In Contention

Category: Daily

  • Eastwood’s ‘J. Edgar’ tapped to open AFI Fest

    The press release, in part:

    The American Film Institute (AFI) announced today that J. EDGAR, directed by AFI Life Achievement Award recipient and Academy Award-winning director Clint Eastwood, will have its world premiere as the Opening Night Gala of AFI FEST 2011 presented by Audi…

    “Clint Eastwood is an American icon ­ one whose work as a director, actor, producer and composer not only stands the test of time, but also continues to add new, rich chapters with each passing year,” said Bob Gazzale, President and CEO of the American Film Institute. “What a gift it is to be going to the movies when Clint Eastwood is making them, and what an honor it is for the American Film Institute to premiere his latest contribution to America’s cultural legacy.”

    Recent AFI Fest openers have included “Love & Other Drugs” and “Doubt.”

    [Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures]

  • 9/7 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Summit’s ‘Better Life’ first screener with a chance, ‘Contagion’ peeps, Murphy reactions

    • Pete Hammond reports that Summit’s “A Better Life” is the first screener to go out “from a movie that has any chance in hell of getting a nomination.” [Deadline]

    • Bryan Alexander talks to the principals of Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion.” [USA Today]

    And naturally, everyone has something to say about Eddie Murphy…

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  • REVIEW: “Wuthering Heights” (***1/2)

    Venice Film Festival

    British filmmaker Andrea Arnold would have been 16 years old when Kate Bush topped the UK pop charts with “Wuthering Heights,” a swirling art-rock ballad that stripped the Emily Brontë novel for which it is named down to a few key lines and narrative details, but evoked its grand-scale tragic romance in more intuitive terms. In its wake, a new generation of schoolgirls clutched Brontë’s words tightly to their chests.

    We can only speculate how Arnold came to the novel, but her bold, forbidding and impressively reconceptualized “Wuthering Heights” appears to take the Kate Bush course of adaptation: gutted of most of its words, with some choice ones added (I haven’t read it in some time, but I’m pretty sure Brontë didn’t write the line, “Fuck you all, cunts”), the novel serves as a theoretical starting point for an artwork that redraws the story with the most immediate sensory tools of its medium. This is a “Wuthering Heights” of weather and flesh and grass and locked eyes, one that has the simple common sense and staggering cinematic wherewithal to know that great adaptations don’t beat great writers at their own game; they play a new game entirely.

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  • A NSFW night at the Oscars

    In honor of today’s news, my favorite bit from “Raw”:

  • Oscar hopes for Venice flicks

    I had asked Guy for a quick one-off on each of the Oscar-contending films he’s seen at Venice so far. I was going to use it for today’s Off the Carpet column, but I published before he got around to it. Nevertheless, it’s worth boiling things down (from his perspective), so here’s what he’s thinking (with the film titles linked to his Venice reviews):

    “The Ides of March”
    Possible Best Picture and Director nominee (but only if US critics are more enthusiastic than the ones at Venice and the film does okay commercially). If it gets those, possible supporting nods for Philip Seymour Hoffman and Evan Rachel Wood. Film Editing is the only tech possibility.

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  • (UPDATED with AMPAS press release) Eddie Murphy set to host the 84th annual Academy Awards, official announcement to come

    The possibility of Eddie Murphy hosting the Oscars this year first started swirling over the weekend while I was up at the Telluride Film Festival. It was interesting to note that, of the various press and industry people I spoke to about the possibility, most were somewhat positive on the prospect. And the more I thought about it, the more I was strangely okay with it, too. And now, according to Deadline, the press release is imminent.

    Murphy’s career has obviously been little more than a cash-grab for quite a while now. Save 2006’s “Dreamgirls,” which brought him within arm’s reach of an Oscar win, he has stayed in the frame of schlock comedy and crowd-pleasing shenanigans. But one thing is rather clear: he’s still very much the showman he always was, and with a newly developed relationship with Oscarcast producer Brett Ratner (who recently directed Murphy in “Tower Heist”), it seems a stint hosting the Oscars could work.

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  • ‘Young Adult’ teaser poster

    Jason Reitman was a sadly absent from this year’s Telluride fest. His last two films, “Juno” and “Up in the Air,” both landed there as an early Sneak Preview before heading to Toronto and awards glory. But the strategy on “Young Adult” has been to stay away from peaking too early. But it’s smart to get the talk moving with a teaser poster for the film, which you can check out after the jump.

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  • 9/6 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Nolte on ‘Warrior,’ southern perspective on ‘The Help,’ Oscar plays out of Telluride

    • Nick Nolte talks “Warrior.” [Making Of]

    • A little southern perspective on “The Help.” [Los Angeles Times]

    • Greg Wellwood considers who got an Oscar boost at Telluride and who didn’t. [Awards Campaign]

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  • TELLURIDE: Sent off on a high note

    Today is the final day of the 38th annual Telluride fest, and the whole thing was another rewarding sprint through the Labor Day weekend. This afternoon I had the great pleasure of sitting down with “The Descendants” star Shailene Woodley to get her wide-eyed, “it’s all happening” perspective on the early days of this year’s awards season. But the day started with perhaps the narrative highlight of the festival for me so far.

    Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation” is, plain and simple, a masterful piece of work that will be with me for a very long time. On the surface it is about the fallout of an Iranian couple headed for divorce but side-tracked by a tragic accident that leaves the husband tangled in a judicial web, but on a deeper level, it’s about so much more. Call it “divorce and its discontents,” because it is, ultimately, a study of parenthood and integrity and situational decisions that impact the impressionable.

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  • 9/5 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Murphy upside, ‘The Help’ abroad, comparing two ‘Straw Dogs’

    • S.T. VanAirsdale looks for the upside in Eddie Murphy potentially hosting the Oscars. [Movieline]

    • Nicole Sperling writes up Tilda Swinton’s tribute track at Telluride and Toronto. [24 Frames]

    • Emma Stone and Viola Davis talk about “The Help”‘s appeal abroad. [The Hollywood Reporter]

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  • VENICE: ‘Dark Horse,’ ‘Chicken With Plums,’ ‘Sal’

    (Review of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” landing later this morning. Hang tight.)

    Todd Solondz has forged a loyal friendship with the Venice Film Festival across the second half of his career: all three of his last features have premiered here. Their mutual devotion somewhat surprises me, given that both Solondz screenings I’ve now attended on the Lido have seemingly been received with a measure of polite confusion by the home crowd, like an awkward cocktail party guest joining in the laughter at a joke he didn’t quite hear. Perhaps other high-end festivals simply lost their taste for his casual misanthropy; after the 1998 career peak of “Happiness,” most arthouse audiences seemed to do the same.

    They could potentially be lured back by “Dark Horse” (***), a more streamlined character comedy that, while neither as probing nor as acidly funny as 2009’s “Life During Wartime,” might just represent the warmest film Solondz is capable of making.

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  • TELLURIDE: The expensive, painstaking restoration of ‘A Trip to the Moon’

    Following today’s “Shame” screening I really wanted to make it across the mountain to the Chuck Jones Cinema and my last chance to catch Agnieszka Holland’s buzzed-about “In Darkness.” But with 15 minutes to get there before it started, a 10 minute walk and a 15 minute gondola ride ahead, it just didn’t seem to be in the cards. Pity.

    Instead, it suddenly hit me that I’d do well to just take in something that didn’t bring with it the pressure of instant coverage. So I looked at the schedule and saw that Serge Bromberg’s cinephile paradise program “A Trip to the Moon and Beyond” was the perfect call.

    The program consisted of a number of discovered and restored silents with Bromberg’s piano accompaniment. The material ranged from pre- and post-earthquake footage of San Francisco along Market Street in 1906, Buster Keaton’s “The Love Nest,” the animated “Balloon Land” (from unsung Disney hero Ub Iwerks) and various other treats here and there. The crown jewel of the presentation, though, was the most elaborate and expensive film restoration project in history.

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  • TELLURIDE: Michael Fassbender and a tale of two movies

    Today’s screening of “Shame” was the big note of anticipation for me at this year’s Telluride fest. After bowing in Venice earlier this morning to generally positive praise, my hopes were still high that Steve McQueen made good on the promise of “Hunger” three years ago. And did he ever.

    I’m tired, at the end of a four-film stretch today, so I’ll try not to wander here too much. But the story of the film is Michael Fassbender’s remarkable performance as a sex addict with a dark past that McQueen only vaguely addresses on the page, allowing the actor to indicate with subtlety and precious strokes of nuance what might be eating away at him.

    Once again, McQueen utilizes long takes to allow his actors to explore in the harsh gaze of the camera. But the technique, perhaps more than his previous effort, even, becomes a tool for navigating the viewer. When Fassbender is filmed jogging for a number of minutes, the camera dollying alongside him as he passes intersection after intersection, the effect goes beyond mere observation. McQueen is ushering us, without cheap manipulation, into the character’s mindset.

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  • TELLURIDE: Gearing up yet winding down, ‘Le Havre,’ Herzog, Ballard’s long-lost ‘Rodeo’ restored

    The interesting thing about Telluride is, the moment things begin to heat up, they also feel like they’re beginning to wind down. I still have screenings of “Shame” and “A Dangerous Method” to come today, and may duck into Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation” tomorrow morning before hopping the shuttle back to Montrose, but for the most part, it feels like we’re peaking now.

    I started the morning with a look at Aki Kaurismäki’s “Le Havre,” which played Cannes in May. I don’t actually think Guy ever got around to writing about the film in depth, but he did a wonderful pre-Cannes job of previewing it.

    Nevertheless, I don’t count myself as the biggest Kaurismäki fan, but it’s very difficult to argue with the heart in this film. It should melt you a bit, if you have warm blood pumping through your veins. The crowd was delighted by it and the director’s dry sense of humor.

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  • ‘Turin Horse’ among latest foreign Oscar entries

    This news has been hanging around for a few days, but amid the Venice hubbub, I haven’t found a moment to post it until today — though we did address it briefly in Friday’s Oscar Talk. With less than a month to go until the deadline, the pile of official submissions for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar is slowly growing — and the most prominent of them is a title I already reviewed at February’s Berlinale.

    That film would be Béla Tarr’s “The Turin Horse,” which won the runner-up Grand Prix at the festival and just screened at Telluride this weekend, and which I described as “a stately, granite-textured and altogether rather tremendous” work in the famously austere director’s canon. Hungary has a history of choosing ballsy and utterly doomed Oscar submissions — “Taxidermia,” anyone? — but this is the first time they’ve dared to enter a Tarr opus.

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  • “I’m Shiva the God of Death!”

    Given their dual tributes at Telluride this year, it seems perfectly reasonable to revisit this gem of a scene:

    And lest fellow tributee Pierre Étaix feel left out, a nod to his work after the jump.

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  • TELLURIDE: Sony Classics, IFC and Searchlight party into the night

    I opted out of tonight’s screening of “Butter” largely because — sorry to say — the Galaxy theater is just too cramped and uncomfortable and hot to fully enjoy a film experience. For me, anyway. I tend to be a furnace regardless, but they need to pump some AC into that joint. By some accounts, though, it was a delightful if somewhat skippable affair. Instead I took to the party circuit, as three studios chose Saturday to hold their talent-studded affairs.

    The night started with Sony Pictures Classics’ annual dinner gathering at La Marmotte. In attendance were “A Dangerous Method” scribe Christopher Hampton, “A Separation” writer/director Asghar Farhadi and “In Darkness” director Agnieszka Holland. Pay close attention to those last two, as they will no doubt figure into this year’s race for Best Foreign Language Film.

    I had a few choice moments with Hampton to discuss his collaboration with David Cronenberg. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet seen the film (Sunday night seems to make the most sense), but I did ask about his take on some reviewers (including our own Guy Lodge) preferring a bit of overt and edgy Cronenberg for a clearly sexual project. His response was that austerity was preferred considering a commitment to truth, and indeed, it seems to me a more cerebral approach would be, at the very least, more realistic for a film such as this. I’ll have an opinion soon enough.

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  • Eddie Murphy in talks to host the 84th annual Oscars

    Ratner strikes, it appears. Nikki Finke has the scoop at Deadline:

    This Tuesday, a confab is scheduled for Oscar producer Brett Ratner to tell the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences whom he wants to host the Oscars. I’ve learned that Ratner will offer one name to Academy President Tom Sherak: Eddie Murphy. This is by no means a done deal yet, but this is a first step – though a lot more steps have to happen before this becomes a reality.

    Reportedly the actor is “showing interest,” but what do you think? Would this be a good fit or a distasteful “Tower Heist” commercial?

    [Photo: The Guardian]