In Contention

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  • Alone: when you hate a movie everyone else seems to love

    Miramax Films\' The English PatientIn 1996 I remember sitting in a packed screening room watching “The English Patient”; it was close to the end when Ralph Fiennes leaves Kristin Scott-Thomas in the cave, promising to come back, never to return, leaving her (through no fault of his own) to perish.

    I couldn’t help thinking at the time: “For fuck’s sake woman, DIE so we can all go home.”  I hated the film — hated it, hated it, hated it — and yet the reviewes were pretty much raves.  Of course the damned thing won nine Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. I did not believe the love connection between the leads (there was no heat) nor that anyone, quite frankly, could fall for an ice queen like Scott-Thomas, much less risk their life for her.

    And yet all around me was this avalanche of praise.  Even the person I did a TV show with named the film the best of the year.  I went with “Trainspotting.”  “The English Patient” was being hailed as this great historical epic while I championed “The Crucible,” which Fox fumbled in releasing, and as the critic who disliked the film, I looked very silly.

    I admire the craftsmanship with which Anthony Mingehlla made his film, but I think he surpassed it with “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and the wonderful “Cold Mountain.”  And of course “The Englsih Patient” was not the first critically acclaimed film I disliked, nor will it be the last, but it does put one in an odd position. You second guess yourself (sometimes) and wonder if you missed something along the way.

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  • ‘Broken’ beauty

    The news that Sony Pictures Classics has acquired rights to “Broken Embraces,” the latest from Spanish master Pedro Almodovar, isn’t really much of a story. After all, SPC have handled Almodovar’s last nine features, and after the success of “Volver,” why would they stop now?

    However, it does provide a nice excuse to post this gorgeous still from the film, courtesy of Almodovar’s always-interesting blog:

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  • 9/2 Oscarweb Round-up

    Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler• Todd McCarthy does cartwheels for Danny Boyle’s “Sulmdog Millionaire.” [Variety]

    • Bruce Springsteen’s “Wrestler” track chokes Darren Aronofsky up every time he hears it. [darrenaronofsky.blogspot.com]

    • Peter Sciretta gives a quick, somewhat lacking review of Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky,” seems to be mixed. [/Film]

    • Across the pond, Penélope Cruz talks “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and working with masters. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Not really awards-related (yet), but, wait…they’re turning “The Wave” into a German language film? Cool! News to me… [Empire]

    • Andrew Pulver separates the cheers from the jeers in Venice. [The Guardian]

    • If you’re looking for one hell of a spiffy awards section… [Rope of Silicon]

    • Rupert Friend makes one creepy Nazi in “The Boy in Striped Pyjamas.” [The Times]

    • Scott Bowles runs down ten fall flicks bursting with potential. [USA Today]

  • Foreign film watch: Holland and Taiwan pick their horses

    For those of you keeping track of the Best Foreign Language Film race, Screen Daily carries details of submissions from two countries with good previous form in the category.

    After fouling foul of the Academy’s arcane rules last year — their entry “Lust, Caution” was disqualified for not being sufficiently Taiwanese — Taiwan is hoping for better luck this time with “Cape No. 7,” a romantic comedy about a group of coastal townspeople who form a support band for a visiting pop star.

    The Netherlands, meanwhile, has selected “Dunya and Desie,” a youth-oriented road comedy about two best friends travelling through Morocco. I find it a surprising choice — the sweeping period weepie “Bride Flight” seemed more Oscar-friendly to me — but the film’s topical theme of Muslim-Western relations might resonate with voters.

    Variety, reviewing it at the Berlin fest in February, loved the film, saying it “positively sings with upbeat energy and humor,” drawing favourable comparisons to “Bend It Like Beckham,” and finally citing “enormous remake potential.”

    For a country with such a small industry, the Dutch have an enviable track record in this category, having won three times, as well as managing nominations for such minor works as “Zus en Zo” and “Twin Sisters.” They are always ones to watch.

  • ‘Che’ = ‘Havana’s Gate’

    Ouch:

    Call it Havana’s Gate. Steven Soderbergh’s elephantine account of the rise and deification of revolutionary icon Ernesto (Che) Guevara could prove as deadly to the director’s career as Heaven’s Gate was to Michael Cimino’s. Running a bladder-bursting 4 hours and 22 minutes (split over two parts), it reeks of authenticity but also self-indulgence. A potentially great performance by Benicio Del Toro in the title role is buried beneath Soderbergh’s stylistic tics and an almost complete lack of dramatic tension. It feels like every plodding jungle bootstep of Che and his band of rebels is shown, first in Cuba and later in Bolivia, but we never really get to know the man whose face launched a million T-shirts.

    Pete Howell has also given high marks to Ed Harris’s “Appaloosa” and Jonathan Demme’s “Rachel Getting Married.” Neither was my cup of tea, and the former was an outright disappointment of potential, but I expect there to be plenty of fans to go around for each.  Especially “Rachel,” with a delicious duo on screen in the form of Anne Hathaway and Rosemarie Dewitt. Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh, eat your hearts out.

  • Another vote of confidence for ‘Button’

    Kris linked earlier to Anne Thompson’s defence of the 20-minute taster of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” — a riposte to the underwhelmed response from certain corners of the blogosphere.

    Encouragingly, Thompson’s Variety colleague Todd McCarthy is of the same mind. Saying the footage “pushes all the right buttons,” he elaborates:

    The footage looked artistically and technically impeccable, and quite different in style from Fincher’s previous work. The ambitious aging technique, employed to tell the story of a man who is born with the features of an old man and gradually grows bigger and younger, was seamless in the footage Fincher presented.

    I must say I took the criticism with a pinch of salt when I heard it — I think it’s impossible to draw conclusions on such a structurally and thematically complex work based on so little footage. As far as I’m concerned, until we can see the entirety of David Fincher’s vision, his film is innocent until proven guilty.   

  • POLL: Will the two-film release strategy for ‘Che’ help or hinder its Oscar chances?

    I’ve been rather low on the Oscar prospects for “Che” for a while.  I’m not sure why.  It was, of course, extremely divisive out of Cannes.  The festival’s jury president had to even step in and defend its value amid the turbulence.  But beyond Benicio Del Toro’s Best Actor bid, I haven’t been able to go along with major awards hopes.

    Part of that had to do with distribution.  No takers.  But we always figured on the film being released as two entities (being “The Argentine” and “Guerrilla”).  And with Wild Bunch solidifying the particulars, I can’t help but wonder whether dividing the material will be a hurdle for the film to leap on the way to Oscar.

    The film has been absent from our charts for a while as we awaited clarity on the issue, and not that we have it now, I thought I’d offer it up as a chance for you to sound off.  Will giving the Academy two options to vote for Del Toro and company help or hinder its chances in the derby?  Tell us in the poll.

  • Bruce Springsteen tapped to write original song for ‘The Wrestler’

    Bruce SpringsteenAs if I need one more reason to see this film. The Boss? Seriously? Darren Aronofsky is hitting all the right spots with me lately.

    Apparently the director has recruited Bruce Springsteen (the greatest live show you’ll ever see, FYI) to pen an original track for “The Wrestler,” a film I’m already dying to see.

    Anne Thompson writes:

    The company [Wild Bunch] is debuting Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler late in Venice, concurrent with Toronto, because they’re waiting for Bruce Springsteen to finish his song for the movie’s credits.

    The fact that it is a closing credits number could hurt it’s Oscar hopes, given that the Academy has shied away from such material since the rule change three years ago. But a good song is a good song, dammit, and Springsteen is incapable of writing a bad one.

    Good lord I hope this is picked up in a hurry so I can figure out who to talk to about screenings!

    Springsteen won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1993 for “Streets of Philadelphia,” from Jonathan Demme’s “Philadelphia.” He was also nominated in 1995 for the title track to Tim Robbins’s “Dead Man Walking.

  • 9/1 Oscarweb Round-up

    Dev Patel in Slumdog Millionaire• Anne Thompson points us to a Best Original Song contender from the Boss in Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler.” But it’s a closing credits tune, which doesn’t bode well given the newest rules implemented by the Academy in 2005. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • She also tries to offset some of the negative press that greeted the 20 minute “Benjamin Button” reel, taking the time to swat at bloggers who didn’t exactly “review” anything, but actually gave their honest opinion. Fancy that…maybe teasing an unfinished product wasn’t the best idea? [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • Screen Daily gets the scoop on the “Che” distribution strategy…but didn’t we always know it would be released as two films? [Screen Daily]

    • T.L. Stanley wonders whether this year’s crop of Oscar films will be a box office buzz kill. [Gold Rush]

    • “Disaster Movie” is probably not going to be an Oscar film…FYI. [/Film]

    • Kim Voyner kicks the Oscar tires for Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire,” a Godsend for Fox Searchlight, which was sitting hollow with a Dakota Fanning vehicle as their only awards hopeful until this week. [Cinematical]

    • Pete Howell chases the buzz in Toronto. Hey, didn’t “For Your Consideration” win this poll last year? [Toronto Star]

    • Jeffrey Wells gets hears some second hand buzz from a friend who thinks Jeff Goldblum gives an Oscar-level performance in Paul Schrader’s “Adam Resurrected.” [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • And in case you missed it, we’ve launched our weekly Oscar column. [In Contention]

  • Cinematical swoons over Scott Thomas

    Compared to the drought of previous years, where the five nominees have been all but pre-determined for months in advance, the Best Actress race is looking rather crowded at this point. (It’s certainly the major category that gave me the most pause when I updated my predictions this morning.)

    What’s gratifying to see is that the field features so many contenders from independent films, including the much-discussed Sally Hawkins, Charlize Theron (coming off a lot of Venice buzz), Anne Hathaway, Melissa Leo and Michelle Williams.

    But perhaps the darkest horse of all is Kristin Scott Thomas, an actress whose star has dimmed somewhat Stateside since receiving her only Oscar nomination twelve years ago. In that time, she’s been working more and more frequently in her adopted homeland of France, and she now returns to prominence with the French-language “I’ve Loved You So Long,” a dark domestic drama in which she plays a woman reconnecting with her family after fifteen years in prison.

    Scott Thomas has been garnering steady acclaim since the film bowed at Berlin in February. Now, in the wake of its Telluride screening, and in the midst of a rave review declaring the film a “rare masterpiece,” Cinematical joins the chorus with this bold assertion:

    Thomas’s performance here has been generating Oscar buzz for a while now, and deservedly so; she will almost certainly garner a Best Actress Oscar nod for this film.

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  • Raves roll in for Miyazaki

    Six days in, and a rather quiet Venice Film Festival has come up with its first unalloyed critical triumph – an animated Japanese re-imagining of Hans Christian Andersen, aimed primarily at children still in the single digits.

    That would be surprising were “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea” directed by anyone other than Hayao Miyazaki, the Oscar-winning animation master who has, in recent years, crossed over to being one of the industry’s most venerated auteurs. After all, “Spirited Away” — for me, still one of the crowning cinematic achievements of the decade — began its incredible success story when it won the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2002 (sharing with Paul Greengrass’ “Bloody Sunday,” no less).

    2005 follow-up “Howl’s Moving Castle” didn’t reach quite the same dizzy heights, but it was another richly textured, narratively daring work that received its fair share of acclaim, and a second Oscar nomination for Miyazaki.

    Now comes “Ponyo,” apparently a return to the simpler, gentler storytelling of earlier films like “My Neighbour Totoro,” that is already doing spectacular business in its home country. And it seems the looser style and younger target audience hasn’t deterred critics in the slightest. Screen Daily breathlessly raves:

    Visually, it’s extraordinary; imaginatively, it’s daring. Once again Hayao Miyazaki is playing in a league of his own with … a sweet, gentle, moving, and always delightful Japanese take on the classic Little Mermaid fable … “Ponyo” is firing on all cylinders on every level. From the sheer creativity of its traditional cell animation to its characterisations (every adult here feels real); the interactions between old and young; the untrammelled imagination on display throughout the story; and, above all, the way Miyazaki still dares to be different.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Make way for the little guys…or not

    Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting MarriedIt may be Labor Day, but the work at hand is breathing down our necks. So it is that we come to the first weekly Oscar column of the new awards season.

    Though to be frank with you, I’m beginning to wonder whether we’ll be able to keep the conversation going, much less interesting on a weekly basis as we push through the last four months of the year. I knew going in to this year that it was going to be a somewhat low-key season, and my own worst fears have been founded in a number of pre-Toronto screenings of films that will be discussed in a week’s time, films leaving me cold, irritated or otherwise just unconvinced.

    I don’t sense a lull on the level of 2005 by any means, but I do get the feeling that after two solid years of cinematic goodness, 2008 could just be one of those “rebuilding” years, to steal a sports term and painfully attempt its application here. It’s interesting (and telling) that my two favorite films of the year are a stoner comedy and a superhero adaptation respectively (though the latter obviously has a legion of fans banking on major awards success…more on that later).

    The most intriguing component for me is the playground that Toronto will provide for a bevy of independent and genuinely smaller product. The heavy-hitters (or, at the very least, the presumed heavy-hitters) are incomplete and not prepared for fall fest unveiling (aside from “Frost/Nixon,” which has already been seen and seems to be riding a wave of confidence at Universal).

    But efforts like Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky,” Jonathan Demme’s “Rachel Getting Married,” Vicente Amorim’s “Good,” Guillermo Arriaga’s “The Burning Plain,” Rian Johnson’s “The Brothers Bloom,” Richard Eyre’s “The Other Man,” etc. — true indies with a fighting chance to turn some heads — won’t have to suffer in the shadows of big studio films angling for the press of an Oscar season starting gun.

    Meanwhile, Cannes entries such as Fernando Meirelles’s “Blindness,” Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York,” Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorrah” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” get an uninhibited second chance in front of festival audiences. Ditto Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling,” in the case of the New York fest.

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  • Predictions of a different stripe

    With Thursday’s game looming, I thought I’d go ahead and get this out of the way on a sunny Sunday afternoon…

    2008 NFL Playoff Predictions

    As a Redskins fan, it pains me to go there…

  • Congrats on $500 million

    Of course, we called this long ago, but I’m glad something finally crossed this milestone again, and doubly happy it was the Bat.

  • Silver lining in a CNN headline for McCain?

    First and foremost, I hope everyone in the New Orleans area (indeed, the entire gulf region that is about to get pounded by an unrelenting storm) safely evacuates the area.  Our first trial run in this regard was enough pain for a lifetime, and having been at Mardi Gras the year before Katrina, I couldn’t help but notice how broken and sullen the town seemed to me when I came through in April of 2007.  The effects will likely never go away, and certainly not with reminders like Gustav every three years.

    That said, my first thought when I read the highlighted portion of this CNN news module was that John McCain and the Republicans probably caught a publicity break:

    CNN.com

  • Welcome back Mr. Rourke

    Mickey Rourke in The WrestlerHe could radiate danger or disarm you with an impish smile. His eyes flashed with rage, or softened with love, both entirely believable. There was a purity to his work, an honesty, an authenticity that many other actors did not, and do not have; he seemed destined to be one of the greats.

    There was a time Mickey Rourke was the heir apparent to Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall and Jack Nicholson, an actor with extraordinary gifts having given an impressive array of performances throughout the 1980s. He stopped “Body Heat” in its tracks with his intimate arsonist, speaking quietly to William Hurt, his lawyer, instructing him on how to build a bomb, his tones quiet as so not to be heard, yet slightly ashamed at what he was suggesting.

    He was astonishing as Motorcycle Boy in Francis Ford Coppola’s experimental and brilliant film “Rumble Fish.”  He tackled the role of a young man blessed, or cursed, with being good at everything he did, yet lacking in ambition because nothing challenged him.

    Rourke was brilliant in “Diner” as the would-be hair dresser that gets in too deep with gambling. And opposite Eric Roberts in “The Pope of Greenwich Village” he put on a method acting workshop that would have made De Niro and Pacino jealous

    Michael Cimino’s under-appreciated “Year of the Dragon,” Alan Parker’s “Angel Heart” — equal success as a  bigoted police captain and a dedicated gumshoe respectively.  And then it all fell apart.

    Friendships with members of the Hells Angels, some of whom he took to studio meetings, and a strange foray into boxing made Rourke poison in the business. No one would work with him.

    This is all beautifully outlined in my good friend Christopher Heard’s book Mickey Rourke: High and Low, and it’s fascinating to read, to gain an understanding of how and why Rourke’s career imploded as it did. Here was a massively talented actor, a prodigy if you will, one of the new greats, and before he was 35 he was finished.

    BUT…now he’s coming back with what is said to be a solid performance in Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler.”  If rumors can believed (sometimes they can, sometimes…well…), the performance might land him in the Oscar circle.  Kris touched on these possibilities a few weeks ago.

    In fairness, Rourke has been back for a while with acclaimed work in “Once Upon a Time in Mexico” and “Sin City,” but this new film supposedly challenges him as an actor and I hear he rises to the occasion with what is being hailed as the finest performance of his career and among the finest of this year.

    All hail Mr. Rourke.  And weclome back…it’s been too long.

  • Walking away with it

    Tom Cruise in MagnoliaI remember slipping into a small theater in 1987 to see something called “Street Smart,” the new Christopher Reeve film that I had no particular interest in, to be quite honest. Two hours later I emerged knowing two things: Morgan Freeman was a brilliant actor, and he would be nominated for an Academy Award.

    In a rather lacking movie, Freeman was terrifying as Fast Black, a vicious pimp who sees in a young reporter the chance to get off of a murder rap. At one point in the film he holds a pair of scissors to the eye of one of his hookers and invites her to choose which eye she is going to lose. It was an astounding performance that launched the actor’s career, earning him awards from the Los Angeles critics, New York critics and National Society of Film Critics…as well as that Oscar nod I predicted.

    Supporting performances can often be the heart and soul of a film, anchoring the picture and actually elevating the work of the lead actor. Can you imagine what “The Wizard of Oz” would be without the perfection of the cast surrounding Judy Garland, or “The Godfather” without the magnificence supporting Marlon Brando and Al Pacino? Nor can I, and in fact, through the years, supporting performances have become more and more important, certainly earning more press, with lead actors once unwilling to be promoted for an Oscar in these “lesser” categories now only to be happy to do so.

    Tom Cruise, arguably the biggest actor on the planet in 1999, gave his finest performance in a supporting role in “Magnolia” and somehow — SOMEHOW — lost the Oscar to Michael Caine. Jack Nicholson has gone the supporting route many times, winning an Oscar for his work in “Terms of Endearment” and earning nods for “Easy Rider,” “Reds” and “A Few Good Men,” though he was criminally snubbed for “The Departed.”

    Meryl Streep has become no stranger to supporting roles, earning an Oscar nod for “Adaptation” in 2002 (she too should have won) and certainly turning heads for a should’ve-been-nominated turn in “The Manchurian Candidate.”

    Sometimes an actor in a supporting role can dominate the film, as we saw this summer with Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight.” In “Apocalypse Now” the film actually peaks with Robert Duvall’s napalm-loving surfer, not Brando’s deranged Colonel. Like Javier Bardem in “No Country for Old Men,” Duvall so dominated the screen when he was on it. In just a few scant scenes…we could never forget him.

    The work of the supporting actor, the “job,” so to speak, may seem to be support of the lead actors, secondary figures in the canvas of other artists. But what we see more often than not is their support of the story, and in many cases, their rise to infamy as a result.

    Have your say. What are some of the most sensational supporting performances in film history?

  • ‘Plain’ brings buzz for Theron

    I’ve already said how high my hopes are for “The Burning Plain,” the directorial debut from one of the most interesting screenwriters in the business, Guillermo Arriaga. Now the reviews are trickling in, and they’re — predictably — mixed.

    Variety, as is often the case these days, provides the major buzzkill, dismissing it as “an elaborate writing exercise” (like that’s a bad thing) with “little to become engaged with.” Happily, Lee Marshall at Variety’s UK equivalent, Screen International, couldn’t disagree more:

    A powerful contemporary melodrama, more restrained but also much cleaner, in dramatic focus and emotional thrust, than the three films Arriaga penned for Inarritu … A sombre story about an unforgivable act and its cross-generational fallout is here leavened by a greater dose of hope and redemption than Arriaga has yet allowed himself, and the games The Burning Plain plays with its audience are amply justified by the emotional punch of the film’s denouement.

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