In Contention

Category: Daily

  • Foreign film race slowly taking shape

    The White RibbonAs I said before, the October 1 “deadline” for Best Foreign Language Film submissions isn’t quite as rigid as it sounds: assorted additions and alterations tend to be made before the Academy officially announces the list.

    The first of these late developments comes from Colombia, with the late submission of Ciro Guerra’s “The Wind Journeys,” which bowed at Cannes and recently played at Toronto. A tale of an elderly accordion player travelling the country with the young musician he’s mentoring, it apparently combines gentle sentiment, generational themes with picturesque landscapes. Lots for the Academy to like there, perhaps.

    With the unveiling of a semi-solid list of contenders, you’ll notice that Kris has committed to some predictions in the category. Meanwhile, I’ve updated mine here. A stab in the dark really, particularly without having seen the vast majority of the films, though there is a level of reasoning here and there.

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  • “What is it to be an adult?”

    I stumbled across David Poland’s video review of the Coens’ “A Serious Man” last night and just had to share.  I think it’s the most insightful of these yet and taps into a number of the rhythms of the season by revealing the Coen film’s place within it.  He calls it one of the duo’s greatest films, with which I’m of course inclined to agree:

  • ‘Red Cliff’ trailer

  • 10/5 Oscarweb Round-up

    Wes Anderson• Lee Daniels and his cast and crew had a blast making “Precious,” despite the gut-wrenching display on screen. [Movieline]

    • Hugo Rifkind sits down with Wes Anderson to talk “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” which is set to open the London Film Festival. [The Times]

    • Dennis Lim talks to Nicolas Winding Refn about his film “Bronson,” one of the year’s best. [New York Times]

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  • Mann subs Robert Capa for Robert Jordan

    Robert CapaDirector Michael Mann has been trying to get an adaptation of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” off the ground for a while now.  As far back as October 2006 (when I interviewed Mann for an Eric Roth profile), the film was mere days from being announced.

    I’m not a sleuth like the Anne Thompsons or the Sharon Waxmans, so I don’t know the specifics of why it hasn’t happened.  I imagine it’s budgeting concerns on some levely.

    Anyway, it’s been a shame not to see things come together on that front, but I’m glad Mann has found a nice outlet to get his Spanish Civil War groove on, and perhaps a better opportunity overall, with Columbia’s acquisition of “Waiting for Robert Capa,” a biography of the war photographer and Mann’s next gig.

    It seems almost too easy to cast Leonardo DiCaprio here, no?  (The actor’s Appian Way offices are in the same Santa Monica complex as Mann’s Forward Pass, and Mann, of course, produced and was once set to direct “The Aviator.”)  Maybe he’ll go a different route (though DiCaprio would be a no-brainer for “Bell”‘s Robert Jordan).

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  • Carey Mulligan: “I was always jealous of the ingenues”

    This NYT chat with “An Education” star Carey Mulligan is weeks old, but for some reason I hadn’t seen it before. I love the conversational looseness of these Screen Test videos: topics on the menu include the demise of the one-liner, dressing as a hooker for “Public Enemies,” and her earliest movie memory of “The Land Before Time.” (Jeez, I’m old.)

    All the while, her quest to be the most adorable person on the planet is chugging along nicely. As for that voice … well, I’m not going to get tired of hearing her speak this awards season. (Just as well, really, since we’ll be hearing her a lot.)

  • What exactly is the gay/Jewish ‘Precious?’

    PreciousDavid Poland has written his first Oscar column of the season, and while it’s a typically interesting read, it features several eyebrow-raising statements that I really can’t square with.

    I’ll leave you to pick through its eccentricities — that he seemingly doesn’t believe Christoph Waltz is a contender, for example — for yourselves. (Sasha Stone has written an extensive riposte.) But there’s a pair of head-scratching (to me, at least) tags in his Best Picture chart that I feel like highlighting:

    “A Serious Man”: It’s the Jewish “Precious” … but funny!

    “A Single Man”: It’s the Gay “Precious” … but pretty!

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  • ‘Ponyo’ saves the world

    PonyoOkay, not quite the world, but a very small part of it. The small, picturesque Japanese fishing port that inspired the setting for Hayao Miyazaki’s “Ponyo” has been spared a drastic redevelopment (a landfill and bridge were on the cards, apparently) thanks to the film itself. Variety reports:

    Miyazaki conceived the idea for “Ponyo,” which earned $170 million at the Japanese B.O. last year, in a two-month stay at Tomonoura port and his animators used it as a setting for the toon. It has since become a mecca for “Ponyo” fans, boosting revenues of local businesses.

    The International Council on Monuments and Sites has named Tomonoura as an endangered historical area because of the project.

    I have yet to see “Ponyo” for myself (thanks, sleepy Brit distributors), so I can’t speak to its other virtues, but any film that keeps the world prettier is okay in my book.

  • From the ‘Last Station’ release

    The Last StationThe film, as you know, was revealed to be a Sony Classics acquisition earlier in the week.  It’s a slow day (being the weekend and all), so I figured I’d toss these quotes from the just-landed press release officially announcing the pick-up (the bold is mine):

    With THE LAST STATION, Michael Hoffman has crafted a film that is not only beautifully made but showcases some of the world’s greatest actors in roles of a lifetime. The film is also incredibly entertaining and moving and we look forward to working with our friends Jens Meurer, Chris Curling and Robbie Little to bring it to audiences.

    –Generically attributed to “Sony Classics.”

    After spending four years of my life making THE LAST STATION, it’s such a relief and a pleasure to be working with talented people you can trust. I love the guys at Sony Pictures Classics.  It’s a perfect home for our film.

    –Director Michael Hoffman

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  • Nick Hornby on writing ‘An Education’

    Nick HornbyAmid the swirl of hype for “An Education” that’s been building for eight months now, there’s been surprisingly little mention of the man who is easily the biggest name involved with the film: superstar novelist Nick Hornby, whose free adaptation of Lynn Barber’s memoir looks certain to land him in the Best Adapted Screenplay pack.

    The film is only Hornby’s second successful stab at writing for film, 12 years after he adapted his own novel “Fever Pitch” for the screen. However, as he states in this Wall Street Journal interview, the gap between screen credits wasn’t for lack of trying:

    While several of his novels have been successfully adapted into movies, including “High Fidelity” and “About a Boy,” the 52-year-old Mr. Hornby has seen most of his screenplays fizzle in development, including a collaboration with actress Emma Thompson that “we just couldn’t get right.”

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  • Crunch time

    We’ve moved into October and I’m about a week, week-and-a-half away from eliminating any film without a distributor from our forecast.  It’s crunch time for the 15 titles in our Contenders section still seeking a domestic buyer.  I count five lead actors, 10 lead actresses and a handful of supporting campaigns that are looking like holdovers.  And who knows what will go the way of “Lovely, Still” (still distributorless over a year after playing Toronto)?

    Most puzzling straggler: “Leaves of Grass,” which seems to me like it could prove both commercial and a fun awards push (for Norton).  And what gives on “Mother and Child,” which was something of a Toronto darling?

  • ‘Paranormal’ experience and thoughts on horror

    Paranormal ActivityI finally got around to “Paranormal Activity” last night, which has been scaring audiences nationwide for about a week now.  The film sat on a shelf for two years, terrifying Steven Spielberg, awaiting a release of some sort, primed for a remake at one point, and finally made its way into the marketplace last week with an innovative, experimental distribution strategy.  All the inside baseball was covered well in this 9/20 John Horn piece in the Los Angeles Times.

    I wasn’t going to write about it.  It’s certainly not an awards film, of course, but I just kind of wanted to have a good time at a midnight screening and let it be that.  But I was still wide awake at 3:45am last night, demanding my girlfriend to stay awake with me on Skype (which actually made things creepier given the cinematographic composition of a Skype video chat).

    The film is repetitive on one hand, but that repetition lulls the viewer into a sense of foreboding that’s hard to measure.  I’m interested in seeing the alternate endings, especially the original, which seems more in keeping with the film’s insistence on a grounded scare.  But the Spielberg-suggested denouement (unfortunately featured in the trailer, leaving its truly jarring moment something to be anticipated rather than freshly experienced) is incredibly unsettling.

    I wouldn’t say filmmaker Oren Peli fully capitalized on the potential of his concept.  Like “The Blair Witch Project” (a film to which “Paranormal Activity” often finds itself compared), there are elements (specifically a moment involving a charred photograph) that feel forced and even betray a sense of anxiety on the part of the filmmakers (who do a remarkable job of letting practicality serve as visceral terrorist for the most part).  But for $20,000, it’s an impressive accomplishment all around.  And it got me thinking on the genre.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Foreign contenders and underdogs

    James McAvoy in The Last Station• The deadline for Best Foreign Language Film entries passed, as Israel and Italy bucked conventional wisdom with their selections.

    • Among the better-received contenders, however, were major festival prizewinners from Australia and Greece. A full list of submissions here.

    • As the smaller studios beef up their Oscar prospects, this week’s Off the Carpet column wondered if this could be the year of the underdog.

    • Speaking of which, Sony Pictures Classics acquired “The Last Station,” a potential awards vehicle for Helen Mirren amongst others.

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  • Who could say “Nein!” to a face like that?

    Not me.  And can we just give Dion Beebe his second Oscar now?  Talk about a race virtually sapped of intrigue (if we’re being honest):

    Penelope Cruz in Nine

    One more reason after the jump.

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  • Century man

    Manoel de OliveiraThroughout this week, I’ve been attending advance press screenings for the upcoming London Film Festival — a handy bonus the organizers provide to give journalists some breathing room when the fest actually begins.

    I’ll get to writing up the films once festival business actually begins on the 14th, but after watching “Eccentricities of a Blonde Haired Girl,” the latest from Portuguese veteran (and I mean veteran) Manoel de Oliveira, I felt compelled to mention my sheer astonishment at the man’s achievement.

    The film itself — which went down well recently at the NYFF, if indieWIRE’s critics’ poll is any indication — is a beguiling curio, but the real story here is that de Oliveira, who made his first feature in 1942, will be 101 years old in December.

    100 years old, folks. And he’s busy working on his next feature as we speak.  That someone is out there making films at all at his age is laudable enough. That he’s making good ones is nothing short of heroic. Has any other filmmaker stayed active that long? Is this a record? Any helpful geeks out there with the numbers to hand?

  • A new, diminished Miramax era

    MiramaxI’ll have to just say it: this is sad.  Just from a movie-goer, awards-watcher standpoint.  Miramax has indeed been “folded-in” at Disney for about a year, as David Poland notes in his characteristic “nothing surprises me” fashion.  And Greg Ellwood has put together a nice analysis of the event over at his Awards Campaign blog at HitFix.  But beyond all that, it’s just…a bummer.

    After all, it’s something of an end of an era for awards obsessives.  Miramax dominated the 1990s under the Weinstein brothers who founded the company, acquired by Disney in 1993.  The run is legendary, of course, and changed the way awards campaigns would be structured for years to come.  But even with the brothers’ departure in 2005, it seemed there could be a spark of renewal in the brand.

    2006 saw the first post-Weinstein Best Picture nomination in Stephen Frears’s “The Queen,” and a year later, “No Country for Old Men” took the Oscar, the first Miramax win since 2002’s “Chicago.”  But the slate of upcoming releases was increasingly thin, and now, the company has been downsized considerably.  Anne Thompson also has more details.  In a nutshell, though, Miramax, as we’ve known it for two decades, is no more.

    And like I said, it’s sad.  The changing face of the industry right now was both inevitable and necessary, but it’s going to be a bit weird to see this former awards giant virtually (if not completely) absent from the Oscar landscape.

  • New ‘Shutter Island’ trailer

    See it HD at Apple.

  • Can Halle Berry turn it around with ‘Frankie & Alice?’

    Halle Berry in Monster's BallPoor Halle Berry has become something of a communal punchbag in recent years among critics seeking examples of the age-old post-Oscar curse; with every disappointing film she makes, the comments about her career (and even her winning performance) get progressively snarkier.

    Look no further than this rather odd (and somewhat out-of-nowhere) piece in today’s Guardian — in which Benjamin Lee makes the curious claim that it is color-blind casting (which others might see as progress of a sort) that has sunk Berry’s career following her Oscar win.

    Lee’s argument essentially boils down to this: non-white actresses are better off sticking to roles (such as Berry’s breakthrough parts in “Monster’s Ball” or the TV film “Introducing Dorothy Dandridge”) that are dependent on their race.

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