In Contention

Author: Guy Lodge

  • Desplat, Zimmer, Burwell lead World Soundtrack nominees

    The World Soundtrack Awards aren’t quite as authoritative as their lofty names implies — established in 2001 to accompany the annual Ghent Film Festival in Belgium, they are voted upon by an educational organization of film composers dubbing themselves the World Soundtrack Academy. Given their European origins, it’s interesting how much their awards overlap with those of American awards bodies.

    Coming at this point in the calendar, this year’s nominees fudge together some first-half releases  from this year with a bunch of 2009 awards veterans. All the nominees for Score of the Year, for example, come under the latter heading, three of them having been Oscar-nominated. (The other two, “A Single Man” and “Where the Wild Things Are,” remain my two favourite scores of 2009: good on the WSA for remembering them.)

    Looking at some of the 2010 titles getting mentioned, however, one has to wonder how deep they were digging: “Knight and Day” and “Alice in Wonderland” don’t belong within striking distance of any musical honor, even as part of a body of work.

    (Full list of nominees after the jump.)

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  • Can we ‘Eat’ yet?

    For a major star vehicle, directed by the current ruler of prime-time television, that is only four days away from release, shouldn’t the profile of “Eat Pray Love” be a little higher right now? I admit I’m on the wrong side of the Atlantic; perhaps American streets, magazines and airwaves are flooded with promotional material for Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of  Elizabeth Gilbert’s chick-lit smash. But the film’s online presence seems decidedly muted, while reviews of any sort have yet to appear. What gives?

    Usually, when critics are kept from seeing or writing about a film until this late in the game, it’s because the product smells decidedly iffy. But that’s hardly the case with “Eat Pray Love”: the source material has a devoted following, the talent involved is top-flight, and the trailer was attractive and thoroughly ingratiating.

    As I made clear in a Page to Screen column recently, I detested Gilbert’s fussy, solipsistic memoir, yet the trailer’s promise of airy romance, luscious scenery and Julia Roberts at her most personable had me pegging the film as one of this summer’s most inviting; if it could win me round, the book’s legions of fans should practically be queuing at the theaters already.

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  • Double dip for Gallo at Venice fest

    If you happen to feel you’ve seen too little of Vincent Gallo lately, you really should head to Venice next month, where he’ll now be gracing two Competition titles (not to mention multi-tasking as writer-director-producer-editor in one of them).

    It was announced two weeks ago that “Promises Written in Water,” his first venture behind the camera since 2003’s roundly reviled “The Brown Bunny,” will contend for the Golden Lion; now comes confirmation that veteran Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski’s “Essential Killing,” in which Gallo stars alongside Emmanuelle Seigner, has been added to the Lido lineup.

    “Essential Killing” marks Skolimowski’s first appearance in a major festival competition since 1991’s “30 Door Key,” and only his second directorial effort since then. The Venice press release describes it thus:

    The film tells the story of an Afghan man [Gallo], captured by American forces in Kabul, who finds himself transported to a nameless European country. He manages to escape into the vast frozen woodland, a world away from the desert home he knew. Forced into extreme survival mode, he must kill anyone who strays into his path.

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  • Patricia Neal (1926 – 2010)

    The occasional indignity of being an Academy Award champ is that it gives obituaries an immediate short-cut through one’s career: a lifetime of distinguished work can be handily reduced to “culminated in an Oscar win for _________.”

    Such is the case in many pieces on the passing of Patricia Neal yesterday, albeit justifiably supplemented with observations on her troubled personal life and remarkable recovery from multiple illnesses. Indeed, as a kid obsessed with all things Roald Dahl, I was, for many years, more familiar with the woman than the actress.

    When discussing her film career, however, it’s hard not to zero straight in on her tremendous, Oscar-nabbing work in “Hud”: handily the most electric moment of an otherwise respectable career, yes, but also among the most essential, era-defining performances ever honored in the Best Actress category. (Yes, up there with greatest-win peers like Vivien Leigh and Hilary Swank, and perhaps something of an evolutionary link between them.)

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  • ‘I’m Still Here’ poster

    I’m not entirely sure what manner of beast Casey Affleck’s upcoming documentary about his friend Joaquin Phoenix’s 2008 retirement/reinvention/stunt/freakout is: it claims to be a sincere portrait underpinned by mutual understanding between artists, but it could just as well be the latest archly ironic act in this most slow-burning of celebrity pranks. Whether it answers any questions or simply adds more to the list, however, it’s bound to be one of the hottest tickets at next month’s Venice Film Festival, where it will premiere out of competition. (Alongside Casey’s brother Ben’s “The Town” — the Lido likes it some Affleck this year.) It also boasts one of 2010’s loveliest one-sheets, by the great Kellerhouse, Inc. — perhaps the only time the word “lovely” could be applied to the look Phoenix is rocking here.

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  • Just say no

    Last week, Tom O’Neil reported on a horrifying unacceptable interesting potential development in this year’s Oscar race, and as much as I’ve tried to push it to the recesses of my mind, the thought won’t leave me alone — not least because it provides a depressingly neat answer to one of the question marks I had over the predictions I made last week.

    As I struggled to cobble together a list of 10 plausible Best Picture nominees, I kept searching for the annual middlebrow specialty wild card that is neither too populist nor too outré for the bluehair voting contingent — the film that will make voters feel artistically discriminating, without making them want to slit their wrists. A film for those voters who, to filch a quote from Nick Davis, “like the arthouse best when there’s no real art in it.”

    “The Kids Are All Right” kind of fits the bill, though it’s actually good, and its fun factor is a little too high. “Winter’s Bone” is suitably low on fun, but it’s also as chilly as its title. “The King’s Speech?” Well, it has corsets and cut-glass British accents a go-go, as well as Harvey Weinstein — a man who, as “The Reader” reminded us only 18 months ago, knows this voting contingent inside out. But it’s also a small-scale story of one man overcoming a stutter: mightn’t that prove a little slight for voters who like their awards bait capital-I Important?

    According to O’Neil, it seems this thought might have crossed Weinstein’s mind, and he’s already forming a back-up plan. Ladies and gentlemen, enter “The Concert.”

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  • Terry Gilliam directs Arcade Fire

    I was asleep for the live transmission a few hours ago — though I understand there were some technical issues — but no doubt many of you caught the (beautifully) Terry Gilliam-directed webcast of Arcade Fire’s Madison Square Garden gig. I look forward to catching up with the whole thing, but for now, here’s their performance of my current (and highly subject to change) favorite track of the new album. Is now the time to say something snarky and uncalled for and thoroughly truthful about this being the most worthwhile thing Gilliam has done in the last decade or more? Okay, consider it said.

  • Christopher Nolan honored by BAFTA/LA

    As if you needed reminding that this is a pretty good summer for a certain Mr. Christopher Nolan, BAFTA/LA — the Anglo-American wing of the British Academy — has handed him their annual John Schlesinger Award for artistic excellence in directing. The award will be presented at their 2010 Britannia Awards ceremony in Los Angeles on November 4.

    You’d be well advised not to read too much into this award as far as general BAFTA voting goes: last year, Emily Blunt was named British Artist of the Year by BAFTA/LA for her performance in “The Young Victoria,” and received not so much as a BAFTA nomination for her pains. Shared acronym aside, the two awards ceremonies bear little relation to each other.

    Indeed, Nolan is the first filmmaker to land this particular gong in a year that could even be deemed his for the owning. Previously, BAFTA/LA has had a habit of rewarding directors the year after a notable achievement on their part: Danny Boyle in 2009, Stephen Frears in 2008, Martin, uh, Campbell in 2007, and so on. Clearly, they feel that “Inception” is an achievement that warrants less delayed recognition — which may or may not be significant.

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  • ‘Never Let Me Go’ to open London Film Festival

    Previously a handy catch-up festival for locals who had missed out on the major premieres of Cannes and the like, the London Film Festival raised its profile significantly in the last two years by opening with major world premieres — “Frost/Nixon” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”

    They haven’t quite managed to repeat the trick a third year running: this year’s curtain-raiser, Mark Romanek’s Kazuo Ishiguro adaptation “Never Let Me Go,” will have already premiered at Toronto the month before. Still, it’s a prestigious feather in the film’s cap, a handy pick for those Europeans unable to make the flight out to Canada, and an appropriately British way to kick off the festival. Coincidentally enough, it’s the fourth year in a row that the LFF has opened with a semi-Brit pic from a North American director.

    The 2010 London Film Festival will run from 13 to 28 October. All eyes now will be on festival director Sandra Hebron’s closing night selection. Last year, the festival closed with another world premiere — Sam Taylor-Wood’s “Nowhere Boy,” which will finally make its way to US theaters this autumn — and if they plan to maintain the  international press presence they enjoyed last year, they’ll want to do the same. Shooting for the stars here, but… “Harry Potter,” anybody?

    Press release after the cut.

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  • ‘Barney’s Version’ teaser

    Hat tip to The Playlist for reminding us of this brief trailer for Richard J. Lewis’s comedy “Barney’s Version,” which will premiere in competition at next month’s Venice Film Festival, before moving on to Toronto. (It’s a couple of months old, but for many, the film only hit the radar recently.) There is too little here to draw any firm conclusions, though it does strike me as an unusually chipper American selection for Venice’s big league. I have yet to read the popular source novel — if there’s time, I might cover it in Page to Screen — and Paul Giamatti is an actor to whose charms I remain curiously immune, so I’ll sit out for the moment. Watch the treaser after the jump and see what you think.

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  • Where is my mind

    As that finicky final shot of “Inception” continues to prompt confusion and discussion in comment boards across the internet, it would appear that some people still aren’t done processing Leonardo DiCaprio’s first puzzle pic of 2010.

    Much has been made of the sizable overlap between Christopher Nolan’s summer blockbuster and Martin Scorsese’s winter genre exercise “Shutter Island” — not least in the respective characters played by the films’ mutual leading man — and this extends to ambiguous finales that, in both cases, cast doubt on said character’s state of consciousness.

    I must admit I wasn’t aware that the debate over the end of “Shutter Island” is quite so extensive; perhaps because I watched the film with Dennis Lehane’s novel — to which the film is letter-faithful for the first 99% of its running time — so fresh in my mind, I didn’t give the film’s minor digressions a second thought. (I wasn’t all that engaged anyway.)

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  • ‘Miral’ French poster

    Thanks to commenter Ziyad for alerting us to this pared-down French one-sheet for Julian Schnabel’s “Miral,” which will premiere next month at the Venice Film Festival. The film still has me (said in Tim Gunn tones) worried, but I rather like this — the expression on the face of Freida Pinto (essentially confirmed here as the film’s star, despite what her billing may imply) is ambiguous enough to counter an otherwise staid composition. Meanwhile, the naïve hand-painted lettering asserts artist-filmmaker Schnabel’s auteur identity, scarcely detectable in the film’s recent trailer.

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  • Get him to the geek

    Aging enfant terrible that he is, out-there auteur Gregg Araki has long fostered a reputation for being prickly — the diplomat’s translation for “self-regarding asshole of the first rank” — but the genial good humor of his last two features suggested he might be thawing a little. Certainly, his new film “Kaboom,” a froot-loopy but frequently delightful stoner fantasy that premiered at Cannes in May, appeared to be work of an artist whose tongue had settled pretty much irretractably in cheek. (I reviewed the film in capsule form here.)

    Alas, appearances have proved deceptive, and Araki is still taking himself as seriously as ever. For evidence, look no further than the unpleasant little flap caused when the director, in a singular display of sourness, withdrew his film from the UK’s much-loved genre film festival FrightFest, where it had been afforded a prominent gala screening. His reason? He didn’t want the film seen by a “bunch of geeks.”

    Even allowing for the stretchiest of “words taken out of context” excuses, Araki’s response is not only unnecessarily hostile but bafflingly self-defeating.

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  • ‘Enter the Void’ poster

    Gaspar Noé’s “Enter the Void,” a three-hour melange of bad-trip imagery, medium-core sex and approximately 1,736 swooping crane shots, has hovered in distribution limbo since last year’s Cannes festival, and no wonder: these days, it’s hard enough for perfectly innocuous foreign festival fare to find American friends, let alone a film that chucks a graphic abortion sequence in the final act just to check that you’re still awake. Nonetheless, IFC has been brave enough to adopt this jolly romp; it hits U.S. arthouse screens on September 24.

    I was less than whelmed by the film at last year’s London fest, writing that Noé’s “fatuous follow-up [to “Irréversible”]  deploys an arsenal of tricked-out technique and a colossal running time of 163 minutes to make the make the startling revelations that death is, like, sad, and that drug-dealing is generally not a good idea.” (And I was pro–“Irréversible.”) Others differ considerably: Manohla Dargis, for one, all but credits the film with rewriting cinematic language. Expect the disagreement to continue this autumn; for now, check out the suitably lurid poster (courtesy of Vulture) after the cut.

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  • I’ll give you 10 guesses

    Oh, okay then. I’ve held out longer than most, but with the summer mostly played out, and newly unveiled schedules for Venice and Toronto signifying that the fall film season is already breathing down our necks, now is as good a time as any to go on the record with some Oscar predictions.

    In years past, I’ve had readers tell me that my predictions are tricky to access on the site — not a problem for me, since the fewer who found them, the more contained the embarrassment when they were proved hopelessly wrong. Nevertheless, we have heard you, and we have acted: at the bottom of Kris’s predictions on the sidebar, you will find a shiny new link to mine. You can’t beat progress.

    As usual, if you like your predictions rational, grounded in inside information and frequently accurate, Kris is your man. (He’ll be updating his on August 23, by the way.) At these early stages, I go on a mixture of gut feeling, sudden hunches and a broken Ouija board I picked up for a fiver in a garage sale. I tend to get stronger inklings about what won’t get nominated than what will, which is why some of my picks have a placeholder feel to them.

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  • A home for Miramax

    Okay, for “home,” read “resting place.” Scrap those sweet-but-always-unlikely reports that the high-end company would be returning to the warm embrace of its parents, the finally outbiddenBrothers Weinstein. The story has a less sentimental ending, but an ending nonetheless — Disney has sold Miramax to one Filmyard Holdings Llc, run by non-film businessmen Ronald Tutor and Tom Barrack.

    The price? A cool $660 million.

    Though details are few, The Hollywood Reporter states that Filmyard plans to launch a new production company that will both cover the Miramax library (consisting of 700+ titles) and make the occasional new feature. The Miramax you know, in other words, is history, reduced to a name-only warehouse of sorts. But you saw that coming. You can read the business-y nuts and bolts of the deal here, if you so wish; I’ll leave you with Disney chief Robert Iger’s parting shot…

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  • ‘Tamara Drewe’ trailer

    This trailer has been hanging around for a few days, but since Stephen Frears’s countryside romp was recently tapped for the Toronto Film Festival, it seems appropriate to feature it now. I reviewed the film out of Cannes and found it singularly strained and irritating — the kind of thing described as “quintessentially English” by those who think “That’s Amore” quintessentially Italian. Nonetheless, it found a number of credible admirers on the Croisette, and will likely continue to do so in Toronto. See what you think. Click on the image below to check it out at Momentum Pictures, or watch the embed after the cut.

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  • Coppola, Schnabel, Reichardt in Venice competition lineup

    UPDATE: The festival website has a list of out-of-competition selections, which include two directorial efforts from the Brothers Affleck: Ben’s “The Town” and Casey’s Joaquin Phoenix doc “I’m Still Here.”

    EARLIER: Before you ask: no, “The Tree of Life” is nowhere to be seen. Not that that’s a surprise by this point. There is a “but,” however — Venice festival organisers announced that there will be one surprise competition entry added at the festival’s halfway mark. I wouldn’t bet the house (or even the garden shed, frankly) on it being the Malick film, but hope is being kept alive nonetheless. (Last year, the fest had two surprise films: one from Werner Herzog and one from Brillante Mendoza.)

    Shifting the focus to what did make it, the 22-title lineup looks much as we expected — we’d effectively been promised Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere” and Julian Schnabel’s “Miral” since they failed to show up at Cannes, while Tuesday’s Toronto announcement tipped us off to the presence of Francois Ozon’s “Potiche,” the Paul Giamatti-Dustin Hoffman starrer “Barney’s Version” and the Haruki Murakami adaptation “Norwegian Wood.”

    (More commentary, and the full competition lineup, after the cut.)

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