It’s the details that stand out whenever a classic film is converted to 3D.
With “Finding Nemo,” the shimmering sea surface, scratches on the lens of a diver’s goggles and smudge marks Nemo the clownfish makes when he mashes his face up against the glass wall of the aquarium that imprisons him all pop off the screen in the 3D re-issue of Pixar’s undisputed masterpiece.
I like the Producer’s Guild Awards, because they seem to widen the Oscar landscape rather than narrow it.
Hell, give “Skyfall” some love, let everybody know that “Brave” and “ParaNorman” are among the best animated films of the year.
Here’s their complete list — not keen on “Moonrise,” or “Django.” What, “Impossible” isn’t in here? Mutter…
The Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures:
“Argo” (Warner Bros.)
Producers: Ben Affleck, George Clooney, Grant Heslov
“Beasts of the Southern Wild” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Producers: Michael Gottwald, Dan Janvey, Josh Penn
“Django Unchained” (The Weinstein Company)
Producers: Reginald Hudlin, Pilar Savone, Stacey Sher
“Les Misérables” (Universal Pictures)
Producers: Tim Bevan & Eric Fellner, Debra Hayward, Cameron Mackintosh
Life of Pi” (Fox 2000 Pictures)
Producers: Ang Lee, Gil Netter, David Womark
“Lincoln” (Touchstone Pictures)
Producers: Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg
“Moonrise Kingdom” (Focus Features)
Producers: Wes Anderson & Scott Rudin, Jeremy Dawson, Steven Rales
“Silver Linings Playbook” (The Weinstein Company)
Producers: Bruce Cohen, Donna Gigliotti, Jonathan Gordon
“Skyfall” (MGM/Columbia Pictures)
Producers: Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson
“Zero Dark Thirty” (Columbia Pictures)
Producers: Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Megan Ellison
The Award for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures:
“Brave” (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
Producer: Katherine Sarafian
“Frankenweenie” (Walt Disney Pictures)
Producers: Allison Abbate, Tim Burton
“ParaNorman” (Focus Features)
Producers: Travis Knight, Arianne Sutner
“Rise of the Guardians” (Paramount Pictures)
Producers: Nancy Bernstein, Christina Steinberg
“Wreck-It Ralph” (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
Producer: Clark Spencer
NOMINEES FOR EXCELLENCE IN PRODUCTION DESIGN FOR A FEATURE FILM IN 2012:
Period Film
ANNA KARENINA Production Designer: Sarah Greenwood
ARGO Production Designer: Sharon Seymour
DJANGO UNCHAINED Production Designer: J. Michael Riva
LES MISÉRABLES Production Designer: Eve Stewart
LINCOLN Production Designer: Rick Carter
Fantasy Film
CLOUD ATLAS Production Designer: Uli Hanisch, Hugh Bateup
LIFE OF PI Production Designer: David Gropman
PROMETHEUS Production Designer: Arthur Max
THE DARK KNIGHT RISES Production Designer: Nathan Crowley
Kevin Kavanaugh
THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY Production Designer: Dan Hannah
Contemporary Film
FLIGHT Production Designer: Nelson Coates
SKYFALL Production Designer: Dennis Gassner
THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL Production Designer: Alan MacDonald
THE IMPOSSIBLE Production Designer: Eugenio Caballero
ZERO DARK THIRTY Production Designer: Jeremy Hindle
Movie fans, those with too much time on their hands, love to ponder the imponderable.
Why did America flock to see “Ted”? How did Tyler Perry build an empire by donning a dress? What is new about “The Hunger Games,” other than its not-seen-many-movies audience?
And why isn’t Jeffrey Dean Morgan a star?
Wes Anderson, the cinema’s tsar of twee, takes on young-younger-youngest love and making rebellious square pegs fit into round holes with “Moonrise Kingdom,” his latest venture into the dark and the daft.
And if it’s not as deft as his most adorable confections (“The Royal Tennenbaums,” “The Fantastic Mr. Fox”), it’s still got plenty to chew on and chuckle over for initiates in the Cult of Wes.
You’re going to want to spring for IMAX tickets to “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol.” If Tom Cruise is willing to hang off the walls of the tallest building in the world, where do you get off going cheap?
“Ghost Protocol” is the most action-packed, most jokey and self-aware, most James Bond-ish of all the Cruise “Mission” films.
He’s got one of the most famous voices in showbiz — a low, whispered growl that can be played for menace, or laughs. But as anybody who has caught Alec Baldwin on “30 Rock,” “Saturday Night Live” or even “Inside the Actor’s Studio” can attest, he’s more than happy to hide that. A gifted mimic, he’s taken down everybody from Richard Nixon to his “30 Rock” co-star Tracy Morgan with his killer impressions.
“I’ve been playing moms since ‘Training Day,’ and I was 25 when I made that,” Eva Mendes says. “Being a bad mom should come easily, by now.”
So don’t read too much into her role in “Girl in Progress,” Mendes’ latest film. The veteran spokesmodel, queen of men’s magazine covers, a woman who, onscreen, is adept at “keying into both male and female fantasies of womanhood” (Interview Magazine), may have just turned 38. That doesn’t mean she’s quite ready to transition into “mom” roles. Even if her character, “Grace,” a self-absorbed and immature mother of a teen (Cierra Ramirez) who needs her, is what Susan Sarandon likes to call “a mom…with legs.”
“‘A mom with legs,'” Mendes purrs. “I can work with that.”
“Girl in Progress,” from the director of “Under the Same Moon (La misma Luna)”, checks in the trainwreck of a life that Grace (Mendes) is leading, a struggling waitress and maid having an affair with a married man, and the trainwreck about to happen that is her daughter, whom Grace thoughtlessly named Ansiedad (Anxiety). Grace has made mistakes, and seems helpless to intervene when her very smart daughter sets out to pass several teen “rites of passage” that could put her on the same dead-end life course that mom followed.
“Grace is so human, so incredibly flawed. She seems like a real person, and did, even on the page. She’s trying her best, and failing. Miserably. She’s failing to be a ‘present’ mom, failing to be a stable influence on her daughter’s life.”
A favorite scene illustrating this? Mendes lit up for that one.
“I’m smoking in the car with the girls, my daughter and her friend, riding with me,” she says. “I’m smoking a real cigarette, and I’m kind of blowing smoke in their faces. That’s like the ultimate sign of a bad mom, kind of our ultimate taboo. When I was growing up, my family had its smokers. My parents had friends who smoked. And it wasn’t nearly the taboo it is now. That scene encapsulates Grace, and the movie. She’s not considerate, not necessarily smart, and not a mom who thinks things through. That’s her.”
But Mendes found redeeming qualities in her character, as actors are wont to do. She points out the sacrifices Grace makes to give Ansiedad a chance, and took her inspiration from a key movie of her own youth — “Stella,” the 1990 Bette Midler remake of that classic mother-daughter weeper, “Stella Dallas.”
“I’ve not seen that movie since i came out, but I remember it made a huge impression on me. HUGE. It reminded me of my relationship with my mother, the things she does that drive you crazy, the things you feel guilty about in the way you treat her.”
Mendes still isn’t letting on much about her own thoughts on motherhood (She’s been in a relationship with Ryan Gosling since last fall). And she’s still getting plenty of offers to play women who aren’t moms — she’s very high on the upcoming “The Place Beyond the Pines,” in which she co-stars with Gosling, a film by his “Blue Valentine” director, and the Cannes competition sci-fi fantasy “Holy Motors,” by Leos Carax, “a movie where I have a big role, and not one single line of dialogue! I love that. I’m trying to make all my movies more like that.”
But if there are mothers in her Hollywood future, Mendes is down with that. “Stella,” which she saw when she was 16, sticks with her.
“I’m a sucker for a good mother-daughter story.”
(Roger Moore’s review of “Girl in Progress:)
(Roger Moore’s review of the weird not-quite-wonderful “Holy Motors”)
A chilly play comes to chilly life in David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method,” a 100-minute peek into the complex relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, the birth of psychoanalysis and the schism between these two giants that impacts psychotherapy to this day.
Daft, dazzling in design but straining ever so hard to be hip, “Mirror Mirror” isn’t your Uncle Walt’s “Snow White.”
