• Nikki Finke chats with Relativity Media honcho Ryan Kavanaugh. [Deadline]
• Gregory Ellwood thinks Melissa Leo flushed her chances at an Oscar down the drain. [Awards Campaign]
• Melena Ryzik catches up with “Waste Land” director Lucy Walker. (Oscar Guide on documentary features coming tomorrow.) [The Carpetbagger]
Alright, you know the drill. What do you want us to address? PLEASE KEEP IT TO ONE QUESTION, and as always, keep it fresh.
Regular readers probably know by now how much I love Kelly Reichardt’s spare, serene Oregon Trail western “Meek’s Cutoff,” which premiered at Venice back in the early days of autumn (how long ago does that feel?), clocked in at #2 on my Best of 2010 list and finally hits US theaters in April. (An unglamorous but sensible choice of slot for a challenging arthouse picture.) Now the first poster for the film has hit, and while the atypically badass image of a fierce-looking Michelle Williams brandishing a rifle was seemingly chosen to lure the “True Grit” audience, it does convey the film’s pastel, handmade visual quality. Full poster after the cut; check out my Venice review of the film here.
Sorry there was no Berlinale dispatch yesterday. It was my birthday, and after “celebrating” it with a triple-bill of variously despairing Competition entries — finishing with “The Turin Horse,” Béla Tarr’s impressive 146-minute ode to blizzards, boiled potatoes and dying — more traditional festivities were in order, beginning with several stiff drinks. There’s nothing like a film festival to infuse a birthday with bleaker-than-usual ruminations on mortality.
After a dawdling start, however, the Competition really kicked into gear yesterday with a pair of substantial auteur works that will likely remain the prime topic of critical conversation for the duration of the festival: the aforementioned Tarr opus and Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi’s “Nader and Simin, A Separation,” now the runaway favorite for the Golden Bear for reasons both artistic and political.
I’ll discuss both these films in due course, but neither one has quite displaced an earlier (and more critically divisive) Competition title from the top of my personal best-of-the-fest list — and indeed, if anything does in the next three days, I’ll be a very happy (and surprised) man. That title would be German director Ulrich Köhler’s third feature “Sleeping Sickness” (****), an arrestingly structured and humidly atmospheric study of immigrant living and integration in west Africa that would make a valuable companion piece to Claire Denis’s more pristine “White Material,” but also warrants discussion on its own merits.
More of Banksy’s hijacking of Los Angeles in the run-up to Oscar at his official site.
One of the things I’ll likely take away from this crazy season, more than the back-biting and the intensity of the race, more, even, than the films I loved, is Roger Ebert’s continued resurgence as one of the most vital voices of our community. His energy hit a new level last year with elevated output via his blog and a big splash on Twitter, and this year, he reclaimed “At the Movies” with two polished hosts at the helm.
Now comes this. Ebert announced via Twitter yesterday, “Thanks to the Library of Congress and some fans, the earliest years of Siskel & Ebert are online.” And now, for posterity, we have SiskelandEbert.org, packed with classic episodes of the duo’s film review segments going all the way back to that first back-and-forth over “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” 35 years ago.
I’ve included that episode after the jump, but head on over there if you want to dive into the history books. A true delight for all film fans.
• Wes Anderson talks editing “Black Swan” with Andrew Weisblum. [Awards Campaign]
• Oscars invade New York’s Grand Central terminal. [Oscars.org]
• Mandi Bierly gets a few Oscarcast details on the Franco-Hathaway chemistry and the opening number. [Inside Movies]
I didn’t see the Grammys this weekend. In fact, I tend to avoid them like the plague. But it was nevertheless an impressive slate of winners, so that’s a unique start.
In any case, it’s worth pointing out that Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett’s “The Weary Kind” wrapped up a long awards march by taking the award for Best Song Written for Motion Picture, Television, or Other Visual Media. So add that to a list of accolades that includes an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a Critic’s Choice Movie Award, and the Americana Music Association “Song of the Year” honor. A great ride indeed.
“It’s incredible,” Bingham said to press backstage at the Grammys. “It’s been a hell of a ride. All this stuff flies by so fast and happens so quick. Afterward you look back on it, let it soak in, and see what it’s all about.”
• Nick Davis’s actress digest moves to the lovely Jennifer Lawrence. [Nick’s Flick Picks]
• Tom Hooper at the BAFTAs: The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. [The Race]
• David Poland talks to “Black Swan” costume co-designers Rodarte. [The Hot Blog]
The cavernous Berlinale Palast theatre was packed to the gills for today’s noontime press screening of “Coriolanus” (***), and small wonder — in a Competition lineup heavy on oatmeal fare boasting comparatively unfamiliar names, Ralph Fiennes’s directorial debut is one of the few entries that affords viewers a little star-gazing.
Fiennes, of course, takes the title role in his revisionist take on Shakespeare’s under-filmed tragedy, with Gerard Butler, Brian Cox and the soon-to-be-ubiquitous Jessica Chastain adding further name appeal.
As the crowd staggered out of the auditorium two hours later, the name being murmured most approvingly was that of the film’s oldest and most distinguished star. And with good reason. As Volumnia, the proud, politically-minded mother of the titular Roman general, Vanessa Redgrave gives one of “those” performances, an Olympian masterclass in classical acting that conjures spontaneous emotional fire upon a bed of immaculate technique.
I can’t let February the 14th pass without some acknowledgement on my part, so here it is: one of the coolest, warmest, hottest romantic exchanges I can think of in any movie. Scott Frank’s writing is conversational poetry here, Anne V. Coates’s editing shapes all the politics of lovemaking into a single scene, and George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, both as beautiful and as human as they’ve ever been on screen, define chemistry. I love this scene. I love this movie. Happy Valentine’s Day.
What screen romances do it for you?
Determined to make up for my rather feeble start to the Berlinale, I made it to five films on Sunday – and in a shock twist that defied the law of both averages and film festivals, I liked all of them to some extent, and two of them rather more than that. How appropriate that I get to put my poison pen away on Valentine’s Day of all days.
I’ll get to writing about “The Guard” (a scuzzily hilarious Irish cop comedy from John Michael McDonagh, brother of Martin) and Competition entry “Sleeping Sickness” (by some measure the best thing I’ve seen, or am likely to see, here) in a later roundup. The other three, however, demand to be grouped in a single post, just as Berlin programmers were making a point by scheduling them back-to-back: all of them were specialist niche films in 3D, marking the moment at which the technology formally stepped outside the multiplex and into the arthouse.
When Werner Herzog announced his intention to make his latest documentary in 3D, the howls of anguish from stern cinephiles could only have increased in volume if he’d added that it was actually going to be a Miley Cyrus concert movie. When his compatriot and contemporary Wim Wenders revealed similar plans for his non-narrative tribute to the late choreographer Pina Bausch, there were fewer protests, if only because after his last few features, nobody’s been paying much attention to anything Wenders does these days.
In today’s Oscar Guide, I addressed one of the biggest surprises of this year’s slate of below-the-line Oscar nominees: “The King’s Speech” being recognized for Best Sound Mixing. It’s easily attributable to sweeping love for the film, but I tried to give some context for why sound is actually integral to the experience of the film in some way.
Today, the good folks at SoundWorks Collection, in lieu of one of their custom profiles on the sonic construction of the film, have offered up a dense interview with production sound mixer John Midgley. Midgley has worked on films such as “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace,” “Hotel Rwanda” and “Children of Men,” and in the interview, he actually touches on some of the points I made in the piece.
Head on over to SoundWorks Collection to check out the full interview — a hefty 30 minutes’ worth — or watch the embed after the jump. It provides a lot of insight into a process that, even if it doesn’t appear award-worthy to the layman, deserves a great deal of respect nevertheless.
Whether or not Luke Matheny’s “God of Love” nabs the Oscar for Best Live Action Short is still to be seen. It sure has its share of champions but it’s rare for a winner of the Student Academy Award to also take the big prize. Nevertheless, there’s clearly a publicity push in motion, witnessed by a cute press release that was waiting in my inbox this morning.
Matheny offers up his “top eight for a date,” films that dovetail nicely with today’s holiday (and what an opportune time for such a holiday to strike when your film is a riff on Cupid). They are (I’m assuming in no particular order):
“Joe vs. The Volcano”
“Paris Blues”
“Miracle of Morgan’s Creek”
“The Bodyguard”
“The Thomas Crown Affair”
“Doc Hollywood”
“Shop Around the Corner”
“Arthur”
• Patrick Goldstein remembers 1939: “When 10 great Oscar nominees really meant 10 great nominees.” [The Big Picture]
• Nikki Finke talks to Sony honcho Amy Pascal in the wake of “The Social Network”‘s post-season stall. [Deadline]
• Marnie Hanel chats with “127 Hours” production designer Suttirat Larlarb, with sketches to boot. [Little Gold Men]
I’ve been on the road most of the day, but happy news for Wally Pfister, who won the ASC award for “Inception.” I wouldn’t look to the Society for much in the way of prognostication. They’ve already seized the opportunity to award Roger Deakins, after all — twice. And had I thought about it, I likely would have predicted Pfister here, given the group’s history. But I don’t want to take anything away from this win, which is well-deserved when considering the work this guy has been knocking out of the park for a decade now.
I still say “True Grit” takes the Oscar, with “The King’s Speech” still as the spoiler.
Which reminds me: Don’t forget.
