In Contention

Author: Guy Lodge

  • WTF press release of the day: Stallone’s Venice ‘glory’

    Sylvester Stallone in RamboI’m as guilty as the next man of laughing off Sylvester Stallone in the face of his largely catastrophic latter-day film career, but I’m still willing to defend the man on a few counts.

    “Rocky” has become one of those unfortunate good films needlessly punished for beating great films to the punch on Oscar night, and “Cop Land” isn’t so distant a memory that we should entirely dismiss his onscreen ability. Hell, some people I know were making similar claims recently for “Rocky Balboa.” (No comment.)

    Nonetheless, I think the organizers of the Venice Film Festival may have taken such revisionist charity a bit far by awarding him the “Jaeger-Le Coultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award,” which is given annually to “an artist” (ahem) “who has left his mark in contemporary cinema.” Previous recipents include Abbas Kiarostami, Takeshi Kitano and Agnes Varda. I repeat: Kiarostami, Kitano, Varda … and Stallone.

    If you think that’s bizarre, wait until you read the press release that delivered the news to my inbox this afternoon, excerpted after the cut.

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  • Korea selects ‘Mother’ for Oscars, bypasses ‘Thirst’

    MotherThanks to The Film Experience for pointing out this news nugget: a month after Sri Lanka kicked off the convoluted, multi-tiered contest for Best Foreign Language Film by selecting their official entry, we have our first relatively high-profile submission, as Korea has entered Bong Joon-ho’s “Mother” into the race.

    Some might be surprised that the country’s selectors passed over Park Chan-wook’s “Thirst” — which won the Jury Prize at Cannes and has received an interesting Stateside promotional push from Focus Features — but they shouldn’t be.

    For one thing, the Koreans are probably as aware as any Oscar-watcher that the chances of the Academy blue-hairs going for an erotic vampire flick with healthy lashings of gore are, to put it gently, minimal. (It appears that “Thirst” was one of six films considered, however.)

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  • Resnais and Almodóvar bookend world-flavored NYFF lineup

    Penelope Cruz in Broken EmbracesindieWIRE has the full lineup for this year’s New York Film Festival, which runs from 25 September to 11 October, and at a glance, it looks remarkably like a greatest-hits lineup from May’s Cannes festival.

    This year, both the NYFF’s opening and closing films have been plucked from the Croisette. Alain Resnais’s “Wild Grass,” for which the 87 year-old New Wave master received a special career-achievement award at Cannes, will kick off proceedings, marking the second year in a row that a French title has taken this high-profile slot.

    Palme d’Or winner “The Class” opened NYFF last year en route to an Oscar nod. Whether a similar path awaits Resnais’s film, a high-flown romantic melodrama which was very warmly reviewed in Cannes, of course depends on what the French choose as their entry from a bumper crop of possibilities.

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  • Philip Glass goes to the Prom

    Philip GlassIt’s rather surprising that Philip Glass, arguably the foremost classical composer at work today (and, lest we forget, a three-time Oscar nominee), has never before been featured at The BBC Proms, the annual eight-week series of London concerts that essentially comprise the world’s largest classical music festival.

    But good things do occasionally come to those who wait, and the 72 year-old Baltimore-born composer will finally get his first Prom tribute tonight at the Royal Albert Hall, as violinist Gidon Kremer reprises his original rendition of Glass’s signature 1987 Violin Concerto, while Glass’s 2004 Toltec Symphony will receive its first UK outing.

    In honor of the occasion, The Times carries an interesting interview with Glass, as he talks through his early career (when he worked as a plumber to pay the bills, unbelievably enough), his four marriages, and his latter-day status as a doyen of the artform in multiple media.

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  • Better education

    Thanks to Glenn at Stale Popcorn for pointing out this Australian one-sheet for “An Education.” It’s not much more revealing of the film at hand than the rather vague American version, but for me, it’s a significant improvement in terms of design and composition.

    And expression, too: Carey Mulligan’s melancholy moue gives slightly more indication of the dramatic stakes here than her impassive face in the U.S. poster. (Plus, showing a bit of Paris will always earn bonus points from me.) Looking forward to seeing what the Brit designers conjure up in the quad format.

    An Education (Australian poster)

  • Getting it wrong on both sides of the pond

    What follows is an actual conversation overheard this evening at Arsenal tube station in North London, as a (slightly inebriated) twentysomething couple stared idly at this international one-sheet for “Funny People.” I was so excited to hear strangers giving voice to my own musings that I began scribbling down a sneaky transcription. (Don’t judge me.)

    Funny People

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  • ‘Up’ vs ‘Coraline’ vs … the Jonas Brothers?

    UpLast month I mentioned that the Venice Film Festival is making a rather large gesture of faith in the current 3-D fad by introducing a new award for the best 3-D film of the year. The prize will be awarded by a separate three-person jury comprising critics Dave Kehr and Scott Foundas and experimental filmmaker Nadia Ranocchi.

    The award is not limited to films competing at the festival — but in case you didn’t get that, the point is made abundantly clear by this frankly bizarre 9-title shortlist for the gong that was unveiled yesterday. Via Variety:

    “Battle for Terra” (Aristomenis Tsirbas)
    “Coraline” (Henry Selick)
    “The Hole” (Joe Dante)
    “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” (Carlos Saldana)
    “Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience” (Bruce Hendricks)
    “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (Eric Brevig)
    “Monsters vs Aliens” (Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon)
    “My Bloody Valentine” (Patrick Lussier)
    “Up” (Pete Docter)

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  • Could Kubrick’s Holocaust film get made after all?

    Stanley Kubrick“Aryan Papers” is a title that is probably familiar to keen students of the great Stanley Kubrick, representing as it does a sadly missed opportunity in his abruptly curtailed career.

    For the uninformed, however, it’s the name of a Holocaust-themed Kubrick screenplay that he was due to direct for Warner Bros. in early 1990s, before the arrival of Steven Spielberg’s similarly targeted “Schindler’s List” compelled director and studio to shelve the project.

    Now it appears that Kubrick’s family is seeking to resurrect the project, which is still owned by Warner Bros., with Kubrick’s brother-in-law (and executive producer on his last four features) Jan Harlan leading the charge.

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  • ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’ UK trailer

    Sorry for the run of lazy posts, but I know a lot of you have been champing at the bit for this one. Make of it what you will … there appears to be more than enough quirk and baroque visual clutter here to keep the Gilliamites in thrall. (Oddly enough, I just passed through one of the key locations here on my morning run. “They should use this in more movies,” I thought to myself. Et voilà.)

    I’m reserving judgment. But I will say that it’s both disorienting and weirdly comforting to see Heath Ledger in a trailer for something fresh. That’s never happening again.

  • Keeping score with ‘Up in the Air’

    Jason Reitman is proving very forthcoming when it comes to sharing details of his progress on “Up in the Air” via Twitter. Earlier today, he divulged the film’s running time as 108 minutes — surely music to the ears of those of us weary of Hollywood’s increasingly bloated productions.

    And speaking of music, he just posted this cute pic of composer Rolfe Kent barefoot at work. “The score is coming to life,” apparently. Apropos of nothing, really, but it’s a slowish day and I’m really starting to look forward to this film. Are you?

  • ‘A Serious Man’ gets a serious poster

    And, in its deliberately, obtusely mundane glory, it’s as starkly unsettling as the terrific trailer we saw last week. I absolutely love the marketing approach Focus have taken with this one, giving away as little as humanly possible.

    In fact, the film seems to get more tauntingly unreadable the closer we get to it. Is it a tortured “Barton Fink” jump down the rabbit-hole? A simple “Burn After Reading” goof-off? A terse “No Country” exercise in economy? All three? I have no idea. I love that, in this age of 8-minute online snippets and trailers that play like complete CliffsNotes for the time-strapped viewer, I know next to nothing about a major release for a change.

    A Serious Man

    [Source: IMP Awards]

  • ‘Fish Tank’ trailer

    It’s been six weeks since I saw (and loved) Andrea Arnold’s Cannes Jury Prize winner “Fish Tank” at the Edinburgh fest, and the film simply will not leave me alone. Scenes and images from Arnold’s simultaneously exhilarating and devastating portrait of an Essex adolescence keep popping vividly into my head at random intervals — and I’m more and more convinced that young Katie Jarvis has given the single best performance of 2009 to date.

    I’m afraid this trailer doesn’t do a great job of selling what distinguishes the film from its kitchen-sink peers: Arnold’s impressionistic use of music and sound, its ambiguous sexual currency, the zest and rhythm of its dialogue. Just take my word for it that this is a very special piece of work. It’s out on 11 September in the UK; Americans must wait indefinitely. (It will, of course, play at Toronto next month.)

  • 8/7 Web Round-up

    Penelope Cruz and Pedro Almodovar on the set of Broken Embraces• Patrick Goldstein revisits a collection of filmmakers’ tributes to John Hughes, “the Tolstoy of American teenagers.” [The Big Picture]

    • The irrepressible Pedro Almodovar talks aging, Cruz and “Broken Embraces.”  On a side note, how sweet is the photo to the right? [Daily Telegraph]

    • Meryl Streep has a problem with male bloggers. Love you anyway, Meryl. [Salon]

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘Flame & Citron’ director Ole Christian Madsen

    Ole Christian MadsenSince opening in its home country of Denmark over 18 months ago, and embarking on a lengthy festival tour that included well-received stops in Toronto, Telluride and London last year, Ole Christian Madsen’s “Flame & Citron” has taken its sweet time arriving in American theaters. (It opened in limited release last Friday.)

    But then patience has been evidently a watchword throughout the conception and execution of this handsome WWII biopic-cum-thriller, a long-gestating pet project for 43 year-old Dogme 95 alumnus Madsen.

    For starters, the story of the titular duo has been nagging away at him since the age of 12 – ever since his father, a former army colonel, gave him a book on heroes of the Nazi Resistance.

    The story of Flame and Citron (aliases for Bent Faurschou-Hviid and Jorgen Haagen Schmith), a pair of native freedom fighters working against the German occupation in 1940s Copenhagen, fired the young Madsen’s imagination, as he sensed a greater moral ambiguity behind it than the history written on the page.

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  • New ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ trailer

    I should say something. I really should. But I’m speechless. In a very good way.

    Let the wild rumpus start, indeed.

  • Is it wrong that I’m totally looking forward to this?

    Jennifer AnistonCall it summer silliness or the fact that I truly am a moron after all, but for all the intriguing projects announced in the last month — Cronenberg taking on DeLillo should be a treat, while I’d be lying if I said my curiosity isn’t perversely piqued by Joe Eszterhas telling the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe — but this is the one my heart really wants to see. One sentence, via Variety:

    “Grey Gardens” helmer Michael Sucsy will make his feature directorial debut on “Goree Girls,” with Jennifer Aniston headlining the true story of an all-female country band in a Texas prison in the 1940s.

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  • The economics of 3D … and why I don’t care

    CoralineI’m going to sound about three times my actual age for saying this, but I’ll say it anyway: I could not care less about 3D.

    I know it’s important, I know it’s fun, I know it’s the future. I know all this largely because almost 20 years ago, a group of cheery traveling 3D promoters visited my elementary school in New Jersey, and told the packed assembly exactly the same thing.

    “Hey, 3D! Yay, 3D! Everybody see in 3D!” they sang, before showing us some jazzed-up motocross footage in the third dimension. Does anybody else remember sitting through the same demonstration?

    I wasn’t thrilled then, and while I’m aware of the massive leap and bounds the technology has made since I was 7 years old, I’m not particularly thrilled now. I like a gosh-wow gimmick as much as the next man — a stupid part of me wishes I’d lived through Smell-O-Rama — but once the novelty of items popping off the screen settles in, I find 3D a dispensable accessory: an extra “D” doesn’t amount to a lot of beans in the cinematic departments I really care about — writing, storytelling, performance.

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  • Is ‘Hurt Locker’ locked in?

    The Hurt LockerA few months ago, before the Academy completely altered the playing field for this year’s Oscars, “The Hurt Locker” looked like the longest of long shots for Best Picture consideration.

    Its unpopular subject matter, absence of stars, a respected but genre-based director, and the languishing delay between its 2008 Venice debut and its summer 2009 release — none of these factors inspired much confidence in its chances.

    But then a weird thing happened. Just after the Academy effectively doubled its chances of a Best Picture nod in June, an ecstatic wave of reviews for the film started rolling in, the ardently passionate consensus of which took many off-guard following its warm but hardly explosive reception on the fest circuit last year.

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