This is William Shatner singing Elton John’s Rocket Man at the 1978 Saturn Awards.
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Producer Nicolas Chartier should have been on stage at the Kodak Theatre on Sunday night for producing The Hurt Locker, but had to make other arrangements after being banned from the Oscars.
As the race for Best Picture heated up Chartier broke Academy rules by sending out a mass email urging members to vote for his film over a certain sci-fi epic with blue aliens, saying:
“If everyone tells one or two of their friends, we will win and not a $500M film.”
Once AMPAS caught on they flipped out and demanded he send an apology to the entire Academy, which he duly did, before also banning him from the ceremony.
So as his fellow producers Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal and Greg Shapiro walked up to collect their Oscars for Best Picture, what was Chartier doing?
It turns out he was at a viewing party in Malibu which was organised by producers Lynette Howell, Mike Fleiss and WME Global chief Graham Taylor.
They even had a poster of the producer with the word ‘banned’ designed in the colours of the French flag.
When Tom Hanks announced on the Oscar stage that The Hurt Locker had won Best Picture the place erupted and Chartier was given a replica Oscar, before making an alternative acceptance speech.
Someone was smart enough to film it and post the footage online:
According to Howell, it was longer than he would have been permitted at the Kodak and after that he headed off into Hollywood to all the post Oscar parties to celebrate even further.
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The latest trailer for Iron Man 2 has arrived.
I couldn’t help but notice the geeky fanboy gushing on YouTube:
It looks like this film is going to make some serious money when it opens.
Intriguingly, it hits UK cinemas on April 30th, a full week ahead of the US, where it bows on May 7th.
> More about Iron Man 2 at Wikipedia
> IMDb entry
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If there is one image that sums up this year’s Oscar race, it is this hilarious shot of Avatar director James Cameron and The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow from last night’s ceremony.
They were once married, but contrary to a lot of lazy media coverage in the build up to the awards, remain friends and even consult each other on their respective film projects.
Cameron urged his ex-wife to do The Hurt Locker after reading the script and even screened Avatar for Bigelow several times in post production to solicit her opinion on the sci-fi blockbuster.
Also, both films were – in their different ways – about the Iraq War as Cameron pointed out in an interview with CBS recently.
Someone has also done a nice Muckety map of the connections between the two directors.
In a way, it all worked out nicely as Avatar scooped the technical awards it deserved, as well as becoming the biggest grossing film of all time.
Meanwhile The Hurt Locker went from a film that almost no major studio wanted to make or release to a Best Picture winner that also made Bigelow the first woman to get a Best Director Oscar.
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DVD & BLU-RAY PICKS
An Education (E1 Entertainment): Coming of age dramas can often fall prey to cliché or sentimentality but this manages to avoid avoid such pitfalls to become something really special. Based on journalist Lynn Barber’s memoir of growing up in the early 1960s, it explores the life lessons learnt by a 16 year old girl named Jenny (Carey Mulligan, outstanding in the central role) as she falls for an older man (Peter Sarsgaard) and the glamorous lifestyle he appears to offer her. Skilfully directed by Lone Scherfig from an intelligent and heartfelt script by Nick Hornby, it evokes the charming drabness of the period whilst accurately depicting the emotional minefield that teenage years can be. [Buy on Blu-ray / Buy on DVD]
Bright Star (20th Century Fox Home Ent.): The latest film from director Jane Campion explores the last years of John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his relationship with Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). Beautifully filmed and acted, it is a surprise that this hasn’t got a UK Blu-ray release given the stunning Vermeer-like cinematography from Greig Fraser. [Buy on DVD]
Toy Story (Walt Disney): The first feature from Pixar finally arrives on the Blu-ray format. The 1995 film directed by John Lasseter had a brilliantly simple concept: what happens to toys when they’re not played with? The main characters it introduced us to were: Cowboy Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks), the favourite toy of a young boy named Andy, who tries to calm his colleagues during a difficult time of year – the birthday – when they may be replaced by newer toys. Along comes the snazzy Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), who mistakenly believes he is a real space ranger and not a toy. What could have been cheesy and overly commercial was instead a magical, innovative landmark in film history. Lasseter and his team won a richly deserved special Oscar “for the development and inspired application of techniques that have made possible the first feature-length computer-animated film”. [Buy on Blu-ray / Buy on DVD]
Toy Story 2 (Walt Disney): The 1999 sequel to Toy Story gets a simultaneous Blu-ray release in preparation for the third film, which is out at cinemas in June. As the only sequel Pixar have done (so far) Toy Story managed to preserve the quality of the original and in certain sequences surpass it. Toy collecting becomes the focus here, as Woody (Tom Hanks) – a rare doll from a popular 60s children’s show – gets kidnapped by a greedy collector and Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) hatches a rescue mission with Andy’s other toys. A massive box office success, the second film demonstrated that Pixar were not only innovators in terms of CG animation but that they had tremendous story telling skills which have continued to delight audiences over the last decade. [Buy on Blu-ray / Buy on DVD]
Afterschool (Network Releasing): A US indie which explores the experiences of a teenage student at an elite East Coast school who accidentally captures on camera the tragic deaths of two female classmates. Their lives become memorialised as part of an audio-visual assignment intended to facilitate the campus-wide healing process, with the technophile Robert eventually overseeing the project, which creates unexpected tensions and unease. An interesting and distinctive debut film from first time director Antonio Campos which explores new and disturbing issues for a generation who have grown up in a world connected by the web. [Buy on DVD]
ALSO OUT
Julie and Julia (Sony Pictures) [Buy on Blu-ray / Buy on DVD]
Kill Zone (Showbox Media Group) [Buy on Blu-ray / Buy on DVD]
Saw VI (Lionsgate UK) [Buy on Blu-ray / Buy on DVD]
The Great Rift (2 Entertain) [Buy on Blu-ray / Buy on DVD]
200 Motels (Tony Palmer Films) [Buy on DVD]
Amelia (20th Century Fox Home Ent.) [Buy on DVD]
Don’t Worry About Me (Verve Pictures) [Buy on DVD]
Mister Lonely (ICA) [Buy on DVD]
Motherhood (Metrodome Distribution) [Buy on DVD]
Reservoir Dogs (Lionsgate UK) [Buy on Blu-ray / Buy on DVD]
Taking Woodstock (Universal Pictures) [Buy on Blu-ray / Buy on DVD]
The Mentalist: Season 1 (Warner Home Video) [Buy on DVD]
Track 29 (Optimum Home Entertainment) [Buy on DVD]
True Lies (20th Century Fox Home Ent.) [Buy on DVD]
> The Best DVD and Blu-ray releases of 2009
> UK cinema releases for Friday 5th March including Alice in Wonderland, Legion, Chloe, Case 39 and Ondine
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