In Contention

Category: Daily

  • AMPAS will vote on expanding visual effects category to five

    Expansion is the thing these days.  And after last year’s shift from five Best Picture nominees to 10, it’s looking like the wheels are in motion to finally cough up another two slots in the category of Best Visual Effects, a move I think many will agree is a long time coming.

    But we’re not there yet, mind you.  Variety’s David Cohen reports that the VFX branch’s executive committee voted “yay” on the proposal and that it now must be approved by the Academy’s Awards Rules Committee.  If they’re on board, we get five.

    Cohen tries to use the old “move would help the Oscars’ efforts to bring popular pics to the show” line, but we all know Best Visual Effects is generally a haven for critically dismissed cotton candy.  Still, given the rise of effects wizardry over the years, a limited slate of three has left more than a few eyebrow-raising bridesmaids.  I’m fully in favor of this and hope it passes.  But cui bono?

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  • Letters from Cannes

    Today’s Cannes schedule has only allowed for one-and-a-quarter films, which at least means I’ll be able to catch up on yesterday’s review backlog later. For now, though, it’s off to one function I didn’t have to work very hard to get invited to — the London Film School (my alma mater) reception, with Mike Leigh as guest of honor.

    Then it’s a dip into the Edinburgh Film Festival party — which can be counted on for good chat and free whiskey — before I get myself all tuxed up and hit the red carpet for tonight’s gala screening of “Certified Copy.” (Yes, I’m seeing it twice in two days — it’s that good.) So I’m afraid there won’t be more reviews for a good few hours, though you can catch my Twittered thoughts on Sundance-to-Cannes indie hit “Blue Valentine.”

    Two things to plug before I go, however. One disadvantage about being on the ground at Cannes is that I haven’t the time to read and round up fellow critical reactions, so indieWIRE’s criticWIRE Cannes Guide, collecting the scores of a wide range of critics and bloggers, is something of a godsend.

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  • CANNES: ‘Certified Copy’ and other adventures

    By the halfway-mark of the festival, Cannes can do irrational and frankly cruel things to your head. Having slunk back to my apartment at 3am after a merry night of wine and pizza some fellow bloggers — only to find myself locked out of said apartment in a cheap sitcom twist — I planned to treat myself to a lie-in while my roommates, Slant’s Matt Noller and the A.V. Club’s Mike D’Angelo, dutifully rose for the 8.30 press screening of Xavier Beauvois’s Competition title “Of Gods and Men.”

    Minutes after the door clicked shut behind them, however, I found myself sitting bolt upright in bed: what if was making a terrible mistake? What if “Of Gods and Men” turned out to be the unforeseen “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”-style masterwork of the festival, and I the one dumb schlub who missed it? What if I was forever frozen out of Film Dweeb Nation for not having an opinion on “the Beauvois?” What if?

    Suitably panicked, I leaped out of bed, tore through a breakneck shower-and-dress routine and ran — ran — down to the Palais so I could settle into a nosebleed seat, panting and bleary-eyed, with one minute to spare.

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  • Dweebs vs. Hot Dog Eaters

    (UPDATE: While he’s good and fired up, Jeff takes the opportunity to slam the “effete critics” who don’t like “Biutiful” as “coming from a stifled and constipated place.”)

    Hot dog eaters? Hey, you asked for more double entendres, though I’m guessing Jeff Wells doesn’t quite mean it that that way.

    I’ve been a fan for many years of Hollywood Elsewhere’s energetic, unguarded and often unhinged Cannes coverage, even — no, especially — when I suspected I’d eventually disagree with him on the films, once I saw them. Actually being at the fest, however, affords me the chance to disagree with him both immediately and in person — as we did last night, on Abbas Kiarostami’s rapturous Competition standout “Certified Copy.” (More on that anon.) What I like about Wells is that he’ll cheerfully join you for a drink mere minutes after posting this:

    Abbas Kiarostami’s Copie Conforme (a.k.a., Certified Copy) is what most hot-dog-eating humans on the planet earth would call a “dead movie” … However, if you’re a member in good standing of Film Dweeb Nation, a presumably human but possibly alien culture which tends to favor and in some cases worship the imaginations of sunlight found in anal cavities, you’ll stroll into the Orange press cafe just after the screening of Copie Conforme, like a certain British journalist did 20 or 25 minutes ago, and go “oh, I loved it!” I looked at this guy incredulously and said, “Hold up, let me get this straight. You didn’t like the Inarritu [i.e., Biutiful] but you liked Copie Conforme?”

    I can’t imagine which journalist he’s talking about … any ideas?

  • The Dark Knight on the Croisette

    Being the Bat-geek that I am, I couldn’t resist posting this image, stolen from The Film Experience’s Cannes correspondent, Julien.  I guess this is one of the advert stills being used before screenings?  Guy?  Either way, love it:

  • ‘Biutiful’ reactions reflect a tale of two movies

    Guy hasn’t pulled his full review of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful” together yet, though he will shortly.  Directly after this morning’s Cannes screening, he Tweeted that the film was “critically unfocused and emotionally muted,” and that “Inarittu clearly needs to kiss and make up with Arriaga.”  And judging by some of the reactions coming out of the theater, he wasn’t alone.

    MSN’s James Rocchi, always a tough sell on films of the Iñárritu breed, mind you, called the film “[m]oving, yes, but I’m unsure about what it’s moving for; Bardem superb, but morally murky melodrama’s depression lacks direction,” while Variety’s Justin Chang wasn’t that far behind: “The grinding arthouse equivalent of ‘The Pursuit of Happyness,’” he called it.

    Chang has one of only three full reviews I’ve come across so far.  The other two come from Sukhdev Sandhu at London’s Telegraph (a pan), and Kirk Honeycutt at The Hollywood Reporter (a rave).

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  • LaBeouf on dropping the Indy ball

    I have a new special place for Shia LaBeouf after reading his fearless ribbing of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” at Cannes.

    Via 24 Frames, the money quote:

    I’ll probably get a call. But he needs to hear this. I love him. I love Steven. I have a relationship with Steven that supersedes our business work. And believe me, I talk to him often enough to know that I’m not out of line. And I would never disrespect the man. I think he’s a genius, and he’s given me my whole life. He’s done so much great work that there’s no need for him to feel vulnerable about one film. But when you drop the ball you drop the ball.

  • ‘Nottingham’: How a hot script became a forgettable film

    Screenwriter blogs can often reward with a refreshing take on the film industry, even if they are at times flavored by the requisite misanthropy of those of us with visions of slug lines dancing in our heads.  Josh Friedman’s I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing was a good read for a time, though it hasn’t been updated in a while.  John August also has a nice outlet that can be a good resource as well.

    I only happened upon William Martell’s Sex in a Submarine today, as his recent post, “Robbing From The Poor (Writer),” caught my eye.  In a nutshell, it’s a thorough look at the development of Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” from a hot Hollywood property into a likely money-losing snooze of a film (with its champions here and there).  And if you’re a fan of smart, unique stories having a place at the table in Hollywood, it’s a bona fide horror story.

    I don’t track projects like some of the other film/fan sites out there, so I wasn’t aware of the fact that Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris’s “Nottingham” was a “C.S.I.”-style look at the classic tale from the point of view of the Sheriff of Nottingham using period forensics.  Sherlock Holmes in Sherwood Forrest, if you will.  But I can’t believe an idea that fresh was squandered so absolutely, even if it is par for the Hollywood course.

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  • ‘Inception’ TV spots

    Something else I happened across while playing web catch-up this morning.  You’ve probably seen them on the tube plenty of times by now, but since it’s a hotly anticipated summer title, I thought I’d offer them up for commentary here.  Two more after the jump.

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  • ‘Another Year’ clips

    Guy really set the tone for Mike Leigh’s “Another Year” for me when he reviewed the Competition title out of Cannes yesterday.  (Though he seems to be catching some friendly flack for not going the full four-star route.  Why the pulled punch, Guy?)  Anyway, suffice it to say, the film appears to be a masterful deconstruction of a certain melancholy, the rhythm in which Leigh finds most success, in my opinion. And we could be looking at a supporting actress contender in Lesley Manville, given the blanket approval of her work.

    A few clips have popped up online.  The first one is below. Three more after the jump.

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  • ‘Pictures at a Revolution’ makes its way to the big screen

    When I read Mark Harris’s “Pictures at a Revolution” last summer, an amazing history of the American filmmaking revolution through the lens of the 1968 nominees for Best Picture, one of my first thoughts was, “This would make a great film.”

    I was thinking narrative, though, mainly because key figures like Rex Harrison and, of course, Warren Beatty stuck out as such vibrant characters.  And the circumstances are so dramatic — or, at least, Harris really found the right dramatic rhythms when he pulled all the information together.  If anyone was willing to sit down and attempt the thankless task of streamlining his dense work into a script, it could make a hell of a film.

    Well, that’s not happening, of course, but the inevitable is.  Oscilloscope Laboratories has announced plans to produce a documentary based on the volume with “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired” director Marina Zenovich tapped to head up the project.  It’ll be fun and it’ll hopefully be revealing.  And if you haven’t read the book yet, do yourself the favor.

    There aren’t any quotes from Harris in the press release, so I thought I’d reach out and get his quick perspective on things.  Check out his response, as well as the full release, after the jump.

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  • Russell Crowe wins radio’s Dick of the Year award

    You might recall last year’s prestigious honor for showing one’s ass across the radio waves went to Billy Bob Thornton.  This year’s award goes, in a landslide, to Russell Crowe:

  • Au revoir ‘Law & Order’

    Even though there are probably seven or eight other iterations of the show on NBC, the network’s decision to cancel the flagship “Law & Order” program this week is, nevertheless, the end of an era.  I felt it shouldn’t pass without some commentary.

    Most interesting for me was this AP story, which serves as a love letter to the show’s depictions of New York over the past two decades.  Writes Melissa Raysworth:

    Some shows depict a New York that simply doesn’t exist (try and find two struggling Manhattan twentysomethings with a “Friends”-sized apartment). Others offer a window into a single corner of New York life: Fashion-obsessed women really do sip cocktails in trendy bars, just like on “Sex and the City.”

    But most TV fare offers up a mere sliver of New York City. For two decades, until it was canceled Friday, NBC’s “Law & Order” did something different. It showed the world not just one New York but hundreds.

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  • Tell us what you thought of ‘Robin Hood’

    I’ve told you what I thought.  Guy offered his opinion from Cannes.  What more can be left to say, other than, hey, what did you think?  Cut loose with your comments below when you see the film this weekend (or whenever).  Also, don’t forget to vote in this week’s sidebar poll.

  • Of notes and diaries on the Croisette

    While Guy is doing a bang-up job handling Cannes for us this year, I thought I’d poke around and see what some of the other usual suspects of the Oscar season are covering things on the ground.  When I clicked over to Awards Daily, I wasn’t the least bit disappointed.

    Sasha Stone, attending the fest for the first time in the 11 years she’s been on the film awards beat, has charted her experience in a series of diary entries that uniquely — and smartly — aims to assess the psychology of a place so wonderfully bizarre as a cosmopolitan film festival.  Her coverage is armed with cheeky barbs such as this:

    There are obscure screenings and high profile screenings and many variations therein. But it does give one a warped sense of things when you see crowds begging for tickets to Wall Street 2. If it were any ordinary Friday in the states you’d be thinking, “do I really want to go see another sequel?” Maybe you would and maybe you wouldn’t, but it is pressing here. It is a must-do.

    Pete Hammond, meanwhile, kicked the tires on his Notes on a Season column over at The Envelope to piece together one of his typical “Notes on the Town” features from the fest.

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  • ‘Love Ranch’ poster

    This is the OTHER Helen Mirren film that seems to be taking its time making it to screens:

    [Courtesy: The Hit List]

  • When the stars go blue

    It’s a quiet first day at Cannes, with only two films screening and little besides a pair of unremarkable press conferences (which, dingy yellow-carder that I am, I couldn’t directly attend anyway) to report on — the highlight of which was Cate Blanchett’s curt answer to a dim-bulb journalist asking her how heavy the film’s chainmail costumes were to wear. “It’s all plastic,” she said drily, before waving on the next question.

    “Robin Hood” served as this morning’s entertainment — Kris has spared me having to review it at any length, but I’ll gather a few thoughts later this evening. (Hint: I like it more than Kris and less than Empire.) Tonight offers Mathieu Amalric’s burlesque-troupe comedy “Tournée (On Tour)” which I’m rather looking forward to. However the film turns out, at least, it plainly boasts the best poster of any film in the festival this year. Or out of it, for that matter.

  • ‘Twas the night before Cannes

    … and while plenty of creatures are stirring along the Croisette — not least some grim-faced papparazzi camping out overnight for their red carpet spot — there’s a palpable sense of a town collectively holding its breath, waiting for the crazy to hit.

    As such, I have little to report from my first day in Cannes; I could regale you with tales of queuing for my press pass, haggling with PR folk for interview time and, more pleasantly, taking a time-out to eat cherries on the beach, but I don’t want to use up all my “A” material already. I can’t even fall back on epic stories of harrowing ash clouds and flight delays, unlike many of my American colleagues — indeed, I’m one of the few who can claim his plane landed in Cannes ahead of schedule.

    Still, my journey did not pass entirely without hardship: it was raining heavily when I touched down in Nice this morning, and I got a little bit wet on exiting the plane. Such are the trials I endure for your sake, readers.

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