z_Blogging the Fest

Adding up Oscar

DOING THE MATH:

It’s always dangerous to allow a words guy near numbers. But I haven’t seen any Einsteins out there crunching the data on the Best Picture contenders, so I guess it’s up to me.

Tradition has it that the leading Academy Awards nominee not only gets a Best Picture nod, but almost always goes on to win the prize as well.

But as everyone now knows, Dreamgirls made Oscar history this week by becoming the first nominees champ to not have a Best Picture bid in its basket of kudos.

Take a closer look, though and perhaps we’ve all erred by naming just one champ. There might actually be three of them.

Dreamgirls has eight nominations, which is on the low side to begin with. But three of those nods are in the Best Original Song category, for the tunes "Listen," "Love You I Do" and "Patience."

The film can win just a single Oscar for its songs, no matter how popular they are, which means the best it can do on Feb. 25 is to take six golden statues. And that result is far from assured, because it’s clear the Academy isn’t as enchanted with Dreamgirls as it obviously is with Little Miss Sunshine.

As the Dreamgirls skyrocket sputters, Jennifer Hudson’s supposed lock for a Best Supporting Actress win is in doubt. She could quite conceivably lose to Little Miss Sunshine’s Abigail Breslin, the 10-year-old firecracker who charms everybody, male or female, young or old.

Now look at Babel, which has seven nominations, Best Picture included. Two of Babel’s noms are for Best Supporting Actress for Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi. Like Dreamgirls, the film could take a maximum of six Oscars. Unlike Dreamgirls, the dual acting nomination indicates a deeper appreciation of this movie by the Academy, which is dominated by actors.

Then there’s The Queen, which has six nominations, none one of them competing and one an almost guaranteed winner: Helen Mirren as Best Actress. The film also has a Best Picture nomination.

So Dreamgirls, Babel and The Queen could each win statues, but they couldn’t all do it together. And only Babel and The Queen could win Best Picture.

Perhaps there are really three nominations leaders? Or am I missing something here?

Here’s something else to key into your calculator. Only nine movies have ever won Best Picture without an accompanying nod for editing.

The last time that happened was in 1980, when Robert Redford’s Ordinary People beat Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull in an awards outcome often cited as one of the weirdest.

Only two of the current Best Picture nominees also have nominations for editing: Babel and The Departed (which has total of five noms).

Could this spell trouble for The Queen? The lack of an editing nomination last year for Brokeback Mountain may have foretold the film’s loss for the Best Picture title to Crash, which did have one.

Anyone with a slide rule or crystal ball who wants to challenge these numbers and theories, feel free to let me know.

Thanks, Mr. Guest

FOR MY CONSIDERATION: If I’m ever in a really embarrassing situation — legal or otherwise— I hope Christopher Guest and his comedy troupe are there to bail me out.

Michael McKean, left, Harry Shearer, and Christopher Guest portray members of the spoof British band, Spinal Tap, created for Rob Reiner's cult favorite This Is Spinal Tap, in this undated photo.

Just as they did Monday afternoon, when I was the moderator for their press conference at the Sutton Place Hotel.

I occasionally get asked to help out with the interviewing chores at TIFF pressers, and I’m happy to oblige. But usually it’s just two or three people who are being interviewed, which makes for a nice chat.

On Monday, practically the entire cast of For Your Consideration showed up for the press roll call: director-screenwriter Guest, co-screenwriter Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Harry Shearer, Parker Posey, Michael McKean, Jane Lynch, Jennifer Coolidge, Fred Willard and Bob Balaban.

It’s a sign of how much they really, really like working with each other.

I was told by the floor director to say a few words about For Your Consideration, which is a spoof of Oscar buzz madness, and then to introduce each of the guests in turn, saying a little bit about each of them. Should have been a snap, even though that’s a lot of people to work through. I’ve done a lot of celebrity interviews. I thought I’d make it easy for myself by not saying the names of the characters they play in the movie.

But midway through the intros, I started to stumble over my words. I said that Guest, McKean and Shearer were once in a movie called “Spinal Cast” (It’s actually This Is Spinal Tap) and I added that Shearer “does the voice for Homer Simpson’s neighbour on The Simpsons” — the name of which suddenly vanished out of my head. D’oh!

I became acutely aware that I had 10 of my favourite actors starting at me, expecting me to say something intelligent. So were the journalists in the room and the people watching at home on TV. And yet I was dying like a bad comedian at open-mic night at Yuk Yuk’s.

I started mumbling inanities just like the Oscar-buzzing morons that are the butt of the jokes in For Your Consideration, which is a very funny movie. To my immense relief, Guest and the gang just rolled with it.

They ignored my gaffes, offered gentle corrections — Shearer kindly didn’t roll his eyes when he reminded me that Ned Flanders is Homer’s neighbour — and we got through the intros.

What the diddly? Former Spinal Tap star Harry Shearer's lesser known role is the voice of Ned Flanders in The Simpsons.

They helped me get back on track, and the rest of the interview went well. I could feel the shades of crimson on my face returning to a normal shade of pasty white.

Guest and the gang have all done so much improv comedy, it was no big deal to help a newbie regain his footing.

Thanks, guys! May much Oscar buzz come your way.

Peter Howell

Truth meets fiction

ONLY IN THE MOVIES?: So there I was last night, racing down King St. to catch the 6:30 premiere of Christopher Guest’s For Your Consideration, and what should I spy but a red car flipped over onto its roof.

Carlos Osorio/Toronto Star

Christopher Guest (from left), Eugene Levy and Michael McKean in Toronto promoting the movie For Your Consideration.

It’s not something you see every day. It’s even more rare when you see it twice in the same day.

The car last night was part of a movie shoot of some kind.

But the red car looked an awful lot like one my friend Lisa and I spotted upturned early yesterday morning, during a run in scenic Taylor Creek Park.

The vehicle had evidently been stolen by joyriders who left skid tracks all over the soft park lawn.

The ride ended with the car being turned turtle in the brush adjacent to the pathway.

There were no signs of personal injury, although the car looked to be a write-off.

Strangest thing: Somebody had dumped about 300 pennies onto the chassis.

We called the cops and reported it.

But the weirdest thing of all was seeing an almost identical red car overturned on King St.

If you see too many movies, your life eventually turns into one.

Peter Howell

John Waters and Naked Ladies

NOT SO MUDDY WATERS: Who'd have figured John Waters as a great stand-up comic?

And also a closet conservative about being gay?

John Waters brings This Filthy World to TIFF.

The Baltimore prince of the perverse is the star of his own one-man stage show in Jeff Garlin's hilarious documentary This Filthy World, debuting Sept. 14 at the festival. Waters holds forth from a garbage-strewn New York stage, made up to look like Oscar the Grouch's corner of Sesame Street. He fills the minds of young college students with stories and ideas they never heard in bedtime tales, unless Caligula was reading the nursery rhymes.

Much of what he says can't be printed in a family blog.

But he does offer advice to Hollywood studios on how best to boost flagging theatre attendance:

1. Allow people to attend movies for free, but make them pay to get out.

2. Two words: nude ushers.

3. Show porn.

4. Install masturbation booths (see 3, above).

Waters also admits that he's had trouble coping with new social attitudes about homosexuality.

"I'm from a generation of gay men who thought it was a privilege not to get married or go into the army."

And here's his very sensible advice to people who object to the rude things in his movies, such as the notorious feces-gobbling scene in Pink Flamigos.

"Why don't they just turn it off? That's what I did when Forrest Gump starting running."

BARENAKED ROMP: I was sprinting down Bloor St. after the morning screening of This Filthy World, heading for festival HQ, when I was struck by the hubbub happening on a fenced-off Bellair St.

Toronto's own Barenaked Ladies were doing a free outdoor mini-concert to promote the release of their new album Barenaked Ladies Are Me, due out Tuesday.

They've been astounding 18 years together, which in Rolling Stones terms would put them near their Tattoo You phase -- and maybe with a hot new single?

That could be the very catchy "Easy," with Ed Robertson on lead vocals, backed by co-frontman Steve Page.

They followed it with the more rocking "Wind It Up." Both tunes went down very well with the lunchtime crowd.

"We're feeling kind of grown up," Page observed, remarking on the band's longevity.

"But not too grown up."

Peter Howell

Way back when

It’s a weird thing to get moist-eyed about, but now the festival’s arrived I’ll miss the relatively intimate press pre-screenings that take place in the weeks leading up to the deluge. Not because I have any particular distaste from the hordes of foreign journalists who descend like black rain upon our fair city and balloon the attendance at press screenings from 30 or 40 to 300 or 400. Oh, bless my soul, no. What I’ll miss is the kind of trench camaraderie that sets in, inevitable by-product of spending up to eight hours a day — while the summer sun shimmers outside — in a dark theatre watching the same movies.

Most of all, I’ll miss stuff like this: at the conclusion of the press screening of the big-budget Indian dud Kabul Express — which opens with possibly the most tastelessly gratuitous use of 9/11 imagery ever — an understandably slack-jawed colleague turned to me and expressed, in a voice loud enough to be heard by passers-by outside, exactly what was on everybody’s mind at the moment. It concerned the vagaries of the process festivals call “programming.”“Were they drunk?” he bellowed.That’s the kind of stuff I’ll miss. Damned if I’m not tearing up just thinking about it.Geoff Pevere

TIFF by the book

FIRST, SOME VANDALISM: Okay, let’s get down to business.

You know the festival program book, the one that gives you a backache from lugging it around to every screening?

Here’s a way to lose some some weight and clutter.

It’s a good way to pass the time while waiting in line.

Grab that book and tear out the first 23 pages.

Director Pedro Almodovar arrives on the red carpet with Penelope Cruz, the star of his film Volver, for the film's gala Friday night.

Yank out all those ads, and all those testimonials of festival love by baby-kissing politicians who think an Almodóvar is a new kind of chocolate treat and who don’t know Guy Maddin from Ronald McDonald.

Go further and yank out all the program title pages scattered throughout the book. You don’t need ’em.

The total is 39 pages, by my count. That’s nearly a half pound of paper you don’t have to carry around. (Yes, I actually weighed it.)

You should be left with a book that begins with The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, the opening night film.“What!?” you cry. “Tamper with the sacred text?”Suck it up, bunkie. What’s more important, your back and shoulders or a book that will be gathering dust in 10 days’ time?Make it work for you. You can even go as far as one loon we know. He has a printing house razor off the back spine. Then he yanks out all the ads and political yak. The pages are then shot down to 75 per cent of the original.The result is a handy dandy book that is quite legible and convenient to carry around.Our next trick: how to turn a Starbucks cup into an attractive and useful ashtray. Peter Howell

Face of the Fest

WE’RE LOST, ALL RIGHT: Inquiring minds want to know: What’s up with the festival’s symbol this year? It shows the faceless head of a man (we presume) with red eyebrows bushy enough to hang-glide with.

It’s supposed to “symbolize the rapture of cinema,” according to Endeavour Marketing, the company in charge of the creative campaign.

Here’s what the official TIFF press release says: “The evocative and surprising visual language of this year’s poster playfully asks the question: how do films transform us? Utilizing a bold colour palette and a unique, painted look, the key art for 2006 captures the ecstasy of losing yourself in great cinema.”

Maybe so, but it’s freaky and weird. If you look too close at the full symbol, it starts to resemble two fat toucans having a conflab inside a tunnel. We’re not supposed to be seeing double for at least another week. PH