In Contention

Author: Guy Lodge

  • Jane Campion’s pick of the Criterion Collection

    The Night PorterI’m glad to see that, whatever the eventual awards fate of “Bright Star,” Jane Campion is by and large back in the critics’ good books. As one of those who feels she’s never really made a bad film — simply some more completely realized than others — it’s a case of reputation rehab being both overdue and unnecessary, if that makes any sense.

    The Criterion Collection, however, always had her back, adding her to their list in 2005 with her 1991 literary biopic “An Angel at My Table,” with her debut “Sweetie” joining it later. (You might be surprised to learn that her signature film “The Piano” still isn’t in the collection.)

    Anyway, at the time, Criterion asked Campion to name nine films from their collection that she holds in highest esteem, and the results make for predictably interesting reading. It doesn’t take a psychic to figure out that the erotic transgressions of “The Night Porter” float her boat, but the inclusion of say, Milos Forman’s wonderful “The Firemen’s Ball,” is less self-evident and no less pleasing.

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  • Foreign film watch: Uruguay, Mongolia submit

    By the Will of Genghis KhanToday is officially the Academy deadline for Best Foreign Language Film submissions — though countries have made late entries in the past — so expect more titles to trickle in through the day. (Our contenders page is presently up to 59 titles, and counting.)

    Greece, for example, is widely expected to submit Cannes prizewinner “Dogtooth” as their entry later today — we’re just awaiting the official announcement.

    Two to formally add to the pile, however, are Uruguay’s “Bad Day to Go Fishing” and Mongolia’s “By the Will of Genghis Khan.” The latter country, making only their third ever submission, are seeking a first nomination; Uruguay, meanwhile, is still seeking a breakthrough after their only nominated film (“A Place in the World,” 1992) was disqualified by the Academy for having too little local input.

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  • Supporting actors, step forward

    Christoph Waltz in Inglourious BasterdsA while back, certain folks were (rather unfairly) dredging up the routine annual complaint about the supposed scarcity of viable Best Actress contenders. Dave Karger, however, has located the real weak spot of this year’s awards race, and it concerns the opposite sex for a change: where, he asks, are the Best Supporting Actor standouts?

    Pound for pound, I tend to find Best Supporting Actor the least compelling of the acting races, a haven for affectionately regarded stalwarts in bit parts that are frequently less than challenging. The last two years have raised the bar considerably, but recent wins for Morgan Freeman, Alan Arkin and Michael Caine are typical of the laziness with which the Academy often treats the category.

    Even by the category’s usual standards, however, this year’s pickings look unusually lean, as Karger narrows the serious contenders so far to a scant three.

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  • Here come the girls

    Saoirse Ronan in The Lovely BonesI know I’m hardly the first person to mention it, but as I was fiddling around with my predictions recently, I was struck once more by just how young the Best Actress category is skewing.

    At present, 15 year-old Saoirse Ronan is the only teenager being talked up for a nomination, but with three other solid contenders — Carey Mulligan, Gabourey Sidibe and Abbie Cornish — all playing teens in their respective vehicles, you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. (As if that weren’t enough, in a perfect world, 18 year-old Katie Jarvis would be leading the field for “Fish Tank.” We can but dream.)

    Meanwhile, you can bet that a sizable number of Academy members are under the impression that waif-like 24 year-old it-girl Mulligan (the current frontrunner for “An Education,” in case you need reminding), and especially 26 year-old non-pro Sidibe (whose buzz for “Precious” has rocketed since Toronto), are even younger than they are.

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  • THE LONG SHOT: What are precursors for, anyway?

    Anne Hathaway at the 2009 Critics Choice AwardsI didn’t time my holiday to coincide with the sleepiest week of awards season, but that’s how it panned out anyway. While I spent 10 days drinking my way along the canals of France’s Burgundy region, divorced from my computer screen and, I admit, any thoughts of Oscar whatsoever, the industry, too, took a collective siesta.

    As people assimilated the minimal revelations of this year’s festival run (Gosh, people like “Precious?” Who knew?) and steeled themselves for the annual madness ahead, the Producers Guild of America clearly aimed to take advantage of the lull by announcing the expansion of its feature film nominees to 10. The blogosphere stirred briefly, dutifully posted the press release, and went back to sleep.

    The PGA was probably hoping for more of a reaction than it got, but that’s what happens when you ape a larger organization’s move three months after the fact…as everyone suspected you would, anyway.

    The truth, however, is that the news was as dispiriting as it was unsurprising. Because for all the organization’s feeble claims that the copycat move was made purely in the interests of artistic diversity, all it does is expose a serious identity crisis that afflicts many of the season’s precursors.

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  • Foreign-language tally rises to 57

    Beyond the CircleThough that number will probably be out of date the second I post this, such is the crush of films squeezing in before the deadline these last few days.

    Any, the latest trio of contenders come from minor national film industries all seeking their first nomination in the category: Estonia, Bangladesh and Indonesia.

    Estonia’s entry, “December Heat,” follows in the category’s grand tradition of sweeping historical drama, detailing Communist Russia’s failed takeover of the country in 1924 and the establishment of Estonian independence. It has apparently been a massive hit at home; The Economist labels it “lively if rather melodramatic.” I’d like the country’s chances more if only the film were about WWII.

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  • Selling ‘Antichrist’: arthouse or genre?

    Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg in AntichristAs we’ve seen from the wildly varied poster designs for the film, “Antichrist” offers it marketers an unusual range of options. Depending on the region, it’s being sold as a stern art film, a jokey provocation, a horror scream-fest or a mixture of all three.

    We have yet to see how the film performs Stateside, but my eye was caught by an article in this month’s Sight & Sound magazine, in which box-office analyst Charles Gant looks into the successful approach taken by UK distributor Artificial Eye.

    Though it is the country’s most highbrow art house outfit (“The Class” and “Fish Tank” are among the other titles they handled this year), Artificial Eye made the unusual decision to sell the film on its genre elements, playing up its more horror-inspired imagery and emphasizing the various “MOST SHOCKING EVER” critical tags that emerged from Cannes.

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  • French ‘Hurt Locker’ poster

    No real reason, just noticed this poster plastered all over Paris when I was there recently and liked it. The title change (it means “Defusers”) is a little bland, but probably necessary: the metaphorical English title really doesn’t translate.

    Demineurs AKA The Hurt Locker

  • Tornatore to represent Italy in Oscar race again

    BaariaAs the deadline for Best Foreign Language Film submissions looms on October 1, news of further entries keeps rolling in. Italy, Vietnam and Norway are the latest additions to the list, which presently numbers 54. (By my count, at least.)

    Italy’s selection is obviously the newsiest: the country’s 13 previous wins make it the leading Oscar champ in this category (though France still holds the record for nominations by a sizable margin). They’ve rather lost their golden touch of late, however, scoring only a solitary nom (“Don’t Tell,” 2005) since “Life is Beautiful” won over a decade ago, and I’m not sure they’ve made the wisest choice to reverse that state of affairs this year.

    On paper, their pick of Giuseppe Tornatore’s “Baaria” may seem like an Oscar slam-dunk. It’s a lavish, decades-spanning period drama from an Academy-favored filmmaker — Tornatore won for “Cinema Paradiso” in 1989, scored a further nod for “The Star Maker” in 1995 and made the 9-film shortlist with “The Unknown Woman” two years ago.

    Which is all well and good, except that “Baaria” was critically slaughtered when it opened the Venice Film Festival last month. Clearly, the massive budget of Tornatore’s film factored into the decision. I never got to see it myself, but Variety’s pan (“overblown in every sense … awash in phony nostalgia (and) cheap sentimentalism”) was typical of the consensus.

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  • Australia and Spain enter foreign-language race

    Samson and DelilahAs regular readers have probably noticed, I’ve been away (undeservedly, apparently) on vacation for the past week or so, so I’ve missed out on the recent influx of submissions for the Best Foreign Language Film race.

    Fortunately, Kris has been keeping you up to speed with our new foreign contenders page. Thanks, meanwhile, to the many helpful readers who have been keeping me updated with developments via email. Keep ’em coming.

    Today, however, saw two potentially significant players enter the race. Readers who have kept up with my predictions since I first posted them in May will recall that I’ve been instinctively forecasting a nod for Australian critical sensation “Samson and Delilah” from the beginning. Now that possibility has taken one further step towards fruition.

    Thanks to Glenn at Stale Popcorn for pointing us to the news that Australia has officially entered Warwick Thornton’s English and Warlpiri-language debut feature, which won the Camera d’Or at Cannes back in May and recently played at Telluride and Toronto to across-the-board praise. (I’ll be seeing it at the London fest this month.)

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  • Wearing the ‘Wild Things’

    The roll-call of hipster names affiliated with Spike Jonze’s take on “Where the Wild Things Are” is beginning to border on the obnoxious. (I say that with nothing but love and anticipation.) But if Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman Karen O was going to be involved, it only makes sense that she should bring her stylist to the party.

    Christian Joy, the outré fashion designer best known for her eccentric, home-made creations for O’s live shows, has teamed with Urban Outfitters to design a set of five “Wild Things”-inspired costumes. The outfits lend Maurice Sendak’s visions a bit of rock-star sparkle, though I can’t be the only one who thinks they recall Sally Hawkins’s “Happy Go Lucky” wardrobe more than anything else.

    Either way, your Halloween problems are solved. More after the jump.

    Christian Joy for Where the Wild Things Are

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  • THE LONG SHOT: Making the 10 work for you

    Coraline*This is the first installment of “The Long Shot,” a new weekly Oscar column from Guy Lodge here at In Contention.

    At some point last week, I snapped at a commenter for rather benignly suggesting that, with the clarity granted certain contenders by the festival season, we could now call 7 of the newly expanded 10 Best Picture slots securely filled in mid-September, thus leaving us a full four months to find another three.

    Going by that rationale, less than one new contender a month could emerge — roughly keeping pace with the film-going habits of many Academy members.

    It was a fair enough theory, I suppose, and I shouldn’t have responded with as much snark as I did — though I will always adhere to the no-fun theory that a film cannot be decreed a “lock” before it is seen.

    (Is “Invictus” a “Million Dollar Baby” or a “Space Cowboys” waiting to happen? Can “Nine” possibly match its ostentatious pedigree? What in the name of God is “Avatar?” Such are the tensions that make the season worth following.)

    But I think the main reason the theory got on my nerves had nothing whatsoever to do with the commenter’s reasoning, and everything to do with the dispiriting possibility of it actually being true. Because if all the much-ballyhooed widening of the Best Picture category amounts to is a catch-all solution to ensure that every frontrunner gets its due — thereby handily making the Oscars more predictable and less particular into the bargain — then I’ll regretfully turn my back on the annual institution that has fascinated me since the second grade, move to Paris and track the Cesars instead.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Swayze passes, Venice wraps, Toronto runs

    Patrick Swayze• Patrick Swayze left us this week, passing away of cancer at the age of 57.

    • The Venice Film Festival drew to a close, with Israeli war drama “Lebanon” taking top honors.

    • It was Colin Firth, however, who emerged with Oscar buzz for the Weinstein-acquired “A Single Man.”

    • Across the Atlantic, we kept you up to date with Toronto goings-on, as buzz for “Precious” continues to build.

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  • ‘Get Low’ poster

    Get Low

    [Source: IMP Awards]

  • Just a friendly reminder…

    Gregoire Colin and Mati Diop in 35 Shots of Rum… to any American readers privileged with access to a good arthouse cinema, that Claire Denis’s wondrous “35 Shots of Rum” finally bows Stateside this weekend. I’ve been raving about the film — a sweetly melancholy, impeccably detailed study of a devoted Parisian father and daughter gradually separating their lives — since I saw it at the Edinburgh fest in June, and it remains in my top three for 2009 thus far.

    You don’t have to take my word for it, though: as much as I dislike people who quote Metacritic stats as some kind of inarguable gospel, it’s fair to say that a film with an MC score of 96 is likely to quite good. To jog your memory, my brief Edinburgh take on “35 Shots of Rum” is here. (With the benefit of hindsight, that 3.5 star rating would certainly get bumped up.)

    Meanwhile, with the similarly excellent “Disgrace” also opening in limited release today, discerning New York moviegoers have a rich selection before them. I just got off the phone with the film’s breakthrough star Jessica Haines (watch out for our interview in the next few weeks), and she discussed the tortuous path the film has taken to finally reach American screens after debuting on the festival circuit a full year ago. Same goes for the Denis film.

    So it’d be nice if some people bothered to see them. Take a chance.

  • Mendes and Oprah unite on ‘Netherland’

    NetherlandI’m glad Sam Mendes seems determined to up the languid one-film-every-three-years work rate he started out with, even if I think “Away We Go” would have benefitted from having a bit more time (and a lot more rewrites) lavished on it.

    He’s not the first director I thought of to helm an adaptation of Joseph O’Neill’s brilliant novel “Netherland,” a story of immigrant displacement in post-9/11 New York. Now I can see the fit rather neatly — and the combination of a Transatlantic narrative with a healthy dose of cricket in the proceedings must have been irresistible to the Brit.

    Variety reports that Mendes is “eyeing” the project with a view to direct, but he’s decisively on board as a producer, teaming with Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions and Focus Features. Meanwhile, Christopher Hampton (“Dangeous Liaisons,” “Atonement”) is on script duty, so you know this is a classy enterprise.

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  • Speaking of South Africa…

    White Wedding… as I just was, my Cape Town-based friend Ed just notified me that the country has selected their official foreign-language Oscar submission. “White Wedding” is a romantic comedy from novelist-turned-filmmaker Jann Turner, and starring Jodie Whittaker of “Venus” fame.

    The blurb describes it as “an appealing, feel-good movie about love, commitment, intimacy and friendship and a host of maddening obstacles that can get in the way of a happy ending.” Yes, but what’s it actually about? I’m afraid I’m none the wiser.

    Turner’s accomplished novels are on the sentimental side of socially conscious; I’m guessing that sensibility extends to her films. “White Wedding” has had a healthy domestic box-office run; an unusual feat in a country where local adult-oriented cinema rarely finds a large audience.

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  • SHORT TAKE: “Disgrace” (***1/2)

    John Malkovich in Disgrace“As long as one is alive, one is all right.”

    These words, spoken with pithy irony by John Malkovich halfway through Steve Jacobs’s brilliant, bruising adaptation of J.M. Coetzee’s novel “Disgrace” — which opens Stateside tomorrow — encapsulate a post-apartheid South Africa more riven by crime and inequality than the bandages of democracy can cover. It’s a world where survivor’s grief is constantly chased by the threat of a more fatal occurrence; where, with no commodity more valuable than security, ugly human compromises must be made.

    Published in 1999, Coetzee’s novel was a well-aimed bullet to the heart of a nation still negotiating its social and racial prejudices, laying them bare with few pointers towards reconciliation. Denounced as racist in some quarters of the ruling African National Congress, it doesn’t cast any social group in a particularly flattering light. Rather, it focuses on individuals, and the very different ways they manage their escalating mistrust of the other.

    The story’s dependence on the country’s multi-splintered cultural differentiations makes the outside-in achievement of Australian director Jacobs (and his wife Anna Maria Monticelli, who wrote the screenplay) all the more miraculous. I can’t recall another feature film that so tangibly evokes the country that I grew up in, from its point-on account of lingering (and shifting) master-servant acrimony to minute details of production design.

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