(Courtesy: MakingOf)
Category: Daily
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Holly Hunter, in praise of Abbie Cornish
Probably the most insightful of these annual actor-on-actor blurbs at Variety this year is Holly Hunter’s take on Abbie Cornish in “Bright Star.” The Jane Campion connection is obviously interesting, but of all the blurbs (save maybe for Ben Affleck’s thoughts on Jeremy Renner, though he gets repetitive), it felt, to me, the most notable:The movie takes place in the mid-19th century. There’s something incredibly of that time about Abbie Cornish. The frankness of the performance though feels very modern. It’s a beautiful combination. It made the movie more complicated because of that conflict in the character, what she wanted versus what her times would allow her. The tenderness that the character had the softness was so completely of her. Abbie Cornish isn’t brazen but she has a certain defiance. From the first time that the camera discovers her Fanny I felt that there was an incredible acceptance on her part of what this love was going to ask. And some of it in some ways was beyond her means. And none of it did Keats seem to require. Fanny’s reading of Milton and Shelley didn’t seem to be a requirement of his. It was something that she took on. I felt it was very naive and charming. This was a desire that she had so much so that she flagrantly lied to Brown about having read everybody in a week. She was a neophyte. She was new at poetry didn’t understand poetry. She couldn’t find a way in. But I loved her.
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11/30 Oscarweb Round-up
• David Poland painstakingly seeks out assumed evidence to support his theory that “The Hurt Locker” will be this year’s Best Picture victor. [Movie City News]• John Horn sits down with “Precious” screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher. [Los Angeles Times]
• Dave Karger chats up Viggo Mortensen and his “Road” co-star Kodi Smit-McPhee. [Oscar Watch]
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WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Lovely Bones’ bows, ‘New Moon’ reigns
• “The Lovely Bones” finally landed this week, to decidedly mixed reviews.• Kris and Anne offered their thoughts on the film (among others) in this week’s Oscar Talk.
• In Off the Carpet, we combed through the Best Adapted Screenplay contenders (which now include “District 9”).
• “New Moon” surprised nobody with a record-breaking box-office haul last weekend, and its dominance is set to continue.
• This week’s Long Shot column surveyed the growing buzz around populist contenders in this year’s Oscar race.
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‘Nine’ leads Golden Satellites with 11 nods
(UPDATE: Full list of categories and special awards added, including a random Best Ensemble prize for “Nine.” Also, a pointless Ten Best Films of 2009 list that leaves out some of their very own Best Picture nominees. Don’t even try to make sense of it. Thanks to Ziyad for the info.) It isn’t really worth spending too much time talking about the Golden Satellites — after all, this is the group who last year thought “Elegy” was an original screenplay written by Philip Roth.
Still, while their nominations are typically meaningless, they are, as usual, fun to consider. At the very least, unlike many other awards bodies on the precursor track, they don’t slavishly try to anticipate the Academy’s choices. When they throw in a Best Picture nod for “The Stoning of Soraya M.,” or a Best Actress mention for Catalina Saavedra, Oscar is the furthest thing from their minds. I salute them for that.
Anyway, enjoy the list and its assorted quirks and surprises — from the exclusion of Gabourey Sidibe in Best Actress to the female triple-header in Best Director to their curious classification of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” as “animated or mixed-media.” Just don’t take it too seriously.
Best Motion Picture (Drama)
“Bright Star”
“An Education”
“The Hurt Locker”
“The Messenger”
“Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire”
“The Stoning of Soraya M.” -
That Federico neorealism?
OK, forgive the idle question that follows, but it’s a Sunday. Something has been bothering me about the lyrics to Kate Hudson’s “Cinema Italiano” number from “Nine”:I feel my body chill
Gives me a special thrill
Each time I see that Guido neorealism
I love the dark handsome guys
With the skinny little ties
Dressed mod, looking out of sight…And so on and so forth, as Hudson sings the praises of “shades in the middle of the night,” “the essence of Italian style” and Rome nightlife. You don’t need a PhD in film studies to gather that Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” is the key reference point here.
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Two original songs from ‘Invictus’ join the race
Even though trade reviews have popped up and there are enough little dutch boys around to seal off the steadily breaking dam, certain parties are still not permitted to discuss “Invictus” in a review capacity. However, I would like to offer up some thoughts on two original songs from the film that should be added to that category’s on-going conversation in this space.“9,000 Days” and “Colorblind” are a pair of sentimental tracks peppered throughout the film. Both songs, as well as most of the soundtrack, can be chalked up to the South Africa vocal group Overtone. “9,000 Days,” using William Earnest Henley’s poem “Invictus” as a framing device, sounds curiously like Jamie Callum’s title track for “Gran Torino” last year. It’s a breezy, jazzy tune that also features Yollandi Nortjie.
“Colorblind,” meanwhile, from Overtone on their own, is a little more difficult to defend. From the schlock, faux-emotive melody of the thing to the trite lyrics (which could probably be determined from the nail-on-the-head title), it’s a fairly miserable song. And its usage in the film is swift, manipulative and frankly distracting.
Suffice it to say, I don’t expect these tracks to play a major role in this year’s race for Best Original Song, but they’re worth mentioning in this robust year for the category regardless.
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Listen to Kate Hudson’s ‘Cinema Italiano’ from ‘Nine’
Wednesday we featured the original song “Take It All” from Rob Marshall’s “Nine.” Today we’re happy to feature the other tune conceived by Maury Yeston specifically for the film: “Cinema Italiano,” performed by Kate Hudson.Hudson’s Vogue journalist Stephanie was expanded considerably for the film, a lustful young thing who announces, “Style is the new substance. It’s what my readers want.” Her song kicks in during an attempt at seducing Daniel Day-Lewis’s crisis-stricken filmmaker Guido Contini and is meant to reflect the flashbulb-popping chic and panache of the entertainment industry, and certainly, Stephanie’s place in that shallow world.
I would say it stands out as the most catching tune of the piece, but it’s also the most out of place and has some fairly trite lyrics (and some odd rhythm shifts), but it’s a sure bet for a nod, along with the aforementioned “Take It All.” Give it a listen below and tell us what you think.
[audio:http://www.incontention.com/audio/cinemaitaliano.mp3] -
The Great Performances: 2002
2002 was probably one of the greatest years for performance excellence in film history, from leading actor right through all the supporting players. They could have easily nominated 10 actors in each of the four acting categories, and still missed some.Though Adrien Brody won the Oscar for “The Pianist,” which was a huge shock, I have always felt that Jack Nicholson gave one of his finest performances in “About Schmidt.” I suspect he and Daniel Day-Lewis in “Gangs of New York” may have split the vote in some way, allowing for Brody’s win.
Michael Caine was up for “The Quiet American” after that film scored with critics at many precursor fests, and Nicolas Cage was the fifth nominee in “Adaptation.” Great performances all, deserving performances all, but there were so many other noteworthy turns. Like Robin Williams’s chilling performance in “One Hour Photo” as a deranged photo lab worker obsessed with a family. Equally brilliant was Leonardo DiCaprio as the young fraudster in “Catch Me If You Can” while Tom Cruise gave one of his very best performances in Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report.”
One of the year’s very best films, “Road to Perdition,” contained one of the year’s best leading performances from Tom Hanks, as a lethal killer on the run from his own mob. And though I loathe the work of Richard Gere, I must confess he did some of his finest work in “Chicago,” winning a Golden Globe for his performance, but no Oscar nod.
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11/27 Osarweb Round-up
• The significance of “Nine” for Anthony Minghella’s legacy. [The Guardian]• Steven Zeitchik catches on to the year’s thin original screenplay race and bangs the drum for “Sugar.” [Risky Business]
• Lauren Shucker talks “Up in the Air” with director Jason Reitman. [Wall Street Journal]
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Reel Geezers on ‘Precious’
I’m featuring this review for one reason: if anybody had concerns that the older white majority of the Academy would be resistant to “Precious” … well, worry no more. (The Geezers are on indieWIRE these days, by the way.)
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Friendly competition
I would put it on the Lennon-McCartney level. Look how healthy that competition was even when it was unhealthy. Look at the results of it. Different approaches and personalities and each makes the other better. There’s this dialogue right now and I would throw Spielberg into it too. There’s a dialogue among a generation of filmmakers. I would say Spielberg is out ahead of it at the forefront, I’d say, being older and with what he carved out with George Lucas and the creation of the summer blockbuster. But to answer your question, of course, between Zemeckis and Cameron, yes, there’s a tremendous awareness of what the other is doing. It’s like Beatles and the Stones. And I’m so pleased that they are doing this; to be in their 50s and forging new avenues, to be taking risks and putting this much work in to it — and to be taking a certain amount of flack. Both Cameron and Zemeckis have remained true to their visions and gone places that people would rather they not go…
From this Geoff Boucher interview with production designer Rick Carter, one of the creative minds behind many of the most successful works from Spielberg, Zemeckis and now, with “Avatar,” James Cameron.
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French masters vie for Louis Delluc Prize
While I was away in Paris earlier this week, I was reminded there of the nominations for the Louis Delluc Prize. Awarded to a single title, it is arguably the most prestigious award in French cinema, having been won by such titans as Truffaut, Renoir, Chabrol, Malle, Bresson, Cocteau, Tati … well, you get the idea.Meanwhile, some formidable auteurs feature in this year’s shortlist, including past three-time winner Alain Resnais and, of course, current Oscar player Jacques Audiard. The eight nominees are:
“Hadewijch” (Bruno Dumont)
“I’m Glad That My Mother Is Alive” (Claude and Nathan Miller)
“In the Beginning” (Xavier Giannoli)
“Irene” (Alain Cavalier)
“Making Plans for Lena” (Christophe Honoré)
“A Prophet” (Jacques Audiard)
“Welcome” (Philippe Lioret)
“Wild Grass” (Alain Resnais) -
Ansen gets first word on ‘Invictus’
Apparently unfazed by embargos, Newsweek’s David Ansen has posted a short, mixed-to-positive review of “Invictus,” the meat of which is here:Invictus is not a biopic; nor does it take us deep inside any of its characters—Eastwood views Mandela from a respectful middle distance. It’s about strategic inspiration. We witness a politician at the top of his game: Freeman’s wily Mandela is a master of charm and soft-spoken gravitas. Anthony Peckham’s sturdy, functional screenplay, based on John Carlin’s book Playing the Enemy, can be a bit on the nose (and the message songs Eastwood adds are overkill). Yet the lapses fade in the face of such a soul-stirring story—one that would be hard to believe if it were fiction. The wonder of Invictus is that it actually went down this way.
So far, the early word I’ve sourced on this one is all over the place. I’m still struggling to get excited. Are you?
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BFCA adds categories
Hot off the presses:The Board of Directors of the Broadcast Film Critics Association has voted unanimously to expand the categories we will be voting on for this year’s 15th annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards. More fun for everybody!
We believe it is appropriate and wise for the BFCA to model its categories more closely after those of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This means adding several “technical” categories, dividing Best Screenplay into Original and Adapted, and tweaking a music category from Best Composer to Best Score. We will not be voting on shorts and we will only be voting one Best Sound category. (And we most likely will not present any of the new categories on our live telecast as we still have only two hours on VH1.) We will still be voting in our unique categories, including Best Comedy, Best Action Movie, Best Young Actor and Best Acting Ensemble.
Full list of categories after the jump.
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Listen to Marion Cotillard’s ‘Take It All’ from ‘Nine’
This year’s big, bombastic musical “Nine” features two original song compositions from Maury Yeston. We’re happy today to feature one of them: “Take It All,” performed in the film by actress Marion Cotillard.Of all the tracks in the film, both original and pre-existing, this one has the most impact if only because it comes during one of the film’s few truly emotional and affecting moments. It would be spoiler territory to reveal the particulars of that scene, but the lyrics pretty much, uh, say it all, if you will.
The tunes of “Nine” won’t have the same problem so many other original songs will have this year because, as movie musical numbers would, they are used within the context of the film. Indeed, they push the story from point A to point B throughout, and “Take It All,” for my money, was the payoff culmination of all of that, partly due to the power of the track, but mostly due to what Cotillard does with it and how her performance resonates in the actual scene.
Have a listen to the track below and tell us what you think.
[display_podcast]
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Bueller?
The town has all but shuttered entirely since Monday. Screeners are showing up constantly (the FedEx and UPS folks are getting their annual workout). The bird is thawing. There’s just not much going on. Anne and I will be doing a podcast Friday rather than taking the week off, but look for it later in the day as we each have a screening earlier that afternoon. Guy will be back in today with a new Long Shot column and Chad and John will have their Friday columns, but beyond that, you’ll understand the gearing down these next few days. FYI.
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Jason Reitman’s first kiss…in ‘Kindergarten Cop’
Jason Reitman has obviously come into his own as a filmmaker ever since his 2006 debut “Thank You for Smoking.” But once upon a time, he was a star of a different sort: the busted middle-schooler caught smooching in Ivan Reitman’s 1990 comedy “Kindergarten Cop.”You remember the scene. The Governator is stalking the hallways looking for that adorable little blond-haired, blue-eyed kid, Dominic. The school has been set on fire by the creepy long-haired heel of the piece, Dominic’s psycho father. Detective John Kimble turns a corner into an abandoned room and there they are, two youngsters slipping in a little make-out action during the chaos of the fire alarm.
“We thought it was another drill,” a young Reitman exclaims, voice breaking, shiny braces — the typical cues of preadolescent youth. He must have been about 12 or 13 at the time. But even if you were aware of that bit of casting trivia, you might not realize it was actually Reitman’s first kiss.