In Contention

Category: Daily

  • WEEKLY WRAP: Academy expands, Malden passes

    Karl Malden and Claire Trevor at the 1951 Academy Awards• This week’s Off the Carpet column took a long, hard look at the ramifications of a 10-nominee Best Picture race.

    • As the popular game of expanding past fields to ten continued, we joined in the speculation.

    • Meanwhile, AMPAS added 134 members to its voting body, from Seth Rogen to Danny Boyle to Peter Gabriel.

    • And they furthered their controversial remodelling, scrapping all honorary awards from the Oscar telecast.

    • We bade a sad farewell to Oscar-winning actor and former AMPAS president Karl Malden.

    • In other disheartening news, Michael Bay’s “Transformers” sequel rocked the box office.

    • We championed “An Education” and its star Alfred Molina, while the film was the subject of this week’s Page to Screen column.

    • With “Public Enemies” on everyone’s mind this week, we counted down the best performances from Michael Mann films.

    • The Edinburgh Film Festival wrapped, handing its top award to Duncan Jones’s “Moon.”

  • Heart stop by window light

    I’m digging into March’s Criterion Blu-ray release of “The Third Man” (which largely ports over most of the 2007 Criterion double-dip), and I have to say, Orson Welles’s first appearance in the film, that knowing smile illuminated by window light, a Viennese woman barking at Joseph Cotton’s novelist-turned-gumshoe, is flat out one of the most arresting moments in cinema history.  I’ve never been much for Carol Reed’s seminal classic, but every moment Welles is on screen, I can’t look away.  It’s always been that way for me.

    Orson Welles in The Third Man

  • ACE: “AVID FTW”

    ACE/AVIDSorry, I couldn’t resist the anagram train on that headline, but this David Cohen story at Variety is interesting for us cinema tech hounds.  It seems the American Cinema Editors will be dishing out the first ever ACE Technical Excellence Award to Avid’s Media Composer software, amounting to”an unprecedented endorsement of a commercial product,” Cohen says.  Furthermore:

    ACE is voicing both appreciation for its close relations with Avid and frustration with what it perceives as snubs from Apple, maker of Final Cut Pro, Avid’s biggest rival.

    The subtext of the kudo announcement is also a message to producers: ACE’s members are frustrated about not having a choice of which tools they use, and they don’t like being forced to use alternatives to Avid.

    All this is coming at a time when ACE editors are feeling restive over job security in the wake of the production slowdown and changes in TV patterns and orders.

    It amounts to inside sniping more than an actual watershed moment for the craft as far as I’m concerned.  Cohen quotes ACE board member Harry B. Miller III as complaining that “Apple and Final Cut Pro doesn’t listen, doesn’t respond, doesn’t solicit [industry editors’] opinion.”  Let’s drag it out in public then, shall we?  Oy.

  • ‘Brothers’ trailer

    As someone who was never particularly taken with Susanne Bier’s popular 2004 melodrama “Brothers” — I find Bier’s work too patly earnest to repay real emotional investment — I approach Jim Sheridan’s long-delayed remake with a measure of caution.

    Judging from this just-released trailer, it seems to hew very close to the original, with added studio gloss and a gloopy background of Fray balladry that I hope isn’t in the film itself. On the plus side, Natalie Portman looks rather good, and needless to say, it’s a step up for Sheridan from the grim career nadir of “Get Rich or Die Tryin’.” (Uh, what isn’t?) Some might have Oscar-level expectations of this, given its December release date, but I’ll need to see the film to be convinced.

  • Is the auteur a dying breed?

    Lars von TrierBy far the boldest, baldest expression of auteur identity I’ve seen in recent times came in the opening credits of Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist.” It’s a sequence that consists of precisely two emphatically scrawled title cards — “Lars von Trier” and “Antichrist” — in that order. No actors, no production credits, no “a film by,” nothing. Lars von Trier. Antichrist.

    It’s an insistent, slightly tongue-in-cheek declaration of full creative ownership — the film that follows is entirely the product of his own imagination, and all other collaborators are merely at the service of his vision. It may strike some as an arrogant, even hostile, approach, but it drives home the point that he’s one of the few contemporary filmmakers who can legitimately claim the title “auteur” — the term coined by New Wave doyen Francois Truffaut to assert the rise of directorial control in a previously producer-centered artform.

    How many directors in the current film lanscape can boast that kind of brand-name power? It’s a question raised by critic Kaleem Aftap in an interesting — and highly debatable — piece in today’s Independent, in which he argues that, in America at least, the notion of auteurism is on the way out:

    Films directed by Truffaut himself, Jean-Luc Godard, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola (used to be) must-see events. At its height, the draw of the auteur was such that films by the Italian modernist Michelangelo Antonioni would regularly appear in the top 25 box-office hits of the year. The right director’s name on a poster was enough to sell tickets and what the directors would do next was something to be genuinely excited about. Now barely any film is sold on the director’s name alone.

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  • Looking back at potential tens

    The Little MermaidOkay, the decision has been made and there is not a thing I can do about it, and let’s face it, even I am going to get bored bitching about it. So I went back 20 years to find films that might have been among the 10 nominees had they been doing this in 1988. It was an interesting experiment that perhaps makes it clear why the Academy had made the move.

    Attention is drawn to films that might otherwise might not have been seen or heard of by the average Joe on the street, and allows for box office hits to find Oscar attention with a Best Picture nomination. Sure, there would be years that the pickings might be slim, but that is the price of doing something like this, and at that point, is it not smart to look at the foreign language films or — to be a bit self-serving — Canadian work?

    Or would sequels such as the superb “The Empire Strikes Back” be nominated along with other good-to-excellent films? It would have been interesting. I did not go for five films each year, but mentioned those I think would have been cinches had there been 10 nominees.

    Here we go…

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  • “Drowning out all birdsong.”

    Klaus Kinski in Fitzcaraldo

    A vision had seized hold of me, like the demented fury of a hound that has sunk its teeth into the leg of a deer carcass and is shaking and tugging at the downed game so frantically that the hunter gives up trying to calm him. It was the vision of a large steamship scaling a hill under its own steam, working its way up a steep slope in the jungle, while above this natural landscape, which shatters the weak and the strong with equal ferocity, soars the voice of Caruso, silencing all the pain and all the voices of the primeval forest and drowning out all birdsong.

    So begins this must-read excerpt from Werner Herzog’s on-set diaries — “Conquest of the Useless: Reflections form the making of Fitzcaraldo” — reprinted in part by The New York Times and on bookshelves now.  It’s a must-read for Herzog fanatics.  If you’ve never seen “Fitzcaraldo,” don’t just do so arbitrarily.  It’s certainly not as transporting as “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” but like all Herzog films, it creates an atmosphere in your mind and takes you on a moody trip.  I’ve got to pick up this book, though.

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  • 7/3 Web Round-up

    Sorority Row• A to Z on Michael Mann — all you needed to know about the director. [Empire]

    • Oscilloscope jumps on the video-on-demand bandwagon, partnering with Warner Digital Distribution. [indieWIRE]

    • The 10 sexiest gangster girlfriends of all time. [Film School Rejects]

    • Oh, by the way.  Weeks after outlets jumped the gun, David Carradine’s death has been ruled “not a suicide.” [The Guardian]

    • Patrick Goldstein talks to Michael Mann about the bank-robber technical adviser the director tapped for “Public Enemies.” [The Big Picture]

    • Eric D. Sneider is baffled by the juxtaposition of the “Sorority Row” trailer and prints of “The Hurt Locker.” [Cinematical]

    • Owen Gleiberman and Lisa Schwarzbaum talk about why they think “Public Enemies” misses the mark. [Entertainment Weekly]

  • Stunning new ‘Broken Embraces’ trailer

    The Guardian has exclusively debuted the brand new trailer for Pedro Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces,” and it’s a thing of considerable beauty.

    Mixed reviews be damned — the oil-painting saturated color of Rodrigo Prieto’s lensing (which weirdly reminds me of Vittorio Storaro’s work on Bertolucci’s “The Spider’s Stratagem”), the cannily cool choice of Cat Power on the soundtrack, not to mention the stylistics of Penelope Cruz’s headlong dive into fetishized femme fatale territory, all have my mouth positively watering. I’ll be seeing the film later this month, and that day can’t come too soon.

    The Guardian selfishly won’t let us embed the trailer, so watch it here. Now. We’ll post it here as soon as it becomes available.

  • ‘Five Minutes of Heaven’ trailer

    I offered some very brief notes a while back on Oliver Hirschbiegel’s excellent “Five Minutes of Heaven,” which premiered on television here in the UK, but will thankfully get the theatrical release (along with VOD) it deserves Stateside in August. Thank God for IFC. (More thoughts after the cut.)

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  • ‘1939: Hollywood’s Greatest Year’

    Greta Garbo in NinotchkaTCM is showcasing the great productions of 1939 tonight, kicking it off a few hours ago with “The Wizard of Oz,” which followed a two-hour doc on the film.

    I wish I had gotten this post up earlier so as to give you the heads up, because I just clicked through the DVR and came across the documentary “1939: Hollywood’s Greatest Year,” which was presented as a world premiere amid the network’s night-long salute to the 70th anniversary of what is still considered in most circles to be the finest 12 months of cinematic output on these shores.

    You know the films: “Gone With the Wind,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Stagecoach,” “Ninotchka,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “Of Mice and Men,” “Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” “Gunga Din,” “Juarez,” “Wuthering Heights,” etc.  I really don’t think there’s ever been a more impressive line-up, and only 1999 has ever come close.  And what a year THAT was.

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  • Brit critics cool on ‘Enemies’

    Marion Cotillard and Johnny Depp in Public EnemiesWith Stateside critics somewhat split on “Public Enemies,” I was interested to see what the UK reception for the film would be like. For all the brawny Americanness of his aesthetic, Michael Mann has many passionate apologists on these shores — he even received a BAFTA nod in 2005 for “Collateral” — perhaps to some degree because Britain is where he studied film and began his career.

    On this occasion, however, the limeys aren’t feeling the love, as the film has opened to a raft of disappointing notices from the major British broadsheets. Wendy Ide at the Times of London is harshest, calling the film “a bloody, muddy mess.” She’s no fan of the film’s digital aspects, perhaps rather naively complaining about the lack of studio sheen:

    Mann’s aim appears to be to develop a new, distinctive digital aesthetic. Which is admirable in theory, but Mann’s digital aesthetic seems to involve making the movie look as grimy and unpolished as possible. Post-production is for wimps. That irresistibly glossy, larger-than-life reality created by Hollywood movies is diminished here. The flat glare of the digital camera emphasises the artifice of the film-making process rather than bringing the hoped-for gritty authenticity to the story.

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  • Previewing tomorrow’s interview

  • Counting to ten

    Since the Academy announced the new ten-lane track for the Best Picture race, any number of bloggers have projected which extra films might have made the cut under this format in the last few years, a process that, for many, retrospectively hands hypothetical nods to everything from “Doubt” to “Memoirs of a Geisha” to “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”

    It’s a process that is as dispiriting as it is occasionally heartening, but so far there hasn’t been much informed analysis of how the Academy’s weighted balloting system might affect the lower reaches of the list. (I must wonder, for example, whether a “Geisha” had enough number-one votes to even crack a list of ten — the new format will certainly test the remaining power of the studio system.)

    Anne Thompson, however, offers by far the most interesting backward-glancing “what-if” piece I’ve yet read, in which an unnamed (but clearly authoritative) film historian digs a little further back to consider what a ten-nominee Best Picture category might have looked like in the years from 1967 to 1979.

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  • Saying goodbye to Karl Malden

    Karl MaldenIn the wake of actor Karl Malden’s death at the age of 97 yesterday, a number of appreciations, remembrances and good old fashioned obituaries have predictably flooded the net.  I thought I’d collect as many as I could in this space, beginning with, for me, the most heart-warming sentiment of the lot.

    John Farr at The Huffington Post:

    It’s sad and scary both to say goodbye to you, because you represented the last man standing from a period in film-making whose like we won’t see again.

    Robert Berkvist at The New York Times:

    Mr. Malden was perhaps the ideal Everyman. He realized early on that he lacked the physical attributes of a leading man; he often joked about his blunt features, particularly his crooked, bulbous nose, which he had broken several times while playing basketball in school. But he was, he once said, determined “to be No. 1 in the No. 2 parts I was destined to get.”

    (More after the jump.)

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  • Sprawling, sumptuous, baroque / cozy, warm, friendly

    I finally got around to watching Criterion’s wonderful Blu-ray package for Alain Resnais’ New Wave tour de force “Last Year at Marienbad” earlier in the week.  I’ll get into the particulars of that sterling disc at a later date, but today I came across the most intriguing theory pertaining to the 1961 classic.  From Glenn Kenny at Some Came Running in a brief item titled “Last Year at Punxatawny”:

    My Lovely Wife and I have been batting around the notion that Groundhog Day is in fact a loose remake of Last Year At Marienbad.

    Nothing more than that aside, though if you’re familiar with both films, nothing more is really needed. A thought tossed out into the ether, ponder it, consider it. Fascinating.

    Giorgio Albertazzi in Last Year at Marienbad

    Bill Murray in Groundhog Day

  • 20 years later…

    (from left) John Turturro, Joie Lee, Bill Lee, Danny Aiello, Ruby Dee, Spike Lee, Samuel L. Jackson and Luis Antonio Ramos at the 20th Anniversary screening of Do The Right Thing

    More from the red carpet of the film’s 20th anniversary screening at Yahoo! Movies.

  • 7/2 Web round-up

    Michael Bay• Michael Bay is a drug. [First Showing]

    • Three years after stirring trouble regaring the on-set particulars of “Miami Vice,” Kim Masters decides to take aim at Michael Mann once again with speculation and anonymous quotes. [The Daily Beast]

    • Meanwhile, Harvey Weinstein seems to be making a transition to film critic, calls “Public Enemies” the start of the 2009 Oscar race. [The Daily Beast]

    • Elliot J. Gorn questions the historical accuracy of the film, fails to understand compositing, artistic license. [Slate]

    • Headline of the month: “Tippi Hedren tells Michael Jackson’s former pet tigers of his death.” [The Guardian]

    • Attempting to steer coverage slightly away from commerce, Eugene Hernandez introduces a new, David Hudson-inspired column aggregation column.  Not exactly novel to the net but certainly to the outlet. [indieWIRE]

    • Geoff Boucher sits down with Guillermo Del Toro. [Hero Complex]

    • The 10 most clever bank robberies in movies. [Spout Blog]