In Contention

Author: Guy Lodge

  • The Cain and Abel of ‘Social Network’

    As much as the film ticks certain prestige-film boxes — hell, it’s a socially conscious biopic from a respected, Oscar-nominated filmmaker — I still find myself doing something of a double-take when I hear “The Social Network” referred to as the Best Picture contender to beat. When was the last time a film so steeped in contemporary youth culture found itself in that position? (And no, “Slumdog Millionaire” does not count.)

    Complementing the film’s preoccupation with a relatively recent chapter of pop culture is a bold stroke of new-generation casting: its three male principals are all under 30, and not yet tapped by the wand of major movie stardom.

    The long-ubiquitous Justin Timberlake aside, it’s not hard to imagine some older Academy members puzzling over their screeners: “Who are these kids?” (Then again, those same folks might also be wondering what the hell Facebook is. It’s only mental scenes like this that give me pause when considering its awards prospects.)

    (more…)

  • ‘Biutiful’ enters foreign Oscar race

    The list of submissions for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar has been fairly short on widely-known auteur names thus far, so expect a lot of awards-watchers to zero in on Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful,” which has just been announced as Mexico’s official entry in the race.

    As with “Pan’s Labyrinth” four years ago, the country has opted for a high-profile Spanish co-production — set and filmed in Barcelona with a Spanish cast — with the Cannes seal of approval.

    Given its name appeal, and the likely accompanying push for star Javier Bardem in the Best Actor category, many might see “Biutiful” as a slam-dunk for a nomination, but I remain less sure. (Even if Bardem does pull through, it could still miss in the foreign race — see “Volver” in 2006.) The film is a relentlessly downbeat and occasionally inscrutable slog that has so far inspired as much critical scorn as admiration — it won’t enjoy the same hip cache that helped Iñárritu to a nomination here 10 years ago for the more universally liked “Amores Perros.”

    (more…)

  • ‘True Grit’ teaser trailer

    Well, they held out on us for long enough, but we have finally been afforded a glimpse of the year’s last major awards hopeful. It’s short, sweet and pleasingly oblique — but you only need watch the first few seconds to know we’re in for something a bit more substantial than the creaky 1969 oater that won John Wayne his gold-watch Oscar. At this teaser stage, they’re still keeping Jeff Bridges’s expectation-laden performance under wraps, showcasing newcomer Hailee Steinfeld instead — and she evidently has a lot to chew on. Meanwhile, whatever the fate of the film, it looks like we can write DP Roger Deakins’s umpteenth nom down in ink. Click on the image to check out the trailer via Apple, or watch the embed after the jump.

    (more…)

  • ‘Another Year’ UK poster

    Honestly, I’m not crazy about the execution in this case, but I’m always pleased to see poster designers trying illustrative concepts ahead of lazy photographic floating-head templates. I imagine Sony Pictures Classics will dream up something quite different for the US market. Incidentally, anybody looking to this poster for clues as to how the actors are being classified will come up empty — Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen and prime awards hopeful Lesley Manville are alphabetically billed as co-leads, which is arguably how it should be. If you need a refresher, here are my thoughts on the film from Cannes, and Kris’s from Telluride.

    (more…)

  • Susanne Bier’s latest in foreign Oscar hunt

    One week from the deadline and the Best Foreign Language Film submissions are coming in thick and fast — our updated list currently boasts 44 titles. The number of those titles I’ve actually seen is, regrettably, still in the single digits, but it does include one of today’s arrivals to the race, India’s “Peepli Live” — which coincidentally also opens in the UK today.

    I’d like to say supportive things about Anusha Rizvi’s well-intentioned but controversial media satire, which premiered in competition on Sundance and has been warmly received on the festival circuit, but I’m afraid I found it a pretty listless affair: the film takes on the potentially rich dramatic subject of farmers committing suicide to gain government aid for their families, but veers crudely between action and subtext without balancing them at once.

    Despite a vast film industry, India has accrued a scant three nominations in this category; though respect for “Peepli Live” is widespread, I somehow sense a fourth isn’t on the cards.

    (more…)

  • James Cameron tops Guardian’s “most powerful” list

    There has been some debate this morning in the British corner of the Twitterverse about the merits of The Guardian’s inaugural Film Power 100 list, which claims to represent the 100 industry figures current wielding the most power over, and influence on, UK filmgoers.

    It’s an ungainly and frequently baffling collection of names, mashing together actors, directors, moguls and journalists, but as readers pick away at the inclusion of this star over that — and non-Brits scratch their heads and wonder who the hell Claudia Winkleman is — few are arguing with the paper’s #1 choice: the long-dormant but mightily resurrected James Cameron. They explain his selection as follows:

    [H]e is almost the entire reason why [3D] is no longer viewed exclusively as a sideshow gimmick … No film-maker has taken a more passionate interest and involvement in cinema technology than this Canadian-born writer-director-producer, who pushed 3D and computer-generated character creation to a point of sophistication that would enable him to make his Pocahontas-goes-science-fiction extravaganza.

    (more…)

  • ‘Carlos’ trailer

    Olivier Assayas’s five-and-a-half-hour Carlos the Jackal biopic was the film I most regretted missing it Cannes, where its gargantuan running time prevented any repeat screenings. Happily, I have a chance to catch up with it at next month’s London Film Festival, and am enormously looking forward to doing so. (It will have its US premiere next week at the New York fest.) IFC will be releasing the film on October 15 both in its full miniseries-format glory and in a 150-minute theatrical cut; word from those I trust at Cannes is that the film rewards the long haul. Click on the image below to check out the trailer via Apple, or watch the embed after the jump.

    (more…)

  • Zuckerberg times his generosity well

    The official line may be that beleaguered Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg isn’t really on board with “The Social Network” — even if the Twitterverse yesterday was abuzz with rumors that he attended a screening in his Sunday best — but whatever his attitude to David Fincher’s film about his rise to fortune, the 26 year-old billionaire is certainly helping out in the publicity stakes.

    The New York Times reports that Zuckerberg will appear on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” tomorrow to announce a $100 million donation to the Newark public schools system:

    The $100 million for Newark is the initial gift to start a foundation for education financed by Mr. Zuckerberg. This would be by far the largest publicly known gift by Mr. Zuckerberg, whose fortune Forbes magazine estimated last year at $2 billion … The gift is many times larger than any the system has received, officials said — an extraordinary sum not only for a district with an $800 million annual operating budget, but also for any publicly financed government agency. It is not yet clear how the money would be used, or over what period.

    (more…)

  • THE LONG SHOT: I’m just here for the movies

    “You’re the Oscar guys, aren’t you?” asked the spike-heeled PR officer upon eyeing the press badge dangling from my neck, her voice exuding the steely sweetness they teach you on the first day of public relations boot camp. It was midway through the Venice Film Festival and I was too beat — or my mouth just too full of complimentary cheese — to rephrase her blunt description. I nodded in reply: yes, I am indeed “the Oscar guys.” One of them, at any rate.

    “Thought so,” she said, eyes darting across the room, perhaps in search of my chart-brandishing entourage. “Not much for you here, is there?”

    On the one hand, I could hardly argue, not least since we’d both just emerged from a film — Chilean auteur Pablo Larrain’s brilliant nightmare of a black comedy “Post Mortem” — that stands as much chance of securing an invitation to the Kodak Theater as Kim Kardashian does to the Kennedy Center Honors.

    Five days into the festival, and the only film screened that belonged in the Oscar conversation (following the critical belly-flop of Julian Schnabel’s “Miral,” at least) was high-gloss opener “Black Swan,” and even that was generating “too cool for the Academy” conclusions. Oscar-watching at European festivals, even blogger-inundated Cannes, is a pretty spotty sport compared to the FYC frenzy of Telluride and Toronto.

    (more…)

  • ‘Red Hill’ trailer

    Okay, so “Red Hill” has about as much of a future in awards season as I do in pro football, but I can’t resist flagging up this trailer anyway — because Patrick Hughes’s debut feature, which I reviewed in brief at the Berlinale in February, is pretty much a blast. A gleefully schlocky, but genuinely jolting, comedy-western-horror hybrid from Down Under, it’s one of the year’s most spirited and inventive genre outings, and also makes a very strong case for “True Blood” star Ryan Kwanten as a leading man. My only question is why Sony is rolling out such obvious Halloween fodder on November 5. Click on the image below to check out the trailer via Apple, or watch the embed after the jump.

    (more…)

  • Israel, Bosnia among latest foreign Oscar submissions

    I know a couple of you have been curious about what Israel submits as its Best Foreign Language Film contender, given that the country been on something of an Oscar hot streak of late — securing nominations in each of the last three races, though the country remains the most-nominated in the category’s history never to have taken the gold. (Zero from nine, for those keeping score.)

    As usual, the country has automatically entered the top winner at its national film awards ceremony, the Ophirs, which took place last night. Most pundits saw this as a slam-dunk for “Intimate Grammar,” a high-prestige literary adaptation that led the race with 12 nods.

    However, in a sizable upset, it was bested by Eran Riklis’s “The Human Resources Manager,” a gentle, character-centered dramedy about a bakery personnel officer tasked with shipping the body of a foreign employee back to her native Romania. (Thanks to reader Cameron McAllister for the tip.)

    (more…)

  • But is it?

    I’m not sure how I missed the memo, but in the past 48 hours, “The Town” apparently became an Oscar contender and nobody told me.

    You may recall that when I posted my updated predictions on Sunday, I actually found room for Ben Affleck’s popular sophomore feature in the Best Adapted Screenplay category. I thought that a relatively off-center guess at the time, but now others, emboldened by strong reviews and excellent box office for the straight-ahead thriller, are going much further.

    Just yesterday, both Deadline’s Pete Hammond and THR’s Gregg Kilday bestowed the “O” word upon “The Town,” with both reporters citing a wildly enthusiastic reception at the film’s Academy screening on Saturday. (I always take such screening reports with a pinch of salt — a film can play well without inspiring reverence — but I’m just passing along the message.) Kilday goes on to suggest that Affleck could benefit from the Academy’s noted fondness for heartthrob actors turned serious filmmakers.

    (more…)

  • ‘Meek’s Cutoff,’ Franco top Toronto critics’ poll

    “The King’s Speech” may have come out on top with Toronto Film Festival audiences, but the critics — at least, the broad cross-section surveyed by indieWIRE in their annual post-festival poll — have other ideas. Kelly Reichardt’s period western “Meek’s Cutoff,” my own pick of the Venice fest, was voted film of the festival by a sizable margin, with 76 points to 58 for runner-up “127 Hours.”

    Of course, regular audiences will have to wait until 2011 to see what the fuss is about, but expect critical reaction to be as breathless when Oscilloscope eventually open Reichardt’s film. It’s too rarefied an arthouse item to get the awards attention it merits, of course, but no matter: I sense a future classic is being born.

    Higher-profile awards-season fare comes next on the list, with “Black Swan” and “The King’s Speech” all but tied for third place, while foreign-language titles finding their way into the top 10 include Palme d’Or champ “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” Venice prizewinners “Attenberg” and “Silent Souls.” and Canada’s probable Oscar submission “Incendies.”

    (more…)

  • FIPRESCI names ‘Ghost Writer’ Film of the Year

    This news actually dropped a few weeks ago, but I neglected to mention it while I was distracted with Venice goings-on. Anyway, since the award was presented at the San Sebastián Film Festival this past weekend, it seems appropriate to bring it up now.

    FIPRESCI, the international critics’ association, is best known for the independent awards they dish out at most major film festivals — which, obviously, tend to line up more with critical consensus than jury decisions. (At Venice last week, for example, they chose the widely admired Russian entry “Silent Souls.”)

    However, once a year, they poll their collected membership to elect a Grand Prix winner for Film of the Year. A list of past winners of the prize, awarded since 1999, reads rather like a greatest-hits compilation of recent arthouse cinema: “There Will Be Blood,” “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” “All About My Mother,” and so on.

    So, what’s their Film of the Year for 2010? Roman Polanski’s “The Ghost Writer.”

    (more…)

  • Some predictions for a Sunday

    Okay, so it’s been almost two months since I last offered up some Oscar nomination predictions, so now that the big triple-header of autumn festivals is over, I thought it time for an update. (Remember, you can always access my predictions page at the tail of the right-hand sidebar.) With the season slowly beginning to swing — my first Long Shot column will land on Wednesday — you can expect more frequent revisions.

    I’ve marked which contenders have been subbed in and out, though the changes aren’t as numerous as I might have expected — I had a summertime hunch about “Made in Dagenham” that I’m sticking to after its warm Toronto reception, and what reason have we been given yet to doubt the likes of “Toy Story 3,” “Another Year” and “The Social Network?”

    As usual, I operate on gut feel, which is a hit-and-miss system: my misgivings about “The King’s Speech” as a major player were obviously unfounded, but until precursors show me otherwise, I’m still not buying “Inception.” As usual, look to Kris for level-headed predictions, but I enjoy trying to spot the snubs. (Last year, my dogged refusal to include “Invictus” in my Best Picture projections all season eventually paid off. Stopped clock, and all that. )

    (more…)

  • TIFF: ‘The King’s Speech’ takes Toronto audience award

    Well, in case you weren’t already convinced, you can pretty much write a Best Picture nod for “The King’s Speech” in ink now. Following in the footsteps of such titles as “American Beauty,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Precious,” The Weinstein Company’s period drama just took the People’s Choice Award on the last day of the Toronto Film Festival — confirming that the film plays across the board.

    Of course, it oversimplifying matters to say that Toronto’s audience award equals a Best Picture play; indeed, only three winners in the last decade have gone on to secure a nomination for Oscar’s top prize. But when a film enters the festival with that much advance buzz and then makes good on it, it’s fair to say that the script is being followed.

    The runner-up prize, meanwhile, went to the British-South African co-production, “The First Grader,” an inspirational true-life drama about an 84 year-old Kenyan man starting school — seemingly the kind of  sentimental human-interest crowdpleaser that is catnip to festival audiences, even if critics have been more divided.

    (more…)

  • France leads latest batch of Oscar entries

    As you may have noticed, we’ve been doing our best to keep you abreast of submissions for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar — the deadline for which is officially (but not definitively) October 1. At last count, 27 countries have entered films, and we now have a separate page where you can keep track of the growing list. (You can also find a link to it under the foreign-language category in the right-hand sidebar.)

    The most prominent contender to enter the race since my last update is France’s “Of Gods and Men,” also known on these pages as the monk movie I embarrassingly couldn’t stay awake for at Cannes, where it wound up taking the Grand Prix. (We’ll be having a rematch at the London Film Festival next month — I look forward to tackling the film again with more than two hours’ sleep behind me.)

    It’s a wholly unsurprising pick, following as it does the country’s simple selection formula since 2007: just choose the French film that took the highest honors on the Croisette. It’s worked for the last two years running, with “The Class” and “A Prophet” both landing nominations.

    (more…)

  • WEEKLY WRAP: Venice winners, Toronto bites, ‘Network’ raves

    • Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere” surprised many by taking top honors at the Venice Film Festival; we took a closer look at the Lido winners.

    • Meanwhile, we were considerably less than wowed by the festival closer, Julie Taymor’s “The Tempest.”

    • This week’s Off the Carpet column reflected on the unusual depth of this year’s Best Actress race.

    • A race that subsequently got even deeper as Lionsgate made the biggest acquisition thus far of this year’s Toronto fest: Nicole Kidman’s comeback effort “Rabbit Hole.”

    (more…)