In Contention

Author: Kristopher Tapley

  • Call it 170

    Reading through Jeffrey Wells’s Hollywood Elsewhere this afternoon, I see he’s spitballing about the length of the script for David Fincher’s upcoming “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” written by Eric Roth.

    I made a call and got a different figure: 170 pages — with some considerable narration to boot.

    Wells’s point seems to be, “uh-oh, it’s gonna be long.” But as far as I’m concerned, a good movie can’t be long enough. So, you know, so be it if “Button” clocks in close to three hours long.

    A commenter at Hollywood Elsewhere, meanwhile, had this to say:

    I know somebody who’s seen a rouch (sic) cut (possibly just the assembly) and says it came in at 3 and a half hours.

    They also said it was a REALLY good 3 and a half hours, so there you go.

    Well, indeed. There you go. We’ll know more soon enough, but this is one of my most anticipated efforts of the season.

    Additionally, Roth is taking off from a 64-page short story, so we can bet on a lot of original material that, hopefully, adds to the emotional context of the original work. And the cover of the recently re-released short story, by the way, showcases the words “The inspiration for the upcoming motion picture,” so I wonder if, at the end of the day, the script might be deemed an original work because of what will likely be a profound, if necessary, departure from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words.

  • Bryony…again?

    I was doing some quick research today into a few titles I neglected to mention in February’s year in advance Oscar column and came across a weird little instance.

    It seems Romola Garai is set to portray a character by the name of Bryony in Richard Eyre’s upcoming “The Other Man,” opposite Liam Neeson, Laura Linney and Antonio Banderas. An i-for-a-y away from the character she conveyed so well (and absence of her due kudos) in last year’s “Atonement.”

    Odd how those things happen.

  • Woah…I think we have a real makeup contender

    Putting together a list of makeup contenders was a little difficult for the year-in-advance column this year. I ultimately settled on “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (a film that will be integrating plenty of effects, makeup key among them), “The Other Boleyn Girl” (eh…I know) and “The Dark Knight” (maybe voters will be impressed by the effects used on Heath Ledger’s Joker and, late in the film, Aaron Eckhart’s Two-Face).

    Frankly, I didn’t see much else worth considering…until I came across this shot of Frank Langella in Ron Howard’s “Frost/Nixon.”

    Sure, I figured some makeup would be used on this film to bridge the gap in appearance between Langella and Richard Nixon. Certainly more than the stage production, which didn’t get too crazy, even for a theatrical performance. But I didn’t expect to find Langella completely lost under the effects. He’s unrecognizable in this, the closest shot of the actor in the film I think we’ve seen yet.

    If the film turns into a sweeper, we’ll certainly need to watch out for it here.

  • I can already see it becoming a problem

    Regarding “Guerrilla.” Take note of the second “r.” I’ve made the mistake already myself. A few times. FYI.

  • Variety sizes up the competition…again

    It looks like they’re spinning their Oscar wheels again over at that other film awards haven of mine.

    I say “again” because Justin Chang put together a very thorough year-in-advance rundown not two months ago, which was already wading further out into the waters than you’d expect from the Hollywood trade.

    This week — actually flying under my radar because I haven’t expected Oscar stuff out of Award Central in a while — it’s Pamela McClintock, eying the release date plays of various fall contenders as an angle on which to hang yet another look ahead. I came across the link via Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere.

    The usual suspects are rounded up: “Frost/Nixon,” “Revolutionary Road,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” etc. But there are a couple of new pics of note.

    For instance, I didn’t include John Hillcoat’s “The Road” (based on the Cormac McCarthy novel) on my own year-in-advance take because there was still some questiona s to whether it would be a 2008 release at the time. The Weinstein Company has it set for a Nov. 26 bow. And I also didn’t spotlight the Greg Kinnear starrer “Flash of Genius,” because quite frankly, it didn’t come up in discussions with Universal publicity brass, so I figured why bring it up? Both films are featured by McClintock.

    Anyway, the story isn’t much beyond a taking stock sort of thing, but it’s Oscarweb news nonetheless. Check it out.

  • Reading “W”

    Boy, they sure are leaning on some hyperbolic recent dubya lore to push this thing along. I’m only about 50 pages in or so and already more than a few things turn me off about this script, but I’m also somewhat surprised that writer Stanley Weiser has gone the way of presenting Bush in such a deep character study.

    I’ll probably write up a “Page to Screen” article later in the fall. But I’m definitely looking forward to Josh Brolin in this role.

  • Poland calls ‘Speed Racer’ a “masterpiece”

    speedracer1.jpgWell, as usual, he doesn’t come right out and say it, but his implications are obvious.

    This film looks like an absolute headache to me, and considering the Wachowski brothers have not created something that caught my fancy since the first installment of “The Matrix” nine years ago, I’m not holding my breath here. Poland’s endorsement is also no shock given that he has gone into the well for the Wachowskis over and over and over again. I guess if you can find genius in “The Matrix Reloaded” and “V For Vendetta,” you’re bound to find it in what looks, on the surface, to be a bubble gum time warp and nothing more.

    But wait, there are family values!

    I doubt it’s that deep, but David likes what he likes. As do we all. See for yourself.

  • Boy, if you hated ‘Donnie Darko’

    southlandtalesrockface1.jpgAnd I did. But Jesus, I put myself through Richard Kelly’s “Southland Tales” last night and really, truly, it might be the worst film I’ve ever seen.

    No one wants to be the last guy to show up to a smack down, so I won’t get into all the whys and what fors on this unqualified mess. Plenty have had their say on the matter. But never has a film exhausted me to the point of absolute, unmitigated fury. I was literally pissed at how terrible this thing was.

    What is worse, I decided to check out the flick’s Rotten Tomatoes page, and lo and behold, there are fools out there forgiving and, in some cases, justifying the film. Staggering.

    I’ve thought Richard Kelly was the cinema’s luckiest hack ever since I laid eyes on “Donnie Darko” back in 2002 or so. But somehow, he’s developed a fan base because of that film (and even for his work on another train wreck, Tony Scott’s “Domino”). I don’t get trends like this. I never do. But I hope he goes away now and, if he must come back, I hope he beats this wretched muse out of his creativity.

    Poor Rock.

  • The machine is us

    httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

  • Foundas got served

    I never miss an opportunity lately to read up on someone giving LA Weekly critic (or in this case, Village Voice pundit) Scott Foundas his due. Today, its Ryan Adams at Awards Daily, who lays into Foundas’ rather inane stretch for an observation that Paramount Pictures are doing everything they can to keep Iraq out of the promotion for Kimberly Peirce’s “Stop-Loss.” Take a look:

    Whoa! spoiler alert there, Scotty! Stop Loss is about Iraq, you say? Never woulda guessed from the saturation advertising of, um, soldiers in desert camo and stuff. Way to “spill the beans” there, friendo. And yet Foundas believes the same target audience he belittles are so informed that they’ve seen all the Vietnam movies like The Deer Hunter and Coming Home…

    Of course, Adams is biased here. He’s made no attempt to conceal his pre-ordained love for “Stop-Loss” in recent weeks. But I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on this one. Give it a read. And if you really want to put yourself through it, check out Foundas’ stretch for a news item at the Voice.

  • Almost there

    shepherd.jpgRobert De Niro’s “The Good Shepherd” has been running on HBO this month. I stopped flipping to watch some of it this evening, kind of caught up in the brief year-ago nostalgia, but mostly transfixed with a film that is so close, yet so far.

    I remember when I first saw the film at the Clarity screening room in Beverly Hills in December of 2006, surrounded by a typically judgmental crowd of HFPA members. I had high hopes. It was, after all, the year’s most anticipated would-be Oscar film, much like 2007’s “Charlie Wilson’s War.” There was a hell of a crew assembled for what sounded like it could be a solid, dense, but meaningful effort. The catch was that I had read Eric Roth’s screenplay some months prior, and “dense” didn’t begin to cover it. I knew this was a script that demanded some sort of device to dig a story, not necessarily bogged down, but still somewhat abstruse, out of the literary and onto the screen in an authoritative manner.

    I had also just finished up a profile of Roth for The New York Times and had grown as fond of the man as I had his work throughout the years.

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  • Not that it matters, but…

    …a month or two ago, the last thing I was completely sick of the Oscars. Nowadays, the only thing that gives me peace of mind from the rigors of school is coming here to work on the redesign. Weird.

  • Don’t tread on me

    I’m starting to wonder if a 7-part mini-series was the best way to go on “John Adams.” While there were some great moments with Tom Wilikinson in last night’s third installment, I have to confess, it was largely boring on the whole. Who would go back and re-watch something that tedious?

    The history, thankfully, was accurate enough but they are still hanging their hat on that “Adams sacrificed so much for the country” ho-hum. Four episodes to go. I better see the reasons to hate him and but fast.

    And I want more David Morse. Sure, he was kind of — awkward as Washington. But Washington WAS awkward, so it’s a weirdly perfect fit. Can’t wait to see the story pick up with him once again.

  • Can’t stop watching

    Not Oscar related, but what is in March? Win, lose or draw, this will be one of the all time greatest speeches. And I just keep watching it.

    httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=zrp-v2tHaDo

  • Remembering Anthony Minghella

    9759a.jpgI’ve been tucked away on an island for the past week, stuck largely in a news vacuum and certainly free of the bindings of daily internet briefings. But it saddens me to return to the shocking news of Anthony Minghella’s passing.

    The Variety report indicates a brain hemorrhage as the cause of death, though Minghella’s publicists, Leslie Dart, is saying that is not so. Whatever the case may be, we’ve been swiftly relieved of one of the cinema’s most interesting voices, a man with just six films to his credit but all of them representative of the man and his convictions in some way, shape or form.

    I met Minghella just once, in December of 2006 when I moderated a Q&A with him and actress Robin Wright Penn for the underrated “Breaking and Entering” in front of an audience of SAG actors. What I remember of the man is a delicate touch, a soft-spoken manner that still held a certain adoration of truth in expression.

    He took the utmost care and consideration for any query, always ignorant of the stock answer and always intoxicating in his process, in explaining why he saw the world the way he did on celluloid and why he went to the deep and profoundly affecting places that he did in his work. Whatever one’s opinion of his filmmaking, it would be difficult to argue with his conviction.

    And now, he’s gone — taken from us like some cruel joke. I’m proud to say I shared a stage with him. I’m prouder, still, to say I was able to speak with him about his craft.

    If only once.

    You can read producing partner Sydney Pollack’s touching remembrance here, and actress Juliette Binoche’s eulogy poem here.

  • HBO’s “John Adams”

    John AdamsI must say, I’m slightly agitated by the approach HBO’s latest mini-series, “John Adams,” seems to be taking.

    Granted one cannot build a 7-part event around a hero too clearly flawed, but the fact remains that Adams wasn’t exactly the most noble of our founding fathers. Being a journalist, I can’t personally celebrate he of the Alien and Sedition Acts without considerable pause, for instance.

    The first part has been a typical conception: building the main character as an outcast set on the law first, and last. I’m not overly familiar with Adams’ early professional years, but ultimately he was a part of a paranoid Federalist sect that was more terrified of the notion of true freedom than not. The specter of the guillotine had better hang heavy over other portions of the mini-series if I’m to personally take it seriously as accountable in its history.

    And Paul Giamatti’s Adams had better see a swift fall from the grace of this initial entry. (more…)

  • OFF THE CARPET: 2008, a year in advance

    Another year, another set of wins…and another look ahead at what’s in store NEXT year.

    It’s never too late to take a long gander at what we might see dominating the film awards landscape in 365 days, and with that in mind, I’ve been doing my usual mulling over the possibilities for a few weeks to put together the sadly thorough examination of the 2008-09 award season that follows. Let’s get into it. There are some major considerations to take into account. right off the top.

    Like Leonardo DiCaprio, for instance, who is set to be the entertainer of the year. With performances in “Body of Lies” (Ridley Scott) and “Revolutionary Road” (Sam Mendes), DiCaprio is working with a duo of awards-proven talent this year. Perhaps that will work against him, much like it did in 2006, and no major Oscar success will come knocking. But we’ll wait until we see the performances. Each of them could be enticing.

    This year’s Best Picture Oscar victor Scott Rudin is back again, by the way, with “Revolutionary Road,” recently inherited by Paramount Vantage and probably one of the true “frontrunners” this far out that we could put our finger on. The only other film in Vantage’s arsenal is Edward Zwick’s “Defiance,” which could simply be a commercial success, but might find its way to multiple nods like “The Last Samurai” and “Blood Diamond” in recent years.

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  • The top 10 shots of 2007: part two

    Today we round out the top 10 shots of the year with the final five.  Check out part one if you missed it.

    Let’s dive in:

    #5

    Michael Clayton

    “MICHAEL CLAYTON”
    Director of Photography: Robert Elswit

    We were completely ripping off New York filmmaking from the 1970s, things like “Klute” and pretty much everything Owen Roizman has ever shot.  But Tony’s sense of these things was not lots of little pieces; he loves making kind of graphic frames that play as long as possible.

    –Robert Elswit

    Robert Elswit had a hell of a year in 2007, finally getting his due from the American Society of Cinematographers who awarded his work in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood.”  There was another film featuring Elswit’s unique signature, however, that flew under the radar for its considerable attention to composition and camera movement: Tony Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton.”

    Much is made of the film’s final sequence, a long shot focused on Clayton as he rides away from the hysteria in his life, desperate for his cab driver to “just drive.”  But a companion shot from earlier in the film was just as arresting, if not more so, as a purposeful point of transition to the second half of the endeavor.  A long tracking shot that never misses a beat, both behind and in front of the camera, the scene detailed is the expert, painfully clinical execution of Arthur Edens, played to an award-worthy T by Oscar nominee Tom Wilkinson.

    The final image is steeped in theme, and an initial tracking sequence under Edens’ opening monologue pulls the viewer into the film’s interior world, but this particular shot is so cold as to be frozen in its depiction of something at once gruesome and strangely beautiful, fluid.  I’m not privy to whether it may have been a directorial decision, though I suspect it may have been, but it is the crown jewel in a film packed with precision from Elswit.
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