In Contention

Author: Guy Lodge

  • ‘The Illusionist’ poster, featuring yours truly

    Hey, have you heard that I kinda like a little animated picture called “The Illusionist?” I may have mentioned it once or twice here. Well, Sony Pictures Classics has unveiled a new one-sheet for the film, and while I normally get quite critical about the design aspects of posters, this one has my full approval — mostly, I admit, for the fact that it gives me my first US poster quote. Interesting that they fillet out the “m” word from my February review, given the related debate Kris recently started, but after multiple viewings of the film, I stand by it. Full poster (courtesy of IMPAwards) after the jump. (Thanks to regular reader Speaking English for the heads-up.)

    (more…)

  • Finally, the 10 best of the 2010 LFF

    For those of you who were loyally following my London Film Festival coverage this year, I must apologize for leaving it somewhat in limbo. Though I did eventually find time for a lengthy discussion of fest closer “127 Hours,” a snowballing workload put paid to my hopes of squeezing in a few more review roundups. And frankly, since the festival wrapped on Thursday after four weeks of press screenings, I so relished having ownership of my days again that I let things lie longer than I intended.

    But by way of a belated send-off, here’s a gathering of the films that made the LFF for me this year. I saw precisely 60 films at the festival, in addition to 27 I’d already seen at previous fests, so I was naïve to hope I might get round to discussing most of them.

    Some of the  clunkers (glum German childbirth drama “Blessed Events,” Ferzan Ozpetek’s lead-footed gay comedy “Loose Cannons”) barely merit appraisal; other, more interesting, disappointments (Xavier Dolan’s meticulous but terminally precious love triangle “Heartbeats,” Benedik Flieugauf’s visually startling but sketchily conceived sci-fi “Womb”) at least deserved a few paragraphs. Ah, well.

    (more…)

  • Dr. Leigh and the women

    I often hear Mike Leigh described as a great “women’s director,” though that’s really only half the truth. Vivid, probing male characters abound in Leigh films, often as vital counterpoints to female star turns (see Eddie Marsan in “Happy-Go-Lucky” or Timothy Spall in “Secrets and Lies”) but sometimes in center stage too: in “Naked,” David Thewlis gives what might be the richest performance in any Leigh film to date. (Hefty statement. Hefty performance.)

    In other words, Leigh is not so much a great director of women as a great director of actors, period. But his actressy reputation sticks, partly because his women have an easier time impressing awards voters, but perhaps also because he’s tougher on the women he writes than most male auteurs, making harsh moral demands of some and pushing even the saintlier ones (Imelda Staunton’s Vera, Sally Hawkins’s Poppy) into behavioral extremes that render them tricky to play. There are no stock love interests, blandly supportive wives or femmes fatales in Leigh ensembles: every character, of either sex, in ensembles comes with an independent inner life.

    (more…)

  • On ‘127 Hours,’ and a messy little thing called opinion

    It all started, as so many conflicts do these days, with a tweet. After spending a morning and afternoon musing on “127 Hours,” following a breakfast-time screening on the last day of the London Film Festival, I accepted the hard fact that I simply didn’t like it very much.

    I wanted to feel differently. Danny Boyle, in addition to being one of my favorite ever interviewees, is a vital filmmaker whose previous misses I’ve even found more stimulating than most directors’ hits. James Franco is shaping up to be among the most pleasingly off-kilter leading men of his generation. The tech geek in me was excited to see the long-underused Enrique Chediak working on a large canvas, alongside the justly rated Anthony Dod Mantle.

    I had, I admit, harbored doubts about how Team Boyle could cinematically enliven Aron Ralston’s simple-if-grisly survival tale, one that could promise no surprises after ample media coverage as recently as 2003. Some blinder of a structural or technical choice, I assumed, was being hidden up someone’s sleeve — and when I saw only a familiar collection of hopped-up editing tricks and multimedia interpolations that designerised the protagonist’s plight without deepening it, I wasn’t afraid to say I felt a little crushed.

    (more…)

  • Bening to be honored at Santa Barbara fest

    It’s not exactly a precursor, but the news we just received that Annette Bening is to receive the American Riviera Award at next year’s Santa Barbara International Film Festival is a bullish omen for her Oscar chances.

    The prize, a career achievement award given annually to “an actor who has had a strong influence on American cinema,” has coincided with the Academy Award more often than not in the past five years: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Forest Whitaker and Sandra Bullock all scooped it up on their campaign trails, while it presaged nominations for Tommy Lee Jones and Mickey Rourke. Clearly, festival director Roger Durling and his team think Bening’s hour has come.

    Bening has a good relationship with the SBIFF: she was previously honored with their Montecito Award in 2005. The award will presented on January 28, the second day of the fest — accompanied, as is their custom, by an onstage retrospective and Q&A with the actress. As usual, Kris will be attending the festival to bring you the highlights of the occasion. Press release excerpt after the cut.

    (more…)

  • ‘King’s Speech’ leads BIFA nods, ‘Another Year’ snubbed

    Mike Leigh has long bemoaned the fact that he gets more respect from American awards bodies than those in his homeland. He received further proof of that this morning, as his broadly acclaimed new feature, “Another Year,” was snubbed in the top category at the British Independent Film Awards in favor of, among others, Matthew Vaughan’s dismal po-mo superhero movie “Kick-Ass.”

    The BIFAs are, of course, to the BAFTAs what the Indie Spirits are to the Oscars. They can always be relied upon to make some interesting calls, but while some of this year’s surprises are laudable, others are just perverse.

    Leigh receives some compensation in the shape of a Best Director nod, plus a trio of acting bids (which interestingly place Ruth Sheen in lead and the much-fancied Lesley Manville in support). But Leigh’s omission from the Best Screenplay category — when the pleasant but join-the-dots writing of “Made in Dagenham” makes the cut — is, if anything, even more of a jawdropper than the Best Film miss. The BIFAs were similarly cool on “Happy-Go-Lucky” two years ago, somewhat anticipating the film’s BAFTA whiteout — here’s hoping we’re not setting ourselves up for a repeat.

    (More thoughts, and the full list of nominations, after the jump.)

    (more…)

  • “Do THEY ever return to possess the living?”

    Halloween is upon us: cue hastily cobbled-together costumes and drunkenly ironic apple-bobbing at friends’ parties, the frenzied whoops of sugar-saturated children and an online avalanche of “best horror films ever” lists. It’s a beautiful time of year. We’ve already contributed our share to said avalanche, so allow me simply to highlight my viewing for the evening (courtesy of the BFI’s handsome recent reissue): Jack Clayton’s “The Innocents.”

    (more…)

  • ‘Illusionist’ vs. ‘Illusionist’

    I stumbled upon this days-old THR story via Anne Thompson, and while I’m glad to see it hasn’t caught on in the blogosphere, I feel compelled to point out just what bullshit it is. (My bad: Kris alluded to the news before THR did.) It would appear that Sylvain Chomet’s probable animated Oscar contender “The Illusionist” is being hassled by parties attached to the 2006 Ed Norton-starring magician drama of the same title, who curiously feel that some kind of trademark is being violated:

    Illusionist Distribution, LLC, claims to be the rights-holder of that [2006] film, and is upset that Sony intends to release its Illusionist, with a “strikingly similar” storyline about a touring master illusionist who falls in love.

    Illusionist Distribution has filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court against SPC and Pathe on grounds of trademark infringement and unfair competition, asking a judge to enjoin the November release of The Illusionist. The company is also seeking disgorgement of all profits plus compensatory damages.

    (more…)

  • THE LONG SHOT: British reserve

    “The British are coming!” crowed screenwriter Colin Welland from the Oscar stage in 1982, hoisting aloft his just-awarded awarded statuette for “Chariots of Fire” – and anticipating one of the bigger upsets in the history of the Best Picture race, as the modest British sports drama upended Warren Beatty’s grand political epic “Reds.”

    His rallying cry was both premature and behind the beat. Welland may or may not have been aware that the Brits had crashed this particular party several decades previously. In 1948, Laurence Olivier’s “Hamlet” became the first non-US production to land the Academy’s top prize, while the 1960s were something of a golden period for England at the Oscars: while films like “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Tom Jones” and “Oliver!” emerged triumphant, so many Brits vacuumed up the acting prizes that Hollywood industry gossips – the bloggers of yore – began to complain. “It’s not fair,” whined Hedda Hopper. “The weather’s so foul on that tight little isle of theirs, that to get in out of the rain, they gather in halls and practise ‘Hamlet’ on each other.”

    But Welland’s promise of a similar period of ubiquitous Brititude was kept only in fits and starts: Richard Attenborough, Ben Kingsley and “Gandhi” may have ruled the roost the following year, but it would be a whole quarter-century before another predominantly UK production (and coincidentally, also one with an Indian bent) took the top prize. In the early 1990s, Limey actors enjoyed a four-year run of wins in the lead acting races – from Daniel Day-Lewis through to Emma Thompson – only for their luck to dry up until Helen Mirren initiated another mini-streak 14 years later. “The British are coming… for occasional visits,” might have been a more accurate boast, if not quite as rousing.

    (more…)

  • Cut straight to the predix

    I spent some time this morning weeding and updating my current nomination predictions, and had planned to introduce them with today’s Long Shot column. As it turns out, LFF wrap-up business, a pair of catch-up screenings (one of them with a Supporting Actress contender who you may have heard sets the screen ablaze) and a backlog of interview transcription meant the column simply didn’t get written. Tomorrow, with apologies.

    In lieu of a column, however, I can at least serve up the predictions — I know how much you folks like to pick at them. Although, by this post-festival stage in the season, certain contenders are beginning to turn concrete, there’s still plenty of room to play with question marks. So once again, don’t take this omission or that against-the-grain inclusion too seriously: when it comes down to it, we’re all just trying things on until the precursors kick in.

    Among the notions I’m flirting with in this update is that “Winter’s Bone” could be this year’s critical indie cause in the race, that the Bening-Moore question may be a moot one to voters watching their screeners for the first time and that they may just take a shine to “The Way Back.” Check out my updated predictions here. (Remember they can always be accessed at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar.)

    [Photo: Sony Pictures Classics]

  • ‘How I Ended This Summer’ takes top prize at London fest

    “We chose our winner last night,” London Film Festival jury president Patricia Clarkson told me yesterday, an evasive  smile on our face, as we eased into our lunchtime interview. (More on that in a few days.) “I’m very pleased with it — it’s a wonderful film.”

    Naturally, my fellow lunch guest, Daily Telegraph critic Tim Robey, and I tried to tease some clues out of the estimable character actress, but she wasn’t budging. She was, however, keen to know which of the shortlisted films we had seen. When Tim declared Alexei Popogrebsky’s two-hander character drama “How I Ended This Summer” his favourite film of the festival,  Clarkson’s eyes glazed over ever so slightly. “Oh, the Russian film?” she said unenthusiastically.

    Well, Clarkson really is quite the actress. For as it turns out, “the Russian film” she so slyly shrugged off at lunch is the very one that she — together with jurors Sandy Powell, John Hillcoat, Shekhar Kapur and Gabriel Byrne — had already voted the winner of the fest’s Best Film trophy, following in the footsteps of last year’s champ “A Prophet,” and beating such heavyweight competition as “Black Swan,” “Another Year,” “The King’s Speech” and “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.” The choice was unveiled at tonight’s festival closing ceremony.

    (more…)

  • ‘Harry Potter’ designer accused of fashion plagiarism

    Way back in the mists of 2001, the very first “Harry Potter” screen outing (don’t ask me to distinguish the titles) received an Oscar nomination for Best Costume Design. It even managed to win the Costume Designers’ Guild award — and that was before they created a separate category for fantasy film.

    No subsequent entry in the series has managed to repeat either feat, and if the current accusations of sartorial stealing being levelled at Jany Temime, costume designer for “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1,” are anything to go by, we shouldn’t hold our breath for a change in that pattern. It seems Temime has aggravated many in the fashion industry by claiming as her own concept a wedding dress, crucial to a climactic scene in the film, that looks irrefutably similar to a revered 2008 design by the late Alexander McQueen:

    (more…)

  • LONDON: French femmes on form

    “I think the French have always enjoyed older women, and they’re right to do so,” Kristin Scott Thomas told me in an interview nearly two years ago, when asked about the range of opportunities for actresses over 40 in the French film industry. “A life has been lived. There’s so much more at stake. The French get that, and as an actor, I’m glad for it.”

    She’s right, of course. Whereas every Hollywood victory for a middle-aged actress — be it Sandra Bullock’s Oscar win, Meryl Streep’s box-office clout or the year-long buzz for the two-pronged attack of “The Kids Are All Right” — is accompanied by assorted talking heads and op-eds proclaiming the significance of the achievement, the French see nothing especially remarkable about a fiftysomething woman headlining a major production.

    Leading ladies in that country tend to remain so for their whole careers — and remain busy at that, dipping into character and ensemble roles while being regularly rewarded with generous individual showcases. This year alone, we’ve seen Juliette Binoche take Best Actress at Cannes for the elaborate thespian gymnastics of “Certified Copy,” while Catherine Deneuve earned plaudits at Venice for “Potiche,” a frothy crowdpleaser that is essentially one huge valentine to the actress.

    (more…)

  • UPDATED: Did Halle Berry just exit the Best Actress race?

    UPDATE (10/26): Kris here, following up on Guy’s report yesterday.  I’m told there is correspondence between reps from the film and AMPAS acknowledging that the film would not open in 2009 and that AMPAS has acknowledged the film will be eligible for 2010 consideration.  I’m also told this sort of hiccup is not uncommon.  Steve Pond has a report up quoting AMPAS publicity on the matter.  So Berry is very much in the race this year.

    EARLIER: A few hours ago, Kris mentioned the moves being made by Freestyle Releasing to launch an awards campaign for the long-delayed Halle Berry starrer “Frankie & Alice.” The distributor plans to give the film an Oscar-qualifying release on December 17, explicitly stating its award-oriented motives in the press release.

    So far, so good. But it seems to me there’s a slight snag: “Frankie & Alice,” although never formally released, actually qualified for the 2009 Oscars. As proved here, the film was on the Academy’s official list of 274 films eligible for last year’s awards:

    (more…)

  • Emma Stone for Best Actress: making it look ‘Easy’

    Jeff Wells, high on Anne Hathaway’s work in “Love and Other Drugs,” recently wrote a piece bemoaning the lack of awards consideration usually granted to romantic comedy performances: “[There is a] belief,” he complains, “that to qualify for an acting award you have to solemnly suffer and pour your heart out in a somewhat doleful and non-pizazzy way.”

    Of course, this is a casual generalization. In the past decade, several women have broken through in the Best Actress for broad comedy (romantic and otherwise) vehicles, including Ellen Page, Diane Keaton, Judi Dench and Meryl Streep — twice. (Or more, depending on your take on “Doubt.”) Should “Love and Other Drugs,” with its big-name pedigree and dramatic overtones, take off with the smart adult audiences it’s being pitched to, a nomination for Hathaway is perfectly feasible.

    Unadulterated comic fluff, however, is another matter. While veterans like Streep and Keaton are given passes for lightweight fare, you have to go back to Renée Zellweger (“Bridget Jones Diary,” 2001) to find an example of a younger actress earning a nod for a purely comic film without Best Picture clout. In 2007, Amy Adams rode a wave of early buzz for “Enchanted,” but fell victim to the Academy’s faulty sense of humor. Still, she got further than, say, Reese Witherspoon in “Legally Blonde” or Jennifer Garner in “13 Going on 30” — both performances worthy of consideration that never got off the starting blocks due to their flighty commercial vehicles.

    (more…)

  • LONDON: ‘Brighton’ hits the rocks

    The success of the London Film Festival’s annual Surprise Film screening isn’t exactly dependent on the surprise element: more often than not, the film’s identity can be pinpointed in advance simply by asking yourself which title you most expected to find in the festival lineup, and then didn’t.

    But even if pretty much everyone sitting in the Leicester Square theater three years ago knew they were about to see “No Country for Old Men,” that didn’t stop the keen applause, peppered with whoops of approval, when the title finally flashed on screen. Ditto the equally predictable-but-welcome selection of “The Wrestler” the following year. It’s a bit like actually getting what you asked for on Christmas morning: the unwrapping is a mere formality, but the result satisfies nonetheless.

    Festival director Sandra Hebron did pull a genuine surprise last year, when the consensus expectation of “Where the Wild Things Are” was dashed by the PSA-style opening of Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story.” Still, by last night, Twitter-abetted speculation had narrowed so conclusively around Rowan Joffe’s “Brighton Rock” — it being the most conspicuously absent Britfilm at a British festival, after all — that anything else would have been a jaw-dropper. (To Hebron’s evident vexation, it was the first title shouted out when she played her annual “guess-the-movie” game with the audience.)

    (more…)

  • LONDON: ‘The King’s Speech, ‘Neds’ and the Brit pack

    Unlike, say, the Venice fest – where the jury’s failure to reward any of the (lousy) Italian films in competition is cause for a media strop — the London Film Festival has often seemed somewhat embarrassed by the homegrown portion of its programme, perhaps granting a big red-carpet date to the odd bit of tony Oscar bait while shoving newer and/or independent British filmmakers into shadowy side slots.

    This year, however, the festival appears to be wearing its flag quite contentedly. This week’s lavish gala screenings have included such big-draw Britpics as “Another Year” and “The King’s Speech” – but rather less predictably, Peter Mullan’s hard bit of Scottish urban realism “Neds” was afforded similar treatment, while tonight’s hot ticket is local TV comedian Richard Ayoade’s Toronto-acclaimed (and Weinstein-acquired) debut “Submarine.” With Joanna Hogg’s bare-bones sophomore feature “Archipelago” also premiering tonight – and unexpectedly shortlisted for the fest’s Best Film award – programmers seem bent on drawing attention to the multitude of approaches in contemporary UK cinema.

    (more…)

  • A little love for ‘I Am Love’

    I know the film has a lot of devotees on this site — I’m not wholly with them, though for the second year running, I do think Tilda Swinton merits a lot more Best Actress consideration than she’s getting — so you may be pleased to know that florid Italian melodrama “I Am Love” has at least (however indirectly) taken one bit of minor silverware.

    I wasn’t aware that the inaugural Screen International UK Marketing & Distribution Awards took place two weeks ago, but so they did, with “I Am Love” (and marketing team AllCity) deservedly scooping Poster of the Year honors for the arresting hot-pink design featured to the right (and in full after the cut). As it happens, we singled out the film’s poster portfolio for praise earlier this year; nice to know we weren’t alone in our admiration. Hey, it’s something.

    Among the posters it beat is another of my favorite 2010 one-sheets recently featured on these pages: the witty crow-and-bomb design for “Four Lions.” Chris Morris’s controversial (and, yes, funny) UK terrorism satire did, however, take the award for Trailer of the Year. You can check that out, too, after the cut.

    (more…)