• Could Jarvis Cocker step into the original song race with “Fantastic Mr. Fox AKA Petey’s Song” from Wes Anderson’s latest? [The Guardian]
• Scott Feinberg talks to “A Single Man” star Julianne Moore. [And the Winner Is…]
• What are the real lessons of Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown.” [Beyond the Multiplex]
• Gregory Ellwood mulls over the pros and cons of this year’s Best Actor hopefuls. [Awards Campaign]
• Andrew O’Hehir on the British indie film explosion. [Beyond the Multiplex]
• A.J. Schnack does a nice job of wrangling up info on the shortlisted short docs. [All These Wonderful Things]
The best read of the day is Scott Timberg’s substantial LA Times profile of “Where the Wild Things Are” author Maurice Sendak, which traces the vast influence he and the book exerted on children’s literature — as well as a certain young Spike Jonze.
As someone who was heavily raised on Sendak’s work — “Wild Things” apart, I could recite his entire “Nutshell Library” back-to-front in my kindergarten days — I’m glad to see the 81 year-old author foregrounded amid the swell of hype for Jonze’s film. Obviously, Timberg devotes much attention to the boundary-breaking darkness and psychological grounding of Sendak’s work; more surprising, however, is this interpretation of the book’s cinematic properties:
In “Wild Things,” a single sentence can take pages to unfold, its meaning changing slightly with each image. And this book with numerous wordless pages ends with a half-sentence and no accompanying image. Sendak works similarly to the directors of the French New Wave, who used jump cuts and other techniques to dislocate their editing.
Yesterday we covered the animated feature film race and the potential for the category to have five nominees this year, largely dependent on Robert Zemeckis’s “A Christmas Carol” being submitted as animation (a decision completely in his hands). As it turns out, the film will indeed be submitted for consideration.
That, along with “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure” brings the tally up to 16 titles. Some are expressing doubts that “Tinker Bell” can qualify, but I’m told the film “looks great, is made professionally, and will receive a theatrical run in LA, so those are the criteria.” Still, being right on the edge, this thing could go either way.
I’m still waiting on confirmation that the French film “A Town Called Panic” had a qualifying run or will have one (mass confusion), and ditto Summit’s “Astro Boy,” but that would be 17 and the absolute ceiling (by my calculation) on the number of submitted titles.
Assuming five nominees, here’s what I’m thinking…
• Lee Daniels and his cast and crew had a blast making “Precious,” despite the gut-wrenching display on screen. [Movieline]
• Hugo Rifkind sits down with Wes Anderson to talk “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” which is set to open the London Film Festival. [The Times]
• Dennis Lim talks to Nicolas Winding Refn about his film “Bronson,” one of the year’s best. [New York Times]
• We wrapped up Toronto as Lee Daniels’s “Precious” took the festival’s audience award, putting it on a solid track for Oscar.
• We got a look at the first trailer for “Harry Brown,” which may or may not be an awards film for actor Michael Caine. John, you’ll recall, isn’t feeling it.
• We saw ‘Meatball’ dominance at the box office in this weekend’s Sunday Cents column.
• This week’s Off the Carpet column kicked off our weekly Oscar coverage with a call for perspective on the perceived Best Picture frontrunners, while a new weekly column from across the pond — The Long Shot — introduces a different perspective mid-week.
AFI Fest kicks off on October 30 and runs for about a week. Generally it’s catch-up time for me as a number of the festival circuit flicks make it a requisite Fall stop, but the opening and closing Galas tend to be first-looks for the most part.
Last year “The Soloist” ultimately bowed out of the closing night slot when the film’s release date was suddenly shifted into 2009. Scott Rudin and company came to the festival’s aid with a digitally projected, slightly unfinished “Doubt,” which was ultimately a bigger get than the previously scheduled film.
This year it looks like Rudin is back in the AFI mix with Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” which has been chosen as the opening night Gala. I’ll be covering AFI Fest next month, but Guy will likely have an initial take on the film from the London fest a week or so prior.
While still ensconced in Venice, I must admit that the thought of diving into another festival makes me slightly dizzy — but the London Film Festival doesn’t care about that. LFF artistic director Sandra Hebron unveiled a strong lineup this morning, but the real news is that they have added a bevy of awards to their trophy cabinet.
In addition to their existing honors, including the Sutherland Trophy for best debut feature and the Grierson Award for best documentary, the festival will, for the first time, hand out an overall Best Film award, as well as an honor for Best British Newcomer. Meanwhile, the British Film Institute will award writing and directing fellowships. Compounding these changes, the festival will, for the first time, hold a formal awards ceremony on the final day.
• In the week’s most dramatic news, Universal rather cleared its awards slate by bumping both “The Wolf Man” and Paul Greengrass’s “Green Zone” to 2010.
• Against expectations, we were won over by Meryl Streep’s latest bid for that elusive third Oscar, “Julie & Julia.”
• The Venice Film Festival unveiled a typically well-planned lineup, with “The Road” and Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” leading the American charge.
UPDATE: “Nowhere Boy” producer, Kevin Loader, addresses Jeff Wells’s concerns about the film’s non-appearance at earlier autumn festivals quite reasonably. He explains that the post-production schedule means the film simply won’t be complete in time for Venice or Toronto. I thought as much.
This is an interesting development. Lately, the London Film Festival has chosen to wrap up with big-name films, many of them already powered by previous festival hype — “Slumdog Millionaire,” “Babel” and “Good Night, and Good Luck” have all been given the closing night slot in recent years.
By comparison, the news of this year’s closing film, Sam Taylor-Wood’s debut feature “Nowhere Boy,” comes slightly out of left field. I’ve been eagerly anticipating Taylor-Wood’s portrait of the young John Lennon, which is being shepherded by The Weinstein Company, for a while now. For many others, however, I suspect it hasn’t really been on the radar.
Gee, they weren’t kidding when they said this is a Wes Anderson film in every respect apart from the lack of human beings. As for Anderson’s recent claim that this is “a British film … set in the UK” … well, perhaps it’s just set in the tourist district, but it looks American as apple pie to me. (By the way, surely Roald Dahl is enough of a legend to be advertised by name, rather than as “the author of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.’”)
On a more serious note, something about the visuals on display here doesn’t gel for me … am I the only one who thinks the stop-motion looks a tad rushed and plasticky? I want to be excited for this — not least because I’ll be about for its world premiere at the London fest — but I find myself, to put it gently, concerned.
As the London Film Festival grows in scale and stature by the year, its opening film becomes an ever bigger deal. Last year, they scored a massive coup by kicking off with the world premiere of “Frost/Nixon,” and I’m pleased to report that they’ve maintained that standard by landing Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” to open this year’s fest.
The eagerly awaited animated pic will have its world premiere on 14 October, just over a week ahead of its UK release (and a full month before its Stateside bow). Its selection continues a happy friendship between Anderson and the LFF — just two years ago, “The Darjeeling Limited” closed the festival. (Here’s hoping this is a slightly more well-received selection.)
In the press release, Anderson explains why this is the appropriate place to unveil what is, after all, a decidedly British production:
Fantastic Mr. Fox is a British film – based on a Roald Dahl book, set in the UK, produced in the UK – and so I am especially pleased to have been invited to be the opening night movie of this year’s London Film Festival. We had a wonderful experience at the LFF with my previous film, and I am eagerly looking forward to introducing Fantastic Mr. Fox to the world in this wonderful venue.
Thanks to the combined efforts of Lars von Trier and Wes Anderson, 2009 should hold a unique place in cinematic history as the year that brought us not one, but two screen depictions of talking foxes.
The films they appear in couldn’t be any more different, though after looking at these two new stills (courtesy of Filmsactu) from Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” I find the woodland critter who pops up halfway through “Antichrist” to reassure us that “chaos reigns” less unsettling than these zombified-looking stop-motion creations.
(More thoughts, and a second still, after the cut.)
• VIDEO: “Star Trek” writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman on how to be a sci-fi screenwriter. [Time]
• Robert E. Lee descendant (and, of course, Academy Award winner) Robert Duvall squares off against Wall-Mart in Virginia. [Associated Press]
• Noah Forrest calls Steven Soderbergh’s “The Girlfriend Experience” the year’s best film so far. [Movie City News]
• Nathaniel Rogers posts a test screening reaction to Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” [The Film Experience]
• Jeffrey Wells expresses some trepidation over the upcoming “Angels & Demons.” [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• Christopher Campbell cranks out a list of 10 mutants who need an “X-Men Origins” movie. [Spout Blog]
• Hugh Jackman, meanwhile, is full-speed-ahead developing a “Wolverine” sequel. [Variety]