In Contention

Category: Daily

  • ‘Inside Job’ trailer

    I reviewed Charles Ferguson’s smart financial recession study at Cannes in May, describing it as “a thorough, incisive if faintly dry breakdown of the current economic crisis that plays a little like last year’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” on a heavy dose of Ritalin.” Most other critics are less measured in their praise; though there are no sure things with the Academy’s wilful documentary branch, the film looks a cinch to score an Oscar nod, and very possibly the win too. The Sony Pictures Classics acquisition will play Toronto next month, before hitting US theaters on October 8. Apple has the first trailer; click on the image to check it out there, or watch the embed after the jump.

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  • Picking the best new lensers

    As you know, we at InContention are dedicated to spotlighting below-the-line talent, so this excellent cinematography-themed piece at The Playlist caught my eye — in it, Oli Lyttelton singles out five individuals that he feels are spearheading an exciting new generation of DPs, breaking down their past achievements and future promise in some detail.

    The focus on newer names is both refreshing and necessary, given how awards voters can be resistant to outstanding work from comparatively untested talents. Of the five worthy names he puts forth, three — Greig Fraser (“Bright Star”), Eduard Grau (“A Single Man”) and Adriano Goldman (“Sin Nombre”) — arguably deserved awards traction in the 2009 season than they eventually got, while two — Robbie Ryan (“Fish Tank”) and Michael McDonough (“Winter’s Bone”) — seem destined to be similarly slighted this year, given their low profile and the gritty unprettiness of their projects.

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  • Anton Corbijn’s ‘American’ picture book

    Anton Corbijn’s “The American” will be screening for press very soon, and it’s one of the films I’ve been most looking forward to this year.  The photographer-turned-director’s debut feature, “Control,” was one of the 10 best of 2007 in my book, and the latest looks to be a tense thriller with visual style to spare.

    Of course, it would be an aesthetic looker.  Corbijn’s photography is the stuff of legend.  And he’s directed some visually dynamic music videos in his time, such as Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box” and the most intriguing of U2’s “One” trilogy.  But the director seems to making more of the production of his latest feature than we tend to get out of a filmmaker.

    First, he blogged the experience with nice accompanying photography.  Now it seems a collection of his photographs behind the scenes will fill what’s sure to be an attractive picture book, “Inside The American.”  Can’t wait to pick up a copy.

    Some more Corbijn awesomeness after the jump.

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  • Celebrating five years of In Contention

    This wasn’t a planned post in the slightest.  I saw that /Film was celebrating its fifth year today, and of course, David Poland celebrated 13 years of The Hot Button/Blog yesterday.  I thought I started the old IC blogspot in September of 2005 but it turns out the first post dropped on August 19, 2005, five years ago last Thursday.  Combine that with next week’s Off the Carpet column marking the start of my 10th year of Oscar coverage and it’s official:

    A lot has happened since those humble beginnings, not least of which being the addition of contributors like Guy Lodge, Gerard Kennedy, Chad Hartigan, Blake Rutherford, Brian Kinsley and John Foote along the way, each of which have elevated our game and made this a better destination. I’m thankful to them for the help and to you for the devotion.

  • Brit critics flip for ‘The Illusionist’

    Yeah, yeah, everybody loves “Toy Story 3.” Enchanting, amusing, heartbreaking… all those swell things. We hear it every year: Pixar shames every other Hollywood studio, transcends the limits of animation, etc, etc. Pencil in a second consecutive Best Picture nomination, and stick a fork in the Best Animated Feature race — for the fourth year running.

    Except it shouldn’t be that easy. Pixar may have expertly capped a beloved film franchise, but they haven’t made the best animated film of the year. That title, bar a late-year surprise, goes to Sylvain Chomet’s “The Illusionist,” which knocked me out at the Berlinale in February and thoroughly sustained the magic on a second viewing this weekend.

    It occurred to me that the visually rapturous film, a beyond-the-grave collaboration with French comic master Jacques Tati, would form a neat (if very moist-eyed) double feature with the Pixar juggernaut: both take a melancholic approach to themes of growing up and letting go, but it’s the Chomet film I found more searching and soulful.

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  • We all got it comin’

    What was the last truly immortal Best Picture winner?  Cases can be made for this or that throughout the years, but for my money, the last film to win the Academy’s top prize that is absolutely a film for the ages was Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven.”

    And you can get the Blu-ray on Amazon for less than eight bucks.  Do it!

    Anyway, nothing other than that on a lazy Sunday.  Though it inspired me to dig up Eastwood’s acceptance speech for his Best Director win back in March of 1993.  Naturally, the Academy is stingy with embeds, but have a look and listen here if you’re bored.

    Oh, and here is Eastwood introducing the film at the AFI’s 40th anniversary celebration a few years ago.  And Gene Hackman winning Best Supporting Actor.  And Eastwood on Hackman’s character, Little Bill Daggett.

    Sorry, I could go on forever about this one.  After the jump, a few choice selections.

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  • Defriending ‘The Social Network’

    With David Fincher’s “The Social Network” already accruing positive buzz ahead of its New York Film Festival premiere next month, its handlers would do well to pre-empt the inevitable pushback over matters of factual accuracy — complaints that have already dogged the film’s sloppy source book, Ben Mezrich’s “The Accidental Billionaires” (discussed at length in Page to Screen here).

    No one will (or should) be seeing “The Social Network” for an exhaustive journalistic essay on the origins of Facebook. Rather, what we’re hoping for from writer Aaron Sorkin is a tangy interpretation of the facts that reaches for broader truths about the social-networking generation; dramatic flexibility, then, is the order of the day. Needless to say, the powers behind Facebook, including founder (and “Social Network” protagonist) Mark Zuckerberg, don’t quite see things that way. This recent New York Times piece goes into the friction between them and the film’s producers.

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  • ‘Right One’ Toronto After Dark poster

    There’s not much going on this weekend, so, apologies for the glut.  We’ll turn the corner over the next week and coverage starts in earnest 8/30 (preceded by a new Oscar Talk on 8/27), so, patience.  For now, I’m really digging this “Let the Right One In” specialty poster from the fifth anniversary of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival (the film screened there in 2008).  Check it out after the jump.

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  • ‘Another Year’ UK trailer

    At Cannes, I was with the critical majority in admiring Mike Leigh’s latest, and the valentines will surely continue to roll in when the film plays Toronto next month ahead of an awards-season run. The Guardian (quite the experts lately in nabbing British trailer exclusives) has the first trailer for the film, which gives a pretty accurate sense of the film’s delicate pitch between dry comedy and crushing drama. Interestingly, rather than granting the spotlight to Lesley Manville’s showy, buzz-generating turn, it represents the film as the ensemble piece it is; one wonders if Sony Pictures Classics will be quite so democratic with the US trailer. Click on the image to check it out at the Guardian site, or watch the embed after the jump.

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  • ‘Tree of Life’ to “change the language of movies?”

    I can’t speak to the interest Anne Thompson’s source on “The Tree of Life” has in the film, though I imagine anyone who has seen it has a vested interest at this stage.  Regardless, what the source has to say is mouth-watering indeed:

    “It’s a mystical exploration of the meaning of life, a journey in which a microcosm of a family mirrors the world; the differences between man and woman, husband and wife, are mirrored against nature and grace. It will change the language of movies. It’s a real event. People will say, ‘what the fuck is this?’”

    You’ll remember yesterday Todd McCarthy publicly stated his expectation that the film will move to 2011, based on little more than the usual impatience.  In his role as New York Film Festival selection committee member, I guess he just got some bad vibes when promise after promise was made to screen it for potential inclusion in the fest, only to no avail.  But I wonder if all of this back and forth is ultimately unhealthy for the film itself.

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  • Foundas on ‘Social Network’: “Big, brash and brilliant.”

    If you’ve read the script for Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Network” then you know it’s powerful stuff waiting to be unleashed on the season.  Well, Scott Foundas is first out of the gate with an extremely early critique of the film, and it’s all thumbs up from Brett Ratner’s best bud.  To wit:

    David Fincher’s The Social Network is big and brash and brilliant…It is nominally the story of the founding of Facebook, yes, and how something that began among friends quickly descended into acrimony and litigation once billions of dollars were at stake. But just as All the President’s Men—a seminal film for Fincher and a huge influence on his Zodiac—was less interested by the Watergate case than by its zeitgeist-altering ripples, so too is The Social Network devoted to larger patterns of meaning. It is a movie that sees how any social microcosm, if viewed from the proper angle, is no different from another—thus the seemingly hermetic codes of Harvard University become the foundation for a global online community that is itself but a reflection of the all-encompassing high-school cafeteria from which we can never escape. And it owes something to The Great Gatsby, too, in its portrait of a self-made outsider marking his territory in the WASP jungle.

    To sayt he least, in most conversations I’m having leading up to the awards season, Fincher’s film is perhaps the most anticipated.  If even half of these sentiments are fair, then I think it’s safe to say a bona fide contender is comin’ round the bend.  Read the rest of Foundas’s thoughts at Film Society of Lincoln Center.

    “The Social Network” opens the New York Film Festival September 24.

  • Oscar buzz (or not) for Noomi Rapace in ‘Dragon Tattoo’

    If we didn’t mention last week’s big casting news of Rooney Mara landing the role of Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher’s English-language remake of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” it’s because a) the story hardly wanted for coverage, and b) I don’t exactly share many people’s keen interest in Stieg Larsson’s mega-selling literary franchise. I find the books diverting but undistinguished airport fare, and the hit Swedish screen adaptation of “Tattoo” a one-note televisual slog.

    That said, I’m fine with any phenomenon that compels mainstream audiences to read both books and subtitled movies — yet I draw the line when people start suggesting that the film should be in line for awards recognition. Deadline Hollywood’s Nikki Finke, however, suggests that the film’s backers sense awards potential for the screen’s original Lisbeth, 30 year-old actress Noomi Rapace:

    I’ve learned that Music Box Films is about to hire an Oscar publicist, probably Melody Korenbrot, to promote Noomi for a Best Actress nomination. That’s right, Best Actress. She’s already won the Swedish equivalency of that for the film. Her new agents at UTA and managers at Magnolia are comparing her to Marion Cotillard, who appeared in a small foreign film, came out of nowhere to be nominated and then win the Best Actress Academy Award, then landed big roles in major studio tentpoles.

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  • December welcomes ‘The Tourist’

    It’s difficult to know how to interpret the news that “The Tourist,” the first English-language feature from Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, has been yanked forward into the 2010 release calendar, following a reportedly well-received screening for studio bosses. The film will now hit US theaters on December 10, a release date it shares with the latest “Chronicles of Narnia” instalment and, more pertinently, David O. Russell’s Oscar hopeful “The Fighter.”

    Why difficult? Well, the buzz on the film has heretofore been so quiet that we have little idea what manner of beast it is. I haven’t seen “Anthony Zimmer,” Jérôme Salle’s well-regarded but underexposed 2005 French espionage thriller from which von Donnersmarck’s film is adapted, but it appears to be a lightweight genre effort.

    While many will assume that the rescheduling positions “The Tourist” as a serious awards prospect, it could just be that Sony sees the film as a commercial winner for adult audiences in the pre-Christmas rush. (We only need look back at last year’s brutal holiday season to be reminded that a December release is no guarantee of awards gold.)

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  • ‘Fair Game’ trailer

    Actress Naomi Watts is front and center as an awards prospect in Doug Liman’s “Fair Game,” and the trailer, recently launched via Yahoo! Movies, certainly conveys as much as well. At Cannes, however, the film didn’t really set things ablaze. Guy was measured in his appreciation of the film at Cannes.  We’ll see what Summit can do with a campaign but for now, it’s clearly being positioned as a thriller to bring in the dollars.  Check out the trailer by clicking the image below or watch the embed after the jump.

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  • No ‘Tree of Life’ until 2011?

    That’s what Todd McCarthy seems to think.  Please keep in mind it’s nothing beyond speculation on his part.  But it’s worth pointing to the graph in question:

    All through our recent two weeks in the dark, we received periodic updates and tentative promises about the imminent arrival of the film for us to view; even well into the second week we were still being thus tantalized. Finally, of course, came word that Malick was still not done and it now seems clear the picture will not be opening this year. I can’t prove it, of course, and he’s supposedly set to start shooting a new film in Oklahoma in October, but I’m convinced we won’t be seeing “The Tree of Life” until, at the earliest, the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. Or perhaps it could turn up at the New York Film Festival a year from now.

    Check out the rest at Deep Focus.

  • SAG honors Ernest Borgnine

    There will no doubt be some mixed responses to this announcement, given that 93 year-old Ernest Borgnine is now recognized by a younger generation less as an Oscar-winning actor than “that bigot who refused to see ‘Brokeback Mountain,’” but he has just been named the recipient of the Life Achievement Award at next year’s Screen Actors Guild ceremony.

    As career awards ago, this one is more hard-earned than most: Borgnine’s résumé is long and peppered with notable contributions to notable films: between “The Wild Bunch,” “From Here to Eternity,” “Bad Day at Black Rock,” “The Dirty Dozen,” “Escape from New York,” “Johnny Guitar,” “The Poseidon Adventure,” “Gattaca” (even if he doesn’t care much for it) and, of course, “Marty,” SAG directors should have a pretty easy time assembling a highlight reel. Plus, you know, “Airwolf!”

    The 2010 SAG Awards ceremony will take place on January 30, 2011. Edited (if hardly brief — did we need to cover his Freemason status?) press release after the cut.

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  • ‘Black Swan’ poster

    Earlier we got the trailer for Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” (which is going over quite well).  Now we get the poster.  Unfortunately it’s just an assemblage of text on a still we’ve already seen.  I’d rather have seen something velvety and sinister like the title screen of the trailer, personally, but there is an obvious black and white, yin and yang vibe going on, so maybe this is just right.  Check out the full poster after the jump.

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  • ‘Black Swan’ trailer

    There are two films I’m most looking forward to in 2010: the Coen brothers’ “True Grit” and Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan.” The trailer for the latter has just hit the web courtesy of Apple and it looks like an absolute stunner.  I’m hearing, awards wise, that it’s probably more of a Best Actress play for Natalie Portman than a Best Picture possibility, but we’ll know all of that sooner or later.  The trailer certainly reveals the film as a showcase for Portman, but Barbara Hershey also could be someone to watch for in supporting.  Check out the trailer by clicking the image below or watch the embed on the jump.

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