In Contention

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  • ‘Miral’ French poster

    Thanks to commenter Ziyad for alerting us to this pared-down French one-sheet for Julian Schnabel’s “Miral,” which will premiere next month at the Venice Film Festival. The film still has me (said in Tim Gunn tones) worried, but I rather like this — the expression on the face of Freida Pinto (essentially confirmed here as the film’s star, despite what her billing may imply) is ambiguous enough to counter an otherwise staid composition. Meanwhile, the naïve hand-painted lettering asserts artist-filmmaker Schnabel’s auteur identity, scarcely detectable in the film’s recent trailer.

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  • Get him to the geek

    Aging enfant terrible that he is, out-there auteur Gregg Araki has long fostered a reputation for being prickly — the diplomat’s translation for “self-regarding asshole of the first rank” — but the genial good humor of his last two features suggested he might be thawing a little. Certainly, his new film “Kaboom,” a froot-loopy but frequently delightful stoner fantasy that premiered at Cannes in May, appeared to be work of an artist whose tongue had settled pretty much irretractably in cheek. (I reviewed the film in capsule form here.)

    Alas, appearances have proved deceptive, and Araki is still taking himself as seriously as ever. For evidence, look no further than the unpleasant little flap caused when the director, in a singular display of sourness, withdrew his film from the UK’s much-loved genre film festival FrightFest, where it had been afforded a prominent gala screening. His reason? He didn’t want the film seen by a “bunch of geeks.”

    Even allowing for the stretchiest of “words taken out of context” excuses, Araki’s response is not only unnecessarily hostile but bafflingly self-defeating.

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  • SUNDAY CENTS: ‘Cats’ is a dog

    *All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.

    Hey gang. Sorry this is late but I spent all morning at work and then all afternoon at the Home Depot Center watching the Galaxy get shellacked by the Chicago Fire and getting a sunburn on half my face. I’ll try to keep it short and sweet.

    The number one movie, for a third weekend in a row, is “Inception.” It’s the third film to spend three weeks at the top in 2010, but the first that wasn’t in 3D. The drop was 36%, a bit harsher than last weekend’s slip and gave it $27.5 million for the three days and $193.3 million total. The film is holding fantastically well and will be only the third live action film of the summer to cross the $200 million mark. The $268.4 million of “The Matrix” is not out of reach, which would make it the most successful original sci-fi property since “Independence Day.” that movie with the big, blue things.

    “Dinner for Schmucks” performed to expectations with $23.3 million. As I mentioned on Friday, that’s a bit above normal for Paul Rudd, who is used to sharing a bill with B-listers like Jason Segel and Seann William Scott. Throw Steve Carell in the mix and you’re good for an extra few million. Throw in an animated Steve Carell in a ridiculous accent and you’re good for the surprise smash of the summer. No wonder he’s leaving “The Office.”

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  • ‘Enter the Void’ poster

    Gaspar Noé’s “Enter the Void,” a three-hour melange of bad-trip imagery, medium-core sex and approximately 1,736 swooping crane shots, has hovered in distribution limbo since last year’s Cannes festival, and no wonder: these days, it’s hard enough for perfectly innocuous foreign festival fare to find American friends, let alone a film that chucks a graphic abortion sequence in the final act just to check that you’re still awake. Nonetheless, IFC has been brave enough to adopt this jolly romp; it hits U.S. arthouse screens on September 24.

    I was less than whelmed by the film at last year’s London fest, writing that Noé’s “fatuous follow-up [to “Irréversible”]  deploys an arsenal of tricked-out technique and a colossal running time of 163 minutes to make the make the startling revelations that death is, like, sad, and that drug-dealing is generally not a good idea.” (And I was pro–“Irréversible.”) Others differ considerably: Manohla Dargis, for one, all but credits the film with rewriting cinematic language. Expect the disagreement to continue this autumn; for now, check out the suitably lurid poster (courtesy of Vulture) after the cut.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Costume Design — Volume I

    Costume design in many ways represents much about the Oscars: glitz, glamor, beauty. But obviously threads do much more than make movie stars look attractive.  They build character, set mood, define period and serve as a defining design aspect of a film.

    Like art direction, the nominees for here overwhelmingly fall into one of two categories: period or fantasy. Indeed, when two contemporary films (“The Queen” and “The Devil Wears Prada”) were nominated in 2006, it was a rare occasion.

    It’s not an exact science, but while a fantasy film is almost always nominated every year, there is usually only one as four films tend to be period. It also should be noted that recent winners in the category have all highlighted British or French royalty and high society.

    Being a Best Picture contender does not hurt with this branch (same with any), but the branch also does a great deal of thinking for itself. Last year, for instance, both “Bright Star” and “Coco Before Chanel” managed nominations here, the only ones for their respective films. In the last four years, four other films (“Curse of the Golden Flower,” “Marie Antoinette,” “Across the Universe” and “Australia”) have also managed the feat, rare for crafts categories.

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  • FRIDAY FORECAST: Reigning ‘Cats & Dogs?’

    *All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.

    Hey kids! How about that terrifying photo to the right? Make you want to see cats and dogs brutally fighting to the death voiced by Nick Nolte and Joe Pantoliano? While Chris O’Donnell looks on confused? Of course it does. We’ve got three new releases this week but are probably looking at a third straight week at the top for “Inception.”

    “Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore” is probably a half decade too late to capitalize on any good will the audience had for the original (a $131 million grossing summer surprise). Warner Bros. has even wisely lopped off the number two from the title since what few fans there are will know and anyone else might just think it’s a family film with a cool concept. They’ve also given it a hefty 3,700 screen count.

    Here’s the thing though. With “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel” being the only exception, talking animal movies have terrible drop offs from the original to the sequel. “Babe,” “Garfield” and “Stuart Little” can all attest. With so much time in between films here, and the almost identical “G-Force” less than a year old, it seems like these cats and dogs are headed for the same pile. I think $17 million is the best they can hope for.

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  • I’ll give you 10 guesses

    Oh, okay then. I’ve held out longer than most, but with the summer mostly played out, and newly unveiled schedules for Venice and Toronto signifying that the fall film season is already breathing down our necks, now is as good a time as any to go on the record with some Oscar predictions.

    In years past, I’ve had readers tell me that my predictions are tricky to access on the site — not a problem for me, since the fewer who found them, the more contained the embarrassment when they were proved hopelessly wrong. Nevertheless, we have heard you, and we have acted: at the bottom of Kris’s predictions on the sidebar, you will find a shiny new link to mine. You can’t beat progress.

    As usual, if you like your predictions rational, grounded in inside information and frequently accurate, Kris is your man. (He’ll be updating his on August 23, by the way.) At these early stages, I go on a mixture of gut feeling, sudden hunches and a broken Ouija board I picked up for a fiver in a garage sale. I tend to get stronger inklings about what won’t get nominated than what will, which is why some of my picks have a placeholder feel to them.

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  • A home for Miramax

    Okay, for “home,” read “resting place.” Scrap those sweet-but-always-unlikely reports that the high-end company would be returning to the warm embrace of its parents, the finally outbiddenBrothers Weinstein. The story has a less sentimental ending, but an ending nonetheless — Disney has sold Miramax to one Filmyard Holdings Llc, run by non-film businessmen Ronald Tutor and Tom Barrack.

    The price? A cool $660 million.

    Though details are few, The Hollywood Reporter states that Filmyard plans to launch a new production company that will both cover the Miramax library (consisting of 700+ titles) and make the occasional new feature. The Miramax you know, in other words, is history, reduced to a name-only warehouse of sorts. But you saw that coming. You can read the business-y nuts and bolts of the deal here, if you so wish; I’ll leave you with Disney chief Robert Iger’s parting shot…

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  • ‘Tamara Drewe’ trailer

    This trailer has been hanging around for a few days, but since Stephen Frears’s countryside romp was recently tapped for the Toronto Film Festival, it seems appropriate to feature it now. I reviewed the film out of Cannes and found it singularly strained and irritating — the kind of thing described as “quintessentially English” by those who think “That’s Amore” quintessentially Italian. Nonetheless, it found a number of credible admirers on the Croisette, and will likely continue to do so in Toronto. See what you think. Click on the image below to check it out at Momentum Pictures, or watch the embed after the cut.

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  • Coppola, Schnabel, Reichardt in Venice competition lineup

    UPDATE: The festival website has a list of out-of-competition selections, which include two directorial efforts from the Brothers Affleck: Ben’s “The Town” and Casey’s Joaquin Phoenix doc “I’m Still Here.”

    EARLIER: Before you ask: no, “The Tree of Life” is nowhere to be seen. Not that that’s a surprise by this point. There is a “but,” however — Venice festival organisers announced that there will be one surprise competition entry added at the festival’s halfway mark. I wouldn’t bet the house (or even the garden shed, frankly) on it being the Malick film, but hope is being kept alive nonetheless. (Last year, the fest had two surprise films: one from Werner Herzog and one from Brillante Mendoza.)

    Shifting the focus to what did make it, the 22-title lineup looks much as we expected — we’d effectively been promised Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere” and Julian Schnabel’s “Miral” since they failed to show up at Cannes, while Tuesday’s Toronto announcement tipped us off to the presence of Francois Ozon’s “Potiche,” the Paul Giamatti-Dustin Hoffman starrer “Barney’s Version” and the Haruki Murakami adaptation “Norwegian Wood.”

    (More commentary, and the full competition lineup, after the cut.)

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  • Del Toro, Cameron to take on Lovecraft’s ‘Madness’

    At Comic-Con, director Guillermo Del Toro announced that one of his next projects would be a remake of Disney’s “The Haunted Mansion.” Del Toro would be co-writing and producing, though, not directing (and boy did that news get a split reaction from movie-goers).  He said his next directorial gig would be announced shortly, and today, we get the answer.

    Mike Fleming reports at Deadline.com that the “Pan’s Labyrinth” helmer will be a 3D adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness,” a project he’s been circling since he set it up at DreamWorks in 2004.  Now Universal has stepped in to breathe life into the film once more.  But that ain’t the half of it.

    As mentioned, it’ll be a 3D film.  With that in mind, James Cameron has come aboard as producer, making this instantly an event film to anticipate, given the scope of Cameron’s 2009 3D ground-breaker “Avatar.” I still think one or two event films along these lines every year would have more impact than blindly converting various 2D titles and muddying the waters of potential for 3D filmed entertainment.

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  • LIFE WITHOUT OSCAR: 1963 and 1964

    Catch up with the idea behind this series here.

    The Beatles weren’t the only British invasion happening around 1963 as “Tom Jones” took the big prize at the Academy Awards and British talent racked up no less than 9 of the 20 acting nominations. It also became one of the few comedies to win, slaying proud heavyweights like “Cleopatra” in the process.

    Also worth mentioning is Sidney Poitier’s historic Best Actor win for “Lilies of the Field.” Normal business resumed the following year as the lavish musical, “My Fair Lady” swept the board, although Julie Andrews got a bit of sweet revenge by stealing the Best Actress award away from Audrey Hepburn, who was cast in the role Andrews made famous on stage.

    Not winning an Oscar that year? You guessed it, Peter O’Toole. And maybe the biggest snub in Oscar history occured when none of the songs from “A Hard Day’s Night,” including the title number received a nomination for Best Song. Nice job Academy, it’s only The Beatles.

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  • ‘Certified Copy’ trailer

    Those who followed my Cannes coverage will know that “Certified Copy,” Abbas Kiarostami’s first film shot outside his native Iran, was comfortably my favorite film of the festival — and one of my favorites of the year, period. The Guardian posted the British trailer yesterday; they’re claiming an “exclusive,” though it’s actually been in UK cinemas since last week. I hesitated before posting this, and not only because a crisp embed has yet to emerge: the trailer doesn’t serve the film terribly well, though it’s admittedly a talky piece that’s tricky to market. It should, however, give you an inkling of why Juliette Binoche took well-deserved gold at Cannes — in a fair world, she’d be right in the thick of the Best Actress discussion. Click on the image to check it out at The Guardian, or watch the (slightly fuzzy) embed after the cut.

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  • Venice to host midnight premiere of ‘Machete’

    The full lineup  for the Venice Film Festival is due shortly, but several pieces are already falling into place. We know that “Black Swan” and “The Tempest” will be bookending the proceedings, while yesterday’s Toronto festival list indirectly gave away several of the titles we’ll be seeing on the Lido.

    Now comes a slightly less highbrow inclusion, as Venice organisers have announced that Robert Rodriguez’s “Machete” will have its world premiere as a midnight screening on September 1, the opening night of the festival — right after Darren Aronofsky’s latest, in other words. Clearly, I’m not going to be allowed much sleep on my first day. Same as it ever was.

    Of course, the film opens Stateside only two days later, but it’s a nice little launchpad all the same. Good for the festival, too, which appears to be balancing populist and arthouse concerns quite ably. Full press release after the cut. Kris, meanwhile, reported on the film’s Comic-Con presence (and its red-band trailer) here.

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  • PAGE TO SCREEN: “The Accidental Billionaires” by Ben Mezrich

    (NOTE: This week’s Page to Screen text is the source material for David Fincher’s upcoming film “The Social Network.”)

    If, with its short, sketchy chapters and preponderance of surface-level description, Ben Mezrich’s “The Accidental Billionaires” resembles less a work of literary non-fiction than a treatment for a more substantially developed screenplay, that’s probably precisely what the author intended: after all, the movie rights to Mezrich’s thin, gossipy account of the birth of Facebook were snapped up well before he’d even finished writing it.

    Mezrich has turned this trick before: his 2003 bestseller “Bringing Down the House,” the story of a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students who managed to swindle millions out of top Las Vegas casinos, was recently turned into a reasonably profitable (if rapidly forgotten) film, “21.” Mezrich’s work certainly commands more respect from Hollywood than it does from literary critics.

    A former sci-fi author, Mezrich delights in fudging (and often blatantly fabricating) the facts in his non-fiction work: a disclaimer at the start of “The Accidental Billionaires” acknowledges that numerous “conversations and scenes [have been] recreated and compressed,” verbs that sound decidedly euphemistic by the time the writer is casually describing the interior thoughts of people he admits to never having met. (Mark Zuckerberg, the young Facebook founder at the center of Mezrich’s story, refused any meetings or interviews with the author, giving this already skimpily researched volume a distinctly lopsided perspective.)

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  • ‘Inception’ infographic helps you understand the film

    Kind of.  Click for a larger image (courtesy Last Exit to Nowhere, via Collider):

  • ‘Never Let Me Go,’ ‘Rabbit Hole’ among Toronto premieres

    Toronto International Film Festival organisers unveiled a typically cluttered lineup of galas and premieres for this year’s edition — including, as usual, a number of films pencilled in as 2010 awards contenders.

    Of the 50 titles announced thus far, half will be world premieres: those include such highly anticipated works as Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go,” John Cameron Mitchell’s “Rabbit Hole,” Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator,” Tony Goldwyn’s “Conviction” and Rowan Joffe’s “Brighton Rock.” The remaining half have either appeared at previous festivals — with a hefty contingent from Cannes, including Mike Leigh’s “Another Year,” Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful” and Woody Allen’s “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” — or look set to make their debut at Venice the week before.

    With Venice due to reveal its own lineup tomorrow, the fact that such still-unseen titles as Ben Affleck’s “The Town,” Francois Ozon’s “Potiche,” Julian Schnabel’s “Miral,” John Madden’s “The Debt” and Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” are all marked only as North American premieres would appear to confirm that they are all Lido-bound. (I’m surprised, however, that Guillaume Canet’s “Little White Lies” will be making its first appearance at Toronto rather than at a European festival.)

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  • ‘Sucker Punch’ trailer

    Warner Bros. turned quite a few heads with its presentation of “Sucker Punch” at Comic-Con.  The crowd was treated to an extended trailer featuring Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks,” which, of course, won’t likely ever be seen outside those walls given the rights issues with such a track.  But the new trailer has been released and it kind of gives you a vibe, but I still don’t get what the hell’s going on.  Intrigued, but confused. Click on the image below to check it out via Appple, or watch the embed on the jump.

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