In Contention

Category: Daily

  • Extreme ‘Happening’ division

    It has an issue or two, granted, but it doesn’t deserve a major thrashing. It’s too refined, too expertly fused.

    LINK

    All I’m saying is that it’s a odd feeling watching a career end before your very eyes.

    LINK

  • Eastwood’s ‘Gran Torino’ set for a 2008 bow, but…

    …didn’t we already know this? Variety’s Pamela McClintock is claiming it as an exclusive, but the film has been on our contenders charts for at least a month now. And Guy Lodge was talking about “Gran Torino” and “Changeling” looking “to keep [Eastwood’s] profile high in 2008” just last week.

  • They’re being taken from us left and right…

    This is becoming a horrible, horrible summer.

  • ‘Hulk’ reviews coming in…

    UPDATE (10:05 a.m.): Jeff Wells is going out of his way to find the so-so reactions to the film.  I anticipated them sooner or later. He’s also going out of his way to toss me under a bus, but he likes the theatrics so he can have at it.

    Wells is spotlighting some shifty sources, though. Mostly net mavens, with an off-the-mark-as-alwys HFPA member thrown in to boot.

    EARLIER: Reviews and reactions to the second Marvel Studios project of the year, “The Incredible Hulk,” are beginning to pour in. The film premiered in Los Angeles Sunday and had screenings in New York and London last night. The bulk of L.A. critics will be getting looks tonight and tomorrow.

    Assessments are generally positive in the early stages. You can read my review here. But this is where the crowd is leaning (with more sure to pile on later this evening):

    Mark Monahan (Daily Telegraph):

    Besides keeping things moving with a mission, Leterrier reveals a strong eye for an exciting set-piece, as at home with a foot-chase through the Brazilian slums as in the brutal climactic battle between the two uber-beings. (In the latter, the potent sense of at-the-ringside immediacy largely – if not entirely – compensates for the CGI shortcomings).

    (More after the jump)

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  • Verde

    2 for 2. More to come…and soon.

  • Cameron Crowe returns!

    After the disaster that was “Elizabethtown” — a script that was so much stronger than what wound up on screen — Cameron Crowe is finally coming back with a Ben Stiller-Reese Witherspoon adventure comedy for Sony.

    Even after “Elizabethtown,” Crowe is still a filmmaker who I will be first in line opening day for. 2009 just got a whole lot more exciting for me.

  • ‘Crystal Skull’ biggest Indy?

    Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I believe this weekend “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” passed “Raiders of the Lost Ark” to become the most successful of the Indy films. Granted, counting in inflation, “Raiders” might still be ahead, but probably not for long.

    One has to wonder how long it will take greedy ol’ Lucas to come up with a follow up plan. I can’t see Spielberg doing another Indy movie, but I can see everyone else involved wanting to badly. Will we be given a Mutt Ravenwood movie (something I’d probably be more in favor of than another Indy film. Get some exciting up and coming directors and writers with soul-power attached, and they could be great).

    At the end of the day, did anybody really want another Indy movie? I get the feeling that when “Crystal Skull” has run it’s course and has around $7-800 worldwide, Lucas won’t let it lie and we’ll get more.

    So what’s the best case scenario? Sound off.

  • Spike vs Clint: Round Three

    Oh dear, this really is getting ugly. As we all knew he would, Spike Lee has responded to Clint Eastwood’s instructions that he “shut his face” about the issue of the supposed sidelining of African-Americans in “Flags of Our Fathers.” And, in an interview with ABC News’ Sheila Marikar, it seems Lee hasn’t picked his words any more tactfully than Eastwood:

    First of all, the man is not my father and we’re not on a plantation either. He’s a great director. He makes his films, I make my films. The thing about it though, I didn’t personally attack him. And a comment like ‘a guy like that should shut his face’ — come on Clint, come on. He sounds like an angry old man right there.

    If he wishes, I could assemble African-American men who fought at Iwo Jima and I’d like him to tell these guys that what they did was insignificant and they did not exist. I’m not making this up. I know history. I’m a student of history. And I know the history of Hollywood and its omission of the one million African-American men and women who contributed to World War II. Not everything was John Wayne, baby.

    Now I’m actually more sympathetic to Lee’s views than some, and I think Eastwood could have phrased his remarks more delicately. But the plantation line takes the argument to a place it really doesn’t need to go, and frankly makes me cringe. These are two of the best, most thoughtful filmmakers in the business, and this is the level of discussion they come up with?

    Lee closes the interview with a peace offering that strikes me a somewhat half-hearted, not least because he can’t resist inserting a political barb there too:

    Even though he’s trying to have a Dirty Harry flashback, I’m going to take the Obama high road and end it right here. Peace and love.

    Not cool. I hope Eastwood has enough smarts to let this go. I suspect he won’t. For my part, I hope “Miracle at St Anna” is a terrific enough film to overshadow this squabble.

  • Sight & Sound weighs in on Cannes

    OK, so Cannes is old news, but for me it’s never really over until Sight & Sound prints its annual Cannes review – for my money, the British magazine offers the most expansive and thoughtful coverage of the festival around. It’s not available online, but it’s worth grabbing a copy if you can. Meanwhile, I’ve picked out a few highlights from editor Nick James’ commentary on the key festival films.

    Interestingly, James agrees by and large with the jury’s selections. He names “The Class” as his favourite film of the festival, declaring it “so electrifying, satisfying and inspiring that it’s hard to believe it isn’t the work of professional fiction weavers at the top of their trade.” He also joins the chorus of approval for “Gomorra:” “So compelling is the detail that there’s no need for thriller conventions … Garrone’s direction makes incredible use of desolate locations and the acting is impeccable.” I must admit I am getting more excited about this film with every notice I read.

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  • Bart’s ‘non-Oscar’ list

    Variety’s Peter Bart is spinning his Oscar wheels at his new blog. The post is a efw days old at this point, but his “non-Oscar list” is a cute little aside worth a look. He chalks actors like Robert Downey Jr. and Sarah Jessica Parker up as being on the list by sheer fact that they’re in bona fide hits (to say nothing of bias against the former and quality of the latter, of course).  But the move toward the unpopular is the point he’s driving at, and a look at the Oscar telecast’s ratings the last few years tells that tale clear enough.

    Here’s a glimpse at his logic:

    A generation ago, Oscar voters were tolerant of success — witness such best picture winners as “The Godfather,” “The Sting,” and, god forbid, “The Sound of Music.” However, a curious bipolar behavior has set in lately. Members of the Academy serve dutifully as professionals in the industry throughout the year, going about their tasks of producing, acting, editing, composing, etc. Then Oscar time sets in and they all think they’re members of a festival jury. “Art” is in and “commerce” is out.

    Lately, several important studio executives have met with the Academy to review these trends and also propose possible changes in the Oscar show. They advocated a tighter show, fewer awards and a greater stress on entertainment value.

    They hit a stone wall. The bipolar Academy is sticking to its ways.

    Read the rest here.

  • Neck and neck

    After last week’s poll on Oscarless directors, it became clear pretty fast that two giants were way ahead of the pack: Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick.  The closest pretender to the throne of snubbed helmers was Robert Altman, but it was a VERY distant third.

    So this week it seemed only fair to suss out where everyone stands on these two alone, without the other 14 names in the mix.  So have at it in the new poll.

  • Howdy-Ho

    Sorry for the delay in writing anything folks. After graduating college and driving cross country and setting up home in Los Angeles, I’ll hopefully be writing here as frequently as the rest of the guys. And they’ll probably all put me to shame.

    This Monday I’ll be attending a reading and Q+A of Eric Roth’s work. I’ll be sure to check back in with my thoughts afterwards. “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is, in my opinion, his masterpiece, and I cannot wait to see what Fincher’s done with it.

  • Eastwood tells Lee to ‘shut his face’

    After a terse response at Cannes to Spike Lee’s accusation that “Flags of Our Fathers” sidelined African-Americans’ contribution to WWII, Clint Eastwood has spoken at greater length about the matter. In a substantial interview in today’s Guardian, he makes his feelings toward Lee quite clear:

    “He was complaining when I did Bird. Why would a white guy be doing that? I was the only guy who made it, that’s why. He could have gone ahead and made it. Instead he was making something else.” As for Flags of Our Fathers, he says, yes, there was a small detachment of black troops on Iwo Jima as a part of a munitions company, “but they didn’t raise the flag. The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn’t do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people’d go, ‘This guy’s lost his mind.’ I mean, it’s not accurate.”

    In what appears to be a pre-emptive strike, he defends his new film “Changeling” against similar accusations, noting that it takes place in Los Angeles before it had a significant black population:

    “What are you going to do, you gonna tell a fuckin’ story about that? Make it look like a commercial for an equal opportunity player? I’m not in that game. I’m playing it the way I read it historically, and that’s the way it is. When I do a picture and it’s 90% black, like Bird, I use 90% black people … A guy like him should shut his face.”

    Well, I wouldn’t expect the Clintster to mince his words, but still… wow. It will be interesting to see if Lee has (another) rebuttal prepared. For one thing, one wonders what makes of Eastwood taking on Nelson Mandela in “Human Factor.” (Eastwood has a quip prepared already: “I’m not going to make Nelson Mandela a white guy.”)

    Lots of good stuff in the interview besides, particularly for fans of the Dirty Harry films. Check it out here. 

  • And the pointless remake of the day is…

    … “My Fair Lady.” Variety reports that Columbia is putting together a new version of the classic Lerner & Lowe musical, George Cukor’s 1964 filmization of which copped the 1964 Best Picture Oscar. 

    The studio is calling it an “update,” something of a misnomer considering it will in fact retain the 1912 London milieu of the original. Their reasoning for this move escapes me, but Columbia co-president Doug Belgrad claims:

    “This update will preserve the magic of the musical while fleshing out the characters and bringing 1912 London to life in an authentic and exciting way.”

    I thought we already had the various interpretations of Shaw’s “Pygmalion” (not least Anthony Asquith’s still-surprisingly-fresh 1938 film) for character depth, but apparently we need another. London theatre impresario Cameron Mackintosh is also on board, and his justification for the project strikes me as even more tenuous than Belgrad’s. Apparently the story of Eliza Doolittle’s metamorphosis from Cockney guttersnipe to society belle “couldn’t be more timely in a contemporary world obsessed with overnight celebrity.” To which I can only ask, if the story is so relevant and contemporary, why not really update it?

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  • Marketing ‘W’

  • ‘Happy’ season for Miramax?

    I’ve been meaning to write about Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” ever since I saw it some three weeks ago, but I haven’t found a window until now. I’m off to Berlin on the weekend and I’d really like to get this off my plate before I leave, so amid all the packing, I thought I’d hammer out some brief thoughts.

    I’m never really let down by a Leigh film. Even his lesser efforts seem to exist on some simple but probing level that makes argument a fool’s errand. More often than not, his work sparks appreciation during the awards season, and he even managed a second Best Director nomination for “Vera Drake” in 2004, which surprised more than a few people.

    “All or Nothing” was one of my absolute favorite gems of 2002, yet it was ignored completely, while going back to the epic year in cinema that was 1999, we find perhaps Leigh’s most ambitious effort in “Topsy-Turvy.” Then, of course, there was “Secrets & Lies,” which captured the hearts of many in an Oscar year dominated by independent film.

    Leigh’s pre-“Secrets & Lies” work is a slightly different breed, but still fundamentally the work of the same artist and, at times, the same vision of the world. And he has come back to it with “Happy-Go-Lucky,” the shrewd observation of which Guy made in his April review of the film.

    Something feels even more off-the-cuff about “Happy” than Leigh’s recent films. There is an even greater sense of spontaneity and improvisation lurking between the frames that can be both exciting and off-putting, but the purpose is served throughout: bringing the audience into the devil may care world of a woman hell-bent on saving the drama for your mama.

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  • Strike ‘9’

    I just caught wind that Focus Features’ animated endeavor “9” from writer/director Shane Acker (and based on his Academy Award-nominated short film) has been slated for 2009, removing it from the already thin slate of contenders in the animated feature category. Apparently, this has always been the case, so I’ve either been out to lunch, going on bad information or both. It happens.

    The studio still, presumably, has a horse in the race with Henry Selick’s Neil Gaiman adaptation “Coraline,” should it maintain a platform release pattern that puts in in U.S. cinemas by the end of the year. We’ll see.

  • Zimmer taking the Joker ‘punk?’

    Todd Martens, who always does a fine job of rounding up news and talking points regarding the year’s film music compositions (especially around the Oscar season), sat down recently with Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. The composing duo of “Batman Begins” and the upcoming “The Dark Knight” are enjoying a nice publicity push, including a press day last week in Los Angeles solely for the pair.

    Martens was able to listen to about 10 minutes of the new score (jealousy isn’t a strong enough adjective at the moment), and he managed to get some details on the way the two composers are splitting duties. It seems Zimmer is on Joker duties, while Howard is fleshing out the aural rhytms of Harvey Dent.

    Zimmer had some interesting things to say on his approach to the Caped Crusader’s latest foe:

    Yet some early signs show “The Dark Knight” departing at least a little bit from the more subtle tones of “Batman Begins”…the theme Zimmer wrote for the Joker, played in the film by the late Heath Ledger, is a damning piece of music. It’s an intense eight-minute piece that comes off like an orchestral interpretation of a something created by Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails. Zimmer says the work is only two notes, but the two notes are twisted and manipulated into mimicking the sounds of thunder, razors and all sorts of clatter heard in alleyways probably better left unexplored.

    Though that description may not make it sound like music to the ears, it’s still immensely listenable. It plays out like something from a horror film, with many a shift in direction and a nod to “Psycho.” But all of it is tied together by a striking blow of strings that keep it from falling apart, and Zimmer said it bears a punk influence.

    Check out the rest. And here’s a glimpse of what might be some of the new score, by the way.

    Anticipation is killing me by the day on this.