As you know, I’m a big fan of this Focus summer release, which puts a neat mainstream spin on progressive sexual politics, and boasts Julianne Moore’s best performance in eight years to boot. It’s interesting (and, I think, appropriate) to see this trailer putting the film’s comedic properties front-and-center rather than going for the highbrow Oscar grab — some viewers might find themselves surprised by how artful and moving it is. It hits screens on July 7; read my Berlin review here.
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García Bernal among names added to Cannes jury
Just over a week away from the announcement of the official selection for this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and any festival-related news is received gratefully by the blogging community. Today, those who deemed Tim Burton too “Hollywood” a choice as this year’s jury president might be appeased by a host of more arthouse-leaning names lined up for jury duty.Chief among them are actors Gael García Bernal and Giovanna Mezzogiorno, both worthy selections to join Burton on the competition jury; that announcement surely means Bernal starrer “Even the Rain,” a Spanish-language epic telling parallel stories of Christopher Columbus and Bolivia’s Water Wars, will not appear in competition, as some speculated it might. Thanks to Anne Thompson for passing along the news.
More exciting to me is the news that Claire Denis, one of the greatest filmmakers at work today, will be presiding over the Un Certain Regard section, where she herself competed with “I Can’t Sleep” in 1994. It’s a nice gesture towards a filmmaker who isn’t quite the Cannes fixture you might expect — she hasn’t been represented at the fest since “Trouble Every Day” played out of competition in 2001. Atom Egoyan, meanwhile, will head up the Cinéfondation jury.
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LIFE WITHOUT OSCAR: 1935 and 1936
Catch up with the idea behind this series here.Moving right along here, 1935 holds a place in Academy history as the year that MGM launched a press ad campaign for its film “Ah, Wilderness!,” the first of any kind of public baiting. Wouldn’t you know it, the campaign failed and the film was shut out. 1936 saw the introduction of the supporting actor and actress categories, awarding plaques to Walter Brennan and Gale Sondergaard. It wasn’t until 1943 that the winners here earned actual Oscar statues.
The big winners from this period were “Mutiny on the Bounty” and “The Great Ziegfeld,” representing a phase where the Academy couldn’t get enough of big budget epics and/or biopics. Some things never change. Here’s what they missed.
1935 – “Triumph of the Will” (Leni Riefenstahl)
Four years before the start of World War II, the Adolf Hitler commissioned Leni Riefenstahl to document the week-long Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg. She was given unprecedented access to Hitler and other party leaders and was entrusted to capture the power of the Third Reich. You probably already know this because “Triumph of the Will” is arguably the most famous propaganda film of all time. Objective by design, it’s ironically the film’s subjectivity that makes it so powerful today.
By that, I mean that Riefenstahl simply lets the camera roll and capture the events, foregoing narration, background information, graphics and talking heads. The city, the people, the soldiers, the motorcades, the speeches, all speak for themselves. Her compositions are flattering and the music swells appropriately, but it’s a direct cinema, observational approach that allows plenty of time for contemplation by the viewer. And in that time, it’s hard not to think about what would occur within this party in the next ten years.
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SHORT TAKE: “Kick-Ass” (**)
“With no power comes no responsibility,” smirks high school student Dave Lizewski (aka Kick-Ass) over halfway through British director Matthew Vaughn’s slick, smug bubblegum-burst of a superhero movie. “Except that’s totally not true.”This essentially meaningless inversion of Lizewski’s Marvel stablemate Peter Parker’s motto – one wonders which half of the original aphorism is “totally not true,” for starters – is ultimately an apt summation of a film that tries to have its cake, eat it and noisily smash the plate against the wall.
Aiming at once for nihilism and cuddliness, Vaughn delights in a long and loose moral leash, as an 11 year-old girl guns down corridors full of grown men without batting an eyelid, but steers clear of truly subversive thinking. Or much thinking at all.
The “Spider-Man” reference is intended to ram home the concept of Lizewski (gamely played by Aaron Johnson, curiously resembling John Lennon slightly more here than he did in the Lennon biopic “Nowhere Boy”) as a YouTube-generation Peter Parker: both are four-eyed, put-upon teenaged geeks spurred into assuming positions of moral authority by a lifetime of bullying, landing implausibly hot girlfriends in the process.
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3D effects for ‘Secret of Kells’ follow-up?
(Earlier, this story accidentally credited the incorrect source — apologies to Brendon Connelly and /Film UK.)
Following his surprise Oscar nomination for “The Secret of Kells,” which only recently landed in U.S. theaters, Irish animator Tomm Moore is already deep into his follow-up, “Song of the Sea.”
The film, which should go into production later this year, will be another excursion into Irish folklore, this time taking the mythical Selkie creatures — also the subject of John Sayles’s 1995 film “The Secret of Roan Inish,” if memory serves — as its inspiration.
Most intriguing is Moore’s admission that he is “experimenting” with 3D stereo effects within his handdrawn 2D aesthetic, though he makes no promises that they’ll turn up in the final film. After the cut, meanwhile, a conceptual trailer for “Song of the Sea” promises more of the stylized stained-glass visuals that so impressed the Academy’s animation branch. (Thanks to /Film UK’s Brendon Connelly for the link.)
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Nolan on dreaming up ‘Inception’
I’ve largely steered clear of the frantic speculation over Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” that has done the online rounds for several months now. For one thing, I’d like to spare the film the pressure of overhype — some fans appear to be expecting something between “Memento: Bigger, Longer and Uncut” and the second coming of Christ — but for another, if the film really is the remarkable crypto-puzzle we’re all hoping for, I’d rather remain as ignorant of its secrets as possible.Nonetheless, it’s hard to read this L.A. Times piece by Geoff Boucher — one of the blessed few to have read Nolan’s script and visited the set — and not get a little excited. I admit I skimmed over some of the specifics, but any summer blockbuster that inspires assorted references to Sigmund Freud, Ian Fleming, M.C. Escher and Haruki Murakami (the latter comparison courtesy of star Ellen Page) can only succeed or fail in interesting ways, right?
Nolan himself describes the sci-fi film as an attempt to “[approach] dream and the dream life as another state of reality,” and brief that initially didn’t mess with the cool genre storytelling he’d devised. After the cut, he describes how things got darker, messier and more intimate.
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Fletcher rides Oscar momentum to directorial debut
In retrospect, Geoffrey Fletcher’s Best Adapted Screenplay win for “Precious” at last month’s Academy Awards shouldn’t have come as quite the shock it did. In the last few years, Oscar voters have been especially kind to newcomers in the writing races, with this year’s pair of freshman winners, Fletcher and Mark Boal, coming on the heels of three others who struck gold for their first feature credit: Michael Arndt, Diablo Cody and Dustin Lance Black.How do you follow that kind of debut success? In the case of many of those names, we’re on the verge on finding out. Arndt has lain low since striking gold with “Little Miss Sunshine” in 2006, but will be back on the radar this summer with “Toy Story 3” — for which, unusually for a Pixar production, he has sole script credit.
Cody may have struck out with “Jennifer’s Body” last year, but is having more luck on the small screen with “The United States of Tara.” Boal, meanwhile, is continuing his happy partnership with Kathryn Bigelow, as the two are readying the South American-set thriller “Triple Frontier” for shooting.
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SUNDAY CENTS: Cash of the ‘Titans’
*All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.Alright. “Clash of the Titans” is the number one film at the box office with a weekend take of $61.4 million. Is that a tally worthy of the Gods? Simply put, in my opinion, no. Let’s set aside the 3D for a second and just pretend that isn’t a factor. Three years ago, “300” was able to debut with $78.4 million in the wastelands of March with arguably less recognizable source material and no recognizable star power. On this very same weekend last year, “Fast & Furious” opened to $72.4 million, setting a new record for the month of April and proving that huge grosses can come on any weekend in any month.
The budget on “Titans” was huge and Warner Bros. spent a small fortune hastily adding 3D at the last minute to try and soullessly suck out a few more bucks. In the shortest of short term, this may have worked, but the word of mouth has been atrocious and a lot of it has to do with the 3D so I expect this to drop like a rock and barely finish around $125 million. With overseas markets, that’ll be enough and yet another lifeless remake earns its stripes thanks to you (if you saw it).
Far more impressive, is the $30.2 million start of “Why Did I Get Married Too?” Tyler Perry’s movies have been the height of consistency, with his Madea titles earning $30 million plus and his Madea-less dramedies earning in the low $20 million range. Now he’s bucked the trend and proved that he doesn’t need a fat suit to register huge numbers. Seriously, there’s nothing harder than opening a drama about adults to $30 million. And that is why Lionsgate is changing their name to Tyler Perry’s Lionsgate.
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Zellweger sings Dylan in ‘My Own Love Song’
Back in 2008, I professed myself less than ecstatic at the prospect of “My Own Love Song,” the first English-language effort from “La Vie en Rose” helmer Olivier Dahan, in which Renée Zellweger plays a wheelchair-bound country singer on a road trip with her eccentric best friend Forest Whitaker, in search of her long-lost son. (I believe my exact words may have been: “This could literally be the worst film of all time.”)The film opens in France next week, and while the trailer (after the cut) suggests I may have been a tad overdramatic, I can wait a very healthy amount of time to see it. I suppose we might be forced to endure a measure of Oscar chatter for Zellweger — “ZOMG it’s the female ‘Crazy Heart!’” — but the film is really looking to make a splash in the Best Original Song category.
The Playlist reports that Bob Dylan (a former Oscar champ for the 2000 “Wonder Boys” cut “Things Have Changed,” in case you forgot) has composed no fewer than 16 original songs for the film. One of them, “Life is Hard,” is performed in the film by Zellweger, and features quite prominently in the trailer.
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Record box office for Oscar shorts
Early in my Oscar-watching days, long before the advent of YouTube or VOD, the short film awards represented little more than a chance to get ahead in the Oscar pool by sheer guesswork.With no means of viewing the nominees, and the field of awards coverage considerably less comprehensive than it is today, you’d do well to find out what the shorts were about, much less whether they were any good. In the end, you picked the title that most caught your fancy, and hoped for the best.
For most casual viewers, of course, the short film awards still mean little more than a handy bathroom-break opportunity in the telecast. But for serious awards-watchers, there’s less of an excuse these days to be uninformed: clips of the nominees (and sometimes even the entire films) are readily available online, while Shorts International and Magnolia Pictures have screened an annual program of the nominees in theaters for the last five years.
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‘Life During Wartime’ trailer and poster
Todd Solondz’s loose, recast sequel to “Happiness” was, for me, one of the pleasant surprises of last autumn’s festival circuit — more focused and astringently funny than his last two features, it’s also about as humane a work as the now middle-aged enfant terrible is capable of conceiving. Fans of all actors in the formidable ensemble will be duly rewarded: Ciaran Hinds is my pick, but Allison Janney turns in the sharpest performance of her career.
This British trailer gives a reasonable idea of what to expect: the film is too mannered and sour to win many new converts, but Solondz acolytes should get in line. The UK release is next month; IFC is making Americans wait until the summer. My review from last year’s Venice fest here. Great poster after the cut.
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LIFE WITHOUT OSCAR: 1933 and 1934
Catch up with the idea behind this series here.1933 was the only year without an Oscar ceremony as the Academy switched its eligibility calendar around and began honoring films released from January 1 through December 31. The result was the 1934 ceremony honoring films from the past seventeen months. And still they picked “Cavalcade” as the best film from that time. Why do we care about this body again?
Song, Score and Editing were added in 1934, as was a space for write-in candidates, which lasted all of two years with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” cinematographer Hal Mohr being the only person ever to win an Oscar they weren’t officially nominated for. So, in these instances, both the nominating committee and the members failed to do the right thing.
1933 – “Duck Soup” (Leo McCarey)
I once heard that you’re either a Marx Brothers guy or a Three Stooges guy. It certainly proves true with me, as I can’t stand the constant mugging and bopping on the head of the latter, while I consider the former to be absolute geniuses. Vaudeville caricatures, slapstick physical comedy, sophisticated zingers and showstopping musical performances are all thrown into a stew and blended to perfection in this film and its immediate follow-up, “A Night at the Opera.”
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SUNDAY CENTS: ‘Dragon’ slays
*All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.I trust your dragons have been sufficiently trained. Despite sounding like a codename for masturbation amongst middle schoolers, “How to Train Your Dragon” is the number one movie at the box office with $43.3 million smackers. Depending on how you look at things, this result could be great or okay. Considering that Paramount and DreamWorks scored $60.5 million for “Monsters vs. Aliens” last March, it may look like a disappointment. But that film came out when 3D was still a novelty and had a hook right in the title that was simply never gonna miss with kids.
Now 3D is everywhere and ticket prices rose steeply over the weekend, possibly hindering the performance. Theater owners may want to chill out a bit because as soon as going to the movies becomes a luxury that the poor can no longer afford, it will cease to be a recession-proof business. In any case, you can continue to expect one big budget computer animated title every March until the end of time.
“Alice in Wonderland” relinquished its three week hold on the throne by slipping 49% to $17.3 million. That drop is mainly due to the loss of precious 3D venues, but the film already has just a shade under $300 million total so don’t shed any tears. I’m just waiting for CNN to break the story that Tim Burton has been locked in a basement somewhere for the last fifteen years and his twin brother has been directing movies armed only with some black and white striped fabric and VHS copies of previous Tim Burton films as his filmmaking training.
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FRIDAY FORECAST: ‘Dragon’ art
*All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.Years of frustration over how to precisely train my dragon will be resolved today as Paramount has released the informative documentary, “How to Train Your Dragon.” There’s one of these bawdy animated titles every March and they usually do pretty damn well. “Monsters vs. Aliens” debuted with $60.5 million last year and “Horton Hears a Who!” snagged $47.7 million the year before.
I think “Dragon” will fall closer to the latter than the former since it has no famous source material and failed to put the one word in its title that would have excited young boys: Vikings! Hello? Who makes an animated movie about Vikings and doesn’t put that in the title? It’s like naming “Toy Story” “Escape From the Room.”
Now, the movie is in 3D and on over 4,000 screens so it’s almost impossible for it not to be huge. I’m just thinking somewhere around $45 million for this one.
The only other movie opening wide is “Hot Tub Time Machine” from MGM. The studio hasn’t released a movie since “Fame” and is more or less dead and bankrupt. They’d like you to think that this is the new “The Hangover,” but the concept is way more wacky and esoteric.
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‘Robin Hood’ to open Cannes
More of a handy PR opportunity than an actual festival honor, Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” has secured the opening night slot at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival on May 12, two days ahead of its US and UK release date.Like last year’s Cannes opener, “Up,” the film will premiere out of competition, affording it the lustre, but not the critical pressure, of a festival berth. That said, the slot is no guarantee of prestige — in 2006, Cannes programmers were taken to task when Ron Howard’s widely derided “The Da Vinci Code” was selected to open the fest. Here’s hoping Scott fares a little better.
“Up,” of course, broke something of a curse attached to Cannes’s opening night, which in recent years has showcased disappointments more often than not — in the years when festival directors haven’t courted blockbusters, the slot has housed in-competition flops like “Blindness” and “My Blueberry Nights.”
I can’t see “Robin Hood” lending the fest the same hip cache that last year’s Pixar pic did, making it something of a conservative choice. But who cares — let’s get to the competition titles already.
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Mulligan set for ‘My Fair Lady’
Between Carey Mulligan and Mia Wasikowska, it seems the industry has no need for other 20-something actresses — they’ll divvy up all the plum parts between them.Days after Mulligan’s name was connected to the English-language remake of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” comes the news that she’s to play Eliza Doolittle in the long-mooted remake of “My Fair Lady.”
Almost two years ago, it was announced that a new version of the 1964 Best Picture winner was in the works, with Keira Knightley and director Joe Wright in the frame. Some games of musical chairs have apparently been played since then — John Madden (“Shakespeare in Love”) in now in the director’s chair, while Emma Thompson is on script duty.
At last night’s premiere for the “Nanny McPhee” sequel, Thompson confirmed that Mulligan — with whom she co-starred, of course, in “An Education” — is on board, adding that she “would love” Hugh Grant to fill Rex Harrison’s Oscar-winning shoes as Professor Henry Higgins.
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LIFE WITHOUT OSCAR: 1931 and 1932
Catch up with the idea behind this series here.1931 was the first time the Academy Awards were broadcast on the radio. Can you imagine having to tune in to Sirius channel 2174 to hear Conrad Nagel announce who won everything? I don’t even know who Conrad Nagel is. 1932 gives us my favorite Oscar story of all time. Apparently, Will Rogers was presenting the Best Director award and after opening the envelope he said, “Come up and get it, Frank!” Frank Capra jumped up and waited for the spotlight to find him before it rested on the actual winner, Frank Lloyd. Someone behind him then yelled, “Down in front!” When Capra did win Best Director the next year, the announcement was also jokingly made by saying, “Come up and get it, Frank!” But enough about what the Oscars did, let’s see what they didn’t do.
1931 – “M” (Fritz Lang)
It was a down to the wire call between Lang’s haunting film and Charlie Chaplin’s career peak, “City Lights,” as both were shamefully overlooked masterpieces. In Chaplin’s case, the sound explosion produced a bit of bias against silent films (none were nominated this year), but there’s no such obvious excuse to pass over “M.” Particularly since René Clair’s “À Nous la Liberté” became the first foreign film to garner any nomination in this year (Best Art Direction). Perhaps it was due to the subject matter, a child murderer as protagonist, that caused Hollywood to balk. Whatever the case, history has proven that Fritz Lang’s first sound film is a treasure worth preserving and watching again and again.
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Russian trailer for ‘The Illusionist’
A tip of the hat to Twitch for digging up a Russian trailer for Sylvain Chomet’s “The Illusionist,” which I reviewed out of Berlin last month. Calling it my favorite film of 2010 is faint praise at this stage, but I’ll be surprised if 10 more films come along to top it. Either way, it’s certain to be in the animation awards discussion if/when it secures a US distributor.
This trailer is oddly structured, to say the least, but you should get some idea of the visual splendor on offer.