In Contention

Tag: A Serious Man

  • The Coens’ ‘A Serious Man’ is a miracle movie

    Michael Stuhlbarg in A Serious ManI wanted to sit down and write a full review of Joel and Ethan Coen’s “A Serious Man,” but structuring my thoughts around a paradigm such as that seems folly at this stage.  I need to see it again — and will certainly do so many more times — before any sort of authoritative personal take will begin to surface.  But a few things stand out that are worth conveying.

    In my view, it is the finest Coen film since “Fargo” and, perhaps, since “Barton Fink.”  It is without question the siblings’ most personal film to date, an exploration of the “What does it all mean?” thoughts that plague each of us on a daily basis.  (The repetition of the line, “What’s going on?,” is by no means incidental.)

    However, despite the film’s heavy dosage of the particulars of the Jewish faith, it is also curiously universal.  After all, I don’t know from Hashem, but the film affected me deeply, it’s themes and ideas resonating from start to finish.

    The film is beautifully abstract, making the impact of its thought-provoking ideas all the more profound.  It features a central performance that could seem merely capbale at first notice, but has a certain refined quality the more one considers it.  And there is a remarkable rhythm to the film, a reminder of the Coens’ brilliance at orchestration and craft.

    That’s all I’ll say for now.  “A Serious Man” is a work of art, plain and simple.  I’m smitten.

  • Previewing the 34th annual Toronto fest

    TorontoIn less than a week I will kiss my wife and kids goodbye and head into Toronto, about 50 miles away, for this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Twelve years ago my wife and I found it makes no sense for me to attend the festival for 16 to 18 hours and then try to drive home; beyond the danger of driving exhausted, arriving home at three in the morning tends to wake them up because our stupid, stupid dog begins barking the moment anyone pulls into the driveway. So for 10 days I live in the Delta Chelsea Hotel on Gerrard Street.

    This year I am finding leaving for the festival easier. Last year my wife Sherri was diagnosed with brain cancer and dealt with the removal of part of a considerable brain tumor. We went through radiation last summer, the loss of her beautiful, lush red hair, and the constant exhaustion she had to deal with. Cancer, sadly, is a family affair, and not something anyone should go through alone.  But this year we are in a good place.  The monster seems to be at bay, for now.

    So what I am looking forward to seeing?  Well first let me state that I’m shocked “Where the Wild Things Are,” “Amelia” and a handful of other films are not here. They seemed like good fits for the festival, their filmmakers have been here before, etc.  That said, it looks like one of the best festivals in recent memory, though I am not sure anything will ever beat out 2007, which presented a bounty of great pictures.  I was leaving screening room after screening room giddy.

    This year looks like a challenge for even the toughest film fester. Choosing the films to see is the toughest part because there is no chance you’ll see everything you want to see. There are generally three of four press/industry screenings at the Varsity, Cumberland or new AMC Theatres, as well as the public screenings which the press have limited access to. Our press pass allows us access to six (I think) Gala performances in the evening, but they sell out quickly. There is also a DVD library where you can watch the films in the rooms provided on your own, but films are meant to be seen on the big screen.

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  • 9/2 Web Round-up

    Michael Stuhlbarg in A Serious Man• “A Serious Man,” a glossary. [Focus Features]

    • Peter Knegt writes up 10 things the fall fests could tell us about the awards season. [indieWIRE]

    • Julian Fellowes talks Robert Altman eight years after “Gosford Park,” bringing back memories (old school Oscar Central readers know). [The Wrap]

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Take a deep breath…

    George Clooney in Up in the AirThe calm before the storm is beginning to subside.  Can you sense it?

    By the end of the week, the Venice and Telluride fests will be underway.  A week later, Toronto will weigh in.  When the smoke settles in roughly three weeks, the season will suddenly be a lot clearer…and yet so much of it will remain a mystery as latter year hopefuls limp (or stomp) into the fray in November and December.

    Yes, the season is upon us.  And while studios continue to think over the true value of Oscar notices, especially in a widened playing field, business marches on as usual.  Venice will tell the tale for efforts like “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” “The Informant!,” and “Capitalism: A Love Story,” while Telluride could make or break the hopes of films such as “The Road” and “Up in the Air.”

    Some overlap will go down in Toronto, but the most anticipated first-look there will likely be the Coen brothers’ “A Serious Man.”  Meanwhile, distributors might be looking to beef up their schedules with films like “Creation” and “Leaves of Grass” looking for buyers.  But for those with ponies primed and ready, these festivals are very much the starting gun for awards runs, as ever.

    So before the madness ensues, we get one more stab in the dark.  But given the perceived road ahead, it seems to me that films with a healthy pre-season awards profile going into the fall are in pretty good shape as it is.

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  • Richard Kind in ‘A Serious Man’

    Richard Kind in A Serious Man

    More photos from upcoming Oscar season contenders, including “Up in the Air,” “The Lovely Bones” and “The Informant!” at MTV.

  • ‘A Serious Man’ gets a serious poster

    And, in its deliberately, obtusely mundane glory, it’s as starkly unsettling as the terrific trailer we saw last week. I absolutely love the marketing approach Focus have taken with this one, giving away as little as humanly possible.

    In fact, the film seems to get more tauntingly unreadable the closer we get to it. Is it a tortured “Barton Fink” jump down the rabbit-hole? A simple “Burn After Reading” goof-off? A terse “No Country” exercise in economy? All three? I have no idea. I love that, in this age of 8-minute online snippets and trailers that play like complete CliffsNotes for the time-strapped viewer, I know next to nothing about a major release for a change.

    A Serious Man

    [Source: IMP Awards]

  • OFF THE CARPET: Whittling further as convention flees

    Max Records in Where the Wild Things AreAnother month, another step closer to the awards season.  As the summer winds down and the industry slowly begins to square itself with the off-season’s bombshell Oscar news, the picture becomes a little clearer.  Kind of.

    Universal Pictures, in a move speculated upon endlessly by now, shuffled two of its contenders — Paul Greengrass’s “Green Zone” and Joe Johnston’s “The Wolf Man” — off to 2010.  As Anne Thompson shrewdly noted in a recent item, the decision likely has everything to do with a numbers game.  The studio has experienced a rocky two quarters this year and things aren’t necessarily looking up.  Some think, in the case of “The Wolf Man,” the shift was made to avoid another box office misfire in 2009 (as by now, with push after push, the film is beginning to smell fishy).  Others say the “Green Zone” shift had a lot to do with “The Hurt Locker”‘s release pattern.

    Whatever the case, the evacuations change the Oscar landscape ever so slightly, giving us just a few more talking points in the vacuum of August before we have anything of value worth discussing when the fall festival season hits in less than a month’s time.

    Universal is now left with two critically divisive, commercially dubious titles in Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies” and Judd Apatow’s “Funny People” to hawk for awards consideration, effectively (if you’re asking me, though I realize no one is) taking the studio out of the game this year — or, at the very least, making the hill steeper.

    But taking note of the studio awards landscape, it doesn’t seem to me that anyone else is on surer ground.  As I look out at the many contenders and the campaigns being prepared for them, it appears the entire industry will be dealing with unconventional approaches and product to go along with the new changes in the Best Picture category (and all the headache that comes with them) this season.

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  • ‘A Serious Man’ trailer

    It’s seldom these days that you get a trailer constructed with such care and wit — this does a bang-up job of sharply conveying tone and essence, while leaving the gift-wrap on the plot for a change. As for the film, I’m sensing a hybrid of the sober bleakness and self-reflexive zaniness that (respectively) characterized the Coens’ last two features. Intriguing.

  • Herzog, Moore, Coens plan a stop at TIFF

    Capitalism: A Love StorySome exciting announcements out of Toronto today (still no “Road”).  The festival is shaping up to be very, very cool this year.

    The film I am most excited about, announced today, is Werner Herzog’s remake “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” with Nicolas Cage in the role that Harvey Keitel made legendary. No in between with this one; they either nailed it or blew it.

    Drew Barrymore will bring her directorial debut here, the roller derby flick “Whip It,” with Ellen Page.  That brings back memories of Saturday afternoons with my grandparents watching roller derby. Barrymore made a startling impact in “Grey Gardens” on HBO earlier this year and hopes are high for this one.

    The Coen brothers are back with “A Serious Man,” as is Michael Moore with “Capitalism: A Love Story,” his latest documentary that will take viewers into the financial brain centers of America.

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  • Could Focus be priming ‘Boat’ for Oscar?

    Rhys Ifans in The Boat That RockedVariety’s Pamela McClintock and Ali Jafaar are reporting tonight that Focus Features will distribute Richard Curtis’s “The Boat That Rocked,” rather than parent Universal, and instead of the originally planned August 28 release date, the studio has pushed it to November, right in the middle of the Oscar season.

    The article notes the fact that Focus is “more adept at marketing less commercial fare” as reason behind the move, but it also notes “Focus prexy James Schamus said his team is working with Curtis to trim about 20 minutes from the film, which originally ran 129 minutes. A chief complaint from critics was the film’s length.”

    You’ll recall, the film took a pretty big critical shellacking upon release in the UK in the spring.  It also failed to light up the international box office, pulling in, as McClintock and Jafaar note, a mere $25.1 million against a $50 million budget.  But while everything is certainly a business maneuver in this industry, one can’t help but wonder whether Focus is thinking, with a thin Oscar slate going into the fall (though animated feature “Coraline” is sure to pop up in the animated field), “Boat” could be whipped into an awards contender.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Handicapping 2009 a year in advance!?

    Ewan McGregor and Hilary Swank in AmeliaAhh.  The dust is settling.  And on the horizon, just visible through the mist and waiting to drive us all up the wall once again: the 2009 Oscar season.

    I’ve been writing this year-in-advance column for probably six years now, and I always look forward to gazing ahead.  No one dives in so pathetically deep this far out as yours truly, but in exchange for not having a life for the past few months, I get to unload this burden the day after our annual season’s peak and forget about little gold men entirely for a few months.

    It’s quite liberating.

    The most interesting thing about the season to come, from my vantage point, is the lack of a dreaded “frontrunner status” for any of the contenders.  Some might say Clint Eastwood’s Nelson Mandela project (which is not called “The Human Factor,” mind you — the director says the film is currently untitled and is based on John Carlin’s book “Playing the Enemy”).

    Others might say Rob Marshall’s “Nine” (coming from a money-tight company hoping to avoid echoes of “Memoirs of a Geisha”).  But I don’t see a “Geisha” from here, or a “Charlie Wilson’s War,” expected heavies waiting to miss the mark.  The field is curiously flat, and as a result, excitingly broad.

    Let’s get to it, shall we?

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