In Contention

Blog

  • Anton Corbijn’s next: ‘The American’ with George Clooney

    Anton CorbijnI was a huge fan of “Control” so this sounds like music to my ears.  The press release, in part:

    Academy Award winner George Clooney stars in the title role of The American for director Anton Corbijn (Control). Focus Features holds worldwide rights to the suspense thriller, which begins production this week on location in Italy. Focus CEO James Schamus made the announcement today.

    The screenplay by Rowan Joffe is adapted from Martin Booth’s novel A Very Private Gentleman, published in 2005. The film’s producers are This is that’s Anne Carey, who most recently produced Adventureland and The Savages; Smokehouse’s Grant Heslov, an Academy Award nominee as producer and co-writer of Good Night, and Good Luck, and producer/director of this fall’s The Men Who Stare at Goats; Smokehouse’s Mr. Clooney; Ann Wingate, who most recently produced Into the Storm, starring Emmy Award winner Brendan Gleeson; and Jill Green, executive producer of the long-running U.K. television series Foyle’s War. Enzo Sisti, co-producer of the upcoming When in Rome, is executive producer of The American.

    Alone among assassins, Jack (played by Mr. Clooney) is a master craftsman. When a job in Sweden ends more harshly than expected for this American abroad, he vows to his contact Larry (Bruce Altman of this fall’s Peter and Vandy) that his next assignment will be his last. Jack reports to the Italian countryside, where he holes up in a small town and relishes being away from death for a spell. The assignment, as specified by a Belgian woman, Mathilde (Thekla Reuten of Focus’ award-winning In Bruges), is in the offing as a weapon is constructed. Surprising himself, Jack seeks out the friendship of local priest Father Benedetto (Italian screen and stage veteran Paolo Bonacelli) and pursues romance with local woman Clara (Italian leading lady Violante Placido). But by stepping out of the shadows, Jack may be tempting fate.

  • OFF THE CARPET: Underdog season

    Hal Holbrook in That Evening SunIt suddenly occurred to me when I got a screening invite last week to “That Evening Sun,” a potential awards prospect for lead actor Hal Holbrook, that the film actually had a distributor: Freestyle Releasing.

    Freestyle is a boutique company that doesn’t have a lot on deck, but it reminded me of how spread out this year’s product seems to be across the spectrum of Hollywood distribution, and one more indication of 2009 as perhaps the year of the underdog.

    It’s a generalization, sure, but when heading into the season the frontrunners of the race are a modest character-driven dramedy and an impassioned work of indie art, I think it’s safe to say the trains that could are drawing a line in the sand.

    I recognize the former is a studio-funded piece with one of the industry’s biggest stars in a leading role, but it fits because, like the director’s last film, it was a discovery even to the studio, one that can suddenly be groomed for awards.

    This idea of eschewing the titans of an awards season could be stretching into the business of things as companies like Overture Films, Summit Entertainment, Apparition, Paladin, Monterey Media, Freestyle, etc. are beginning to claim significant portions of the consideration pie…at least in this calm before the storm.

    Others have been here for years, of course.  IFC Films always makes its play.  Magnolia Pictures tends to be in the conversation.  Oscilloscope came pretty close with a great coming out last year (and will no doubt be in the thick of it again).

    The dependents that haven’t been swallowed by their parent companies have made their hay in the awards season, from Focus to Sony Classics to Searchlight, but I remain very enthusiastic, and perhaps overly optimistic, that in an economy such as this, the competitive market has opened up a number of options.

    (more…)

  • 9/28 Oscarweb Round-up

    Roman Polanski• Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski arrested in Zurich for 1977 rape charge. [CNN]

    • Steven Zeitchik reports that Summit was set to be the first out of the gate with awards screeners this year with “The Hurt Locker.” Would it have made a difference? [Risky Biz Blog]

    • Nathaniel Rogers considers Julianne Moore’s Oscar chances in “A Single Man.” [The Film Experience]

    (more…)

  • Revamping ‘Elm Street’

  • SUNDAY CENTS: Great ‘Balls’ on fire

    SurrogatesAmerica lined up for seconds as “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” topped the box office for the second weekend in a row, dropping only 19% to $24.6 million. That’s a fantastic hold for the only family film out in the market and makes $100 million a very real possibility, if not a formality.

    It was an otherwise slow and disappointing frame at the multiplex as audiences found some other way to entertain themselves. Did football season just start?

    Second place went to Disney’s “Surrogates,” which grossed $15 million. While that might sound a little soft, it’s actually better than Willis’s average for this type of film in recent years as “Perfect Stranger,” “Lucky Number Slevin,” “16 Blocks” and “Hostage” all did less than $13 million. The trailer was great but the posters featuring robot models were pretty weak and I think Disney missed an easy chance to take the top spot.

    MGM released its first film since “Valkyrie” amidst reports of possible bankruptcy and the $10 million pulled in by “Fame” is probably not going to help matters much. When dance films like “Stomp the Yard” and “Step Up” can pull in $22 million each, a remake of a well-known classic shouldn’t pull in less than half of that. Of course, I use the term “classic” as loosely as they use the term “remake.”

    (more…)

  • Day of rest

    Washington Redskins

  • “Solipsism” and Moore on Maher

    Michael Moore in Capitalism: A Love Story

    Last night, on Maher, [Michael Moore] talked about wanting to make a movie that was so outrageously honest that no studio would ever fund another one of his movies. Epic Fail, Mike. There is not a single thing exposed in the body of Capitalism: A Love Story that Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, David Letterman, and even Jay Leno haven’t already mocked… and mocked in a more funny way. No one needed a film to tell us that bailing out banks sucks and that people being thrown out of their houses – that they took insane loans on, of their own greedy accord, btw – at the same time feels like a shot in the gut. America gets it.

    You used to convert. Now all you seem to want to do is to preach to the converted.

    I truly love your work and believe in your gift, Michael Moore. But you need to get further out ahead of the news cycle or you become just another f-ing talking head for the liberals instead of the idiots of Fox News who do the same crap on the other side.

    From David Poland’s dismissal of Michael Moore’s latest in a post titled “Solipsism: A Love Story” at The Hot Blog.  And from last night, Moore on Real Time, after the jump…

    (more…)

  • ‘Ajami,’ not ‘Lebanon,’ chosen to represent Israel in foreign language race

    Thanks to Anne Thompson for the Twitter heads up here, but Yair Raveh is reporting that the Israeli entry in this year’s Best Foreign Language Film race isn’t the Venice fest’s Golden Lion winner “Lebanon,” but the Ophir-winning crime drama “Ajami.” The foreign submissions page has been updated.  Discuss.

  • Listen to portions of Cave and Ellis’s ‘Road’ score

    The second selection is the overriding theme of the piece that I remember playing throughout the film. Beautiful stuff, aka, the kind of the the Academy’s music branch wouldn’t know how to appreciate.

    Also worth mentioning is “White Lunar,” a collection of some of the duo’s film music compositions.

    (Courtesy: The Playlist)

  • “I don’t want to do a line reading.”

  • Weekend SPC food for thought

    First, Barker and Bernard are unfortunately forced to go on the record and defend themselves against rather naive and myopic attacks from the blog-o-sphere.

    Second, one of David Poland’s inside baseball “State of the Union” DP/30s is dedicated to the duo.

    Well worth your time if you’re interested in the business of show.

  • WEEKLY WRAP: Festival pick-ups, the season’s fetes and the PGA’s 10

    Robert Duvall in Get Low• We wrapped up Toronto as Lee Daniels’s “Precious” took the festival’s audience award, putting it on a solid track for Oscar.

    • We got a look at the first trailer for “Harry Brown,” which may or may not be an awards film for actor Michael Caine.  John, you’ll recall, isn’t feeling it.

    • We saw ‘Meatball’ dominance at the box office in this weekend’s Sunday Cents column.

    • This week’s Off the Carpet column kicked off our weekly Oscar coverage with a call for perspective on the perceived Best Picture frontrunners, while a new weekly column from across the pond — The Long Shot — introduces a different perspective mid-week.

    (more…)

  • More foreign language film submissions

    Following up on yesterday’s item, I’ve added Albania, Argentina, Croatia, Czech Republic, Iceland, and Macedonia to the list and dedicated a page to collecting these.  Up to 46 countries now.

  • Sony Classics holding ‘Get Low’ until 2010

    Get LowThose of you anticipating Aaron Schneider’s “Get Low” and a potential second lead actor Oscar for Robert Duvall will have to wait a little longer.  Sony Pictures Classics will not be releasing the film this year and is priming it for a mid-2010 release.  No Oscar qualifying run is planned for 2009 either.

    Sony Classics, as you’re well aware, has a pretty full slate of films this year.  This could have something to do with the move.  It costs money to put films out into the marketplace, and while SPC might be one of the few dependents able to stay afloat in this economy, it’s not a company made of money.  But I’m just spit-balling here.

    Then there’s the consideration of an Oscar campaign, which is also costly.  The studio has a number of opportunities for the 2009 race as it is.  “Coco Before Chanel,” “An Education” and “Broken Embraces” represent a stacked trio of lead actress hopefuls, but Tahar Rahim’s brilliance in “A Prophet” aside, I kind of thought SPC could use a contender like Duvall to amplify its lead actor profile.

    But it’s not going to happen.  Not this year, at least, so tidy up your charts and contender lists, folks.  The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

  • UK ‘Parnassus’ quad

    The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

    (Courtesy: Empire)

  • Audrey Tautou on preparing for ‘Coco’

    (Courtesy: MakingOf)

  • No Oscar Talk today

    With Anne in New York, me in San Francisco and relatively little to discuss (though we can wax for 20 minutes on anything, really), we figured we’d rest up, reload and hit it again in a week’s time.  Until then…

  • 9/25 Oscarweb Round-up

    Steven Spielberg• Pete Hammond suggests Steven Spielberg as Oscarcast producer. [Notes on a Season]

    • Steve Pond likes the idea, tries to turn over some news as to who might have been tapped, comes up with nothing. [The Odds]

    • Kyle Buchanan chats with “Coco Before Chanel” star Audrey Tautou. [Movieline]

    (more…)