In Contention

Author: Guy Lodge

  • Kate Hudson joins ‘Nine’

    I wrote back in May about the embarrassment of riches that is the cast of “Nine” – Rob Marshall’s upcoming filmization of the hit Broadway musical based, in turn, in Fellini’s “8½.”

    Now, as if Daniel Day-Lewis, Sophia Loren, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Penelope Cruz and Marion Cotillard weren’t enough names to fit on the marquee, word is out that room must be made for another – Kate Hudson. (I must have missed the memo when Day-Lewis was confirmed for the project, but it appears he’s definitely in.)

    You could say that she’s the least accomplished thesp on the list so far, but nevertheless, I’ve always liked Hudson, and it sure would be nice to see her in a good (or at least promising) film again. (“Almost Famous” is starting to seem awfully long ago.) The role – a Yank fashion reporter abroad – has reportedly been created especially for the film adaptation to showcase what Marshall describes as Hudson’s “revelatory skills as a singer and dancer.”

    Finally, an interesting detail that I hadn’t heard before: credit for the screenplay is shared by Michael Tolkin (already interesting enough, no?) and none other than the late Anthony Minghella. Shooting begins in the UK on October 10; sounds like The Weinstein Company have a very hot property on their hands here.

  • Wells joins the guessing game

    In response to Tom O’Neil’s contender shortlist that I discussed yesterday, Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere has come up with his own list of Best Picture frontrunners – and predicted also-rans. (O’Neil has since significantly amended his list, by the way – wisely removing “Blindness” and “Synecdoche, New York” from Best Picture consideration, and adding some titles including, bizarrely, “Mamma Mia!” Meanwhile, names like Tommy Lee Jones, Rachel McAdams and Kristin Scott Thomas enter the actors’ mix.)

    Wells’ top choices include “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (which he describes as “not the front-runner,  but the contender with the best script”), “Milk,” “Doubt,” “Gran Torino,” “Frost/Nixon,” “W” and “The Visitor.” “W” is a predictably contentious selection; I certainly know a few people who would disagree with his assertion that it “works on the page.”

    Rather more fun is Wells’ rundown of the titles that he thinks don’t have a prayer, which he breaks down as follows:

    “Appaloosa” (possibly worthy Ed Harris western but New Line leftover status dooms it); “Burn After Reading” (a dry Coen brothers goof, not an Oscar film); “Body of Lies” (I know nothing about this brilliant Middle Eastern spy thriller that would qualify it as Oscar bait); “Changeling” (Best Actress nom for Angelina Jolie but the film, while dramatically solid and well made, just isn’t stratospheric enough); “The Dark Knight” (are Tom and Pete having us off?); “Defiance” (an Ed Zwick World War II movie about Russian-Jewish resistance guerillas…hello?); “Mamma Mia!” (all right, that’s enough); “Miracle at St. Anna” (a Spike Lee movie in which a bank teller is shot by an old guy having a memory seizure?) and “Vicki Cristina Barcelona” (can’t and won’t happen).

    I must say I agree with him on most counts there – in particular, I’ll be somewhat surprised if “Miracle at St. Anna” and “Defiance” even turn out to be good films, let alone Best Picture possibilities. I can’t help thinking, though, that some little picture that’s slipped through all these lists will sneak up on us later this year. We sure weren’t talking about “Juno” a year ago.

  • Gold Derby backs ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’

    All us awards-watchers know that Tom O’Neil’s Oscar prognostications can be a little wacky (let’s just forget that he predicted “Sweeney Todd” would sweep the top four awards last year, shall we?). Still, he knows the game better than most, and his mid-year list of frontrunners (with assistance from Pete Hammond) in the top three categories makes for interesting reading.

    All the usual suspects (“Benjamin Button,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Revolutionary Road,” etc) are present, though there are some surprising choices – he still has “Blindness” and “Synecdoche, New York” (still without a distributor) in his Best Picture shortlist, and “W” crops up there too.

    O’Neil clearly isn’t buying into “The Road,” though Viggo Mortensen makes an appearance in his Best Actor list. Meanwhile, two unexpected choices stood out for me in his acting lists: Eric Bana in the bestseller adaptation “The Time Traveller’s Wife” (a fairly unknown quantity that I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere), and the terrific Melissa Leo in Sundance champ “Frozen River.”

    What interested me the most, however, is that O’Neil singles out “Happy-Go-Lucky” for discussion, calling it:

    (The) film you may be most underestimating … Mike Leigh’s little flix are often big players (“Vera Drake,” “Secrets and Lies”) and this perky one could be the next “Little Miss Sunshine” or “Juno.” Sally Hawkins already won the Best Actress trophy at the Berlin Film Festival.

    I’ve been predicting big things for Leigh’s delightful film (which, incidentally, gets better the more I contemplate it) for a while now, so I’m pleased to see O’Neil shares my faith in it – though I’m not sure I quite agree with his comparison. It’s certainly a warm and very funny film, but there’s more melancholy and bite to it than either “Juno” or “Little Miss Sunshine.”

    Back in June, Kris wondered where “Happy-Go-Lucky” would land in Miramax’s awards priorities. Since then, the picture has cleared a little bit. With “Doubt” now seemingly the only other prestige contender on Miramax’s slate, Leigh’s film looks well-positioned to get an awards push from the studio – particularly in the event of “Doubt” disappointing. (I still don’t buy the latter as a Best Picture contender.) And with its profile further raised by its inclusion in the Toronto Film Festival lineup, the prospects for “Happy-Go-Lucky” are starting to look as sunny as its title.

  • Bond song battle goes on… and on

    Alicia KeysI’m taking yesterday’s news that Alicia Keys is the “top contender” to sing the theme song for “Quantum of Solace” with a grain of salt. I’ve had my eye on this story for a while, and since initial frontrunner Amy Winehouse became a hazy prospect, any number of names have been thrown into the pot.

    First it was (God help us) Beyonce. Then the Bond producers were apparently “set on” Leona Lewis. Then Duffy, a soul revivalist in the Winehouse vein, began dropping hints that she had the gig. Then Duran Duran. (You tell me why.) Then Annie Lennox. Even Jack White’s name has been bandied around. Now Keys.

    The Keys rumour appears moderately more credible than some of the others, but if so, she strikes me as an odd choice. All the best Bond themes (“Goldfinger,” “You Only Live Twice,” “Nobody Does It Better,” since you asked) project a sense of danger, sex appeal even, amid the lush arrangements. Keys’ edgeless, uber-earnest R&B just doesn’t fit the bill, to my mind.

    The names put forward so far suggest that the producers are looking for more of a throwback sound after the last two attempts at modernising the formula (Chris Cornell’s oddly dated-sounding “You Know My Name” and Madonna’s plain dismal “Die Another Day”) didn’t exactly set the world alight. The arrival of the Bond theme used to be an event in itself – the amount of press over this installment’s vocalist suggests the producers are trying to recapture that level of anticipation.

    You’d expect the year’s most discussed movie song to be a cinch for an Oscar nomination, whoever lands the gig, but history suggests otherwise. Only three Bond themes (“Live and Let Die,” “Nobody Does It Better,” and – ugh – “For Your Eyes Only”) have ever been nominated, all unsuccessfully. But with the slate of Best Song contenders this year looking sparser than usual, and “Casino Royale” having given the franchise a major boost in cred, the odds of a nomination look better than usual. The producers should therefore be especially canny about who they choose.

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  • Sean Penn defends ‘Che’

    Benicio Del Toro in CheBritish film magazine Sight & Sound has a nice new tradition of interviewing the jury president of the most recent Cannes Film Festival, which makes for interesting reading. (Last year’s prez, Stephen Frears, presciently predicted in his interview that “No Country for Old Men” would “do really well,” despite not winning anything at the festival.)

    Unsurprisingly, 2008 president Sean Penn is rather more candid in his interview with  Richard T. Kelly. After admitting that he had four clear favourites in the competition (two of which, “The Class” and “Che,” were unanimously awarded their respective Palme d’Or and Best Actor prizes), he then launches into an impassioned defence of Steven Soderbergh’s polarising opus, as well as an attack on the journalists who dismissed it:

    Right through the festival I had no awareness of what the ‘buzz’ was, and I shut people down if they tried to talk about movies in front of me. But when I did a little bit of catch-up browsing afterward I read some of the stupidest, ugliest, most cynical responses to what had gone on, and I had the front-seat to be aware of their inconsistencies.

    “Che” is a great example. I pray it finds distribution in the four-hour-plus form I saw, because otherwise people will be missing out.  The film-making is stellar: there are so many details in the execution of that huge story. Every sentiment about Guevara I’ve heard passionately expressed when I’ve travelled in Cuba and South America was not only dramatised, but without exposition, seamlessly, fulfilling the narrative. Then you have one of the first tour de force performances in film history that doesn’t rely on the close-up.

    This is a film, I later find, that had some negative responses…I was in a jury room of nine people with more expertise in their big toenails than any of the people writing in these papers: nine out of nine wanted to go out and change the world afterwards.

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  • Variety ponders the season at the mid-way point

    We’ve already been over what a thin year it’s been so far for Oscar candidates – or good films at all, for that matter. Now Variety has come to the same conclusion. In his mid-year awards-season study, Timothy M. Gray goes so far as to say that “the past six months have offered fewer potential contenders than any January-June period in memory,” and wonders if we’re seeing a return to the days when the Oscars were dominated by winter releases from the majors.

    Indeed, Gray only finds one title from the first-half of the year that he thinks has main category potential: Overture Films’ “The Visitor,” the prospects of which I discussed extensively yesterday. I’m not sure I’d boil down an entire half-year to a sole film (“In Bruges,” anyone?), but I agree that “The Visitor” has a real campaigning advantage:

    Keep an eye on Overture’s “The Visitor”: Lead actor Richard Jenkins has rightly earned awards buzz, but the film has many other virtues (Thomas McCarthy’s script and direction, the other performances, etc.). McCarthy, a talented actor in his own right, has crafted an actors’ movie — a character study with current-event concerns — that will play well on DVD, so late-year mailings could pay off.

    (Indeed, the more I think about the film’s position in the awards derby, the more it reminds me of a certain tiny spring release from last year: “Away From Her.”

    Looking forward into the rest of 2008, Gray ends up pondering most of the same questionmarks that we all are, including the following questions:

    Will the early buzz sustain for Disney-Pixar’s “Wall-E” and WB’s “The Dark Knight” and Heath Ledger?

    What effect will the Clint Eastwood double whammy — November’s “Changeling” and the December bow of Warner Bros.-Village Roadshow’s “Gran Torino,” in which he stars as well as directs — have on kudos? Similarly, Scott Rudin, who was in the winner’s circle with “No Country,” has two December openers — but will he have a third with “The Reader,” whose opening date is not yet set?

    Benicio Del Toro won Cannes’ actor award for Steven Soderbergh’s “Che,” but will it find a U.S. distrib this year and, if so, in what form will the two-part film be released?

    And then there are … other questions. In the last few years, the song category has been dominated by tunes that were production numbers (as opposed to those end-credit or background songs). So does this bode well for Disney’s “High School Musical 3” and Focus’ “Hamlet 2”? (If the song “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” can win, there may be hope for the latter pic’s “Rock Me Sexy Jesus.”)

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  • Will Oscar have an unexpected ‘Visitor?’

    Richard Jenkins and Hiam Abbas in The VisitorAs you all know, we in the UK tend to be a bit behind the curve on most American releases, so I didn’t get to see Tom McCarthy’s wonderful “The Visitor” in time for our mid-year review. Had I done so, it certainly would have been in contention for my ‘best of the year so far’ title. (Happily, Blake recognised it in his contribution.)

    The film opens in the UK tomorrow (July 4 — an auspicious date for a film that challenges American ideals of liberty quite insistently) and, amid the summer movie crush, is getting a fair amount of publicity here, including this interesting piece in last weekend’s Guardian. Drawing comparison to such indie word-of-mouth successes as “In the Bedroom” and “Junebug,” critic Damon Wise believes that McCarthy’s gentle, wry but politically impassioned film could make a similar dent in awards season:

    Normally, articles about the Oscar race appear in late November, once the studios have dusted off their A-list movies. But almost every year when the noms come in, there’s a film that leaves everyone scratching their heads because it seems to have appeared from the ether: it’s the film that came out ages ago, got some good reviews but didn’t do so well at the box office …

    Today’s strangers arrive unannounced, and after the surprise appearance of In The Bedroom at the 2002 festivities, the industry now realises that there is no pattern any more: they can come from anywhere. Which, coincidentally, is, in some ways, the plot of The Visitor, a film that ticks several potential nomination boxes – it features a powerhouse central performance, it ponders on the flaws and foibles of being a so-called normal human being, it finds drama in the everyday – and it does it really rather well.

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  • LAFF closes: Sundance hits score again

    I must admit, the Los Angeles Film Festival hasn’t always been on my radar in the past, but its stature seems to be growing from year to year. This year’s edition wrapped up on Sunday, with the jury prizes going to Sean Baker’s “Prince of Broadway” in the narrative feature category, and to Darius Marder’s “Loot” in the documentary section.

    Just as significant, however, in a festival that boasts “The Audience is King” as its slogan, are the audience awards. Here, a pair of films that already took audience awards at Sundance earlier this year repeated the feat: Jonathan Levine’s “The Wackness” took the gold in the narrative section, while James Marsh’s Brit documentary “Man on Wire” won the international audience award. In the documentary category, Sacha Gervasi’s “Anvil! The Story of Anvil” emerged victorious. A summary and full list of awards can be found here.

    The former two have had buzz building around them for months; indeed, earlier in the year, I had Levine’s oddball character comedy on my Best Original Screenplay list until the category got a bit crowded. Still, one to keep an eye on, particularly at the Spirit Awards. Meanwhile, “Man on Wire,” a study of Philippe Petit’s law-defying 1974 tightrope walk between the Twin Towers, has me very excited for its UK release next month. I’d be tempted to predict an Oscar nomination for the film, which also won a Grand Jury prize at Sundance, but the Academy can be sticky about non-US docs.

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  • ‘Frost/Nixon’ to bow at London fest

    Good news for me and my fellow Brits: for once, we’re going to get something first. Although Ron Howard’s baity “Frost/Nixon” hasn’t been kept that tightly under wraps, confirmation has arrived that the film will have its world premiere at the 52nd London Film Festival, where it will open proceedings on October 15.

    It’s an auspicious slot, as LFF artistic director Sandra Hebron has a habit of picking successful films to kick off the fest. Previous openers include “Almost Famous,” “Gosford Park,” “Vera Drake,” “The Constant Gardener,” “The Last King of Scotland” and last year’s very London-centric “Eastern Promises.”

    As you can see, prestige films with a UK element are favoured, so the selection of Howard’s film, an adaptation of a very British stage hit, comes as no surprise. There have been a couple of misfires in the opening slot over the years (Ang Lee’s strangely forgotten “Ride With the Devil,” Jane Campion’s underrated “In the Cut”), but for now, the odds are against “Frost/Nixon” going the same way.

    Either way, it’s a nice feather in the cap for a lovely, very public-friendly festival that gets stronger with each year: last year’s dynamite lineup included “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” “Lust, Caution,” “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days,” “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” and, in the surprise-screening slot that I was lucky enough to attend, “No Country for Old Men.” Hebron has done a brilliant job thus far; I expect her streak to continue in 2008.

  • AMPAS invites 105 to the party

    The Academy has officially announced the 105 people it has invited to join its ranks this year; they range from obvious recent winners (Marion Cotillard, Diablo Cody), to cool commercial forces (Judd Apatow, Sacha Baron Cohen), to less glamorous but equally deserving names such as documentarian Nanette Burstein and composer Michael Giacchino.

    Looking down the list, it’s hard to believe that certain veterans weren’t already members; take Ruby Dee, for example, or Jack Fisk, or one of my personal writing heroes, Jean-Claude Carriere. Knowing that such vital artists could be voting sure aids the credibility of the awards – though I have a hard time imagining Michael Haneke hunched over his ballot, agonising over the nominees for Best Original Song.

    The full list of 2008 invitees is after the jump. Your thoughts, as ever, welcome.

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  • ‘Mad Men’: Rewriting the hero

    I know we don’t really cover TV here at In Contention, but since Matthew Weiner’s AMC show “Mad Men” is the greatest piece of screen drama I’ve seen in any medium this past year, I couldn’t resist linking to this mammoth profile of the show, and its creator, in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine.

    Neatly timed to coincide with the imminent first-season DVD release, and (hopefully) to catch the eye of Emmy voters, Alex Witchel’s piece gives fascinating insight into the writerly thinking behind what is certainly the most literate show currently on air. (As a screenwriter, I found the first season to be pretty much a master class in character construction, and the marrying of social and personal narratives.) Weiner, who was also a significant member of the writing team on “The Sopranos,” proves a fiercely intelligent interviewee; the following is one of the best descriptions of a writer’s raison d’etre I’ve read in a while:

    The payoff for Weiner is getting to combine his love of history and literature with his love for the tradition of live television from the 1950s: Paddy Chayevsky, Rod Serling, “Kraft Television Theater” and “Playhouse 90.” “It all goes back to being socially conscious and the blacklist and who those heroes are,” he said. “Those were my parents’ heroes, and I think that part of the show is me trying to be one of those heroes and part of the show is trying to figure out — this sounds really ineloquent — trying to figure out what is the deal with my parents. Am I them? Because you know you are.”

    Read the rest here. Sorry for the fanboy tone of this post, but it’s a great piece on a landmark work.

  • Tarantino doubles up… again

    It’s difficult to get a grasp on what’s going on with Quentin Tarantino’s long-mooted WWII project, “Inglorious Bastards,” not least because QT seems somewhat hazy on the subject himself. Last month, he made this rather bold claim at Cannes: “If all goes well, I will be here … in 2009 with ‘Inglorious Bastards.’” (I’d question the hubris of his assuming that Cannes will have him, but hell, they accepted “Death Proof” into competition, so I can’t.)

    Now comes word that, in what’s becoming a familiar move for the director, the project will be released as two films, apparently because the story is too big for a single feature. Said story involves a group of war criminals fighting both Allied and Nazi forces on a journey to neutral Switzerland, which sounds do-able in one film to me, but what do I know? Meanwhile, the Vulture at New York Magazine is taking Tarantino’s assertions with a pinch of salt:

    That gives Tarantino about ten months to finish the scripts, find himself some actors — he now says previous mentions of Michael Madsen, Adam Sandler, Christopher Walken, and others were just “conversations” — and shoot and edit two movies. It’s possible, of course, but it’s also possible that this project is but a ball of yarn for Tarantino’s mischievous-kitten tendencies, and in a year, it will be a seven-part cartoon musical.

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  • Breaking into the boys’ club

    Quick, how many women have ever been nominated for Best Cinematography at the Academy Awards?

    Let’s just say that if you answered anything more than zero, you weren’t even close. The sad fact is that the cinematography and sound categories at the Oscars have remained gentlemen-only for eighty whole years. True, female cinematographers are vastly outnumbered in the industry, but that should be all the more reason to recognise one when she does outstanding work.

    For my money, Ellen Kuras (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Personal Velocity,” “Summer of Sam”) is one of the most exciting talents in the business. Lisa Rinzler’s work on Tony Bui’s “Three Seasons” made it one of the most painterly films of this decade. Maryse Alberti did extraordinary work on Todd Haynes’ “Velvet Goldmine” and has contributed to some of the most important documentaries of recent years, including this year’s Oscar winner, “Taxi to the Dark Side.” These, and other, female DPs have been recognised by Sundance, the Independent Spirit Awards, and even the American Society of Cinematographers, but never at the awards holy grail that is the Oscars. Yet.

    Next year, the Academy has one of their strongest chances yet to break that hex. That chance comes in the shape of Mandy Walker, the hitherto largely unheralded cinematographer of Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming epic “Australia,” who received the Kodak Vision Award at last night’s Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Awards.

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  • Is Dennis Lehane the new Jane Austen?

    Okay, perhaps not. Maybe more like the new Elmore Leonard. But the quintessential Boston writer is clearly Hollywood’s favourite author du jour. After the adaptations of “Mystic River” and “Gone Baby Gone” reignited the careers of Clint Eastwood and Ben Affleck, respectively, it seems the studios are snapping up his titles faster than he can write them.

    I hardly need to remind you about a little film coming up next year called “Shutter Island,” based on Lehane’s 1950’s-set suspenser. With Scorsese hoping for lightning to strike twice for him in Beantown, and Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Max von Sydow and Michelle Williams just some of the names on board, who isn’t excited about that?

    With less fanfare, but interesting nonetheless, we also have an upcoming adaptation of Lehane’s brilliant short story “Until Gwen,” with Josh Olson, the Oscar-nominated writer of “A History of Violence,” taking both scripting and directing duties on the project.

    Now Variety reports that the latest filmmaker to take on Lehane is Sam Raimi. Columbia has got in early and nabbed the author’s yet-to-be-published “The Given Day” for Raimi to direct.

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  • Hammond on ‘Frost/Nixon’

    Apologies for digging up a nearly three-week old article – somehow this escaped my notice until now. Buried in Pete Hammond’s typically thorough Cannes review is this very positive aside about Ron Howard’s much-anticipated “Frost/Nixon:”

    Howard could, and probably will, find himself in competition with Eastwood in the directing category. His funny, complicated and fascinating film (we’ve seen it – it’s completed but so far avoiding the fest circuit and bypassing election season) is brilliant, even matching his Oscar-winning “A Beautiful Mind.”

    Frank Langella as Nixon and Michael Sheen as David Frost, the man who conducts a series of TV interviews with the former president, are equally superb re-creating their Broadway and West End triumphs. Both are best actor candidates unless the studio decides to try to squeeze one or the other into supporting, which really seems unlikely. 

    I wasn’t aware that cat had been let out of the bag on that prospect, but there you go. I admit I’ve been sceptical that Howard was the right man to realize Peter Morgan’s play, but if Hammond’s views are indicative of the critical reception to come, this could be a watershed film for him.

    Hammond also echoes Kris’ prediction chart on the issue of category placement for the two leads – though if I were Michael Sheen, I’d find a way to wriggle into supporting, fast. 

  • Early predix: Nat Rogers pipes in

    So the ever-worthwhile Nathaniel Rogers at The Film Experience has joined in the predictions game – check out his thoughts here. Like many others, his list has “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” ruling the roost with eight nominations, with “Defiance,” “Doubt,” “Milk” and “Miracle at St Anna” rounding out the Best Picture list.

    The latter is a particularly interesting choice – one wonders whether the controversy-shy Academy voters will be put off by Spike Lee’s increasingly ridiculous quarrel with Clint Eastwood. Of course, January is a long way off, and if “Miracle at St Anna” turns out to be great, chances are this whole debacle will be forgotten by then. I fear it will not – but with “Changeling” not making his Best Picture list, Nat clearly sees Spike having the last laugh here.

    Elsewhere in Nat’s list, most of the usual suspects are present. I’m particularly pleased to see that he shares my faith in a Best Actress nomination for Sally Hawkins (“Happy-Go-Lucky”) – I’m going to be banging this drum all year, so get used to it. Nat, meanwhile, is evidently beginning the campaigning early for Michelle Pfeiffer in “Cheri,” going so far as to call her a “legendary actress.” I admit there won’t be any complaining from me if she finally cops a statuette.

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  • Spike vs Clint: Round Three

    Oh dear, this really is getting ugly. As we all knew he would, Spike Lee has responded to Clint Eastwood’s instructions that he “shut his face” about the issue of the supposed sidelining of African-Americans in “Flags of Our Fathers.” And, in an interview with ABC News’ Sheila Marikar, it seems Lee hasn’t picked his words any more tactfully than Eastwood:

    First of all, the man is not my father and we’re not on a plantation either. He’s a great director. He makes his films, I make my films. The thing about it though, I didn’t personally attack him. And a comment like ‘a guy like that should shut his face’ — come on Clint, come on. He sounds like an angry old man right there.

    If he wishes, I could assemble African-American men who fought at Iwo Jima and I’d like him to tell these guys that what they did was insignificant and they did not exist. I’m not making this up. I know history. I’m a student of history. And I know the history of Hollywood and its omission of the one million African-American men and women who contributed to World War II. Not everything was John Wayne, baby.

    Now I’m actually more sympathetic to Lee’s views than some, and I think Eastwood could have phrased his remarks more delicately. But the plantation line takes the argument to a place it really doesn’t need to go, and frankly makes me cringe. These are two of the best, most thoughtful filmmakers in the business, and this is the level of discussion they come up with?

    Lee closes the interview with a peace offering that strikes me a somewhat half-hearted, not least because he can’t resist inserting a political barb there too:

    Even though he’s trying to have a Dirty Harry flashback, I’m going to take the Obama high road and end it right here. Peace and love.

    Not cool. I hope Eastwood has enough smarts to let this go. I suspect he won’t. For my part, I hope “Miracle at St Anna” is a terrific enough film to overshadow this squabble.

  • Sight & Sound weighs in on Cannes

    OK, so Cannes is old news, but for me it’s never really over until Sight & Sound prints its annual Cannes review – for my money, the British magazine offers the most expansive and thoughtful coverage of the festival around. It’s not available online, but it’s worth grabbing a copy if you can. Meanwhile, I’ve picked out a few highlights from editor Nick James’ commentary on the key festival films.

    Interestingly, James agrees by and large with the jury’s selections. He names “The Class” as his favourite film of the festival, declaring it “so electrifying, satisfying and inspiring that it’s hard to believe it isn’t the work of professional fiction weavers at the top of their trade.” He also joins the chorus of approval for “Gomorra:” “So compelling is the detail that there’s no need for thriller conventions … Garrone’s direction makes incredible use of desolate locations and the acting is impeccable.” I must admit I am getting more excited about this film with every notice I read.

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