In Contention

Category: Daily

  • Telegraph predicts “global hit” for ‘Dagenham’

    Two weeks ago, when I made my first Oscar predictions of the 2010 season, I went out on a bit of a limb for “Made in Dagenham,” the upcoming true-life Britcom that will have its world premiere at Toronto next month.

    I have yet to see the film, but the story material, the talent involved and the promisingly perky trailer (embedded after the jump) combined to suggest one of those undemanding, broadly appealing UK charmers that sneak up on the Academy every couple of years — and that, as “An Education” proved last year, face a gentler climb to a Best Picture nod in a field of ten.

    With the Academy’s sizable British voting bloc having often made their presence felt even in the days of five nominees — hello, “Atonement” — the odds do favor at least one British film making the cut in most years. Many see Mike Leigh’s “Another Year” as the prime candidate for that hypothetical slot this year, and it’s certainly a worthy one, but it remains a tough sell in many respects: a quiet, sometimes despairing essay on middle-aged loneliness unlikely to register beyond a rarefied arthouse audience.

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  • ‘The Tempest’ poster

    “The Tempest” is a title we’ve been waiting for for some time.  It wasn’t ready last year and the back and forth with Miramax raised more questions, but slowly, surely, it’s coming down the pike.  We all know Sandy Powell’s costumes will be marvelous.  I hear Elliot Goldenthal’s score is remarkable.  If nothing else, it’ll surely be another imaginative head trip from director Julie Taymor.  The poster has hit, courtesy of Yahoo! Movies.  Check it out after the jump.

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  • Tranquilo

    I’ve been unplugged since last Wednesday, in the midst of some much-needed laptop-less, sun-soaking, ocean-wading, tequila-slurping and Mexicuisine-gobbling down time in Cabo, so forgive the absence.  A few notes, though.  The season kick-off for the Off the Carpet weekly will be Monday, August 30.  Anne and I will hold off another seven days on the Oscar Talk weekly (Friday, September 3).  And this piece from Scott Feinberg, about how “The Kids Are All Right” ended on paper (and should have ended on celluloid), is well worth your time.  Back to normal tomorrow.

  • Not just Lawrence

    With indie darling “Winter’s Bone” beginning to sidle out of American theaters, the most important gain it leaves with — besides its not-inconsiderable $4 million gross — is a healthy head of Best Actress buzz for breakout star Jennifer Lawrence.

    Sure, recognition for the screenplay may be on the cards too; even a filler Best Picture nod isn’t inconceivable, should critics rally for the film in December the way they did for “Frozen River” two years ago. But its awards hopes begin with its 19 year-old lead: she’s the story, the bright young thing whose achievement even the film’s detractors can agree on.

    But should she be getting all the glory? Not so fast, says Nathaniel Rogers. In this week’s instalment of Best in Show, a self-explanatory weekly column for Tribeca Film, Rogers argues that Lawrence, fine as she is, may not even be the film’s most valued player. That position, he says, is held jointly by older character actors John Hawkes and Dale Dickey.

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  • Emma vs. Audrey

    British papers have probably made more of Emma Thompson’s recent dismissal of Audrey Hepburn than her slightly flip comments warranted, but it has prompted an interesting amount of side-taking over the merits of one of Old Hollywood’s most beloved (or so we thought) icons. If you’re new to this story, Thompson’s jabs at Hepburn were made with specific reference to her performance in “My Fair Lady,” for which Thompson herself is scripting the upcoming big-screen remake:

    [T]here needs to be a new version. I’m not hugely fond of the film. I find Audrey Hepburn fantastically twee. Twee is whimsy without wit. It’s mimsy-mumsy sweetness without any kind of bite. And that’s not for me. She can’t sing and she can’t really act, I’m afraid. I’m sure she was a delightful woman – and perhaps if I had known her I would have enjoyed her acting more, but I don’t and I didn’t, so that’s all there is to it, really.

    It was Cecil Beaton’s designs and Rex Harrison that gave it its extraordinary quality. I don’t do Audrey Hepburn. I think that she’s a guy thing… It’s high time that the extraordinary role of Eliza was reinterpreted, because it’s a very fantastic part for a woman.

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  • ‘Monsters’ poster and trailer

    A smart little horror-romance-road movie hybrid, and an eye-catching debut for British writer-director-DP-production-designer-FX-creator Gareth Edwards, “Monsters” was one of my top finds of June’s Edinburgh Film Festival, where it deservedly won the New Directors Award. Judging from this new poster and UK trailer, the film’s marketers are obviously feeding off the comparisons that have already been made to “District 9” — and though Edwards’s film is very much its own beast, it’s easy to see why they sense similar indie-genre-crossover potential. Keep an eye on this one. Poster (via IMDb) and trailer after the jump; read my review of the film here.

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  • Desplat, Zimmer, Burwell lead World Soundtrack nominees

    The World Soundtrack Awards aren’t quite as authoritative as their lofty names implies — established in 2001 to accompany the annual Ghent Film Festival in Belgium, they are voted upon by an educational organization of film composers dubbing themselves the World Soundtrack Academy. Given their European origins, it’s interesting how much their awards overlap with those of American awards bodies.

    Coming at this point in the calendar, this year’s nominees fudge together some first-half releases  from this year with a bunch of 2009 awards veterans. All the nominees for Score of the Year, for example, come under the latter heading, three of them having been Oscar-nominated. (The other two, “A Single Man” and “Where the Wild Things Are,” remain my two favourite scores of 2009: good on the WSA for remembering them.)

    Looking at some of the 2010 titles getting mentioned, however, one has to wonder how deep they were digging: “Knight and Day” and “Alice in Wonderland” don’t belong within striking distance of any musical honor, even as part of a body of work.

    (Full list of nominees after the jump.)

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  • Can we ‘Eat’ yet?

    For a major star vehicle, directed by the current ruler of prime-time television, that is only four days away from release, shouldn’t the profile of “Eat Pray Love” be a little higher right now? I admit I’m on the wrong side of the Atlantic; perhaps American streets, magazines and airwaves are flooded with promotional material for Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of  Elizabeth Gilbert’s chick-lit smash. But the film’s online presence seems decidedly muted, while reviews of any sort have yet to appear. What gives?

    Usually, when critics are kept from seeing or writing about a film until this late in the game, it’s because the product smells decidedly iffy. But that’s hardly the case with “Eat Pray Love”: the source material has a devoted following, the talent involved is top-flight, and the trailer was attractive and thoroughly ingratiating.

    As I made clear in a Page to Screen column recently, I detested Gilbert’s fussy, solipsistic memoir, yet the trailer’s promise of airy romance, luscious scenery and Julia Roberts at her most personable had me pegging the film as one of this summer’s most inviting; if it could win me round, the book’s legions of fans should practically be queuing at the theaters already.

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  • Double dip for Gallo at Venice fest

    If you happen to feel you’ve seen too little of Vincent Gallo lately, you really should head to Venice next month, where he’ll now be gracing two Competition titles (not to mention multi-tasking as writer-director-producer-editor in one of them).

    It was announced two weeks ago that “Promises Written in Water,” his first venture behind the camera since 2003’s roundly reviled “The Brown Bunny,” will contend for the Golden Lion; now comes confirmation that veteran Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski’s “Essential Killing,” in which Gallo stars alongside Emmanuelle Seigner, has been added to the Lido lineup.

    “Essential Killing” marks Skolimowski’s first appearance in a major festival competition since 1991’s “30 Door Key,” and only his second directorial effort since then. The Venice press release describes it thus:

    The film tells the story of an Afghan man [Gallo], captured by American forces in Kabul, who finds himself transported to a nameless European country. He manages to escape into the vast frozen woodland, a world away from the desert home he knew. Forced into extreme survival mode, he must kill anyone who strays into his path.

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  • Patricia Neal (1926 – 2010)

    The occasional indignity of being an Academy Award champ is that it gives obituaries an immediate short-cut through one’s career: a lifetime of distinguished work can be handily reduced to “culminated in an Oscar win for _________.”

    Such is the case in many pieces on the passing of Patricia Neal yesterday, albeit justifiably supplemented with observations on her troubled personal life and remarkable recovery from multiple illnesses. Indeed, as a kid obsessed with all things Roald Dahl, I was, for many years, more familiar with the woman than the actress.

    When discussing her film career, however, it’s hard not to zero straight in on her tremendous, Oscar-nabbing work in “Hud”: handily the most electric moment of an otherwise respectable career, yes, but also among the most essential, era-defining performances ever honored in the Best Actress category. (Yes, up there with greatest-win peers like Vivien Leigh and Hilary Swank, and perhaps something of an evolutionary link between them.)

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  • ‘I’m Still Here’ poster

    I’m not entirely sure what manner of beast Casey Affleck’s upcoming documentary about his friend Joaquin Phoenix’s 2008 retirement/reinvention/stunt/freakout is: it claims to be a sincere portrait underpinned by mutual understanding between artists, but it could just as well be the latest archly ironic act in this most slow-burning of celebrity pranks. Whether it answers any questions or simply adds more to the list, however, it’s bound to be one of the hottest tickets at next month’s Venice Film Festival, where it will premiere out of competition. (Alongside Casey’s brother Ben’s “The Town” — the Lido likes it some Affleck this year.) It also boasts one of 2010’s loveliest one-sheets, by the great Kellerhouse, Inc. — perhaps the only time the word “lovely” could be applied to the look Phoenix is rocking here.

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  • Just say no

    Last week, Tom O’Neil reported on a horrifying unacceptable interesting potential development in this year’s Oscar race, and as much as I’ve tried to push it to the recesses of my mind, the thought won’t leave me alone — not least because it provides a depressingly neat answer to one of the question marks I had over the predictions I made last week.

    As I struggled to cobble together a list of 10 plausible Best Picture nominees, I kept searching for the annual middlebrow specialty wild card that is neither too populist nor too outré for the bluehair voting contingent — the film that will make voters feel artistically discriminating, without making them want to slit their wrists. A film for those voters who, to filch a quote from Nick Davis, “like the arthouse best when there’s no real art in it.”

    “The Kids Are All Right” kind of fits the bill, though it’s actually good, and its fun factor is a little too high. “Winter’s Bone” is suitably low on fun, but it’s also as chilly as its title. “The King’s Speech?” Well, it has corsets and cut-glass British accents a go-go, as well as Harvey Weinstein — a man who, as “The Reader” reminded us only 18 months ago, knows this voting contingent inside out. But it’s also a small-scale story of one man overcoming a stutter: mightn’t that prove a little slight for voters who like their awards bait capital-I Important?

    According to O’Neil, it seems this thought might have crossed Weinstein’s mind, and he’s already forming a back-up plan. Ladies and gentlemen, enter “The Concert.”

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  • Terry Gilliam directs Arcade Fire

    I was asleep for the live transmission a few hours ago — though I understand there were some technical issues — but no doubt many of you caught the (beautifully) Terry Gilliam-directed webcast of Arcade Fire’s Madison Square Garden gig. I look forward to catching up with the whole thing, but for now, here’s their performance of my current (and highly subject to change) favorite track of the new album. Is now the time to say something snarky and uncalled for and thoroughly truthful about this being the most worthwhile thing Gilliam has done in the last decade or more? Okay, consider it said.

  • Christopher Nolan honored by BAFTA/LA

    As if you needed reminding that this is a pretty good summer for a certain Mr. Christopher Nolan, BAFTA/LA — the Anglo-American wing of the British Academy — has handed him their annual John Schlesinger Award for artistic excellence in directing. The award will be presented at their 2010 Britannia Awards ceremony in Los Angeles on November 4.

    You’d be well advised not to read too much into this award as far as general BAFTA voting goes: last year, Emily Blunt was named British Artist of the Year by BAFTA/LA for her performance in “The Young Victoria,” and received not so much as a BAFTA nomination for her pains. Shared acronym aside, the two awards ceremonies bear little relation to each other.

    Indeed, Nolan is the first filmmaker to land this particular gong in a year that could even be deemed his for the owning. Previously, BAFTA/LA has had a habit of rewarding directors the year after a notable achievement on their part: Danny Boyle in 2009, Stephen Frears in 2008, Martin, uh, Campbell in 2007, and so on. Clearly, they feel that “Inception” is an achievement that warrants less delayed recognition — which may or may not be significant.

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  • ‘Never Let Me Go’ to open London Film Festival

    Previously a handy catch-up festival for locals who had missed out on the major premieres of Cannes and the like, the London Film Festival raised its profile significantly in the last two years by opening with major world premieres — “Frost/Nixon” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”

    They haven’t quite managed to repeat the trick a third year running: this year’s curtain-raiser, Mark Romanek’s Kazuo Ishiguro adaptation “Never Let Me Go,” will have already premiered at Toronto the month before. Still, it’s a prestigious feather in the film’s cap, a handy pick for those Europeans unable to make the flight out to Canada, and an appropriately British way to kick off the festival. Coincidentally enough, it’s the fourth year in a row that the LFF has opened with a semi-Brit pic from a North American director.

    The 2010 London Film Festival will run from 13 to 28 October. All eyes now will be on festival director Sandra Hebron’s closing night selection. Last year, the festival closed with another world premiere — Sam Taylor-Wood’s “Nowhere Boy,” which will finally make its way to US theaters this autumn — and if they plan to maintain the  international press presence they enjoyed last year, they’ll want to do the same. Shooting for the stars here, but… “Harry Potter,” anybody?

    Press release after the cut.

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  • ‘Barney’s Version’ teaser

    Hat tip to The Playlist for reminding us of this brief trailer for Richard J. Lewis’s comedy “Barney’s Version,” which will premiere in competition at next month’s Venice Film Festival, before moving on to Toronto. (It’s a couple of months old, but for many, the film only hit the radar recently.) There is too little here to draw any firm conclusions, though it does strike me as an unusually chipper American selection for Venice’s big league. I have yet to read the popular source novel — if there’s time, I might cover it in Page to Screen — and Paul Giamatti is an actor to whose charms I remain curiously immune, so I’ll sit out for the moment. Watch the treaser after the jump and see what you think.

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  • Where is my mind

    As that finicky final shot of “Inception” continues to prompt confusion and discussion in comment boards across the internet, it would appear that some people still aren’t done processing Leonardo DiCaprio’s first puzzle pic of 2010.

    Much has been made of the sizable overlap between Christopher Nolan’s summer blockbuster and Martin Scorsese’s winter genre exercise “Shutter Island” — not least in the respective characters played by the films’ mutual leading man — and this extends to ambiguous finales that, in both cases, cast doubt on said character’s state of consciousness.

    I must admit I wasn’t aware that the debate over the end of “Shutter Island” is quite so extensive; perhaps because I watched the film with Dennis Lehane’s novel — to which the film is letter-faithful for the first 99% of its running time — so fresh in my mind, I didn’t give the film’s minor digressions a second thought. (I wasn’t all that engaged anyway.)

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  • Reitman, Cody reteam on ‘Young Adult’

    Jason Reitman announced shortly after last season’s “Up in the Air” bonanza that his company had acquired the rights to Joyce Maynard’s novel “Labor Day.” But it turns out that, while he’s hard at work on drafts of that adaptation, another original script from “Juno” scribe Diablo Cody is what’s on deck for the director.

    Mike Fleming reports at Deadline that Cody’s “Young Adult” is being set up through John Malkovich’s Mr. Mudd production company for Reitman’s next gig behind the camera. 2007’s Oscar-winning “Juno” was also set up through Mr. Mudd.

    Charlize Theron is set to star as “a ghostwriter of young adult novels who realizes she has no identity with her pseudonym and plots to reclaim her identity,” Fleming writes. “Her campaign involves going back and rekindling a relationship with her high school boyfriend–who’s freshly married, is a new father, and wants no part of her.”  Reitman, meanwhile, compared the material to “To Die For” when we exchanged emails.  Sounds exciting.  He plans to go right into production on “Labor Day” after this project.

    Check out the rest of the story at Deadline.