In Contention

Category: Daily

  • Howard’s ‘Airbender’ score hits iTunes

    When I took my initial stab at the 2010 Oscar forecast a few weeks back, I went out on a limb in a few places for M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Last Airbender,” which I’ve frequently said could be a disaster or something really special.  One of those limbs was Best Original Score, as James Newton Howard could potentially land his sixth nomination in the category.

    Howard has lately become a perennial favorite with the Oscars. His most recent nominations came for “Defiance” (a film that didn’t do well in other categories) and “Michael Clayton” (for a score few could remember when his name popped up on nomination morning). And let’s not forget his saving grace work in “The Village,” which was also recognized.

    His score for “The Last Airbender” has already been released via iTunes for a $9.99 download, and it’s packed with all of Howard’s usual percussive intensity and has just the right touch of epic strokes to perhaps be recognized come year’s end. Additionally, a rave review of the work has already popped up online.

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  • Nolan breathes something about ‘Dark Knight’ sequel

    It’s not much, nor would it be.  Nolan offers his stand-by “I work on one film at a time” line, but the meat of what he says in a forthcoming Empire magazine interview:

    “[The third film will be] the finishing of a story rather than infinitely blowing up the balloon and expanding the story.”

    And:

    “No, [the Joker will not return or be recast].  I just don’t feel comfortable about it.”

    That ought to get a few foaming-at-the-mouth fans through the next month or so.  In the same interview Nolan goes on to talk about adopting Superman to a “modern context” and his position that cross-over mentality goes against the grain of what Superman and Batman are all about.  Coming Soon has tons of quotes from the article, which isn’t online right now.

  • UK poster and trailer for ‘White Material’

    Yes, I’m still pimping this. The runaway best film of 2010 (or 2009, depending on when you saw it) finally drops in the UK on July 2 — I’m already itching for another look. The trailer, after the cut, is much the same as the French one I featured in March, with the addition of subtitles and a choice Brit critic’s quote. (The quality is iffy, I’m afraid, but it’s the only link I could find.)

    American readers, IFC is looking after you, but no release date is scheduled yet.

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  • Del Toro hobbles ‘Hobbit’

    You’ve probably heard the news by now, but in case you haven’t, here’s a précis via Variety:

    Guillermo Del Toro has dropped out directing “The Hobbit” movies due to the ongoing delays in getting the films greenlit. Del Toro made the surprise announcement Sunday on The One Ring web site, adding that he will continue to co-write the screenplays based on J.R.R Tolkien’s “The Hobbit.”

    “It’s not greenlit,” he told reporters. “That’s categorical. We’ve been caught in a very tangled negotiation. There cannot be any start dates until the MGM situation gets resolved. They do hold a considerable portion of the rights.”

    I appear to be the only — well, maybe not the only — person on the internet not crushed by this news, so feel free to vent and speculate in the comments. Who would you like to see take up the reins? I hear rumors it’s a close-run thing between Béla Tarr and Brett Ratner.

  • Jennifer Lawrence would like to remind you she’s hot

    Assuming (and I am assuming) that the film remains in the conversation, Kris and I will be at loggerheads all season over “Winter’s Bone” — I am a fan, he is emphatically not. What we do agree on, however, is that the film’s 19-year-old star, Jennifer Lawrence, is the real deal.

    Actually, we agreed on this point a year ago, when Lawrence emerged as the standout of a strong ensemble in Guillermo Arriaga’s “The Burning Plain.” The film went largely unseen, but those who did get round to it were consequently less surprised than everyone else by the actress’s remarkable, film-carrying turn in this year’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize champ.

    Back in February, in a published conversation with The Film Experience’s Nathaniel Rogers, I unwisely put my neck on the block by predicting a 2010 Best Actress Oscar nomination for Lawrence — and while the market for female Oscar contenders in bleak indies is already getting crowded, what with Lesley Manville and Michelle Williams in the mix, I’m sticking by that still-premature call. As I wrote to Nathaniel then: “[I]t’s such a mammoth performance, plus she’s young and hot.”

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  • R.I.P. Dennis Hopper

    “What are they gonna say about him?  Are they gonna say he was a kind man?  He was wise man?  He had plans?  He had wisdom?”

    It’s up to those of us left to have that say, I suppose.  He’ll live forever.  Ride easy.

  • On the move

    Sorry for the post-Cannes drought on my end. I’m en route from Chicago to Nowheresville, Ohio after a rockin’ Route 66 road trip and will be playing meet the parents this weekend. Understandably, I’m out of pocket. So use this space to talk about, I don’t know, “Shrek?” “Prince of Persia?” All I know is I tried to watch “Alice in Wonderland” at the hotel last night and still can’t get the taste out of my mouth…

  • CANNES: Starfish and coffee

    “Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye,” you might have thought (or even sang, in gravelly Leonard Cohen tones) after my rushed response to yesterday’s Cannes winners. But having recharged overnight with a hearty curry and a good 13 hours’ sleep, it’s time to properly put a bow on Cannes 2010.

    Perhaps it was quite a Tim Burton-flavored festival after all. Jury presidents at Cannes often seem at pains to choose the last film anyone would associate with their own work — which is partly why I picked the sober ecclesiastical drama “Of Gods and Men” for the Palme — but Burton and his cohorts swung in a quirkier direction. “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” which I flippantly likened to a parallel-universe take on Burton’s own “Big Fish,” becomes the first fantasy film (of a type) to take gold at Cannes since “Miracle in Milan” almost 60 years ago. (More surprisingly, it’s also first Asian winner since 1997.)

    I wish I could personally groove to the film the way almost everyone else does (my C+ grade sticks out like a sore thumb on indieWIRE’s critic score roundup) but objectively speaking, it’s the best choice Team Burton could have made for the Palme: the undisputed critical favorite of the festival, a wholly unique, challenging piece from a distinctive major auteur, and a film that can truly benefit from the award in securing international distribution that could prove elusive otherwise. Plus, it won me £50 on a Palme bet I made weeks before the fest started. I’m liking the film more already.

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  • ‘Uncle Boonmee,’ Bardem, Binoche take gold at Cannes

    No prizes for guessing which award here makes me happiest. I’m quite proud of having semi-called (who sees a tie coming, anyway?) Elio Germano for Best Actor — didn’t hear anybody else mentioning his name. Also got the top two prizewinners, just in reverse order. More discussion later, but for now, I have a dinner appointment to keep. The list of winners:

    Palme d’Or: “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”

    Grand Prix: “Of Gods and Men”

    Best Actor: (tie) Javier Bardem, “Biutiful” and Elio Germano, “La Nostra Vita”

    Best Actress: Juliette Binoche, “Certified Copy”

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  • CANNES: What will win… and what should

    Okay, so that took longer than I expected. I had hoped to get this post up last night, but instead got quite easily talked into a night on the tiles with a band of merry Film Dweebs led by James Rocchi — not the wisest idea with a morning flight to catch, but by the time we found ourselves in a friendly 3am chat with Atom Egoyan about our respective issues with the ending of “Chloe,” that hardly seemed important. (Name dropped and duly picked up. Apologies.)

    Anyway, after a smooth morning’s traveling, I am now writing to you from my North London living room — not quite as glamorous as the Croisette, though surprisingly, just as sun-splashed.

    In a few hours, Cannes 2010 will come to a close as Tim Burton and his fellow jurors reveal their selections for the best of the fest, perhaps shedding some light on the burning question I’ve asked myself after every Competition screening: “But what does Kate Beckinsale think?”

    (More analysis, and full list of predictions and preferences, after the cut.)

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  • ‘On Tour,’ ‘Of Gods,’ ‘HaHaHa’ take early Cannes prizes

    The big guns, the Competition jury, announce their prizewinners tomorrow night, but ahead of that, there are a host of smaller, independent juries making their voices heard.

    I’ve just returned from the Un Certain Regard award ceremony, a short, sweet tuxedoes-and-sneakers affair presided over by UCR jury president Claire Denis. As delighted as I was to see one of our greatest living filmmakers in the (tiny) flesh, I was less pleased with her team’s selection — by handing their top prize to Hong Sangsoo’s wispy romcom “HaHaHa,” they continued an increasingly disconcerting trend whereby films that I walk out of at major festivals are handsomely rewarded. (Hey, I wasn’t alone: James Rocchi bailed too.)

    The Ecumenical Jury got that memo, too, handing their top prize to another film I didn’t finish, Xavier Beauvois’s “Of Gods and Men.” Of course, that was a gimme — if you don’t know, the Ecumenical Jury Prize was established in 1974 by a group of Christian film professionals to reward expressions of faith and/or humanism in Competition. How was the true-life tragedy of monk massacre in Algeria not going to win?

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  • CANNES: All things being sequel

    I began my final day in Cannes with some dutiful, and not greatly anticipated, ticking of boxes, taking in my last two Competition screenings back-to-back this morning.

    That brings my final tally to an elegantly symmetrical 14 and 1/4 films seen of the 19 selected. (That sneaky fraction represents my fatigue-induced walkout on the bookies’ Palme d’Or favorite “Of Gods and Men.” Quelle dommage.)

    I was shooting for a 100% record when I arrived, but scheduling conflicts and screening shutouts conspired against me. As it stands, of the ones I missed, only “The Housemaid” is really nagging at me.

    I’ll post some thoughts on the runners and riders for the Competition gold later today; tonight, however, brings the Un Certain Regard award ceremony, where Claire Denis (hurrah) and her jury will reveal what they deem the best of the festival’s B-league. I’m doing even less well on the UCR front, having caught only 11 of the 19 selections, though the promising-on-paper lineup has generated surprisingly few talking points across the festival.

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  • CANNES: ‘Life, Above All,’ ‘Tender Son,’ ‘Cameraman’

    “It is finished so soon?” asked the chipper French festival volunteer manning the theater doors as I slunk out of Hong Sangsoo’s “Hahaha” just before 11pm. No, I explained — it had a good hour left to go.

    “Is it that boring?” he asked. No, I explained — it wasn’t that boring. Modestly boring. Sweetly boring, if you will. But it wasn’t making any effort to grab me, even gently.

    So, as my bum knee began to twinge in protest at yet another couple of hours locked at a 90 degree angle, I realized that what I really needed was to be outside a movie theater for the rest of the night, to buy a Grand Marnier ice-cream cone from the excellent gelateria by the Grand Palais, and to go eat it barefoot on the beach. I told the volunteer as much, minus a few extraneous details. He nodded sympathetically.

    “I understand,” he said. “I’ve watched some of the films. What you’re saying is that they have no … no balls, you mean?”

    Ladies and gentlemen, a great critic is born.

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  • CANNES: Machinists, masochists and monkey ghosts

    “Are you eating at all? Are you sleeping? You don’t look like you are,” observed our good friend Anne Thompson yesterday afternoon, her face etched with motherly concern, before whisking me off for a hearty al fresco meal.

    I wanted to tell Anne that I tend to cut a pretty gaunt figure even on my best days — but having just read someone on AwardsDaily noting my allegedly striking resemblance to Christian Bale in “The Machinist,” I had to concede that festival fatigue may have hit me pretty hard.

    But hey, the Mayor of Cannes is holding a Provençal lunch for the festival press tomorrow afternoon in the old town quarter, so I won’t keel over just yet. If there’s one lesson I’ve learnt at the festival, it’s that there’s always such a thing as a free lunch.

    If you weren’t tipped off by the fact that I’ve spent 150 words musing on matters of alimentation rather than movies, Cannes 2010 is beginning to wind down. Much of the U.S. press contingent (including Anne, Jeff Wells and Sasha Stone) have gone home, the hot movies — such as they were — have been unveiled and the crowds have thinned out to the extent that even a lowly yellow-badger like me can rock up two minutes before a screening and enter without hassle.

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  • One more round

    Megan Fox may be an airhead and Shia LaBeouf may be a lightweight, but when it comes to speaking the truth, they deserve credit for having far more bracing honesty than most of the suck-ups who rule the business. Only in Hollywood is calling a lousy movie a lousy movie considered an act of sedition.

    From Patrick Goldstein’s most recent Big Picture post.

  • Tension between Scott and Crowe on ‘Robin Hood’

    We’ve already pointed out the long, destructive development process of “Robin Hood” and how it yielded a Frankenstein assemblage due to multiple rewrites.  So it’s a full nine graphs into this Vulture “exclusive” before you get to the actual exclusive material: the film apparently almost splintered Crowe and Scott’s relationship forever.  Writes Claude Brodesser-Akner:

    With a Screen Actors Guild strike looming, and the release date blown, real tension began to mount between Crowe and Scott. Their familiar bonhomie had been replaced by frosty, terse exchanges. “There was a feeling of ‘Get it right already!” recalls one insider. “They were always speaking, but barely.” Said another source who watched the relationship deteriorate, “There were a lot of forces who all believed they were trying to do the right thing.”

    Then again, there’s not a lot of meat there, so who knows how serious the situation really was. Anyway, more grist for the mill.

  • ‘Another Year’ goes to Sony Pictures Classics

    Mike Leigh’s latest, easily the consensus critical darling of Cannes thus far, was never going to have trouble finding a U.S. distributor — the only question was whether it would be the equally plausible candidates Focus or Sony who got there first. As ScreenDaily reported earlier today, it’s the latter:

    Sony Pictures Classics has acquired North American rights from Focus Features International (FFI) to Mike Leigh’s much fancied Palme d’Or contender Another Year.

    FFI chief Alison Thompson concluded the deal with the Sony Pictures Classics team of Tom Bernard, Michael Barker and Dylan Leiner at around midnight on Tuesday [18].

    Another Year will open towards the end of the year and Bernard and Barker are likely to give it an awards push.

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  • CANNES: ‘Blue Valentine,’ ‘Tamara Drewe,’ ‘Film Socialisme’

    Sadly, this is looking like a second consecutive day of minimal film viewing — thanks to the scheduling of my morning roundtable interview with the “Blue Valentine” team of Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams and director Derek Cianfrance, I had to forgo this morning’s screening of Lee Chang-dong’s “Poetry,” of which I have rather high expectations — I hope to catch the repeat tomorrow.

    Meanwhile, the interviews ran late enough to ensure I missed today’s hottest ticket: Olivier Assayas’s five-and-a-half hour “Carlos.” On the one hand, I’m obviously disappointed. On the other, 330 minutes is a pretty lavish gift of time, and it’s thanks to that that I’m able to write this very piece.

    So, to every cloud a silver lining and all that — and there are a lot of clouds doing the rounds on this uncharacteristically damp and chilly day in Cannes. Perhaps the sun saw that monk-massacre movie everyone’s raving about, and couldn’t see the point in continuing.

    On with the review catch-up.

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