In Contention

Author: Guy Lodge

  • Cheer up, Meryl — you have your masterpiece

    Meryl StreepYou may well have spotted this very funny (and frequently accurate) Onion piece doing the web rounds today, in which a writer claiming to be Meryl Streep shoots down her career with all the withering disdain of Miranda Priestly.

    The gist of the argument is that, as fine an actor as Streep is, she has — whether through bad luck or bad choices — never made a truly great film.

    I can see the temptation to agree. Certainly the latter stretch of Streep’s filmography is spotty: even if you remove the outright embarrassments, (“Prime,” “Mamma Mia!”) or even the respectable-but-still-throwaway entertainments (“Julie & Julia,” “The Devil Wears Prada”), you’re left with a lot of worthily middlebrow titles engineered more as performance showcases than as vital, durable cinema.

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  • How ‘Up in the Air’ factored in the ‘Shutter’ bump

    George Clooney in Up in the AirVariety’s Pamela McClintock was written a detailed piece examining the financial ins and outs of the recent postponing of “Shutter Island,” coming to the conclusion — as did Kris following the announcement — that the move is purely a practical one on the part of Paramount chief Brad Grey. Quite simply, she explains, the film stands to make more of a profit in February, free from the expense of awards-season marketing.

    But while everyone has picked up on how the move potentially improves the fortunes of Paramount awards hopeful “The Lovely Bones,” McClintock suggests that it is Jason Reitman’s increasingly buzzy “Up in the Air” that is a more significant factor in this conversation. In picking Reitman’s far smaller film over Scorsese’s as a 2009 Oscar pony, the studio has pragmatically opted for the title that is cheaper to market — and to campaign:

    Unofficially, Par has decided to throw its support behind George Clooney dark comedy and awards hopeful “Up in the Air,” directed by Jason Reitman. That film isn’t yet dated. Rumors are that it will be released in early December, but Par says a date won’t be decided upon until after the film makes its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival.

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  • Brits fall for ‘Hurt Locker,’ ‘Broken Embraces’

    Lluis Homar and Penelope Cruz in Broken EmbracesIn what is surely the richest weekend of the year for discerning British cinemagoers since the glut of Oscar contenders in January, both Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” and Pedro Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces” hit UK screens today.

    You could be forgiven for not knowing that, though. While Almodovar’s film has enjoyed a prominent marketing campaign here in London, that Warholesque poster shot of Penelope Cruz ubiquitous on buses, tube tunnels and phone boxes (I can see one right now from my living-room window), “The Hurt Locker” has, sadly, been an all-but-invisible presence.

    The local broadsheets are doing their best to raise the film’s fortunes, however, as Bigelow’s film continues to slay the critical community on either side of the pond. In a fairly rare trifecta, The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, The Independent’s Anthony Quinn and The Times’s Kevin Maher all afford the film 5-star reviews.

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  • FIPRESCI names ‘White Ribbon’ best film of the year

    A scene from The White RibbonIt’s been a very good week for Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or winner “The White Ribbon.” One day after being selected as Germany’s official entry in the Oscar race, it has received a prestigious addition to its trophy cabinet in the shape of the FIPRESCI Grand Prix for Film of the Year. (Before you complain that the award is a few months premature, the eligibility period runs from July 2008.)

    You probably recognize FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) as the body that hands out its own awards at a wide range of film festivals throughout the year. (Of course, “The White Ribbon” also nabbed a Cannes FIPRESCI gong back in May.)

    But the Grand Prix, which was inaugurated in 1999 and is (rather randomly) handed out at the opening ceremony of the San Sebastian fest in September, represents the culmination of a year’s worth of honors, and must rank as one the most all-inclusive awards in existence. As you can see from the list of previous winners below the cut, Haneke’s win here places him in some illustrious company.

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  • Optimum remakes ‘Great Expectations’ and ‘Brighton Rock’

    Sam RileySince starting up a decade ago, British outfit Optimum Releasing has done sterling arthouse distribution work in their home country: this year alone his seen them bring “The Hurt Locker,” “The Wrestler,” “Gomorrah” and “In the Loop,” among others, to UK screens. But until now, they haven’t had much profile on the production side of things.

    That’s set to change as Optimum dips into the British canon to bring two major literary adaptations to the screen: Charles Dickens’s “Great Expectations” and Graham Greene’s “Brighton Rock.”

    The former project is being shepherded by veteran producer Stephen Woolley (an Oscar nominee for “The Crying Game”), while novelist-turned-screenwriter David Nicholls (“Starter for Ten”) is on script duty. No cast is in place yet, but the film is scheduled to begin shooting next year.

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  • Lasseter on reviving 2-D animation and Pixar’s “failures”

    The Princess and the FrogJohn Lasseter certainly gives good interview. We linked back in June to a candid and very thorough piece in which the Pixar maven talked through his up-and-down (and up again) history with Disney. Now Variety carries a worthwhile profile of the man, in anticipation of the lifetime-achievement Golden Lion he is due to receive at the Venice Film Festival next week.

    In it, he reveals the supposed secret behind Pixar’s unbroken run of hits (not to mention their enviable critical track record) to be a collaborative “creative brain trust,” whereby an in-progress project is screened every three months, then critiqued and workshopped by Lasseter and the studio’s leading creatives.

    It’s a process designed to nip potential story problems in the bud, while Lasseter and his collaborators would have you believe that such problems emerge more often than not:

    “We fail a lot,” admits “Toy Story 3” director Lee Unkrich. “We just don’t fail by the time the movie comes out. John would be the first to tell you that every movie we’ve made has been at one point the biggest piece of garbage we’ve ever worked on.”

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  • ‘Hurt Locker’ scribe Mark Boal up for Venice award

    Mark BoalI had the pleasure of interviewing Mark Boal, the celebrated journalist and screenwriter of “The Hurt Locker,” over a beer in London last week, and was glad to find him as alert and interesting a subject as the film he wrote. (The interview will crop up on these pages soon, by the way.)

    So as awards season unfolds over the coming months, I’ll be cheering every bit of recognition that comes his way. And the first such citation, neatly enough, comes at the place where “The Hurt Locker” made its first appearance nearly a year ago: the Venice Film Festival.

    Variety reports that Boal has been shortlisted for the Gucci Group Award, a prize presented during the festival since 2006 to honor outstanding cinematic achievement by individuals from outside the world of film. Should he win, he’ll be in excellent company: previous recipients include Julian Schnabel (for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) and Steve McQueen (“Hunger”).

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  • Germany submits ‘White Ribbon’ for Oscar

    The White RibbonIt should come as no surprise to anyone that Germany has selected Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” (trailer here) as their official candidate for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. No foreign-language Palme d’Or winner has failed to be entered in the race since Japan’s “The Eel” in 1997, and “The White Ribbon” has both breathless critical acclaim and a recognizable auteur name going for it.

    Still, the severe arthouse work remains an adventurous choice for Germany, given that Haneke’s icy formalism hardly sits very comfortably in the Academy’s wheelhouse.

    The Austrian filmmaker has previously had four of his films submitted for Oscar consideration by his home country, each time failing to make the Academy’s grade: most recently, 2005 critical darling “Caché” was controversially disqualified for not being in the submitting country’s own language. (The resulting outcry prompted a revision of the rules.)

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  • A.O. Scott revisits ‘Gattaca’

    I must say I’m really enjoying the New York Times’s Critics’ Picks video series — the clips are short, sweet and to the point, the discussion in them lucid, and the selections impeccable. Occasionally rather imaginative, too, as with A.O. Scott’s latest pick of Andrew Niccol’s 1997 masterpiece “Gattaca.”

    The film was sadly neglected on release, scoring a paltry $12 million gross (against a budget three times the size) and a solitary Oscar nod for art direction. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration, however, to name it one of the greatest sci-fi films of all time, one whose crisp, chilly technical trappings allow the unnerving human desperation of the story to shimmer through. (Jude Law, meanwhile, was robbed of every supporting gong going.) Happily, it seems to have gathered a number of devotees over the year; even more happily, we’re in good company with Scott.

  • Prince of the city

    I have Chad to thank for pointing me to this Criterion DVD cover (pictured left) for Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorrah,” a film you may remember we kind of liked here at In Contention. Chad is no fan of the cover art (which of course riffs on one of the film’s most widely publicized images), and a number of readers at The Auteurs seem to be with him.

    Criterion cover for GomorrahUK DVD cover for Gomorrah

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  • Venice gears up for Kurosawa centenary

    Akira KurosawaWe may be celebrating the 70th birthday of “The Wizard of Oz” today, but the Venice Film Festival has decided to start the party early for another major film-related milestone  coming up next year: the 100-year anniversary of Akira Kurosawa’s birth.

    I’m sure we can expect more retrospectives of the great man’s work when the day rolls around on March 23, 2010, but since Venice has something of a history with the filmmaker (“Rashomon” winning the Golden Lion in 1951 gave a critical boost to his international profile), festival organizers have decided to pay tribute on their own time, with an in-depth panel discussion of his work.

    The formidable, internationally-flavored panel will be chaired by venerable film historian Peter Cowie, while the likes of Richard Corliss, Michel Ciment and Donald Richie. Should be a good sit, though I’m disappointed they haven’t yet mentioned any screenings to accompany proceedings. Surely that would be advisable? Press release extract after the jump.

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  • A thing of beauty

    When I headed off to Wales this past weekend to camp out at the Green Man music festival, I wasn’t expecting to find anything to feed my cinephile appetite. (Well, I did entertain the far-fetched possibility of Jarvis Cocker revealing his “Fantastic Mr. Fox” compositions. He didn’t.) But I was wrong.

    The best thing I saw all weekend — and one of the most tingly performances I’ve seen all year, musically or cinematically — was a screening of Robert Flaherty’s classic 1934 documentary “Man of Aran,” rescored live by the great indie band British Sea Power. The stark, balletic poetry of Flaherty’s images fused with the lush rock orchestrations of the new score was hypnotic to behold: I can’t imagine anything quite replicating the power of the live performance, but the rescored film is now available on DVD. I recommend checking it out.

  • New generation

    Apropos of nothing really, except this thin story about her being cast in the latest John Carpenter thriller, but for the first time this afternoon I took time to properly look at Mamie Gummer. You might know her better under the name of “Meryl Streep’s daughter.”

    Gummer has been cropping up in supporting parts for a couple of years now, notably in “Stop-Loss,” “John Adams” and now in “Taking Woodstock,” while she played a younger incarnation of her mother in the dismal “Evening.” I can’t say she’s ever particularly stood out to me, but on glancing at the photo accompanying the Screen Daily story, I was suddenly startled by the family resemblance. If she goes on to major things, this could get quite unsettling.

    Mamie Gummer

  • THE LISTS: Top 10 “Greatest” lists ‘The Wizard of Oz’ deserves to be on

    Judy Garland in The Wizard of OzAs you have probably heard by now, today marks a rather special anniversary in cinema. (And it’s not Sean Connery’s 79th birthday, though we do wish him well.) It is, of course, 70 years ago to the day since a little film called “The Wizard of Oz” opened nationally in the United States. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

    So much has been documented and discussed about this film over the years that it seems redundant to discuss its slow-burning impact on, and importance in, the landscape of American cinema.

    The film’s troubled production – from its casting musical chairs to its rocky reception – is now the stuff of Hollywood legend, while its place in the commonly regarded Hollywood annus mirabilis of 1939 only cements its status by association, as the film is forever banded with the likes of “Gone With the Wind” and “Stagecoach” in endless “they don’t make ‘em like they used to” discussions.

    You know all this, readers: just two months ago, you voted it the fifth most influential film of all time, after all.

    “The Wizard of Oz” may have dictated several of the still-held standards for fantasy and children’s filmmaking in Hollywood (and elsewhere), but even when we’re not watching it – or even thinking about it – the film has made its presence felt in our daily lives.

    Phrases like “yellow-brick road” and “friend of Dorothy” have acquired linguistic meanings independent of their source. Sundry American Idol contestants warble the film’s signature song on a daily basis (while artists from Prince to Pink Floyd have filched from elsewhere in the soundtrack). A current series of British cellphone ads features the Wicked Witch of the West alive and well in suburban London.

    Still, as ubiquitous and occasionally over-analyzed as the film is, we couldn’t let its 70th birthday pass without baking a cake and lighting some candles: hence the devotion of this week’s edition of The Lists to all things Oz.

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  • Dante, Bahrani added to Venice lineup

    The Movie OrgyEarlier this morning, Kris pointed you to the news that four features have been added to the Venice lineup: Joe Dante’s “The Movie Orgy: Ultimate Version,” Angela Ismailos’s “Great Directors,” Hana Makhmalbaf’s “Green Days” and Peter Greenaway’s “The Marriage.” Under the radar (and out of competition) they may be, but all of them further my anticipation for my trip to the Lido next week.

    The former two are intriguing American cinema-themed documentaries: Ismailos’s film, her debut, lives up to its rather blunt title by examining the work of ten contemporary helmers, including Todd Haynes, Richard Linklater, John Sayles and David Lynch. Dante’s film, meanwhile, is a slightly (and, at 280 minutes, I mean only slightly) more disciplined cut of his mammoth 1968 film, a 7-hour valentine to B-movies of the 1950s and 1960s.

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  • Banging the drum for women

    Andrea ArnoldI’ve already mooted the possibility of 2009 being a history-making year for female filmmakers at the Oscars. Whether or not awards season plays along in a few months’ time, however, there’s no denying it’s been a banner year for women behind the camera — both in terms of quantity (for starters, Cannes had more female-helmed films in competition than ever before) and quality (my three favorite films of the year so far all fall under the category).

    The media is clearly sensing the trend, too. In a handy roundup, The Auteurs points to an unusual confluence of assorted female-focused coverage this last weekend alone, from The Observer’s excellent interview with Andrea Arnold, director of the terrific Brit drama “Fish Tank,” to a New York Times piece in which Michael Cieply digs into the numbers supporting the truth that Hollywood is still very much a man’s world:

    What the count shows is that Hollywood directors are pretty much what they have always been: a small brotherhood of highly skilled craftsmen — more than 90 percent this year are men — who could hit or miss with any given film, but who tend to have solid experience.

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  • The song, not the singer

    Penelope Cruz in NineIt’s a few days old, but I only just found this nugget buried at the tail of a (rather good) David Poland rumination on the potential demise of The Weinstein Company — and since many of you seem to be hungry for details of Rob Marshall’s “Nine,” I thought it worth sharing. Poland has been casting “Nine” as a “problem movie” for a while now, but here he elaborates slightly on his concerns:

    It has test screened… results were mixed… they face a problem with hardcore theater types being unhappy with a majority (all but 7) of the show’s songs being cut… but as “The Producers” showed, loyalty to a stage version is not necessarily a good bet.

    The film is still in post and you can be sure that all kinds of jiggering is being done, just as it was with “Chicago.” Just like “Class” in that show, there is a song on the bubble that may or may not make it. They added 3 brand new songs for the film and seriously reworked a 4th. The film is running good bit longer than “Chicago” (about 30 minutes at the last screening), though fixing that is a big part of what makes Harvey Harvey.

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  • What have ye done, indeed

    He may be one of our greatest living filmmakers, but these are strange days in the career of one Mr. Werner Herzog. First he finally cops his first Oscar nomination this year for an immaculately executed middle-arthouse documentary that nonetheless stands deep in the shadow of his greatest work.

    Then he goes to the opposite extreme of form, function and taste with his frankly barmy-looking genre experiment “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” which we’ll soon be seeing at Venice and Toronto. While we’re still scratching their heads over that prospect, some folks aren’t even aware that he has a second pulpy American policier bowing at Toronto.

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