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After building a long and illustrious film career by playing CGI goblins and Mega Apes, Andy Serkis is apparently tired of not getting the credit he deserves. (If you ask me, I feel like he gets a lot of credit, and I’m not saying that dismissively, I am just saying that as much as someone who is responsible for wearing a motion capture suit and translating his body language into on-screen monsters without anyone really knowing very well what he looks or sounds like, I feel like Andy Serkis is doing GRRRRRREAT!) After his apparently subtle and nuanced performance as Cesar in The Rise of the Planet of the Apes–”apparently” because I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard it’s pretty good, and I’m sure Serkis’s computer monkey was very subtle and nuanced compared to James Franco as a “scientist”–FOX is launching an all-out publicity campaign to get him an Oscar nomination for best actor. Fair enough! Seriously, sure. Why not? He seems like he really knows what he’s doing, and I’m sure he’s as good of an actor as 1996 Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding Jr. (won for Snow Dogs, I believe?). We live in a time of extraordinary technological innovation, and being able to turn a Photoshop into a believable character that you can have actual human feelings about seems like no small trick. So, yes, OK, Andy Serkis for President of Movies 2011. But now that the actual publicity campaign ads are coming out, GOOD GRIEF, that is a bit MUCH, don’t you think?! “The Time Is Now”?!?!?!?!??! Take it easy. (It’s also kind of funny that they used a side-by-side comparison in which Andy Serkis and the ape are actually making pretty different faces? Rest your case, poster, rest your case before the judge’s gavel!) Honestly, though, you’d think Andy Serkis was the new Rosie the Computer Programmer based on this poster. THE TIME IS NOW! Garbage. It’s so weird that something associated with the Academy Awards is puffed up, self-congratulatory, overly dramatic, and treats the already impossibly well-compensated work of movie-making as some kind of noble sacrifice for the human good. So weird. So unlike them. Go figure. (Via /Film. Click through to enlarge if you want to read the quote about Andy Serkis’s performance from TIME MAGAZINE*!)
*At a certain point, we’re all going to have to agree that Time magazine is not as powerful and weighty of an imprimatur of quality and integrity as it used to be, based mostly on the fact that who the fuck reads Time magazine anymore?
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Is this that Amy Sedaris woman?
Maybe they could make a movie about an Oscar that lives in a celebrity’s bathroom and comes to life at night, and Andy Serkis could play the Oscar.
Get Philip Seymour Hoffman on the phone. And a clothes pin for Andy’s nose.
It’s a bit odd that they went with “The Time Is Now”. That line seems to imply that there’s some long history of motion capture acting that has gone criminally unrecognized by the Academy, which is something that nobody thinks.
Beg to differ
THE TIME IS NOW.
Occupy the Academy!
I agree! The time IS meow!
Too easy. Let’s all agree to move on.
I wish they’d give the Oscar to a real Mega Ape.
What do you read in doctors’ offices Gabe?
The antics of Goofus and Gallant will always draw Gabe to the stack of Highlights.
Oh, R2. You’re such a Gallant!
Curses to the kid who circles all the hidden pictures in a fresh new issue of Highlights, ruining the enjoyment of everyone else to come.
This is one of the easier of the “spot the difference” picture games
ANSWER: Something that hasn’t been groped by thousands of sick people.
To be fair, Andy Serkis isn’t the one doing the campaigning. Unlike she did:
while i agree that that ad is egregiously ridiculous looking, melissa leo is a phenomenal actress and i give her a pass on it.
At first glance I thought this was a pro-bestiality campaign.
I don’t know, I thought Fozzie Bear was pretty emotive in his role as Fozzie Bear. Let’s give it to the puppeteer(s) that waggled him around.
Upvote because “waggled.”
I have to disagree here. I mean, I’m so sick of all the hollywood actors getting their egos rubbed that maybe giving it to someone lesser known would be a big FU to them. How many times do we have to see Tom Hanks or Meryl Streep walk up on stage? I wish the days of the Oscars when Marlon Brando brought up a Puerto Rican pretending to be a Native American and ripped into the establishment were back!
His earlier capture work was pretty notable too.
serkis gets nominated, billy crystal comes out in a motion-capture suit with that coy shrug look on his face, and the world spins madly on.
But just think of all the lame ‘My Precious’ jokes we will hear if he wins an Oscar!
I think Pacino will win (Jack and Jill, yo) then Serkis will leap on his back and bite his finger off.
I don’t think they’ll have enough raw materials to make Oscars for Andy Serkis and ALL OF WETA DIGITAL.
can’t we all agree that the Oscars are being real grouches for not already giving serkis an oscar? case closed.
I saw this movie and thought it was terrible. It was boring and I felt absolutely no connection to the characters, ESPECIALLY the ape. If fact I felt like the movie would have been better WITHOUT an actor potraying the ape. I say the time is now and we have all waited too long – it is time the members of the Golden Rasberrys award a Razzie to an actor they never see in a film!!!
wow, really? is it hard living in a glass cage of no emotion?
Most of the time.
The academy recognizes Ryan Gosling, and I am sure he is just a digitally created human man.
Zach and the Real Gosling
The time is now, though, right? Like, right now is now? Because if it’s not then Imma freak out!
I’m sorry I said ‘Imma’.