Oscar Shakeout: ‘Lovely Bones’ May Be Broken
The reviews are in, and Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones” did not go over well tonight in London. Or anywhere else.
THR’s Kirk Honeycutt is not the only reviewer who’s panned the much-anticipated film translation of Alice Sebold’s best-selling novel. A spy in London called it “dull, lame and disappointing.” Yikes.
This isn’t good news for Paramount on a boxoffice basis. Of course, the studio will hope to spin the movie to the book’s large fan base. But Oscar-wise, it would seem that these “Bones” are fractured beyond repair. Believe me, in Oscarland, bad news travels fast!
Paramount can console itself with Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air.” That’s their ace in the hole, so OK, it’s all good, as we so often like to say. But having said that (I’m stealing from the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” finale), the 10 best picture nominees are looking more like this:
1. “Precious”
2. “Up in the Air”
3. “Nine”
4. “The Hurt Locker”
5. “Inglorious Basterds”
6. “An Education”
7. “A Single Man”
8. “Up”
9. “Invictus”
10. Choose one: “Avatar,” “A Serious Man,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “The Last Station,” “The Road,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”
Of course, it’s going to turn out that the change to 10 best picture nominations is the second-worst idea of the year, following, of course, the closing of Broadway to pedestrians and the installation of tables and chairs in Times Square. (Imagine that the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade is being rerouted to Sixth Avenue to accommodate the stupidest traffic plan in the history of New York!)
Next week, the New York press finally gets to see “The Lovely Bones,” and we’ll keep our fingers crossed that all these other people were wrong. But this is the problem when a studio insists on not showing a film to any press early to build momentum before a mass screening.
For what it’s worth, by the way, the completely unreliable Web site aintitcoolnews.com called the movie — about the rape and murder of a 14-year-old — “lovely.” Harry Knowles does note in his “review” that his wife was upset that all her favorite parts of the book were missing from the film. He doesn’t care since he never read the book but says now he’ll go out and buy it.
