In Contention

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  • Amen, brother

    Hugh Jackman at the 81st annual Academy AwardsI loved this nugget from from MCN columnist Noah Forrest’s constructive rant on how to improve the Oscars (Hint: he doesn’t think the Academy recent changes do the trick.) Rather than try and streamline the ceremony as the Academy has done by ditching the honorary awards (a fate that far too many people feel should befall the technical awards too), he actually wants to extend it:

    Every year we hear the same complaint about how the show is too long. The people complaining about this are the same folks who buy tickets to a baseball game and then whine about how the game is so slow. If you’re tuning into the Oscars, you are already expecting that the show is going to be a bit long, so get over it. The Academy shouldn’t be trying to cater to those curmudgeons who want a shorter show.

    It’s important to recognize who the audience is for this show; a large majority of the people who watch the Oscars are fans of film just like the people who watch baseball games usually enjoy that sport. Catering to people who aren’t particularly big fans of what you’re doing doesn’t really seem like the wisest move.

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  • Finding trends in Oscar’s ten

    Ralph Fiennes in The English PatientOver at MCN, David Poland has offered his first formal Oscar column of the season (can we say “the season” in July?) and he has some strong points to make. Prediction junkies who just jump straight to his top 10 forecast for Best Picture will find some (delete according to taste) interesting/exciting/eccentric choices in the mix — he’s certainly the first pundit I’ve heard suggest that Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” is a frontrunner, while “Julie & Julia” hasn’t previously entered the discussion much either.

    But the column itself is of more interest, largely because he brings up a key (and I think under-discussed) point about the potential impact of a 10-nominee race: namely, that with such a broad field, it becomes much more difficult to pinpoint voter and industry trends from year to year:

    How will 10 nominees change the dynamic of desperate efforts to spin trend stories? How can it be The Year Of… anything with such inevitable diversity?

    It could, I guess, be The Year of Matt Damon, who has Invictus, The Informer!, the animated Miyazaki film, Ponyo, and maybe even Green Zone coming out. It could be The Year Of Not Bio-Pics, in spite of the Nelson Mandela film from Eastwood, Invictus, and Meryl Streep invoking Julia Child.

    Some will try to make it The Year of The Woman, with Nine leading the way for such hopefuls as Julie & Julia, Bright Star, Precious, An Education, Broken Embraces, the 2 SPC Coco Chanel movies, Amelia, Cheri, and even the female director of The Hurt Locker. And maybe they will have a point… there could be 5 nominations in that group.

    Or not.

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  • 7/14 Web Round-up

    Steven Soderbergh• Who dropped the “Moneyball?” [CNN]

    • Steven Soderbergh can see the end of his career. [The Guardian]

    • Michael Adams talks to filmmaker Mick Garris about the all-but-forgotten 1997 short film “Ghosts,” starring Michael Jackson. [Movieline]

    • Need a “Green Lantern” primer?  Here’s a good one. [Empire]

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  • ‘An Education’ gets a poster

    I have to say, as enchanting as this new one-sheet for Lone Sherfig’s “An Education” is, and as attractive as the composition might be, I don’t feel like it properly capitalizes on the tone or the underlying theme of the film.  That’s a shame.  I like it, it’s just…it could have been something  meaningful.  We’re talking about the best film of the year so far.  Is it wrong to expect more?  Anyway, your thoughts?

    An Education

  • Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’ celebrates its 30th

    AlienIt seems the 30th anniversary of Ridley Scott’s “Alien” unfortunately came and went back on May 25 before I even snapped to its attention.  I’ve never been a dedicated disciple of the film but it is unquestionably a staple of science-fiction cinema, a film packed with ideas that also succeeds at terrifying audiences both psychologicall and viscerally.  It’s peculiar that Scott hasn’t approached that level of thoughtful filmmaking in the 30 years since.

    Over at The Auteurs’ Notebook, Ben Simington has dedicated a healthy word count to the film, which is currently engaged in a one-week run at New York’s Film Forum to celebrate the anniversary with a new 35mm print of the 2004 director’s cut.  What I found particularly revealing, was Simington’s commitment to dissecting the film’s exemplary production design and set decoration.  “To say that Ridley Scott’s commercial breakthrough was robbed of its Oscar for Best Art Direction/Set Direction is a pathetic understatement,” he writes, “not only about the film in its own right, but also about the film within the history of moving-image arts.”

    Simington proceeds to spotlight key design elements that stuck out to him in a recent Film Forum screening, everything from the usual detail-oriented ornamentation of work spaces to more abstract interpretations read into nude pin-up posters in tandem with a photo of fried eggs.  It’s fascinating stuff, but it really catches stride for me when Simington writes up artist H.R. Giger’s contribution to the film’s architecture.

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  • More with Leary

    Denis LearyJust before I ducked out on vacation last week (big thanks to Guy for keeping the boat afloat), you might have caught my interview with comedian Denis Leary of FX’s “Rescue Me.”  Even though TV isn’t something we cover much around here, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to chat with a personal favorite of MTV’s glory years and the star/co-creator of one of my favorite cable shows.  We talked about “Rescue Me,” of course, but we dived into MTV’s decade-long funk, Leary’s Emerson background and NFL football, among other things.

    Over at the LA Times, Choire Sicha has taken some time out with Leary, with Thursday’s Emmy nominations looming ahead (Leary has been nominated twice for the show but has not won the award yet).  Most of it is softball stuff, the questions pretty pat on the whole.  But it’s branded a “Sunday Conversation,” so I guess a little froth is okay.  As expected, however, Leary offers bizarre insight even if the questions lack it, such as one random (but oddly precise) reaction to a question about his son recently shipping off to college (also at Emerson), a moment he describes as “a combination of jealousy, rage, envy, fear.”

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  • TCM’s ‘Summer Under the Stars’ posters

    Brad Brevet over at Rope of Silicon points me today over to the Turner Classic Movies website, which, in preparation for August’s mega “Summer Under the Stars” program, has released a modest series of redesigned posters for a few of the classic films set to be screened.  The “Magnificent Seven” and “Grapes of Wrath” posters are, of course, exquisite, but I was taken by the arresting simplicity of this one for “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”:

    Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

    Speaking of Stanley Kramer’s film, I finally got around to Mark Harris’s book “Pictures at a Revolution” last week, maybe 100 pages in so far.  It’s a look at a pivotal time in American film history through the lens of 1967’s five Best Picture nominees (“Bonnie & Clyde,” “Doctor Dolittle,” “The Graduate,” “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” and “The Graduate”), and I can’t put the damn thing down.  It’s expertly rendered journalism that reads like a novel and every chance I get, I’ve been recommending it to film enthusiasts.  So it only makes sense I bring it up here.  Seek it out.

  • 7/13 Web Round-up

    (from left) Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in (500) Days of Summer• Gael Garcia Bernal: activist. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Phil de Semlyen chats it up with Bruno. [Empire]

    • Michael Powell goes deep on “Golden Age” survivor Andrew Sarris. [New York Times]

    • Mike Jones profiles the child actors of Harry Potter, wonders if their fame can last beyond Hogwarts. [The independent]

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  • SUNDAY CENTS: One fine gay

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

    Sacha Baron Cohen’s full frontal assault on audiences took the top spot at the box office this weekend with an estimated $30.4 million from 2,756 screens. Considering that “Borat” made $29 million from 837 screens in its debut and then $31 million from 2,566 in its second weekend, I think it’s safe to say that lightning hasn’t struck twice in the same spot here.

    Universal can still be happy with its $40 million investment as the film has bright prospects overseas and on home video. But with almost 50% of the weekend figure coming from Friday alone, the signs are there for this to vanish from U.S. theaters pretty quickly. $65 or $70 million seems like the probable domestic total, or roughly half of what “Borat” finished with.

    If you’re looking for an explanation, I’ve got one for you: Gay Sexual Content = Box Office Poison in 60% of the country.

    “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” retains the runner-up position with a slim 33% drop from its somewhat disappointing debut. Another $28.5 million in the bank brings the running total to $120.6 million and sets the film on track to finish in the $175 million range, or exactly what was expected of it. Ray Romano may actually have himself quite the successful film career, as long as we never have to see his face again.

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  • Plumping for Pike in ‘An Education’

    Rosamund Pike in An EducationIt seems that Lone Scherfig’s British period drama “An Education” continues to steal the heart of pretty much everyone who sees it — this has been near the top of my “most anticipated” list for some time now.

    You may remember a recent piece where Kris, while echoing the resounding praise for the film and its breakout star Carey Mulligan, really flew the flag for supporting star Alfred Molina.

    Now comes further applause for the film — and an emphatic endorsement for yet another member of the film’s ensemble — from an interesting source: Santa Barbara Film Festival director Roger Durling.

    In an ecstatic note to Jeff Wells, one of the film’s earliest champions, Durling likens watching the film to “a state of movie nirvana” and declares Mulligan both “sublime” and “the leading contender at this point for Best Actress.” But I’m most interested to see that he singles out the supporting work of 30 year-old British actress Rosamund Pike for special attention.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Buried treasure, reading pleasure

    Leonardo DiCaprio and Michelle Williams in Shutter IslandEntirely slipped my mind to do this on Friday, but here’s what we (and you) were talking about this week:

    • At 2009’s halfway mark, this week’s list shone a light on the year’s most undersung films thus far.

    • In Page to Screen this week, we eagerly sank our teeth into Dennis Lehane’s “Shutter Island.”

    • As the respective “Ice Age” and “Transformers” rehashes battled for box-office glory, “Up” quietly became Pixar’s second-highest grosser.

    • Meanwhile, soon-to-be titan “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” garnered mixed-to-positive notices.

    • Burton, Lasseter, Miyazaki, Zemeckis … the upcoming Comic-Con just got a lot more auteur-heavy.

    • Speaking of comics, “The Green Lantern” has a lead … and his name is Ryan Reynolds.

    • Away from the big screen, we discussed the joys of bargain-bin DVDs.

    • And stirred up debate with a celebration of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”

  • TECH SUPPORT: Kicking the tires on a new season

    Daniel Day-Lewis in NineToday marks the beginning of a fourth year of Tech Support here at In Contention. Over the past four years, we’ve sought to bring the otherwise under-reported crafts categories and crafts artists the attention they seldom receive, despite their enormous contributions to the art of cinema.

    This year, we plan on looking at nine of the categories – Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Makeup, Original Score, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Visual Effects – twice thoroughly between now and the morning the nominations are announced. Best Original Song will be previewed once, when we have a better idea of eligible contenders.

    I will be offering the analysis of these categories but Kris will also be joining me for the first time this year with Tech Support features and interview pieces throughout.

    Last year, a contemporary film – “Slumdog Millionaire” – managed to triumph in five of the 10 categories, a truly remarkable achievement, while “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” unsurprisingly took three others.  (Meanwhile, the year’s blockbuster “The Dark Knight” managed one.)  It will be interesting to see whether this year will be seen as having tech sweepers like “Millionaire” and “Button” or a greater spreading of the wealth, as we saw in 2007, when eight different films shared the 10 crafts awards!

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  • Ryan Reynolds cast in ‘Green Lantern’

    Green LanternIt all started with a recent Hollywood Reporter piece claiming that Bradley Cooper, Ryan Reynolds and Justin Timberlake (WTF) were up for the lead role in WB’s “The Green Lantern” (a script I’ve had for a while but preferred to satisfy the inner geek in me by reading the Geoff Johns saga in full, leading up to this summer’s “Blackest Night” event).

    Of those three, with a gun to my head, I’d prefer Bradley Cooper, which was tossed into the mix by a Drew McWeeny report a few weeks back.  I love Timberlake and actually think he’s a fine actor, but I don’t buy him as a cock-sure-test-pilot-turned-intergalactic-police-officer, do you?

    But according to this Michael Fleming scoop at Variety’s new industry blog BF Deal Memo, the news strangely being dumped at the end of the week and the start of the weekend, it seems Warner Bros. is going with Ryan Reynolds.  Ugh.

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  • Could ‘Mr. Fox,’ ‘Carol’ join toon Best Pic hopefuls?

    Fantastic Mr. FoxJoBlo has an exclusive first look today at the central character from Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” a Scott Rudin-produced animated Roald Dahl adaptation.  The film was recently shifted from Fox over to Fox Searchlight for the purposes of distribution, lest a small, niche film such as this be lost in the shuffle.  But I have also heard murmurs (none of them confirmed, mind you) that the film will be pushed for a Best Picture nomination now that there are 10 slots up for grabs.

    What is confirmed, however, is that Henry Selick’s “Coraline” will be campaigned for the top prize by Focus Features (while Richard Curtis’s “The Boat That Rocked,” recently speculated in this space as being primed for Oscar, will not).  And of course, Disney/Pixar will be hitting the pavement in favor of “Up.”  Before long, the question becomes, “Well if they’re going for it, we should, too.”  Which leads me to wonder…

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  • Zen pulp

    I should really let Matt Zoller Seitz’s words speak for themselves in his ongoing five-part series of video essays concerning director Michael Mann at the Museum of the Moving Image, (“Zen Pulp: The World of Michael Mann”), but I’m a sucker for this stuff.

    Part one (posted July 1), which you can check out below, concerns Mann’s early years, moving from TV’s “Miami Vice” backwards five years to his first directorial effort, TV movie “The Jericho Mile” (a movie I REALLY need to see, already). Then it’s back to “Vice” for some aesthetic analysis.

    “The advertising part of Mann’s sensibility is encoded in the show’s brooding slickness,” Seitz says, “its fascination with clothes, cars, boats, buildings, and bodies as objects worth contemplating apart from their narrative function.” There’s plenty of talk about Mann’s penchant for authenticating the world on screen and the heavy body count and aesthetic violence in the ground-breaking series.  Then it’s a fast-forward 22 years to talk about the 2006 feature film starring Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx.  Check it out:

    (Keep reading to check out parts two and three.)

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  • Probably deserved worse

    I’m back after a week of non-Internet, non-TV, book-diving and screenwriting beachy goodness, and one of the stories I’m coming home to today is former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s death.  I don’t want to be too much of a dick here, especially in the wake of similar sniping from others surrounding Michael Jackson’s untimely exit, but isn’t it always guys like McNamara who end up going peacefully in their sleep?  The Meyer Lanskys of the world.  The ones too smart to go down before their natural expiration date like their fellow hooligans.  Here’s hoping your conscience didn’t get in the way of that long, healthy life, Mr. McNamara.  Whatever the case, sleep well.  At least Errol Morris got you on the record.

  • Five years on, Gibson’s ‘Christ’ still moving, misunderstood

    Jim Caviezel in The Passion of the ChristFive years have passed since the release of Mel Gibson’s extraordinary film “The Passion of the Christ,” a self-financed work that would eventually stun the industry, bringing in more than $600 million worldwide. There were gales of protest about the film, religious leaders spoke out, some for it , some actually against it, and audiences members wept, or walked out, depending on the person.  I can’t remember a film causing this sort of reaction from so many people. Gibson divided audience right down the middle.

    The actor/director chose not to make a film about Jesus’s life but rather his death, exploring in great detail the horrors inflicted on the poor man as he walked toward a hill where he would be nailed to a cross and left to die a most horrible death. The chain of events is called “the stations of the cross” in religious teaching, but Gibson laid it out in near matter-of-fact fashion.  His faith was apparent but it wasn’t a propagandist’s work in the slightest.

    In essence, Gibson made a film about a man who was driven.  He could have stopped but he pushed through this awful denouement to his life. I suppose that, more than anything else, moved me. The fact that no matter what happened to his body, whether it be scourging his flesh or beating him about the head and face, he just kept going, knowing his purpose, knowing his destiny.  In that way, the film could be seen less as a portrait of a religious figure than a tale about everyday passion, the will to continue, eyes on the prize, etc.  Who can’t relate to that in some way, however comparably small?

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  • Letterman and Brüno sell the movie

    “Don’t you want to see a crazy gay Austrian who isn’t the governor of California?” What can I add to that? Enjoy: