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  • ‘Get Low,’ ‘Monsters,’ ‘Skeletons’ among Edinburgh winners

    I have an irritating habit of missing key prizewinners at film festivals, so it was with some astonishment that I perused the list of films honored at the close of the Edinburgh Film Festival — only to find that I’d seen most of them. Considering the brevity of my visit, and my mostly random selection procedure, I can only conclude that the less I prepare for a fest, the better I do.

    Clearly, it’s not because I have a natural nose for a winner — I’d never have guessed that Aaron Schneider’s sluggish, self-regarding folk tale “Get Low” was a likely winner of the festival’s Audience Award, yet the public evidently responded to it more than I did. No accounting for tastes, I suppose.

    This particular award has proven something of a good luck charm in recent years, with winners like “Tsotsi,” “Man on Wire” and “The Secret of Kells” all going on to bigger things — perhaps last year’s Toronto buzz for the Robert Duvall vehicle wasn’t a false alarm after all.

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  • SUNDAY CENTS: ‘Grown Ups’ and their toys

    *All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.

    Adam Sandler’s agent successfully convinced him that cancer was way less funny than Kevin James’s blubby body falling down repeatedly and that agent has his finger on America’s pulse. “Grown Ups” is not the number one movie this weekend, though, so we’ll come back to it in a second.

    “Toy Story 3” dropped a respectable 47% to $59.0 million and easily repeated at the summit of the chart. It’s running total passed $225 million and the drops should get considerably better from here on out. I guess this means that the success of the first two films wasn’t down to the popularity of Jim Varney after all.

    Okay, now there’s that movie about “Grown Ups.” Seemingly named by an Executive’s five year old son and possibly written by him as well, the Adam Sandler comedy grossed $41.0 million for the weekend. That almost matches the $42.7 million of “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” and goes a bit better than the $39.6 million of “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.”

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  • ‘Four Lions,’ ‘Thunder Soul’ take audience awards at LAFF

    The poor Los Angeles Film Festival has had to battle major sporting events at every pass this year. Beats being screwed by World Cup refs, I guess.  The final press release, in part:

    Today Film Independent…announced its 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival audience award winners before the Closing Night film, Despicable Me. The Los Angeles Film Festival, presented by The Los Angeles Times, with its central hub at L.A. LIVE, began Thursday, June 17 and ended today.

    The Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature went to Four Lions directed by Christopher Morris and the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature went to Thunder Soul, directed by Mark Landsman. Roberto Hernández and Geoffrey Smith’s Presumed Guilty won the Audience Award for Best International Feature.

    The Audience Award for Best Short Film went to Dock Ellis & the LSD No-No, directed by James Blagden. The video for OK Go’s This Too Shall Pass, directed by James Frost, OK Go, and Syyn Labs won the Audience Award for Best Music Video.

  • EDINBURGH: ‘Monsters,’ ‘The Dry Land,’ ‘Mouth of the Wolf’

    My brief trip to the Edinburgh Film Festival came to an end Friday evening, as I hopped on a bus to Glasgow for a weekend with friends — sadly, that means I missed Tilda Swinton’s flashmob dance event, but I’m waving my right hand in the air as I type. It’ll have to do.

    I had planned to do a separate post for each of my final two days at the fest, but the notable films from that period can be squeezed into a single roundup. It’s perhaps kinder not to dwell on the likes of Britfilm “The Kid” — a paperback misery memoir put to film that bottoms out with Natascha McElhone trying to out-monster Mo’Nique in National Health glasses and oddly well-conditioned hair — while some titles are already old news Stateside.

    I dipped into Icelandic director Dagur Kári’s “The Good Heart,” for example, to see if the critical pounding US critics gave it in April was justified. Alas, it was: after this and “The Extra Man” (easily the worst film I saw here) Paul Dano should be wary of any script that calls on him to shack up with batty old codgers in Manhattan. Thankfully, my final day provided me with two of my favorite discoveries of the week, a happy conclusion to a cheerily-run festival that has been needlessly mauled in certain media quarters.

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  • On the sound of ‘Toy Story 3’

    It’s been a while since I linked over to the guys at SoundWorks Collection, who consistently do a marvelous job of conveying the intricacies of sound design, editing and mixing with making-of vignettes.  Most recently they turned their gaze to Pixar’s “Toy Story 3,” which boasts talents like Michael Semanick, Tom Meyers and Michael Silvers on the sound track.  Click the image below to shoot over to SoundWorks Collection or check out the embed after the jump.

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  • 7,300 ‘Days of Thunder’ later

    I grew up with a father who couldn’t be pried from the TV every Sunday, sometimes Saturdays for the Busch races, too.  So, naturally, I hated NASCAR.  Everything about it.  The kneejerk taunts of redneck ridicule were easy for me to saddle up to as well.

    But really, the older I got the more boring anti-NASCAR sentiment became.  Generally it’s ignorant prejudice, if we’re being honest, and even though I probably haven’t watched a race beginning to end since the one I attended at Bristol in the late-1980s, I every now and then get the urge to stick up for what is nevertheless one of the most popular sports in the world.

    With that in mind, I sort of delighted in reading Jenna Fryer’s AP story on the 20th anniversary of Tony Scott’s “Days of Thunder,” a film I must confess to loving.  Robert Duvall’s minute or two soliloquy to a parked car is, seriously, top notch stuff in my book.  Fryer makes early points about how the film reflected a number of real events but later explains an exaggeration of bump and grind on the track turned off a great many.

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  • Lawrence at your disposal

    I meant to make mention of this earlier, but actress Jennifer Lawrence will be participating in a post-screening Q&A this evening after the 7:40pm screening of “Winter’s Bone” at the Arclight in Hollywood.  She did the very same thing yesterday after a screening at the Landmark in West LA.

    If you’re a local and you’d like to hear a smart young actress talk about her brilliant work in the film, I’m sure it would be worth your while.

  • Man with a fútbol

    The whine of harmonica from my favorite piece of film music ever caught my attention on the television a moment ago.  I looked up to see a short version of the following commercial, featuring Argentina’s Lionel Messi and Spain’s David Villa.  Pretty neat.  Though nothing will likely ever touch Michael Mann’s (American) football promo from a few years back.

  • ‘A Family,’ ‘Make Believe’ win at LAFF

    I haven’t been able to cover this year’s LA fest with the diligence I had hoped, given that I’ve had company for nearly two weeks.  But today the jury winners were announced, so as a quick break from World Cup drama today, the press release, in part:

    Today Film Independent…announced its 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival award winners at a brunch at CHAYA Downtown. Audience award winners will be announced tomorrow afternoon…

    “There were thousands of movie fans at the festival this year, discovering new stories from our talented filmmakers,” said Film Independent Executive Director Dawn Hudson. “We are delighted to have the support of the Los Angeles film-going community for these films and their creators”

    The two top juried awards of the Los Angeles Film Festival are the Narrative Award and Documentary Award, each carrying an unrestricted $50,000 cash prize, funded by Film Independent, for the winning film’s director. The awards were established by the Festival encourage independent filmmakers to pursue their artistic ambitions.

    “In a year that celebrated an exhilarating spectrum of American and international cinema, it’s so fitting that these jury awards reflect the incredible diversity of the Festival,” said Festival Director Rebecca Yeldham.

  • ‘The Social Network’ trailer

    The teaser for David Fincher’s upcoming “The Social Network” hit the net at Mashable yesterday.  If you’re somehow unaware, it’s a biopic (weird to say that, no?) on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg from a script by Aaron Sorkin, based on Ben Mezrich’s novel “The Accidental Billionaires.”  There is no footage, just a lofty tease that gives the impression the film will be, shall we say, quite sincere.  It’s left to be seen how Columbia flacks and the 42 West component behind producer Scott Rudin (as always) will coalesce during the season, but it’s certainly a sight-unseen favorite for the race.  Check out the trailer by clicking the image below or watch the embed after the jump.

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  • FRIDAY FORECAST: Things get Cruisazy!

    *All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.

    This post is a little late so sorry if it’s brief. Turned out to be a very hectic Friday. I should have gone to a “Jonah Hex” screening for a little piece and solitude. Hey-oh!

    But seriously folks, we have two new releases to talk about, one of which has already been out for two days so let’s start there. Tom Cruise aims to repair his damaged reputation with the action/comedy/romance, “Knight and Day.” “Vanilla Sky” co-star Cameron Diaz has got his back and James Mangold directs. While the media likes to paint a grim picture of Cruise’s appeal, the simple box office facts are that the man has only had one miss to his name in recent years and that was “Lions for Lambs.”

    Given his supporting role and mutual star power coming from Robert Redford and Meryl Streep, we can go ahead and call it not Tom’s fault. “Mission: Impossible III” underwhelmed domestically but did just fine overseas. “War of the Worlds” was a mega-blockbuster, “Tropic Thunder” crossed $100 million with direct help from his buzz-worthy cameo and “Valkyrie” came close to the same mark in a crowded Christmas market with less than stellar reviews.

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  • AMPAS welcomes 135 new members

    Well, we already knew Jeremy Renner had got the nod. And no surprise that many of his fellow acting nominees from this year’s Oscar race — Christoph Waltz, Mo’Nique, Carey Mulligan, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick among them — have now been granted Academy membership. (Lest you think that the invitation automatically follows a nomination, Saoirse Ronan only gets in now, two years after her nod.)

    Other inclusions from Oscar’s class of 2009 include directors Lee Daniels and Juan  Jose Campanella, writers Mark Boal, Geoffrey Fletcher, Neill Blomkamp, Nick Hornby and Tom McCarthy, cinematographers Barry Ackroyd and Christian Berger, musician T-Bone Burnett, editors Bob Murawski and Joe Klotz, sound designer Paul N.J. Ottosson and costumer Catherine Leterrier.

    More thoughts, and the full list of 135 invitees, after the cut.

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  • EDINBURGH: ‘Get Low,’ ‘Restrepo,’ ‘Vacation!’

    My third day in the ‘Burgh (shut up, I have legitimately heard people call it that) wasn’t as film-heavy as the previous one: social commitments and a certain football match between Slovenia and some other country got in the way. Under these circumstances, three screenings — taken together, as disparate a cross-section of the U.S. indie scene as one could ask for — felt like an entirely honorable commitment, particularly when the first (and worst) of them rewarded me with the still-smarting black eye I mentioned yesterday.

    Chalk it up, however unfairly, as a further gripe I have with a would-be Oscar vehicle for Robert Duvall that has been pestering the festival circuit since last fall.

    “GET LOW” (**)

    Oscar-winning short director Aaron Schneider’s feature debut is the kind of prestige production that has critics reaching for adjectives like “handsome” (or, at a push, “elegant”) in the absence of any more compelling emotional connection to the material. If anything, however, the ample visual burnishment on display (it’s no surprise to learn Schneider began his career as an acclaimed cinematographer) only ends up smothering a decidedly minor-key narrative: a folksy slab of mini-Americana that Horton Foote might have penned in a particularly mannered mood, and then binned for lack of consequence.

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  • Craig Brewer’s rock and roll film

    Some time ago I remember an interview or maybe just a bit of director Craig Brewer’s general PR patter that he was interested in making a series of films that reflect various styles of music.  “Hustle & Flow,” for instance, was his “rap film.”  “Black Snake Moan” was his “blues film,” and so on.

    It came back to me immediately after I had the expected kneejerk “huh?” reaction to the news that he’ll be helming the long-gestating “Footloose” remake, but as I thought about it, it totally made sense.  This could be his “rock and roll” movie, and really, what better material to use than this?  A tale of finger-wagging adults warning the kids off of the devil’s music?  Perfect fit, really.

    One thing is certain: Brewer is a much better choice than the parade of potential directors the project has boasted in recent years.  First reactions might be to recoil, but I find myself strangely game for this.

    What about you?

  • Pixar animators = Renaissance masters?

    I’m not saying it — Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones is. In a brief but gutsy blog post, Jones adds an alternative (but still admiring) view to the past week’s pile of love letters to “Toy Story 3,” focusing less on their storytelling and more on their value as fine art pieces.

    In so doing, he concludes that Pixar and its fellow digital animation studios are artistic innovators equivalent not only to the artists of Disney’s golden age, but Renaissance masters like Leonardo da Vinci:

    If you watch the “making of” features on your DVD of the original Toy Story you will be told the story of a modern Renaissance. The Pixar team did not accidentally hit on a new way to make toys apparently come to life on screen. After seeing earlier attempts at digital animation they actively theorised that it was possible to perfect this technology, and to use it to create “real” animated worlds of an intricacy and vitality that would amaze and move audiences in a completely new way … Toy Story and its successors are colossal artistic achievements.

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  • Peter Jackson’s King Kong…again

    I must say, I’m kind of amped for the new Peter Jackson-directed King Kong 360/3D ride at Universal Studios.  The old, classic attraction, you might recall, went up in flames along with much of the historic lot when the area caught fire in the summer of 2008.  Here’s one of the many commercial spots that have caught my eye as of late.  A five-minute making-of featurette after the jump.  More goodies over at Universal’s YouTube page.

    Oh, and here’s a March 4 Geek Tyrant post with details on the ride that I stumbled across with some brief, wholly unrefined Google searching out of sheer curiosity.

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  • Case closed…for now

    I’ve been out scouting potential wedding locations all afternoon, but as a Variety story revealed today, the hub-bub concerning a potential shift to January for the Oscars would apply to the 2012 show, not the upcoming 2011 show.  Which, you know, of course.  I’ve been dealing with it as a kind of abstract idea and figured it was too late in the game for it to happen for the upcoming show, but that doesn’t make all the discussion moot.  We’ll just be putting it on hold for now.

    In the meantime, a few more folks have chimed in with thoughts on the matter.  Anne Thompson thinks it’s all a bunch of silliness (and is rebutted aggressively by David Poland), while Steve Pond gets Bruce Davis on the record in a piece that supports the (CRAZY! INSANE! ASININE!) theory that awards fatigue is, indeed, real.  Go figure.  Gregg Kilday also had some of the same stuff to offer at The Hollywood Reporter.

    The Oscars will air on ABC February 27, 2011.

  • LIFE WITHOUT OSCAR: 1953 and 1954

    Catch up with the idea behind this series here.

    Did you guys see that USA-Algeria game today? I mean, talk about a life without Oscar. How can anyone think of movies while the World Cup is going on? Can we start a petition to give Landon Donovan the Jean Hersholt award this year? I suppose not everyone has the fever so let’s talk about some films that should be burning up your Netflix queue.

    1953’s big prize went to “From Here to Eternity,” a serious film that few probably argued about then and warrants uninspired admiration today. 1954 gave us “On the Waterfront,” another serious film that briefly brought the Academy back to social drama before awarding more shitty, bloated epics later in the decade. So what should have gotten some love?

    1953 – “Tokyo Story” (Yasujiro Ozu)

    Yasujiro Ozu is one of the few directors I can think of that actually got better with age. The films made in the twilight of his career show a maturation of technique that rivals all masters of the medium, but they also show a maturation of storytelling that favors simplicity, as if he’s realized that life is too short to bother with anything but the heart of the matter. People can’t seem to stop talking about how “Toy Story 3” made them cry, but I can watch the last five minutes of “Rudy” with zero context and cry. “Tokyo Story” made me want to call my parents and tell them I love them, and that is the real power of the movies.

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