• Steve Pond asks five important questions about the expanded Best Picture category. #1, #3 and #5 have been covered at length in this space. #2 is philosophical and worth considering. #4 is a practical issue at hand, I imagine. [The Odds]
• On set with the Coens directing “A Serious Man.” [MakingOf]
• Nicolas Winding Refn talks “Bronson”‘s Pet Shop Boys alterna-score, among other things. [The Playlist]
I stumbled across David Poland’s video review of the Coens’ “A Serious Man” last night and just had to share. I think it’s the most insightful of these yet and taps into a number of the rhythms of the season by revealing the Coen film’s place within it. He calls it one of the duo’s greatest films, with which I’m of course inclined to agree:
• Lee Daniels and his cast and crew had a blast making “Precious,” despite the gut-wrenching display on screen. [Movieline]
• Hugo Rifkind sits down with Wes Anderson to talk “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” which is set to open the London Film Festival. [The Times]
• Dennis Lim talks to Nicolas Winding Refn about his film “Bronson,” one of the year’s best. [New York Times]
Fox may not be able to get teens excited about horror comedy but Sony sure can as “Zombieland” debuted with an impressive $25 million and the number one spot.The studio makes a killing off these types of relatively low budget genre titles (“Obsessed”, “Lakeview Terrace”) and you have to hand it to the marketing department for turning yet another one into a winner. I mean, this is the studio that can get a film like “21” a $24 million opening weekend and that’s pretty amazing.
Sony holds the runner-up spot as well with the animated hit “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.” Another slim drop, this time 33%, gave the film a $16.7 million weekend and $82.4 million in the books already. In a few weeks it’ll become only the fifth film released in September this decade to cross $100 million joining illustrious company like “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Remember the Titans.”
“Meatballs” was served a healthy dose of competition by Disney’s 3D double feature of the first two “Toy Story” films. $12.5 million is pretty exceptional for films that are widely available on DVD and were never meant to be seen in 3D in the first place, so Disney can laugh all the way to the John Ratzenberg-voiced piggy bank.
Warner Bros. and Ricky Gervais exceeded mild expectations with “The Invention of Lying” by grossing $7.4 million and stealing fourth place. That’s an improvement over the $5 million of “Ghost Town” and makes Greg Kinnear look like the box office poison in this equation. Gervais is crafting a pretty strange big screen career for himself and this result will help get his next milquetoast idea past the pitch stage.
David Poland has written his first Oscar column of the season, and while it’s a typically interesting read, it features several eyebrow-raising statements that I really can’t square with.
I’ll leave you to pick through its eccentricities — that he seemingly doesn’t believe Christoph Waltz is a contender, for example — for yourselves. (Sasha Stone has written an extensive riposte.) But there’s a pair of head-scratching (to me, at least) tags in his Best Picture chart that I feel like highlighting:
“A Serious Man”: It’s the Jewish “Precious” … but funny!
“A Single Man”: It’s the Gay “Precious” … but pretty!
Recorded yesterday, here’s the fourth installment of Oscar Talk with yours truly and Anne Thompson of indieWIRE. We took the week off last Friday due to traveling conflicts, but we’re back on today.
On the docket:
• Anne and I discuss the foreign language film submissions, up to 62 entries so far (61 at the time of this recording).
• The PGA’s copy cat move to 10, which leads of course to further discussion on the Academy’s move to 10.
• Jane Campion’s “Bright Star,” which has opened to glowing reviews. Odds on Oscar, box office potential, etc.
• Sony Pictures Classics’ shucking and jiving with their Oscar schedule, grabbing “The Last Station” (confirmed today) and moving “Get Low” (as reported here last week).
• Anne wonders whether Weinstein pick-up “A Single Man” could be an under-the-radar contender for Best Picture.
• The weekend’s releases: “A Serious Man” (covered extensively last time) and “Zombieland” (to steer away from awards talk for a moment).
• Anne talks Alain Resnais’s “Wild Grass,” which recently opened the New York Film Festival.
• And the distribution strategy for “Paranormal Activity,” hardly an Oscar contender but right in line with Anne’s recent column on studios missing an opportunity to experiment with release paradigms on modestly budgeted films.
Check out the podcast below, with a musical lead-in from Mark Bradshaw’s “Bright Star” score. And as always, you can subscribe to Oscar Talk via iTunes here.
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• Maurice Sendak’s one nit-pick with the adaptation of his “Where the Wild Things Are.” I agree with him. [io9]
• Capturing the miniature worlds of the film. [Los Angeles Times]
• Adding a new dimension to Woody and Buzz Lightyear. [New York Times]
• Arguing that “Public Enemies” looks “cheap” due to HD nearly three months after release. [The Huffington Post]
• Dave Karger wonders if a bona fide left-field Best Picture nominee is in the cards in a 10-nominee paradigm. [Oscar Watch]
• Getting the 70s bush right for “A Serious Man” (Amy Landecker officially rocks). [Vulture]
• Adam Dawtrey on the rebirth of Colin Firth. [The Guardian]
• In honor of “A Serious Man,” Nathan Englander picks the top five Jewish films from the 1970s. Why not the 1960s? You know, when the Coen film is set? [Film in Focus]
• Not Oscar related, but most desired remake: “The Goonies.” [Daily Telegraph]
Okay, so “A Serious Man,” “A Single Man,” something has to give, right? I haven’t seen the latter, but I imagine it’s an apt title. However, if I’m honest, the Coen brothers’ title doesn’t really say much about the film, nor is it really representative (in my mind, at least) of it’s penetrating, expertly rendered themes. It doesn’t really work on any level for me, actually.
So my question is this: What are the odds on getting a title change, boys? Both films are going to be in play this Oscar season so it’s fine to recognize that and steer clear of the confusion, but really, I think you can do better.
It’s releasing next month, so probably no dice. But, you know, just one guy’s opinion on a slow news day…
Examining themes of faith, family and fortunes, “A Serious Man,” is a film about consequences, both unwarranted and equitable and a meticulously crafted film that demands a second viewing to soak up all the puzzle pieces and clues. It’s a picture you need to meditate on, but breathtaking is really the word for it. It starts out rather humdrum and unremarkable, but as the story builds, lilts, exhales and then crescendos, it’s like an incredible orchestra firing on every cylinder, virtuoso notes and vibratos being held just thusly.
From Rodrigo Perez’s all-out rave of the Coen brothers’ “A Serious Man.”
You might have noticed this morning’s round-up reverted back to “Oscarweb.” The big late-summer festival trilogy wrapped up with Toronto’s kudo-dishing over the weekend and on the other side, we face the long haul. The season is officially here. You ready?
As punishing as it feels, I’m still excited for our weekly coverage. Punishing because monthly diagnosis is so liberating, but we’re at that stage where the nuances of the season are worth tracking closely, the layers of the race peeled back slowly but surely. Today’s Off the Carpet column kicks all of that off for us at In Contention.
Tomorrow we’ll have a list dedicated to the best of the Academy’s chosen. Wednesday, Guy will launch “The Long Shot,” a new weekly awards column that will consider things from afar without the dizzying insider silliness you find in this space every Monday, and I’m really excited for that. Gerard comes back Thursday for another series of Tech Support columns, and, of course, Anne and I will continue the conversation Friday in our weekly Oscar Talk podcast. I think we’re covering all bases.
So, as we go into the season, what do we know? And do we think we know more than we actually do? Probably.
“Up in the Air,” for instance, was the story of September if only because any goodwill toward “Precious” was already a known commodity. Jason Reitman’s “Juno” follow-up comes along at just the right time for the country, taps into actor George Clooney’s movie star quality to find other insights and pretty much nails a tone, a vibe, an overall sense of things.
The third installment of Oscar Talk lands as Toronto winds down and, seemingly, the season’s biggest questions are being answered. Or are they?
I’m joined by Anne Thompson of indieWIRE as always and we discussed the following:
• The Coen brothers’ “A Serious Man,” Anne’s thoughts, my thoughts, the Coens doing Woody, etc.
• The first sell of Toronto, “A Single Man” (not to be confused with “A Serious Man”), and the Oscar prospects of Colin Firth and Julianne Moore.
• Business at the fest and a shifting acquisition paradigm in the industry.
• Anne gives her thoughts on Annette Bening and Samuel L. Jackson in Rodrigo Garcia’s “Mother and Child,” great performances, but will it be picked up?
• Robert Duvall’s Oscar-worthy work in “Get Low,” a film that has yet to be picked up when it’s the sort of film that may have ignited a bidding war in years past.
• Thoughts on other films that bowed at Toronto, including “Capitalism: A Love Story,” “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” and “Jennifer’s Body” (leading to a conversation about Megan Fox’s talents that will put each of us out on a limb).
• Anne loved Edward Norton in Tim Blake Nelson’s “Leaves of Grass” but found the film on the whole to be a missed opportunity.
But nothing seems to be decided even with a bulk of the season’s offerings having been screened in Venice, Telluride and Venice. Onward!
As always you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here. (If you have some audio issues with the levels, my apologies — with Anne in Toronto and me in North Carolina, we had some technical difficulties.)
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Today we’re pointed, via Awards Daily, to Richard Corliss’s review of the Coen brothers’ “A Serious Man” in Time magazine with this thoughtful closer:
As Fate keeps stomping him, he embraces Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. What he tells his class about the theory — “Even if you can’t figure it out, you’re still responsible for it on the midterm” — applies, in spades, to his crumbling life. And yet for most of the movie he hangs in there, behaving honorably, seeking the wisdom of his ancestors, trying to observe the Jewish concept of Hashem. “Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you,” says Elie Wiesel’s Rashi. To absorb God’s body blows, this disquieting, haunting movie says, is to be fully alive. To do otherwise could kill you.
And yet, as much as I respect and agree with that sentiment, the film is much more than that, working on deeper, even more universal levels — so much so that it is quickly firming itself up as the best film of the year, in my view.
Anne Thompson and I will be discussing “A Serious Man,” among other things, in the next installment of Oscar Talk.
• Overture angles for the domestic rights to Antoine Fuqua’s “Brooklyn’s Finest,” perhaps giving a leg up to Ethan Hawke in the Best Actor race. [Variety]
• Is Charles Darwin too controversial for American multiplexes? [CHUD]
• Christopher Plummer at 80, busy as ever. [The Toronto Star]
I’ve been chewing on the Coen brothers’ “A Serious Man” like a thick piece of spiritual jerky ever since I walked out of the Clariety screening room in Beverly Hills yesterday evening. I’ve retweeted other perspectives, exchanged emails with industry types equally leveled by it and, in my own way, started banging the drum for a film I think everyone should see.
It’s sticking with me in the best of ways, I guess you could say. It’s illuminating unexpected corners. It really is settling in and staying there.
So I was quick to devour this piece in The Toronto Star by Chicago Sun-Times religion columnist Cathleen Falsani. Falsani is also the author of the book “The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers,” which explores the spiritual messages found in the Coens’ films. So she was more than qualified to write up the siblings’ most personal and, certainly, most spiritual film to date.
