In Contention

Category: Daily

  • 9/5 Oscarweb Round-up

    Rinko Kikuchi in The Brothers Bloom• Stephen Zeitchik and Borys Kit tackle the covert war films playing this year’s Toronto fest. [Hollywood Reporter]

    • Jeffrey Wells is hearing that Danny Glover’s narration track in Fernando Meirelles’s “Blindness” has been nixed. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • And he responds unfavorably to Rian Johnson’s “Brick” follow-up, “The Brothers Bloom.” [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • James Rocchi, however, is diggin’ it. [Cinematical]

    • But back to “Blindness, Pete Hammond charts the film’s second chance following mixed-to-negative reactions in Cannes. [The Envelope]

    • The tenacious Sheigh Crabtree scores some exclusive footage from Paramount Vantage’s “The Duchess.” [The Envelope]

    • Brad Brevet begins tracking the Best Foreign Language Film race. [Rope of Silicon]

    • Regarding “Rachel Getting Married,” David Poland continues the Robert Altman comparisons in his review (which really aren’t as applicable as the critical fraternity seems to think, I must say). [The Hot Button]

    • Tom O’Neil catches up with everyone else, ponders a Toronto minus the usual Oscar heavies. [Gold Derby]

    • Why do we always get one of those “Hollywood is at a crossroads” stories every few years? [Peter Bart]

  • Oceans apart

    One of the great things about getting to review a film before the general press has had their say is having no idea where your views will stand in the tide of critical opinion. With only gut expectations to live up (or down) to, one can respond to nothing but the work at hand.

    So it was last week when I reviewed Guy Ritchie’s “RocknRolla,” which screened yesterday in Toronto and opens in the UK today. I thought it a dismal effort, but was quite prepared to be in the minority on that one. Nonetheless, the extreme split in opinion that is emerging has taken me by surprise — not least because it seems to be on geographical lines.

    The UK reception for “RocknRolla” has been decidedly frosty, with the tabloids and the more highbrow broadsheets seemingly united in their contempt for the film. The Daily Mail deems it an “embarrassing turkey,” and The Guardian — in a one-star review that’s not as funny as Peter Bradshaw thinks it is — is right with them, calling it a “shocker.” (Or “shocka,” to use Bradshaw Mockney-aping spelling.)

    The Times is moderately kinder, acknowledging its entertainment value, but complaining that “it brings back too many jaundiced memories and fails to lay any fresh tracks.” The drubbing continues at The Independent, who blame the “inexcusable banality” of Ritchie’s script, while The Telegraph complains the film is “loud and brash but goes nowhere.”

    Cross the pond, however, and the US trade papers seem to have seen an entirely different film at Toronto. Variety loves “RocknRolla,” declaring it “cleverly constructed, sensationally stylish and darkly hilarious,” and predicting strong Stateside business. The Hollywood Reporter seconds that emotion, calling it Ritchie’s “most accessible and enjoyable film yet.” (Have they seen “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels?”)

    (more…)

  • ‘Che’ to be released in the U.S. by Magnolia Pictures?

    Benicio Del Toro in CheLou Lumenick is hearing some rumblings on the “Che” buyer situation in Toronto. From his New York Post blog:

    I’m hearing from an exhibition source that Mark Cuban’s Magnolia Pictures has signed to distribute Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” in the United States. The deal is expected to be announced shortly for the two-part biopic of the Argentine guerilla who worked with Fidel Castro starring Benecio del Toro, which premiered to mixed reviews in Cannes. A slightly shorter version — 4 hour 22 minutes total — will be showing at the Toronto and New York Film Festivals. NYFF will be screening “Che” at the 1100-seat Ziegfeld and don’t be surprised if that’s where this epic has a reserved-seat, Academy-qualification run beginning on December 12.

    10 p.m. update: A Magnolia rep says an announcement would be “premature,” but I hear they’re already booking theaters.

    Frankly, it sounds like a done deal to me. Magnolia is no powerhouse distributor but the company nurtures creativity and smaller efforts well enough. Each year it represents the Oscar-nominated short films, providing more exposure for them than they’d receive otherwise. But a major Oscar campaign is a tough row to hoe when it comes to a season packed with big dogs.

    We’ve got a new buzz page for the film here, by the way.

    We’ll see.

  • ‘Wrestler’ off to a good start

    Now this is good news. Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” bows at Venice tomorrow, but the trades have put up their reviews from Toronto … and they’re mighty positive.

    Todd McCarthy and the Hollywood Reporter’s Stephen Farber both give credence to those Best Actor rumours for Mickey Rourke. Farber calls the performance the best of his career, while McCarthy goes further, declaring it one of the great performances, period.

    On another note, I’m pleased to see that both critics confirm a hunch I had that Marisa Tomei — a personal favourite — would deliver too.

    McCarthy raves:

    Rourke creates a galvanizing, humorous, deeply moving portrait that instantly takes its place among the great, iconic screen performances. An elemental story simply and brilliantly told, Darren Aronofsky’s fourth feature is a winner from every possible angle.

    Rourke is simply staggering as Ram. The camera is rarely off him, and one doesn’t want it to be, so entirely does he express the full life of this man with his every word and gesture … As vibrant — and as naked — as she was in last year’s “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” Tomei is in top, emotionally forthright form as she charts a life passage similar to Ram’s, if much less extreme.

    (more…)

  • Oops…

    I just realized that I failed to add “Valkyrie,” the Tom Cruise film that has stopped and started like nobody’s business, back to the charts in this week’s Oscar update.  Oh well, we’ll adjust the next time around (when Torotno is safely behind us).

  • Missing the point on the Harvey thing

    Cover of Batman #397Much as I love Brad Brevet and the work he does at Rope of Silicon, the point of the Harvey Dent stuff has never been about what’s in the screenplay.

    We’ve talked about this before, but the script shows what an audience sees, not what is. What the audience was meant to see was that the character was toast, but it was a vague send-off.  Which is what has allowed for all the speculation, for Eckhart to say that he’d love to come back for a third film, for Emma Thomas to outright claim that the filmmakers left it open for interpretation, for Eckhart to even have to ASK CHRIS NOLAN THE CHARACTER’S STATUS (which of course led to yesterday’s item).

    So enough of the “How could you not know??” stuff. It’s always been up-in-the-air, if you ask me.

  • Patrick Goldstein goes after Variety’s Todd McCarthy

    Greg Kinnear\'s Flash of GeniusHere’s another one of those “bloggers and critics are the story” pieces that some people hate so much, but when there’s a dust-up, I like to grab the popcorn and rubberneck like anyone else.

    This time around it’s Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times, you know, the guy that hates bloggers but finds himself doing just that these days.  Anyway, he seems to have taken umbrage with Todd McCarthy’s recent review of “Flash of Genius,” the Universal Greg Kinnear starrer that I’m, frankly, interested in seeing, despite its apparent tendency toward the sentimental.

    Goldstein seems to think there is more to McCarthy’s hemming and hawing than a simple dissatisfaction with the material:

    McCarthy seems intent on taking down the movie, which debuted over the weekend at the Telluride Film Festival…

    As it turns out, “Flash of Genius” is one of the few movies that was invited to both Telluride and Toronto, putting it in distinguished company. My colleague John Horn was at Telluride and says the people he spoke to who saw the film — just regular festival-goers — were impressed by it. In fact, the Telluride screenings were so popular that the festival had to put on additional showings.

    My suspicion is that McCarthy’s real problem with the movie — as he implied in his Telluride wrap-up — is that film festivals shouldn’t be showing what he believes are everyday studio product. If so, he oughta get off the festival circuit, starting with Toronto, which, as always, is loaded with studio fare, some of it no doubt bland and forgettable. The L.A. Film Festival actually premiered a Michael Bay movie a few summers back, which gives you an idea of the length festivals will go to get attention these days.

    Well, there we are.  Two of the old MSM guys going at it.  If only McCarthy had his own blog, we could see some real fireworks.

    But I guess Variety’s blog situation is in…flux…lately.

  • ‘Rachel’ gets a poster

    Is it just me or does Anne Hathaway look weirdly distorted in this image? Not that such a thing is surprising with poster art these days, but truthfully, this is painfully lacking in creativity if you ask me:

    Sony Pictures Classics' Rachel Getting Married

    We have a new buzz page for the film, by the way, which you can check out here.

  • 9/4 Oscarweb Round-up

    Sean Penn in Milk• Tom O’Neil responds to the “Milk” trailer. [Gold Derby]

    • So does Seth Abramowitz. [Defamer]

    • “Appaloosa” director Ed Harris will receive the 3rd annual Kirk Douglas Award at this year’s Santa Barbara Film Festival. [Variety]

    • Peter Sciretta wonders whether “Slumdog Millionaire” stole “Happy-Go-Lucky”‘s thunder at Telluride this year. [/Film]

    • James Rocchi begins his sure-to-be-insightful Toronto coverage. [Cinematical]

    • John Horn looks at acquisition hopefuls in Toronto this year. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Sam Adams profiles “Waltz with Bashir” helmer Ari Folman. [The Envelope]

    • Susan Wloszczyna seems to think Toronto isn’t its Oscar-forecasting self this year. [USA Today]

    • Similarly, in addition to contending that “award-winning contenders appear to be fewer and far between this year,” Anthony Kaufman indicates that “recent market forces” could dampen the buying and selling of films at this year’s fest. [Wall Street Journal]

  • New ‘Quantum’ pics

    Picking up on this a day late, but Empire has unveiled a load of previously unseen stills from “Quantum of Solace.” Nothing particularly illuminating or striking about them, though my inner eight-year-old can’t wait for the scene that contains this:

    Also, I hadn’t registered until now that the UK is getting this two weeks before the Yanks. Sometimes Britannia does indeed rule.

  • Huh?

    In a year when the Venice festival lineup has been roundly deemed the weakest — not to mention, least star-powered — in some time, you have to wonder what its organisers are thinking in going head-to-head with Toronto next year.

    I assume Venice director Marco Mueller is banking on the European prestige of a potential Golden Lion to lure titles away from Toronto, which doesn’t have a competition aspect, but as the Times succinctly puts it:

    This could leave Venice in a vulnerable position: it’s a film festival noted for its glamour and certainly has more public recognition than Toronto – but no business is done there; it doesn’t have a “market” (as Toronto does) where films are bought and sold. Quite besides the red carpet fun and games, the “market” is the nuts and bolts of a film festival, including Cannes.

     Madness.

  • Two-Face is dead afterall…

    It’s official…and totally fucking stupid.  Way to go, Nolie.  Way to neuter the second most important Bat-villain there is.

  • Critics fall hard for ‘Rachel’

    Since I saw that smart, snappy trailer, I suspected that “Rachel Getting Married” would find a following. Even so, I wouldn’t have guessed that it would turn out to be the critical darling of the Venice Film Festival at the halfway mark.

    Yet that — aided by the general perception that, the Miyazaki aside, the competition films have been lacklustre — is exactly what has happened. Hours after its Lido screening this evening, raves for the film as a whole are pouring in, while that Oscar buzz for Anne Hathaway is getting louder.

    Screen International gushes:

    Hand-held, free-wheeling and at times joyously spontaneous, the dogme-like “Rachel Getting Married” sees Jonathan Demme paying tribute to Robert Altman (in particular “A Wedding”) but there’s such a large dose of music in here it almost forms a genre of its own … Packed with superb performances, in particular from Anne Hathaway in the lead role and Debra Winger in a small supporting turn she makes memorable, Rachel Getting Married will undoubtedly be up for awards consideration in the major categories.

    Variety’s breathless review, meanwhile, sums up Hathaway’s performance as “fragile, angry and superb,” while comparing the film to my own favourite Demme work:

    Brimming with energy, elan and the unpredictability of his “Something Wild,” Jonathan Demme’s triumphant “Rachel Getting Married” may just lay the wedding film to rest, being such a hard act to follow … Riding emotional rollercoasters to the ever-changing rhythms of the wonderfully eclectic in-house bands whose music never ceases, Demme’s self-styled stunner should appeal to arthouse auds.

    (more…)

  • ‘Slumdog’ to close London fest

    The full lineup for October’s London Film Festival will be revealed in a week’s time, but we do now know what its bookends will be.

    “Frost/Nixon” was confirmed months ago as the festival opener. Now comes the announcement that Danny Boyle’s surprise package “Slumdog Millionaire,” coming off sensational buzz at Telluride, will have its European premiere as the closing film of the festival. Guess which one I’m more excited about.

    Festival director Sandra Hebron faces a tough task trying to top last year’s amazing slate, which included “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” “No Country for Old Men,” “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days,” “I’m Not There,”  “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” and “The Savages,” to name but a few of the highlights.

    But this bodes very well indeed … and it’s a nice touch to round out this very British festival with a hot film from a homegrown talent. I can’t wait.

  • “Never blend in.”

    Never Blend InThe new tagline for “Milk” is better than the “Join Him” line that was on that prospective poster we saw yesterday, I’d say. Beyond the obvious issue of individualistic pride (gay or otherwise) being conveyed, it digs in to the zeitgeist, reflects the importance of going your own way, particularly noteworthy this year, I’d say.

    The “Milk” buzz page has been updated with the trailer and official site, by the way.

  • Fantastic ‘Milk’ trailer debuts!

    As promised. And it looks absolutely amazing.

    Focus Features has just released the trailer for Gus Van Sant’s “Milk,” along with what looks to be the key art work for the film (as opposed to the concept poster that was revealed yesterday).

    I’ve been hearing some wonderful things about Sean Penn’s work in the film, and if this two-and-a-half minute glimpse is any indication, he’ll be a busy man this Oscar season.

    Click here to view the trailer or on the image below.

    Focus Features\' Milk

    And on YouTube:

  • ‘Appaloosa’ art work continues to impress

    I really dug the one-sheet for Ed Harris’s “Appaloosa” that debuted a few weeks ago. There’s something about the monochrome grit of it all. And now it seems that New Line has released some banner art work for each of the four principle characters in the film. I stumbled onto them at Awards Daily (and cropped the set into the badass character quartet below).

    I’ll be reviewing “Appaloosa,” which I saw last week, in a few days once Toronto kicks into high gear. Feast your eyes for the time being:

    New Line Cinema\'s Appaloosa

  • James Franco in ‘Milk’

    James Franco in Milk

    (Thanks to Bryan)