• Jacki Weaver talks “Animal Kingdom” downunder. [New Zealand Herald]
• Rowan Joffe on how he conceived “The American” as “an almost parodic contemporary Western.” [Movieline]
• Mark Romanek on music videos vs. movies. [Wall Street Journal]
Category: Daily
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‘The Fighter’ trailer
In yesterday’s “what could be the frontrunner” rant, one of the titles I noted could really change things up by year’s end is David O. Russell’s “The Fighter.” Every indication I’ve received is that it’s a powerful piece of work and that Christian Bale is outstanding (so much so that a lead actor push was considered at one point). Well the trailer has just launched via Apple and it looks like a high gloss prestige pic that could absolutely strike the right chord. Check it out by clicking the link below or watch an embed after the jump.
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TIFF: Invasion of The Boss
How do you follow up a massively successful, iconic, generation-defining album like “Born to Run?” How to even attempt to approach that level of stratospheric impact? Well, Thom Zimny’s documentary “The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town” made its way to Toronto last night to help answer those questions, and I knew I could count on The Wrap’s Steve Pond to be there, front and center, with a hell of a breakdown of the event (which probably had the biggest draw of the fest), the screening and Springsteen’s onstage “Mavericks” discussion with Edward Norton.Most fascinating is the fact that the conversation (naturally) dealt with the impact of cinema on Springsteen’s work. “Martin Scorsese once said that the artist’s job is to get the audience to care about your obsessions,” he said. He called the small-town America of the 1960s and the rumbling underneath which Bob Dylan bubbled to the surface “Lynchian.” He counted the “dark, bloody” pictures of the 1970s as an influence, as well as the work of John Ford, and he outright called his albums “cinematic,” which is difficult to argue against.
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TIFF: Lionsgate/Roadside grabs ‘Conspirator,’ Hawkins belle of the ball, Black’s melodramatic upbringing
It seems Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator” has become the first significant sell of Toronto (a few things have been picked up here and there already). Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions (which is really stepping it up this year) have nailed down the domestic rights, but go ahead and strike the film from your longlists. It won’t be released until the spring, Deadline’s Mike Fleming reports.Meanwhile, Patrick Goldstein sat down with Sally Hawkins, who has three films at the festival in “Never Let Me Go,” “Submarine” and “Made in Dagenham.” Andrea Riseborough is in two of those films (as well as “Brighton Rock”) and has been getting similar notices, but it’s Hawkins who could really make a dent on the season.
In his piece, Goldstein offers that for him, “what makes [‘Made in Dagenham’] work so well is that it doesn’t treat its story as a weighty political screed.”
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‘The Tourist’ trailer
Sony recently announced a December release date for Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s English language debut “The Tourist,” starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. It’s likely o be a commercial play (that will nevertheless be an SEO dream for webmasters), but the recently debuted trailer showcases a delightful performance from Depp. Check it out at Yahoo! Movies by clicking the image below or watch an embed after the jump. (Believe it or not there was actually a press release issued Monday announcing the upcoming launch of this trailer. Soon enough it’ll be the press release announcing the press release.)
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9/15 Oscarweb Round-up
• Anne Thompson sits down with Golden Lion winner Sofia Coppola, from Venice. [Thompson on Hollywood]• Patrick Goldstein on Hollywood’s on-going lover affair with mobster cinema. [The Big Picture]
• Pete Hammond concurs with the Oscar buzz surrounding “The Social Network” after a slew of screenings in New York and Los Angeles. [Deadline]
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Schemers trying to control their little worlds
It’s intriguing that two of the most press shy entrepreneurs of the internet age – Mark Zuckerberg and Sean Parker – have suddenly participated in two dense magazine profiles this month. It’s almost as if there was a film depicting key moments in their lives set for imminent release and they want to set the record straight. Oh…Really, though, I was struck reading this Vanity Fair profile of Parker that the character described is perhaps a bit more interesting than the more simplistic character Aaron Sorkin wrote in “The Social Network.” In the film, Parker is portrayed by Justin Timberlake as a paranoid, mean-spirited misfit. A misfit (and party animal) he may be, but Parker is lauded in the piece as a “higher being,” “generous” and “loyal,” and frankly comes off as something of a saint.
The writer does mention that Parker reached out to potential sources to smooth out his image, but even still, the accounts of generosity become a bit too consistent to ignore. Parker works well as an antagonistic figure in the film, mind you, but I think an instance of some of this would have added a nice layer of depth to the character. After all, Zuckerberg sure is dealt with in complex hues, and is all the more fascinating for it.
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‘For Colored Girls’ trailer
Ever since Lionsgate announced a November 5 release date for Tyler Perry’s “For Colored Girls,” talk has circulated around an expected Oscar campaign. A set of posters dropped recently that went a long way toward showcasing the female acting talent on display. But is it a contender? Could one of these ladies (or the film itself) slide into the race? Or should we expect the usual from Perry? Lionsgate did a fine job launching “Precious” on the same release date last year, but it also had a headwind coming out of the Sundance and Cannes film festivals. We’ll have to wait and see. The new trailer for Perry’s film, released today at Yahoo! Movies, is at the very least handsomely mounted. Have a look by clicking the image below or watch an embed after the jump.
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Step away from the Blair
Regular readers (or Twitter followers) may have gathered by now that Peter Morgan isn’t my favorite high-end screenwriter on the scene — I’ve found his recent run of factional biopics, resulting in a pair of Oscar nods for “The Queen” and “Frost/Nixon,” increasingly smug and samey, and was pleased to see him attempting something a little different in Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter.”Going on the mixed Toronto reception for the latter film, the jury is still out on whether Morgan’s flirtation with fiction — spiritually-tinged fiction, no less — has actually been successful. Either way, it would appear that Morgan is quite ready to return to his comfort zone, and more specifically, to his longstanding hobby-horse, Tony Blair.
Morgan has now dramatized the career of the former British prime minister in three separate projects — with “The Queen” sandwiched by TV films “The Deal” and “The Special Relationship” — each of them giving actor Michael Sheen an opportunity to fine-tune his Blair impersonation.
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TIFF: Riseborough on the, uh, rise
As Kris mentioned earlier, reaction out of Toronto to Rowan Joffe’s “Brighton Rock” has, so far, been on the guarded side, though it has found admirers — Time Out’s Tom Charity among them. Still, however the film lands, it does at least appear to confirm the arrival of Andrea Riseborough, the 29 year-old Brit who is something of a ubiquitous presence at this year’s fest, with supporting roles in “Never Let Me Go” and “Made in Dagenham” boosting her profile.It’s the plum role of Rose — the merits of which I discussed in Page to Screen — in the Graham Greene adaptation that is getting her noticed, however. You might remember that Kris had her in his Supporting Actress predictions until distribution doubts forced her out, but early notices suggest he was onto something. Writing for The Guardian, David Cox suggests that in Joffe’s adaptation, “Brighton Rock” emerges more as Rose’s story than anyone else’s, and that Riseborough carries the film mightily:
[W]hether Joffé intended it to or not, Andrea Riseborough’s breathtaking performance as Rose soon overwhelms the drama. To say her achievement deserves an Oscar would be somehow to demean it.
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TIFF: ‘Brighton,’ ‘Rabbit,’ ‘Debt,’ ‘Whistleblower,’ ‘Boating’ reactions
A quick round-up this morning. First, we already offered some reactions to Rowan Joffe’s “Brighton Rock,” which is still looking for a distributor. But things aren’t looking great for awards prospects should it land a buyer, as Movieline’s Michelle Orange says the film “extends the Graham Green adaptation curse.”Meanwhile, John Madden’s “The Debt” could still be in play. Rope of Silicon’s Brad Brevet calls it “a satisfying thriller that is almost so subtle it feels like it’s based on a true story.” He later singles out Helen Mirren’s performance as “striking,” noting that she “brings a commanding and competent presence to her character.”
One hotly anticipated title is John Cameron Mitchell’s “Rabbit Hole,” also still seeking distribution. Showbiz 411’s Roger Friedman Tweets that star Nicole Kidman is “back in Oscar form,” while Deadline’s Pete Hammond gets a bit more substantial, adding Dianne Wiest to the mix. “Should it find a distributor this week and get an end-of-year berth,” he writes, “past winners Kidman and Wiest both become bonafide Oscar contenders again.” He does warn that it could be perceived as too much of a “downer,” though. Nathaniel Rogers does a much better job of rounding up responses at The Film Experience, though.
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9/14 Oscarweb Round-up
• Ben Affleck discusses “The Town” across the pond. [Daily Telegraph]• The Best Picture race begins to take shape for Sasha Stone. [Awards Daily]
• Michael Cieply talks to Kevin Spacey about his work as “Casino Jack” and his involvement with “The Social Network.” [New York Times]
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‘Life, Above All,’ ‘Uncle Boonmee’ enter Oscar race
I lost track of the foreign-language Oscar submissions while I was away in Venice, so the entry of my own favored horse into the race seems like a good occasion to catch up. If you kept up with my Cannes coverage, you might remember that I made a slightly off-center prediction while reviewing the South African AIDS drama “Life, Above All” — that it would secure a Best Foreign Language Film nod next year, and could even be the film to beat for the Oscar.I stand by that call, and it remains on track: South Africa, seeking its third nomination and second win in the category since 2004, has predictably submitted Oliver Schmitz’s film to the Academy. (Thanks to Bianca Jacobsohn for notifying me.) The film recently had its North American premiere at the Toronto fest, where it seems to have been warmly received, and has already been adopted by Sony Pictures Classics — the studio that dominated last year’s foreign-language race with three of the five nominees, including the eventual winner.
I maintain that the film’s child’s-eye focus and heart-tugging issue drama place it squarely in the Academy’s wheelhouse — that it’s also a strong film only helps matters.
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TIFF: Eastwood is either patient or lazy, depending…
Traditional media are responding to Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter” even if early-bird web folks smacked it down after the first press screening of the film this weekend. I think it’s safe to say that Richard Corliss and Roger Ebert rarely meet an Eastwood film they don’t like, but raves in Time magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times can go a long way in an awards season.Corliss seems to feel that “if you go with his new picture’s slow flow, and stick around for its rapturous resolution, you’ll see this as a summing up, a final testament of so many Clint characters, from The Man With No Name to Dirty Harry, from Million Dollar Baby’s Frankie Dunn to Gran Torino’s Walt Kowalski, for all of whom facing down death was a natural part of life.”
Ebert, meanwhile, notes that the film “is made with the reserve, the reluctance to take obvious emotional shortcuts, that is a hallmark of Eastwood as a filmmaker” and that “Eastwood and his actors achieve a tone that never forces the material but embraces it.”
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A note on Chabrol
I wouldn’t even know where to start writing an obituary for Claude Chabrol, the French nouvelle vague master who passed away yesterday at the age of 80. His filmography is so vast — spanning 52 years and 54 features, many of which I have yet to see — and his influence so extensive that formal tributes are best left to those more learned than I.Still, that’s not to say he hasn’t made a number of films that mean something to me, chief among them 1970’s “Le Boucher,” a character-study-as-thriller so perfectly and precisely formed it hurts a little to watch it. It was my first Chabrol, and indeed one of my first forays into the French arthouse canon, introduced to me in childhood by my dad — who counts it among his favorite films.
I’ve inherited his affection: the film’s simple set-up — shy young schoolteacher strikes up a friendship with a lonely village butcher who may or may not be a killer — is an undercoat for a deeply compassionate study of emotional repression and moral judgment, with a for-the-ages lead turn by his then-wife Stéphane Audran.
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‘Mildred Pierce’ trailer
Okay, this isn’t theatrical coverage, but one of the projects I’ve had my eye on for some time is Todd Haynes’s remake/re-adaptation of “Mildred Pierce.” It has been developed as a mini-series and looks incredibly striking, if viewed through a much different prism than Michael Curtiz’s original film. Check out new trailer for the event after the jump.
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9/13 Oscarweb Round-up
• Richard Corliss, clearly irritated by early Oscar buzz, comes down hard on “The King’s Speech” and seems to think it is “bad enough” to win the Oscar for Best Picture. [Time]• Colin Firth, meanwhile, responds to said Oscar buzz. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Regarding “Let Me In,” Stephanie Zacharek contends “like a piece of great music, a strong movie can withstand multiple interpretations.” [Movieline]