In Contention

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  • TIFF: Not so ‘Funny,’ ‘Super’ buyer interest, Redford still looking

    Things are slow moving at the start of this year’s fest.  People are catching up with press screenings of this and that, some of them Venice or Telluride or Cannes, with a few Toronto first-timers thrown in.

    Firstly, Scott Weinberg joins the dogpile on Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” by calling the film “outrageously bad” and noting that its ilk is “best left for the festival circuit — which is where we suffer through the indie-style artifice so you don’t have to.”

    The market is in full swing, particularly around James Gunn’s “Super,” which screened late last night and stirred a lot of interest.  Movieline called the Rainn Wilson starrer an “instant cult classic.”  Buyers are also reportedly showing interest in Rowan Joffe’s “Brighton Rock” (as I imagined they would), so maybe we’ll see Andrea Riseborough popped up once again in that vacant supporting actress category shortly.

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  • REVIEW: “The Tempest” (*)

    Venice Film Festival

    If any one title in the Shakespeare library has been sufficiently fiddled about with on screen, it’s “The Tempest,” among the most tonally malleable of his comedies, and a fantasy that gifts filmmakers with obvious opportunities for spectacle.

    “Forbidden Planet,” a terrific 1956 sci-fi riff on the play, perhaps took this adaptability furthest, but it only set the ball rolling for assorted free interpretations: Derek Jarman gave it a homoerotic spin in 1979, Paul Mazursky rewrote it as a neurotic modern-day sex comedy in 1982 and Peter Greenaway played all manner of metatextual games in 1991’s “Prospero’s Books.” At this point, about the most radical thing a filmmaker could do with “The Tempest” on screen is play it straight.

    That is evidently not a view shared by one Julie Taymor, whose murky, lunk-headed and signally boring new film tricks out Shakespeare’s text with gaudy CGI saturation, a wardrobe from “Zoolander”‘s Derelicte collection and a key sex change in the lead, as sorcerer and doting father Prospero here morphs into Helen Mirren’s Prospera, a highbrow voodoo priestess of sorts with a permanent Patty Hewes-style scowl.

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  • TIFF: Boden/Fleck’s latest dividing audiences

    This hurts my heart.  Sure the trailer for Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” looked a bit twee, but after “Half Nelson” and “Sugar,” it’s okay to give a little slack and offer the benefit of the doubt.

    But some are walking away in outright disgust.  Tweets James Rocchi, “It’s a lazy, cliche-ridden artistic and emotional fraud that loves itself to death.”  Drew McWeeny, meanwhile, pulls no punches in his HitFix review, calling it “an agonizingly phony piece of work that struggles to be a sort of ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’ for teenagers, but which ends up regurgitating platitudes in place of any genuine insight or emotion.”

    Elsewhere, the AV Club’s Scott Tobias straight up calls it a “let down” while The Playlist quips, “it’s kind of a disappointment.”  And this guy lands a devastating blow: “What’s worse than a calculated sell-out? A failed attempt at same.”

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  • ‘Hereafter’ trailer

    Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter” is set to play Toronto this Sunday.  No screenings in LA until after the festival but there have been a few vague reactions already.  The story revolves around current event disasters (the London tube bombings, the Sri Lanka tsunami, etc.) to tell a story of, you know, death and stuff.  The trailer just released via Apple and looks properly somber, revolving mostly around Matt Damon’s character (of the reported triptych).  What else to say other than that?  Check it out by clicking the link below or watch an embed after the jump.

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  • Eat your heart out Mr. Hemsey

    Brroooowwnnng!

  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 31 – Searchlight’s busy season, ‘The Way Back’ and a not so brave new world for similar filmmaking, Toronto anticipations

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, a one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change on route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    Today Anne is calling from Toronto after a long journey from the Venice film festival, while I’m back home in LA following a great Telluride fest last weekend. We’re both able to talk from a more informed perspective on a number of the season’s hotly anticipated films, so let’s see what’s on the docket today…

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  • VENICE: Jury duty – award predictions and preferences

    The Venice Competition lineup officially wrapped today with one of its lightest and most mainstream selections, “Barney’s Version” (reviewed this morning).

    With only the out-of-competition closing film “The Tempest” left to screen before I head back to London tomorrow evening, allow me a moment to sift through the runners and riders for the festival prizes – at the same time as Quentin Tarantino and his (hopefully) merry band of jurors much be contemplating the same thing.

    They have good reason to be merry: as a friend and I agreed this morning, festival director Marco Mueller has assembled a truly outstanding Competition field this year – thoughtfully balanced in terms of highbrow and middlebrow, genre and esoterica, veteran auteurs and younger ascending talents.

    (More thoughts, plus Golden Lion predictions and wishes, after the cut.)

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  • TIFF: ‘Conviction’ reviews trickling in

    I had hoped Fox Searchlight would screen Tony Goldwyn’s “Conviction” here in LA during Toronto, but I guess I kind of understand why they didn’t.  I’ve heard nothing but “meh” things on the film since day one (the first reaction I heard was from someone who saw it before the studio even picked it up).  That ambivalence is reflected in Brad Brevet’s C+ review of the film out of Toronto.

    Brevet calls it “a rather simple film” and notes that “the emotional impact of the story comes through in the end after what is a rather mundane and cliched story of the innocent man in jail and the person working hard on the outside to get him out.”  Well, I guess I could have gleaned that from a synopsis.  Dig, Brad!  Oh, here we go:  “At no point does this seem like new territory, but outside of being about ten minutes too long, it’s a film that works despite its rather traditional dramatic nature.”

    Wouldn’t “traditional” be a guarantee that the story would work?  In any case, I’m just having fun here.  Most I’ve talked to seem to think Sam Rockwell could charge to the front of the supporting actor derby.  Brevet writes that the actor plays the character “with enough eccentricity to make it believable, but never so much that it feels like a caricature trying to be larger than the scene.”

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  • Another scene from ‘The King’s Speech’

    A number of you were thirsty for more after yesterday’s look at a scene from Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech.” Today we get another one, courtesy of Awards Campaign:

  • ‘Client 9’ poster

    One of the films I’m very much looking forward to this year is Alex Gibney’s  “Clinet 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer.” I imagine, given Spitzer’s appearance in “Inside Job” and that film’s brief detailing of Wall Street types’ obsession with prostitutes, it could dovetail nicely with Charles Ferguson’s study.  And as noted plenty of times, it’s looking like a hell of a year for documentary features.  Magnolia Pictures will release the film November 5 and today, courtesy of Vulture, we get a look at the poster.  Check out the full image after the jump.

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  • Whoa there, hoss

    With the fall festival season and all it’s expected “prestige” product going before many sets of critical eyes over the next two months, I think it would be smart to heed Danny Leigh’s words at The Guardian, who warns, “Never let me go overboard.”

    The problem with the Oscar season is that it can be a rush to dismantle or anoint, and the greatest offenders are already sharpening their knives or fluffing pillows for a soft landing.  All I can ever do is be honest about what I think about a film and give early thoughts on awards potential (something that is always in flux, mind you).  But sure, the freshness of an unexpected doosey or an overwhelming positive experience can tip the balance of coverage at these fests.

    Peter Sciretta recently wrote about the issue of reviewing at festivals and I agree with much of what he said.  It’s why I prefer the more relaxed weekend of Telluride to the marathon of something like Toronto.  But Leigh hits it right on the mark.  He drags out David Poland’s already battered “masterpiece” review of Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go” and uses it as a case study in “too much” when it comes to praise.

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  • ‘Country Strong’ trailer

    One of the lurking titles this Oscar season is Shana Feste’s “Country Strong,” currently set for a limited release on December 22.  Screen Gems could make a play for Gwyneth Paltrow, but it’s competitive terrain (Monday’s Off the Carpet will survey the strongest lead actress category in years).  Perhaps it’s too easy to chalk it up as “Crazy Heart” with a girl, but all the songs are original, I’m told, so at the very least something could happen there.  Check out the trailer after the jump.

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  • Eight actresses showcased in ‘For Colored Girls’ poster set

    We’ve been wondering for a couple of weeks now whether an unexpected contender could hop into this year’s race.  Last week Lionsgate announced a November 5 release date Tyler Perry’s “For Colored Girls” (the title of which had been officially shortened in the release from the original play’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf”).  Anne and I discussed the film as an awards possibility in Friday’s podcast.  And this week it looks like everyone’s catching up to the left-field idea.

    Scott Mendelsen used the occasion for Oscar pondering at The Huffington Post.  Sasha Stone picked that up and offered her own thoughts yesterday.  Meanwhile, no one really knows for sure what we’re dealing with here.  It could be a legitimate awards contender or it could just be a respectful push on behalf of a filmmaker that has made a lot of money for the studio.

    One thing is certain: there is a slew of prime female parts in the material for the role call of actresses involved to sink their teeth into.  That has been handsomely reflected in a recently released group of eight posters for the film.  Check them out at Yahoo! Movies.

    [Photo: Lionsgate]

  • Brutal

  • 9/10 Oscarweb Round-up

    • Jeffrey Wells, meanwhile, re-posts his thoughts on James Solomon’s screenplay. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Pete Hammond reports extensively from Wednesday’s “Tangled” event on the Disney lot. [Deadline]

    • Tim Gray on Venice’s unique role in film history. [Variety]

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  • SHORT TAKE: “Barney’s Version” (***)

    Venice Film Festival

    Too few film reviews open with the wisdom of Feargal Sharkey, so it brings me great pleasure to begin this one by saying that a good heart these days is, indeed, hard to find. That’s the chief conclusion to be taken from not just the narrative but the execution of “Barney’s Version,” a measured, thoughtful and agreeably down-the-middle adult romance that makes up in mature sincerity for what it lacks in style.

    I am, I admit, unfamiliar with the popular 1997 novel by Mordecai Richler from which Canadian TV director Richard J. Lewis’s film is adapted; it is, by all accounts, a dense, inventive and stingingly satirical work that has been substantially pared back and ironed out for the screen. This is not surprising: even without knowledge of the material, it’s easy to see where corners have been either cut or sanded smooth in the adaptation of a decades-spanning life study.

    Charting the fortunes and (mostly) misfortunes of Paul Giamatti’s eponymous anti-hero, principally his three failed marriages, Lewis and novice screenwriter Michael Konyves have fashioned a busy, baggy flashback structure that races through some key plot points as it leaves others dangling, and never makes good on its literary opening gambit to tell the story as Barney’s autobiography.

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  • ‘Megamind’ trailer

    DreamWorks has already released a couple of trailers for the animated “Megamind,” but the latest (via Apple) is probably the last full-length one we’ll get in advance of the November 5 release.  I really liked what I saw of the film at Comic-Con this year and given that we’re likely to see five nominees in the animated feature category this year due to a rule change broadening what is considered feature length, it could have a fighting chance.  But the competition is stiff, and not just from the usual suspects.  Check out the trailer by clicking the image below or watch the embed after the jump.

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  • VENICE: ‘Black Venus,’ ’13 Assassins,’ ‘Attenberg,’ ‘A Sad Trumpet Ballad’

    On my way to Tom Tykwer’s latest, so no time for an intro. Further rounding up highlights (and lowlights) of the Venice competition lineup:

    Expectations were appreciably high, and the press screening queue consequently doubled back on itself, for Abdellatif Kechiche’s historical drama “Black Venus” (**1/2) – after all, Kechiche had a hit on the Lido three years ago with the excellent “The Secret of the Grain,” and for those who know it, the story he’s working with here seemed overdue for screen treatment. By the time the credits rolled on this hard, dense, 165-minute slap of a movie, however, applause was more scattered than one might have expected for a display of such voluminous craft and ambition; the silence, one suspects, was that of an audience assessing which lines had and hadn’t been crossed.

    For my part, I remain stuck in a halfway house between immense appreciation that Kechiche has brought the extraordinary story of Saartjie Baartman, the black South African maid whose unusual physique (and genitalia) briefly made her the toast of the European vaudeville circuit in the 19th century, to the screen; and regret that he’s chosen to tell it in such a way that the film becomes complicit in the objectification it claims to decry.

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