By Gareen Darakjian, Special to LAist
By Gareen Darakjian, Special to LAist
105 people were invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to become voting members today. Among those were actors Sacha Baron Cohen, Marion Cotillard, Allison Janney, Cody Diablo and Jet Li.
That's Marion Cotillard, this year's best actress winner at the Academy Awards. Pictured is a mural depicting a moment from her very sweet Oscar speech. Sadly my name isn't Olivier, I am at the moment providing 0.00% of rock to Marion's world. She's referring to Olivier Dahan, her director in the Edith Piaf biopic "La Vie en Rose." A punk if you ask me.
"No Country For Old Men," "There Will Be Blood," "Juno," "Michael Clayton," and "Atonement" all received nominations for Best Picture this morning, as the Academy Award nominations were announced in Beverly Hills. "No Country" and "There Will Be Blood" are the front runners with eight noms apiece, including a Best Actor nod for perennial Oscar fav Daniel Day-Lewis, and directing nominations for the Coen Bros. and Paul Thomas Anderson. While Javier Bardem was recognized with a Best Supporting nom for his work in "No Country," neither Tommy Lee Jones nor Josh Brolin were nominated for the film (although Jones is in the running for a Best Actor award for his work in "In the Valley of Elah" -- did anybody actually see that?).
The buzz on ?
Two of the four big summer three-quels hit DVD shelves today. Neither is worth your money. Better to spend it on La Vie en Rose, featuring one of the best performances in years by the amazing Marion Cotillard. Better yet, make it a French double-feature and pick up Paris Je T'Aime, too. If you haven't yet, invest a weekend watching Berlin Alexanderplatz. And, yes, it will take the whole weekend. Christmas and South Park...
Photo by idealterna via Flickr
A few weeks ago in this space, I predicted that Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer would be the big-budget flop of the summer. Turns out I missed it by one week. Evan Almighty tallied a meager 32.1 million dollars at the box office over the weekend--well below already reduced expectations (the ugliest five words a studio chief can ever hear--worse even than "the call girl taped everything"). Considering its budget was somewhere between 175 and 210 million dollars (depending on who you believe), Evan Almighty should prove to be the summer's #1 bust. Its prospects are further dimmed by the fact that the next couple weeks bring Ratatoille, Live Free or Die Hard and Transformers--all of which are tracking very well.