I know what you were thinking: “Whew! The Oscars are over! No more of this Uggie red-carpet business! We can back to real celebrities and real celebrity issues — like what Jimmy Kimmel thinks about Kim Kardashian. Hard-hitting!” Alas, guess who went to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner over the weekend? Moreover, guess who just got a freaking book deal?
First off, there’s the Artist wonder dog hamming it up on the WHCD red carpet, presumably awaiting a glass of pinot grigio and maybe a crab cake or just holding poor Diane Sawyer up on her way to the metal detector. It’s hard to know without having been there, and when you consider that a retired Jack Russell terrier was invited and you weren’t, it’s easy to think you should have been there, and what are you doing with your life, paying off five figures’ worth of student loans while this dog has awards campaigns and international social-media notoriety in his name, and maybe you went into the wrong line of business, and really who wants to live longer than 14 or 15 years anyway on this godforsaken rock, especially one riven by war, pestilence and, well, this…
More from the AP [via Huffington Post]:
Uggie, the Jack Russell terrier who appeared in the Oscar-winning The Artist, has a memoir coming. Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, announced Friday that Uggie: My Story will come out in October. His tale of tails will be transcribed by biographer and presumed dog whisperer Wendy Holden.
Whatever. I’m totally willing to accept responsibility for this and apologize accordingly for the tsunami of existential…
Full Story »The Jack Russell Terrier Club of America loves your Uggie obsession, but a word of warning to those swept up in the hunt for lookalike pets: “Today, Jack Russell terriers are hot! Tomorrow, those of us who are truly devoted to the breed will be paying the price for this surge in popularity with greatly increased use of our rescue system.” [ANI via The Dog Files]
Full Story »Surely no one saw this coming: Uggie, the Jack Russell terrier and Artist wonder dog on whose behalf the Consider Uggie awards campaign has surged ever onward for nearly three months now, won the top prize Monday at the inaugural Golden Collar Awards.
That’s really all I have to say about that, deferring instead to Uggie’s trainer Omar Von Muller, who put the purpose of the whole phenomenon in perspective while accepting the trophy with his winning pooch:
Von Muller said the award was “overwhelming” adding: “He has been my buddy forever and is a great performer and great family member.”
He also thanked award organizers DogNewsDaily.com saying: “This is very important for all the trainers in the movie industry, because we have never been recognized before, and people just don’t understand that it takes hundreds and even thousands of hours to train a dog.”
Exactly. Respect!
[BBC; photo via WireImage]
Full Story »Despite the Consider Uggie campaign’s global impact on social media, auteur awards strategies and the ever-sensitive dynamics of poster giveaways, many adversaries would just as soon see the Artist wonder dog shot into space, Laika-style, never to be seen or heard from again. I hesitate to acknowledge or dignify their numbers, but since this is news we can both use, let’s all rally round one of the best Uggie-specific developments to date: Uggie is now a cookie.
Eleni’s, the New York-based bakery renowned for its Oscar-season confections, this week announced its 2012 collection of Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Actor cookies. Among the Best Picture assortment — which annually transforms one or two key story elements from each nominee into an edible treat — we find a Hawaiian shirt from The Descendants, a clock from Hugo, a bloated, dripping hunk of Oscar bait for The Daldry, and a cheerful Jack Russell terrier representing Michel Hazanavicius’s Oscar front-runner:
True, the tree representing The Tree of Life seems a little underimagined, but it’s not like you want to be devouring the goddamned baby’s foot we’ve seen for the last year-plus.
Anyway. Uggie! Is a cookie! As an avowed devotee of this particular awards tradition for years (nothing — and I mean nothing — will ever beat the airgun cookie from No Country For Old Men, but hey), I can’t overstate my pride in this milestone. I also can’t stop you from hungrily snapping the head off the little guy in punitive glee, followed by the tambourine from The Daldry just to add to the puppy cookie’s prolonged gastric suffering. The possibilities are endless. Or endless-ish. Whatever.
The Best Picture set is available now for $75 at Elenis.com. Enjoy!
Full Story »So we’ve already established that The Artist is going to pretty much dominate next month’s Academy Awards — a certainty that we’ve seen reflected in the behavior of certain awards-season foes who’ve taken aim at the silent film’s ubiquitous wonder dog Uggie. Christopher Plummer led the offensive last week on behalf of his Beginners co-star (and Uggie’s fellow Jack Russell terrier) Cosmo, joined over the weekend by an unlikely ally hoping to raise another dog’s profile as we sleepwalk toward Oscar.
Martin Scorsese — yes, the Martin Scorsese, master filmmaker and current Best Director nominee for Hugo — put his name on a cheeky L.A. Times op-ed asking viewers, voters and especially the organizers of the inaugural Golden Collar Awards to consider his film’s fierce Doberman, Blackie. It’s all kind of priceless:
OK, let’s lay all our cards on the table. Jack Russell terriers are small and cute. Dobermans are enormous and — handsome. More tellingly, Uggie plays a nice little mascot who does tricks and saves his master’s life in one of the films, while Blackie gives an uncompromising performance as a ferocious guard dog who terrorizes children. I’m sure you can see what I’m driving at. [...]
I’m proud of Blackie, who laid it on the line and dared to risk the sympathy of her audience. Let’s just say that on the set, she had a fitting nickname: Citizen Canine. The bath scene alone is a masterpiece of underplaying, with Blackie’s wonderfully aquiline face accentuated by the 3-D.
Ohhhh, boy. You really need to read the whole thing, for both a refreshing glimpse at Scorsese’s sense of humor and a bracing example of how dogs — dogs! — have politicized this year’s awards race. Dog News…
Full Story »Seeing Uggie, the Artist’s celebrated Jack Russell terrier, onstage Sunday night at the Golden Globes might have been enough to placate some observers who’ve demonstrated an interest in the wonder dog’s awards-season recognition. But for most who’ve joined the “Consider Uggie” chorus — 6,218 fans and counting — our mission is only getting started.
We’ve seen the most measurable growth at both Movieline’s “Consider Uggie” Facebook page and the Weinstein Company’s @Uggie_theArtist Twitter feed, the latter of which in particular has become a comprehensive clearing house for all the #ConsiderUggie news and developments you can stand. And I hope you can stand a lot of them, because:
· Uggie was on Ellen today, reprising some of his finest performance tricks and probably cutting a mean rug with the famously dance-friendly host after the credits rolled:
video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player
· The BBC devoted an entire segment to the matter of Uggie’s — and, by extension, all animals’ — ineligibility at the the Oscars, led by an uncanny simulation of what an Uggie acceptance speech might sound like. Skip ahead to the 52:00 mark; it is goosebump-inducing and extraordinary. Or it’ll make the skeptics bang their heads on a wall — which is fine with me! Just bang them hard.
· People’s pet site rounded up five noteworthy facts for Uggie newcomers, including this remarkable performance anecdote I hadn’t heard or read before:
While shooting one intense scene in which a character turns a handgun on himself, Uggie jumped into action. “Uggie was barking and pulling on the pant leg, but what they didn’t show in the scene was Uggie actually reached up and tried to pull
…
Full Story »After a few quiet holiday weeks on the #ConsiderUggie front, the awards campaign for The Artist’s wonder dog has redoubled its efforts in that far-off land of influence and taste: Great Britain. Not to be outdone, a French awards body has finally thrown Uggie some much-deserved recognition. It’s all coming together, folks!
According to a press release sent over to Movieline late Wednesday, everyone’s favorite four-legged scene-stealer is making considerable headway this week in his quest for hardware:
Uggie has come a long way from almost being put to sleep in a pound to now being the most talked about dog in the film that has 6 Golden Globe nominations and is tipped to sweep the board at The Oscars. Following rave reviews and a stellar opening weekend for THE ARTIST on its exclusive London platform release, Uggie, the nine year old Jack Russell Terrier, canine star of the film will be arriving in London today for a week of media appearances including BBC’s The Graham Norton Show, BBC’s Newsround and a special screening of THE ARTIST for Dogs Trust. Just today, France’s Lumière Awards awarded Uggie an honourable mention when announcing this year’s nominations.
Wait, what?
Just today, France’s Lumière Awards awarded Uggie an honourable mention when announcing this year’s nominations.
Wow. Actually, the nominations for France’s equivalent of the Golden Globes were announced just before Christmas, and sure enough, there he is: The fifth of five overall Prix Lumière acknowledgements for the homegrown Artist, and for now, anyway, the only one that the universally acclaimed film is guaranteed to win. Damn.
Elsewhere in animal awards news, author Susan Orlean continued her stumping on behalf of Rin Tin Tin — the iconic German Shepherd whom Orlean further immortalized…
Full Story »
No one wants to hear about the sex lives — or lack thereof — of their parents. But once you reach adulthood and begin to reckon with the horrific reality that parents are people too, learning all that stuff you don’t want to know is sometimes unavoidable. Mike Mills’ Beginners squarely addresses the fallout that often comes with that unwanted knowledge. And while the picture sometimes groans under the 200-pound whimsy of Mills’ filmmaking, it’s also often touchingly direct. Beginners is all about beginnings that begin with endings — the point, Mills seems to be saying, is that sometimes you need to say good-bye to make room for hello.
Thirty-eight-year-old Oliver (Ewan McGregor), a commercial artist living in Los Angeles, has only recently learned that his father, Hal (Christopher Plummer), is gay. Not much later, he learns Hal is terminally ill. After Hal’s death (which the movie’s opening scene clues us in to), Oliver, who has spent his adult life going from one short-term relationship to another, meets a woman — Mélanie Laurent’s Anna — who seems particularly attuned to his special brand of sadness. They meet at a costume party where Oliver is dressed as Sigmund Freud, accompanied by his father’s criminally adorable Jack Russell terrier, Arthur, whom Oliver willingly adopted after Hal’s death.
The costume is an obvious defense mechanism: It allows Oliver to socialize by getting others to talk about their troubles, even as he clings tenaciously and silently to his own. Anna has laryngitis, which means she has to communicate through use…
Full Story »
