Word: chocolateer
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...Best Picture nomination an amazing nine years in a row (two in 1998); the runner-up studio for consecutive years is DreamWorks, with three. Miramax films snared the top prize in two of the past four years: The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love. Now comes Chocolat, an English-language movie with a French accent and a Swedish director (Lasse Hallstrom), a negligible film whose greatest asset is its studio logo...
...Chocolat is the story of a smug, sleepy town invaded by a charismatic outsider who feeds the villagers sweets and makes them do crazy things. To speak metaphorically, the town is Los Angeles; the outsider is Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein; and what could be nuttier than voting Chocolat a nomination for the year's best film? The movie is at best a trifle, and at most a tribute to Weinstein, a man who knows that Hollywood is the art of the sell. He can feed the Academy voters anything and have them say Mmm-mmm, good...
...possible that Chocolat touched the soft center of Oscar's heart. And who are we to dismiss any movie with an appearance by the heartthrob of two millennia, Johnny Depp? Still, we suspect that inclusion of the film testifies only to the Academy members' belief that each year attention must be paid to a Miramax film, of whatever quality or heft. It's like tithing...
...Chocolat A sweet, if slightly fluffy fairy tale. Give Johnny Depp a good haircut and you've got a great-looking cast and a delightful way to spend a weekend afternoon. What you don't have, however, is the Best Picture of the Year...
...just made history by becoming the first director to garner two Best Director nominations and two Best Picture nods in the same year), "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (Also up for Best Foreign Film; just hoping its director, Ang Lee, hasn't learned to make acceptance speeches from Robert Benigni), "Chocolat" (the most controversial nomination; Miramax has been accused of buying a nod for a film that most critics considered a sugary nothing; the film is punished with the omission of its director, Lasse Halstrom, in the directing category; "Billy Elliot" director Stephen Daldry gets the nod instead). Worried about Soderbergh...