Daniel Radcliffe: Harry Potter vs. the Academy Awards
Among recent revelations and assertions ranging from the highly personal to the highly political, Daniel Radcliffe has publicly complained that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, 2011’s biggest worldwide blockbuster and the very last Harry Potter movie, is in the running in only three “technical” categories for the 2012 Academy Awards. For the record, those are Best Art Direction, Best Make-Up, and Best Visual Effects.
“I don’t think the Oscars like commercial films, or kids’ films, unless they’re directed by Martin Scorsese,” Radcliffe remarked in an interview with Radio Times. “I was watching Hugo the other day and going, ‘Why is this nominated and we’re not?’ I was slightly miffed. There’s a certain amount of snobbery. It’s kind of disheartening. I never thought I’d care. But it would’ve been nice to have some recognition, just for the hours put in.”
Scorsese’s Hugo, which happens to be an expensive box office disappointment – i.e., an “uncommercial” movie – is up for 11 Oscars. That’s more than any other film this year. Among Hugo‘s nominations are those for Best Picture and Best Director.
Daniel Radcliffe & Harry Potter vs. the Oscars
Although several Harry Potter movies have been shortlisted for the Academy Awards in a handful of “technical” categories – generally for their production design and visual effects – they’ve yet to win a single Oscar. None of the Harry Potter performers, directors, or screenwriters has been nominated for an Oscar for their work on the franchise – though many have either been nominated for or won Oscars for their work elsewhere. (See below.)
Needless to say, no Harry Potter movie has ever been a Best Picture Oscar contender. Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint have never been shortlisted either.
Directed by David Yates from Steve Kloves’ screenplay based on J.K. Rowling’s novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is arguably the best-received Harry Potter movie.
‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2’ actors: Oscar winners & nominees
In addition to Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, and Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2 also features two-time Oscar nominees Ralph Fiennes (Schindler’s List, The English Patient) and Helena Bonham Carter (The Wings of the Dove, The King’s Speech); two-time Oscar winner Emma Thompson (Best Actress for Howards End, Best Adapted Screenplay for Sense and Sensibility); and 2012 Best Actor nominee Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy).
Also: two-time Oscar nominee John Hurt (Midnight Express, The Elephant Man), two-time winner Maggie Smith (Best Actress for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Best Supporting Actress for California Suite), two-time nominee Julie Walters (Educating Rita, Billy Eliot), two-time nominee Miranda Richardson (Damage, Tom & Viv), and Oscar winner Jim Broadbent (Iris).
Besides, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2 features Tom Felton, Michael Gambon, Jason Isaacs, Robbie Coltrane, Kelly Macdonald, Ciarán Hinds, David Thewlis, Timothy Spall, Warwick Davis, and Miriam Margolyes.
Daniel Radcliffe: Life after Harry Potter
Having said goodbye to Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe is currently doing quite well for himself as the star of the ghost story The Woman in Black, which way overperformed at the North American box office this past weekend.
Daniel Radcliffe Harry Potter vs. the Academy quotes via The Guardian.
Jean Dujardin: Next James Bond Villain?
When I read that The Artist‘s Best Actor Academy Award nominee and SAG Award winner Jean Dujardin was going to play a villain in the next James Bond movie, I was outraged. Why do renowned foreign actors (excepting those from English-speaking countries) have to play villains in big-budget Hollywood productions? Why don’t they have instead Adam Sandler playing a vicious villain in a French blockbuster, or Shia LaBeouf be the next Godzilla in a Japanese horror/actioner? (Though Roberto Benigni as a blood-thirsty serial killer in some David Fincher or Joel Coen/Ethan Coen movie might be interesting.)
Well, my outrage was thoroughly misplaced – at least for the time being. (I believe Jean Dujardin is still learning English.) Dujardin won’t necessarily follow in the footsteps of Christoph Waltz, Javier Bardem, Jean, Reno, Mads Mikkelsen, Mathieu Amalric, and others. The “announcement” of Dujardin’s casting as the villain of Bridesmaids 2,, The Smurfs 3, Transformers 4, Mission: Impossible 5, The Bourne Legacy 6, James Bond 74, etc – even sequels to Sandler’s Jack and Jill and Tom Hanks-Julia Roberts’ Larry Crowne – came courtesy of the website Funny or Die. Now, villain or no, I certainly wouldn’t mind Dujardin preventing Matt Damon from buying any more zoos. See video below.
Robert Redford One-Man Movie: ‘All Is Lost’
Robert Redford, 75, has been slated to star in All Is Lost, the story of an old man fighting to survive in open sea. To be directed by J.C. Chandor, All Is Lost won’t be exactly an ensemble piece along the lines of Chandor’s Margin Call (which featured Jeremy Irons, Kevin Spacey, Mary McDonnell, Demi Moore, Penn Badgley, and Zachary Quinto, among others). After all, Redford will be the film’s sole cast member.
Shooting of the adventure drama should begin this summer at Mexico’s Baja Studios in Rosarita Beach, where Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio loved and suffered while James Cameron’s Titanic sank into the tank. Lionsgate will release All Is Lost in the U.S.
Now, let’s get Oscar 2014 (or whereabouts) buzz going: does All Is Lost mean a potential Oscar nomination for Redford? Well, why not? If you have fewer actors on screen, you can focus your attention on one single performance. James Whitmore was a Best Actor nominee for Steve Binder’s Give ’em Hell, Harry! (1975), a filmization of his one-man show. Spencer Tracy was nominated for John Sturges’ The Old Man and the Sea (1958), in which Tracy is by himself during most of the film’s 86 minutes. The same went for Best Actor nominee Tom Hanks in Robert Zemeckis’ Cast Away (2000). And small casts surely didn’t hinder Best Actor nominees Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Sleuth (1972) or the quartet – Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Sandy Dennis, George Segal – in Mike Nichols’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).
Redford has been nominated for two Best Director Academy Awards: Ordinary People (1980), a family drama starring this year’s SAG Life Achievement Award recipient Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Sutherland, and Timothy Hutton; and Quiz Show (1994), a psychological/social drama with Ralph Fiennes and Paul Scofield. Redford won an Oscar for the former. As an actor, Redford has been shortlisted only once: for George Roy Hill’s The Sting (1973); he lost to Jack Lemmon in Save the Tiger. He also won an Honorary Oscar in 2002.
Among Redford’s other film credits as an actor are Arthur Penn’s costly box office disaster The Chase (1966), with Marlon Brando and Jane Fonda; Hill’s blockbuster Western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), with Paul Newman and Katharine Ross; Sydney Pollack’s spy thriller Three Days of the Condor (1973), with Faye Dunaway and Cliff Robertson; and Pollack’s romantic melodrama The Way We Were (1973), with Barbra Streisand.
Also: Pollack’s Best Picture Oscar winner Out of Africa (1985), with Meryl Streep; Adrian Lyne’s sensational sex melo Indecent Proposal (1993), with Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore; the political drama Lions for Lambs (2006), which Redford also directed and co-starred with Tom Cruise and once again Meryl Streep; and the upcoming The Company You Keep (2012), a political thriller that he also directed and stars opposite a big-name cast: Shia LaBeouf, Julie Christie, Sam Elliott, Brendan Gleeson, Brit Marling, Anna Kendrick, Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte, Jackie Evancho, Terrence Howard, Stanley Tucci, Richard Jenkins, and Chris Cooper.
5 comments
I reallly wish that Jean Dujardin had been cast in Skyfall. That would have been an even better movie. I’m just not sure if Dujardin should have been cast in the Javier Bardem role or in the Naomie Harris role. He’d have been fine in either one.
The working title should be something akin to, “We All Die Sometime,” or “Absolution of Fate.”
Instead, creative minds should collaborate to portray Jean as “Goldeneye,” the direct antithesis to James Bond. AND, I hope, the death of Daniel Craig’s character, or lack thereof. LOL
Just so you know, Miranda Richardson is also a two-time nominee. In addition to her Supporting Actress citation in 1992 for ‘Damage’, she received a Best Actress nomination in 1994 for ‘Tom & Viv’
I don’t think Harry Potter was ever close to a best movie or directing nod, but Daniel Radcliffe really hit the nail in the head with the Hugo / Scorsese reference.