• Anne Thompson talks with “The Way Back” director Peter Weir. [Thompson on Hollywood]
• Nathaniel Rogers charts Oscar’s age preferences. [The Film Experience]
• Melinda Newman sits down with “True Grit” and “TRON Legacy” star Jeff Bridges. [Awards Campaign]
• 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]
About a year ago I took to examining the 2009 Best Actor race. The frontrunners for five slots seemed to be, in order, George Clooney, Colin Firth, Jeremy Renner, Morgan Freeman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Viggo Mortensen and Robert De Niro.
A day later press members received their first invites to “Crazy Heart” screenings and were notified that the film would be released in 2009. Jeff Bridges hit the ground running and never let off the gas until he was past the finish line.
A year earlier we were looking at a pair of politico-biopic portrayals, either one of which would make a handsome winner: Frank Langella and Sean Penn. But we were fairly sure the latter would be on his way to the podium one more time.
But soon after, Mickey Rourke’s festival buzz caught serious fire and forged an atmosphere of doubt. The season’s narrative seemed to be changing, and yet the early buzz carried through and brought Penn his Oscar.
So that’s two drastically different directions – in as many years – that a lead actor race can take. Given the mid-October fulcrum shared here, let’s consider our perspective on the Best Actor category right now.
Welcome 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.
This week we’re happy to be joined by In Contention’s own Guy Lodge and indieWIRE‘s Peter Knegt, both calling from London where the London Film Festival has just kicked off. Plenty to chew on with four voices on the mic so let’s see what’s on the docket…
Last week we got our first look at the striking poster for Andrew Jarecki’s “All Good Things.” Today we’re treated to a VERY well-assembled trailer that should help get people to see the film. Unfortunately it’s all in service of a total misfire, but, well, I’ll save that for tomorrow’s Oscar Talk. Check out the trailer via Apple by clicking the image below or watch an embed after the jump.
Andrew Jarecki’s “All Good Things” has been patiently waiting a release for quite a while now. I heard some great things about Kirsten Dunst last year but all eyes may be on Ryan Gosling (who is also pitch-perfect in “Blue Valentine,” which I finally saw last night — more later). I’ll be seeing Jarecki’s film next week, but today we get a look at the poster courtesy of Vulture. Check out the full image after the jump.
Welcome 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.
There’s a lot on the plate today as we dive headlong into the madness one more time. Summer is giving way to fall (though a check of the weather wouldn’t make you guess as much), and with it, the first major stage of the long haul: festival season. Let’s see what’s on the docket today…
This announcement has been imminent for a couple of weeks now, but I guess the i’s (and lowercase j’s) and t’s are finally crossed and dotted.
Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful” will be distributed by Roadside Attractions and Liddell Entertainmnet. Roadside also has indie “Winter’s Bone” in the mix this year and got its awards season feet wet for the first time last year with “The Cove.” There will, I imagine, be a considerable push for Javier Bardem in the lead actor race.
The film was generally well received, but while there were rabid advocates, there were also a fair share of detractors, making for a tale of two movies. Our own Guy Lodge called it “an effortfully solemn amalgamation of personal crises and social concerns” that “paints from too limited an emotional palette for its high-stakes story of parental duty, in the face of hovering mortality, to hit home the way it should.”
The film will play the fall festival circuit. I’ll have a look then.
Ahh. 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?