In Contention

Category: Daily

  • Streep sells

    Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia!I may have said a while back that Meryl Streep is the most bankable actress in the business at the moment (despite her lowly ranking on the Forbes 100), but I didn’t quite mean it in this way.

    “Julie & Julia” may not be performing at quite the same level as “Mamma Mia!” or “The Devil Wears Prada,” but it still marks the third time in four years that Streep has successfully spearheaded a healthy piece of mainstream counter-programming amid the testosterone-fueled dross of summer.

    With Nancy Meyers’s “It’s Complicated” looking to apply that same populist Midas touch to the Christmas season, that’s a pretty remarkable track record for any woman in the business, much less one in her sixties.

    But this article by Jonathan Romney in today’s Independent takes Streep’s commercial viability even further, and outside the movie theater, by pointing out the peripheral economic effects of her recent hits, in departments ranging from the music industry to the leisure sector.

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  • A statement I can get behind

    Marshalling an ensemble is something that the 46-year-old director has always excelled at, and throughout his career he has made a habit of resuscitating ailing careers – most recently, the late David Carradine in the martial arts double Kill Bill. But with his latest film, it’s Tarantino’s willingness to cast outside his Hollywood postcode that deserves praise: with Inglourious Basterds, he’s taking risks on German stars such as Til Schweiger, August Diehl and Daniel Brühl.

    From this James Mottram story in London’s Independent newspaper.  I find it hard to fault most of the performances in the film, actually.  Save for Brad Pitt and, to a lesser extent (shockingly) Eli Roth, of course.  But for the most part, I think Tarantino was pretty shrewd in the casting.

    By the way, scroll down to the various comments from actors on the crew.  Roth’s thoughts are the most insightful, but Pitt’s win best in show.

  • Still crazy after all these years

    In the course of my daily rummaging, I happened upon this beautiful French one-sheet (pictured left) for Alain Resnais’s “Wild Grass”  that instantly takes the lead in my personal “poster of the year” race. (The film, as we recently mentioned, has the honor of opening the New York Film Festival.)

    Wild GrassLast Year at Marienbad

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  • Second life

    Seth Rogen in Funny PeopleOn Friday, John Foote raised the question of which recent films look likely to endure through the coming decades, despite, in many cases, having under-performed on initial release. You responded in your droves.

    Interestingly enough, Joe Queenan recently addressed a similar issue in a very good essay for The Guardian, contemplating the odd phenomena that lead certain films to largely escape the notice of critics and audiences in theaters, but then go on to gain cult status on DVD (or, back in the day, home video).

    Films he cites as key examples include “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” “The Big Lebowski” (which many seem to have forgotten was dismissed by many as a misfire following the crossover success of “Fargo”) and “Office Space” (which barely made it to theaters at all), as well as far older titles that slow-burned their way to classic status, such as “The Wizard of Oz” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

    When it comes to predicting a similar path for current films, he dismisses naming broadly acclaimed specialty titles with moderate box-office (“The Wrestler,” “The Hurt Locker”) as too easy, too prestigious.

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  • Waltz on his middle-aged breakthrough in ‘Basterds’

    Christoph Waltz in Inglourious BasterdsWhen I committed my considerably negative thoughts on Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” last week, I made it a point of indicating a true diamond in the rough, Christoph Waltz’s unsettling performance of Col. Hans Landa, the quietly sadistic “killer of the Jews” who owns the screen every time he graces it.  “Waltz definitely deserves the high marks he received out of this year’s Cannes Film Festival,” I wrote at the time.  “It’s a vivid new spin on a classic villain persona, the still-waters-run-deep kind of stomach-twisting presence that takes real skill to pull off.  Waltz makes it look pretty easy.”

    It is therefore refreshing to read this brief profile of the actor in The New York Times, revealing a humble, grounded, blue-collar actor who is happy to get the recogniztion but has clearly been around the block enough times to know you keep looking forward.

    In the piece, Waltz discusses, rather honestly, his opinions on the acting profession, an awareness of future pitfalls that could await his late-blooming Stateside career and, of course, the process of working with Tarantino.

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  • International ‘White Ribbon’ trailer

    Okay, so your appreciation of this trailer for Michael Haneke’s lavishly acclaimed Palme d’Or winner will obviously be enhanced if you have at least a working knowledge of German. (No subtitles here.)

    But since it’s the first substantial glimpse most of us have had of what is clearly a major work, I thought it worth posting. The imagery and atmospherics on display here speak for themselves, anyway. Hat tip to Jeff Wells for digging it up. (Trailer plays after the cut.)

    The White Ribbon

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  • North by northwest, via Tatooine

    I don’t even like “Star Wars,” but I would hang this on my wall in a heartbeat:

    North by Northwest meets Star Wars

    (Courtesy: io9)

  • James Cameron on the stories that influenced ‘Avatar’

    James Cameron on the set of AvatarEarlier in the week we told you about Geoff Boucher’s exclusive two-part interview with “Avatar” director James Cameron at the Los Angeles Times’s Hero Complex blog.  Part two is up now and in it, Cameron gets into the “‘Dances With Wolves’ in space” thing and talks more about the film’s influences:

    You see the same theme in “At Play in the Fields of the Lord” and also “The Emerald Forest,” which maybe thematically isn’t that connected but it did have that clash of civilizations or of cultures. That was another reference point for me. There was some beautiful stuff in that film. I just gathered all this stuff in and then you look at it through the lens of science fiction and it comes out looking very different but is still recognizable in a universal story way. It’s almost comfortable for the audience – “I know what kind of tale this is.” They’re not just sitting there scratching their heads, they’re enjoying it and being taken along. And we still have turns and surprises in it, too, things you don’t see coming. But the idea that you feel like you are in a classic story, a story that could have been shaped by Rudyard Kipling or Edgar Rice Burroughs.

    Read the rest at Hero Complex.

  • Ebert stands up for Armond White … then sits down again

    Armond WhiteI’m sure Armond White couldn’t be more thrilled with the amount of chatter about him this week, and all spurred by one solitary review to boot. It rather puts the lie to the perception that nobody cares about what critics have to say these days.

    Now Roger Ebert, generally appointed by America as class captain of the critical artform, has decided to weigh in on the matter, and has come out in defence of White — only to rather confusingly revoke his support overnight.

    Ebert backs up White’s take on “District 9,” agreeing with him that the film ends in “apocalyptic silliness” (Ebert’s own review heavily criticizes the third act) and praising him for both his political reading of the material and his off-the-beaten-track film references.

    Finally, he stands up for White’s supposedly contrarian leanings, and in doing so, points out the stupidity of using Rotten Tomatoes as a barometer of critical worth:

    More to the point is White’s reputation as a critic who “doesn’t like anything.” This is not true. It would be more accurate to say he dislikes a great many films approved of by fanboys. The last Tomatoes lynch mob raised against him was for his dislike of “Star Trek.” Man, did they hate him for that! You may be surprised to learn that White agrees (or, for that matter, disagrees) with the TomatoMeter exactly 50% of the time.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Festivals beckon, ‘District 9’ opens

    Sharlto Copley in District 9• The New York Film Festival unveiled a decidedly foreign lineup, with Alain Resnais and Pedro Almodovar at either end.

    • Speaking of festivals, the long-awaited “The Road” was among the titles added to the Toronto slate this week.

    • With everyone excited about “District 9” this week, we took time to chat to the film’s breakout star Sharlto Copley.

    • Best Film Editing was the subject of this week’s installment of Tech Support.

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  • Apparition logo

    Bob Berney and Bill Pohlad’s new distribution company got a new name last week.  You’ve read all about it.  Today at a screening of “Bright Star” (which did not work for me — at all — but more on that next week), I saw this image on the front of the press notes.  I imagine it will be the new logo, but I don’t know.  It’s either brave to have a brand this confusing at first glance or really stupid.  I haven’t decided yet.  Plus, the logo implies a reflection, not an apparition, which should, I don’t know, appear more ghostly or something.  What do you think?

    Apparition

  • One-eyed jacks

    Raoul Walsh“A film must always be finished, even if it is in the dark.”

    This line may come froma brand new film, Pedro Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces,” but it’s an apt pointer to a vintage film retrospective in New York that surely forms the oddest news item of the day. In “Broken Embraces,” the line is spoken by a blind film director determine to salvage the work of his once-sighted career; in this retrospective, directors with half that disability are being duly celebrated.

    The New York Post reports that the Anthology Film Archives in the East Village is screening a series of classics from five Hollywood masters, all of whom share the unusual fate of having gone blind in one eye: John Ford, Nicholas Ray, Fritz Lang, Raoul Walsh and  Andre de Toth.

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  • Super Movie Friends talk prawns

    I was supposed to participate in this edition of David Poland’s “Super Movie Friends,” but alas, I couldn’t make it.  The conversation in the clip below revolves around “District 9,” the participants being James Rocchi of MSN and Netflix and Mark Olsen of the LA Times and Film Comment.

    It’s a rather down-beat conversation at times.  Rocchi calls the film “astonishingly derivative,” but appreciates that it clearly came from a place of passion.  Olsen, meanwhile, says the hype got his expectations too high, that the film was “wildly uneven” and portions were “actively bad.”  And David brings up his “Defiant Ones” parallel once again.  He liked the film, though.

    Side note: the way Olsen says “Nu, uhh, no, NO” as he tilts back the glass of water at the beginning totally cracked me up.  If only that was Jameson on the rocks or something.  Anyway, take a look:

  • First official image from ‘Avatar’

    Peter Sciretta at /Film woke up to a nice surprise in his inbox this morning: the first official image from James Cameron’s “Avatar” (which will be appearing in magazines shortly).  You’ve got Sam Worthington in front of a tank containing one of the avatars with that cool Cameron blue.  Very beautiful.  For more on “Avatar” (and the avatars, in fact), check out my coverage of the Comic-Con footage here.

    Sam Worthington in Avatar

  • Tell us what you thought of ‘District 9’

    District 9

    Alright, we passed along the Comic-Con coverage, I’ve had my say, we’ve talked to the film’s star and we’ve offered up a road map of links to whet your appetite as you wait to give Neill Blomkamp’s “District 9” a look this weekend.  There’s nothing left to do but open the floor up to the readership, so come on back and give us your thoughts when you see the film.  Also, for fun, any stabs at opening weekend box office numbers?  It could go SO many different ways.

  • Being Quentin Tarantino

    Quentin TarantinoYou’ll be reading more and more about Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” (review) over the next week or so as the film prepares for an Auguest 21 release, but two specific pieces caught my eye today that I had to share.

    Writing at Salon’s Beyond the Multiplex blog, Andrew O’Hehir, who seems to have disliked the film but tries to steer clear of reviewing, conveys the sentiments of those who take what could be perceived as the easy road and have painted Tarantino, perhaps rightly, as an inconsiderate child whose work here is aimless, thoughtless, and in a nutshell, irresponsible:

    Film critics and responsible authority figures in both Germany and Israel have almost unanimously announced that they dread “Inglourious Basterds,” and can’t see how it will contribute anything positive to the dreary world of post-Holocaust discourse.

    In a separate piece across the pond in The Times, Tarantino seems to respond directly to this.

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  • ‘District 9’ round-up

    District 9As I prepared this morning’s round-up, I kept stumbling onto various “District 9” features and articles that I wanted to pass your way.  But I didn’t want to flood the post with one subject, so I thought I’d aggregate them all here.

    Over at Film School Rejects, Cole Abaius gets round down to the point with seven reasons why you should see the movie.  Keeping with the collectives, Devin Faraci over at CHUD, in honor of the film’s modest budget, cranks out a list of 10 great non-blockbuster science-fiction films of the 21st century.

    Anne Thompson, at her new digs, wants you to root for “District 9” to do well, while Matt Bradshaw, in another lists, charts his favorite movie aliens.

    On the interview circuit, Peter Jackson sits down with the wire services, Reuters and the Associated Press (both out of Comic-Con), while Sharlto Copley, who was featured in this space yesterday, gets his moment in the sun at the Los Angeles Times.

    And that should about cover it.  We’ll have a reactions thread later on, but if you’re sitting around with nothing to do, go catcha  matinee — now!

  • Carey Mulligan becomes a Gekko, joins ‘Wall Street’ sequel cast

    Carey MulliganActress Carey Mulligan (she’s worth a double-dip today) will ignite the awards circuit this year.  Just you wait.  Most lead actress races will likely pit her against living legend Meryl Streep, giving her all the more clout as anyone who goes toe-to-toe with Streep enjoys the boost of simply being in her company.  I anticipate Mulligan could be so respected for her work in “An Education” that, with the right campaign, she could win an Oscar for her efforts.

    And now she’s filling out the next phase of her career nicely, joining the already impressive cast of Oliver Stone’s forthcoming “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.”  Entertainment Weekly’s Nicole Sperling reports (though Latino Review broke the story first back in June and, I’m sorry to say, I missed it) Mulligan has been picked to play the estranged daughter of Michael Douglas’s legenday Gordon Gekko character.

    Mulligan will share the screen with Shia LaBeouf, Josh Brolin and Frank Langella in what is turning into one of the must-see films of next year.  Her character will be romantically linked to LaBeouf’s, Sperling reports.

    Meanwhile, audiences await the release of “An Education,” which will no doubt mark Mulligan’s star-making moment and perhaps rack up a healthy kudo total along the way.  She deserves it.  Guy pointed to some nice notices on the web earlier this morning.

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