Word: miramaxes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...said that moguls commanded their thousands of employees (virtually every actor, director and technician was under studio contract) to vote for the company's favored films. That doesn't happen any more, but Oscar bettors should still know which studio released a nominated movie. Especially if that studio is Miramax Films...
This boutique outfit, based in New York City, has won a 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...
...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...
BILLY ELLIOT Miramax-hyped Chocolat gets Oscar nomination over sugarcoated Brit flick...