14 DAY TRIAL // You probably heard about it but in case you didn’t, here it is: for the first time in her years-long career, Jennifer Aniston is getting Oscar buzz for her performance in the indie movie “Cake.” A first trailer for it was released some hours ago, and you can see it below in full.
Unfortunately, the release comes with some bad news for Aniston: she just got her first snub of the awards season. The nominees for the Independent Spirit Awards 2014 have been announced, but her name isn’t on the list in the Best Actress category.
The Spirit Awards gala isn’t a highly mediated event like the Globes or the Oscars are, but it’s considered the one that kicks off the awards season, and because of it, it’s a “tool” used for predicting future nominees and winners. That’s gotta sting for Jennifer.
Oscar buzz: manufactured or not?
The Best Female Lead nominations at the Independent Spirit Awards 2014, as per E! Online, are Marion Cotillard for “The Immigrant,” Rinko Kikuchi, Kumiko for “The Treasure Hunter,” Julianne Moore for “Still Alice,” Jenny Slate for “Obvious Child” and Tilda Swinton for “Only Lovers Left Alive.”
No love for Jennifer Aniston, despite talk of how she was a shoe-in for best actress this year, after transforming herself and immersing herself completely in the role in “Cake.” Based on this, industry watchers believe that Jennifer should come to terms with the idea that she’s not getting an Oscar nomination this year, or even worse, no awards love of any kind.
It must be said, there is something very fishy about the buzz around “Cake” and its Oscar potential: first of all, the film premiered at TIFF, where despite some warm reviews, it failed to secure a US distributor. This is almost unheard of for a movie that’s as good as unnamed people say it is.
In order to get the US distribution and thus qualify for the Oscars, the producers launched their own distribution branch, reportedly with money out of Aniston’s pocket. In other words, she’s releasing the movie at her own expense, hoping she might get that Oscar nod.
As for the buzz around the film, there is a lot of speculation that this too comes from Aniston’s publicist, who has been leaking stories of this kind for months. The fact remains that few people have seen “Cake” so it’s virtually impossible for it to be getting “strong” Oscar buzz unless “someone” really wants the fans at home to make the connection between these two.
“Cake” trailer is out, promising
This brings us to the release of the first trailer for the film. Though it’s been weeks that we’ve been hearing about Aniston and her potential Oscar-worthy performance, we’ve seen very little of the film until the first trailer premiered on ABC News – too little to actually make an opinion.
This means that distributors wasted very precious time (a few weeks’ worth of it) by not capitalizing on the hype and releasing a trailer. What makes even less sense is that they put it off for this long when they actually had footage to make a cut as promising as the one they finally delivered.
So either someone on Aniston’s camp is not handling this right, or the trailer is very misleading, making the movie look better than it is in reality. Because hot damn, this looks very promising!
“Cake” also stars Sam Worthington, Anna Kendrick, Felicity Huffman, Adriana Barraza, Sam Worthington and Mamie Gummer, and tells the story of a woman who’s a car-crash survivor, living in chronic pain. In between trying to make the pain go away with illegal drugs, she reaches out to a widower in the hope that whatever connection they might have could help them both heal.
Check it out.
