In Contention

Author: Guy Lodge

  • Holocaust victims 4, Nazis 0

    This interactive Oscar trivia chart at the Guardian is great fun, even if I can’t vouch for its accuracy across the board. (At a glance, I can tell that there are numerous names missing from their “most nominated without wins” page, while there have been more than three R-rated Best Picture nominees this year, let alone this decade.)

    Quibbles aside, however, it’s a handy confirmation of several well-known Academy trends (yes, the most surefire route to an Oscar is playing someone with mental health problems, with 23 winners to prove the fact), as well as some less familiar ones. Who knew that Jon Voight remains the only man to win Best Actor for playing a long-haired character? If we count the early stages of “Milk,” does that mean that this much-neglected demographic will get a certain boost on Sunday night?

    My favourite, however, was this particular nugget: four thesps have won for playing Holocaust victims. But Nazis? None. You’ve been warned, Ms. Winslet.

  • Revisiting the waterfront

    As Sunday’s Oscars bear down upon us with a measure of both inevitability and indifference, I can’t be the only one fed up of watching, talking or even thinking about certain 2008 nominees — even some of the ones I liked. The sooner we can begin putting some much-needed distance between ourselves and these films, the better, I say.

    So it was with great pleasure this evening that I plunged into the refreshing waters of both classic Oscar history and a different medium altogether — by going to see Steven Berkoff’s quite stunning reconceptualisation of Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront” on the West End stage.

    The source, of course, needs no introduction: Kazan’s searing 1954 study of corruption and violence amid the longshoremen of Hoboken boasts any number of immediately quotable lines, arguably Marlon Brando’s signature performance and, of course, eight Academy Awards. It remains, for me, one the Best Picture category’s finest hours.

    Turning such a flavourfully urban example of realist cinema into a heightened physical theatre exercise may seem a foolhardy task, but Berkoff’s interpretation is equal parts devoted tribute (Budd Schulberg’s original screenplay is transferred largely intact, while thumping jazz cues speak to Leonard Bernstein’s iconic score) and wildly stylised reinvention.

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  • A soupçon of ‘Broken Embraces’

    Thanks to Nat Rogers for pointing out this new teaser for Pedro Almodovar’s upcoming Penelope Cruz-starrer “Broken Embraces.” I do mean “teaser,” by the way — it’s under 30 seconds long, with no betrayal of dialogue or plot — but if, like me, this is your most anticipated film of 2009, you take what you can get.

    This much we can tell: it’s lush. If “Volver” was a joyful, humanist showcase for the tinderbox screen charisma of its leading lady, this appears to be its (and Cruz’s) nastier, noir-ier bookend, furthering Almodovar’s ambition to construct her as this generation’s premier Euro screen goddess. I. Can’t. Wait.

  • Curiouser and curiouser

    I have to say, it’s a stroke of luck that the most predictable Oscar race in some years at least happens to conicide with the most unpredictable Oscar ceremony. It’s as if Bill Condon and Laurence Mark knew that they had to pull out all the stops in reconfiguring the show to make up for a slate of nominees that could not have been more cautious. The few hints that have been dropped so far (including a radically altered stage design) suggest that, whether it sinks or soars, something very different is in store.

    Pete Hammond has written an interesting piece in which he considers the information we have so far, and wonders what bearing this year’s ceremony might have on the Oscarcast’s long-term future. He acknowledges the canniness of Condon and Mark’s semi-veiled strategy thus far (suggesting, I suspect  accurately, that the “leaked” news of Robert Pattinson and Zac Efron as presenters was in fact calculated to lure in younger viewers), and drops this tantalising bit of gossip:

    Oscar director Roger Goodman has worked with the new producers the past few weeks. A friend who sat with him the other night at the Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony said Goodman was characterizing Condon as a certified genius.

    OK, maybe this is a lot of hype. But … Oscar-nominated producer, Bruce Cohen said he had heard the same kind of talk.  He mentioned that Condon and Mark had presented their plans for the show to the academy’s board of governors two weeks ago and the board was blown away. If you can wow this crowd, you must be on to something.

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  • Keeping it low-key, Hollywood style

    As one of this year’s nearly-nominated figures recently remarked to me (and I’m sure they’ll forgive me for quoting them): “The best place to enjoy the Oscars has to be at home in PJs, wrapped up in many a duvet with a large mug of sweet tea … a look which I doubt I could have quite pulled off on the carpet.”

    It’s a philosophy I subscribe to as well — though admittedly one’s celebration options are somewhat limited when when the Oscarcast takes place in the wee small hours of the morning. However, it seems that this year, many of Hollywood’s finest could discover for themselves the low-key, home-made delights of home Oscar parties, as the economically panicked industry scales back on the famously lavish post-ceremony bashes, limiting the guest lists and dropping the accoutrements. As Variety reports:

    Balancing modesty with glitz is no easy task, but award season veterans are definitely seeing some changes this year. Saturday’s seventh annual Night Before party at the Beverly Hills hotel benefitting the Motion Picture & Television Fund is cutting out the gift bags, and it is not holding the Friday night pre-event as in years past.

    After more than a decade at Mortons (and then no party last year), Vanity Fair has moved to the Sunset Tower for its viewing and after-party. The mag says the “invitation list has been cut down considerably,” but a permit filed with the city of West Hollywood said there would be between 800 guests over the course of the evening.

    OK, so they’re not suffering that modestly. But apparently Elton John’s AIDS Foundation dinner will have no after-party, while entourages and security will be denied entry. That’s slumming it, by Hollywood standards. Seriously, though, I’m glad to see the industry taking reality into account to some extent. It’s all about the movies, after all, or it should be — so if the glossy magazines have to make do with fewer Oscar-bash celeb snaps to choose from this year, that’s no bad thing.

    Meanwhile, if any stars feel like hopping across the pond and joining me for my traditional post-ceremony breakfast — I do great blueberry pancakes — I can make some room on the guest list.

  • Ang Lee takes on ‘Pi’

    Few film projects in recent years have come with as formidable a chain of prospective directors attached than Fox 2000’s adaptation of Yann Martel’s bestselling 2002 Booker Prize winner “Life of Pi.”

    First M. Night Shyamalan was on board — which, admittedly, might have been a more appealing prospect five years ago. The next name attached was a considerable step up: “Amelie” helmer Jean-Pierre Jeunet would have been a pretty natural fit for Martel’s brand of surreal whimsy. I seem to recall Alfonso Cuaron being mentioned in connection with the project at one point too. Like I said, an impressive roster.

    In the end, however, it looks like Ang Lee will ultimately accept the challenge, and I do mean ‘challenge.’ For those of you unfamiliar with the novel, it’s an allegorical fantasy about a shipwrecked Indian boy who survives by sharing a raft with a Bengal tiger, among other wild animals. It’s a tricky film premise to say the least, but Lee has proved time and again that he knows his way around delicate, potentially uncinematic literary source material. I think his visual grace and lightness of touch is just what is required here. Smart choice.

    I do love how busy Lee is keeping himself, compared to many other auteurs of his calibre. “Lust, Caution” is a fresh, searing memory still, and it was only a few months ago that we heard he was beginning work on “Taking Woodstock,” an ensemble piece centred around the eponymous music festival. With that film already wrapped and due for release in August (perhaps a title set for discussion in our upcoming 2009 Oscar preview), Lee is ready to move on, with yet another wholly different proposition for his filmography. Good on him.

  • Not so very shocking

    Dave Karger has posted a list of ten potential “shockers” that he thinks could (however faintly) foreseeably shake things up on Oscar night.

    Many of them have been raised before, and are suitably fanciful. Though I’ve said before that there is a logical case to be made for Melissa Leo leapfrogging both Kate Winslet and Meryl Streep to the Best Actress award, it’s safe to say that the odds are firmly stacked against that happening. Meanwhile, while the “‘Benjamin Button’ goes 0-for-13” theory has been floated around before, it’s difficult to see how it could lose all three of the technical awards in which it is deemed a lock. So those outcomes would certainly count as shocking in some measure.

    Some of Karger’s ideas would definitely be upsets, but not necessarily “shockers.” As I’ve written before, I’m joining him on the same limb in predicting a Best Foreign Language Film win for “The Class” — but that category is so prone to upsets, it’s almost more of a surprise when things go according to plan. And I know I’m not the only one seriously considering Viola Davis in the frequently topsy-turvy Best Supporting Actress category — she’s not the favourite, sure, but it wouldn’t be a jaw-dropper of Marcia Gay Harden proportions.

    Some of Karger’s supposed “shockers,” however, wouldn’t even count as upsets to me. He lists both the possibility of “Slumdog Millionaire” making a clean sweep of nine awards, and “The Dark Knight” getting only one statuette — which are really co-dependent on each other, since the sound awards, as far as I can see, represent “TDK’s” only other shots at victory. (Cinematography, I think, sailed with the ASC.) And since “Slumdog” just nabbed the CAS award, would that be so very unexpected?

    The one on Karger’s list that really surprised me, however, was a Best Actor win for Mickey Rourke. It’s well-known by now that this is a neck-and-neck battle to the finish between two beloved performances that have evenly split the major Oscar precursors. In the latest Gurus of Gold chart, Penn leads Rourke by a single vote. I think we can honestly say by now that either result would not be a surprise at all. Now Frank Langella … that would be a shocker.

  • Again, uh…

    Following yesterday’s thrilling/indifferent/perplexing (adjust according to age) revelation that Robert Pattinson is a likely presenter at Sunday’s Academy Awards, Sasha Stone has excavated some further hints as to who to expect on stage — and it seems Beyoncé Knowles, “High School Musical” tweens Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens, as well as young “Mamma Mia!” duo Amanda Seyfried and Dominic Cooper could all be in the mix.

    Beyoncé is a bona fide megastar and has been a regular fixture at the Oscars for some years now, so that at least makes sense. But what’s with the excessive pandering to the (pre)teen demographic? Do that many of them really watch the Oscars? Maybe they do — I’m just asking.

    But isn’t the inclusion of one pretty-but-sexually-unthreatening vampire a sufficient nod to the demographic? Efron on his own could be bearable, but let’s not kid ourselves into pretending that Hudgens, Seyfried and Cooper are movie stars just yet.

    With names like these, perhaps the whole “secret presenters” thing was just a ploy to avoid scaring us off.

  • ‘Duchess,’ ‘Slumdog,’ ‘Knight’ take CDG Awards

    So, the final guild awards before the Oscars have been doled out — and “Slumdog Millionaire” maintains its unprecedented, unbroken streak, with Suttriat Larlab winning the contemporary field at the Costume Designers Guild awards.

    “The Dark Knight’s” Lindy Hemming predictably took the fantasy category while, in the only victory that has any bearing on the Oscar race, Michael O’Connor took the period gong for “The Duchess.”

    The latter strikes me as an interesting win. While the relatively unfamiliar O’Connor is a favourite for the Oscars, I didn’t necessarily expect him to triumph with the Guild, which often prefers more established names — and hasn’t shared the Academy’s recent affinity for European royalty-porn. (Neither “Marie-Antoinette” nor “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” won here.) The fact that they relented this year suggests O’Connor is looking primed for the bigger win on Sunday.

  • How not to present — or accept — an Oscar

    The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw has rounded up a morbidly fascinating collection of the all-time most awkward performances by an Oscar presenter — a remarkable study in the multitude of ways in which one can fail at reading a teleprompter and opening an envelope with any semblance of panache.

    They’re all fun in their variously excruciating ways (I love Jill Ireland’s thoroughly zombified reading of the 1973 Best Supporting Actress nominees), but I have to agree with Thomson that the most “cant-look-can’t-look-away” presentation is that of the 1972 Best Actor Oscar.

    Of course, the moment is already infamous for Marlon Brando’s choice of proxy to accept the award, but even before we get there, classic status is assured by the surreal pairing of Roger Moore and Liv Ullmann to present — and their painful lack of chemistry together. Whatever has been lined up for Sunday, it can’t go worse than this. (Check out Bradshaw’s full list here.)

  • ‘A little blingier’

    Admittedly, it’s a little difficult to feel any sympathy for Oscar nominees when they discuss their frantic awards-season schedules. Oh poor you, it must be such a pain in the ass having to attend fittings for your free designer gown, or to attend yet another dinner held for the sole purpose of celebrating your wonderfulness.

    But if anyone can make such trials seem relatable, it’s Taraji P. Henson, who could just be the year’s most loveable nominee. Here, she shares her own schedule from the past week, and she’s clearly loving every minute. I love the girlish enthusiasm she expresses here about the red-carpet rigmarole:

    “She knows how to work it,” (stylist Mary) Norton says. “She won’t give herself that credit, but it’s why designers want to work with her. She doesn’t just walk a red carpet, she owns it.” Henson giggles at the very thought of it. “Well, I think it’s that ham that comes along with being an actress! I still to this day play dress-up. My son will come in my room and will be like, ‘Where are you going?’ And I’m like, ‘I’m playing. Get out!’ I’ve been playing dress-up all my life,” she says, stopping to laugh again. “But it’s on a whole ‘nother level now. It’s gotten a little blingier!”

    How can you not be happy for her? Work it, Taraji.

  • It’s all about the actors

    Over at USA Today, Susan Wloszczyna has come to the conclusion that, in a fairly weak year for film with a less-than-competitive Best Picture slate to show for it, the performance categories are where it’s at this year:

    The real action this year is in the acting. Sets were chewed with delicious relish and scenes were snatched with delectable finesse, even if the films themselves have underwhelmed.

    “I look at my ballot and see all these amazing actors,” says an overwhelmed Donna Gigliotti, a producer on The Reader and a trophy winner for 1998’s Shakespeare in Love. “It’s just staggering. That role was a game changer for Anne Hathaway, nothing that anyone expected from her. And Melissa Leo in Frozen River? What is she, 48? Her nomination just made me want to stand up and cheer. Richard Jenkins is such a fabulous actor. And Taraji P. Henson is the soul of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.“

    I’m inclined to agree. Though I still think the Academy dropped the ball in some areas (Best Actress, in particular, could have been a far richer and more diverse race had the likes of Sally Hawkins and Kristin Scott Thomas been invited), it’s true that, while 2008 hasn’t been as rewarding for auteur works as some previous years, we’ve seen a lot of films either wholly constructed around their performances (“The Wrestler” being a prime example) or saved by them (for my money, Anne Hathaway and Rosemarie DeWitt are the most focused elements of “Rachel Getting Married”).

    The result is, I think, that people seem a lot more invested in this year’s acting races than the ones for Picture or Director — and it’s not just because the latter two are foregone conclusions. (Let’s face it, there’s not much more suspense in some of the acting categories, and I think you know what I’m referring to.) It seems to me that the performances of 2008 have been more complete, complex and adventurous than the films — in some cases, the very films in which they appear.

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  • Uh…

    So this is the apparent pay-off for all the cloak and dagger mystery surrounding this year’s Oscar presenters? So that, as we wait with bated breath, the curtain can rise on the heartstoppingly awe-inspiring likes of — golly, gosh, wow, gee, etc — Robert Pattinson?

    Okay, I’m not a pre-teen girl, so forgive me if I didn’t just wet my pants in anticipation. But I hope Bill Condon and Laurence Mark have some more interesting aces up their sleeves than the stars of “Twilight.” Otherwise, y’know, why all the secrecy?

  • Can ‘Slumdog’ really make a clean sweep?

    As we all know, this was a(nother) exceptionally good weekend for “Slumdog Millionaire,” as it nabbed a quartet of technical guild trophies, from the cinematographers, editors, art directors and even, in an especially unlikely coup, the sound mixers. With just the costume designers left to weigh in, this means that Danny Boyle’s film has not come up empty at a single guild ceremony all season — it is an unprecedented hot streak.

    With voters seemingly incapable, on any given ballot, of not checking the box alongside the word “Slumdog,” the film suddenly poses a very real threat of nabbing 9 awards, sweeping every category in which it is nominated at the Oscars. Nathaniel Rogers, for one, is predicting such an outcome, and thinks that the key to everything lies in the usually unheralded sound categories:

    It might sound odd to say but I believe these are the key categories of the night. If they announce them early and they both go to Slumdog Millionaire we have a sweeper on our hands and you’ll watch it win all 9 of its categories. If it loses both it will likely be a more traditional night when several film get a couple of statues each. But these two categories are clearly where Slumdog is most vulnerable to defeat. Voters could also opt to improve WALL•E or The Dark Knight‘s statue total … (But) the biggest problem for both the robot and the batman is, I fear, each other. Which might have also been the case in the best picture nomination battle.

    I completely agree. The two sound categories are among the races causing me the most head-scratching as I finalise my predictions. As a technical feat of sound design, “WALL-E” would appear to be the connoisseur’s choice, but the fact that it was passed over by the guild raises a questionmark. “The Dark Knight” fits the same “acclaimed action movie” profile that netted “The Bourne Ultimatum” a brace of wins here last year. But aren’t the Academy members who don’t know much about the craft, but do love “Slumdog,” simply going to check off the film’s name twice more?

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  • Berlin jury avoids the mainstream

    Perhaps it’s an indication of an unusually low-key festival, or perhaps (more likely) I’ve been too distracted by the steamrolling Oscar season, but either way, I’m a little disturbed that the Berlin Film Festival wrapped up this weekend and I am barely familiar with most of the prizewinning films.

    I had heard some positive things about “London River,” a culture-clash drama from “Day of Glory” helmer Rachid Bouchareb, set around the 2005 London bombings, that gathered some buzz for Brenda Blethyn’s performance — but ended up taking Best Actor for Sotigui Kouyate.

    And I was aware that “Sweet Rush,” which shared the Alfred Bauer Prize (which rewards “new perspectives,” apparently), is the latest from Andrzej Wajda (though word is it’s not one of his best), while I remember the Best Screenplay winner, Iraq-themed US indie “The Messenger,” gathered some notice at Sundance.

    But I must admit that the winner of the Golden Bear, “The Milk of Sorrow,” skipped my radar entirely. The sophomore film from female Peruvian director Claudia Llosa, it’s a solemn-sounding effort about the lifelong trauma inflicted on a child of rape — or, if you want the more sensationalist pitch, a woman with a potato in her nether regions. It seems to have attracted mixed notices — Variety’s review admires from a distance, but Screen International finds it “mannered” and “contrived.”

    Of course, one would expect a jury headed by avante-garde arthouse queen Tilda Swinton to favour the international and the eccentric, so none of this is really a surprise — especially given that they’d made clear their intent to reward politically charged work.

    In any case, the Golden Bear truly hasn’t been any indicator of international success of late — the last few winners include “U-Carmen eKhayelitsha” (which really deserved a higher profile), “Grbavica,” “Tuya’s Marriage” and “Elite Squad.” I have a feeling Llosa’s film isn’t going to have much more luck crossing over, but we’ll see.

    Full list of winners after the cut.

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  • ‘Button,’ ‘Knight,’ ‘Slumdog’ take ADG Awards

    The Art Directors Guild didn’t really veer from the expected last night, handing their awards to “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” in the period category, “The Dark Knight” in fantasy and “Slumdog Millionaire” in contemporary.

    And on we go. This pretty much affirms “Button’s” grip on this category for the Oscars. The real question, however, remains: how on earth does Nathan Crowley’s work in “The Dark Knight” qualify as “fantasy” design?

  • Writing the silences

    Hard as it may be to believe, it seems there are a lot of people in and around the industry who don’t fully understand what a screenplay is — who think that ‘writing’ equals ‘dialogue.’ This makes it all the more laudable that the Academy’s writing branch recognised “WALL-E,” a film that hinges, of course, on extended stretches of dialogue-free storytelling.

    As I’ve written before, it’s a significant challenge to build empathetic characters, credible relationships and narrative immediacy with a minimum of on-screen words. And yet, one still hears occasional murmurings questioning the validity of the film as a feat of screenwriting. (Presumably they imagine the animators made up the story as they drew, or that all silent cinema was entirely improvised.)

    So I was pleased to read Andrew Stanton thoroughly address this issue in a chat with Pete Hammond, wherein he states that of all “WALL-E”‘s 6 nominations, he takes the most pride in the screenplay nod:

    “I am prouder to be in writing more than anything else. At Pixar we say ‘story, story, story.’ It’s the root of everything,” he says. “It’s the biggest pat on the back I can think of. We put ourselves fully into every aspect but it’s all in service of the story.”

    It could be a tough sell to the overall academy (every branch votes on the final screenplay award) as a lot of members just don’t understand how a virtually silent movie, in which the main characters speak their own language, could possibly have been “written.”  But Stanton says it’s no different than the process any other writer would go through.

    “How you tell a story is just as important as what the story is. In my mind these characters were gonna speak. They just weren’t gonna speak in a language you and I knew. When they spoke and why they spoke was just as important as if you could understand their language,” he says.

    Well said. Got it, voters?

  • Taking it in his stride

    With the Best Actor race narrowing to a heated finish between Mickey Rourke and Sean Penn, it’s easy to forget that Clint Eastwood was once very much part of the conversation. Of course, any such possibilities were sunk as “Gran Torino” became the first Eastwood in six years to come up empty on nomination morning. In a substantial interview in today’s Guardian, however, Eastwood doesn’t seem particularly fazed by missing out this time:

    “I have had three films nominated out of the last five I’ve made. I just make the film the best I can. The rest is political stuff and posturing. I’m not terribly good at that. I think our message was as good as any message out there this year. There we are.”

    I imagine it’s easier to be philosophical about such things when you have four Oscars on your mantlepiece already, and the film in question is still raking in the millions. However, as I read the piece, I got the distinct impression that “Torino” is very much a film Eastwood made for himself, rather than with designs on awards and critical kudos. (As it happens, interviewer Emma Brockes is refreshingly unfawning on her subject — though she likes the film as a whole, she isn’t too awed to point out its flaws, including the star’s own occasional “snarling and overacting.”)

    Of course, a more cynical take would be that he isn’t bothered by his poor showing in this year’s awards race because he has an ominously baity project in the pipeline — his thus-far vaguely defined Nelson Mandela picture — that could well feed the Academy’s known penchant for ennobling true-life stories. As a South African, I must admit that the project has me nervous for all kinds of reasons, but amid the earnestness, Eastwood isn’t above poking a bit of fun at himself:

    When I ask who will play (Mandela), he looks devilish and says, “I’m going to play him. I’m going to show you my versatility.” (It will actually be Morgan Freeman. “Perfect casting for Mandela.”)

    We will no doubt be talking further about this project when Kris offers his year-in-advance speculation on the 2009 Oscars later this month, so keep an eye out for that. In the meantime, read the rest of the interview here.