You know what to do. PLEASE STICK TO ONE QUESTION, and try not to cover any terrain we’ve already hit. I immediately gloss over something that feels done or stale (sorry). Cut loose with your queries in the comments section and we’ll address what we can.
Category: Daily
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Gearing up for ‘Conan’
I saw this in front of a movie this weekend. Nice touch tossing the glasses to the turf:
“Show Zero,” which has been making the rounds, after the jump. “Conan” premieres on TBS Monday, November 8.
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EXCLUSIVE: ‘127 Hours,’ 2 DPs (clip)
One of the unique aspects of Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours” is it’s use of two cinematographers. Longtime Boyle collaborator Anthony Dod Mantle (who won the Oscar for Best Cinematography in 2008 for “Slumdog Millionaire”) was joined by Enrique Chediak (who shot the Boyle-produced “28 Weeks Later”).Both units were given equal weight during production (going so far as to be dubbed “red” and “blue” rather than “one” and “two”). As producer Christian Colson puts it, the decision served to keep the energy of the film constant and consistently bring in fresh ideas.
Fox Searchlight has supplied us with an exclusive clip detailing the duel DP design (alliteration — nice). In it you’ll hear from Boyle, star James Franco, Mantle, Chediak and Colson. Have a look after the jump. The film hits theaters in limited release this weekend. (Also, check back tomorrow for an interview with director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy).
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Clip from ‘The Lottery’
Following on the heels of that “Waiting for Superman” item this morning, I have a clip of Madeleine Sackler’s “The Lottery” to share.“The Lottery” hit theaters back in May to little fanfare but the publicity machine is swinging behind it as we cross into awards season territory. The film focuses on the lottery scenario depicted briefly at the end of “Waiting for Superman” (for the purposes of entering a charter school, which was the subject of Diane Ravitch’s ire in that piece earlier). While detailing union resistance as part of the debate it also focuses on the community debate over building space for charter schools versus zoned public schools and explores that specific issue a bit more in depth (with eye-popping revelations about charter protests).
To put the clip in context, Eva Moskowitz of the Success Charter Network is presenting the benefits of a charter school system to elected officials stonewalling her cause. It’s from a larger segment, the juiciest scene of the film. Check it out after the jump.
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Trailer for every Oscar-winning movie ever
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Damon finds inspiration in Tommy Lee Jones for ‘True Grit’
It seems like I’m desperate for any morsel on the Coen brothers’ upcoming “True Grit.” If you haven’t guessed by now, it’s the film I’m most looking forward to this season, and every time that trailer drops before a film, I perk up immediately. I’m in the tank and I haven’t even seen it.I guess everyone involved is getting their patter down, because after a quick EW video interview with child star Hailee Steinfeld yesterday, I stumbled across this interview with Matt Damon from Empire. It’s actually just a snippet of the exchange. There’s more in the full issue, which hits stands tomorrow (the cover featuring that first glimpse of Steve Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn” that has so many all worked up).
Damon was asked about the role of Texas Ranger LaBeouf, who looks to offer some comedic balance to the dark retribution and vengeance-seeking air of the film. And the actor says he looked to a fellow actor for inspiration.
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Taking aim at ‘Waiting for Superman’
When I saw Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting for Superman” at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June, I noted that “the film casts a broad net when it would have been something more as a focused study” and that “modest stretching to make the point” dilutes the overall impact of the film. However, I also made it clear that while not entirely successful as a work of art, it’s certainly worth applauding as a work of activism.Well, Diane Ravitch at The New York Review of Books isn’t nearly as forgiving. In a piece called “The Myth of Charter Schools,” Ravitch takes Guggenheim’s film to the cleaners, attacking its depiction of charter schools and denouncing privatized education as the answer to a struggling public school system. She also mentions similar docs released this year — “The Cartel” and “The Lottery” — but mainly, Ravitch dives into the facts and figures to disassemble seemingly every frame of Guggenheim’s film.
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11/3 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: ‘Hereafter’ works for AMPAS, Plame and Wilson talk ‘Game,’ Coppola on the Chateau
• Lee Unkrich and Darla K. Anderson on “Toy Story 3” reviews, Oscar campaign, and sequel chances. [Vulture]• Steve Pond reports a positive reaction to Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter” at a recent Academy screening. [The Odds]
• Gregory Ellwood sits down with Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson, subjects of Doug Liman’s “Fair Game.” [HitFix]
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‘The Illusionist’ poster, featuring yours truly
Hey, have you heard that I kinda like a little animated picture called “The Illusionist?” I may have mentioned it once or twice here. Well, Sony Pictures Classics has unveiled a new one-sheet for the film, and while I normally get quite critical about the design aspects of posters, this one has my full approval — mostly, I admit, for the fact that it gives me my first US poster quote. Interesting that they fillet out the “m” word from my February review, given the related debate Kris recently started, but after multiple viewings of the film, I stand by it. Full poster (courtesy of IMPAwards) after the jump. (Thanks to regular reader Speaking English for the heads-up.)
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Finally, the 10 best of the 2010 LFF
For those of you who were loyally following my London Film Festival coverage this year, I must apologize for leaving it somewhat in limbo. Though I did eventually find time for a lengthy discussion of fest closer “127 Hours,” a snowballing workload put paid to my hopes of squeezing in a few more review roundups. And frankly, since the festival wrapped on Thursday after four weeks of press screenings, I so relished having ownership of my days again that I let things lie longer than I intended.
But by way of a belated send-off, here’s a gathering of the films that made the LFF for me this year. I saw precisely 60 films at the festival, in addition to 27 I’d already seen at previous fests, so I was naïve to hope I might get round to discussing most of them.
Some of the clunkers (glum German childbirth drama “Blessed Events,” Ferzan Ozpetek’s lead-footed gay comedy “Loose Cannons”) barely merit appraisal; other, more interesting, disappointments (Xavier Dolan’s meticulous but terminally precious love triangle “Heartbeats,” Benedik Flieugauf’s visually startling but sketchily conceived sci-fi “Womb”) at least deserved a few paragraphs. Ah, well.
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‘The King’s Speech’ poster
Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” has had an air of “prestige” around it ever since a plot synopsis hit the net. So no mistake that the official one-sheet for the film adopts that kind of high gloss approach, but, well, it’s a bit vanilla if you ask me. Check out the full image, courtesy of Cinematical, after the jump.
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‘Way Back’ to open inaugural Museum of Tolerance fest
The press release, in part:The Museum of Tolerance has announced its lineup of films for the first Museum of Tolerance International Film Festival (MOTIFF) taking place November 13-18, 2010 in Los Angeles…
The opening night film will be “The Way Back,” directed by six-time Academy Award® nominee Peter Weir. Inspired by Slavomir Rawicz’s acclaimed novel, The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom as well as other real life accounts, “The Way Back” is an epic story of survival, solidarity and indomitable human will chronicling the escape of a small group of multi-national prisoners from a Siberian gulag in 1940 and their remarkable life affirming journey over thousands of miles across five hostile countries.
“We are proud that the Museum of Tolerance International Film Festival will open with ‘The Way Back,’ a timeless story of man’s eternal struggle for freedom,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, Founding Director of the MOTIFF and Founder and Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its acclaimed Museum of Tolerance .
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Super ‘There Will Be Blood’ video game
It’s not exactly a booming news day and I’m slow to get back into the groove after a weekend away, so forgive the frivolity of this. I thought it was kind of awesome.Although, I have a beef. This looks closer to an 8-bit thing than a 16-bit thing, and 16-bit is necessary if you’re going to slap the “Super” prefix on there, right? (Like I said, slow news day.)
Anyway, this video, to the best of my knowledge, showed up on Geek Tyrant first but it’s been making the rounds the last week or so. If only the creator had cooked this up back in 2007. Freshness is key!
Someone get busy on, I don’t know, an NES-style representation of “Inception.” (Or have they totally done that already?) Check out the video game adventures of Daniel Plainview after the jump. -
John Legend and The Roots perform ‘Shine’
In lieu of a proper “listen to” item on John Legend’s “Shine” from “Waiting for Superman” (since I’ve already featured the tune twice), I thought I’d post up this video of the singer performing the song with The Roots in studio.At the end of the day, I think this track has a real shot at being our Best Original Song winner. Though some point out that Melissa Etheridge won here in 2006 for “I Need to Wake Up” from “An Inconvenient Truth” (another doc hit with AMPAS), that was before the current voting practice of viewing contenders in the context of their films. So it’s possible Legend misses the nod altogether. But I think it’s also worth pointing out that, like “I Need to Wake Up,” “Shine” doesn’t just play over a traditional credit role, but instead an animated “fact roll,” if you will, with various bits of information making an extension of the narrative.
And after the nod? Tough to stand up to that charisma and such a chance to do well by the issue by shining (pardon the pun) a spotlight on a film that may not win in the doc feature field (given the stiff competition), especially when you’re working with frothy tracks from animated features and musical numbers in films that don’t appear to be major Oscar threats in general.
Check out the video after the jump.
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11/2 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Newton on ‘For Colored Girls,’ Godard’s Oscar revives controversy, ratings board drama
• Jean-Luc Godard’s Honorary Oscar revives controversy over the director’s supposed anti-Semitism. [New York Times]• Amy Kaufman sits down with “Love & Other Drugs” director Edward Zwick. [The Envelope]
• Edward Douglas chats up “For Colored Girls” star Thandie Newton. [Coming Soon]
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Dr. Leigh and the women
I often hear Mike Leigh described as a great “women’s director,” though that’s really only half the truth. Vivid, probing male characters abound in Leigh films, often as vital counterpoints to female star turns (see Eddie Marsan in “Happy-Go-Lucky” or Timothy Spall in “Secrets and Lies”) but sometimes in center stage too: in “Naked,” David Thewlis gives what might be the richest performance in any Leigh film to date. (Hefty statement. Hefty performance.)In other words, Leigh is not so much a great director of women as a great director of actors, period. But his actressy reputation sticks, partly because his women have an easier time impressing awards voters, but perhaps also because he’s tougher on the women he writes than most male auteurs, making harsh moral demands of some and pushing even the saintlier ones (Imelda Staunton’s Vera, Sally Hawkins’s Poppy) into behavioral extremes that render them tricky to play. There are no stock love interests, blandly supportive wives or femmes fatales in Leigh ensembles: every character, of either sex, in ensembles comes with an independent inner life.
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On ‘127 Hours,’ and a messy little thing called opinion
It all started, as so many conflicts do these days, with a tweet. After spending a morning and afternoon musing on “127 Hours,” following a breakfast-time screening on the last day of the London Film Festival, I accepted the hard fact that I simply didn’t like it very much.I wanted to feel differently. Danny Boyle, in addition to being one of my favorite ever interviewees, is a vital filmmaker whose previous misses I’ve even found more stimulating than most directors’ hits. James Franco is shaping up to be among the most pleasingly off-kilter leading men of his generation. The tech geek in me was excited to see the long-underused Enrique Chediak working on a large canvas, alongside the justly rated Anthony Dod Mantle.
I had, I admit, harbored doubts about how Team Boyle could cinematically enliven Aron Ralston’s simple-if-grisly survival tale, one that could promise no surprises after ample media coverage as recently as 2003. Some blinder of a structural or technical choice, I assumed, was being hidden up someone’s sleeve — and when I saw only a familiar collection of hopped-up editing tricks and multimedia interpolations that designerised the protagonist’s plight without deepening it, I wasn’t afraid to say I felt a little crushed.