In Contention

Category: Daily

  • Audiences to see a different ‘Iron Man’ than critics?

    At Monday’s screening of “Iron Man,” I was sad to see that Samuel L. Jackson’s much-anticipated cameo as S.H.I.E.L.D. leader Nick Fury wasn’t in the cut. Though director Jon Favreau has suggested the scene might surface in the DVD release.

    Well New York Mag’s Vulture blog points us today to a Comic Book Resources story revealing that general audiences will get to see the Easter egg scene that was withheld from critics’ screenings on the grounds of Top Secrecy, so to speak:

    One thing missing from the film was the much-touted end of movie scene with Samuel Jackson as Nick Fury. I understand from British Film classification sources that the scene is in the print that they’ve approved for general release, but not in premiere or preview screenings, so as not to spoil the um.. surprise… bugger. Anyway, he’s recruiting for a group called The Avengers.

    And Moviehole confirms the notion. With the sentiments of two fellow journos. Fair enough. I was gonna pay to see it again anyway. Now I have even more incentive!

    And come on, “The Avengers initiative?” A shared scene with Tony Stark in “The Incredible Hulk?” The road to an “Avengers” moving being paved with gold? My geek meter is on overload.

    God bless Marvel Studios.

    UPDATED: It looks like John over at The Movie Blog has the footage in question up, from a YouTube posting.

  • Actors winning Best Director — always deserved?

    Of course not. Quite often the Academy gets behind an actor for the simple reason they pulled of the film without screwing too much up.

    How else can one explain Mel Gibson’s win for “Braveheart” but failure to be nominated for his masterpiece “The Passion of the Christ” and “Apocalypto,” easily two of the finest directed films of the last ten years? Somewhere along the road, the Academy fell in love with actors who try their hand at directing (unless your name is Sean Penn or Barbara Streisand) and began giving away Oscars, quite often over more deserving directors.

    Poor Martin Scorsese has watched actors win the Best Director prize over his work three times. In 1980, of course, Robert Redford won for his drama “Ordinary People” over Scorsese’s searing “Raging Bull,” while ten years later Kevin Costner won the Oscar for “Dances with Wolves,” besting Scorsese for “Goodfellas.” But hey — this is the Academy…right? Clint Eastwood also bested Scorsese’s “The Aviator” in 2004 with a win for “Million Dollar Baby.”

    One year after Redford won his Academy Award for Best Director, Warren Beatty took home the award, much deserved for his criminally under-appreciated epic “Reds.” But he would watch in shock as “Chariots of Fire” ran to the Best Picture award over his film. The following year, a minor British actor, Richard Attenborough directed “Gandhi,” which the Academy fell in love with, honoring the achievements of the film’s subject rather than the effort itself, which even at the time seemed old-fashioned and rather ordinary. Attenborough himself, on the way to accept the Directors Guild Award for the film, stopped to chat with Steven Spielberg to make clear what everyone in the room seemed to know: that Spielberg should have won the award for “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial!”

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  • Could Robert Downey Jr. own this year?

    I remember when Robert Downey Jr. was cast in the role of Tony Stark for Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man,” my colleague David Poland made the shrewd observation that the former drug-addled wash-up was once again insurable.

    Not that I like putting such language to an actor I love so much, but the truth is, he hit one of the deepest downward spirals a star of his caliber could imagine, all of it following nearly 10 years of Brat Pack fame and a heralded Oscar nominated performance in 1992.

    But how about the turnaround? After the bad days of the mid-to-late 90s, and some major relapses in the first part of the new millennium, Downey finally turned the corner. A new role on one of television’s hottest shows wasn’t enough to get him bonded for Woody Allen’s “Melinda and Melinda” (which waited another four years to hit screens, with Will Ferrell ultimately taking the role), and there were pitfalls ahead still, but the upward curve seemed on the horizon somewhere, lurking.

    And here, eight years later, Downey is one day away from the release of one of the year’s most anticipated, likely highest-grossing films. Insured doesn’t say the half of it. Robert Downey Jr. is vindicated.

    But it doesn’t end with Tony Stark. The actor has two other very high profile performances landing in 2008, one of them set to be a laugh riot as he sports black face opposite Ben Stiller in “Tropic Thunder,” releasing in August. To cap off the year, Downey will star in Joe Wright’s “Atonement” follow-up, “The Soloist,” an awards season hopeful for DreamWorks SKG and perhaps a ride to a second Oscar nomination for the actor.

    I bring all this up because it is the story people should be writing, however much publicity would likely prefer to shine the light elsewhere. David Carr wrote a superlative piece that touched the finer points for The New York Times a few weeks ago, and my colleague Blake Rutherford offered his own thoughts in that light as well. But there isn’t enough patting on the back going around for my taste — sue me. An actor taking this big a stumble, looking like straight-to-DVD material if ever a career could be salvaged, and then pushing back with a creative and hard-working fury such as this — it is cause for celebration.

    When all is said and done, I have a feeling Robert Downey Jr. will be the toast of Hollywood in 2008. Entertainer of the year? Maybe. But it’s certainly the story of the year.

    Bravo. And here, here.

  • The buried

    Okay, I think we’re done cleaning out all the kinks here for the night. I wanted to mention, however, that the old site is still out there in cyberspace for you to peruse. Check it out here. It’s a little buggy over there in the wake of the move, but I’ll iron all that out in due time. But now that the new design is out and about, I wanted to link back to a few posts from the last month by both myself and a few contributors, lest they be lost in the shuffle of today’s goings-on:

    1) Guy Lodge previews the Cannes line-up. (4/22)
    2) John Foote takes a look at Brad Pitt’s Oscar hopes this year. (4/21)
    3) Steve Lopez talks about his new book, “The Soloist,” in Pasadena. (4/19)
    4) The “Valkyrie” pile-on knows no bounds. (4/8) and (4/22)
    5) Anticipating the summer movie season. (4/8)
    6) Very brief notes on the “W” screenplay. (4/1)
    7) Remembering Anthony Minghella. (3/23)
    8) And of course, the year-in-advance Oscar column. (2/26)

    That should cover it.

  • Welcome to the new In Contention

    And a day and a half early at that. I like to keep you on your toes. But…a bit of a change, no?

    We’ve cleaned things up around here and consolidated the look of In Contention to what, we hope, is a little more streamlined and user-friendly. Allow me to offer a brisk walk-through.

    We’ve added a few new voices to the mixture who will be posting at their will, so be sure to check out our Contributors section to read up on what they bring to the table. It should make for an exciting season for those of you desperate for some sort of Tapley dilution (I know you’re out there).

    Gerard will still be offering up his weekly “Tech Support” column, but it will be streamlined into the main page of the site here. Ditto Brian Kinsley’s “Page to Screen” articles, though I will be contributing to that weekly feature as well. All features, by the way, will be tagged and headlined accordingly (i.e., “TECH SUPPORT: Best Cinematography,” “PAGE TO SCREEN: ‘Body of Lies,’” etc.). No separate blogs/pages this time.

    You’ll also notice a backlog of a month or so of content. While I was working out the kinks here and there in setting up the new digs, I figured I would continue my various pontifications. Nothing earth-shattering, but some points of interest, perhaps, to be perused. The introductory posts from our new team members can be found sprinkled throughout as well.

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  • Spielberg and blockbusters

    Can he do it? After becoming (in his own eyes) a serious filmmaker with “Schindler’s List,” “Amistad,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “A.I.” and “Munich,” is Steven Spielberg able to re-create the magic he almost always brought to his pure entertainment blockbusters?

    It takes a look at his journey as an artist to even attempt a reasoned understanding of such a question.

    On one hand, I argue that he was always a brilliant director, “Jaws,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and “E.T.” all great examples of his artistry, yet he himself was never satisfied by the reaction to those films by the Academy. It is well documented that Spielberg coveted acceptance in the film community, seeing the Oscar for Best Director as the ultimate acceptance from Hollywood. Snubbed for “Jaws” in 1975, he behaved like a petulant child as live cameras caught it all on film, invited in to see his reaction when he was nominated…but — he wasn’t.

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  • Vulture takes a piss out of ole’ Dubya

    In my daily trek through the ranks of New York Magazine’s Vulture blog this afternoon (increasingly my favorite stop on the net), I came across a couple of posts ripping into our Commander in Chief (*shiver*).

    First up, a very insightful entry, actually, concerning how the evil leader of our gloriously broke and battered nation has come to be embraced with pity by pop culture, rather than accosted on appropriately venomous levels.

    Here’s a look:

    The two places that George W. Bush is showing up in pop culture this spring — besides, of course, taped appearances on game shows — confirm that the culture no longer views him as relevant to the discussion. The Times’ Dennis Lim refers to Bush’s depiction in this week’s stoner comedy Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantánamo Bay as “arguably the most sympathetic movie portrayal of him to date” — but apparently he hasn’t read the widely leaked early draft of the screenplay to Oliver Stone’s biopic. Both portrayals mostly bypass direct criticism of the president, substituting bemusement and — dare we say it? — affection. He’s not a bad guy, just an amiable buffoon — a figure to poke fun at, like an eccentric uncle, but not to revile.

    It’s admirable, in a way, that at his lowest point — with his popularity in the cellar and his political influence in the toilet — pop culture is willing to cut George W. Bush some slack. It’s also disheartening that the leader of the free world is so unimportant that even self-righteous Hollywood blowhards can’t be bothered to get angry at him.

    Also, the webmasters over there got a copy of that widely circulated “W” screenplay that Oliver Stone is hard at work filming down in the Bayou at the moment (or that was the plan last I checked). Along with the help of some of their buddies at the Upright Citizens Brigade, they filmed five scenes (just, you know, to give you an idea of how ridiculous this script really is).

    Take a look, if you can’t stomach it. And yes, “serious as dick cancer” is a line in this thing. Along with the now infamous “Freedom Fries” quip.

    Oy.

  • ‘Enchanted 2’ in the works?

    According to moviehole.net, yes.

  • Kudos season starts here: Cannes lineup is out

    So Cannes Film Festival president Gilles Jacob has revealed the lineup for this year’s competition… and it’s a doozy.

    Suffice to say that next month we’ll have some clarity on at least three of the titles being talked up for next year’s derby, all from formidable Oscar champs – Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York,” Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling” and Steven Soderbergh’s Che Guevara double-whammy, “The Argentine” and “Guerrilla.”

    Interestingly, Soderbergh’s films will screen (and compete) as one four-hour entry, titled simply “Che”; I can’t help wondering whether this is a road-test for an alternative distribution strategy. Seems to me that having only one release to deal with would heighten the project’s awards prospects… not that Soderbergh is any stranger to competing against himself, mind you.

    For Eastwood, meanwhile, this marks his fifth directorial appearance in the Cannes competition, after “Pale Rider,” “Bird,” “White Hunter, Black Heart” and “Mystic River.” As the mixed fortunes of those titles attest, a place in the lineup is no guarantee of future awards glory. Nevertheless, the unexpected inclusion of “Changeling” on the list (a last-minute addition, like the Soderbergh films), combined with Eastwood’s impeccable recent form, certainly boosts the cache of a film that, with its supernatural story elements and the maddeningly inconsistent Angelina Jolie in the lead, has me guarded about its awards potential.

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  • Fonda talks Leone

    Regarding last night’s David Mamet post and that Henry Fonda/Sergio Leone story, I was poking around YouTube and wouldn’t you know it, there’s a clip of the actor recounting the whole story. And he does it much better than me.

    Check it out:

    httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=cHI6Hl7FUqA

  • Milking that ‘Valkyrie’ teet

    I don’t disagree with a lot of what Michael Cieply has to say about the counted-out “Valkyrie” in this recent New York Times piece. Indeed, the Web is the greatest offender when it comes to instant declarations. It’s a tough balance that plenty of webmasters, myself included, struggle with on a daily basis.

    Indeed, there is much from every side on this story in Cieply’s filing, if certain parties are grossly under-quoted or under-attributed for my tastes. (A closing note from Bryan Singer just isn’t enough.) But the bottom line is, hey — maybe there’s nothing to see here?

    However, when you quote executives in a context such as this:

    In the interim Mr. Cruise, his partners at United Artists and the “Valkyrie” filmmakers are bracing for what will likely be a nine-month fight to prove their critics wrong. “We will not be daunted,” Paula Wagner, chief executive of United Artists, said last week.

    During a 90-minute interview at the company’s headquarters in a Century City office tower, Ms. Wagner said she and her fellow executives were intent on overcoming negative reactions that she saw as rooted in ignorance of the process of building movie production companies.

    “Anybody trying to dismiss us or write us off doesn’t understand the business,” Ms. Wagner said. She added: “Nothing is going to stop us. We are determined to make this work.”

    How can one not smell blood in the water? Granted, Cieply might have bumped two or three of Wagner’s clearly adamant exclamations that perhaps came at varying times in that 90minute interview, but it still comes across somewhat desperate on her part.

    David Poland is busy washing his hands of all of this, making sure everyone understands that he wasn’t aiming for negativity on “Valkyrie” from the outset. Of course, he’s got that usual balancing act of bashing old media, digging up an old, probably unarchived Oscar call and running through the box office numbers again. But at least he sticks it to Roger Friedman, who Cieply should never have called for such a piece. It takes the story down exponential levels.

    Anyway, I personally could care less about all of this and wish the press would ease off of it. And I’ve said it before, but what good is it doing pulling back the layers on this one?

  • David Mamet on the greatest actor ever

    David Mamet’s “Redbelt” is releasing soon, though I just realized I haven’t made it to any of the film’s screenings this past month. I love Mamet, even when he fails. But I’m not hearing good things on that film.

    Anyway, I came across an interesting piece at Film Stew this evening that cornered the esteemed playwright and filmmaker with that most difficult of queries: Who is the greatest actor ever?

    This is the sort of thing that could change with the wind, of course, and any given person is sure to bounce a number of names around his or her head when it comes down to it. In most cases, you might expect some rote answer. Who can’t steer clear of the Pacinos, the De Niros, the Brandos and the Nicholsons?

    I was happy, and not the least it surprised, to see Mamet hang it out there for a unique choice. His pick: Henry Fonda.

    I have to say, I can run with that. I sometimes forget that two Henry Fonda films rest easy in my top five films of all time (“12 Angry Men” and “Once Upon a Time in the West”). I’d buy a “Vote for Juror #8” shirt if they made one. His career spanned decades and genres with ease as he tackled portrayals of villains and heroes with equal aplomb.

    I’m always reminded of the classic Sergio Leone story when it comes to Fonda. Leone, of course, cast Fonda in “Once Upon a Time in the West” as the lawless Frank, a character (and film, in fat) from which Martin Scorsese would borrow greatly when conceiving “Gangs of New York.” Here was America’s golden god of the screen, Henry Fonda, the quintessential good guy — and he was about to portray a guy who’d shoot a child without blinking…and in the first reel!

    Fonda shows up to set looking like, well, a haggard, ruthless villain. Hadn’t shaved, de-glammed to the max, ready to tackle the antagonist for once. Leone was beside himself. “I didn’t hire you to hide behind a beard,” the director said (and of course, I’m paraphrasing). “I hired Henry Fonda and that’s what I want.” Leone was well aware of the impact a sculpted, shaved, blue-eyed angel like Fonda would make as he tore through the narrative in such a despicable role.

    And boy was he right:

    httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=WgKsMolvDLw

    Quite an inspired choice by Mr. Mamet. It’s a shame Fonda only walked away with a solitary competitive Oscar for one of his lesser (if still wonderful) portrayals. But ain’t it always the case?

    By the way, if you’ve never flipped through Mamet’s guide for actors, “True and False,” I encourage you to do so.

  • The LA Times points and laughs at poor bastards

    It looks like LA Times is still beating that Oscar drum for the old media sect. This week, Susan King writes up the lackluster career choices that followed a number of Academy wins throughout the years.

    Here’s a look:

    Just because you win an Oscar doesn’t mean that every subsequent film you make will be Academy Award-caliber stuff. In fact, Oscar winners inevitably make incongruous missteps in their career after they pick up an Academy Award.

    Just look at Kevin Costner. After being on top of the world when he won the best director Oscar for the 1990 best film, “Dances With Wolves,” he made the gargantuan turkey “Waterworld” and then directed a three-hour celluloid nightmare called “The Postman,” which was DOA with critics and audiences alike. No sooner did Julia Roberts earn an Oscar for “Erin Brockovich” than critics soured on her talents in the ill-fated comedy “America’s Sweethearts.” And what was Oscar-winner Tommy Lee Jones thinking when he signed up for the yawn-inducing comedy “Man of the House,” a film so tepid that it wasn’t even screened for critics?

    She goes on to pour salt on the wounds of Al Pacino, Halle Berry, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams and Nicole Kidman, among others. But I’m left wondering what good a piece like this serves.

    Now I’m no elitist. I understand we all have to stretch for awards content and perspective from time to time. And typically, the LA Times and its awards site, The Envelope, nail down interesting subject matter in that regard. But this piece is like one of those throwaway photo galleries that land on a weekly basis over there on a weekly basis.

    Obviously this was a buttress piece for Patrick Goldstein’s latest think piece (regarding the downward spiral of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino), but I don’t know. It seems a little cheap and unnecessary to me.

    Check out the rest of King’s piece here.

  • A 3-hour ‘Dark Knight’

    I, like virtually everyone else in the world, can’t wait to see Chris Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” this summer. In addition to being the following up to “Batman Begins,” everything about it so far looks riveting, Nolan has continued to prove himself and I fully expect Aaron Eckhart and Heath Ledger to hit their roles out of the park.

    But Dark Horizons is today reporting that the film is going to come in and around the three hour mark. While I have the utmost faith in Nolan to entertain and make an all around great movie, this running time nevertheless gives me some concern. I like my superhero movies at the 110-120 minute mark.

    Again, I’m not worried – I’m just hoping this is not a misstep.

  • The independent film not to be missed

    Every year the best of independent cinema convenes at a series of festivals and awards programs, most notably the Independent Spirit Awards.

    In February, Jeff Nichols, a first-time filmmaker, won an ISA for his first feature length film “Shotgun Stories.” The effort chronicles a deadly family feud between two sets of brothers that ensues upon the death of the father they share.

    The film produced by fellow Arkansan David Gordon Green, has finally made it’s way to major film markets (it screened in Little Rock, Arkansas, Mr. Nichols’ hometown, although he now lives in Austin, Texas, late last year), including Los Angeles. Susan King of the Los Angeles Times described the film as a “stark, Eugene O’Neill-esque tale.”

    There was a rousing welcome in Mr. Nichols’ home state for “Shotgun Stories.” In addition to critical accolades, It managed to win multiple awards on the festival circuit too, including Grand Jury prizes at the Seattle International Film Festival and the Austin Film Festival. It opened in New York a few weeks ago, and while the film is considered a 2007 release, I didn’t want my friends on the west coast to miss it.

    Last month, New York Magazine’s David Edelstein wrote of the film’s lead actor, Michael Shannon:

    His deliberateness can be lovable, even romantic, but can also signal desperation, as if his head were too cavernous for him to snatch and string together all his thoughts. He’s a fascinating actor—the perfect hero for movies suffused with rage against the Creator.

    The same might be said of Mr. Nichols. He’s a young director to watch.

  • Harvey Dent’s coming out party in NYC

    It looks like Warner Bros. unveiled the new trailer for “The Dark Knight” at the New York Comic-Con over the weekend (I still feel burned they never turned anything up in San Diego last summer). As expected, the PR focus has shifted off of the Joker character in the wake of Heath Ledger’s death and over to Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent.

    The new trailer comes amid a flurry of recent viral PR for the film aimed at the district attorney character, both on the net and in the “real world.”

    Did I mention how much my head is about to explode with anticipation over this film? And if it’s nearly three hours long — God help me, I’ll be in batty heaven.

    But back to Dent, I think this series has the makings of putting Eckhart in a very exciting position in 2011, much like the anticipation over Ledger’s Joker portrayal. Eckhart as Two-Face could be just as explosive, just as creepy and, perhaps, twice as ruthless. We have to get there first, and “The Dark Knight” will be our road there…

    …that’s all I’m sayin’.

  • Streep seems a lock for ‘Doubt’

    Meryl Streep is without equal as the greatest screen actress in the history of the cinema, able to slip effortlessly into character and create magic before our eyes. Meeting her makes clear her genius because the woman you will speak with bears no connection to the many characters she has portrayed over her now 30-plus years in movies; her eyes dance with mischief, but crackle with intelligence.

    Revered by many as the greatest actress, some state greatest actor (period), is it not odd that Streep has just one Academy Award for Best Actress for her astounding and searing performance as the death camp survivor in “Sophie’s Choice,” (easily the single greatest performance ever given by a woman on film)? Yes she won in the supporting category before that, for “Kramer vs. Kramer,” but consider this…Hilary Swank, a fine actress, has won the Oscar for Best Actress twice, as has Jodie Foster, yet Streep has just one, and more than 25 years ago at that. In that time she has given an array of performances that have collected prizes from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Circle, and despite racking up more Oscar nominations than anyone else in history, she has remained a bridesmaid for some time now.

    There are complaints each year when she is nominated, the nasty ones stating that all she has to do is appear in a film to get nominated, but you know, even at half-speed, she is so much stronger than everyone else, is she not? So yes, she should have won other Oscars as a leading lady.

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  • Pitt finally going to get some Oscar love?

    Over the course of his impressive career, Brad Pitt has not always been appreciated for the fine actor he is. This is an actor who could easily take the cheap way out and do one goofy romantic comedy or silly film after another, but who instead takes bold risks with his career, always challenging himself, and though sometimes falling flat on his face, growing as an actor.

    Pitt is not the first actor to grow in maturity through the years; look at John Wayne, badly under appreciated for much of his career, though his work in “The Quiet Man”, “Rio Bravo” and especially “The Searchers” was astounding. His last performance, as the gunfighter dying of cancer in “The Shootist,” richly deserved Oscar attention which sadly never came.

    Actors, the great ones, live to challenge themselves, never content to continue doing what they have done before, they need change, they live for challenge.

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