Oscar Beat - The Movie of the Millenium! Or not…

Posted by Neil Miller (neil@filmschoolrejects.com) on January 2, 2007

Just eight days removed from declaring Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men the “movie of the millennium”, Slate’s movie critic Dana Stevens released a statement saying “Ok, maybe I was feeling a burst of yuletide generosity last week when I labeled this ‘the movie of the millennium’, but it’s been a long time since a filmmaker has brought together intellectual rigor, technical prowess and compassion the way Alfonso Cuaron does.” Ok, fair enough. We all know that critics get caught up in their own over-exaggerated levels of zeal when it comes to movies they like, so who can really fault her for trying to get her name on the movie poster by spewing out such a ridiculous comment. Here at FSR, we would probably have done the same, but less people would have noticed. The fact still remains that everyone is still high on Cuaron’s piece about the death of mankind, and it has people whispering that naughty little phrase that rhymes with Oscar dinner.

Speaking of Children of Men, we have just learned that it will go into wide release on January 5, which means plenty of people (even those in Columbus, Ohio) will have a chance to see it quite early in Awards season. This is undoubtedly the result of numerous nominations from critics associations over the past few weeks.

Along with Children of Men, films like Dreamgirls and Pan’s Labyrinth will also be expanding in release over the next few weeks thanks to being extremely well received by critics. As the trend seems to go every January, films that open in 3 screens in L.A. and New York come out strong with major releases in the New Year. It falls into the theory that you should always test the waters before making your grand entrance, kind of like dating.

Also on the Oscar warpath are more critics - sigh. Those of us at Film School Rejects are waiting for the right time to release our 2006 Honor Roll (January 21, mark it on your calenders), but many popular critics and online cinematic pundits are talking “Top Tens” this week. Two critics that I enjoy thoroughly, Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly and Josh Tyler of Cinema Blend released their Top Ten lists this week, along with that guy who made an ass of himself during a Clerks II screening earlier in the year, Joel Siegel of ABC News.

Also chiming in for the first time was the Online Film Critics Society, who announced their nominations yesterday for year end awards. A few surprises were the nomination of Pan’s Labyrinth for Best Picture and the relative lack of nominations for Dreamgirls (3 lowly nominations). It should be interesting to see which films make the vote when they announce their awards on January 23.

The OFCS is one of the last critical groups to announce awards, as many have already released their lists (Chicago, New York, Boston, L.A., BFCA, Foreign Critics, Utah, etc.) Now it comes time for the almighty guilds to recognize those films which dazzled them. Often very different from critics, the guilds are comprised of the working people of the movie industry (The Directors, Actors, Writers and even the Art Directors). All of their awards should be announced by the end of this week, so keep an eye right here as we will definitely be in the business of news regurgitation when the guilds speak their peace.

| | Read more articles by Neil Miller