I’m sitting here at LACMA’s Bing Theater awaiting a screening of Christopher Nolan’s “Following,” to be followed (no pun intended) by a Q&A with the man himself.
The energy is pretty high. Nearly packed theater with a mix of anxious fans and reserved night-on-the-towners.
I’ll report back later this evening or in the morning with some snaps and an mp3 of the discussion. Ken Turan is moderating, I believe.
Looking at the latest contenders to muscle in on an already crowded Best Actor field, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s 1986 or something.
First, the formerly washed-up Mickey Rourke rebounds with an apparently career-best performance in “The Wrestler” that is generating loud Oscar buzz.
Now Rourke’s relative contemporary, Jeff Goldblum, is setting tongues wagging for another indie effort, albeit one with a much lower profile going in. As Holocaust survivor Adam Steiner in “Adam Resurrected,” the latest film from the ever-underrated Paul Schrader, Goldblum is attracting the kind of attention he hasn’t seen since, well, his career-making performance in “The Fly.”
Writing from Telluride, where the film bowed, Cinematical’s Kim Voynar began beating the drum:
Goldblum’s performance as Adam is complex and engrossing to watch, and while I can’t begin to fathom what it must have taken out of him to get inside this story and character to pull the performance off at this level, it’s truly a wonder to behold onscreen. The Oscar buzz circulating Goldblum’s turn in this film is far from hype; he educes the death and rebirth of a man’s soul in such a way that I’d be hard pressed to compare it to anything I’ve ever seen onscreen.
I don’t think it’s much of a secret around these parts that I really wanted to be on board for “Appaloosa.” I’m in love with the new resurgence of the western genre, even if I get irritated when people refer to “No Country for Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood” as evidence of it.
This, of course, redirects credit due to a modern lineage that began with Kevin Costner’s back-to-basics “Open Range,” exploded with creativity with David Milch’s “Deadwood” and settled into a hell of a groove last year with James Mangold’s “3:10 to Yuma” and Andrew Dominik’s “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert ford.”
But lulls and misfires are to be expected of a genre finding its footing in a brave new Hollywood seemingly willing to finance such efforts, and it pains me to say “Appaloosa” is an example.
Lifted from the pages of a Robert Parker novel painstakingly simple in its narrative approach, Ed Harris’s adaptation suffers in its admittedly commendable insistence to be faithful to the source. The result is a stilted narrative with vague characterizations and otherwise awkward interaction.
Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen star as Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch respectively, gun-hands that move from town to town restoring order for a fee, establishing the law and governance of the country’s last frontier. Fifteen years together can breed a relationship of intuition. Virgil and Everett sense each other’s disposition, depend on each other like extensions of themselves. The interplay was fascinating in novel form and is almost there on the screen.
When the duo arrive in Appaloosa, the city has been forced to its knees by a quick-draw rancher, Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons) and his band of misfits. By-laws are posted, Cole is given command of the town’s law and order and the wheels are set in motion for plenty of steely-eyed encounters and enough shoot-outs (and near shoot-outs) to satisfy the appetite.
It seems Jeff Wells is one of the few to walk out of Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Burn After Reading” with a big smile on his face.
Here’s what he had to say, in part:
I didn’t laugh all that much, but I loved every minute of this thing. Relished it, and mainly I sat there with a bemused smile on my face. If you’re on the misanthrope boat, this half-espionage, half-comedy of modern fools and manners is about as good as this sort of thing gets. But you have to forget about “laughing.” (Which is overrated anyway, despite what Joel McCrea‘s John L. Sullivan might have thought.) Because this movie is about much more than that.
Sounds promiing, despite the negative early Stateside opinions (the Brits, however, sided with Wells on this one). I’ll know for myself in, oh, four hours when I check it out over in Beverly Hills. I’m quite looking forward to it, to tell you the truth.
Let’s face it, we all wanted it to be the great Canadian film we have been waiting for for so long, the one that would become mainstream enough to make its mark on the box office charts and enjoy some praise from critics around North America. We wanted “Passchendaele” to be the great Canadian film that was also popular with mass audiences in the manner of Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan.”
And it’s a rare occurrence. Two examples leap to mind. “The Sweet Hereafter,” Atom Egoyan’s 1997 masterpiece, was the last universally acclaimed work of cinematic art out of this country, while “The Barbarian Invasions” took home an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
Paul Gross, a bona fide stud of a Canadian movie star (but no Spielberg) has wanted to make “Passchendaele” since listening to the stories his grandfather used to tell him. The $21 million dollars he was given to start production was unheard of for a Canadian film, but to his credit every penny is up there on the screen. His recreation of the period is quite stunning, capturing the very essence of a small Canadian town circa 1917.
Gross catapults his audience back to the muddy fields of the First World War, where soldiers sat and slept in cold, wet and muddy trenches, the smell and sights of death all around them, awaiting the enemy’s advance, awaiting hell to escape from the bowels of the earth. His work at the helm in these sequences is flawless, and though all war films are forever compared to what Spielberg accomplished in the summer of 1998, this was a very different war. It was one lacking the technologies we had by the 1940s, a much more brutal and unforgiving conflict with almost barbaric weaponry. I mean, Jesus, bayonets? Gas? Rocks? Whatever they could hit with or throw.
• Stephen Zeitchik and Borys Kit tackle the covert war films playing this year’s Toronto fest. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Jeffrey Wells is hearing that Danny Glover’s narration track in Fernando Meirelles’s “Blindness” has been nixed. [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• And he responds unfavorably to Rian Johnson’s “Brick” follow-up, “The Brothers Bloom.” [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• James Rocchi, however, is diggin’ it. [Cinematical]
• But back to “Blindness, Pete Hammond charts the film’s second chance following mixed-to-negative reactions in Cannes. [The Envelope]
• The tenacious Sheigh Crabtree scores some exclusive footage from Paramount Vantage’s “The Duchess.” [The Envelope]
• Brad Brevet begins tracking the Best Foreign Language Film race. [Rope of Silicon]
• Regarding “Rachel Getting Married,” David Poland continues the Robert Altman comparisons in his review (which really aren’t as applicable as the critical fraternity seems to think, I must say). [The Hot Button]
• Tom O’Neil catches up with everyone else, ponders a Toronto minus the usual Oscar heavies. [Gold Derby]
• Why do we always get one of those “Hollywood is at a crossroads” stories every few years? [Peter Bart]
One of the great things about getting to review a film before the general press has had their say is having no idea where your views will stand in the tide of critical opinion. With only gut expectations to live up (or down) to, one can respond to nothing but the work at hand.
So it was last week when I reviewed Guy Ritchie’s “RocknRolla,” which screened yesterday in Toronto and opens in the UK today. I thought it a dismal effort, but was quite prepared to be in the minority on that one. Nonetheless, the extreme split in opinion that is emerging has taken me by surprise — not least because it seems to be on geographical lines.
The UK reception for “RocknRolla” has been decidedly frosty, with the tabloids and the more highbrow broadsheets seemingly united in their contempt for the film. The Daily Mail deems it an “embarrassing turkey,” and The Guardian — in a one-star review that’s not as funny as Peter Bradshaw thinks it is — is right with them, calling it a “shocker.” (Or “shocka,” to use Bradshaw Mockney-aping spelling.)
The Times is moderately kinder, acknowledging its entertainment value, but complaining that “it brings back too many jaundiced memories and fails to lay any fresh tracks.” The drubbing continues at The Independent, who blame the “inexcusable banality” of Ritchie’s script, while The Telegraph complains the film is “loud and brash but goes nowhere.”
Cross the pond, however, and the US trade papers seem to have seen an entirely different film at Toronto. Variety loves “RocknRolla,” declaring it “cleverly constructed, sensationally stylish and darkly hilarious,” and predicting strong Stateside business. The Hollywood Reporter seconds that emotion, calling it Ritchie’s “most accessible and enjoyable film yet.” (Have they seen “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels?”)
Lou Lumenick is hearing some rumblings on the “Che” buyer situation in Toronto. From his New York Post blog:
I’m hearing from an exhibition source that Mark Cuban’s Magnolia Pictures has signed to distribute Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” in the United States. The deal is expected to be announced shortly for the two-part biopic of the Argentine guerilla who worked with Fidel Castro starring Benecio del Toro, which premiered to mixed reviews in Cannes. A slightly shorter version — 4 hour 22 minutes total — will be showing at the Toronto and New York Film Festivals. NYFF will be screening “Che” at the 1100-seat Ziegfeld and don’t be surprised if that’s where this epic has a reserved-seat, Academy-qualification run beginning on December 12.
10 p.m. update: A Magnolia rep says an announcement would be “premature,” but I hear they’re already booking theaters.
Frankly, it sounds like a done deal to me. Magnolia is no powerhouse distributor but the company nurtures creativity and smaller efforts well enough. Each year it represents the Oscar-nominated short films, providing more exposure for them than they’d receive otherwise. But a major Oscar campaign is a tough row to hoe when it comes to a season packed with big dogs.
We’ve got a new buzz page for the film here, by the way.
We’ll see.
Now this is good news. Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” bows at Venice tomorrow, but the trades have put up their reviews from Toronto … and they’re mighty positive.
Todd McCarthy and the Hollywood Reporter’s Stephen Farber both give credence to those Best Actor rumours for Mickey Rourke. Farber calls the performance the best of his career, while McCarthy goes further, declaring it one of the great performances, period.
On another note, I’m pleased to see that both critics confirm a hunch I had that Marisa Tomei — a personal favourite — would deliver too.
McCarthy raves:
Rourke creates a galvanizing, humorous, deeply moving portrait that instantly takes its place among the great, iconic screen performances. An elemental story simply and brilliantly told, Darren Aronofsky’s fourth feature is a winner from every possible angle.
Rourke is simply staggering as Ram. The camera is rarely off him, and one doesn’t want it to be, so entirely does he express the full life of this man with his every word and gesture … As vibrant — and as naked — as she was in last year’s “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” Tomei is in top, emotionally forthright form as she charts a life passage similar to Ram’s, if much less extreme.
Much as I love Brad Brevet and the work he does at Rope of Silicon, the point of the Harvey Dent stuff has never been about what’s in the screenplay.
We’ve talked about this before, but the script shows what an audience sees, not what is. What the audience was meant to see was that the character was toast, but it was a vague send-off. Which is what has allowed for all the speculation, for Eckhart to say that he’d love to come back for a third film, for Emma Thomas to outright claim that the filmmakers left it open for interpretation, for Eckhart to even have to ASK CHRIS NOLAN THE CHARACTER’S STATUS (which of course led to yesterday’s item).
So enough of the “How could you not know??” stuff. It’s always been up-in-the-air, if you ask me.
Here’s another one of those “bloggers and critics are the story” pieces that some people hate so much, but when there’s a dust-up, I like to grab the popcorn and rubberneck like anyone else.
This time around it’s Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times, you know, the guy that hates bloggers but finds himself doing just that these days. Anyway, he seems to have taken umbrage with Todd McCarthy’s recent review of “Flash of Genius,” the Universal Greg Kinnear starrer that I’m, frankly, interested in seeing, despite its apparent tendency toward the sentimental.
Goldstein seems to think there is more to McCarthy’s hemming and hawing than a simple dissatisfaction with the material:
McCarthy seems intent on taking down the movie, which debuted over the weekend at the Telluride Film Festival…
As it turns out, “Flash of Genius” is one of the few movies that was invited to both Telluride and Toronto, putting it in distinguished company. My colleague John Horn was at Telluride and says the people he spoke to who saw the film — just regular festival-goers — were impressed by it. In fact, the Telluride screenings were so popular that the festival had to put on additional showings.
My suspicion is that McCarthy’s real problem with the movie — as he implied in his Telluride wrap-up — is that film festivals shouldn’t be showing what he believes are everyday studio product. If so, he oughta get off the festival circuit, starting with Toronto, which, as always, is loaded with studio fare, some of it no doubt bland and forgettable. The L.A. Film Festival actually premiered a Michael Bay movie a few summers back, which gives you an idea of the length festivals will go to get attention these days.
Well, there we are. Two of the old MSM guys going at it. If only McCarthy had his own blog, we could see some real fireworks.
But I guess Variety’s blog situation is in…flux…lately.
Is it just me or does Anne Hathaway look weirdly distorted in this image? Not that such a thing is surprising with poster art these days, but truthfully, this is painfully lacking in creativity if you ask me:
We have a new buzz page for the film, by the way, which you can check out here.
Well here we go again. Welcome to the third year of “Tech Support” here at In Contention, still the Oscarweb’s only weekly column devoted strictly to the crafts elements of filmmaking and the awards process that surrounds them.
The Toronto International Film Festival will be commencing tonight in my hometown and I am yet again “up the creek” (the creek being Lake Ontario) in Kingston. TIFF is correctly acknowledged as the true starting point of awards season so the next few weeks will really be an intro to the year ahead posing the intial questions that the oncoming season will eventually answer. The crafts categories will be no exception in that regard.
So before we get there, perhaps stating the purpose of Tech Support, for both new and veteran readers, is a good place to start.
Consider camera work. Sets. Costumes. Editing. Sound. Visual Effects. Makeup. Music.
It goes without saying the absence of either element would negate the film-going experience. It might be true that the average moviegoer will see a film because of its director or its stars and not its
cinematography but that does not take away from the work that crafts artists do behind the scenes to
bring a movie to life, to improve it and to push the medium of film forward.
Tech Support is an attempt to give the artists behind this work a more prominent role in the media, a role they almost never find themselves in. At In Contention, our focus is obviously on the awards side of the filmmaking industry. Discussing phenomena seen in the categories that award these disciplines, discussing particular categories and interviewing those “in contention” are frequent subjects of the weekly debate and discourse.
• Tom O’Neil responds to the “Milk” trailer. [Gold Derby]
• So does Seth Abramowitz. [Defamer]
• “Appaloosa” director Ed Harris will receive the 3rd annual Kirk Douglas Award at this year’s Santa Barbara Film Festival. [Variety]
• Peter Sciretta wonders whether “Slumdog Millionaire” stole “Happy-Go-Lucky”‘s thunder at Telluride this year. [/Film]
• James Rocchi begins his sure-to-be-insightful Toronto coverage. [Cinematical]
• John Horn looks at acquisition hopefuls in Toronto this year. [Los Angeles Times]
• Sam Adams profiles “Waltz with Bashir” helmer Ari Folman. [The Envelope]
• Susan Wloszczyna seems to think Toronto isn’t its Oscar-forecasting self this year. [USA Today]
• Similarly, in addition to contending that “award-winning contenders appear to be fewer and far between this year,” Anthony Kaufman indicates that “recent market forces” could dampen the buying and selling of films at this year’s fest. [Wall Street Journal]
Picking up on this a day late, but Empire has unveiled a load of previously unseen stills from “Quantum of Solace.” Nothing particularly illuminating or striking about them, though my inner eight-year-old can’t wait for the scene that contains this:
Also, I hadn’t registered until now that the UK is getting this two weeks before the Yanks. Sometimes Britannia does indeed rule.
In a year when the Venice festival lineup has been roundly deemed the weakest — not to mention, least star-powered — in some time, you have to wonder what its organisers are thinking in going head-to-head with Toronto next year.
I assume Venice director Marco Mueller is banking on the European prestige of a potential Golden Lion to lure titles away from Toronto, which doesn’t have a competition aspect, but as the Times succinctly puts it:
This could leave Venice in a vulnerable position: it’s a film festival noted for its glamour and certainly has more public recognition than Toronto – but no business is done there; it doesn’t have a “market” (as Toronto does) where films are bought and sold. Quite besides the red carpet fun and games, the “market” is the nuts and bolts of a film festival, including Cannes.
Madness.