• Edna Gundersen talks to Sir Paul McCartney about his musical addition to Kirk Jones’s “Everybody’s Fine.” [USA Today]
• In praise of the opening sequence of Michael Mann’s “Ali.” [The Auteurs Notebook]
• Pete Hammond reports from Monday night’s premiere of “Up in the Air.” [Notes on a Season]
Wow, what’s with all the big announcements today? Space yourselves out, folks.
Anyway, this is one bit of news I’m very happy to pass on. 83 year-old filmmaker and producer Norman Jewison has been named the next recipient of the Directors Guild of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He will accept the honor at the DGA’s awards ceremony on 30 January.
Jewison is the kind of artist for whom career achievement awards were invented — accomplished, versatile and hard-working across five decades in cinema, he’s rarely had the spotlight to himself. This despite having directed a Best Picture Oscar winner (“In the Heat of the Night,” 1967) and having amassed a career total of seven Oscar nods for such films as “Moonstruck,” “A Soldier’s Story,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.”
The Academy paid their respects to Jewison in 1999, with an Irving G. Thalberg Award, so the DGA (who have nominated him thrice themselves) is playing catch-up here. Nice to see. Press release excerpt after the cut.
For actor Jeff Bridges, whose career has already spanned five decades, Scott Cooper’s “Crazy Heart” was something of a homecoming and, the actor says, “a dream come true.”
Bridges stars in the film as Bad Blake, a ramblin’ country-western singer who travels the Southwest playing dive after dive, cut from the same cloth as Hank Williams Jr., maybe, or Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, etc. A guitarist in his own right, Bridges was eager to take on a film so concerned with music, but was wary of underwhelming after the example set by another music-themed film from his past, Steve Kloves’s “The Fabulous Baker Boys” from 1989.
“What they did with that movie I thought was so wonderful that to do another music movie and not match that, it’s a pretty high bar there, so I was concerned about that,” Bridges says over lunch in Beverly Hills one November afternoon. “There were several music scripts that came down the pike, and sometimes it would have lyrics or little samples and it wouldn’t be right. And this one had no music. Then I thought maybe I could write the music, or my friend, but then, you know, I was busy, so I didn’t focus on it.”
Indeed, Bridges is quick to admit that he spends a great deal of his energy steering clear of new projects. It might be a phobia of commitment on one hand, but on the other, he’s a man who likes to keep his options open. Signing onto a new film means missing the chance to work on any number of other projects that might ultimately interest him more.
But “Crazy Heart” was a different story, especially once his good friend T Bone Burnett got involved as producer, music consultant and composer.
“Coraline” and “Up” both received nominations in eight categories. “The Princess and the Frog” showed up in five while “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” showed up in four.
“Fantastic Mr. Fox” (3), “Monsters vs. Aliens” (3), “9” (2), “Astro Boy” (2) and “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” (2) brought up the rear with mentions in three and two categories respectively. “Ponyo” also only landed two nods, for music and direction, so that’s probably worth noting.
I’m listing per category, by the way, because it’s weird to me to have two separate “nominations” in fields like character design and production design, one per person. Why not just one for the film with the artists listed as nominees? It makes sense for vocal performance nods, but not really otherwise. Anyway, to be fair, I guess “Coraline” leads the whole field with 10 total nominations, while “Up” has nine. “The Princess and the Frog” has eight, with that in mind.
Anyway, check out the full list of feature nominees after the jump (and the full list of all nominees at the Annie website).
I’m told Santa Barbara Film Festival director Roger Durling “flipped’ for Sandra Bullock’s performance in “The Blind Side.” So with that in mind, here’s the press release, in part:
It was announced today by SBIFF Executive Director Roger Durling that Sandra Bullock will receive the American Riviera Award Presented By Chopin on Friday, February 5, at the 25th edition of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, which runs February 4-14, 2010.
The American Riviera Award, sponsored by Chopin Vodka, was established to recognize an actor who has had a strong influence on American Cinema. Bullock will join an illustrious group of past recipients: Mickey Rourke (09), Tommy Lee Jones (08), Forrest Whitaker (07), Philip Seymour Hoffman (06), Kevin Bacon (05) and Diane Lane (04).
“Bullock’s career-capping performance in The Blind Side encompasses everything we have loved about her since the early 90’s, from the deft physical comedy in While You Were Sleeping to the mettle of her role in the Academy Award-winning Crash,” commented Durling. “What a most perfect time to salute this enduring movie star’s lengthy career.”
• Pete Hammond reports on a last minute surge to get “Iron Cross,” Roy Scheider’s final film, into Oscar contention. [Notes on a Season]
• Gregory Ellwood takes note of the season’s box office champs so far: “Inglourious Basterds” and “Up.” [Awards Campaign]
• Geoff Boucher talks to “Avatar” composer James Horner. [Hero Complex]
It won’t come as a surprise to anyone to “Precious” landed atop the list of Independent Spirit Award nominations this morning. Lee Daniels’ indie smash earned 5 mentions including Best Feature, Director and Actress, and looks like the one to beat in every category where it features.
Fewer people, however, might have expected Michael Hoffman’s “The Last Station” to tie that total, landing Best Feature and Director nods alongside more predictable citations for stars Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer. Many pundits (myself included) have been suggesting that this placid, kindly regarded film could be a threat for a Best Picture Oscar nod — this lends further weight to the idea.
Surprises include the comparatively low profile of “A Serious Man” on the list, which some thought a shoo-in for a Best Feature nod. It missed in the top category, as did Michael Stuhlbarg for Best Actor, though the film managed mentions in the Best Director and Best Cinematography races. Further compensation for the film arrives in the shape of the Robert Altman Award for ensemble work.
I had a Q&A to moderate this evening, so forgive the lateness here (though these and the Indie Spirits, for my money, stopped being about true independent cinema long ago, so there was really no haste to begin with).
Anyway, predictably, “The Hurt Locker” came out on top at tonight’s Gotham Awards. The film won Best Feature and Best Ensemble, though lead actor Jeremy Renner was upset in the breakthrough actor race by Catalina Saavedra in “The Maid.” I’ve got that screener around here somewhere.
Tomorrow the Indie Spirits announce their nominees, which, by the way, will not include “The Hurt Locker” because the film wasn’t eligible this year. It was last year, when it received nods for Best Actor (Renner) and Best Supporting Actor (Anthony Mackie). Looking for a leg up tomorrow are “Precious” and “Crazy Heart,” I’d say, though we can expect some surprises too, I guess (I hope).
Full list of Gotham Winners after the jump.
We reported Friday (and mentioned in this weekend’s Oscar Talk) that Clint Eastwood’s latest, “Invictus,” has two original songs from South Africa boy band Overtone. Today we’re happy to feature one of them.
“9,000 Days” (credited as “Invictus 9,000 Days” in the film) also features vocalist Yollandi Nortjie. It’s used in the context of the film and is also called up as a reprise as the first closing credits cue. I wouldn’t say it’s used organically in the film, as the presence of both this and “Colorblind” (which we’ll feature Wednesday) seem forced and somewhat random on the film’s soundtrack.
The song has a jazzy, bluesy vibe, much like Jamie Callum’s “Gran Torino” last year. It also uses the William Earnest Henley poem which lends its name to the film’s title as a framing device throughout (which could render it ineligible, who knows). Like the film, it’s pretty simple, cut and dry, no frills.
Have a listen below and tell us what you think of the tune:
[audio:http://www.incontention.com/audio/9000days.mp3]
After some initial resistance, I’m getting chattier on Twitter lately. Yesterday, in a “best of 2000s” frame of mind, an enjoyable back-and-forth with some of you started after I idly asked which actor or actress has had the greatest decade on film.
The suggestions came in thick and fast, some mathematically going by awards stats, others opting for more abstract criteria. Some names came up with particular frequency: it’s hard to argue with the choice of Kate Winslet, though with the peerless exception of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” I wish she had more stone-cold masterworks under her belt.
Johnny Depp was a popular choice, as was Sean Penn. I liked many more outré suggestions, including a shout-out for Patricia Clarkson, though will admit to scratching my head over two people’s advocation of Clint Eastwood. (If we’re counting people who only appeared four films this decade, I’ll stick with Daniel Day-Lewis.)
But I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who plumped for the same name I’d consider for the honor: Nicole Kidman. The actress has been at the receiving end of a lot of media snark lately, be it in a professional or personal capacity, but clearly she still commands respect for her adventurous script choices and rarefied taste in auteurs.
Every now and then this season, I’ve sat down and taken on the fool’s errand of deciphering what 2009, the year in film, has been “about.” It’s silly because a given film year is the result of years and years of preparation and development, so to think a collective thematic consciousness settles in is a bit of a stretch.
This year alone we have a swift production that at this time last year saw the filmmaker still in the editing suite for his late-2008 entry, while on the other side of the spectrum, a forward-thinking director will finally see the end of a decades-long journey for an anticipated “game-changer.” Movies come from a thousand different places and a thousand different perspectives.
Nevertheless, I’ve always come back to one thought on this year’s slate of films: catharsis. With expected exceptions here and there, in one way or another, the bulk of what we’ve seen on screens in 2009 has very much been about emotional purging, bleeding out the past and, not to be too on-the-nose with the zeitgeist connotations, change.
Let me illustrate. The most and the least compelling examples are the best place to start: Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist” and Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus,” respectively.
The team behind “Up in the Air” have done a very sly job of making the film alternately ubiquitous and invisible this season, as paradoxical as that sounds.
For us bloggers, the film seems to have been around for ages — indeed, it’s nearly three months since its Telluride premiere, an eternity in awards-campaign terms. Yet, conscious of the dangers of overhype, the film has been held back after that initial buzz-burst, garnering goodwill at select subsequent screenings, but largely ceding the publicity spotlight to the likes of “Precious.”
Now, with the film finally opening to the public this Friday, the media assault begins afresh, with two extensive profiles of writer-director Jason Reitman appearing yesterday in the flagship papers of both coasts. David Carr’s NYT interview and Rachel Abramowitz’s LA Times piece overlap a fair amount, though Carr’s takes the cute route of meeting Reitman in an airport, allowing for a more pointed reflection on the film’s themes of physical and personal statelessness.
There’s really no arguing the fact that South Africa’s victory in the 1995 Rugby World Cup was an inspirational moment of collaborative triumph for a country healing the wounds of the past. The occasion was an against-all-odds statement of progress and togetherness. It announced to the world that a nation had chosen to look to the future, not to the past. And the echoes undeniably reverberate in the crossroads the United States finds itself in this very day.
These themes are apparent in Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus,” but they do not have the elevating quality that might have rendered them truly affecting. A flat narrative and tedious structure ironically hold the audience at arm’s length from a story of inclusion and camaraderie. A confused central relationship is done no favors by a lack of true conflict and dramatic tension (the latter due largely to swift third act resolution). The film simply chugs along at a capable but unremarkable pace, and given the subject matter, it’s staggering how arbitrary the proceedings ultimately feel.
This might be seen as par for the course when it comes to Eastwood. He is an unfussy director concerned with streamlined, no-frills visual story telling, and at times, refreshingly so. But “Invictus” doesn’t feel like the work of a man invigorated by his focused process. It almost feels like the work of an exhausted artist, letting any number of elements slide on the way to completing a toothless, benign depiction of a momentous occasion.
Probably the most insightful of these annual actor-on-actor blurbs at Variety this year is Holly Hunter’s take on Abbie Cornish in “Bright Star.” The Jane Campion connection is obviously interesting, but of all the blurbs (save maybe for Ben Affleck’s thoughts on Jeremy Renner, though he gets repetitive), it felt, to me, the most notable:
The movie takes place in the mid-19th century. There’s something incredibly of that time about Abbie Cornish. The frankness of the performance though feels very modern. It’s a beautiful combination. It made the movie more complicated because of that conflict in the character, what she wanted versus what her times would allow her. The tenderness that the character had the softness was so completely of her. Abbie Cornish isn’t brazen but she has a certain defiance. From the first time that the camera discovers her Fanny I felt that there was an incredible acceptance on her part of what this love was going to ask. And some of it in some ways was beyond her means. And none of it did Keats seem to require. Fanny’s reading of Milton and Shelley didn’t seem to be a requirement of his. It was something that she took on. I felt it was very naive and charming. This was a desire that she had so much so that she flagrantly lied to Brown about having read everybody in a week. She was a neophyte. She was new at poetry didn’t understand poetry. She couldn’t find a way in. But I loved her.
• David Poland painstakingly seeks out assumed evidence to support his theory that “The Hurt Locker” will be this year’s Best Picture victor. [Movie City News]
• John Horn sits down with “Precious” screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher. [Los Angeles Times]
• Dave Karger chats up Viggo Mortensen and his “Road” co-star Kodi Smit-McPhee. [Oscar Watch]
*All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.
Did you enjoy your Thanksgiving? If you are Sandra Bullock or work for Warner Bros. then I think I already know the answer.
The number one movie for the second weekend in a row is “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” with $42.5 million. This is a good news bad news situation for Summit. The good news is that the film has $230.7 million after 10 days and only eight films have grossed more in that period of time. The bad news is that the figure represents a 70% drop from last weekend and only three films released on at least 3,000 screens have ever dropped more.
And this is a holiday weekend. Does anybody at Summit care? Probably not, as the drops should level off a bit from here and the film will easily scoot past $300 million and become the second highest grossing title of the year.
But what is the deal with “The Blind Side?” Seriously. A second consecutive weekend in the runner-up spot and another $40.1 million over the three days gives the drama $100.3 million after just 10 days. For those keeping track at home, that’s an 18% increase over last weekend and there’s a very real possibility that the film will make close to $250 million in the United States.
• “The Lovely Bones” finally landed this week, to decidedly mixed reviews.
• Kris and Anne offered their thoughts on the film (among others) in this week’s Oscar Talk.
• In Off the Carpet, we combed through the Best Adapted Screenplay contenders (which now include “District 9”).
• “New Moon” surprised nobody with a record-breaking box-office haul last weekend, and its dominance is set to continue.
• This week’s Long Shot column surveyed the growing buzz around populist contenders in this year’s Oscar race.