In Contention

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  • Bringing the truths of Skid Row to the masses

    The LA Times’ Steve Lopez is enjoying plenty of publicity this month for his latest book release, “The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship and the Redemptive Power of Music.” The book was drawn from a series of articles Lopez published three years ago in his “Points West” column in the Times about a Juliard-trained, homeless musician: Nathaniel Ayers.

    The story was cleverly recounted with amusing detail by Lopez at a book reading in Pasadena last month, which was when I first discovered that the film adaptation (releasing later this year and starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr.) might actually do some good in forwarding the issue of mental disorder in the U.S., a stigmatized subject that deserves more focus.

    Lopez and “The Soloist” are featured on newsstands this week as Dana Goodyear writes the story and the issue up as a “Letter from Los Angeles” in the pages of The New Yorker. And I’m happy to see that the film may actually take these issues seriously, rather than setting them aside in favor of what would obviously be a heart-warming story.

    Here’s a look at the abstract (I wish the full article was online, but it’s the May 5 issue for those interested):

    Since the nineteen-eighties, L.A. has been known as the country’s homeless capital. Skid Row, a fifty-block area covering less than a square mile between the L.A. River and the office towers of downtown, has the city’s highest concentration of homeless people. A January, 2007, street count showed that there were just over five thousand homeless people living in the area, thirty-three hundred of them in shelters and nearly eighteen hundred on the street. Many suffer from mental illnesses, drug addiction, or both. Thousands are in recovery.

    Joe Wright, the British director of the new Ayers film, decided to take the job on one condition: that the film be made with real people from Skid Row…Open casting calls for extras in the movie were held on San Julian Street, and hundreds of people turned up. Two miles east of the real San Julian Street, a set was built. The Skid Row cast members were asked to play recognizable street types. Some days there were four hundred extras on the set, the vast majority of them from Skid Row.

    “The humanness of the story has given people a rooting interest in Nathaniel’s life, and to that extent it has destigmatized homelessness,” Lopez said. “But Nathaniel pays a heavier price. He has to deal with the attention.”

  • Eckhart on Dent

    My guy identifies with everybody in the movie…Really, all of it is more than an adventure tale, it’s somewhat of a mirror of our times. It deals with some fundamental questions of what’s going on in society. To me, this film is about how Batman feels about justice, how he takes care of the city, how he feels about the Joker when he meets him and sees what he is capable of doing. How he feels when Harvey Two-Face takes matters into his own hands. It’s not simple, and it gets ugly. I think people will be surprised.

    From this weekend’s profile in the LA Times.

  • Uh…is it a cleansing by fire for Dent rather than acid?

    A second look at “Iron Man” with the masses (indeed, the MASSES) last night afforded a look at the new trailer for “The Dark Knight” on the big screen, rather than dealing with that clumsy cell phone video that’s out there.

    Two things hit me when I was watching this:

    1) Wally Pfister is all but guaranteed a second nomination for his work on the series. The opening hero shot, dizzyingly high above and looking down a Chicago skyscraper, has to be the coolest shot in the genre.

    2) I think the brothers Nolan may have taken some liberties with the Two-Face origin.

    The information has always been scattered out there that, in David Goyer and Christopher Nolan’s vision of a trilogy, the Joker would be the one responsible for the mangling of Harvey Dent’s face and, therefore, the impetus for the creation of Two-Face. (Aaron Eckhart plays Dent in the film. He was profiled in the LA Times this weekend).

    I don’t know if this has panned out, but if it has, I am still not 100% comfortable with it. In the comics, of course, Dent is scarred when a mob boss tosses a vial of acid his way, most interestingly laid out by writer Jeph Loeb and artist Tim Sale in “The Long Halloween.” In that story, the boss is Sal Maroni (portrayed by Eric Roberts in “The Dark Knight,” by the way).

    No, I’m not beholden to comic-to-screen loyalty every step of the way. “Batman Begins” was, after all, a brilliant mish-mash of a couple of comic sources, and we already know that Nolan and company are taking the mash-up approach to “The Dark Knight,” using a little of Batman #1, a little of “The Long Halloween,” this and that, this and that. Fair enough. But I’ve never been fully comfortable with one of the rogues gallery providing the genesis for another.

    Watching the new trailer again last night, I noticed a brief shot of what looked to be Harvey held down, the left side of his face pressed against a floor covered in gasoline. It was quick, but I think I know what I saw.

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  • Opening day = $32.5 million

    You always expect the first summer blockbuster to do well but still…Yowsers. The sky is really the limit for this one now, especially with the great reviews. I have to say I’m really happy for Downey and “Iron Man” in general at this point. This is the start of an amazing year for him — a year he’s had coming for a long time.

    How far do people think this one can go? What does it tell us is in store for the next blockbusters on the way?

  • Artist on Artist: John Cusack and Diablo Cody

    Just ran across this over at The Movie Blog. The latest installment of MySpace’s “Artist on Artist” series features a conversation between John Cusack and Diablo Cody.

    Cody talks a little about her upcoming horror film “Jennifer’s Body,” which is in the midst of filming right now up north. Cusack feigns interest while clearly trying to figure out how he might get her back to his crib. (Kidding, of course…kinda.)

    Check it out:

  • What did you think of ‘Iron Man?’

    Now that the first summer blockbuster has landed, tell us what you thought.

  • Official poster for ‘Hamlet 2’

    This was a big hit at Sundance and something tells me with the right finesse, Focus Features could spin some awards potential out of the film. But admittedly I haven’t seen it yet. Here’s the trailer. And the new poster:

  • Chiwetel Ejiofor: an actor to watch

    As both Kris and I have suggested, this is likely to be the year of Robert Downey Jr. I’m pleased to see that he’s getting rave reviews for his work in “Iron Man,” and I’m glad to know that it isn’t a mess the way many comic book adaptations become (“Hulk” and “Batman & Robin,” certainly).

    But since we’re on the topic of new actors (or, in Mr. Downey’s case, veteran actors re-made) taking the scene, I wanted to draw attention to Chiwetel Ejiofor, who stars in the lead role of David Mamet’s new film “Redbelt.”

    Ejiofor easily makes my list of the finest actors working today. Recently, he starred in Alfonso Cuaron’s marvelous “Children of Men,” alongside Denzel Washington in Ridley Scott’s “American Gangster” and opposite Don Cheadle in “Talk to Me.” I thought his role in HBO’s under-appreciated drama “Tsunami: The Aftermath” was extraordinary.

    In “Redbelt,” Ejiofor plays the role of Mike Terry, a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu instructor who runs a struggling academy in Los Angeles. Michael Rechtshaffen of Hollywood Reporter describes Ejiofor as the “heart and soul of the film.” Today, Ejiofor appeared on NPR’s “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross.

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  • Audiences to see a different ‘Iron Man’ than critics?

    At Monday’s screening of “Iron Man,” I was sad to see that Samuel L. Jackson’s much-anticipated cameo as S.H.I.E.L.D. leader Nick Fury wasn’t in the cut. Though director Jon Favreau has suggested the scene might surface in the DVD release.

    Well New York Mag’s Vulture blog points us today to a Comic Book Resources story revealing that general audiences will get to see the Easter egg scene that was withheld from critics’ screenings on the grounds of Top Secrecy, so to speak:

    One thing missing from the film was the much-touted end of movie scene with Samuel Jackson as Nick Fury. I understand from British Film classification sources that the scene is in the print that they’ve approved for general release, but not in premiere or preview screenings, so as not to spoil the um.. surprise… bugger. Anyway, he’s recruiting for a group called The Avengers.

    And Moviehole confirms the notion. With the sentiments of two fellow journos. Fair enough. I was gonna pay to see it again anyway. Now I have even more incentive!

    And come on, “The Avengers initiative?” A shared scene with Tony Stark in “The Incredible Hulk?” The road to an “Avengers” moving being paved with gold? My geek meter is on overload.

    God bless Marvel Studios.

    UPDATED: It looks like John over at The Movie Blog has the footage in question up, from a YouTube posting.

  • Actors winning Best Director — always deserved?

    Of course not. Quite often the Academy gets behind an actor for the simple reason they pulled of the film without screwing too much up.

    How else can one explain Mel Gibson’s win for “Braveheart” but failure to be nominated for his masterpiece “The Passion of the Christ” and “Apocalypto,” easily two of the finest directed films of the last ten years? Somewhere along the road, the Academy fell in love with actors who try their hand at directing (unless your name is Sean Penn or Barbara Streisand) and began giving away Oscars, quite often over more deserving directors.

    Poor Martin Scorsese has watched actors win the Best Director prize over his work three times. In 1980, of course, Robert Redford won for his drama “Ordinary People” over Scorsese’s searing “Raging Bull,” while ten years later Kevin Costner won the Oscar for “Dances with Wolves,” besting Scorsese for “Goodfellas.” But hey — this is the Academy…right? Clint Eastwood also bested Scorsese’s “The Aviator” in 2004 with a win for “Million Dollar Baby.”

    One year after Redford won his Academy Award for Best Director, Warren Beatty took home the award, much deserved for his criminally under-appreciated epic “Reds.” But he would watch in shock as “Chariots of Fire” ran to the Best Picture award over his film. The following year, a minor British actor, Richard Attenborough directed “Gandhi,” which the Academy fell in love with, honoring the achievements of the film’s subject rather than the effort itself, which even at the time seemed old-fashioned and rather ordinary. Attenborough himself, on the way to accept the Directors Guild Award for the film, stopped to chat with Steven Spielberg to make clear what everyone in the room seemed to know: that Spielberg should have won the award for “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial!”

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  • SHORT TAKE: “Iron Man” (***1/2)

    Paramount Pictures\' Iron ManYou know, I find myself agreeing with many of the criticisms leveled at “Iron Man” in some quarters this week, rather than adhering to the admittedly overreaching raves pouring out of others.

    Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. are working from very thin material here, from a horribly green four-person screenwriting team. Set pieces seem injected without the benefit of a valid thought process that might have elevated the film within the genre, while character details are buried under the desire to go high gloss throughout. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with any of this, mind you, though it is a bit difficult to sit through the film without wondering what might have been, the “next level” hovering like a specter above.

    Yes, “Iron Man” is a hell of a time at the movies. Yes, the suit is really, really cool. And yes, Downey Jr.’s performance might stay at the top of a lot of personal favorites lists throughout the season. It’s like a glove; the actor fires on all cylinders, more a machine of dramatic purpose and performing genius than an actor playing the part. For comic fanatics (to avoid the pejorative “geeks”), hair-raising joy is in many a minor crevice. Terrence Howard will afford the line of the year in some respects — a simple toss to a crowd in the know but smooth as butter and damn near an afterthought all the same. Very cool.

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  • REVIEW: “Happy-Go-Lucky” (***)

    The common line in the British press so far on “Happy-Go-Lucky,” Mike Leigh’s alternately fascinating and frustrating new film, is that it’s a departure for him — an exuberant comic revelation following the spare, precise despair of “All or Nothing” and “Vera Drake.” How quickly we forget.

    Only nine years ago, Leigh gave us the similarly punctuated “Topsy-Turvy,” a period romp that in some moments rivalled “Shakespeare in Love” for broad music-hall humour. Even his biggest crossover hit, the 1996 Best Picture Oscar nominee “Secrets & Lies,” had a much more explicit comic tone than many seem to recall.

    However, the most accurate precedents for “Happy-Go-Lucky” date farther back still: the film is not so much a new direction for Leigh as a throwback to the gentle character-oriented comedy and wispy, free-form narrative of his breakthrough features “High Hopes” and “Life is Sweet.” It’s a welcome move. As immaculately crafted and performed as “Vera Drake” was, it didn’t, for me, play to Leigh’s strengths as a writer: his witty ear for vernacular language and his preoccupation with the tensions and absurdities inherent in everyday conversation.

    These qualities re-emerge with a vengeance in “Happy-Go-Lucky,” a film bursting with rapid-fire banter, cathartic outbursts and occasionally didactic speechifying. The inimitably fluid language of London’s multicultural, multi-class population is woven through the film’s every exchange; if Leigh could snag a Best Original Screenplay nomination for a film as comparatively underwritten as “Vera Drake,” it’s difficult to see him getting passed over for this.

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  • Could Robert Downey Jr. own this year?

    I remember when Robert Downey Jr. was cast in the role of Tony Stark for Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man,” my colleague David Poland made the shrewd observation that the former drug-addled wash-up was once again insurable.

    Not that I like putting such language to an actor I love so much, but the truth is, he hit one of the deepest downward spirals a star of his caliber could imagine, all of it following nearly 10 years of Brat Pack fame and a heralded Oscar nominated performance in 1992.

    But how about the turnaround? After the bad days of the mid-to-late 90s, and some major relapses in the first part of the new millennium, Downey finally turned the corner. A new role on one of television’s hottest shows wasn’t enough to get him bonded for Woody Allen’s “Melinda and Melinda” (which waited another four years to hit screens, with Will Ferrell ultimately taking the role), and there were pitfalls ahead still, but the upward curve seemed on the horizon somewhere, lurking.

    And here, eight years later, Downey is one day away from the release of one of the year’s most anticipated, likely highest-grossing films. Insured doesn’t say the half of it. Robert Downey Jr. is vindicated.

    But it doesn’t end with Tony Stark. The actor has two other very high profile performances landing in 2008, one of them set to be a laugh riot as he sports black face opposite Ben Stiller in “Tropic Thunder,” releasing in August. To cap off the year, Downey will star in Joe Wright’s “Atonement” follow-up, “The Soloist,” an awards season hopeful for DreamWorks SKG and perhaps a ride to a second Oscar nomination for the actor.

    I bring all this up because it is the story people should be writing, however much publicity would likely prefer to shine the light elsewhere. David Carr wrote a superlative piece that touched the finer points for The New York Times a few weeks ago, and my colleague Blake Rutherford offered his own thoughts in that light as well. But there isn’t enough patting on the back going around for my taste — sue me. An actor taking this big a stumble, looking like straight-to-DVD material if ever a career could be salvaged, and then pushing back with a creative and hard-working fury such as this — it is cause for celebration.

    When all is said and done, I have a feeling Robert Downey Jr. will be the toast of Hollywood in 2008. Entertainer of the year? Maybe. But it’s certainly the story of the year.

    Bravo. And here, here.

  • The buried

    Okay, I think we’re done cleaning out all the kinks here for the night. I wanted to mention, however, that the old site is still out there in cyberspace for you to peruse. Check it out here. It’s a little buggy over there in the wake of the move, but I’ll iron all that out in due time. But now that the new design is out and about, I wanted to link back to a few posts from the last month by both myself and a few contributors, lest they be lost in the shuffle of today’s goings-on:

    1) Guy Lodge previews the Cannes line-up. (4/22)
    2) John Foote takes a look at Brad Pitt’s Oscar hopes this year. (4/21)
    3) Steve Lopez talks about his new book, “The Soloist,” in Pasadena. (4/19)
    4) The “Valkyrie” pile-on knows no bounds. (4/8) and (4/22)
    5) Anticipating the summer movie season. (4/8)
    6) Very brief notes on the “W” screenplay. (4/1)
    7) Remembering Anthony Minghella. (3/23)
    8) And of course, the year-in-advance Oscar column. (2/26)

    That should cover it.

  • Welcome to the new In Contention

    And a day and a half early at that. I like to keep you on your toes. But…a bit of a change, no?

    We’ve cleaned things up around here and consolidated the look of In Contention to what, we hope, is a little more streamlined and user-friendly. Allow me to offer a brisk walk-through.

    We’ve added a few new voices to the mixture who will be posting at their will, so be sure to check out our Contributors section to read up on what they bring to the table. It should make for an exciting season for those of you desperate for some sort of Tapley dilution (I know you’re out there).

    Gerard will still be offering up his weekly “Tech Support” column, but it will be streamlined into the main page of the site here. Ditto Brian Kinsley’s “Page to Screen” articles, though I will be contributing to that weekly feature as well. All features, by the way, will be tagged and headlined accordingly (i.e., “TECH SUPPORT: Best Cinematography,” “PAGE TO SCREEN: ‘Body of Lies,’” etc.). No separate blogs/pages this time.

    You’ll also notice a backlog of a month or so of content. While I was working out the kinks here and there in setting up the new digs, I figured I would continue my various pontifications. Nothing earth-shattering, but some points of interest, perhaps, to be perused. The introductory posts from our new team members can be found sprinkled throughout as well.

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  • Spielberg and blockbusters

    Can he do it? After becoming (in his own eyes) a serious filmmaker with “Schindler’s List,” “Amistad,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “A.I.” and “Munich,” is Steven Spielberg able to re-create the magic he almost always brought to his pure entertainment blockbusters?

    It takes a look at his journey as an artist to even attempt a reasoned understanding of such a question.

    On one hand, I argue that he was always a brilliant director, “Jaws,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and “E.T.” all great examples of his artistry, yet he himself was never satisfied by the reaction to those films by the Academy. It is well documented that Spielberg coveted acceptance in the film community, seeing the Oscar for Best Director as the ultimate acceptance from Hollywood. Snubbed for “Jaws” in 1975, he behaved like a petulant child as live cameras caught it all on film, invited in to see his reaction when he was nominated…but — he wasn’t.

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  • Vulture takes a piss out of ole’ Dubya

    In my daily trek through the ranks of New York Magazine’s Vulture blog this afternoon (increasingly my favorite stop on the net), I came across a couple of posts ripping into our Commander in Chief (*shiver*).

    First up, a very insightful entry, actually, concerning how the evil leader of our gloriously broke and battered nation has come to be embraced with pity by pop culture, rather than accosted on appropriately venomous levels.

    Here’s a look:

    The two places that George W. Bush is showing up in pop culture this spring — besides, of course, taped appearances on game shows — confirm that the culture no longer views him as relevant to the discussion. The Times’ Dennis Lim refers to Bush’s depiction in this week’s stoner comedy Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantánamo Bay as “arguably the most sympathetic movie portrayal of him to date” — but apparently he hasn’t read the widely leaked early draft of the screenplay to Oliver Stone’s biopic. Both portrayals mostly bypass direct criticism of the president, substituting bemusement and — dare we say it? — affection. He’s not a bad guy, just an amiable buffoon — a figure to poke fun at, like an eccentric uncle, but not to revile.

    It’s admirable, in a way, that at his lowest point — with his popularity in the cellar and his political influence in the toilet — pop culture is willing to cut George W. Bush some slack. It’s also disheartening that the leader of the free world is so unimportant that even self-righteous Hollywood blowhards can’t be bothered to get angry at him.

    Also, the webmasters over there got a copy of that widely circulated “W” screenplay that Oliver Stone is hard at work filming down in the Bayou at the moment (or that was the plan last I checked). Along with the help of some of their buddies at the Upright Citizens Brigade, they filmed five scenes (just, you know, to give you an idea of how ridiculous this script really is).

    Take a look, if you can’t stomach it. And yes, “serious as dick cancer” is a line in this thing. Along with the now infamous “Freedom Fries” quip.

    Oy.

  • ‘Enchanted 2’ in the works?

    According to moviehole.net, yes.