Winslet Nabs a Pair of BAFTA Nominations

The BAFTA nominations have been announced, and as we know, BAFTA stands for British...uh...British (Something) Film (Something) Academy/Association/(Something).

There's a strong likelihood that these films will be similar to the ones announced in one week, when the Oscar nominations hit us over the head. Last year, for example, four of the BAFTA nominees earned Oscar nominations, and for the past five years, that's been fairly consistent: 19 out of 25 Best Picture nominees at the British Academy of Film and Television Awards have earned Academy Award nominations, as well. We won't go through the whole list, but the highlights are that Kate Winslet is nominated twice for Best Actress, something she can't do by rule with the Oscars. Individuals can be nominated twice, but it has to be in different categories. The Dark Knight received nine nominations, all but one for a technical award. Heath Ledger was among the five Best Supporting Actor nominees, but the film did not pick up nods for Best Picture, Director, or Adapted Screenplay. As expected, Slumdog Millionaire and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button are the top nominees, with 11 each. The Dark Knight finished third in the tally, followed by the surprising Changeling with eight, and Frost/Nixon with six nominations.

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DiCaprio to Produce, Star in 'Beat the Reaper'

Overall, I think you'd have to rate the past two years as below average for Leonardo DiCaprio. It's still better and more lucrative than almost any other actor alive, but for him, it's not exactly the salad days. Don't get me wrong; I think the movies are mostly still of a very high quality, but his star power hasn't been unquestionable.

Though he received an Oscar nomination for Blood Diamond, the film was not as commercially viable as it should have been, even in spite the serious undertones. His documentary, The 11th Hour, was both poorly executed and received. Body of Lies was flat, and Revolutionary Road won't get him that elusive Oscar. Yeah, outside of The Departed, it's been four years since Leo has been in synch with his audience. And The Departed was definitely a group effort. He's been working behind the scenes as a producer lately, and he obviously has a good eye for scripts; outside of my own aversion to Revolutionary Road, he hasn't taken a bad drama since The Beach, so I expect him to do well picking projects for his Appian Way production company. Variety reports that Leo has picked up another project to produce, an adaptation of the Josh Bazell novel Beat the Reaper but he'll star in it as well. And really, who doesn't love to beat the reaper now and again?

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Movie Review - 'Revolutionary Road'

Revolutionary Road Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, and Michael Shannon Directed by Sam Mendes Rated R

Is it enough to commend the look of a production like Revolutionary Road? Does it suffice to acknowledge that Sam Mendes directs this very specific type of human warfare with unflinching honesty and that Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet go to those dark places only great actors can find?Some will say yes, but I just can't recommend Revolutionary Road. The problem is not the actors or the period production design or Mendes' very measured work behind the camera or Thomas Newman's score. The problem is the principal characters, Frank and April Wheeler. They're both so incredibly detestible that you can't side with either one of them, you can't feel for them, and you can barely relate to them. The opening of Revolutionary Road is an argument. The middle is another argument. And the ending is some other argument, this time with enromous consequences. What's curious about the first confrontation is that Frank Wheeler (DiCaprio) pulls his giant 1950s sedan over to the side of the road, he and his wife April (Winslet) storm out of the car mid-fight, fight some more, and then get back in the car. If, at that point, the car had burst into flames, we would've felt some sadness that we had never gotten to know Frank and April, but once you get to know them, you might wish for the car-in-flames solution instead. Frank and April met at a party as two city kids right out of college. They fell in love with the idea of each other. Their marriage is unhappy and unending. Frank works in advertising, while April stays at home with the kids. The miserable bastards decide that to put life back into their marriage, they'll move to France. It's an idealistic approach to a very real problem, and France won't fix what's wrong, because what's wrong is Frank and April. These characters aren't just bad to each other, they're just bad people. So moving them to France would only mean that they'd bound from a tiny red Renault when they begin arguing on the Champs- Élysées.

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Leo Talks Kate Winslet and 'Revolutionary Road'

Later this year, Leonardo DiCaprio will re-team with Kate Winslet in Revolutionary Road. Together, of course, they were the star-crossed Jack and Rose in Titanic, although DiCaprio has been trying to shed that teen heartthrob image ever since.

He usually takes very serious roles with the best directors in the world (the "worst" director he's worked with in a decade is Edward Zwick) and the result is a string of thought-provoking works that extends with his latest, an adaptation of a National Book Award finalist in the 1960s, which DiCaprio says conveys some of his own disappointment with modern society.

"For me, the film asks a good question — what do you do when you are trying to hold on to a higher moral context in an immoral world? Ferris is trying to do good by his country while his country is slapping him in the face. I’m very anti-war.”

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'The Road' Likely Out of the Running for 2008 Awards

Just when it seemed as though the awards contenders were lining up, three possible nominees have been moved around...in the last two days! Let's begin with the most crushing blow to the awards season, the removal of The Road from the 2008 schedule.

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men), The Road stars Viggo Mortensen as a man going cross-country with his son after an apocalyptic event. It was supposed to be released in mid-November, following a path similar to No Country, but the film is reportedly "decidedly" not ready for release. The news gets worse: The Weinstein Company, hedging its bets that The Road won't be in shape for any kind of awards run this year, has moved Stephen Daldry's The Reader up to early December to fill its slot in the company's big end-of-the-year push.That's really sad. I know that a lot of people were really looking forward to The Road, and I can't imagine what would delay it so much in post-production, unless test results were just that negative. I don't know that to be the case, but I'm troubled by the possibility.

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