Oscar Bits and Bites

Beautiful Angelina Jolie appear son 60 Minutes this Sunday to talk about her new film, which is quietly gaining buzz behind the scenes (thanks to Justjared):

Kris Tapley writes up an intensive piece on Méliès and Martin Scorsese’s Hugo.  It’s a wonderfully informative bit of writing, a must-read for Hugo fans:

Naturally, then, it was a perfect fit for Scorsese’s film, which features an aged Méliès when he was a toy salesman (portrayed by Ben Kingsley), struggling to forget and move on from his life’s work as a filmmaker. “A Trip to the Moon” makes an appearance in the film at a key moment in the third act, but it’s not just any version of the film. It’s the colorized Technicolor restoration that Scorsese used, truly bringing the themes of his film full circle.

Méliès was a magician before he became a filmmaker. He brought that touch to his work behind the camera, and when you talk to people who have been inspired by that work, the word “magic” just seems to effortlessly come forth.

“Motion and emotion. They were, and are, at the core of cinema,” Scorsese writes in “The Hugo Movie Companion,” a handsome behind-the-scenes hardbound book that has been published in conjunction with the film. “And it was Georges Méliès who provided the final key: magic…He saw moving pictures as a way to enrich and enlarge his stage presentations. In so doing, he took the movies another giant step forward. The Lumières [who invented motion picture photography] gave us the world as we knew it, and Méliès gave it to us as we imagined and extended it, with imaginary voyages, disappearances, and transformations.”

Jeff Wells talks to A Dangerous Method’s David Cronenberg, “I still remember the intensity of that discussion and saying to myself as Cronenberg delivered his points, “Whoa, this guy doesn’t fool around…no digressions, no bullshit.”

Scott Feinberg digs into Best Original Score and the possibilities of newcomers breaking into the pack, “This year could prove to be a tipping point for things, with a number of established veterans each in the running for multiple scores opposite a number of very worthy newcomers.”