• Steve Pond offers his perspective on the Best Original Song race. [The Odds]
• Jack Giroux talks “Rabbit Hole” with star Sandra Oh. [Film School Rejects]
• Michael Cieply reveals how a shrewd publicity executive rigged the game in the favor of “True Grit” the first time around. [New York Times]
“True Grit” looks to end up the highest-grossing western since “Unforgiven,” and hopefully a box office bump from a number of Oscar nods will be nice. Whew.
(Courtesy: Exhibitor Relations)
When I was filling out my ballot for indieWIRE’s 2010 critics’ poll, Best First Film was perhaps the category I spent the longest time deliberating over — as unremarkable as the year has been in other respects, the amount of scrappy new directorial promise surging up through the cracks has been both unusually high and unusually prominent.
Excitingly, much of this fresh filmmaking energy has been on the non-fiction side of things — something reflected in The Guardian’s newly announced shortlist for their annual Best First Film award. Four of the 10 films selected are documentaries after a fashion, even as they play with the boundaries of the format. (One of them, of course, turns out to be wholly a performance piece.)
Included, of course, is Kris’s #1 film of the year, as is the film I eventually settled on for my indieWIRE vote. The list follows the UK release calendar — hence the inclusion of a 2009 title and the exclusion of, say, “Animal Kingdom” — but it’s a fine selection nonetheless.
Happy Christmas Eve. Warner Bros. has been nice enough to give you a present early this year in the form of a two-and-a-half-minute look behind the scenes of Christopher Nolan’s “Inception.” Enjoy:
• The 15 greatest mustaches in Coen brothers history. [Vulture]
• The Gurus o’ Gold get their last licks in before the new year. [Movie City News]
• Betsy Sharkey writes up the 10 most overlooked films of 2010, and yes, it’s a valid point to put the nearly $300 million worldwide grosser “Shutter Island” on there. [Los Angeles Times]
I wrote at the end of my coverage of the Edinburgh Film Festival, back in June, that this year’s fest had come in for a fair bit of media flak, with many journos complaining (not entirely fairly, I thought) of a tepid film programme and minimal atmosphere. Few were surprised, then, when the fest’s artistic director Hannah McGill resigned from her post shortly afterward; speculation as to who might replace her has been coursing through the UK industry ever since.
As it turns out, the answer is nobody: under a radical new scheme for the festival drawn up by festival patron Tilda Swinton and former EIFF director Mark Cousins–the pair who previously set up their own mobile film festival in the Scottish Highlands– and newly appointed producer James Mullighan, the new-look festival will dispense with an artistic chief (as well as many of its usual parties and awards) and instead have films programmed by multiple guest/celebrity curators.
I had no time to post this up yesterday, but it’s time you had your say on the Coen brothers’ latest. I am a big fan, of course, and a bit predisposed, given my love for the genre. But rattle off your thoughts in the comments section below if you get a chance to see it over the holiday.
Updating has been a bit sluggish. Apologies. The holidays. You understand. Today, three critics groups to mention, as the Austin folks admirably go with something different here, the Utah critics aren’t afraid of ties (and do well by properly placing Hailee Steinfeld and Lesley Manville) here and the Oklahoma critics file in with the usual here.
• Anne Thompson talks with “The Way Back” director Peter Weir. [Thompson on Hollywood]
• Nathaniel Rogers charts Oscar’s age preferences. [The Film Experience]
• Melinda Newman sits down with “True Grit” and “TRON Legacy” star Jeff Bridges. [Awards Campaign]
During the 12/10 top 10 podcast, when I spoke on the two documentaries that made my list this year — “Catfish” and “Exit Through the Gift Shop” — I made a point of noting that I’m taking the films at face value. They are films that spark a natural sense of suspicion, especially in the case of the latter given that it is directed by prankster street artist Banksy, but I’m content to take them for what they claim to be (while feeling that, if fake, they are even more brilliant).
All These Wonderful Things documentary hound A.J. Schnack recently interviewed Banksy about his film. When the question of authenticity pops up, the debuting filmmaker states explicitly that the film is “100% true,” though of course he would. But it’s an enlightening discussion for other reasons.
For instance, Banksy says he’s very unpopular in his community at the moment for the attention paid to Mr. Brainwash, whose derivative, pointless, cookie-cutter “art work” becomes a narrative and thematic focus for the film. There’s also his perspective on documentary filmmaking (“Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock are very punk to me,” he says.) Great stuff.
He doesn’t make it easy. The list below, in no particular order. How many can you guess? (Okay, I made the first one pretty easy.)
• The Sweet-Hearted-But-Poignant Animated One We’re Supposed To Take More Seriously
• The One By The Famously Exacting Director With The Great Script By The Famously Jerky Screenwriter
• The One Where You’re Going Insane Waiting Around For The Crazy Thing To Happen, Then It Happens
“High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell,” the HBO documentary featuring Dicky Eklund (the making of which is featured prominently in “The Fighter”), has been available on the net for some time now, but I figured I’d wait until you all had a chance to see it to dedicate a separate post.
Well, now that you have, it seems a perfect time to post it up for you. The film, directed by Richard Farrell, Maryann DeLeo and Jon Alpert, first aired on HBO in 1995. You can read more about it at the film’s Wikipedia page and Snag Films has the full hour-long film posted for your viewing pleasure.
• On the language, cult following and press-shyness of reclusive “True Grit” author Charles Portis. [Speakeasy]
• Mike Leigh discusses “Another Year” and why he’ll never make a superhero movie. [Movieline]
• “Avatar” tops list of 2010’s most pirated movies. [New York Post]
After a sidestep into the writing races last week, we return to the performance categories in our rundown of notable work from the first half of the year’s release slate. And so we land upon the category that perhaps needs this feature most of all: where the Best Actress conversation still includes some names from the January-to-June window, no leading men from early 2010 are to be found even on the fringes of the awards race.
Of course, when you consider the options, it’s not hard to see why: all the strongest performances came in films that nobody saw, films that the Academy wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, or both. In four of my five selections below, moreover, the actor is operating at a rather higher level than the film around him — and yet it’s here where I think some of the whole year’s most adventurous work in the category is to be found.
I wish it wasn’t quite such a bleak set of films to be celebrating in this of all weeks, but that’s just how it worked out. I’m sure at least one omission will confound some readers, as, I imagine, will one inclusion — but therein lies the fun. Check out my picks after the cut and contribute yours in the comments. Remember: first half.
In last week’s year-in-review superlatives column, I closed things up as I always do by offering up my choice for “entertainer of the year.” It generally goes to an individual or organization I think made the most significant popular and/or creative impact on cinema in a given year, kind of a tip of the hat to Entertainment Weekly’s annual feature.
In past years I’ve gone with George Clooney (2005), Clint Eastwood (2006), Phillip Seymour Hoffman (2007), Robert Downey Jr. (2008) and Weta Digital (2009), but for 2010, I couldn’t think of anyone more applicable than Leonardo DiCaprio, whose work in “Inception” and particularly “Shutter Island” raised his own bar and proved once again that he’s a star who wields his cachet smartly.
And now he’s been singled out by Forbes Magazine as the year’s highest-grossing star. Both films have made over $1.1 billion at the worldwide box office, so it’s a natural choice. And neither needed the added impact of inflated 3D ticket sales, the piece notes.
The Hollywood Reporter sure kicked up some controversy with that writers round table last month. This one featuring directors of the season has been making the rounds so I thought I’d post it up: