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Day: January 7, 2002
The New Zealand director Peter Jackson’s 2 hour 58 minute adaptation of the first volume of J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic beat out nine other finalists for the honor in voting by a panel of several dozen filmmakers, scholars, performers, critics and industry executives. The film has seen its Oscar chances rise perceptibly in recent weeks on the basis of strong reviews and persistent popularity. [More]
Film Group’s First Awards Lift Oscar Haze a Bit
By RICK LYMAN
OS ANGELES, Jan. 6 – The murky Oscar race may have lurched ever-so-slightly into focus as the American Film Institute, in its first annual movie and television honors, named “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” the best film of 2001 at a nationally televised banquet Saturday night at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
The New Zealand director Peter Jackson’s 2 hour 58 minute adaptation of the first volume of J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic beat out nine other finalists for the honor in voting by a panel of several dozen filmmakers, scholars, performers, critics and industry executives. The film has seen its Oscar chances rise perceptibly in recent weeks on the basis of strong reviews and persistent popularity. It was No. 1 at the box office for the third weekend in a row, having made more than $200 million in less than three weeks.
The current Oscar race is in a muddle because little consensus has emerged – among critics, audiences and industry professionals – about what the best efforts were in what is widely perceived as a lackluster year for mainstream moviemaking.
Most of the critics groups have by now handed out their annual awards. Also on Saturday, for instance, the National Society of Film Critics named David Lynch’s dreamlike “Mulholland Drive” the year’s best film, just as the New York Film Critics Circle had a month earlier. The National Board of Review chose Baz Luhrmann’s opulent musical “Moulin Rouge,” while Los Angeles critics picked Todd Field’s family drama, “In the Bedroom.”
How much real effect the new, untested American Film Institute awards might have on the wide- open Oscar race, however, remains to be seen. The institute’s inaugural ceremonies were somewhat ragged and conspicuously short of actual winners on hand to pick up their honors. (Among the missing were the best-actor winner, Denzel Washington, who played a crooked cop in “Training Day,” and the winner for directing, Robert Altman, who was selected for “Gosford Park,” although Sissy Spacek was present to accept best-actress honors for “In the Bedroom.”)
Coming weeks will also bring the Broadcast Film Critics awards (on Jan. 11) and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globes (on Jan. 20), followed by awards from the actors, directors and other Hollywood guilds in February and March. Oscar nominations will be announced on Feb. 12, with the awards ceremony on March 24 in the new Kodak Theater on Hollywood Boulevard.
The institute, best known for its annual Lifetime Achievement Award and its occasional lists of the Top 100 this or that type of film (also accompanied by a television special), decided to take a slightly different approach from other groups in its annual honors. Unlike the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes and others, the institute’s top award is given to a film’s entire creative team, a calculated effort to highlight the collaborative nature of filmmaking and to stress the contributions of those whose work is usually less celebrated.
And instead of five nominations, the final award is chosen from an annual top-10 list, which this year included “A Beautiful Mind,” “Black Hawk Down,” “In the Bedroom,” “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” “Memento,” “Monster’s Ball,” “Moulin Rouge,” “Mulholland Drive” and “Shrek.”
Mr. Jackson’s film also won awards for its visual effects and production design, while “Moulin Rouge” was honored for its music and editing and “Memento” for its screenplay. Gene Hackman was named best featured actor for “The Royal Tenenbaums” (the National Society of Film Critics had earlier in the day named him best lead actor for the same role), and Jennifer Connelly won best featured actress for “A Beautiful Mind.” Mr. Hackman and Ms. Connelly, too, were not on hand to pick up their awards.
The institute also handed out awards for television, naming “The Sopranos” best dramatic series and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” best comedy series. Both are on HBO.
After auditioning for the part of hobbit Samwise Gangee, the loyal and stout pal of hero Frodo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in 1999, Sean Astin heard that “a fat guy in London” was his main competitor. [More]
Julie K.L. Dam; Julie Jordan in Los Angeles
After auditioning for the part of hobbit Samwise Gangee, the loyal and stout pal of hero Frodo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in 1999, Sean Astin heard that “a fat guy in London” was his main competitor. “I was like, ‘I can be fat!”‘ recalls the 5’8”, 175-lb. Astin, who ran in the Los Angeles marathon that year. “I sent a note saying, ‘I’m committed to doing whatever I need to do to deliver this character–including eat like a pig.”‘
True to his word, Astin, 30, packed on 30 lbs. and relocated to New Zealand in October 1999 for the 15-month shoot with wife Christine, 34, and daughter Alexandra, 5, in tow (the couple are expecting a second child this year). The can-do attitude didn’t end there. Evacuated from the set by helicopter one afternoon with a badly punctured foot caused by stepping on a stick, “he came back to work the next day,” says Rings producer Barrie M. Osborne. “He was a trouper.”
Now his travails have paid off: With the success of Rings, which made $94 million in its first week, and two more installments to come (in 2002 and 2003), it will take more than an errant twig to block Astin’s career path. Not that he is unfamiliar with the hazards of fame. The older son of actress Patty Duke, 55, and John Astin (Gomez on the 1960s TV series The Addams Family), 71, Astin watched his mother battle manic depression before divorcing John in 1985. As a result his focus, says Astin, is to be a good parent: “My priorities are clear. I provide for and protect my family.”
That devotion was evident in New Zealand, where the cast filmed all three Rings movies simultaneously. “We became family for each other,” says costar Elijah Wood, who celebrated Thanksgiving 2000 with Astin’s clan. When it came to nightlife, though, Astin often opted out. “I was the old married guy of the hobbits,” he says. “They would go out clubbing. I was maybe good for one night a month of that.”
Even as a child Astin was the self-described “goody-goody” of the family, which includes brother Mackenzie, 28, also an actor. “Sean was extremely protective of me,” says Duke, who was diagnosed with manic depression in 1982 and whose rages included breaking her Oscar (for Best Supporting Actress for 1962’s The Miracle Worker) by throwing it across the living room.
Astin responded to the tumult by immersing himself in acting rather than acting out. In 1985 he won his first film role, in Steven Spielberg’s The Goonies. “He was still a kid, but he took it seriously,” says John Astin. But the complications were far from over: At age 25, Sean discovered that John was not his biological father. In her 1987 autobiography, Call Me Anna, Duke explains that in 1970 she’d had a fling with Desi Arnaz Jr., then 17, followed by a brief affair with John. Soon after, the 23-year-old impulsively wed rock promoter Michael Tell, now 56. The Tell marriage lasted 13 days; by then, Duke was pregnant. (She married John in 1972.) DNA tests– conducted after Astin had a chance 1994 encounter with Tell’s niece, who suggested that he get tested–proved Tell to be his father. Now, though he considers John his dad, he is friendly with all three men– including Arnaz Jr., whom he met through John in 1995. To this day Duke maintains that Tell–with whom she says she was never intimate– is not Astin’s biological father. “I don’t buy that test,” she says. Astin takes a remarkably mellow view of the paternity muddle. “My feeling is that I want to honor my relationships with the people who looked after me,” he says–especially John, “who gave a huge amount of his time, energy and love.”
Forming his own family was far easier. At 19, Astin met Christine Harrell, then an assistant at his talent agency, and proposed within the first five minutes. “He was terribly brazen,” says Christine, who has been a producing partner with Astin. The couple, both UCLA grads, wed in 1992, just before Astin won the role of an overachieving, undersize college football player in 1993’s Rudy. To this day, Christine reports, “we’ll walk through an airport with 40 strangers chanting, ‘Rudy! Rudy!”‘
He would prefer them to yell “Mr. President!” Conservative Democrat Astin, whose family shares a Spanish-style house in L.A. with a dog and two cats, says he may one day run for office–and has his sights on the top job. “I’m living a full life and I’m happy,” he says. “But I really am yearning for some new challenge.”
Those Hobbits are making a habit of winning. For the third straight frame, New Line’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings” topped weekend box office rankings, with an estimated $23 million. Cume for “Rings,” which also copped an American Film Institute best pic win Saturday, is $205.5 million through just 19 days. [More]