In Contention

Category: Daily

  • More foreign film submissions trickle in

    With the deadline for submissions for Best Foreign Language Film coming at the end of the month, these are virtually being announced on a daily basis. The latest:

    Canada, whose “The Barbarian Invasions” took the gold in 2004, has selected French-Inuit period drama “The Necessities of Life.” The film, a period piece about the relationship between a hunter (played by Natar Ungalaaq from “Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner”), dying in a Quebec City hospital, and a young Inuit orphan, premiered at the recent Montreal Film Festival, where it won the audience award.

    Variety describes it as “a finely wrought drama” and “a model of emotional restraint.” Hopefully my fellow contributor John can offer a local perspective on the selection.

    Elsewhere, Finland has chosen “Home of Dark Butterflies,” another Montreal entry. The film is centred on a group of teen boys at an isolated reform school, got only a middling Variety review — they criticise it for “veering into melodramatic excess.”

  • Hardest…video game…ever.

    Not Oscar related at all (unless you drag Anton Furst into it), but I’ve been playing this again lately since I hooked up my old NES.  And Jesus — it’s damn near impossible.  Then I find a YouTube clip of some dude making it look easy.  Ass:

  • Best Actor race looking tight as always — expect surprises

    Leonardo DiCaprio in Revolutionary RoadThe Best Actor category tends to be one of the more crowded categories come Oscar time, and 2008 looks to be no exception. To be sure, there are a handful of frontrunners as usual, but hovering behind them are another group, more than eight who could easily sneak in and nab a nomination. Last year Tommy Lee Jones was nominated for his powerful work in “The Valley of Elah,” a richly deserved nod, but completely unexpected by the majority of prognosticators.  I remember smiling when I heard his name read, but it was a huge surprise.

    I would expect something similar this year, as we have some of the great  actors and potentially stunning performances in contention.

    The obvious frontrunner at this point is Mickey Rourke, basking in the attention being given to “The Wrestler.”  His performance is nothing short of miraculous, an astounding piece of acting, and it is great to see him back in the fold.  But when it comes to winning the award, I have to say: not a chance. Rourke is intensely disliked in Hollywood.  He’s seen as someone who basically spit on the industry to walk away and become a boxer. As a friend close to Rourke said, “A lot of people were happy when he left and don’t want this guy back.”

    Frank Langella looks to be terrific in the trailers for “Frost/ Nixon.”  He has always been a great actor, better known for his stage work than film, though in the last few years he has become a formidable presence on the big screen. I remember seeing him as “Dracula” both on stage and on film in the late 1970s and hoped he would go far. He did, just not in the movies, until recently.

    Kris has Michael Sheen down as a lead actor possibility as well, and I agree. It’s one of those “Amadeus” situations where one performance cannot exist without the other. There is a strong chance that if the film and the actors are terrific, both of them will be nominated, though Langella certainly has the showier role of the two.

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  • 9/17 Oscarweb Round-up

    (from left) Josh Brolin and Noah Wyle in W.• One night only…ABC wants to bump the Oscars to March. [Variety]

    • David Poland finally reviews some Toronto films. [The Hot Button]

    • Breaking down a Wired cover story, starring Charlie Kaufman. [Wired]

    • Aaron Eckhart is four-square against the idea of recasting the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s Batman franchise.  James Franco and Michael C. Hall can stop holding their breaths. [MTV]

    • More parsing of the “Burn After Reading” numbers.  Why isn’t it obvious?  Brad Pitt + George Clooney = $$$. [Risky Biz Blog]

    • Patrick Goldstein mines this month’s issue of Esquire for clues about Paul Thomas Anderson’s childhood. [The Big Picture]

    • Ten movies to watch when feeling the financial crunch. [Spout Blog]

    • From the rumor mill: Rome’s mayor wants to ban “W.” from showing at the city’s upcoming film festival?  Forced denial and all. [The Guardian]

  • Nick Cave on film, music and committees

    I can’t think offhand of an upcoming film score that I’m more eager to hear than Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ work for “The Road.” Their dark, elegiac score for “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” which wove together a panoply of Americana with a smattering of modern influences, was one of the great overlooked achievements of last year.

    Of course, “The Road” reunites Cave and Ellis with director John Hillcoat, with whom they collaborated on “The Proposition” — the fascinating Outback “Western” that Cave himself also scripted. “The Proposition”‘s score was another sonically dense, richly atmospheric affair, and I expect them to repeat the feat on “The Road.”

    All of which brings me to this interesting little interview with Cave, taken while he was recording for “The Road” in London. He’s long been one of the most articulate, intelligent guys in rock music, and he offers quite generous insight here into his deliciously strange creative process. There’s also this rather matter-of-fact perspective on working for film:

    The whole film business, everything is done by committee, it would seem. So what you feel about what you’ve created is highly irrelevant in the process of making a film. You hand something in and the worth of it is judged by people you’ve never even seen, so it’s mentally frustrating in that way, but at times it’s hugely enjoyable because the kind of agony of original creation, of having to think of the actual idea and the theme and what you’re going to write about and all that kind of stuff, which is really very difficult, the toughest part of songwriting for me, is not there. You’re simply supplied everything by what’s on the screen.

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  • Top 10 Downey perfs?

    Robert Downy Jr. in Natural Born KillersOur friend John Campea over at The Movie Blog recently posted a list of the top 10 performances Robert Downey Jr. has given us over his roller-coaster career.  A nice idea for a post given the career resurgence Downy is enjoying this year, and perhaps one more portrayal will be taken into consideration in a few months when “The Soloist” drops.

    Anyway, John’s list got my wheels turning to say the least.  I object with plenty of it, from choice of performances to the ranking order, but a few of the omissions really sting.

    So I figured I’d just toss up my own list (keeping in mind I haven’t yet seen “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints”):

    1. “Natural Born Killers”
    2. “Chaplin”
    3. “Less Than Zero”
    4. “Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus”
    5. “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”
    6. “Two Girls and a Guy”
    7. “Iron Man”
    8. “Zodiac”
    9. “Tropic Thunder”
    10. “Restoration”

    What say you?

  • Breakthrough for Hawkins and Franco

    As regular readers may know, I’ve been yammering on about a Best Actress nomination for “Happy-Go-Lucky”‘s delightful Sally Hawkins since I reviewed the film back in April. So I’m pleased to see that Hawkins will receive the Breakthrough Actress award at next month’s Hollywood Film Awards.

    As I said when they named their crafts honorees earlier this month, I’m a bit mystified by these awards, which appear to honour as-yet-unseen films rather frequently. Still, it’s difficult to argue with this selection: in a crowded field of Best Actress contenders, Hawkins is the freshest face out there. It’s a good omen for her Oscar chances — last year’s honoree was Ellen Page.

    “Happy-Go-Lucky” didn’t emerge from the festival circuit with quite the amount of heat I hoped it might, but Hawkins remains a solid contender for awards consideration. As we know now, the performance has a major Marmite factor — people either love or hate Hawkins’ character — but it’s sure to stick in people’s minds.

    Elsewhere, the Breakthrough Actor award went to James Franco — another obvious choice, and a move that gives credence to the Best Supporting Actor buzz for his performance in “Milk,” something Kris just discussed.

    “Milk” scored twice with the awards, with newbie (not that you’d know it from the marketing) scripter Dustin Lance Black named Breakthrough Screenwriter. Meanwhile, “Doubt” helmer John Patrick Shanley picked up Breakthrough Director. The latter strikes me as something of a safe choice in a year that has given us stellar debuts from such talents as Martin McDonagh and Philippe Claudel, but we only have the trailer to go on.

    Finally, pointing to two Oscar inevitabilities, the Animation award will go to Andrew Stanton for “WALL-E” (well, duh), while “Iron Man” will be recognised for its visual effects.

  • Sweden and Germany loom large in Oscar race

    As anyone who follows the arcane workings of the Best Foreign Language Film award knows, there is no such thing as a sure thing in the category. However, it’s fair to say that Sweden and Germany have emerged as strong contenders in the race after both countries selected high-profile films as their official entries.

    Unsurprisingly, Sweden has chosen “Everlasting Moments,” a highly personal biopic from veteran filmmaker Jan Troell — a Best Director nominee back in 1973 for “The Emigrants.” The film is a portrait of Maria Larsson, Sweden’s first female photographer, who also happens to be the grandmother of Troell’s wife (and co-scripter) Agnes. The film bowed at Toronto last week to warm reviews, including this rave from Screen International:

    Discreet, old fashioned, traditional and altogether admirable, this is Jan Troell in what he does best … Paying minute attention to the smallest details, taking its time but never appearing to drag its feet, immensely sympathetic to its heroes and villains alike, this is an intimate family portrait and at the same time a rich canvas of working class life … This picture has quality stamped all over it, awards are likely to come its way whether for direction, photography or the performances of Maria Heiskanen and Mikael Persbrandt.

    By all accounts, it’s a stately, beautifully crafted period piece with a degree of social gravitas — difficult to see the Academy resisting that one.

    On a very different note, Germany has gone with Uli Edel’s terrorism thriller “The Baader Meinhof Complex” as its entry. The film, a chronicle of the infamous left-wing Red Army Faction group that terrorised the country through the late 60s and early 70s, has yet to open in its home country, but advance word is promising. (Jeff Wells gives some useful insight here.)

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  • Polish movie posters rock!

    I came across this site showcasing a top 50 Polish movie posters via /Film and couldn’t stop scrolling.  Some of them are positively terrifying for various reasons, but all of them are wonderfully creative.

    My favorite has to be this “Eyes Wide Shut” art work.  I would hang it on my wall in a heartbeat:

    Eyes Wide Shut

  • 9/16 Oscarweb Round-up

    Brad Pitt in Burn After Reading• Sasha Stone rounds up a few of the foreign language film submissions coming in. [Awards Daily]

    • Peter Bart seems to think the Coen brothers’ best opening weekend yet for “Burn After Reading” has more to do with turning “cold” into “hot” than with Brad Pitt extracting laugh after laugh in trailers for the past few months. [Peter Bart]

    • Sony Pictures Classics nabs the Toronto documentary hit “Every Little Step.” [The Hollywood Reporter]

    • Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s “Still Walking” edges out “Goodbye Solo” and “The Wrestler” for the best of Toronto as Eugene Hernandez polls critics and bloggers at the fest. [indieWIRE]

    • Keira Knightley keeps the “Duchess” publicity tour going with a stop under Donna Freydkin’s microscope. [USA Today]

  • POLL: Which Toronto favorite are you anticipating the most?

    With the bulk of the festival season behind us (just a few more to go), I thought I’d gauge support for the films that were well-received in Toronto.  I suspect I know the answer already, but you guys tend to surprise me with these more often than not.  So let us know in the sidebar: what’s tickling your fancy after waves of critical approval?  And if you have another title in mind, tell us below!

  • 9/15 Oscarweb Round-up

    Keira Knightley in The Duchess• Anne Thompson offers her perspective on Toronto’s winners and losers. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • Nathaniel Rogers digs back into the recent past of the festival’s Audience Award to see what is in store for “Slumdog Millionaire.” [The Film Experience]

    • Has “The Visitor” begun an award-winning streak that will culminate with Oscar recognition?  [Screen Daily]

    • Susan Wloszczyna spends some quality time with “it” boy Mickey Rourke. [USA Today]

    • Keira Knightley talks “The Duchess” and fashion with Mark Ellwood. [New York Daily News]

    • Jenni Miller sits down with “The Brothers Bloom” star Adrien Brody. [Premiere]

    • Michelle Kung gets Ed Harris on the record. [The Wall Street Journal]

    • Spike Lee puts his Clint Eastwood fued to bed…whatever. [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

  • A taste of ‘Another Way to Die’

    Jack White is reportedly none too pleased about this, but an instrumental sample of “Another Way to Die,” his much-awaited Bond theme on which he duets with Alicia Keys, has been revealed in a new ad for Coke Zero.

    The ad, a promotional tie-in which finds the soft drink rebranded as Zero Zero 7 (geddit?) is a fairly low-rent knockoff of a typical Bond credit sequence, but the music is terrific — sounds like White has married his own guitar sound with a throwback to John Barry brassiness. If the vocals are this good, it could be the best Bond theme in some time.

  • Face to face

    Face to face

  • Fuller ET ‘Revolutionary Road’ trailer

  • ‘The Soloist’ poster and behind-the-scenes featurette

    Lots of stuff happening on the promotion front this week.  Posters and trailers galore.  More on all of that in tomorrow’s “Off the Carpet” column, but for now, it looks like Joe Wright’s “The Soloist” has landed a one-sheet:

    DreamWorks SKG's The Soloist

    Meh.  Shades of “Brokeback Mountain.”  And I’m not crazy about the tagline either.  I like the scribbling along the edges, though.

    Additionally, Apple has released a behind-the-scenes featurette of the film.  Have a look:

    The offical website for “The Soloist” went up this weekend as well, and as always, you can keep track of the latest over at the film’s buzz page.

    While I’m on the topic, I should point out that Steve Lopez is one of the coolest cats in town, bar none.  I met him a few months back at Vroman’s in Pasadena.  He spoke at length to a crowd of eager bookworms about his encounters with Nathaniel Anthony Ayers on the streets of Los Angeles, which of course led to numerous articles in the paper and the inevitable book.

    (I’ve always thought the best part of that audio recording from Vroman’s was when Lopez talks about how he and Ayers call each other Mr.s Lopez and Mr. Ayers.  No one tells a story like Lopez.)

    As for the film version, I think Robert Downey Jr. has really nailed Lopez’s look.  I half-expected there to be no particular interest in mimicking it, so thank God for small miracles.

  • TORONTO: That’s a wrap

    TorontoAnd with a whimper it ended. With many press headed home by Wednesday of this week, the screenings were a little less crowded, there was much grumbling about the lack of strong films, and very little buying action.  The festival wound down slowly, like something in the throes of a long, drawn-out death.

    In the more than a decade I have been covering the Toronto International Film Festival, I’ve never seen a weaker year than 2008 — at least in terms of sheer quality of product. Many writers compare the festival’s success with the number of films that go on to Oscar glory, and at this point, we have no idea, but I think it is safe to say the Oscar candidates coming out of this year’s festival will be limited.

    Last year, for instance, four of the five nominees for Best Picture played here. Many news writers and critics are asking why the festival was so weak, but I think the answer is rather simple: 2008 is shaping up to be a poor year for film in general, and the festival was an unfortunate victim of that.

    I know for a fact some of the films the festival programmers wanted were simply not ready, “Milk” being one of them.  And though previously announced on IMDb, “The Road” never made it here either. The reasoning behind “Changeling” skipping out on Toronto was too foolish to comprehend (Angelina Jolie couldn’t make it and Clint Eastwood wouldn’t have been sexy enough on his own), and I think the programmers recognize that now.  And though “Doubt” was a sought-after showcase, that would never come to pass either.

    There is talk that the festival is actively trying to divorce itself from the Oscar race and the Hollywood product, but I still say this year’s fest was weak regardless of all that.

    In any case, I thought I’d give a brief recap for those who haven’t been able to keep up with the day-to-day coverage…

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  • Baz Luhrmann on his “crushing ambition”

    I’ve already expressed my eagerness for Baz Luhrmann’s “Australia,” probably my single most anticipated film of the year. I was thoroughly enraptured by the trailer that had many others passing snide pre-judgments on the film. (Bizarrely, words like “corny” and “artificial” were frequently thrown up as pejoratives, indicating that the self-irony of Luhrmann’s previous work entirely escaped certain audiences.)

    Now my appetite has been further whetted by this lengthy profile of the film that appeared in today’s Sunday Times, in which Luhrmann and his stars make the scale of their ambition abundantly clear. And that ambition, to go by this quote from Nicole Kidman, is to create something as vast, iconic and quintessential as the title suggests:

    This is the last of a dying breed, this kind of movie. They don’t build stuff like this any more. To feel that air and see people ravaged by the elements, as hard as it is, it’s exquisite. I dreamt of making a film that had the passion and the weight of the films I grew up watching — Gone with the Wind, Doctor Zhivago. When Baz and I first started speaking about this, seven years ago, I said there needed to be a film about our land that speaks on a much broader scale.

    No pressure, then. Luhrmann, meanwhile, acknowledges the flak he will likely receive (already expressed by some readers on this site) for that bald, broad title, but his defence is both intelligent and mischievous:

    Why “Australia?” Well, first of all, to get people all uppity about it, so there’s a lot of comment. I think about films like Lawrence of Arabia, Out of Africa, Casablanca, Hawaii, by James A Michener: epics that use one word to describe a place. The film can’t be definitive about Australia, but ‘What does it mean?’ is not a bad place to start when you’re creating a story.” Sixty years ago, Casablanca meant “faraway, exotic.” I think even now, to the rest of the world, ‘Australia’ just means big, somewhat mysterious, somewhat misunderstood. This is a land far, far away. It has a sense of fairy tale about it.”

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