In Contention

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  • ‘WALL-E’ Best Pic talk

    This Nikki Finke item is three days old at this point, but I’m just stumbling upon it (I avoid her like the plague).  It brings up the ole’ “can an animated film get a Best Picture nomination” thing again.

    Here’s a bbit of insight about a potential campaign in the works:

    I’m told that Disney and Pixar are going to push hard for a Best Picture Oscar nomination for Wall-E on the basis of its anti-toon moody darkness and rave reviews by critics who matter. Certainly many toons have tried for that high honor over the years, and then settled for “just” a recently added Best Animated Feature nod. Only one animated movie has made it into the most competitive Academy Award category — Disney’s Beauty And The Beast in 1991 — but, alas, didn’t win.

    I don’t want to say “it won’t happen,” because I always have hope, but this is an interesting item considering the reality of the animation Best Pic possibilities embraced by some of the individuals in charge of marketing them.  That’s all I’m sayin’.

  • Goldenthal to score Mann’s ‘Enemies’

    Exciting news.  This is without a doubt my most anticipated film of next year.  The press release, in part, on Goldenthal jumping on board:

    Oscar-winning composer Elliot Goldenthal (Frida) has been signed to score Universal Pictures’ action-thriller from acclaimed filmmaker Michael Mann, Public Enemies. Currently shooting in Chicago, Public Enemies stars Johnny Depp and Christian Bale in the incredible story of criminal folk hero John Dillinger (Depp), whose wave of bank robberies and the subsequent FBI manhunt, commanded by J. Edgar Hoover and run by Special Agent Melvin Purvis (Bale), fascinated the nation in the 1930s.  The film also stars Oscar winner Marion Cotillard, Giovanni Ribisi, Billy Crudup, Stephen Dorff, Rory Cochrane, Stephen Lang, David Wenham, Stephen Graham, Channing Tatum, and Jason Clarke.  It arrives in theatres in July 2009.

  • ‘Cheri’ to be released in 2009

    In response to the most recent Oscar update I received a note from Miramax publicity this afternoon, regarding Stephen Frears’s “Chéri.”  It seems the film is staying in 2009, narrowing the studio’s awards hopefuls to Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” and John Shanley’s “Doubt.”

    The critically thumped “Blindness” is still lingering as a possibility, while Julian Jarrold’s “Brideshead Revisited” needs to overcome the widespread opinion that Evelyn Waugh’s novel has already been filmed definitively.

    As for the current Oscar charts, I’ll update them at some point this week to strike “Chéri” from the record.  Tell a friend.

  • OFF THE CARPET: Stuck in the middle with…what?

    Since we’ve finally reached the midway point of 2008, it seemed as good a time as any to post the first “Off the Carpet” column since our year in advance take over four months ago.

    First and foremost, I’m in a unique situation this year.  Being in London since mid-May, I’ve found myself looking from the outside in on a lot of projects.  The UK generally has later release dates, meaning later press screenings.  And so, films like “WALL-E” and “The Dark Knight,” I won’t be commenting on them (and, therefore, won’t have an educated viewpoint on their Oscar prospects) until I’m back in the States in three weeks.

    In a lot of ways, it’s just like the old days (for those who remember the old, clunky Oscar Central stuff, or perhaps the sporadic columns at Oscarwatch (now Awards Daily).  I’m back in the position of fan first, commentator second in some areas, and it’s been a bit of a thrill, I have to say.  Especially in a year of Bat-hype nearly approaching the hysteria of the summer of 1989.

    But with that in mind, I also humbly recall that my Oscar-guessing mind was in a slightly better place back then, removed from the fray, having the true instincts of an observer on which to depend.  But all of that is beside the point.  The real question is, right now, half way through the year, which films have even laid a claim for film awards attention in the brutal season that will be here before we know it?

    (more…)

  • In Paris…

    …and I just finished a Royal with cheese:

    httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=SLtwFugudZE

    Also, I must have a “Le Chevalier Noir” poster.  MUST.  Pics to follow.

    Happy Sunday (and I swear the “Dark Knight’ chatter will die down around here soon).

  • Batman vs. Batman vs. Batman vs. Batman

    A…W…E…S…O…M…E:

  • Sayin’ it now

    With reviews trickling down for “The Dark Knight” in the last 24 hours or so, everyone seems to be going out of their way to hail Heath Ledger’s performance as Oscar caliber, perhaps even sporting the chops to win the award posthumously.

    Of course, we’ve been all over that scenario for months here at In Contention, but it’s occured to me now that Warner Bros. might have a case to push this apparently epic portrayal for all it’s worth.

    I’m talking about a nomination for Heath Ledger in the Best Actor category.

    Stranger things — indeed, similarly atypical scenarios — have certainly happened.  The easiest excuses remain Lee Marvin in “Cat Ballou” and Johnny Depp in “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.”  If a genre performance comes along that is so earth-shattering, or perhaps not even that so much as a head-spinner that demands critical attention and adoration, the Academy seems willing to comply in those often heated lead races.  Why not this year?  Why not this performance?

    By all accounts, Ledger seems to be blowing his co-stars off the screen.  More than simply chewing the scenery, it appears he is gnawing on the film stock, owning the film and every meaningful aspect of it.

    Respect might well be demanded in a manner we didn’t expect — perhaps Mr. Ledger will go into the Oscar books a two-time nominee for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role.

    More in the charts on Monday.

  • Coming next week…

    Just a heads up: Monday we’ll offer up a brief midway point article charting each of our contributors picks for the best and worst films of the year so far.  Also, a month has flown by since the last Oscar update, and so it’s time for some nipping and tucking.  Stay tuned.

  • Counting down the best of Pixar

    In honor of today’s release of Walt Disney/Pixar’s “WALL-E” (it seems we’re sticking with the hyphen), the gang at New York Magazine’s Vulture blog have offered up a countdown of the best films in Pixar’s consistently impressive portfolio.

    I have to say, I share their opinion that “The Incredibles” simply…isn’t all that.  I was on the bandwagon for “The Polar Express” back in 2004, but comparisons aside, the film never hooked me the way it did the rest of the film-going community.  And that says a lot, given my comic geek roots.  It’s a nice film, but a little flat.

    Their pick for the studio’s greatest work is a slightly unconventional choice: “Monsters, Inc.”  I confess I actually haven’t given it a second look since 2001 (what became the year of “Shrek”), but I’ve been meaning to pick up a copy for a number of years now.

    My choice is far and away “Finding Nemo,” the only animated film ever to land in my top five for a given year (#3 in 2003).  But I do love the “Toy Story” films.

    Here’s their list:

    1. “Monsters, Inc.”
    2. “Finding Nemo”
    3. “Toy Story 2”
    4. “Ratatouille”
    5. “Toy Story”
    6. “A Bug’s Life”
    7. “The Incredibles”
    8. “Cars”

    I obviously haven’t seen it yet, but it’s looking more and more like “WALL-E” will top everyone’s list in due time.

    Speaking of “WALL-E,” Sasha Stone at Awards Daily has put up her first State of the Race column this week, focusing on the film, its awards potential and the political message supposedly within.  Take a look:

    Wall-E begins its run at midnight.  Some peripheral chatter is focused on it being not kiddie fare or it being a target for conservatives for having a “message.”  If the message ends up being that we as a culture have a disease of consumerism and that it will end us in pathetic ruin, that is not a great leap in logic.  Look around.

    But if the conservatives do start whining about it that only means its Oscar chances shoot through the roof, as if they haven’t already.  We have here a “too big to ignore” film, a Schindler’s List of the animated feature category and if anything is to take it down it’s only going to be a shocker at the box office, an extremely unlikely scenario.

    Read the rest here.

  • Campea on ‘Knight’

    Our pal John Campea over at The Movie Blog is back in Los Angeles after some time back home in Toronto this summer, and right out of the gate he’s slapped up a review from last night’s screening of “The Dark Knight.”

    It’s a glowing assessment to say the least, and at one point John says he was ready to call the film one of the best cinematic endeavors of the last three or four years.  But John’s getting old, what can I say — and the length of the film kind of got to him a bit.

    To each his own.  But I doubt there will be too many people upset with the apparent direction the final act takes (in the way of bridging over to the eventual third film).

    It’s worth noting that John structures his reviews in a very accessible way.  His site is and has always been a film site, a great community of movie lovers with no pretensions.  Keep that in mind as I offer his load-busting assessment of Heath Ledger’s performance:

    One of the things I was preparing myself for was how over hyped the performance of Heath Ledger was going to be. Since he passed away, I knew he’d be getting rave reviews out the ying (sic) yang no matter what and I’d be frowned upon if I said any different. But holy mother suck puss face… HEATH LEDGER DESERVES AN OSCAR NOMINATION FOR HIS PERFORMANCE AS THE JOKER… no… I’m not even kidding in the least. I was totally, 100% blown away like nothing I’ve ever seen in a comic based movie before.

    And the closer:

    Holy crap did Two Face look WICKED!!!

    Then he gets into why the length bothered him, etc.  Check out ther rest here.

    I haven’t seen any other reviews drop yet, but I’m sure we’ll start seeing them throughout Friday and into the weekend, when the junket screenings start to land.  Be on the lookout.

  • ‘WALL-E’ or ‘WALL*E?’

    Just curious.  I’ve been going with the hyphen, and I’m certainly not going to cut and paste the dot every time.  Some outlets are going with the asterisk.

    What say you?  Ooh…new pointless poll perhaps?  Yeah, I think so.

  • Battersea featured in ‘Dark Knight?’

    This one is a stretch, I know — and many of you could care less.  But I can’t escape “Dark Knight” news no matter where I turn.  Seriously, I just click on a link to a random news story about the revitalization of London’s Battersea Power Station, and there it is, staring me in the face.

    The Batman films are always valuable for their design elements, but I didn’t know this monolith — perhaps best known from the cover of Pink Floyd’s “Animals” (an image replicated two years ago in “Children of Men”) — was going to be featured in the film.  But it seems that’s the case.

    I can, like, see Battersea from my kitchen.  Very cool.

    Carry on…

  • “A duel between two powerful lone wolves”

    Yeah, Opie actually called it that.  A bit much, but anyway…

    Guy already passed along the news this morning that Ron Howard’s “Frost/Nixon” will open the 52nd annual London Film Festival on October 15.  But I also stumbled onto this preview/interview with Howard at The Times of London that offers a little more insight than the Screen International story.

    Here’s more from the director:

    Peter Morgan calls it a thinking person’s Rocky and I agree with him…I loved the audacity of the story, this famous British guy being turned down by the US networks and then cobbling together his own network to clobber the Americans with their own stick. It’s just this tremendous act of entrepreneurial courage.

    And some key lines from Ben Hoyle’s copy:

    The stage play of Frost/Nixon opened at the Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden, London, in August 2006 before transferring to the West End and later Broadway. Howard said that he read the script early on in the initial run. When he discovered that a frantic bidding war for the film rights was already under way, “I jumped on a plane to London with my wife and went to see it.” What he found was “one of the best theatre experiences of my life”…

    Critics adored the performances but some complained that Morgan had oversimplified the story, playing fast and loose with the interview transcripts and suggesting that the interviews sealed Nixon’s ignominy in the minds of the American people…Both Morgan and Howard empha-sise that Frost/Nixon is an impression of what happened in and around the interviews, not a docudrama.

    Check out the rest here.

  • Exclusive ‘Dark Knight’ set piece footage on ET

    I know, I know.  The Batman stuff is coming fast and furious.  Being out of the loop in Britain (re: press screenings) is pushing the site’s coverage of the film into the fanboy anticipatory realm, but I’m okay with that.  Kind of reminds me of the old days.

    Here’s a look at one of the big action set pieces of the film, which Entertainment Tonight showed exclusively last night:

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVWg0KHZl4E

  • Letterman’s top 3 reasons to see ‘The Dark Knight’

    1) Everyone dies in the end.
    2) The motorcycle.
    3) Heath Ledger.

    Yes, it seems late night king of comedy David Letterman got an early look at “The Dark Knight,” and while he pokes fun at the anticipation and, of course, the “keep it under wraps” mentality of the studio, there seems to be some genuine adoration for the effort in there.

    Money quote for Ledger:

    Heath Ledger…oh my God is he great in this one…I’m telling you, this is a tremendous performance.  That’s the reason people ought to go see this film.

    Check it out:

    httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=6-sXBkQ13EQ

    The new TV spot, featuring spooking Joker narration (after the jump):

    (more…)

  • Yet another early look at the ‘W’ script

    Poor “W” can’t catch a break.

    Stanley Weiser’s take on our Commander-in-Chief (*shiver*), had already caused a stir in more than a few areas before principle photography even began two months ago.  The first shockwave hit when the script was profiled by Marcus Baram for ABC News back in April.  Then The Hollywood Reporter consulted with four Bush biographers to assess the accuracy of the depiction. Their view: not so much.

    New York Magazine’s Vulture blog, always quick with the wit, predicted the film to be the comedy hit of 2009 before later getting their hands on a copy and enlisting the aid of the Upright Citizens Brigade to perform five of the more ridiculous moments for posterity’s sake.

    Weiser’s script quickly became the most widely circulated screenplay I’ve certainly ever heard of, and no one — save Jeffrey Wells — had a kind word to say about it.  So much drama and the film hadn’t even been fully conceived yet, as casting continued and locations were locked in for the April production start.

    We all know Oliver Stone was adament that the film (formerly known as “Bush” — clever titles all around) be in the marketplace “before the president leaves office in January.” But he might be wishing he’d just sprung this thing on everyone like a true October surprise.

    And now, another voice has chimed in.  Ryan Adams of Awards Daily had this to say:

    Sad to report, having now read the complete screenplay, I can assure you that the groaners we saw two months ago were the good parts. The teaser poster publicity material doesn’t try to pretend that ‘W’ intends to portray Bush as anything except an embarrassing joke. But guess what? I don’t find war crimes very funny. Yuck it up Oliver Stone.

    Personally I think Adams is way off the mark and even a bit immature in his assessment of the script’s (and Stone’s) intentions, but if we do share a point of view it is that the screenplay is quite awful.

    I ran a brief one-off when I was about half-way through the script a few months back, but I’ll save the deeper discussion for August when we launch Page to Screen once again.  And of course, the real judgment ought to be saved for Stone’s finished product when Lionsgate releases it in the Fall.

  • ‘Frost/Nixon’ to bow at London fest

    Good news for me and my fellow Brits: for once, we’re going to get something first. Although Ron Howard’s baity “Frost/Nixon” hasn’t been kept that tightly under wraps, confirmation has arrived that the film will have its world premiere at the 52nd London Film Festival, where it will open proceedings on October 15.

    It’s an auspicious slot, as LFF artistic director Sandra Hebron has a habit of picking successful films to kick off the fest. Previous openers include “Almost Famous,” “Gosford Park,” “Vera Drake,” “The Constant Gardener,” “The Last King of Scotland” and last year’s very London-centric “Eastern Promises.”

    As you can see, prestige films with a UK element are favoured, so the selection of Howard’s film, an adaptation of a very British stage hit, comes as no surprise. There have been a couple of misfires in the opening slot over the years (Ang Lee’s strangely forgotten “Ride With the Devil,” Jane Campion’s underrated “In the Cut”), but for now, the odds are against “Frost/Nixon” going the same way.

    Either way, it’s a nice feather in the cap for a lovely, very public-friendly festival that gets stronger with each year: last year’s dynamite lineup included “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” “Lust, Caution,” “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days,” “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” and, in the surprise-screening slot that I was lucky enough to attend, “No Country for Old Men.” Hebron has done a brilliant job thus far; I expect her streak to continue in 2008.

  • ‘Knight’ falls in L.A. tomorrow (and Travers jumps the gun)

    FYI.  Keep those lids peeled for reviews coming form tomorrow’s Los Angeles screening.

    In the meantime, Peter Travers has the first official review up at Rolling Stone.  Here’s a taste:

    Heads up: a thunderbolt is about to rip into the blanket of bland we call summer movies. The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan’s absolute stunner of a follow-up to 2005’s Batman Begins, is a potent provocation decked out as a comic-book movie. Feverish action? Check. Dazzling spectacle? Check. Devilish fun? Check. But Nolan is just warming up. There’s something raw and elemental at work in this artfully imagined universe.

    And praise for Ledger, as if we weren’t expecting it:

    I can only speak superlatives of Ledger, who is mad-crazy-blazing brilliant as the Joker. Miles from Jack Nicholson’s broadly funny take on the role in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman, Ledger takes the role to the shadows, where even what’s comic is hardly a relief…It’s typical of Ledger’s total commitment to films as diverse as Brokeback Mountain and I’m Not There that he does nothing out of vanity or the need to be liked. If there’s a movement to get him the first posthumous Oscar since Peter Finch won for 1976’s Network, sign me up.

    The rest.