PageSix. An unnamed director tells the publication, "What bumbling bulls**t and ineptitude. They're p**sys and they're playing favorites."
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