In Contention

Category: Daily

  • 10/25 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Desplat honored, Watts and Plame on ‘Game,’ animated feature hopefuls reach 14

    • Colin Firth talks royalty and “The King’s Speech.” [Awards Campaign]

    • Alexandre Desplat named composer of the year. [Variety]

    • Scott Kraft chats with “Fair Game” star Naomi Watts and subject Valerie Plame. [Los Angeles Times]

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  • Boyle, Beaufoy on pushing the boundaries of cinema

    I sat down earlier this afternoon with “127 Hours” star James Franco, director Danny Boyle and writer Simon Beaufoy.  I’ll have proper written pieces up surrounding each in the coming days but there was something I wanted to share now.

    Firstly, it’s always a joy to talk cinema with Boyle.  He’s a truly excitable character who projects a brand of passion impossible to counterfeit and is just a good guy on top of it.  (Check out my interview with the director from the 2008-2010 season — “8 things I’ve learned from my career in features” — here.)

    Anyway, he got fired up when we began discussing the hallucination sequences of the film, how to convey something that’s intrinsically so personal in a creative but organic way.  Off he went on a tangent, soon joined by Beaufoy, that I found inspiring as a fan and as a writer.  Maybe you will, too.  Have a listen after the jump.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Bone’ boost, category debate, LFF coverage

    (A day later than usual — apologies. Friday night got in the way.)

    • The Gotham Awards served up the first nominations of the season, with indie darling “Winter’s Bone” sitting pretty.

    • With “The Kids Are All Right” and “Another Year” prodding the discussion, this week’s Long Shot column ruminated on a perennial gripe of Oscar pundits: category fraud.

    • News of a high-profile Scorsese-DiCaprio retrospective launching an Oscar campaign for the film re-opened the debate over the merits of “Shutter Island.”

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  • ‘Rabbit Hole’ trailer

    I quite liked John Cameron Mitchell’s “Rabbit Hole,” a smooth adaptation of a stage work with quality performances. So I’m happy to see an understated trailer playing very much into what the film is as opposed to selling it as something it isn’t. Check it out via Apple by clicking the image below or watch an embed after the jump.

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  • Malick’s ‘Tree of Life’ gets a release date?

    Oh the drama of Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life.” At some point I just shut down and dutifully conveyed all of the pointless back-and-forth nuggets, because really, this kind of hype and spectatorship is just unhealthy for a film sight-unseen.

    But now you can mark your calendars, because according to a Box Office Mojo scheduling update, Fox Searchlight (which recently acquired the film) will be releasing the film on May 27, 2011.  If you’re keeping score at home, that’s just five days after the 2011 Cannes International Film Festival closes up shop, so I suppose it’s fair to still hold out hope for a bow at that festival.

    However, there is still the scuttlebutt regarding Malick’s history with the Berlinale, so it could pop up there first.  The film was slated by EuropaCorp for a February bow in France, but that seems unlikely to me now.

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  • Scorsese/DiCaprio retrospective set to kick-start ‘Shutter Island’ campaign

    People have scoffed at the idea of a Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island” campaign for months now.  The film didn’t hit with the critics, therefore it must be an also ran, right?  The thing is, it made decent bank and is packed with elements I know for a fact are well-respected from the industry, whether it’s Thelma Schoonmaker’s typically expert film editing, Robert Richardson’s throwback lensing, Dante Ferretti’s creepy production design or, indeed, Leonardo DiCaprio’s fantastic lead performance.

    All of that goodwill can build momentum in a year of 10 Best Picture nominees, and let’s face it, every DiCaprio/Scorsese collaboration has been nominated in the top category, in years of five, no less.  With Halloween right around the corner, now is the perfect time for Paramount Pictures to remind everyone of the film.  The studio is therefore kicking off the season’s festivities with a two-day American Cinemateque retrospective on their eight-year partnership.

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  • ‘Made in Dagenham’ trailer

    I was high on Nigel Cole’s “Made in Dagenham” just before the film bowed at Toronto last month.  I still see Miranda Richardson and Sally Hawkins as formidable in their categories but I’ll be anxious to see if the film is as big a crowd-pleaser as I suspect it is. A new trailer hit yesterday via Apple. Check it out by clicking the image below or watch an embed after the jump.

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  • 10/22 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Arndt, Unkrich on Fresh Air, no ‘Hangover’ for Gibson, ‘Paranormal’ sequel scares L.A.

    • Lesley Manville talks “Another Year” across the pond. [The Guardian]

    • Terry Gross talks with “Toy Story 3” director Lee Unrich and writer Michael Arndt on Fresh Air. [NPR]

    • Watch in night vision as a Los Angeles audience reacts to a screening of “Paranormal Activity 2.” [HitFix]

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  • A little love for ‘I Am Love’

    I know the film has a lot of devotees on this site — I’m not wholly with them, though for the second year running, I do think Tilda Swinton merits a lot more Best Actress consideration than she’s getting — so you may be pleased to know that florid Italian melodrama “I Am Love” has at least (however indirectly) taken one bit of minor silverware.

    I wasn’t aware that the inaugural Screen International UK Marketing & Distribution Awards took place two weeks ago, but so they did, with “I Am Love” (and marketing team AllCity) deservedly scooping Poster of the Year honors for the arresting hot-pink design featured to the right (and in full after the cut). As it happens, we singled out the film’s poster portfolio for praise earlier this year; nice to know we weren’t alone in our admiration. Hey, it’s something.

    Among the posters it beat is another of my favorite 2010 one-sheets recently featured on these pages: the witty crow-and-bomb design for “Four Lions.” Chris Morris’s controversial (and, yes, funny) UK terrorism satire did, however, take the award for Trailer of the Year. You can check that out, too, after the cut.

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  • Guardian does the ‘all-time greatest’ meme

    Ah, lists. The gift that keeps giving — particularly in the world of film blogging, where they provide snappy short-form content, invite numerous comments and generate multiple hits when spread across a zillion pages.

    Last year’s flood of end-of-decade countdowns surely satisfied even the most ardent list fanatic for a good few months, but with no such milestone to mark this year, The Guardian has returned to an old chestnut: the greatest films of all time.

    The gimmick they’ve used for the project (the results of which have been unfolding on their website over the past week) is to subdivide the larger collective according to genre: the 25 best comedies, romances, action films, and so on. As if any all-time best isn’t prone to enough criticism, this doubles the opportunities for debate: now we can kvetch not only about the films that made the cut (or didn’t), but whether they’ve even been categorized correctly.

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  • ‘South Park’ does ‘Inception’

  • ‘I Love You Phillip Morris’ red band trailer

    I recently sang the praises of Glenn Ficcara and John Requa’s “I Love You Phillip Morris,” which is building up the publicity push as of late. We got a poster last week, and today, a red band trailer that, suffice it to say, is NSFW. Check it out after the jump.

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  • Rockwell talks ‘Conviction,’ other choices for Kenny Waters, destroyed footage

    Backstage’s Jenelle Riley recently moderated a post-screening Q&A with “Conviction” star Sam Rockwell and a few interesting nuggets surfaced during the chat.

    First and foremost, I was always under the impression that Rockwell was the first choice for the role of Kenny Waters in the film.  But as he reveals here, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly dropped out of the part along the way.  It leaves you wondering what the film might have been like.  I think either actor would have been intriguing but Rockwell brings a real charm to the character that might have been lacking otherwise.

    But most crushing, I’d say, is the fact that 16 hours of crucial footage was apparently destroyed by an airport x-ray.  Can you imagine?  And it sounds like it was intense material as Rockwell says it was probably the hardest thing he’s ever done to go back and res-hoot all of that stuff.

    It’s worth a look and listen.  Head on over to Backstage to watch or check out the embed after the jump.

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  • Taking questions for Oscar Talk

    Sorry for not posting this yesterday.  It totally slipped my mind.  But you know the drill.  Rifle off any queries you’d like us to address on Friday’s podcast in the comments section below.

  • 10/21 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Praise for ‘Love & Other Drugs,’ sussing out Best Actress, quotable ‘Social Network’

    • Jeffrey Wells calls “Love & Other Drugs” Edward Zwick’s best film yet. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Peter Knegt assesses the Gotham Award nominations. [indieWIRE]

    • Nathaniel Rogers hearts Sam Rockwell in “Conviction.” [Tribeca Film]

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  • ‘TRON Legacy’ poster

    I’m not all that psyched for Disney’s “TRON Legacy,” but even I’ll admit that the final one-sheet for the film is pretty damn nifty.  If it strikes you as familiar, that’s because it craftily mirrors the poster art of the original film.  Check out the full image after the jump.

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  • 10/20 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: ‘Complete Metropolis’ coming to TCM, buzz for Leo, Cameron on the usual talking points

    • Jeffrey Wells reminds of the forthcoming TCM airing of the restored “Metropolis” and one hour documentary “Metropolis Refound.”  I’ll…be…there. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Steve Pond conveys positive word on Christian Bale and (as reported for months here) Melissa Leo’s performances in “The Fighter” from ShoEast. [The Odds]

    • Naomi Watts on “Fair Game,” Valerie Plame and politics in Hollywood. [HitFix]

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  • ‘King’s Speech’ told to mind its language

    Admittedly, this isn’t much of a story, but following last week’s furore over the NC-17 certificate handed to the starkly adult marital drama “Blue Valentine,” it’s amusing to see a rather more milquetoast Oscar hopeful having its own trouble with the ratings board.

    London’s Evening Standard paper reports that “The King’s Speech,” already rated R by the MPAA, has been given a 15 rating (permitting no viewers under that age) by the British censors — not a severe rating, but more restrictive than one might expect for a polite period biopic revolving around speech therapy.

    The reason for the adult rating is the same on both sides of the Atlantic: a short comic scene where Colin Firth’s stuttering King George VI is required to say “fuck” 42 times in quick succession as part of a therapeutic exercise. To be frank, 14 year-olds were unlikely to be queueing around the block to see “The King’s Speech” in the first place, but that’s not really the point: R or 15 ratings could wrongfoot mild-mannered mature viewers who otherwise sit squarely in the film’s sights.

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