In Contention

Author: Guy Lodge

  • Predict the NYFCC Awards

    Tilda Swinton in JuliaAfter surprising myself with the number of LAFCA categories I called yesterday, I’m set to disprove my newfound prescience by predicting today’s New York Film Critics’ Circle awards.

    Many are thinking the New Yorkers’ highbrow urban sensibility will favor “A Serious Man,” — but I don’t know if they’ll want to crown the Coens just two years after they last did so. Others think they may offer “Up in the Air” compensation for its meager showing yesterday, but it seemed more an L.A.-style pick to me.

    It may seem foolhardy to predict a repeat of yesterday’s LAFCA wins in the top two categories, but it wouldn’t be unprecedented: “Brokeback Mountain” nabbed Best Picture and Director honors from both groups in 2005, and the indie edge (and low box-office) of “The Hurt Locker” gives it the feel of a cause that critics’ groups won’t mind joining forces to champion.

    What are your best guesses?

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  • AFI announce Top 10 American films of 2009

    Algenis Perez Soto in SugarJeez, give us some breathing room. Anyway, the American Film Institute has revealed their annual selection of the year’s best U.S. titles, and as usual, it’s a pleasingly diverse, idiosyncratic list.

    My heart sings to see Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s marvelous “Sugar” make the cut, at the expense of heavily-hyped titles like “Invictus” and even “Avatar” — Anne Thompson reports the latter got a special citation for technical achievement, though it’s not in the press release.

    From an awards-watcher’s perspective, however, the most interesting inclusion here might be “The Messenger,” whose higher-than-expected precursor profile suggests some may be underestimating its Oscar potential.

    Those looking for correlation with the Academy’s eventual Top 10 should bear in mind that a foreign title like “An Education” isn’t eligible for inclusion here. Even so, I’d say there are plenty of American titles not included here that are more likely to land Best Picture nods than, say, “The Hangover.”

    But that’s the beauty of the list — it’s always a joy to see a set of year-end honors with more on its mind than mere Oscar prognostication. Check out the full Top 10 after the cut.

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  • ‘Hurt Locker’ tops with LA Critics

    Kathryn BigelowToday is a very good day to be one Ms. Kathryn Bigelow. A few days ago, we asked you which film looks set to be the critics’ darling of the season — today, at least, the clear answer appears to be “The Hurt Locker.”

    Hours after sweeping the board with the Beantown crowd, Bigelow’s Iraq-set heartpounder took the top two prizes in the LAFCA voting. What this means for the film’s Oscar chances is open to question, but its 58 year-old helmer’s trifecta of prizes today bodes well for her chances of become the first female Best Director Oscar winner in history.

    The film wasn’t as dominant as it was in the Boston critics’ awards. Jeremy Renner’s Boston upset was not to be repeated, with Jeff Bridges taking his first (and, I suspect, not his last) Best Actor honor of the season for “Crazy Heart.” Meanwhile, DP Barry Ackroyd came in second to Christian Berger for “The White Ribbon.”

    More thoughts, and a full list of winners and runners-up, after the cut.

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  • ‘Avatar’ takes top prize from NY Online Critics

    AvatarNote to all the critics’ groups out there: yesterday was a quiet day. Did none of you think to announce your awards then, getting a little more individual attention in the process? Talk about a pile-up.

    Anyway, the New York Film Critics Online just revealed their selections, and while they’re not the most influential group out there, there’s good news for those hoping for a blockbuster presence in the awards season — and a battle of the exes on the Best Director front.

    Side note for fellow fans of Tilda Swinton’s performance in “Julia”: apparently she was Meryl Streep’s nearest competitor for Best Actress, though voter Katey Rich of CinemaBlend speculates that some critics voting hadn’t seen the film. Sigh. Still, nice to see her crop up in some way.

    A full list of winners is after the cut. (Thanks to assorted commenters, and Katey again, for furnishing us with details.)

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  • First wave of LAFCA winners

    I’ll offer some commentary when we have the full list of winners at 2.30, but for now I’ll just convey my astonishment at the competence of my predictions so far. And offer a hearty cheer for Agnes Varda.

    Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds”
    Runner-up: Peter Capaldi, “In the Loop”

    Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique, “Precious”
    Runner-up: Anna Kendrick, “Up in the Air”

    Best Screenplay: Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, “Up in the Air”
    Runner-up: Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Ianucci and Tony Roche, “In the Loop”

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  • ‘Hurt Locker’ sweeps Boston critics’ awards

    Jeremy Renner in The Hurt LockerAmid the anticipation for the LAFCA awards later this afternoon, you might not have realized that the Boston Society of Film Critics is also announcing its winners today. (I know I hadn’t.)

    Anyway, it’s spectacular news for “The Hurt Locker,” which emerged triumphant in five categories, including Best Picture, Director, Cinematography and Film Editing. In a most welcome surprise, Jeremy Renner took Best Actor for the film — a cheer for the underdog amid a slate of more heavily-buzzed acting winners including Meryl Streep, Christoph Waltz and Mo’Nique. Here’s hoping it’s not the last.

    Meanwhile, it fell to the brothers Coen to prevent a clean “Hurt Locker” sweep, taking Best Screenplay honors for “A Serious Man,” while the BSFC’s quirkiest move is the joint selection of “Precious” and “Star Trek” for Best Ensemble. In another gesture towards populist cinema, “District 9” took the debut director award. After some delay, meanwhile, “Summer Hours” took foreign-language honors.

    Still, the only real story here is the loud arrival of Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq actioner on the critics’ award scene. It’ll be interesting to see if the LA Critics continue the love across the country; we’ll know in a few hours. Full list of winners after the cut.

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  • Final LAFCA guesses

    Fantastic Mr. FoxBecause it’s a lazy Sunday afternoon. Because I need a moment of light relief after rewatching “Inland Empire” and plunging back into “Dogville” — I’m working on my end-of-decade Top 50, can’tcha tell? Because I personally get more fluttery with excitement about critics’ awards than any well-adjusted guy should.

    Because of all these things, my best guesses for the outcome of today’s two-part L.A. critics’ awards are after the cut. I’ll be bringing you the winners as soon as they are announced — at 12.30 and 14.30 PST.

    Meanwhile, you’ve been guessing away at these gongs in previous spaces Kris designated for the purpose — but who wants to take a stab at the tech categories? The LAFCA always do interesting things there. (Their music award is, annually, the most well-judged of the season, if you ask me.)

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  • ‘White Ribbon’ triumphs at European Film Awards

    The White Ribbon

    (UPDATE: Due to an error on the EFA’s own website, we initially reported that the technical Prix d’Excellence had been awarded to “Vincere.” This is incorrect: the sound design team behind “A Prophet” took the prize.)

    Foreign-language Oscar favorites “The White Ribbon” and “A Prophet” have been locked in something of an awards duel since May, when they took the top two prizes at Cannes.

    However, while the latter film has been hogging the spotlight of late — pipping “Ribbon” to the post at the London Film Festival, the NBR Awards and even the Spirit noms — Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or winner clawed back some momentum at tonight’s European Film Awards, taking the top three prizes for Best Film, Director and Screenwriter.

    “A Prophet,” which entered the race as the most-nominated contender, had to be content with a well-deserved Best Actor award for sensational newcomer Tahar Rahim, as well as the technical Prix d’Excellence for its sound team.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Avatar’ awe, ‘Bones’ defense, original songs

    Avatar• A little movie called “Avatar” premiered. This week’s Oscar Talk tucked into the film.

    • As “The Lovely Bones” faces a frosty critical welcome, this week’s Off the Carpet column went to bat for the film.

    • We interviewed a quartet of young actors making strides this year: Abbie Cornish, Saoirse Ronan, Ben Foster and Bryce Dallas Howard.

    • In The Long Shot, we examined the animation race — and stood up for under-the-radar contender “Mary & Max.”

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘Terribly Happy’ director Henrik Ruben Genz

    Henrik Ruben GenzTwo striking films in this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar race probe the theme of moral drift, both individual and communal, bred in a rural European community – the very opposite of what Hillary Clinton meant by “It takes a village.”

    One of them, Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon,” you’ve probably heard of. The other you’ll hopefully hear much more about in the months to come: Danish entry “Terribly Happy” is a terrific thriller from Oscar-nominated writer-director Henrik Ruben Genz that has taken its homeland by storm and is ripe for a U.S. remake.

    A wickedly comic flipside to Haneke’s solemn social critique, Genz’s film trades in twisty suspense and coal-black humor as it follows the misadventures of Robert (Jakob Cedergren), a mysteriously disgraced Copenhagen cop reassigned to an unwelcoming one-horse town with its own share of nasty secrets.

    As Robert gets drawn into the void by a hesitant relationship with abused housewife Ingerlise (Lene Maria Christensen), the film has drawn comparisons to the Coen Brothers of “Blood Simple” and even the David Lynch of “Twin Peaks” in its cool unveiling of the macabre within the mundane.

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  • Day-Lewis on pickiness and privacy

    Daniel Day-Lewis in NinePart of the reason I love Daniel Day-Lewis — aside from the plain evidence of his acting, of course — is that he’s one of the few actors these days who maintains a measure of old-fashioned, movie-star mystique.

    His gossip-column days of dating and ditching everyone from Julia Roberts to Isabelle Adjani now long behind him, he reveals precisely as much of himself and his process as he’s willing to give — which, as this Guardian interview with Xan Brooks proves, is not very much at all. He’s clearly playing up his eccentricity and guardedness to a fairly self-indulgent degree, but that’s fine by me — I like my movie stars from another planet.

    The rarity of Day-Lewis interviews alone makes the piece a must-read — though Brooks barely masks his reservations about “Nine” (“a gorgeous, feathered folly; a turkey that longs to be a flamingo”) and, indeed, the actor’s performance in it.

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  • ‘A Prophet’ takes Louis Delluc Prize

    Tahar Rahim in A ProphetTwo weeks ago, I mentioned the impressive shortlist of nominees for the Louis Delluc Prize, a prestigious juried award handed annually to the title thought to represent the best in French cinema. Variety has just reported that Jacques Audiard’s Oscar contender “A Prophet” is this year’s winner.

    The news isn’t entirely unsurprising — the Delluc sometimes sidelines obvious frontrunners in favor of more hidden gems, as was the case last year, when “The Class” lost to documentary “Modern Life.”

    Not so this time — indeed, Audiard’s film has barely missed an awards opportunity since taking silver at Cannes. It also looks a good bet to take home some hardware at tomorrow’s European Film Awards … could the Oscar even be within reach?

    Meanwhile, another prison-related drama, Lea Fehner’s “Silent Voice,” took the Best First Film award.

  • Lists, lists, lists

    Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish in Bright StarI don’t feel anywhere near ready to present my Best of 2009 list, much less my Best of the 2000s one, yet — too many movies to watch, re-watch and contemplate before the brutal culling and shuffling of titles can begin. Still, a lot of critics and bloggers are clearly more organized than me — as each day brings a new pile of Top 10s.

    Our friend Anne Thompson has one of the more individual lists out there: I won’t steal her thunder by replicating her entire collective, but here’s her top 5, which I rather like. (She adds the caveat that she had not seen “Avatar” at the time of posting.)

    1. “Bright Star”
    2. “A Serious Man”
     3. “A Prophet”
     4. “Up”
    5. “Red Cliff”

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  • The Guardian on ‘Avatar’: “It was good.”

    Like everone else, The Guardian can’t print a full review of “Avatar” before Monday, but their writer Mark Brown (not the paper’s regular critic, it should be said) has tested the embargo enough to say this:

    So by saying Avatar was really much, much better than expected, that it looked amazing and that the story was gripping – if cheesy in many places – the Guardian is in technical breach of the agreement. It is not a breach, however, to report that other journalists leaving the screening were also positive: the terrible film that some had been anticipating had not materialised. It was good.

    They also report that Cameron claims to have enough story material for two sequels. (It had better be “good,” then.) More here.

  • INTERVIEW: Abbie Cornish

    Abbie CornishTo call Abbie Cornish’s astute, china-delicate performance in “Bright Star” a “breakthrough,” as so many critics this year have done, is to do something of a disservice to her similarly remarkable work in a pair of underseen Australian titles.

    No informed viewer should be taken off-guard by the tart questioning and quiet sensuality she brings to the role of Fanny Brawne, the teenaged lover of famed Romantic poet John Keats, in Jane Campion’s period biopic.

    What’s surprising is that, after winning a bevy of Australian awards at the age of 22 for Cate Shortland’s 2004 coming-of-age drama “Somersault,” and following it up with a searing turn opposite the late Heath Ledger in Neil Armfield’s harrowing junkie romance “Candy,” it’s taken three years for another starring role to come her way.

    In that time, Cornish dipped her toe into international waters with supporting roles in ill-fated vehicles like “A Good Year,” “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” and “Stop-Loss” – though if those lean years were troubling to the Next Big Thing monitors, they weren’t to Cornish, who had “Bright Star” on her radar all along.

    “I was sent the script for the film about two-and-a-half years ago, and I fell in love then and there,” the 27 year-old actress tells me over the phone, gentle Australian twang very much intact. She’s in Los Angeles to pick up her younger sister, before returning to the Vancouver set of Zack Snyder’s “Sucker Punch.”

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  • The actor as auteur

    Nicole Kidman in BirthOne of my current favorite film writers, Ryan Gilbey, has written an excellent New Statesman piece reflecting on the past decade in film acting. In it, he argues that the 2000s have gone some way towards blurring the definitions of ‘star’ and ‘character actor,’ and singling out the achievements of three actors in particular:

    Unconsciously or otherwise, [Nicole] Kidman, [Viggo] Mortensen and [Johnny] Depp have insisted that the star can be an instrument of art rather than (or as well as) commerce, like superheroes dedicating their unearthly gifts to the service of good over evil.

    This ties neatly into a piece I wrote here recently on the decade’s key actors, where I (and a number of you) suggested that Kidman’s adventurous straddling of arthouse and commercial instincts put her in the top spot — however hit-and-miss her filmography.

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  • THE LONG SHOT: Cartoon network

    Mary and MaxAs the year winds down, and critics and entertainment journalists search for neat blanket tags with which to label the year that was, “the year of animation” is a phrase that is getting increasingly bandied about – some going so far as to declare 2009 the greatest year of all time for animated product. (Certainly, TIME magazine has fed that narrative, by naming a trio of ‘toons the year’s three greatest films.)

    It’s up for debate whether such talk is a result of extraordinary across-the-board quality, or sheer numbers. Make no mistake, this year has turned up more visible animated titles, in a broader range of artistic formats, than any in recent memory.

    Confirmation of this deluge comes in the Academy’s official listing of 20 titles in the hunt for the Best Animated Feature Oscar – the largest number since the category’s inception in 2001, and one that ensures the first five-strong slate of nominees since 2002.

    Of course, 2002, despite the higher-than-usual proportion of contenders, was hardly a banner year for the medium: “Spirited Away” may have taken a well-deserved Oscar, but the amount of filler it had to beat in the process – including such already forgotten snoozes as “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” and “Treasure Planet” – was proof positive that quantity doesn’t equal quality in this particular race.

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  • Don’t you clean up nice?

    After the widely criticized “de-gaying” of “A Single Man,” The Weinstein Company’s next marketing project appears to be the “de-gritting” of “The Road.”

    How else to explain the choice of a tidily mustachioed Viggo Mortensen and a radiantly smiling Charlize Theron as the largest images in this FYC ad? Never mind that they appear in this attractive, well-groomed state for only the briefest of interludes in the film. Nobody votes for a guy with a beard, right?

    The RoadThe Road