Christopher Plummer is, without contest, one of the greatest, most versatile and most distinguished actors of our time. Unbelievably, he was 82 years old when he won an Academy Award for Beginners, in the Best Supporting Actor category. It was the wrong prize, for the wrong film. What he really deserves is a Best Actor Read More
As we were otherwise unoccupied on Sunday night, we turned on the television to watch the 84th Academy Awards. “You’re only two years older than me,” Christopher Plummer crooned to his newly acquired gold statue, “Where have you been all my life?” Mr. Plummer won Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Beginners, giving him the distinction of being the oldest actor to ever win an Oscar. But by the end of the telecast, we’d all aged at least a couple of decades, as did Billy Crystal, who seemed to have peeked inside the Ark of the Covenant right before the broadcast.
The whole night was full of non-surprises. Read More
Join Drew Grant and Daniel D’Adderio as they discuss the Academy Awards in real time! Who will win? Brad Pitt? George Clooney? Meryl Streep??! It’s all so exciting! Read More
Last night’s Screen Actors Guild Awards shook up the Oscar race insofar as it was able to be shaken up. Sure bets in the supporting categories Octavia Spencer (The Help) and Christopher Plummer (Beginners) cleaned up again, while frontrunning lead actors George Clooney (The Descendants) and Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady) were dethroned.
The beneficiaries Read More
Newsweek‘s current issue features its annual pre-nominations “Oscar roundtable”–and either it’ll look dated when nominations are announced tomorrow, or we need to adjust our predictions! The panelists are likely nominees George Clooney and Viola Davis (the working-it pair both recently appeared together on an Entertainment Weekly cover, too), as well as Read More
Tomorrow morning will bring that early-morning announcement of this year’s Oscar nominees–with the attention-desperate wrinkle that no one knows how many nominees there will be. Herewith, our predictions, for last-minute entries into your office pool (if yours is the sort of office at which Oscar nominations are the subject of a pool. Ours is not, Read More
The most likely, of last night’s awards, to an awards-show junkie in 2002 imagining the hazy future:
1. Meryl Streep. Sure! Bet the speech was great.
2. Christopher Plummer. Glad he’s still around!
3. Martin Scorsese. He deserves some recognition!
4. George Clooney. Did he win for playing Cary Grant?
Middling likelihood–not impossible to imagine, Read More
There might not be a chill in the air just yet—thanks, global warming!—but as long as the calendar reads December, we’re in Oscar season. The first weekend of the month brings three contenders to multiplexes, but just one (hint: its name rhymes with Schmup in the Schmair) stands a good chance of bringing home the Read More
With the calendar turned over to December and the Carpetbagger blogging once again (now with a new Bagger!), awards season has officially started. And to that we say: finally. In an effort to get a jump on the equally irrelevant Golden Globes, Film Independent announced the nominees for the 25th annual Spirit Awards Read More
The Last Station
Running time 112 minutes
Written and directed by Michael Hoffman
Starring James McAvoy, Christopher Plummer, Paul Giamatti, Helen Mirren
Let the drums roll. The arrival of a movie with as much intelligence and artistry as The Last Station should also be accompanied by the sound of trumpets. For the legions of Read More
