The group gave Zero Dark Thirty its top Best Picture and Best Director prizes in addition to Best Actress for Jessica Chastain , while Lincoln ‘s Daniel Day-Lewis took Best Actor with the Chicago Film Critics Association Monday. [ Related: Golden Globes Unveil 70th Edition Nominees And ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Takes Top National Board Of Review Honors ] [ Related: LA Film Critics Name ‘Amour’ Best Picture, Boost ‘The Master,’ Jazz Up Oscar Race ] The wins follow: Best Picture: Zero Dark Thirty Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis , Lincoln Best Actress: Jessica Chastain , Zero Dark Thirty Best Supporting Actor: Phillip Seymour Hoffman , The Master Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams , The Master Best Original Screenplay: Zero Dark Thirty by Mark Boal Best Adapted Screenplay: Lincoln by Tony Kushner Best Foreign Language Film: Amour Best Documentary: The Invisible War Best Animated Feature: ParaNorman Best Cinematography: Mihai Milaimare Jr. , The Master Best Original Score: Jonny Greenwood , The Master Best Art Direction: Moonrise Kingdom Best Editing: William Goldenberg & Dylan Tichenor , Zero Dark Thirty Most Promising Performer: Quvenzhané Wallis , Beasts of the Southern Wild Most Promising Filmmaker: Benh Zeitlin , Beasts of the Southern Wild [ Related: NY Film Critics Circle Spices Up Oscar Race With ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Best Picture Pick ]
It’s impressive how much J.J. Abrams and the folks at Bad Robot manage to pack into the new teaser trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness without revealing, well, the actual plot of the summer 2013 sequel. Space action! Benedict Cumberbatch ! That darned hands-on-glass scene that just screams ” I have been and always shall be your friend !” Watch the action-packed teaser below and let’s get to piecing together the puzzle. The teaser is big on setting up an ambiguous adversarial relationship between Kirk (Chris Pine) and Cumberbatch, but Captain Pike’s voice over seems more telling of the themes Star Trek Into Darkness will hit: Kirk’s bravado, and the danger it poses to his crew. Despite the out of context flashes of intriguing set pieces — Star Wars ian spaceship action, that leap off a cliff, that other leap off a building, and what appears to be the Enterprise crash-landing in water — the hands moment ends the tease with a clear nod to Wrath of Khan , although we can’t tell who’s on what side of the glass. Still, something tells me there are more clues hidden in this teaser than we might think, like this brief shot of Noel Clarke’s as-yet unidentified character. As seen in the first nine minutes of the film , Clarke plays a man whose ailing daughter Cumberbatch approaches at a London hospital and offers to save. Here we see him in a possibly-Starfleet uniform as he appears to drop a thumble full of something into a glass of water — perhaps fulfilling his end of his deal with the Cumber-Devil? What intriguing bits and clues do you see in the teaser? Chime in below. Star Trek Into Darkness hits theaters May 17, 2013. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino defended the heavy dosage of violence in Django Unchained , his latest film starring Jamie Foxx , Christoph Waltz , Leonardo DiCaprio , Kerry Washington and Samuel L. Jackson . As with many of his past offerings, Tarantino’s Oscar hopeful includes a graphic depictions of blood and gunshot victims. Tarantino was asked about the violence over the weekend in New York in the wake of the tragedy in a Connecticut elementary school that left 26 dead, most of them children. At a Saturday press event, Tarantino said that real-life violence is the fault of perpetrators and didn’t appear to accept a correlation between incidents like the weekend’s massacre in Newtown, CT and violence on the big screen. “I think you know there’s violence in the world, tragedies happen, blame the playmakers,” he said according to BBC, adding, “It’s a Western. Give me a break.” Django Unchained received five Golden Globe nominations last week and is a strong contender for Oscar nominations next month. Still, Django star Jamie Foxx did say he believes the big screen can influence people’s actions. “We cannot turn our back and say that violence in films or anything that we do doesn’t have a sort of influence. It does,” he said. In the spaghetti-western style feature, Foxx pays a freed slave who sets out to rescue his wife from a ruthless plantation owner, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Representing more divide among the Django crew that is perhaps a microcosm of society generally, Christoph Waltz said he didn’t believe films provoke violence, adding that the film contained violence because it was in fact part of American history. “The media’s responsibility is greater than the story teller is because… Django is violent, but it’s not inspiring violence,” said Waltz. Kerry Washington offered up that violence in film can serve as an important learning vehicle, educating audiences about historical atrocities such as slavery. “I do think that it’s important when we have the opportunity to talk about violence and not just kind of have it as entertainment, but connect it to the wrongs, the injustices, the social ills,” said Washington. Meanwhile, Paramount decided to move premiere events in Los Angeles and Pittsburgh for Tom Cruise’s new action pic Jack Reacher “out of honor and respect for the families of the victims whose lives were senselessly taken.” The feature opens with sniper shooting several people. And Sunday night, new episodes of Family Guy and American Dad were dropped, with Fox network opting for repeats of the shows in order to avoid showing any potentially sensitive content. A scheduled repeat of The Cleveland Show was also swapped out. Twenty six children and six adults died at Sandy Hook school in Newton, CT. The gunman is identified as Adam Lanza, 20. He killed his mother before heading to the school Friday. [ Source: BBC ]
Do you remember when J.J. Abrams ‘ ABC series Alias was the greatest female spy story of its time? Premiering in 2001, just weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it starred an apple-cheeked newcomer with just the right combination of hardness and softness. For five seasons and through hundreds of costume changes — does the CIA really spend thousands of dollars on neon wigs? — Sydney Bristow ( Jennifer Garner ) showed the world that a female spy could be just as clever, alluring, and badass as James Bond , even on a TV budget. Since the premiere of Showtime’s spy thriller, Homeland , last year, however, Sydney has been retroactively exposed as Spy Barbie, a product of the girl-power fad of the 1990s. Homeland and the upcoming film, Zero Dark Thirty , which chronicles the decade-long manhunt for Osama bin Laden, make a more serious case for feminism — or a more serious kind of feminism — by pulling their female CIA-agent protagonists from the field and eschewing gold-lamé bikinis for sensible pantsuits. The ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ ‘Homeland’ Comparison Zero Dark Thirty ’s Maya ( Jessica Chastain) and Homeland ’s Carrie Mathison ( Claire Danes) are certainly cut from the same cotton-polyester blend cloth. They’re both young, willowy, fair-haired women hell-bent on finding a man: Maya is after bin Laden and Carrie after Abu Nazir, OBL’s fictional counterpart. They’re no-nonsense women with passion and indignation to spare, and more often than not, the smartest person in the room. They’re frequently the only women in a man’s world, but they’re not the type to make a big deal about it. Their hunches are usually ignored by exasperated higher-ups, but that has less to do with their gender than political convenience and grandstanding. Zero Dark Thirty and Homeland ’s rejection of honeypots in favor of intelligence analysts is instrumental in the reception of the film and the TV show as feminist works. That rejection reflects changing demographics within the espionage community, where female superstar data-crunchers are quickly becoming the norm. Both Maya and Carrie are famously based on real-life women in CIA.. The head of the spy bureau’s Al-Qaeda tracking team recently stated , “If I could have put out a sign on the door [after 9/11] that said ‘No men need apply,’ I would have done it.” But what’s most interesting about the feminisms — that’s feminism with an ‘s’ — of ZDT and Homeland are their different, but equally compelling, approaches to female heroism. The feminism in ZDT follows the “anything a man can do, I can do better” school of thought. It’s impossible not to project that attitude onto ZDT director Kathryn Bigelow , whose filmography strongly suggests a “guys’ girl,” and who received the first-ever Best Director Oscar awarded to a woman for making a macho military movie, The Hurt Locker . It’s difficult not to see Bigelow’s brand of feminism in Chastain’s Maya. Girlish ponytail and pouty lips aside, Chastain’s Maya is essentially a gender-neutral character. When she’s asked about her thoughts on office romance, her response is the closest she ever gets to femininity: “I’m not that girl that fucks.” In other words, the sexless, workaholic Maya briefly dons the mean-girl mask to define herself against all those other “girls” who men might see as sexual partners, instead of colleagues. In a later scene, she takes credit for her discovery of bin Laden’s hideout in a room full of military brass by declaring, “I’m the motherfucker that found this place.” With that short statement, Maya draws attention to her gender by pointedly not drawing attention to it. Anyone can be a motherfucker, man or woman — just like anyone can find bin Laden. Like Zero Dark Thirty , Homeland is rarely about Carrie’s gender. But the character begs to be read as a fervent defense of female hysteria and hyper-emotionality. It’s not PMS that makes Carrie a puppet to her emotions, but her bipolar disorder, a condition that’s spottily and sporadically treated in the show’s first season. Even after a bout of electro-convulsive therapy and a regular regimen of lithium to stabilize her mood swings, Carrie isn’t balanced enough for spycraft. When she helps capture Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), the ex-P.O.W. she alone — and correctly — believed to be a terrorist (and whom she later has an affair with), she screams, “I LOVED YOU!” at him while her embarrassed colleagues handcuff and cart him away. But the reason Homeland is a feminist — rather than misogynist — show, even with a caricature of female emotional instability at its center, is that it transforms a trait that has traditionally been used to denigrate women into a professional advantage. This isn’t the kind of gender-neutral feminism that congratulates female CEOs for shattering the glass ceiling. Rather, it questions the value of gender-neutrality and asks why women should want things that men have designated as desirable. Why should a little girl crash toy trucks together, for example, when playing with dolls will improve her verbal and empathy skills more quickly? Or in the case of Homeland , why should Carrie’s emotional instability be counted against her when it’s her perilous leaps of logic and mania-induced zealotry that enables her to see what nobody else can ? Even her ill-advised affair with Brody, fueled by loneliness and uncontrollable desire, helps her collect evidence of his extremism. The different approaches to feminism that Homeland and ZDT embody prove that there isn’t just one correct approach to gender equity: women (and progressive men) can have their feminism both ways. Now if only we could get a female CIA director, or even just a movie about one, already. Bonus note: Do Homeland and Zero Dark Thirty pass the Bechdel test ? Although the central cast of Homeland is basically Claire Danes and a bunch of dudes, it passes with flying colors. ZDT is a bit more complicated. Maya and a female colleague (Jennifer Ehle) discuss work a lot, but work for them is killing and torturing a bunch of men. It doesn’t pass on technical grounds, but it does in spirit. Whether the banner of feminism should be used to ignore, soften, or justify the brutality of torture, well, that’s a discussion for another day . Inkoo Kang is a film critic and investigative journalist in Boston. She has been published in Salon, Indiewire, Boxoffice, Yahoo! Movies, Pop Matters, Screen Junkies, and MuckRock. Her great dream in life is to direct a remake of All About Eve with an all-dog cast.” I Follow Inkoo Kang on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
No surprise, it was a Hobbit weekend with the title, accounting for over half of the overall box office and even setting a December record. It did not match the highest estimates of some box office prognosticators, but nevertheless a solid showing considering its expectations. The top 10 grossed over $122.6 million. 1. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Gross: $84,775,000 Screens: 4,045 (PSA: $20,958) Week: 1 As expected, Middle Earth proved highly lucrative at the box office, even setting a December record. With 4,045 theaters, The Hobbit ‘s gross outpaced the previous December record-holder, I Am Legend with $77.2 million. It also performed above the start of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King at $73.3 million. Still, the Lord of the Rings prequel did not match the lofty expectations of $100 million some had predicted. The feature accounted for over half of the b.o. over the weekend. 2. Rise of the Guardians Gross: $7,420,000 (Cume: $71,361,823) Screens: 3,387 (PSA: $2,191) Week: 4 (Change: – 28.7%) Rise of the Guardians placed second again and the title only fell about 29% maintaining momentum that should continue with its holiday theme. The pic will have to contend with a number of new releases headed to theaters between now and Christmas, so reaching the $100 million mark may still be tough. 3. Lincoln Gross: $7,244,000 (Cume: $107,898,000) Screens: 2,285 (PSA: 3,170) Week: 6 (Change: – 18.8%) After its big Golden Globe nomination haul, Steven Spielberg’s pic on the 16th U.S. President held strong, only dropping under 19% as the title added 271 theaters. Among the Oscar contenders, it is the highest grossing, at nearly $107.9 million, ahead of Argo ‘s $104.9 million. 4. Skyfall Gross: $7 million (Cume: $272,366,000) Screens: 2,924 (PSA: $2,394) Week: 6 (Change: – 35.1%) The latest Bond hit number one last weekend in a generally slow box office, but displayed bravado nonetheless. The pic continued to show strength over the weekend, placing fourth in its sixth week with only a 35% drop despite losing 477 theaters from the previous week. 5. Life of Pi Gross: $5.4 million (Cume: $69,559,406) Screens: 2,548 (PSA: $2,119) Week: 4 (Change: – 35.2%) Ang Lee’s 3-D spectacle held decently with a 35% drop as it lost 398 theaters over the previous weekend. Life of Pi again placed 5th in the box office rankings and it continues to be a tiger at the box office overseas where it has grossed an additional $128.5 million. Still it will have a tough time hitting $100 million domestically. 6. Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 Gross: $5,175,000 (Cume: $276,865,000) Screens: 3,042 (PSA: $1,701) Week: 5 (Change: – 43.5%) The Twilight finale lost 604 theaters in its 5th weekend, placing sixth on the chart, dropping three spots from the previous weekend. Worldwide it has grossed a cool $778,265,000 worldwide. 7. Wreck-It Ralph Gross: $3,273,000 (Cume: $168,779,000) Screens: 2,249 (PSA: $1,455) Week: 7 (Change: – 32.6%) In its seventh weekend of release, the animated Disney pic only dropped 32.6 per cent after losing 497 theaters. It again placed seventh in the chart. Abroad the pic has cumed $57.7 million. 8. Playing for Keeps Gross: $3,247,000 (Cume: $10,838,092) Screens: 2,840 (PSA: $1,143) Week: 2 (Change: – 43.5%) Opening in sixth place, the pic added three venues and dropped two slots to eighth. The pic will struggle to stay in the top 10 and will likely not stay in theaters in a significant way as new offerings open. 9. Red Dawn Gross: $2,394,000 (Cume: $40,889,423) Screens: 2,250 (PSA: $1,064) Week: 4 (Change: – 43.5%) One month out, Red Dawn lost 504 theaters and dropped one spot to 9th place. The pic will struggle to pass $45 million domestically which marks a likely loss considering its $65 million production budget. 10. Silver Linings Playbook Gross: $2,084,000 (Cume: $16,954,049 Screens: 371 (PSA: $5,617) Week: 5 (Change: – 4%) The Oscar hopeful broke the top 10 after flirting with it for a number of weeks. The feature is in comparatively far fewer theaters than its other top 10 brethren and its $5,617 per screen average is only outpaced by The Hobbit , which bowed this weekend. After dropping nearly 30% in each of the last couple weeks, the film only fell a very slight 4% this weekend, showing the title has some solid footing as it heads into the thick of the holidays and a wider expansion likely in the New Year.
The hero of Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Petit Soldat declared “The cinema is truth, 24 times per second,” as The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw noted while pondering frame rates and cinematic standards last year. Peter Jackson insists that it’s closer to 48 frames per second , as demonstrated by the groundbreaking new frame rate he utilized for this weekend’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey . But do scientific theories about the way our brains perceive images and reality — truth unfolding onscreen, in front of our eyes — support Jackson’s brave new vision for cinema, or undermine it? There is a great gulf between the cinematic look of 24 fps, the traditional rate at which film images are presented in succession to simulate moving images on a screen, and 48 fps. The latter packs more visual information into each second of film, for better and worse . Jackson and his fellow HFR enthusiasts (including James Cameron and Douglas Trumbull ) argue that 48 fps and even higher frame rates result in greater clarity and a closer approximation to real life. They also contend it reduces motion blur, thus improving the look of 3-D images. But scientists and researchers in the field of consciousness perception say that the human brain perceives reality at a rate somewhere between 24 fps and 48 fps — 40 conscious moments per second , to be more exact — and exceeding the limit of the brain’s speed of cognition beyond the sweet spot that connotes realism is where Jackson & Co. get into trouble. Movieline spoke with filmmaker James Kerwin , who lectured on the subject of the science of film perception and consciousness at the University of Arizona’s Center for Consciousness Studies . (His presentation included an analysis of the work of Dr. Stuart Hameroff and British cosmologist/philosopher Roger Penrose, and their quantum theory of consciousness.) According to Kerwin, there really is a simple scientific answer for why The Hobbit ’s 48 fps presentation plays so poorly with some viewers — and it’s not something we’ll get used to over time. HOW OUR BRAINS PERCEIVE REALITY James Kerwin: “Studies seem to show that most humans see about 66 frames per second — that’s how we see reality through our eyes, and our brains. So you would think that 48 frames per second is sufficiently below that — that it would look very different from reality. But what people aren’t taking into account is the fact that although we see 66 frames per second, neuroscientists and consciousness researchers are starting to realize that we’re only consciously aware of 40 moments per second.” “Dr. Hameroff’s theory has to do with the synchrony of the gamma waves in the brain — it’s called gamma synchrony — the brain wave cycle of 40 hertz. There’s a very strong theory that that is why we perceive 40 moments per second, but regardless of the reason, most researchers agree we perceive 40 conscious moments per second. In other words: our eyes see more than that but we’re only aware of 40. So if a frame rate hits or exceeds 40 fps, it looks to us like reality. Whereas if it’s significantly below that, like 24 fps or even 30 fps, there’s a separation, there’s a difference — and we know immediately that what we’re watching is not real.” HIGH FRAME RATES AND THE UNCANNY VALLEY “You’ve got guys like Cameron and Jackson saying, let’s make it more real because the more realistic, the better; the higher the definition, the more 3-D, the more this, the more that. They’re not taking into account what’s called The Uncanny Valley in psychology. The Uncanny Valley says that, statistically, if you map out a consumer’s reaction to something they’re seeing, if they’re seeing something artificial and it starts to approach something looking real, they begin to inherently psychologically reject it.” “Not every person perceives the Uncanny Valley, however. There are some people that just do not reject things that look too real, although the vast majority of people do experience that phenomenon. So you’re going to get some individuals who see it and go, This looks great! The problem is anecdotes are not evidence. You have to look at the public as a whole, and I think that’s what Jackson and Cameron are not doing.” FORWARD-MOVING HFR VS. TRADITIONAL FILM CONVENTIONS “There are all sorts of conventions in film that are not found in reality. People talk to each other in ways that they don’t in reality. Things are lit in ways that they’re not lit in reality. The make-up, the hair, the props, everything is fake. If you stand on a film set and you watch the actors performing, you don’t for a second think that it’s real. There are acting conventions that we have chosen to accept.” “One thing a lot of people are saying about The Hobbit in 48 is that the acting is bad — well, the acting’s not bad, they’re simply acting with cinematic conventions but it’s such a high frame rate that the motion looks too real and you can see through the artifice of the acting.” THE NECESSARY SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF — WHICH 48 FPS LACKS “It’s psychological: we need suspension of disbelief, and suspension of disbelief comes from the lower frame rate. The lower frame rate allows our brains to say, Okay — I’m not perceiving 40 conscious moments per second anymore; I’m only perceiving 24, or 30, and therefore this is not real and I can accept the artificial conventions of the acting and the lighting and the props. It’s an inherent part of the way our brain perceives things. Twenty-four or 30 frames per second is an inherent part of the cinematic experience. It’s the way we accept cinema. It’s the way we suspend our disbelief.” “Those high frame rates are great for reality television, and we accept them because we know these things are real. We’re always going to associate high frame rates with something that’s not acted, and our brains are always going to associate low frame rates with something that is not. It’s not a learned behavior; [Some say] you watch it long enough and you won’t associate it with cheap soap operas anymore. That’s nonsense. The science does not say that. It’s not learned behavior. It’s an inherent part of the way our brains see things.” James Kerwin is currently in development on an adaptation of R.U.R. Find more about him at his website , and head here to read further on Dr. Stuart Hameroff’s consciousness studies. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
“Can I be honest with you? I’m bad news. I’m not your friend. I’m not going to help you – I’m going to break you. Any questions?” are the haunting words that open the latest Zero Dark Thirty trailer spoken by actor Jason Clarke who plays Dan, a CIA interrogator. [ Related: Oscar Index: ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Caught In The Cross-Hairs ] His character is at the center of a mini-controversy that broke this week by critics of the film by Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow who say it justifies the U.S.’s use of water-boarding and other “enhanced interrogation” techniques — considered torture by many &mdash’ as useful tools in the eventual successful hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. The trailer depicts the worldwide hunt from the boardrooms of the CIA in Washington, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and eventually Afghanistan and Pakistan. Jessica Chastain, who has received multiple critics awards and nominations so far, including a Golden Globe nomination yesterday , is the secret operative at the center of the hunt. The trailer hints at the slick telling of the story and ends with what sounds like a child’s choir singing a haunting version of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters.” [ Related: Should Torture Controversy Blindside ‘Zero Dark Thirty’? ] Zero Dark Thirty Synopsis: For a decade, an elite team of intelligence and military operatives, working in secret across the globe, devoted themselves to a single goal: to find and eliminate Osama bin Laden. Zero Dark Thirty reunites the Oscar-winning team of director-producer Kathryn Bigelow and writer-producer Mark Boal ( The Hurt Locker ) for the story of history’s greatest manhunt for the world’s most dangerous man.
Kristen Stewart says it was director Walter Salles’ passion for On The Road that inspired her to sign on for the film. At the New York premiere for the film, the actress, who plays free-spirited Marylou (a character based on Beat icon Neal Cassady’s onetime wife LuAnne Henderson), Stewart told me she was impressed by the immersive research that Salles did — including a 2011 documentary called Searching for On The Road — in preparation for adapting Jack Kerouac’s novel for the screen. “There’s an honor to this story and to the project that is not typical in our business,” Stewart said. Salles is lucky to have her riding shotgun, too. Hollywood has been trying to turn On the Road into a movie since the year it was published, 1957, and Stewart’s immense star power was crucial to getting the job done. RELATED: Check out Movieline’s photo gallery of Kristen Stewart and Garrett Hedlund at the On The Road screening at AFI Fest Salles also talked to me at the premiere as did cast members Sam Riley , Garrett Hedlund and Kirsten Dunst and screenwriter Jose Rivera. It was fun to congratulate him for getting top billing on the movie poster — a rare thing indeed for writers in Hollywood. Check out my full interview below: MORE ON KRISTEN: Kristen Stewart Shares How ‘On The Road’ Helped Her Be Unabashedly Herself Kristen Stewart Talks ‘Hard Love’ In Toronto For On The Road Kristen Stewart Tells Toronto Her Character’s Ability To ‘Love So Openly’ Was Difficult, Nude Scenes Not So Much Follow Movieline on Twitter . Follow Grace Randolph on Twitter .
Pedro Almodóvar has taken a rather dark turn in his last couple of outings including 2011’s The Skin I Live In and Broken Embraces (2009). Speaking in Cannes in 2011, Almodóvar admitted that he has a dark outlook on life, at least then, but he is still very capable of pulling out a comedy. And this teaser for his latest, I’m So Excited appears to be just that. [ Related: ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Bows A New & Haunting Trailer ] There are not many detail about the film that his longtime U.S. distributor Sony Pictures Classics will open domestically sometime in 2013, but its stars include Carlos Areces, Raul Arevalo, Javier Cámara, Lola Dueñas, Carmen Machi, Laya Martí, Cecilia Roth, Hugo Silva, Miguel Ángel Silvestre, and Blanca Suárez. The clip seems to indicate I’m So Excited (a not-so-subtle reference to the Pointer Sisters early ’80s hit) will be a high-flying Laugh Out Loud adventure complete with dancing queen flight attendants and at least one pilot asleep on the job. And even Pedro himself appears to be a passenger (seated in the back in the top image). Almodóvar teased two Mays ago he was working on a comedy and even his first English-language script, though I’m So Excited or Los amantes pasajeros , which is its official Spanish title, appears to be firmly in his Spanish roots. The trailer follows with English subtitles.
Early Thursday morning, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced its Golden Globe nominees , and, as you might expect, there were some surprises. Thanks to the Academy’s decision to unveil its Oscar nominations on Jan. 10, three days before Globe winners are revealed on Jan. 13, today’s nominations will have less bearing than usual on Oscar jockeying. But don’t let anyone kid you. Academy voters may have nothing in common with HFPA members, but they aren’t impervious to the media’s perception of who’s hot, cold or no longer in the running. With that in mind, here are a few preliminary observations about the nominations: The snubs: Although both Les Misérables and Silver Linings Playbook were nominated in the Best Musical or Comedy Picture category, those films’ directors, respectively, Tom Hooper and David O. Russell were conspicuously absent from the Best Directors category. Robert De Niro , who does his best work in years in Playbook was also not nominated. Beasts of The Southern Wild was shut out entirely, although I doubt that will be the case with the Academy. In some ways, the biggest surprise of all was the cold shoulder that Skyfall got despite its critical acclaim and spectacular overseas box-office success. Adele’s theme song, Skyfall , was the FHPA’s only nod to the film. Dame Judi Dench is among the nominees, but for her work in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel . We at Movieline are also extremely disappointed that Matthew McConaughey was not nominated for Magic Mike. The surprises: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen which netted nominations for Best Film, Actor ( Ewan McGregor ) and Actress ( Emily Blunt ) in the Comedy or Musical category. (The film may not have done Skyfall numbers, but it also performed surprisingly well at the box office.) Nicole Kidman’s Supporting Actress nomination for The Paperboy should at least get Academy voters to consider or reconsider her performance. Meanwhile, Rachel Weisz’s performance in The Deep Blue Sea is turning in to the most honored acting role that nobody saw, but that could be about to change. The Head Scratcher: I realize that the title of Quentin Tarantino’s movie is not Dr. King Schultz Unchained , but it’s a damn shame that Christoph Waltz’s extraordinary performance as the bounty hunter who frees Django and helps him locate his wife, has been relegated to the Supporting Actor category. Although Daniel Day-Lewis is probably going to win the Best Actor, Drama category, I actually think Waltz would have had a better shot in that race because his performance and Django Unchained are both very different from the other entries. In the supporting actor category, he and co-star Leonardo DiCaprio will inevitably cancel each other out. Technicalities and politics be damned, Waltz’s performance is as crucial to the movie as Jamie Foxx’s, and I say he got robbed here. Related: Golden Globes Unveil 70th Edition Nominees Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
