In Contention

Category: Daily

  • Back East with the ladies of ‘Julie & Julia’

    Meryl Streep in Julie & JuliaEarlier in the week I offered up my (surprisingly) positive assessment of Nora Ephron’s “Julie & Julia,” a shrewdly adapted narrative that features two of my favorite performances of the year from Meryl Streep (as famed chef Julia Child) and Stanley Tucci (as her loving husband, Paul).

    Today in the pages of USA Today, Susan Wloszczyna has caught up with Ephron, Streep and co-star Amy Adams for a frothy little interview from New York.  She even sets the quaint mood early on with a lead describing “a picture-perfect summer’s day at the Blue Hill restaurant at Stone Barns, a bucolic foodie mecca about an hour’s drive from Manhattan in Westchester County.”  She then proceeds to structure the piece like a recipe (but of course), including the proper asides from the conversation here and there.

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  • 7/31 Web Round-up

    Rose Byrne• Rose Byrne, leading lady at last. [Daily Telegraph]

    • More on the story that won’t go away as the “Moneyball” drama spills into the pages of Vanity Fair. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Stephanie Zacharek wonders whether the “Judd Apatow moment” might be over. [Salon]

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  • Lennon biopic ‘Nowhere Boy’ to close London fest

    Aaron Johnson as John Lennon in Nowhere Boy

    UPDATE: “Nowhere Boy” producer, Kevin Loader, addresses Jeff Wells’s concerns about the film’s non-appearance at earlier autumn festivals quite reasonably. He explains that the post-production schedule means the film simply won’t be complete in time for Venice or Toronto. I thought as much.

    This is an interesting development. Lately, the London Film Festival has chosen to wrap up with big-name films, many of them already powered by previous festival hype — “Slumdog Millionaire,” “Babel” and “Good Night, and Good Luck” have all been given the closing night slot in recent years.

    By comparison, the news of this year’s closing film, Sam Taylor-Wood’s debut feature “Nowhere Boy,” comes slightly out of left field. I’ve been eagerly anticipating Taylor-Wood’s portrait of the young John Lennon, which is being shepherded by The Weinstein Company, for a while now. For many others, however, I suspect it hasn’t really been on the radar.

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  • Diablo Cody star-struck by Stan Lee at Comic-Con

    (via Awards Daily)

  • ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ trailer

    Gee, they weren’t kidding when they said this is a Wes Anderson film in every respect apart from the lack of human beings. As for Anderson’s recent claim that this is “a British film … set in the UK” … well, perhaps it’s just set in the tourist district, but it looks American as apple pie to me. (By the way, surely Roald Dahl is enough of a legend to be advertised by name, rather than as “the author of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.’”)

    On a more serious note, something about the visuals on display here doesn’t gel for me … am I the only one who thinks the stop-motion looks a tad rushed and plasticky? I want to be excited for this — not least because I’ll be about for its world premiere at the London fest — but I find myself, to put it gently, concerned.

  • ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ featurette

    It originally appeared at Apple and I’m just getting around to posting it.  A nice discussion with author Maurice Sendak with added commentary from Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers:

  • UK ‘Informant!’ poster

    The Informant!

    (Courtesy: Empire)

  • Check out the full Daft Punk ‘Tron Legacy’ theme song

    (Courtesy: Latino Review)

  • 7/30 Web Round-up

    Vincent Cassel• Jeremy Piven would like to see an “Entourage” film.  Who wouldn’t? [CNN]

    • Vincent Cassel refuses to court Hollywood.  Who needs it when you’ve got Monica Bellucci at home? [Daily Telegraph]

    • Robert Levin sits down with “In the Loop” director Armando Iannucci. [Film School Rejects]

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  • ‘A Serious Man’ trailer

    It’s seldom these days that you get a trailer constructed with such care and wit — this does a bang-up job of sharply conveying tone and essence, while leaving the gift-wrap on the plot for a change. As for the film, I’m sensing a hybrid of the sober bleakness and self-reflexive zaniness that (respectively) characterized the Coens’ last two features. Intriguing.

  • Venice lineup includes ‘The Road,’ ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’

    Venice Film Festival(UPDATE: For whatever reason, my initial source failed to mention that George A. Romero’s latest zombie opus, “Survival of the Dead,” is also in competition.)

    In years past, the Venice Film Festival has unveiled several titles that went on to figure significantly in the awards season ahead — “Brokeback Mountain,”The Queen,” “Far From Heaven” and “Vera Drake” all began their journeys with major wins on the Venetian Lido. Last year alone gifted us with “The Wrestler,” “Rachel Getting Married” and this summer’s hot property, “The Hurt Locker.”

    However, looking down the list of list of titles in competition at this year’s fest, it’s hard to tell if there are any selections that could go a similar distance.

    As usual for the festival, it’s a Euro-loaded menu — and a tasty one at that, featuring new offerings from the likes of Claire Denis, Fatih Akin and Jacques Rivette — while, as with Cannes this year, the U.S. contingent is on the small side. (There is, incidentally, one “surprise film” film in competition, so the speculation is not yet over.)

    Now is as good a time as any to reveal that I have an invested interest in the lineup, as I’m attending the festival for the first time, so we’ll be bringing you all the Venice news and reviews first-hand for a change.

    (More details, and a full list of films in competition, after the cut.)

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  • Venice finalizes jury, readies lineup

    Ang LeeThe competition lineup for the 66th Venice Film Festival is due later today, but ahead of that major announcement, other bits and bobs relating to to yesterday’s fest have been trickling through recently.

    Yesterday organisers announced the complete (and pleasantly eccentric) jury lineup. It’s been known for some time that it will be headed by Ang Lee — who has a good rapport with Venice, after all, having won the Golden Lion twice in the last four years.

    Now we know that he’ll be joined by U.S. director Joe Dante (“Gremlins”), French actress Sandrine Bonnaire (herself a previous Venice prize winner for “La Ceremonie”) and firebrand Italian auteur Liliana Cavani (“The Night Porter”). Rounding out the group are two less internationally familiar names: Indian multi-hyphenate Anurag Kashyap and Italian musician-filmmaker Luciano Ligabue.

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  • Draw it out, you ‘Basterd’

    I’ll get to Quentin Tarantino’s latest misfire in due time, but for now, this David Poland video review of the film is its own special kind of brilliance, even if it provides no insight at all as to why Poland liked the film:

  • Sharlto at the Four Seasons

    A double feature this morning and afternoon will keep me away from the computer for a spell, but stay tuned for an interview with Sharlto Copley either later today or tomorrow.  I got a few minutes with the “District 9” star yesterday and am anxious to dig into the quotes.  Sharp guy, caught in the whirlwind of offers and well-wishers, but grounded.  And a hell of a talent.  More later.

    Sharlto Copley

  • Sandler grows up in ‘Funny People’

    Adam Sandler in Funny PeopleI caught up with Judd Apatow’s “Funny People” last night, and the knee-jerk reaction was that the writer/director was close…oh so close.  The film isn’t a failure but is an intriguing miss nonetheless, a reminder that while Apatow seems quite qualified to tell a story with these particular layers, he might have better served the project by giving it a few more years to marinate.

    The stand-out element of the film is definitely Adam Sandler’s performance.  The actor takes on a character whose arc is curiously flat but brings a fleshed out sense of reality that, frankly, seems to be coming from the same deep, dark places of experience that Mickey Rourke must have plumbed for “The Wrestler.”

    In taking a trip down Sandler movie memory lane, MSNBC’s Dave White seems to think that notion of remaining true to who Sandler is represents a good reason why the film, and the performance, works in the face of attempt after attempt at working against the grain of the actor’s personal truth.

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  • ‘The Burning Plain’ poster

    The Burning Plain

    (Courtesy: Collider)

  • ‘Toy Story’ and ‘Toy Story 2’ 3D re-release trailers

  • 7/29 Web Round-up

    Quentin Tarantino• Quentin Tarantino set to raise funds with special Chi-town screening of “Inglourious Basterds.” [Chicago Tribune]

    • Andrew O’Hehir on the lawsuit that could derailed the “Hobbit” adaptation. [Beyond the Multiplex]

    • In a tight economy, how do you decide what films deserve your hard-earned cash? [The Guardian]

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