In Contention

Tag: 127 Hours

  • 11/8 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Oscar’s misogyny, Gurus back on the case, classifying the 10’s “slots”

    • Rachel Shields on the misogyny of Oscar. [The Independent]

    • Gregory Ellwood reports from Friday’s Britannia Awards. [Awards Campaign]

    • “The King’s Speech,” Colin Firth and Annette Bening top the new weekly Gurus o’ Gold survey. [Movie City News]

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  • Boyle does Fallon

    Nothing overly insightful. Lots of “whoa, dude” silliness from Fallon. But anyway:

  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘127 Hours’ dissent, BIFA nods, interviews

    • Guy didn’t much care for “127 Hours.” That got you talking.

    • Happily, Kris did, and got talking to director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy.

    • The British Independent Film Award nominations threw some surprises into the mix, handing scads of noms to “The King’s Speech”… and “Kick-Ass.”

    • Chad’s Life Without Oscar column eased into the late 1980s, showcasing one films on either side of the Hollywood border.

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  • Tell us what you thought of ‘127 Hours’

    I think it’s safe to say we’ve offered plenty on Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours” as of late. Here are my thoughts from Telluride and Guy’s totally different take from London fest. The film opens in limited release today and I’m eager to hear some reader thoughts, so cut loose with your reaction in the comments section below once you see it.  (It opens wide on November 19 so feel free to re-visit this thread then.)

  • Listen to Dido and A.R. Rahman’s ‘If I Rise’ from ‘127 Hours’

    Two years ago composer A.R. Rahman managed to sweep the music categories at the Academy Awards.  One of only two nominations “Slumdog Millionaire” didn’t translate into an Oscar was original song “O…Saya” — because the film’s other key track, “Jai Ho,” won instead.

    This year Rahman is back in the mix with the vibrant score for Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours,” and specifically, the original song “If I Rise.”  Dido provides the vocals on the song, which plays sporadically at key moments during the film’s climax and finally plays in full over the closing credits.

    At the end of the day, this could be a formidable contender in the race for Best Original Song.  It’s well-placed in the film and that will go over well when voters sit down and watch all of the contenders in context.  At the very least, that’s enough for the track seriously threaten a nomination.

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  • 11/5 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Boyle on ‘127 Hours’ faintings, best in animated villainy, lead actresses must suffer

    • Steve Pond gets Danny Boyle’s thoughts on this rash of faintings at screenings of “127 Hours.” [The Odds]

    • Sasha Stone calls 2010 (so far) one of the best years for film in recent history. [Awards Daily]

    • “Megamind” gets Josh Wigler thinking about the best animated villains of all time. [MTV Movies Blog]

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘127 Hours’ director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy

    Danny Boyle has been wanting to tell the story of Aron Ralston on celluloid for four years now. He met with the mountain climber in 2006 seeking permission, but at the time, Ralston was looking to convey the story in documentary form.

    “He didn’t want to make it as a feature with a major actor,” Boyle says, sitting with screenwriter Simon Beaufoy discussing their latest collaboration. “He wanted to narrate it a la ‘Touching the Void.’ Any climber is very much conscious of Joe Simpson and that kind of world. And also he’s not from our world in the media. He and his peer group particularly think Hollywood is bullshit, and you can imagine what they think Hollywood might do to a true story like this.”

    Flash forward a few years and Boyle is coming off a high after his film, “Slumdog Millionaire,” swept the Oscars and provided plenty of cachet (and confidence) for him to tackle anything he wanted. But this story of a 27-year-old undergoing physical trauma and mental enlightenment in a tiny Utah canyon was still sticking with him.

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  • Drama at ‘127 Hours’ premiere

    I ended up missing last night’s premiere of “127 Hours” but man do I wish I had been there.  Because these fainting spells are turning into a traveling roadshow experience for the film.  First Telluride (where I was skeptical it was anything more than altitude sickness), then Toronto, now the Academy on Wilshire.  Maybe they should just start having medics on stand-by.

    The incident is being reported as a “diabetic seizure” and apparently came during a not-all-that-intense moment in the film.  Gregory Ellwood wrote it up last night.  The Hollywood Reporter and David Poland chimed in today.  I was reading about it in real time via Steven Zeitchik’s Tweets.  Bizarre.

    Apparently the film got a standing ovation, as of course it would.  Premieres are cake for a film like this.  Bummer I couldn’t make it but, onto the next.  Check back later today for an interview with the film’s director and writer Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy.

    [Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures]

  • EXCLUSIVE: ‘127 Hours,’ 2 DPs (clip)

    One of the unique aspects of Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours” is it’s use of two cinematographers.  Longtime Boyle collaborator Anthony Dod Mantle (who won the Oscar for Best Cinematography in 2008 for “Slumdog Millionaire”) was joined by Enrique Chediak (who shot the Boyle-produced “28 Weeks Later”).

    Both units were given equal weight during production (going so far as to be dubbed “red” and “blue” rather than “one” and “two”).  As producer Christian Colson puts it, the decision served to keep the energy of the film constant and consistently bring in fresh ideas.

    Fox Searchlight has supplied us with an exclusive clip detailing the duel DP design (alliteration — nice).  In it you’ll hear from Boyle, star James Franco, Mantle, Chediak and Colson.  Have a look after the jump.  The film hits theaters in limited release this weekend.  (Also, check back tomorrow for an interview with director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy).

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  • 11/2 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Newton on ‘For Colored Girls,’ Godard’s Oscar revives controversy, ratings board drama

    • Jean-Luc Godard’s Honorary Oscar revives controversy over the director’s supposed anti-Semitism. [New York Times]

    • Amy Kaufman sits down with “Love & Other Drugs” director Edward Zwick. [The Envelope]

    • Edward Douglas chats up “For Colored Girls” star Thandie Newton. [Coming Soon]

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  • On ‘127 Hours,’ and a messy little thing called opinion

    It all started, as so many conflicts do these days, with a tweet. After spending a morning and afternoon musing on “127 Hours,” following a breakfast-time screening on the last day of the London Film Festival, I accepted the hard fact that I simply didn’t like it very much.

    I wanted to feel differently. Danny Boyle, in addition to being one of my favorite ever interviewees, is a vital filmmaker whose previous misses I’ve even found more stimulating than most directors’ hits. James Franco is shaping up to be among the most pleasingly off-kilter leading men of his generation. The tech geek in me was excited to see the long-underused Enrique Chediak working on a large canvas, alongside the justly rated Anthony Dod Mantle.

    I had, I admit, harbored doubts about how Team Boyle could cinematically enliven Aron Ralston’s simple-if-grisly survival tale, one that could promise no surprises after ample media coverage as recently as 2003. Some blinder of a structural or technical choice, I assumed, was being hidden up someone’s sleeve — and when I saw only a familiar collection of hopped-up editing tricks and multimedia interpolations that designerised the protagonist’s plight without deepening it, I wasn’t afraid to say I felt a little crushed.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Leading men, Halloween horror, comic contenders

    • This week’s Off the Carpet column took a roll call of this year’s Best Actor contenders.

    • Meanwhile, we interviewed one of the strongest of those contenders, “127 Hours” star James Franco.

    • With “The King’s Speech,” “Another Year” and “Made in Dagenham” all in the hunt, The Long Shot mused on Britain’s back-and-forth relationship with the Oscars.

    • In case you’d forgotten what day it is, Chad got into the Halloween spirit by counting down his ten favorite alternative horror movies.

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 38 — ‘Love & Other Drugs,’ lead and supporting actor races, the circuit revs up, favorite horror films

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your 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 en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    You can feel the season rumbling to life with Halloween just around the corner.  It’s been a lively enough week as contenders began to hit the circuit and more films were unveiled for eager press.  Let’s see what’s on the docket today…

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  • 10/29 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: O’Barry biopic on the way, stumping for Bell in ‘Exorcism,’ Reznor talks ‘Network’ synth

    • Across the pond, Deborah Orr on a 15 rating due to harmless swearing weighing down an uplifting film like “Made in Dagenham.” [The Guardian]

    • A feature biopic is in the works about “The Cove” activist Ric O’Barry. [Deadline]

    • The deadline for animated feature submission nears. [Oscars.org]

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Film Editing — Volume II

    So important but so hard to notice. That’s how I would describe the work of our best film editors – those cutting artists who blend and juxtapose frames together to make films coherent, establish a flow and also set the mood in a manner that suits the screenwriter’s words and the director’s vision.

    The Academy Award for Best Film Editing is, more than any other category, very much tied to the Best Picture race. Despite a blip from 2005-2007, this category always has at least three – usually four, sometimes all five – of its nominees also nominated in the big category. Now that there are 10 nominees, however, one cannot help but wonder if we are ever going to again see a nominee here also not cited in Best Picture.

    Apart from Best Picture contention, being a war film, action film or musical never hurts here. I must say, however, that since I last previewed this category in August, I continue to believe that the three titles I had leading the way then are still out in front.

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  • 10/28 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Youngest Best Actresses, seeking Oscar journos, Cameron readies ‘Avatar’ sequels

    • AMPAS and mtvU launch the third annual “Oscars Correspondent Contest” for college journalists. [Oscars.org]

    • Across the pond, Stuart Heritage counts down the ways “Rabbit Hole” could be an Oscar bet for Nicole Kidman. [The Guardian]

    • The Durst family predictably threatens to sue over “All Good Things.” [Deadline]

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘127 Hours’ star James Franco

    James Franco sits in one of the countless, nondescript rooms on the sixth floor of the Four Seasons hotel in Los Angeles remembering the time he first met mountain climber Aron Ralston in the same building, perhaps in a room not unlike this one.

    It wasn’t even a year ago — January, to be exact, right around the time of the Golden Globes. Director Danny Boyle had recently offered the actor the role of Ralston in “127 Hours,” a film that would depict the harrowing six days the outdoorsman spent with his hand wedged between a boulder and a canyon wall. It was an ordeal that ended with Ralston cutting off his own arm, just below the elbow, in order to survive. And the film would — naturally, given the material and the filmmaker involved — be anything but conventional.

    But Boyle was adamant that the performance not be an “outside-in approach,” as Franco puts it. It couldn’t be slavish mimicry of personality or behavior. But there was this abstract idea of confronting one’s potential demise that remained somewhat elusive for Franco, yet something he nevertheless wanted to reflect in authentic terms. Little did he know he’d find the answer during that first meeting with Ralston, Boyle, writer Simon Beaufoy, producer Christian Colson and production designer Suttirat Larlarb.

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  • “Miniature golf with Terrence Malick”

    If you read around sites like The Hot Blog or Hollywood Elsewhere, you’re sure to have read some colorful commentary from “LexG.”  And if you follow him on Twitter or catch his YouTube videos, you likely know it spills over.  Some hate him.  I love the guy.

    So naturally, “Oscar Chat” caught my eye.  I trust even the offended will at least get a chuckle or two.  I laughed my ass off: