In Contention

Author: Guy Lodge

  • New ‘Drive’ posters

    Or, as a “Top Chef” contestant might title this post, “Drive” Four Ways. The US teaser poster for Nicolas Winding Refn’s Cannes winner unveiled a couple of weeks ago — the one that handily doubles as the cover for Ryan Gosling’s upcoming workout DVD — met a mixed reception. Some liked the kitsch, star-centered romanticism of it (though I can’t top Nick Davis’s “Aaron Carter inspirational cassette single” analogy), while many others thought it did an inadequate job of selling the film’s genre components. The film’s a fast-car thriller — where were the cars? And the thrills?

    Those objectors should be appeased by the film’s new US and UK one-sheets, both of which retain The Gosling Factor while shading in a little more of the action-film context. (A faint hint of camp is still present in the film’s trademark hot-pink cursive.) The US poster wins on the design front — and props for including a glimpse of the film’s key fetish object, Gosling’s leather driving gloves — but loses major points for recycling a tagline indelibly attached to “No Country for Old Men.” What were they thinking? Check ’em out after the cut.

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  • Tweet of the day

    Not the beginning of a regular feature, I should explain. But sometimes an RT doesn’t feel like enough.

  • BOX OFFICE: Our ‘Help’ in ‘Apes’ Past

    Okay, so now you know why I’m not usually charged with box-office pun duties. Come back to the five and dime, Chad Hartigan, Chad Hartigan, and so on. Still, it doesn’t take a prodigious number-cruncher — lucky, since I’m not one — to tell that this is quite a result for “The Help.” Even accounting for bestselling source material, for a female-driven, racially-themed drama in which the biggest star is the still-green Emma Stone to come this close to toppling a summer popcorner as robust as “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” is pretty spectacular: expect a strong hold as word of mouth for Disney’s cuddly civil-rights film builds, buttressing the eventual Oscar campaign. (For the sake of comparison, the far more star-powered “The Blind Side” debuted with $34 million in 2009.)

    Surely the week’s unhappiest new release, meanwhile, falls outside the Top 10: “Glee: The 3D Concert Movie” pulled in a miserable $5.7 million, suggesting that the show’s many fans can still tell the difference between a film and an iTunes playlist in three dimensions. I’d worry that we’ve collectively lost our sense of wonder, but people are still going to see “Final Destination 5,” so let’s not panic.

    (Courtesy: Exhibitor Relations)

  • On the “danger” of Andy Serkis

    I suppose some might put it down to the fact that I didn’t find the film as spirit-lifting as many critics did, but I have a hard time signing the blogosphere’s imaginary petition for Andy Serkis to get a Best Supporting Actor nomination for “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.”

    It’s not that I don’t admire Serkis’s expertise, or accept motion-capture performance as a valid and exciting discipline. Nor am I a physical purist in terms of what constitutes award-level acting. Not two years ago, I happily included James Gandolfini on my hypothetical Oscar ballot for “Where the Wild Things Are,” and I have no beef with the 2001 BAFTA nomination handed to Eddie Murphy in “Shrek.” An actor’s face may be his foremost tool, but if he can affect audiences without it, then more power to him.

    I will admit, however, to some uncertainty as to the border between Serkis’s contribution and that of the FX team; whereas I can locate and identify the limitations of Gandolfini’s work, much of the critical praise for Serkis’s Caesar hinges on a undeniable expressiveness that has nonetheless been enhanced beyond the actor’s own means.

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  • Tell us what you thought of ‘The Help’

    I haven’t yet had a chance to see the bestseller-based civil rights drama “The Help,” but I gather a lot of you have. The film — and more specifically, its first-class female ensemble — clearly hit the right note for Kris, though other reports I’m hearing suggest there’s far more to like about the film’s performances than its honey-dipped politics. (Are you, like some, bothered by a narrative in which a white character’s actions propel social change for the black ones? Or do you agree with the more sanguine view of one of my Twitter friends: in film, liberal guilt is preferable to liberal non-guilt?)

    Interested to hear views on the film that dig a little deeper, or at least a little more personal, than the blogosphere’s current fascination over what Oscar category Viola Davis should campaign in. Meanwhile, was Davis the film’s MVP for you, or did another cast member — perhaps Kris’s favorite, Jessica Chastain — steal your affections? Go.

  • ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’ UK trailer

    Okay, so we featured the decent French trailer for Lynne Ramsay’s blinding comeback feature only a few days ago, but this excellent one from UK distributor Artificial Eye does a better job of distilling the film’s complicated essence: it captures a measure of the film’s cruel wit, as well as Ramsay’s typically off-kilter sensory details. Those sprinklers heard at the trailer’s outset, by the way, will not leave your mind for days after seeing the film. It premiered yesterday at The Guardian — click on the image to watch it there, or check out the embed after the cut.

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  • A note on ‘Senna’ and the Oscars

    Longtime Oscar-watchers know that the Academy’s documentary branch is a law unto itself: no amount of glowing reviews, previous awards, robust box office and/or pop-culture prominence is enough to secure a film a guaranteed nomination in the Best Documentary Feature race. Indeed, anticipating the “surprise” snub in the branch’s series of shortlists is something of an annual pundits’ parlor game: last year, Davis Guggenheim’s popular “Waiting for Superman” was the winning/losing horse, depending on your perspective.

    Still, inasmuch as one can predict these things, Asif Kapadia’s marvelous “Senna,” which I reviewed earlier this week, ticks all the boxes of an Oscar frontrunner in the category.

    A rousing, emotionally rich biopic with a strong dramatic arc that makes it accessible even to those with no interest in motor sport — the latter audience representing its biggest obstacle in the States — it arrives on US screens today boasting sensational reviews (for the number obsessives, its Metacritic score currently sits 84), record-breaking UK box office and a Sundance audience award. When it comes to BAFTA night, at least, the other four documentary nominees may as well not bother turning up. (It’ll likely be a hot contender for the Best British Film prize too.)

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  • Yours truly at Empire Big Screen

    Here’s some exciting news for my London-based fans — all six of you, give or take members of my immediate family. If your long-cherished dream has been to see me in the flesh, offering my own limited insight into the whys and hows of film journalism, that can become a reality today.

    I am flattered — not to mention a little bewildered — to have been invited to take part in a couple of panel discussions at this weekend’s Empire Big Screen event at the O2 Dome, an exciting three-day summit of sorts for movie fans featuring a range of screenings, exhibits, talks and other swell distractions. The panel I’m taking part in is called ‘How to Become a Film Journalist’ (alternative title: ‘How to Try in Business Without Really Succeeding’) and I, for one, look forward to learning the answer.

    I’ll be on this afternoon at 3pm, as well as twice on Sunday, with an impressive array of panellists including Anna Smith, David Edwards, Charlie Lyne and Tim Robey, the bylines of whom are familiar to far more UK film buffs than my own. If you happen to be at Big Screen — check out the full lineup here — do come along and watch me bluff.

  • ‘Coriolanus’ UK trailer

    I stuck my neck out back in February at the Berlin Film Festival and said that Vanessa Redgrave will snag a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination (at least) for her galvanizing interpretation of Volumnia in Ralph Fiennes’s hopped-up take on Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus.” I’m sticking to my guns — and I imagine more voices will join mine when the film finally makes its second festival appearance at Toronto next month — but you wouldn’t get the message from this slick, alluring UK trailer, which understandably places the emphasis squarely on the film’s testosterone component. (More thoughts, plus the embed, after the jump.)

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  • SHORT TAKE: “Senna” (****)

    It seems perverse to begin a review of a documentary — one about a well-known, latter-day sports legend, at that — with something as mundanely cautious as a spoiler alert. Until recently, if general knowledge hadn’t already acquainted a viewer with the outcome of a non-fiction feature, or if the laws of real, unheightened life hadn’t made it patently obvious, the filmmakers would usually do the job for us anyway, working backwards from set facts to find the variables we don’t know, or didn’t know we knew.

    With a new breed of documentarists getting ever more playfully shape-shifting in they ways they trade information and manipulate point of view — last year’s talking-point docs “Catfish” and “Exit Through the Gift Shop” both hinged on an abrupt turn not only in perspective, but in subject — Asif Kapadia’s dazzling biopic “Senna” instead subverts expectations by keeping its storytelling fiercely linear. Viewers unfamiliar with the story of Ayrton Senna, the reckless, beautiful Brazilian Formula 1 racing driver who rose to prominence in the 1980s and ended his career as arguably the greatest in the sport’s history, are offered no pat framing devices and wistful talking heads to say what became of him, beyond the unhappy use of the past tense.

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  • ‘Contagion’ character posters

    I’ve successfully dodged the trailer — and swiftly ducked out of any online discussion — for Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion,” to I can honestly say that I haven’t the faintest idea what it’s about, and plan to stay cheerfully ignorant until the lights go down at its Venice press screening in a few weeks’ time. Fortunately, this set of six character posters that hit the web yesterday doesn’t shed any more light, selling the film on its tantalizing cast and a hazy sense of foreboding that invites so many questions. What’s going on? Why can’t we touch anyone? Why has Matt Damon switched bodies with Mark Wahlberg? Why is Jude Law preserved in ice? And what did poor Gwyneth Paltrow, here lobbying hard for Ron Howard’s long-gestating Tilda Swinton biopic, do to so displease the film’s marketers?

    All will be revealed in under a month. The most arresting of the designs is after the cut, followed by the most flattering (Marion Cotillard clearly has friends in the right places) — check out the rest at Yahoo! Movies.

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  • Toronto updates lineup, plus ‘Take This Waltz’ teaser

    The vast Toronto Film Festival lineup is a still-growing beast, but today it swelled to 125 titles with the addition of a cluster of homegrown Canadian titles, including two films — Mary Harron’s “The Moth Diaries” and Jean-Marc Vallée’s “Cafe de Flore” — that will debut at Venice a few days earlier. Most exciting, however, is the world premiere of “Keyhole”: avant-garde auteur Guy Maddin’s first dramatic feature in several years reunites him with former muse Isabella Rossellini, while Jason Patric (hey, remember him?) takes the lead.

    Steve Pond has the list of new Canadian additions, while you can check out the full lineup (thus far) at the festival site.

    Speaking of all thing Canadian, by the way, a couple of readers have asked for a space to air opinions on the teaser scene (I’m not sure why some are calling it a trailer) recently released for the TIFF-booked “Take This Waltz,” the Michelle Williams-Seth Rogen romantic drama from Oscar-nominated actress-turned-filmmaker Sarah Polley. I thought the spot too isolated and inconsequential to merit much discussion, but the force is strong — check it out after the jump, if you’re so inclined, and share your thoughts.

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  • Things we lost in the fire

    Apologies for the silence on the site in the last day or so — Kris has been in transit, while I’ve been distracted by dispiriting events close to home.  The riots that have been plaguing London since Saturday night seemed to finally attract the full attention of international news networks today, but I’m not sure how effectively they can convey the queasy jumble of anger, confusion and dread afflicting most of the city’s residents, myself included.

    Many of us, even, are scarcely getting the full impression: it’s hard enough to wrap one’s head around local misfortunes — last night, I was dryly informed via Twitter that a bus a mere half-mile from my house had gone up in flames — before taking in the full, discontinuous jigsaw of incident and loss, and moving on to ponder what this means on a broader (and longer-term) national and social level.

    “It’s sad that so much damage is somehow being done with so little conviction,” I overheard a train passenger say this afternoon, a quote that seemed to me to sum up the stateless quality of the last couple of days.

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  • French trailer and poster for ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’

    As some you will remember, I flipped for Lynne Ramsay’s “We Need To Talk About Kevin” back in May, and the film has yet to work its way out from under my skin. The film is heading into its second festival phase, build on its Cannes buzz at Toronto and perhaps Telluride. (It’s sure to have a high-profile gala spot at the London Film Festival too.) We’re still awaiting the US and UK marketing, but for the impatient, French distributor Diaphana has put out an intelligently cut trailer that does a pretty good job of conveying the stylized, sensually led approach Ramsay has taken to the material — but keeps the lid on Tilda Swinton’s Oscar-ready performance. The poster, however, could use some improvement. Check them out after the jump, via Bleeding Cool. (Thanks to reader Jim T for the tip.)

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  • In praise of the modern movie soundtrack

    I generally try to ignore film opinion pieces I think are fundamentally misguided — à chacun son goût and all that, plus the fact that fighting one mind is generally more trouble than it’s worth — but Ben Walsh’s idle article in The Independent today on the supposed demise of the movie soundtrack does such an absurd disservice to the current landscape of film music that it can’t pass without objection.

    Walsh’s standpoint is a dully nostalgic one: movie scores were so much more memorable in the old days, when greats like John Williams, Ennio Morricone and Danny Elfman (who are all dead, apparently) conjured whistle-ready themes by the dozen, while scores today “seem so completely unmemorable” by comparison.

    His pool of case studies for this assertion is a shallow one — he speaks mainly of the recent Oscar winners by Best Picture, Original Score and Original Song, oddly conflating the last two categories as if the two disciplines are somehow comparable — and even through that narrow prism, his preferences are hard to justify.

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  • First look at Anne Hathaway as Catwoman

    Or, to be more precise, as Selina Kyle, given that the “Dark Knight Rises” machine seems to be avoiding the “Catwoman” moniker. My considered verdict on this: she’s not Michelle Pfeiffer. But then, few people are. Beyond that, I have no opinion, though I’m sure many of you do. Have at it in the comments.

  • ‘Margaret’ finally goes free

    And you thought “The Tree of Life” had a protracted journey to its eventual release. It’s well over two years since I first wrote about the woes of Kenneth Lonergan’s chronically delayed sophomore feature, “Margaret,” and even then, it was a stale issue. The film was shot in 2005 — long before co-producers Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella passed on, long before leading lady Anna Paquin’s career was transformed by “True Blood” — and has languished in post-production purgatory (with occasional trips into legal hell) ever since.

    Indeed, the wait for “Margaret” simply to travel from set to screen has now exceeded the already frustrating five-year gap between Lonergan’s marvelous, Oscar-nominated debut, “You Can Count on Me,” and the production of his follow-up. Some blamed Lonergan’s perfectionism in the editing room, others an unruly, 168-page shooting script; whispered reports from test screenings weren’t overly encouraging. For better or worse, I had assumed by now, the film was lost to us.

    Happily, I was wrong. Making good on a brief but firm promise made a year ago, distributor Fox Searchlight has named a September 30 release date for the film.

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  • Should we be buying into ‘Zoo?’

    When compiling my first round of Oscar predictions last week, I somehow found myself gliding instinctively over Cameron Crowe’s upcoming true-life comedy “We Bought a Zoo” — despite its starry profile, big studio backing and plum holiday release date. Glancing over Kris’s predictions to the right, I noticed he’s done the same.

    Admittedly, Crowe’s last two features — 2001’s intriguing but unmoored “Vanilla Sky” and 2005’s utterly wretched “Elizabethtown” — have rather diminished the stock of the writer-director who won an Oscar ten years ago for “Almost Famous.” And “We Bought a Zoo” — a seemingly lightweight, family-friendly film adapted from Benjamin Mee’s memoirs of his quest to revive a failing wildlife park — could strike some as too fuzzy a prospect for big-league awards.

    Meanwhile, that Fox is skipping the festival circuit might be interpreted as an indication that they view the film as a likely commercial play rather than a critics’ cause. It’s worth noting, meanwhile, that this is Crowe’s first feature on which he shares a writing credit — with chick-flick fixture Aline Brosh McKenna, who struck the right fluffy note with her adaptation of “The Devil Wears Prada,” but likewise has stumbled badly with her follow-up efforts.

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