In Contention

Category: Daily

  • Daft ‘TRON’

  • ‘Four Lions’ poster

    I’ve slowly begun to perk up at Chris Morris’s “Four Lions,” which has been playing the festival circuit all year and is heading for a November 5 release.  I need to track down some screenings, but it’s worth noting that the film, a farce about British jihadists, was written in part by Jesse Armstrong, one of the co-nominees of last year’s “In the Loop.” And judging by the new poster, I’m guessing the film is funny.  Check out the full image after the jump.

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  • 10/12 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Obama with the ‘Superman’ kids, handicapping the docs, ‘Debt’ delayed

    • President Obama met with children featured in the film “Waiting for Superman” yesterday. [Associated Press]

    • Handicapping this year’s documentary feature Oscar race. [Vulture]

    • Dave Karger explains his Gurus choices, calls “Love & Other Drugs” (one of his predicted Best Picture nominees) one of the sexiest films he’s seen in years. [Oscar Watch]

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  • Looking back on Oscar’s Old Left leanings

    Its installments come all too infrequently these days, but Best Pictures From The Outside In — a collaborative project between The Film Experience’s Nathaniel Rogers and his learned pals — is one of the best sources of Oscar discussion and analysis on the web.

    That’s not only because it provides ample opportunity for kvetching over the Academy’s past mistakes (our favorite sport, let’s face it), but because its system of pairing up Best Picture champs from opposite ends of history often reveals unexpected patterns of progression (or not, in some cases) among the voters.

    Their latest episode is a doozy on both counts, covering as it does one of the most roundly jeered winners in the category’s history, 1989’s thoroughly vanilla race-relations drama “Driving Miss Daisy.” (By contrast, the other featured champ, 1946’s “The Best Years of Our Lives,” holds up to this day.)

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  • Mike Leigh celebrates “hidden city” of London

    My attention was drawn to this article last week, but since the London Film Festival kicks off this week (and Mike Leigh’s “Another Year” will be competing for top honors there), now seems an appropriate time to link to it. Picking up on the role England’s capital city has played in a number of Leigh’s films — including his latest — the Wall Street Journal quotes the Salford-born director on his self-proclaimed status as an “ethnic London filmmaker”:

    It’s precisely the city’s specificity that engenders the grittiness of Leigh’s “Naked,” for example, or the quiet melancholy of “Another Year.” “By definition, London is a kind of place that means so many things,” Leigh said. “I’ve lived in London exactly 50 years. When you reflect on your life in a slab of 50 years…I adore London. I think it’s a wonderful, glorious city. That does inform the stuff that you’re talking about.”

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  • ‘White Ribbon,’ Bertolucci win BBC World Cinema Awards

    Fear not, you haven’t entered a very somber Tardis and woken up in December 2009. The BBC World Cinema Award is a small but creditable gong dished out annually to honor the best in foreign-language film — but due to a significant change in the show’s calendar, this year’s award effectively spanned the last two years of UK releases.

    Hence the rather stale-sounding list of nominees, but congratulations anyway to Michael Haneke’s 2009 Cannes champ “The White Ribbon,” which triumphed over “I Am Love,” “A Prophet,” “Let the Right One In” and “Waltz With Bashir.” (Note the absence of a certain pair of recent Oscar winners for Best Foreign Language Film.) Previous winners of the award include “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “Downfall.”

    The award was determined by a jury headed by Oscar-winning screenwriter and playwright Christopher Hampton, and presented in London last week. At the same time, Bernardo Bertolucci was honored with a lifetime achievement award. Anyway, nothing to stop the presses for, but thought you’d like to know.

    [Photo: Sony Pictures Classics]

  • Schnabel’s ‘Miral’ pushed to March 2011

    Well, it makes sense for The Weinstein Company to tidy up its slate a bit.  “Blue Valentine,” “Nowhere Boy” and big dog “The King’s Speech” are enough to play with, and there is also “The Company Men,” which has been screening lately.

    So we bid farewell to Julian Schnabel’s “Miral,” which was looking like an awards season also-ran anyway, given the response out of Venice and Toronto.  From the Lido, Guy wrote that “Schnabel’s stated passion for the material is scarcely evident in his screen treatment thereof” and that the film is “enlightening neither as emotional essay nor as straight-up history lecture…[it] seemingly lands shy of every imaginable target audience: it’s too dry for the middlebrow awards set that might otherwise thrill to its superficially good intentions, too didactic for the highbrow intelligentsia that turned out for the director’s previous outings, and too dull for just about everybody.”

    David Poland originally Tweeted the news last night.  I’ve been waiting all morning for an informed source to verify.  Crazy, I know, but anyway, with said verification, chalk it up.  The film will be released in March of next year.

    [Photo: The Weinstein Company]

  • Lifetime Achievement Awards for Deakins and Freeman

    A pair to report.  First up, Morgan Freeman gets the AFI tribute treatment this year.  I wonder if we’ll get some quality discussion of his work with David Fincher on “Se7en.” The press release, in part:

    Morgan Freeman has been selected by the  American Film Institute’s (AFI) Board of Trustees to receive the 39th AFI Life Achievement Award, the highest honor for a career in film, it was announced today by Sir Howard Stringer, Chair of the AFI Board of Trustees. The award will be presented to Freeman at a gala tribute on Thursday, June 9, 2011 in Los Angeles, CA.  TV Land will broadcast the 39th AFI Life Achievement Award tribute on TV Land PRIME later in June 2011.

    “Morgan Freeman is an American treasure,” said Stringer.  “Across decades, whether playing a prisoner, a president or God, he embodies a calm authority that demands respect for the character and for the art form.  His gifts to the cultural record are also underscored by his   unmistakable voice that echoes through the hearts and minds of movie lovers around the world.  AFI is proud to present him with its 39th Life Achievement Award.”

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  • POLL: What is your favorite Peter Weir film?

    Last week’s query regarding David Fincher’s filmography turned out to slightly favor “Fight Club” over the rest of his work.  I’ve been spending the last week or two diving back into Peter Weir’s offerings, especially topical given the recent announcement of “The Way Back” as an official contender in this year’s Oscar race.  So it seemed a good time to offer up a new poll on the matter.  What’s your favorite film from Weir?  Let us know in the left sidebar and feel free to offer up your defense in the comments section below.

  • Mann trying his ‘Luck’ with TV once again

    Doesn’t it feel like television is moving into a new golden age?  Everything from hour dramas to half-hour comedies is as impressive as ever and top filmmaking talent continues to make the jump.  We’ve already seen Martin Scorsese’s impact with “Boardwalk Empire” this year and if there’s one thing I’m looking forward to on the small screen, it’s the upcoming Michael Mann/David Milch horse race drama “Luck” on, where else, HBO.

    This is a powerhouse partnership by anyone’s measure, and that’s before you even get to the talent in front of the camera (Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte will star).  Both of these guys, Mann and Milch, are alphas, to quote one actor I talked to about the show at a festival last year (who has worked with both and who shall remain nameless).  But they’re also creative beasts.

    Geoff Boucher wrote a piece for this weekend’s LA Times and, of course, touches on that little nugget of intrigue.  He gets quotes from Hoffman, Mann and Milch on the matter, as well as HBO programming president Michael Lombardo (misidentified as David Lombardo).

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  • Samberg as Zuckerberg on SNL

    A different, but related clip after the jump.

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  • 10/11 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Franco at MOMA, Schnabel’s Polaroids, O’Hehir and Ebert fight to the death

    • Jeffrey Wells reports from a MOMA Q&A with “127 Hours” star James Franco. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Amy Kaufman talks with “Conviction” star Hilary Swank. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Add Polaroid photography to Julian Schnabel’s list of artistic pursuits. [The Guardian]

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Fincher reflection, ‘Way Back’ in, ‘Valentine’ blues

    • As robust box-office returns for “The Social Network” amplified its Oscar buzz, this week’s Off the Carpet column warned that the awards race is “a marathon, not a sprint.”

    • Keeping the conversation on David Fincher, we counted down the greatest technical achievements in his filmmography…

    • …and invited you to name your favorite Fincher film in our new poll.

    • Oscar-watchers got a new title to play with this week, as it was revealed that Peter Weir’s “The Way Back” will qualify for the 2010 awards after all.

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  • ‘Blue Valentine’ trailer

    Well, speak of the devil. On the heels of the film’s unfortunate run-in with the MPAA ratings board, The Weinstein Company has unveiled the first trailer for “Blue Valentine,” and it should give you some idea of why critics have been talking up this film — and, particularly, its pair of searing lead performances — since it debuted at Sundance in January. I was impressed by the film in Cannes, and Kris also boarded the wagon earlier this week. Check out the trailer via Yahoo! Movies by clicking the image below, or watch the embed after the jump.

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  • MPAA burns ‘Blue Valentine’ with NC-17 rating

    As if Derek Cianfrance’s moving, bruising marital drama “Blue Valentine” — with its Oscar-caliber performances by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams — didn’t face enough obstacles heading into the awards season, what with its bleak subject matter and perilously late release date, the MPAA has just thrown it an extra curveball. In their wisdom, the sensitive souls on the ratings board have ludicrously given the film an NC-17 rating: the movie-censorship equivalent of a scarlet letter, theoretically reserved for films that feature extreme, boundary-pushing violence or sexual content.

    It’s been almost five months since I saw “Blue Valentine,” so my memory may be a little hazy, but I must profess to being absolutely stumped as to what content in the film could have provoked this decision. It’s a harsh, adult-oriented drama, make no mistake, but it doesn’t even feature explicit nudity, much less any beyond-the-pale activity. Deadline’s Mike Fleming claims this was the scene that supposedly crossed the line [mild spoiler alert]:

    I’m told the rating was given for a scene in which the characters played by Gosling and Williams try to save their crumbling marriage by spending a night away in a hotel. They get drunk and their problems intensify when he wants to have sex and she doesn’t, but will to get him off her back.

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  • ‘The Way Back’ UK trailer

    The big news earlier this week was the announcement of a one-week qualifying run for Peter Weir’s “The Way Back” (which will be discussed by Anne and I this morning in the podcast). I had my say on the film at Telluride, but today, via The Guardian, we’re treated to the first trailer for the film. It’s cut a bit intensely but you get a decent idea of the scope of the film. Check it out by clicking the image below or watch an embed after the jump.

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  • ‘127 Hours’ poster

    Yesterday we got a look at an extended trailer for “127 Hours.” There was a poster bouncing around but I decided to hold out for a high res image, and that’s what we got today.  I like the hourglass vibe even if the overall design is a bit glossy for my tastes.  Have a look at the full image after the jump.

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  • 10/8 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: ‘Superman’ does well, Paramount grabs Reitman’s next, Lane on ‘Secretariat’

    • Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting for Superman” has performed better than several other high profile releases. [The Envelope]

    • David Poland sits down with “Let Me In” director Matt Reeves. [Movie City News]

    • Paramount to distribute Jason Reitman’s “Young Adult,” written by Diablo Cody. [Hollywood Reporter]

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