The Weinstein Company is seemingly pulling out all the stops in trying to get Cate Blanchett an Oscar for her portrayal of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes’ “I’m Not There.”
For one, the Weinstein’s don’t have much of a shot with anything this year aside from this film which is part of the reason they’re campaigning so hard. Secondly, “I’m Not There” didn’t do great business at the box-office ($3 million in the U.S. only so far, $7 million world-wide with a reported $20 million dollar budget) so to grab some extra Oscar attention wouldn’t hurt the impending DVD release (more on that later).
As we’ve mentioned, they’ve released every Cate Blanchett scene in the film on YouTube as a way to highlight her performance for Oscar members too A.D.D. (or bored) to sit through the entire unwieldy and heady film (she doesn’t even enter until about an hour into the 2-hour, 15- minute movie). Now they’ve put a 20 minute featurette front and center on Apple Trailers.com as another way of giving Cate’s performance more shine. It’s doubtful they can do much more to give her attention, but never underestimate the Weinsteins when they get an bug idea up their butt.
The Apple featurette is ok. It’s basically a bunch of talking head interviews you’ve already seen and heard (if you’re a fan of the film) with lots of lengthy unbroken clips from the film much like the YouTube clips (only not as long, but the quality is obviously much, much better).
“Films like ‘I’m Not There’ don’t get made, really,” Blanchett says. “The script was not written for studio executives. It wasn’t a digestible document, it was an auteurs document and you don’t really read that very often. I understood the film through the process of doing it. Todd [would explain], ‘It’s like a dream.’ “
Blanchett does have a good shot, but the Best Supporting Actress category is Oscar’s biggest major-category wild card this year (which is yet just another reason the studio is working so hard).
Meanwhile, the film’s DVD release is set for a May 6 street date, however no details have been announced yet. We’d love to see a double-disc tricked out version, but we’re not holding out breath, frankly. Suffice to say there probably won’t be any Heath Ledger featurettes involved. They really ought to release a Todd Haynes’ Dylan “mix-tape” CD of all the various Dylan songs used in the film, cause it’s a great grab bag of Zimmy songs, some of which are semi-obscure and pretty great.
Watch: “Ballad Of A Thin Man” – from “I’m Not There”