Oscar 2009 Buzz: Kate Winslet Breaks Bette Davis’ Record, Title Sequence Design Oscar?
Clip posted by MovieTitleSequences.
Emily Oberman and Bonnie Siegler in the New York Times (by way of David Hudson’s The Daily)
"There’s an Oscar for pretty much every aspect of filmmaking, except one: the title sequences. Titles, though, have always played a significant part in motion pictures. They may have started out as simple black-and-white cards. But in the days before sound, they already did more than identify key players: they communicated dialogue and advanced plot. And as filmmaking evolved, so did title design. Titles have become wonderful bridges from reality into the cinematic world and back out again. At their very best, they are themselves innovative, emotional experiences, microcosms of their movies."
*** Oberman and Siegler then list a series of film title sequences, including the one in The Palm Beach Story (designer unkown, 1942), Stephen Frankfurt’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), and Pablo Ferro’s Dr. Strangelove (1964). Now, what about Saul Bass‘ Advise and Consent (1962)? (Bass is listed instead for Psycho [1960], above.)
***
Via the Omaha Herald World, "Facts to impress your fellow Oscar watchers." Among the impressive facts are those two quoted below:
- At 33, Kate Winslet is the youngest actress ever to get six nominations. She beat Bette Davis‘ old record, set in 1942, by a year. Winslet has yet to win an Oscar. Davis had won two by the time she was 30.
- Oscar’s weird ranking system only nominates songs that scored higher than 8.25 out of 10 with its members. So, only three songs were nominated this year. Bruce Springsteen ("The Wrestler") and Clint Eastwood ("Gran Torino") were passed over.
*** For the record, Bette Davis (above, with John Loder in the 1942 melodrama Now, Voyager, for which she got her sixth Oscar nod) went on to receive 10 Academy Award nominations in a period of 27 years (1935-1962).
***
"We think we might have created the perfect Oscar-winning film," says The [London] Independent, "a three-hanky historical epic with [Kate] Winslet, [Daniel] Day-Lewis and [Steven] Spielberg all on board. But ‘The Tango Instructor’ is missing one vital element: your creative input, dear reader…"
"The formula for success: Only three films have won all of the ‘big five’ categories (Best Picture, Actress, Actor, Director, and Original Screenplay): It Happened One Night (a 1934 Frank Capra screwball comedy); One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Milos Forman’s 1975 adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel); and The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme’s 1991 adaptation of Thomas Harris’s novel). If there is a common thread joining these three films, it’s that each features a combative male-female lead pair. None, though, is among the biggest Oscar winners … And to do that, it helps if the film is: long (the average running time of the Best Picture is 2hrs 20mins); sombre (the Academy is sniffy about comedies); epic (the broader the canvas, the happier the director of photography); set ‘historically’ or in a coherent fantasy world (give the production and costume designer something to work with); and able to fit in a battle (keep those visual-effects geeks happy), with some tasteful gore (ditto the make-up artists)."
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Kate will get more than one Oscar. She has lots and lots of time and lotssssss of talent.