In Contention

Category: Daily

  • Cinematical swoons over Scott Thomas

    Compared to the drought of previous years, where the five nominees have been all but pre-determined for months in advance, the Best Actress race is looking rather crowded at this point. (It’s certainly the major category that gave me the most pause when I updated my predictions this morning.)

    What’s gratifying to see is that the field features so many contenders from independent films, including the much-discussed Sally Hawkins, Charlize Theron (coming off a lot of Venice buzz), Anne Hathaway, Melissa Leo and Michelle Williams.

    But perhaps the darkest horse of all is Kristin Scott Thomas, an actress whose star has dimmed somewhat Stateside since receiving her only Oscar nomination twelve years ago. In that time, she’s been working more and more frequently in her adopted homeland of France, and she now returns to prominence with the French-language “I’ve Loved You So Long,” a dark domestic drama in which she plays a woman reconnecting with her family after fifteen years in prison.

    Scott Thomas has been garnering steady acclaim since the film bowed at Berlin in February. Now, in the wake of its Telluride screening, and in the midst of a rave review declaring the film a “rare masterpiece,” Cinematical joins the chorus with this bold assertion:

    Thomas’s performance here has been generating Oscar buzz for a while now, and deservedly so; she will almost certainly garner a Best Actress Oscar nod for this film.

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  • Raves roll in for Miyazaki

    Six days in, and a rather quiet Venice Film Festival has come up with its first unalloyed critical triumph – an animated Japanese re-imagining of Hans Christian Andersen, aimed primarily at children still in the single digits.

    That would be surprising were “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea” directed by anyone other than Hayao Miyazaki, the Oscar-winning animation master who has, in recent years, crossed over to being one of the industry’s most venerated auteurs. After all, “Spirited Away” — for me, still one of the crowning cinematic achievements of the decade — began its incredible success story when it won the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2002 (sharing with Paul Greengrass’ “Bloody Sunday,” no less).

    2005 follow-up “Howl’s Moving Castle” didn’t reach quite the same dizzy heights, but it was another richly textured, narratively daring work that received its fair share of acclaim, and a second Oscar nomination for Miyazaki.

    Now comes “Ponyo,” apparently a return to the simpler, gentler storytelling of earlier films like “My Neighbour Totoro,” that is already doing spectacular business in its home country. And it seems the looser style and younger target audience hasn’t deterred critics in the slightest. Screen Daily breathlessly raves:

    Visually, it’s extraordinary; imaginatively, it’s daring. Once again Hayao Miyazaki is playing in a league of his own with … a sweet, gentle, moving, and always delightful Japanese take on the classic Little Mermaid fable … “Ponyo” is firing on all cylinders on every level. From the sheer creativity of its traditional cell animation to its characterisations (every adult here feels real); the interactions between old and young; the untrammelled imagination on display throughout the story; and, above all, the way Miyazaki still dares to be different.

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  • Congrats on $500 million

    Of course, we called this long ago, but I’m glad something finally crossed this milestone again, and doubly happy it was the Bat.

  • Welcome back Mr. Rourke

    Mickey Rourke in The WrestlerHe could radiate danger or disarm you with an impish smile. His eyes flashed with rage, or softened with love, both entirely believable. There was a purity to his work, an honesty, an authenticity that many other actors did not, and do not have; he seemed destined to be one of the greats.

    There was a time Mickey Rourke was the heir apparent to Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall and Jack Nicholson, an actor with extraordinary gifts having given an impressive array of performances throughout the 1980s. He stopped “Body Heat” in its tracks with his intimate arsonist, speaking quietly to William Hurt, his lawyer, instructing him on how to build a bomb, his tones quiet as so not to be heard, yet slightly ashamed at what he was suggesting.

    He was astonishing as Motorcycle Boy in Francis Ford Coppola’s experimental and brilliant film “Rumble Fish.”  He tackled the role of a young man blessed, or cursed, with being good at everything he did, yet lacking in ambition because nothing challenged him.

    Rourke was brilliant in “Diner” as the would-be hair dresser that gets in too deep with gambling. And opposite Eric Roberts in “The Pope of Greenwich Village” he put on a method acting workshop that would have made De Niro and Pacino jealous

    Michael Cimino’s under-appreciated “Year of the Dragon,” Alan Parker’s “Angel Heart” — equal success as a  bigoted police captain and a dedicated gumshoe respectively.  And then it all fell apart.

    Friendships with members of the Hells Angels, some of whom he took to studio meetings, and a strange foray into boxing made Rourke poison in the business. No one would work with him.

    This is all beautifully outlined in my good friend Christopher Heard’s book Mickey Rourke: High and Low, and it’s fascinating to read, to gain an understanding of how and why Rourke’s career imploded as it did. Here was a massively talented actor, a prodigy if you will, one of the new greats, and before he was 35 he was finished.

    BUT…now he’s coming back with what is said to be a solid performance in Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler.”  If rumors can believed (sometimes they can, sometimes…well…), the performance might land him in the Oscar circle.  Kris touched on these possibilities a few weeks ago.

    In fairness, Rourke has been back for a while with acclaimed work in “Once Upon a Time in Mexico” and “Sin City,” but this new film supposedly challenges him as an actor and I hear he rises to the occasion with what is being hailed as the finest performance of his career and among the finest of this year.

    All hail Mr. Rourke.  And weclome back…it’s been too long.

  • Walking away with it

    Tom Cruise in MagnoliaI remember slipping into a small theater in 1987 to see something called “Street Smart,” the new Christopher Reeve film that I had no particular interest in, to be quite honest. Two hours later I emerged knowing two things: Morgan Freeman was a brilliant actor, and he would be nominated for an Academy Award.

    In a rather lacking movie, Freeman was terrifying as Fast Black, a vicious pimp who sees in a young reporter the chance to get off of a murder rap. At one point in the film he holds a pair of scissors to the eye of one of his hookers and invites her to choose which eye she is going to lose. It was an astounding performance that launched the actor’s career, earning him awards from the Los Angeles critics, New York critics and National Society of Film Critics…as well as that Oscar nod I predicted.

    Supporting performances can often be the heart and soul of a film, anchoring the picture and actually elevating the work of the lead actor. Can you imagine what “The Wizard of Oz” would be without the perfection of the cast surrounding Judy Garland, or “The Godfather” without the magnificence supporting Marlon Brando and Al Pacino? Nor can I, and in fact, through the years, supporting performances have become more and more important, certainly earning more press, with lead actors once unwilling to be promoted for an Oscar in these “lesser” categories now only to be happy to do so.

    Tom Cruise, arguably the biggest actor on the planet in 1999, gave his finest performance in a supporting role in “Magnolia” and somehow — SOMEHOW — lost the Oscar to Michael Caine. Jack Nicholson has gone the supporting route many times, winning an Oscar for his work in “Terms of Endearment” and earning nods for “Easy Rider,” “Reds” and “A Few Good Men,” though he was criminally snubbed for “The Departed.”

    Meryl Streep has become no stranger to supporting roles, earning an Oscar nod for “Adaptation” in 2002 (she too should have won) and certainly turning heads for a should’ve-been-nominated turn in “The Manchurian Candidate.”

    Sometimes an actor in a supporting role can dominate the film, as we saw this summer with Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight.” In “Apocalypse Now” the film actually peaks with Robert Duvall’s napalm-loving surfer, not Brando’s deranged Colonel. Like Javier Bardem in “No Country for Old Men,” Duvall so dominated the screen when he was on it. In just a few scant scenes…we could never forget him.

    The work of the supporting actor, the “job,” so to speak, may seem to be support of the lead actors, secondary figures in the canvas of other artists. But what we see more often than not is their support of the story, and in many cases, their rise to infamy as a result.

    Have your say. What are some of the most sensational supporting performances in film history?

  • ‘Plain’ brings buzz for Theron

    I’ve already said how high my hopes are for “The Burning Plain,” the directorial debut from one of the most interesting screenwriters in the business, Guillermo Arriaga. Now the reviews are trickling in, and they’re — predictably — mixed.

    Variety, as is often the case these days, provides the major buzzkill, dismissing it as “an elaborate writing exercise” (like that’s a bad thing) with “little to become engaged with.” Happily, Lee Marshall at Variety’s UK equivalent, Screen International, couldn’t disagree more:

    A powerful contemporary melodrama, more restrained but also much cleaner, in dramatic focus and emotional thrust, than the three films Arriaga penned for Inarritu … A sombre story about an unforgivable act and its cross-generational fallout is here leavened by a greater dose of hope and redemption than Arriaga has yet allowed himself, and the games The Burning Plain plays with its audience are amply justified by the emotional punch of the film’s denouement.

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  • When ‘W.’ met Laura

    I have to say, Josh Brolin isn’t nearly as convincing in this CNN exclusive clip of Oliver Stone’s upcoming “W.” as he has been in the other stuff we’ve seen:

  • ‘Button’ footage raises concerns at Telluride

    Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin ButtonWell I was willing to let the first murmurs go by without commentary, but the more I poke around, the more I’m hearing that the footage from David Fincher’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” shown last night at the director’s tribute is underwhelming to say the least.

    This is disconcerting.  As much as I loved Eric Roth’s screenplay, I also made it a point of mentioning that it had a lot of room to be interpreted peculiarly on screen.  It’s the sort of narrative that could fly off the rails in the transition and it seems that perhaps — just perhaps — this could be the case.

    I’m keeping my hopes up for the moment, but it seems Jeffrey Wells conveyed these sentiments from one attendee:

    It just wasn’t particularly exciting or engrossing, one explained. Excellent visual effects (old Pitt as a baby, etc.) and fine cinematography but with a kind of enervated, waiting-for-something-to-happen quality. The footage showed portions of the entire film, the other friend said, but in a way that kept you from getting into it with cuts coming too abruptly. And so people were kind of…whatever, grunting and muttering on the way out.

    And now Peter Sciretta of /Film has unloaded this first hand reaction:

    I’m all for conserving the director’s artistic vision, and I’ve enjoyed most of Fincher’s work, even if Zodiac could have been 30 minutes shorter on the back end. So when I first heard rumors of the studio pushing Fincher to cut back, my first response was to write it off as another movie studio exec that just didn’t get it. But as it turns out, they might be right.

    The footage I screened tonight was met with disappointment and concern. There are moments of magic and wonder, but interrupted and surrounded by moments which had me questioning, “Is this really the best footage he has?”

    Sciretta has some nice words to say about Brad Pitt and the cinematography, but regardless of the brief high marks, I don’t think I’m alone in saying: “Gulp…”

  • Changing servers

    Okay, after some false starts we’re doing this for real over the weekend.  So if things get dicey you know why.  We’ll make sure it’s all cleared up by Monday’s Oscar column and chart update.  FYI.

  • Into it

    I’m not exactly waiting with bated breath for the Greg Berendt adaptation “He’s Just Not That Into You,” but I will say that I like the visual concept of the teaser poster:

    New Line Cinema's He's Just Not That Into You

    Check out the full poster here.

  • Most anticipated films of Toronto

    Miracle at St. AnnaArmed with the fat program book, detailing every single film to be screened at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, I have gone through it several times to find the films I am interested in seeing. The press schedule is announced online today, at which time I will begin the nightmarish process of creating a calendar that details screening times, interview times, and leave room for the unexpected, a last minute call from a frantic publicist to do an interview I had requested and been declined, but now they want me.

    I love TIFF.

    Aside from Christmas (for my kids) this is my favorite event of the year. Admittedly this one is a tad lower key than in other years as there were some last minute disappointments, films we thought were coming, rumored to be coming, and are not. The hottest whisper on the wind saw “Body of Lies” here with Leo, Russel and Sir Ridley, as well as “The Road,” a film I cannot wait to see, having read the amazing book in three scant days.

    I had hoped Eastwood’s “Changeling” would be here, but for some goofy reason Angelina Jolie could not make it and the festival folks felt Clint Eastwood was not enough star power on his own…(ouch!).

    Those minor complaints aside, I am now officially pumped for the festival to begin. Following are the ten most anticipated films of the fest for me and me alone. I will see more than 40 films over the 10 days, conduct 20 interviews or so, and maybe get four hours of sleep a night. I will ingest more coffee than is healthy, drink far too much water, and eat poorly, but hey…it’s festival.

    Check out the list after the jump…

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  • ‘Body of Lies’ poster

    Cinematical is calling this poster image of Ridley Scott’s upcoming “Body of Lies” an exclusive, but I guess I could’ve gone down to the Warner lot any time last week and snapped a shot of the giant banner that’s hanging out on Olive and called it the same thing. It’s been there for a few days now.

    Anyway, here it is in all it’s slick glory:

    Warner Bros. Pictures' Body of Lies

  • Robert Parker’s ‘Appaloosa’

    Appaloosa by Robert ParkerBefore I head out today on a whirlwind of pre-Toronto screenings that will take me away from the work at hand, I wanted to follow up last week’s brief comments on Robert Parker’s novel “Appaloosa,” which is being adapted for the screen by director Ed Harris this year (and will play at the festival next week).

    I’ll reiterate here that the most interesting dynamic of the entire narrative is the relationship between Virgil Cole  and Everett Hitch.  Two gun hands that swagger from town to town to clean up messes, make up “laws” that must be followed and represent order for a small time before moving on, they’ve got a 15-year partnership that goes to the bone marrow.  The Hitch character relays the story in the first person, which makes the wordless conversations between the two men, the subtle nuances of knowledge, the all around ability to intuit each other’s disposition — especially where Hitch is concerned — all the more intriguing.

    Consider a scene that depicts Cole flying off the rails and beating a giant bar patron to a pulp, furious at some outside irritant more than the patron’s loud antics.  Only Hitch can pull him off the man, and he does so with a calm, inevitable touch, lifting Cole off the ground and pulling him back until Cole tells him, twice, and equally calm: “You can let me go.”  It’s an awesome dynamic these two have.

    Cole and Hitch will be played by Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen respectively in the upcoming film, and I really hope they can pull off this chemistry (I’ll know soon).  The narrative itself might be a touch trite and Renee Zellweger’s Allie character is certainly it’s most irritating aspect, but the peculiarities of character that Parker writes into the two leads more than make up for that.

    So if you’re a fan of the genre, I’d recommend it.  Don’t expect a miracle of substance, but you’ll get some nice grit and hard-nosed simplicity to sink your teeth into.

  • ‘Australia’ steps aside for Bond

    Jeff Wells reports that the release date for Baz Luhrmann’s vast period romance “Australia” has been pushed back from November 14 to November 26.

    Fair enough – I wouldn’t want to go up against “Quantum of Solace” either. Given that it seems to have become fashionable to beat up on “Australia,” sight unseen, there will no doubt be a lot of snarky speculation about what state the film is currently in – though seriously, there’s only so much that can be done in twelve days.

    As perhaps the only person on earth who loved that trailer, I remain resolutely optimistic. Luhrmann is quite possibly insane, but the world needs more of that.

  • Docs scramble for the deadline

    Today’s New York Times carries an interesting piece about the crunch of documentaries currently being screened in Manhattan to empty houses – all in the name of Oscar eligibility. A simplified rule change now requires that, in order to qualify for the awards, feature docs must be screened for a week – on both coasts – before August 31.

    However, in a rather surreal bit of logic, the filmmakers involved are doing their utmost not to attract audiences, presumably so as to avoid peaking too early in terms of media coverage:

    “I didn’t advertise, I didn’t seek reviews,” said Roberta Grossman, producer of “Blessed is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh,” the story of a Jewish-Hungarian resistance fighter during World War II. “My goal for this run was to qualify for the Academy Awards, period.”

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  • The Brits feeling ‘Burn’

    You’ve surely heard by now that the US trade papers aren’t exactly crazy for the Coen Brothers’ latest, “Burn After Reading,” which bowed in Venice last night. “Arch and ungainly” was one of the less damning descriptions in Todd McCarthy’s review, while Kirk Honeycutt was moderately kinder in calling the film “a minor piece of silliness.”

    Which makes the reaction of the frequently grouchy Limey press all the more surprising. They like it, they really like it. The film has gone four-for-four with the major British papers, all of them seemingly welcoming the brothers’ fleet-footed change of pace. The Independent’s venerable Geoffrey Macnab calls it “dark, convoluted, chaotic – and extremely funny,” arguing that the film goes deeper than has been advertised:

    The Coens suggest this is simply a story about knuckleheads. But the film offers a damning portrait of a society in which the knuckleheads continue to hold the levers of power. The Coens introduce plenty of familiar, noirish elements. On one level, this is a dark thriller in which paranoia, avarice and sexual jealousy rule. But thanks to the increasingly absurd behaviour of the protagonists,it is also very funny.

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  • Shameless

    Sitting at a bus stop in London’s Shoreditch at 2am, waiting for the ever-elusive night bus home, I had rather a long time to contemplate the new UK poster for “The Duchess,” Paramount Vantage’s Keira Knightley costume flick…

    … and my initial reaction was that, to my surprise, I rather liked it. Clean, stark, beautifully lit (the colours are richer in print), it also squarely emphasises the basic drawcard of what looks (to me) like a rather uninteresting film: a gorgeous woman in nice frocks.

    But then I came to that tagline – “There are three people in her marriage” – and, well, ick.

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  • Lovin’ the Boss

    Can I just say the use of Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising” as Joe Biden’s theme of sorts on this campaign (the same song accompanied his entrance on Saturday) is adding to that tingly feeling?