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 »“I’ve done nothing wrong,” director Michel Hazanavicius told CNN when asked his reaction to Kim Novak’s recent comments lambasting The Artist for using the Vertigo love theme. “I used music from another movie, but it’s not illegal. We paid for that, we asked for that and we had the permission to do it. For me there is no real controversy…I feel sorry for her, but there’s a lot of movies with music from other movies, directors do that all the time and I’m not sure it’s a big deal.” [CNN]
Full Story »This just in: Kim Novak, star of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, has a beef with Oscar front-runner The Artist and its use of Bernard Herrmann’s iconic love theme from the 1958 classic. Let’s just cut to the chase and let Novak’s words speak for themselves: “I want to report a rape… my body of work has been violated by The Artist.”
Say what, Ms. Novak? Rape? Director Michel Hazanavicius might prefer the term “homage,” but potato, po-tah-to… perhaps some elaboration is in order. Novak’s personal missive, for which she composed a press release and took out a full-page trade ad, continues via Deadline:
“This film took the Love Theme music from Vertigo and used the emotions it engenders as its own. Alfred Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart can’t speak for themselves, but I can. It was our work that unconsciously or consciously evoked the memories and feelings to the audience that were used for the climax of The Artist.”
“There was no reason for them to depend on Bernard Herrmann’s score from Vertigo to provide more drama. Vertigo’s music was written during the filming. Hitchcock wanted the theme woven musically in the puzzle pieces of the storyline. Even though they did given Bernard Herrmann a small credit at the end, I believe this kind of filmmaking trick to be cheating. Shame on them!”
“It is morally wrong of people in our industry to use and abuse famous pieces of work to gain attention and applause for other than what the original work was intended. It is essential that all artists safeguard our special bodies of work for posterity, with their individual identities intact and protected.”
Novak has a point, to a point: Using a well-known piece from a beloved classic can,…
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After some initial vexation from both director Michel Hazanavicius and star Jean Dujardin about The Artist’s wonder dog Uggie factoring in this year’s awards conversation, the duo seems to be warming ever so gradually to the notion that people liking Uggie is good for the movie. “When people say the dog is a good actor, it makes me happy,” Hazanavicius said in his latest interview. “I take it as a compliment for myself and the trainer.” Fair enough! And as for Dujardin? How about prime placement on the Golden Globes’ Web site praising his canine castmate?
OK, so there’s the same old caveat about Uggie just wanting sausages at the end of the day. But come on: We all want sausages at the end of the day. I’ll take mine without mustard. And with a beer. It is the end of the day, right?
[via @goldenglobes]
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It was probably just a matter of time before French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius broke through in the United States: His OSS 117 diptych of spy spoofs had already acquired something of an international audience, and his curiosity about Hollywood has grown alongside his reputation. But no one — least of all Hazanavicius himself — likely foresaw him breaking through with The Artist.
Which says more about our culture’s lack of vision than Hazanavicius’s own. After all, he was the one who conceived and executed an honest-to-goodness black-and-white silent film about George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), a silent-era Hollywood superstar relegated to obscurity as talkies — led notably by George’s erstwhile co-star Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) — surge to the fore. The rest is history — or it will be history, anyway, if The Artist’s devotees continue mobilizing on its behalf in the awards race.
Hazanavicius just made it look easy, though. He recently talked to Movieline about the untold challenges before, during and after making his masterpiece, up to and including what’s next for the artist behind The Artist.
How are you holding up in the Artist marathon?
It’s not so easy day after day from a personal point of view, because I have kids, and they’re in Paris, and I don’t see them enough. And a lot of the time you say the same kinds of things, and there’s just one subject of discussion — your own movie. It’s not so easy. But in another way, I don’t feel I have the right to complain, because it’s a good story for the movie. And the movie goes well. So I feel like a soldier serving the movie.
A soldier for The Artist!
Yes,…
