AND THE WINNER IS…

Back in November, I interviewed the terrific French actor Mathieu Amalric about his starring role in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. As the conversation came to a close, I asked him about his stated intention to quit acting for a while. His answer was somewhat cryptic:

AMALRIC: “What is very important to me is to direct my own film. That’s why I have to stop acting. But something just fell on me three days ago—but I’m not allowed to say.“

FEINBERG: “It has to do with acting, though?”

AMALRIC: “Yeah, with acting. It’s something that you just can’t refuse, so I’m gonna act again. [laughs] Yeah, in something incredible—when you will learn it, it’s so funny, it really is great.“

Well, now we know what he was taking about! Amalric has been cast as the villain in the next James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. This 22nd installment of the 007 franchise, which is currently filming in London, is being directed by Marc Forster and will again star Daniel Craig. It will hit be released in theaters on November 7, 2008.

Amalric says he and Forster decided that the evil of the character, who is named Dominic Greene, should come from within. “That’s maybe what is horrible about today,” he said. “We can’t guess who the villains are. The villains invisble.” Interesting, and perhaps controversially, he also volunteered that he is partially modeling the character on two living, well-known politicians: “I’ve been taking details, the smile of [former British Prime Minister] Tony Blair, the craziness of [current French president Nicolas] Sarkozy—he’s the worst villain we’ve ever had.”

A reader just posted the following comment about my initial post-nomination projections: “I knew you would place Juno at the top. Same way you did with Little Miss Sunshine last year.”

The reader is absolutely correct that I regarded Little Miss Sunshine as the leading contender for Best Picture last year—until just days before the Oscars, at which time I finally felt I had sufficient reason to change my call and went with The Departed on my final projections. But why am I leaning towards the critically-acclaimed, crowd-pleasing, little-indie-that-could again, you ask? Because there are some major differences between the two films, the nominations they received, and their fields of competition, among other things…

To begin with, Juno comes in with (1) a Best Director nominee, (2) a very viable Best Actress nominee, and (3) even more impressive box-office numbers that will only continue to grow during phase two of the awards season, thanks to a late season release, as opposed to one in August. It is heating up at just the right time.

Also, I am presently of the belief that No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood will split the vote of those who feel the need to support a completely ‘serious’ film, and that Juno—which might have enough passionate support anyway—would be the most obvious beneficiary… not Michael Clayton, which is solid filmmaking but rarely passion-inducing, and not Atonement, which at first seems to fit the model of past winners (period piece, British accents, sweeping score and cinematography, etc.) but lacks nominations for its director and lead actors, which is indicative of shallow support. Indeed, only two films have ever won Best Picture without a Best Director nomination.

Now, of course, comes the same question we pondered with Little Miss Sunshine: “How can Juno win without a Best Editing nomination?” It is true that only nine films have ever won Best Picture without a Best Editing nomination, and none since 1980… but this year’s Best Picture field—not to mention the recent Oscar wins for nominees like The Departed, Crash, Three Six Mafia, Eminem, etc.—are anything but historically conventional. Besides, try looking at it this way: If a nomination for Best Editing remains such a good indicator of Best Picture support, then how come the majority of this year’s Best Editing nominees (Into the Wild, Diving Bell, and The Bourne Ultimatum) are nowhere to be found among this year’s five Best Picture nominees?

Last key point: I believe to this day that Little Miss Sunshine would have won Best Picture last year had Martin Scorsese not been in the Best Director race. The win for The Departed was less an endorsement of that film (which was also outside of the historical mold of Best Picture winners) than of its director—voters knew first and foremost that they had to seize the opportunity to honor Scorsese to make up for past oversights, and then not enough of them could bring themselves to split their votes for Best Director and Best Picture in a close race, leading to the win for The Departed. Try as they might, No Country backers will not be able to elicit the same sense of obligation among Oscar voters to seize this opportunity to honor the Coens, and so there will be no coattail effect this year—in fact, I think we probably will see a Picture-Director split.

Look, it’s still early in the race, and we’ll see how things progress, but at this point I have little doubt that Juno has the stuff to win Best Picture. Keep in mind that almost nobody thought it had the stuff to get to this point until relatively recently, but I did from the start, so I would submit that I have read its support pretty well, thus far. We’ll see!

The following projections are by no means scientific and are arrived at through a variety of means, including advance screenings and insights from trusted industry sources and voters. Your comments are welcomed.

BEST PICTURE
Nominees
(1) Juno (Fox Searchlight)
(2) No Country for Old Men (Miramax)
(3) There Will Be Blood (Paramount Vantage)
(4) Atonement (Focus Features)
(5) Michael Clayton (Warner Brothers)

BEST DIRECTOR
Nominees
(1) Ethan Coen, Joel Coen (No Country for Old Men)
(2) Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood)
(3) Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
(4) Jason Reitman (Juno)
(5) Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton)

BEST ACTOR
Nominees
(1) Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood)
(2) George Clooney (Michael Clayton)
(3) Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd)
(4) Tommy Lee Jones (In the Valley of Elah)
(5) Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises)

BEST ACTRESS
Nominees
(1) Ellen Page (Juno)
(2) Julie Christie (Away from Her)
(3) Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose)
(4) Laura Linney (The Savages)
(5) Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth: The Golden Age)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Nominees
(1) Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)
(2) Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild)
(3) Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton)
(4) Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James)
(5) Philip Seymour Hoffman (Charlie Wilson’s War)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Nominees
(1) Ruby Dee (American Gangster)
(2) Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone)
(3) Cate Blanchett (I’m Not There)
(4) Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton)
(5) Saoirse Ronan (Atonement)

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Nominees
(1) Ethan Coen, Joel Coen (No Country for Old Men)
(2) Ronald Harwood (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
(3) Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood)
(4) Christopher Hampton (Atonement)
(5) Sarah Polley (Away from Her)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Nominees
(1) Diablo Cody (Juno)
(2) Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton)
(3) Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava (Ratatouille)
(4) Tamara Jenkins (The Savages)
(5) Nancy Oliver (Lars and the Real Girl)

BEST ANIMATED FILM
Nominees
(1) Ratatouille (Disney)
(2) Persepolis (Sony Pictures Classics)
(3) Surf’s Up (Columbia)

BEST FOREIGN FILM
Nominees
(1) The Counterfeitters (Austria)
(2) 12 (Russia)
(3) Katyn (Poland)
(4) Beaufort (Israel)
(5) Mongol (Kazakhstan)

BEST DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE)
Nominees
(1) Sicko (Weinstein Company)
(2) No End in Sight (Magnolia)
(3) Taxi to the Darkside (THINKFilm)
(4) Operation Homecoming (Documentary Group)
(5) War/Dance (THINKFilm)

BEST ART DIRECTION
Nominees
(1) Dante Ferretti, Francesca Lo Schiavo (Sweeney Todd)
(2) Jack Fisk, Jim Erickson (There Will Be Blood)
(3) Sarah Greenwood, Katie Spencer (Atonement)
(4) Dennis Gassner, Anna Pinnock (The Golden Compass)
(5) Arthur Max, Sonja Klaus, Leslie E. Rollins, Beth A. Rubino (American Gangster)

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Nominees
(1) Janusz Kaminski (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
(2) Roger Deakins (No Country for Old Men)
(3) Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood)
(4) Seamus McGarvey (Atonement)
(5) Roger Deakins (The Assassination of Jesse James)

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Nominees
(1) Jacqueline Durran (Atonement)
(2) Colleen Atwood (Sweeney Todd)
(3) Alexandra Byrne (Elizabeth: The Golden Age)
(4) Marit Allen (La Vie En Rose)
(5) Albert Wolsky (Across the Universe)

BEST FILM EDITING
Nominees
(1) Ethan Coen, Joel Coen (No Country for Old Men)
(2) Dylan Tichenor (There Will Be Blood)
(3) Juliette Welfing (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
(4) Jay Cassidy (Into the Wild)
(5) Christopher Rouse (The Bourne Ultimatum)

BEST MAKEUP
Nominees
(1) Jan Archibald, Didier Lavergne (La Vie En Rose)
(2) Rick Baker, Kazuhiro Tsuji (Norbit)
(3) Ve Neill, Martin Samuel (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End)

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Nominees
(1) Dario Marianelli (Atonement)
(2) Michael Giacchino (Ratatouille)
(3) Alberto Iglesias (The Kite Runner)
(4) Marco Beltrami (3:10 to Yuma)
(5) James Newton Howard (Michael Clayton)

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
Nominees
(1) “Falling Slowly” (Once)
(2) “That’s How You Know” (Enchanted)
(3) “Raise It Up” (August Rush)
(4) “Happy Working Song” (Enchanted)
(5) “So Close” (Enchanted)

BEST SOUND EDITING
Nominees
(1) Mike Hopkins, Ethan Van der Ryn (Transformers)
(2) Randy Thom, Mike Silvers (Ratatouille)
(3) Per Hallberg, Karen Baker Landers (The Bourne Ultimatum)
(4) Matthew Wood (There Will Be Blood)
(5) Skip Lievsay (No Country for Old Men)

BEST SOUND MIXING
Nominees
(1) Peter J. Devlin, Kevin O’Connell, Greg P. Russell (Transformers)
(2) Craig Berkey, Peter Kurland, Skip Lievsay, Greg Orloff (No Country for Old Men)
(3) Doc Kane, Michael Semanick, Randy Thom (Ratatouille)
(4) Kirk Francis, Scott Millan, David Parker (The Bourne Ultimatum)
(5) David Giammarco, Paul Massey, Jim Stuebe (3:10 to Yuma)

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Nominees
(1) Scott Benza, Russell Earl, Scott Farrar, John Frazier (Transformers)
(2) Michael Fink, Ben Morris, Bill Westenhofer, Trevor Wood (The Golden Compass)
(3) John Frazier, Charles Gibson, Hal Hickel, John Knoll (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End)

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM
Nominees
(TBD) I Met the Walrus
(TBD) Madame Tutli-Putli
(TBD) Meme Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)
(TBD) Moya Lyubov (My Love)
(TBD) Peter and the Wolf

BEST DOCUMENTARY (SHORT SUBJECT)
Nominees
(TBD) Freeheld
(TBD) La Corona (The Crown)
(TBD) Salim Baba
(TBD) Sari’s Mother

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM
Nominees
(TBD) At Night
(TBD) Il Supplente (The Substitute)
(TBD) Le Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets)
(TBD) Tanghi Argentini
(TBD) The Tonto Woman

This evening, the top-rated Irish radio program “The Breakfast Show” asked me back on the air to discuss the tragic death of Heath Ledger, which sent shockwaves around the world. I was somewhat reluctant because I can’t say I really knew Ledger or what he was about, but then I realized, based on today’s coverage of his death, that nobody seemed to. During his career, Ledger portrayed a rebellious soldier, a conniving student, a gay cowboy, and even Casanova, but the role that best captured his own personality may well have been his last to hit theaters: the deeply conflicted, incomprehensible Dylan-like character in I’m Not There. Ledger seems equally hard to figure out: he played shallow sex symbols, but also complex outsiders; he was drawn to homebody Michelle Williams and lived with her in quiet Brooklyn, but after their split spent time with party girls and models in hopping New York City; and he was, by all accounts, a loving father, but may have cut short their time together by behaving recklessly. At this hour, when we do not yet know if Ledger died as a result of a tragic accident or utter recklessness, he seems every bit as much of a mystery as Dylan, and every bit as tragic a figure as Dean. That was my prevailing thought during this brief interview…

• I got a call this morning from the Associated Press seeking comment about this morning’s strong showing by Juno, the awards prospects of which I have championed since Toronto. The piece has since posted, and you can check it out here. (I also spoke with USA Today for a broader piece on the nominations, and that will appear in tomorrow’s print edition.)
  
• Speaking of Juno, tomorrow afternoon I’ll be chatting with the film’s director, the newly-minted Oscar nominee Jason Reitman, a great guy and unexpected but very worthy contender.
• Also just confirmed that I’ll be speaking with celebutante-turned-actress Paris Hilton early next month when she will be in town to promote her latest film, The Hottie and the Nottie, and to be roasted by Harvard University. I imagine the whole thing will be somewhat surreal…

BEST PICTURE
SCORE 4/5 (missed Atonement)

BEST DIRECTOR
SCORE 5/5 (4/5+Alt)

BEST ACTOR
SCORE 4/5 (3/5+Alt; missed Tommy Lee Jones)

BEST ACTRESS
SCORE 5/5 (4/5+Alt)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
SCORE 5/5

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
SCORE 5/5 (4/5+Alt)

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
SCORE 4/5 (missed Away from Her)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
SCORE 5/5

BEST ANIMATED FILM
SCORE 2/3 (missed Surf’s Up)

BEST FOREIGN FILM
SCORE 3/5 (missed Beaufort and Mongol)

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
SCORE 2/5 (missed Operation Homecoming, Taxi to the Darkside, and War/Dance)

BEST ART DIRECTION
SCORE 4/5 (3/5+Alt; missed American Gangster)

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
SCORE 5/5 (4/5+Alt)

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
SCORE 3/5 (missed Across the Universe and La Vie En Rose)

BEST EDITING
SCORE 4/5 (3/5+Alt; missed The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)

BEST MAKEUP
SCORE 1/3 (missed Norbit and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End)

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
SCORE 4/5 (3/5+Alt; missed Michael Clayton)

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
SCORE 2/5 (missed “Happy Working Song” and “So Close” from Enchanted and “Raise It Up” from August Rush)

BEST SOUND EDITING
SCORE 3/5 (missed No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood)

BEST SOUND MIXING
SCORE 3/5 (2/5+Alt; missed The Bourne Ultimatum and 3:10 to Yuma)

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
SCORE 3/3

Watch this November 2007 interview with Heath Ledger and then try to tell me there were no warning signs… I call “bullshit.” This guy could not sit still and could not focus mentally for one second. Someone should have intervened… this appears to have been such a preventable tragedy. (On that note, I hope someone kicks Amy Winehouse and Britney Spears in the face tonight and gives them a nice wake-up call that this could just as easily have been one of them.)

Heath Ledger, the 28 year old Australian-born actor best known for his Oscar-nominated performance as Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain, has been found dead in New York City in what appears to be a drug overdose.

Ledger (People bio), who was not a known drug user, was found naked on his bed surrounded by prescription pills. Like us, his representatives are not yet fully aware of what happened, but what is known is that he leaves behind his ex-fiancee, Brokeback co-star Michelle Williams, and their 2 year old daughter, Matilda.

Ledger starred in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), The Patriot (2000), A Knight’s Tale (2001), Monster’s Ball (2001), The Brothers Grimm (2005), Casanova (2005), Lords of Dogtown (2005), and Candy (2006), but was best known for Brokeback Mountain (2005). His rugged good looks, brooding attitude, and brave performance as the mumbling Del Mar had already elicited comparisons to James Dean, and now his tragic death will almost certainly make him a cult icon, like Dean. Interestingly, at the time of his death, Dean had two hotly-anticipated Warner Brothers films (Rebel Without a Cause and Giant) in the can at the time of his death, and Ledger has one, as well—he was to play the demonic Joker in the next Batman film, The Dark Knight, which was scheduled for release on July 18, 2008.

UPDATE: The following is an excerpt from a November 4, 2007 New York Times profile of Ledger by Sarah Lyall that was published in conjunction with the release of his most recent film, I’m Not There. In retrospect, Ledger’s statements sound ominous…

Because Christian Bale, the actor who plays this early Dylan in the film, was scheduled to film his scenes after Mr. Ledger, Mr. Ledger said he was faced with “playing an actor portraying Christian portraying a Dylanesque character, and not being sure what Christian was going to do.” Or, to put it another way, “Who was I playing when I was acting?”

It all tied him in knots. “I stressed out a little too much,” Mr. Ledger said.

He tends to do that. He is here in London filming the latest episode of the “Batman” franchise, “The Dark Knight.” (Mr. Bale, as it happens, plays Batman; Mr. Ledger plays the Joker.) It is a physically and mentally draining role—his Joker is a “psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy” he said cheerfully — and, as often happens when he throws himself into a part, he is not sleeping much.

“Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night,” he said. “I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.” One night he took an Ambien, which failed to work. He took a second one and fell into a stupor, only to wake up an hour later, his mind still racing.

Even as he spoke, Mr. Ledger was hard-pressed to keep still. He got up and poured more coffee. He stepped outside into the courtyard and smoked a cigarette. He shook his hair out from under its hood, put a rubber band around it, took out the rubber band, put on a hat, took off the hat, put the hood back up. He went outside and had another cigarette. Polite and charming, he nonetheless gave off the sense that the last thing he wanted to do was delve deep into himself for public consumption. “It can be a little distressing to have to overintellectualize yourself,” is how he put it, a little apologetically.