In Contention

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  • 9/7 Oscarweb Round-up

    Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight• Peter Sciretta thinks “The Dark Knight” will eventually beat the $600 million “Titanic” domestic take with re-releases in future years.  Fair enough, but the worldwide gross is insurmountable and always will be. [/Film]

    • Tom O’Neil wonders whether Peter O’Toole has an Oscar win in store for his work in “Dean Spanley.” [Gold Derby]

    • Kevin Kelley spends some time with Brad Pitt. [Spout Blog]

    • Kim Voynar calls the newly re-edited version of Fernando Meirelles’s “Blindness” a “vast improvement” over the cut screened at Cannes. [Cinematical]

    • James Rocchi, meanwhile, talks to “Appaloosa” helmer Ed Harris. [Cinematical]

    • David Poland catches up with opinions on a few Toronto films, including “The Secret Life of Bees” from Fox Searchlight. [The Hot Blog]

  • Is there room for the old(er) guys?

    With the acting races getting more crowded by the day, it seems new contenders will need to make quite some impact to stay afloat in awards season. Nonetheless, David Poland and Tom O’Neil are beating their respective drums for a couple of veteran actors in decidedly low-key projects that have just bowed at Toronto.

    David Poland is excited about “Lovely, Still,” a small-scale holiday pic charting the December-to-December romance between Ellen Burstyn and Martin Landau. I thought the film sounded fairly ghastly when I first heard about it, but Poland is won over, citing “home run performances” from the leads:

    All of those “Boynton Beach Club” movies that get distribution… this is going to be the king of them. Maybe it’s just $10 million in theatrical, but given the Academy composition and the very real love of these two actors, don’t be shocked to hear award buzz around this one all season.

    Cinema Blend has also come over all warm and fuzzy on the film, and describes the performances as “dazzling.” The stars are obviously Academy stalwarts — and I’m always happy to see recognition for Burstyn, one of America’s greatest living actors — but I need more convincing.

    Meanwhile, over at Gold Derby, O’Neil is hoping the Academy might finally give in to poor Peter O’Toole, the man who now holds the record for most losses (eight) without winning. Two years ago, everything seemed set for O’Toole to finally collect for “Venus” — and he might well have, had the film not been so feeble.

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  • Films for the future

    To commemorate their 75th anniversary, the British Film Institute has launched a nice little project called “Visions for the Future.” They’ve selected 75 figures from the world of film — actors, filmmakers, critics and other industry pros — and invited them to name one film they would choose to share with future generations, as well as asking for their thoughts on the future of the medium.

    The results — mainly in the form of video interviews — are really rather insightful. Obvious (albeit worthy) choices abound, from “The Wizard of Oz” to “The Third Man” to “Tokyo Story.”

    But there are a number of interesting left turns. As if there weren’t enough reasons to like her already, Cate Blanchett proves her taste and intelligence by picking Andrei Tarkovsky’s mind-blowing “Stalker,” though she admits it took her three days to get through it. (Her choice also gives me a nice excuse to post one of the most beautiful posters of all time as an illustration.)

    My favourite choice, however, is that of the brilliant playwright and screenwriter Patrick Marber — Powell and Pressburger’s “The Red Shoes,” a twisted, romantic and visually breathtaking fairytale that he economically describes as being “about wanting things too much and not getting them.”

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  • TORONTO: ‘Rachel Getting Married,’ ‘Flash of Genius’

    Greg Kinnear in Flash of GeniusWoke up dog tired this morning, yesterday’s marathon of screenings wore me out. Getting old. Do the usual pre-screening intake of food and coffee (a festival staple) before getting ready to head off to the first screening, “Flash of Genius” which I am looking to seeing.

    Greg Kinnear convinced me he was the real deal opposite Jack Nicholson in “As Good As It Gets” and even more so as Bob Crane in the dark biopic “Auto Focus.” He has got an all American quality about him that I quite enjoy.

    (Reviews after the jump.)

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  • Is ‘Slumdog’ really a slam dunk?

    It’s no secret that Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” is shaping up to be one of the indie darlings of 2008. The film was the uncontested hit of the Telluride festival, bowing to sensational reviews, of which Todd McCarthy’s (key phrases: “a blast;” “fantastic energy;” “a vital piece of work”) represents the consensus.

    Almost immediately, Oscar buzz began building around the film, with pundits suggesting that the film’s combination of gritty sociological themes and ultimately uplifting narrative would prove irresistible to voters seeking to annoint this year’s ‘little film that could.’ (Glib comparisons have been made to “Juno,” based on, well, nothing really — except it’s a small film that audiences like.)

    Now, the latest to board the “Slumdog” train in Toronto are Tom O’Neil and Jeffrey Wells. In this video from Gold Derby, O’Neil says the film has the “passionate rooting factor” that a film needs to get those first-place votes on the nomination ballot. In closing, O’Neil and Wells agree that the film is “without question” one of 2008’s five Best Picture nominees. Article continues after the cut:

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  • DiCaprio and Scott start talking ‘Lies’

    Leonardo DiCaprio in Body of LiesThe LA Times’ Chris Lee has reported an interesting story about Ridley Scott’s upcoming “Body of Lies,” but the best anecdote is right at the top:

    “If I’m going to get down to brass tacks, there’s no rules,” Scott exclaimed, sitting on the sun-drenched deck of his West Hollywood production company. He was speaking hypothetically about his willingness to use torture to extract information from a suspected terrorist — a pivotal plot point in the knighted British director’s political thriller “Body of Lies”…

    “If I want to get the information out of somebody, I have to do it,” Scott continued. “And it makes it a lot easier if that person put a bomb in a square or blew up a bunch of kids. I’d definitely take a cricket bat to him.” He glanced over at DiCaprio for confirmation. “Right?”

    DiCaprio clamped his lips together, averted eye contact and almost imperceptibly shook his head no. Awkward moment, anyone? The hard-charging director suddenly reversed course. “Never let me be the head of any counter-terrorist organization,” Scott said, chuckling.

    Lee has apparently seen “Body of Lies,” by the way, judging by his descriptions.  He calls the film “a deliberate throwback to Nixon-era conspiracy thrillers, films that spotlighted American political skulduggery and corruption…The film offers plenty of other visceral stimulation as well, tautly paced around shootouts, car chases and lushly photographed explosions courtesy of cinematographer Alexander Witt.  Big ideas too.”

  • Javier Bardem: Defending the character

    Some actors just have it. Javier Bardem is one of them.

    A few weeks ago, Kris posted that engaging Penelope Cruz interview with Lynn Hirschberg of the New York Times. Now, in a neat bit of symmetry, Bardem is next in the series — and he is as articulate and perceptive an interviewee as he is a performer.

    I particularly like his description (borrowed from Victoria Abril) of the acting process as being akin to that of a lawyer, defending their characters through their portrayals — even when they’re as despicable as Anton Chigurh. Further on, it’s nice to hear someone who appears genuinely honoured and humbled by his whole Oscar experience.

    And just in case he wasn’t cool enough… the first film he saw was “All That Jazz.”

  • Robert Downey Jr. to join the lead actor race in ‘The Soloist?’

    Robert Downey Jr. in The SoloistI’m hearing (not altogether surprising) rumblings that Robert Downey Jr.’s role in Joe Wright’s “The Soloist” is larger than Jamie Foxx’s homeless violinist Nathaniel Ayers and that he’ll be pushed as a leading actor contender by the good folks at Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks SKG.  Apparently this is coming from a place of beaming confidence from the studio and Downey Jr. is said to be fantastic in the film.

    “The Soloist” is, of course, largely Steve Lopez’s story.  It is told from his perspective and is about, as the title of the book lets us know, “the redemptive power of music.”  That would be Lopez’s redemption as much as Ayers’, seeing as the LA Times columnist has picked up his guitar again as a result of his relationship with the man.  (Listen to Lopez discuss his interaction with Ayers and the process of committing that story to print here).

    Of course, actors with star power have a say in these things.  I can’t imagine Paramount would want to put both of these guys in the same category, but I’m starting to get more of a “Resurrecting the Champ” vibe out of Foxx’s role than before.  Perhaps he’d be better suited in the supporting arena, but again, these are decisions that have yet to be finalized.

    It goes without saying that Downey Jr. is having a hell of a come-back year.  I’m still having conversations with industry folks that think he has a shot at Oscar gold for his work in “Iron Man,” but perhaps Paramount can spin that goodwill into the Best Actor group think for “The Soloist.”

    Downey Jr., DiCaprio, Rourke, Jenkins, Langella, Penn, Mortensen, Eastwood, Pitt, Sheen……it’s gettin’ crowded in here.  And Heath Ledger may have just seized the supporting prize.

    More as it develops…

  • ‘Wrestler’: Is Golden Lion just the beginning?

    As Kris just reported, Darren Aronosky’s “The Wrestler” has won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. No surprise there — in what was widely deemed a lukewarm festival, Aronofsky’s film, which only screened yesterday on the Lido, was one of the few outright critical sensations.

    What is surprising is that Mickey Rourke, whose lauded comeback performance is the predominant source of the film’s buzz, missed out on the Best Actor prize, which went to Italy’s Silvio Orlando for “Giovanna’s Father.”

    Perhaps the jury wanted to spread the love. Perhaps after wins for David Strathairn, Ben Affleck and Brad Pitt in the last three years, they felt American actors had been sufficiently rewarded for a while. Prize or no prize, however, this recognition for the film — to which his performance is so integral — makes it quite clear that Rourke is on the awards trail.

    But what of the film itself? In years past, the Golden Lion has been the start of a healthy awards-season run for a couple of films — examples include “Atlantic City,” “Vera Drake,” and most notably, “Brokeback Mountain.”

    It’s no guarantee of future glory, though. In 1996, Neil Jordan’s lavishly mounted biopic “Michael Collins” seemed poised for an awards sweep after it took the Golden Lion and its star, Liam Neeson, nabbed the Best Actor prize. But the film never quite clicked with other awards bodies — and on Oscar nomination morning, all that awaited it was a pair of technical nods.

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  • ‘Wrestler’ wins the Golden Lion in Venice

    Can’t wait.  Can’t freakin’ wait.  Read the full story here.

  • SHORT TAKE: “Burn After Reading” (*1/2)

    Focus Features' Burn After ReadingI really didn’t like “Burn After Reading,” but I laughed.  A LOT.

    I think the Coen brothers are probably the only filmmakers who can generate such a reaction.  The entire film is expendable.  It doesn’t even work on the grounds of slapstick, really.  It’s a series of events strung together, no point, no thematic ingenuity, a tapestry of…stuff.

    And that’s obviously the point.  The film willfully aimless.  Like J.K. Simmons says at film’s end, “I’ll be damned if I know what happened.”  And I stand on my chair and applaud the Coens for doing exactly what they wanted to do after the critical embrace of “No Country for Old Men” last year, because it takes balls to crank out (probably knowingly) your least accomplished film one year after what could be considered your most successful one.

    Only the Coens.

    The star of the film’s wacky ensemble is, without a doubt, Brad Pitt.  The actor’s age, however, pokes through sometimes, making his character oddly askew and somewhat…creepy?  But he takes the bull by the horns and rides this character for all it’s worth.  Chad Feldheimer is without a doubt Pitt’s most inventive creation since Jeffrey Goines in “Twelve Monkeys.”

    The rest of the cast is merely passable.  Frances McDormand gets the appropriate snorts as a superficial, middle-aged gym employee trolling the Internet for love interests.  Tilda Swinton is awkward as the stuck-up wife of John Malkovich’s disgraced CIA agent.  Malkovich provides plenty of laugh-out-loud moments but seems consistently aware that the story is spiraling out of control.

    Elsewhere, George Clooney is probably the runner-up for talent on display as he makes his way through a character addicted to sex in the most humorous and matter-of-fact ways, while Richard Jenkins kind of gives the audience something to attach themselves to as a life jacket in the choppy waters.  Kind of.

    But ultimately, the film is nothing more than a romp.  A harmless one, but a difficult one to qualify in any sense.  Enjoyable, yes, but hollow and lacking any ability to fully satisfy.  Not unlike eating large amounts of candy.

  • TORONTO: ‘Burn After Reading,’ ‘Appaloosa,’ ‘Miracle at St. Anna’

    Ed Harris in AppaloosaRough day on the legs yesterday, a lot of walking.  Five films. One of them I will watch on DVD in the luxury of my room tonight, so four that I am running to, but hey, these are films I want to see, which always helps, right?

    I scanned the local papers for reaction to Thursday’s Gala of “Passchendaele” first thing yesterday.  The reviews seem to be fair in their honesty; no one thinks the film is a masterpiece but no one is tearing it apart either. The real news seems to be the demonstrators outside of Roy Thomson Hall protesting our government’s recent announcement of massive funding cuts to the arts.

    Dumb, dumb, dumb.  When will they learn that a culture without art ceases to be a culture?

    Anyway, I arrived at the first screening and took my seat only to overhear a distressing conversation (a dangerous part of this job) between two American film critics. One said the festival had lost its identity this year because its programmers have not brought in any Oscar contenders, unlike last year when four of the five best picture nominees played here.

    I was stunned by his arrogance and ignorance. How could he possibly make that statement? The Oscar nominations…as far as I know…are not announced until January. Perhaps he is forgetting that this festival was created to celebrate the art form.  That films that went on to Oscar attention was just icing on the cake. And who is to say many of the films here may not head in Oscar’s direction? And so what…SO WHAT (??!!) if they do not?

    Perhaps they have forgotten their own identity as film critics and why they took up the job: to write about great films, big and small, Oscars or not.

    (Reviews after the jump.)

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  • REVIEW: “Miracle at St. Anna” (**)

    Touchstone Pictures\' Miracle at St. AnnaSpike Lee knows how to mount a natural tension behind the camera. He knows how to create powerful scenes. He knows how to weave theme and yes, even subtext into his narratives. But more often than not he fails to put these gifts together in a successful piece that gets out of its own way and provides a complete experience.

    “Mircale at St. Anna” isn’t the nosedive that “Bamboozled” takes half-way through. It isn’t the vibrant mess of “Mo’ Better Blues” and it sure isn’t the ineptitude and stylized aggression of “Inside Man.” Indeed, it is probably the filmmaker’s most unique effort in a number of years. But despite a few sequences that remind the viewer of the skill and artistic ability of its director, it is mostly a narrative strung along and together by poor performances (at least one of them awful) and unfocused screenwriting.

    The story begins in Manhattan in the present day. A murder in a post office. Casual, but purposeful, and full of mystery. A giant stone head, a relic, discovered in the perpetrator’s home. The intrigue on high so much that we can forgive the out-of-place and unnecessary, “Pilgrim, we fought for this country, too” that the character spoke not five minutes earlier (a typical on-the-nose Lee aside but also entirely out of keeping with the character’s motivations).

    A reporter is digging at the truth. “I know who the sleeping man is,” the shooter tells him. We’re hooked; what will the flashback have in store to explain all of this peculiarity?

    Not a whole hell of a lot, as it turns out. We’re zapped back in time to World War II in the countryside of Italy. The Buffalo Soldiers division, a group of African American soldiers referred to as an “experiment” by one blatantly racist commander played by Robert John Burke, will be our company throughout.

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  • 9/6 Oscarweb Round-up

    Gerard Butler and Thandie Newton in RocknRolla• Nancy Kriparos keeps her Oscar diary going with looks at “Passchendaele,” “RocknRolla” and “Burn After Reading.” [Awards Daily]

    • Tom O’Neil and Jeffrey Wells talk up the Oscar prospects of Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire.” [Gold Derby]

    • Wells, meanwhile, seems to be talking himself out of seeing Spike Lee’s “Miracle at St. Anna” as best he can. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • David Poland calls “Lovely, Still” the first real surprise of Toronto. [The Hot Blog]

    • Anne Thompson responds positively to Richard Linklater’s “Me and Orson Welles.” [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • The Kingdom of Jordan will leap into Oscar’s foreign language film race for the first time ever with Amin Matalqua’s “Captain Abu Raed.” [Variety]

  • Back on the radar

    Here’s some happy news. After being put so far on the back burner as to be almost invisible, Spike Jonze’s intriguing adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” has been assigned a release date by Warner Bros.

    The film will apparently open on October 16, 2009, which should allow Jonze plenty of time to complete his vision — hopefully unimpeded. (No confirmation yet on whether Karen O is really doing the music.)

    I understand the studio’s concerns about audience accessibility, but c’mon — you don’t put Spike Jonze on a project and expect “Charlotte’s Web.” We’re talking about a potential audience that goes way beyond the kid demographic. Let the man’s freak flag fly.

  • Anyone want to see this?

    Sorry this news is a few days old, but it escaped my notice until now. Variety reports on a new independent drama that enters production next month. I’m just going to lay down the details, one by one:

    Renee Zellweger plays a wheelchair-bound former singer.

    Forest Whitaker plays an emotionally damaged fireman.

    Together, they embark on a road trip to Memphis, wherein they work through the tragedy they have both faced in their lives.

    And apparently find love.

    It’s written and directed by Olivier Dahan, he of “La Vie en Rose.”

    And it’s called “My Own Love Song.”

    I should keep an open mind. Maybe it’s a masterpiece in the making. But based on those facts, is there not a strong possibility this could literally be the worst film of all time?

  • TORONTO: ‘The Wrestler’ is the talk of the fest

    Just two days and a few hours into TIFF 2008 and already one film is emerging as the talk of the festival.

    I do not see “The Wrestler” until Monday, right after “Che.” But I am counting the hours. Every year there seems to be a little film that arrives here with not a lot of advance notice and captures the imaginations of the audiences and critics on the way to becoming one of the hottest films of the season. Discovery is often what TIFF is all about. Finding that gem, celebrating it and letting the world know it is here.

    I remember “The Apostle” in 1997, as I’ve recounted in this space before. Two groups of men got up and ran out of the theater, dialing their cell phones on their way up the aisle. As Robert Duvall told it to me, they began making deals for the film in the lobby of the the theater, until Harvey Weinstein turned it into a nightmare.

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  • ‘Following’ Chris Nolan at LACMA

    (from left) Christopher Nolan and Kenneth Turan at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Bing TheaterI had not seen Christopher Nolan’s directorial debut “Following” in six or seven years, which made for the perfect excuse to drop 20 bucks on a ticket to tonight’s Slamdance screening and Q&A over at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

    The film holds up as a wonderful, if slightly obscure excerpt from that sensational year of cinema: 1999.  It contains the seeds of a director’s fascination with broken narrative storytelling, borrows humbly from genre particulars already developed by David Mamet and Stephen Frears in years past (while turning them on their heads) and is a modest announcement of a significant new talent.

    Little did we know this unassuming director with a film rejected by Sundance would go on to helm one of the highest-grossing movies in film history.

    It’s a delight to listen to Nolan discuss the particulars of his craft today, with five other films under his belt and a lot of perspective to shine back on his initial cinematic foray.  The narrative with Nolan has become, “He still maintains that independent edge even in blockbuster territory.”  Yes, but it’s deeper, and yet simpler than that.  It would be fairer to say he still maintains an understanding of lean storytelling (for the most part), even in the midst of dramatically ambitious stories.

    “Following” is a case study in that.  And of course, the year-long filming process astounds me to this day, grabbing footage here and there on the weekends, the actors maintaining their appearance long enough to complete the project.  Amazing.

    Nolan spoke an all-too-brief 20 minutes to the LA Times’ Kenneth Turan (who was double-checking his notes constantly) in front of a relatively diverse crowd, bringing in examples from his steadily expanding portfolio to emboss artistic points about his view of the filmmaking process.  With Bat-hysteria flying off the rails this summer, it was a treat to listen in on a developing master’s serene take on the nuts and bolts of his art form.

    And that’s what it’s always about at the end of the day, no?

    Here is a recording of the proceedings.  Nolan is soft spoken, and Turan doesn’t exactly announce his queries with the loudest authority, but you might catch some gems of the conversation if you crank the volume:

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