Nathaniel Rogers is having a bit of fun with marketers in charge of Angelina Jolie’s mug this year. He’s also cooked up a Google map for your foreign film Oscar-watching pleasure.
Tag: Angelina Jolie
-
Let’s hear it for the ladies!
Wow, what a damn fine year for lead actress performances. When was the last time you heard anyone say that?I caught some flack recently when I took Meryl Streep off my predicted five nominees in the category. “How can the Goddess miss?” Well, she can, and she has, but regardless, the point is that there is some really stiff competition this year for the leading ladies, and man, that’s exciting (and unique)!
Sally Hawkins (“Happy-Go-Lucky”), Charlize Theron (“The Burning Plain”), Kristin Scott-Thomas (“I’ve Loved You So Long”), Angelina Jolie (“Changeling”), Penélope Cruz (“Elegy”), Melissa Leo (“Frozen River”) and Michelle Williams (“Wendy and Lucy”) represent the seen and raved performances. Anne Hathaway’s work has also been viewed, but we’ll get to that at the end of the week. Rest assured, she’ll have her fans as well.
On the horizon we’ll have Nicole Kidman (“Australia”) and the aforementioned Streep (“Doubt) in big Oscar hopefuls, not to mention Kate Winslet’s double dip in “The Reader” and “Revolutionary Road” (which ought to make home life interesting for the five-time nominee around campaign time).
There are still fringe possibilities for Keira Knightley in “The Duchess” or Emily Blunt in “The Young Victoria,” while Laura Linney could add an Oscar nod to her Emmy success if “The Other Man” finds a distributor in Toronto.
There’s always Julianne Moore lurking with her work in “Blindness” should the mixed reaction from Cannes prove to be a different story in Toronto, and Kate Beckinsale, by the way, is fantastic in Rod Lurie’s “Nothing But the Truth,” so who knows?
So let’s not get our panties in a twist over shifting and sliding in this category over the next few months. I don’t need consistent emails asking “Why did you take so and so out of your Best Actress chart,” because the fact of the matter is, there are a lot of horses in this particular race.
Which is what we want, right?
-
‘Che’ and ‘Porno’ among 20 new films announced for Toronto
John hasn’t addressed this yet, so I’ll put it out there…Variety’s Anne Thompson is reporting on 20 new films added to the line-up of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Following suit with yesterday’s New York fest news, Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” (listed as “Part One” and “Part Two” for Toronto) will make the trip up north.
Other special presentations of note include Rian Johnson’s “The Brothers Bloom,” Richard Linklater’s “Me and Orson Welles,” Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire,” Kevin Smith’s controversial “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” Guillermo Arriaga’s “The Burning Plain” (could be Oscar bait for actress Charlize Theron), Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” and Marc Abraham’s “Flash of Genius” (which could be an awards vehicle for Greg Kinnear).
The big news, however, seems to be that Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling” will not be heading to the fest. Here’s Thompson on that front:
Clint Eastwood’s Cannes Fest entry “Changeling,” which will be the centerpiece of the New York Film Festival, will not be at Toronto because there was uncertainty about new mother Angelina Jolie’s availability to participate in a gala premiere. “We would have loved to have had Clint Eastwood,” said Bailey, “but the only way to present the movie in a big way was as a gala with Eastwood and Jolie.”
Basically, the Toronto crew can’t star-fuck, so they’d rather not show it. Gotcha.
Anyway, read all about the new additions here. The full line-up will be unveiled next Tuesday.
-
Melissa Leo: could she be a frontrunner?
So far, 2008 hasn’t presented a surfeit of cast-iron Best Actress contenders. (Consider that by this time last year, we all knew Marion Cotillard and Julie Christie were locks.)Angelina Jolie seems to have been installed as the de facto frontrunner since Cannes, but I’m not really buying it – her performance has some high-profile detractors, and I’m not sure many people feel she’s earned entry into the double-champ club. Sally Hawkins would be in if I had my way, but as Kris has pointed out, the performance can be divisive. For the rest, we only have unseen prospects to contemplate.
Into this blurry picture comes 47 year-old character actress Melissa Leo, playing a broke single mother who gets involved in illegal immigrant trafficking in zero-budget Sundance champ “Frozen River.” She is currently riding a wave of unanimous critical adulation that is swiftly translating into Oscar buzz. Over at Awards Daily, Sasha Stone has been supporting her enthusiastically, bluntly stating:
The great Melissa Leo … is going to be among those left standing by the year’s end if anyone with half a brain is paying attention. Her performance WILL stand out among the performances of this year, male or female.
This is no blogosphere conjecture either: Leo is getting significant press coverage, most notably a major profile in the New York Times, which notes the “thrill” of watching Leo get “enough room to explore one of the complicated, surprising women she’s so good at sketching in smaller roles.”
-
The Guardian fires the starting gun
No particularly new insights to be gleaned from this, but when a Limey paper declares awards season to be officially on, you know it’s here.Guardian writer Jeremy Kay glosses over the upcoming Venice and Toronto festivals, picking out some awards potential from the lineup. He begins by trumpeting the Best Actor chances of Mickey Rourke, rumoured to give a “standout performance” in Darren Aronofsky’s surprise entry “The Wrestler,” which I discussed yesterday. Elsewhere, however, Kay finds little to chew on in the lean American lineup:
The Venice lineup of US entries is skimpy this year because the writers strike in the first quarter slowed down production. As a result the studios are holding back some of their big guns until later in the year because otherwise, well, they wouldn’t have much to get excited about come November and December. Mueller and his team previously announced that the Coen brothers’ dark CIA comedy Burn After Reading will open the event and, while an Oscar win for a comedy is about as unlikely as a snowstorm in July, it would take a brave pundit to bet against Joel and Ethan, who won three statuettes for No Country For Old Men back in February.
Well, it’s a theory. Meanwhile, I’m quite confident to bet against the Coens – the Academy rarely feels obliged to reward newly-crowned directors for their follow-up efforts. (Just ask any number of recent winners: Sam Mendes, Ron Howard, Peter Jackson, Ang Lee… ) And “Burn After Reading” doesn’t exactly look like Oscar fodder. (Of course, neither, in a different way, did “No Country for Old Men.” Who knows what these guys like anymore?)
-
A bit of perspective
A day after its Cannes premiere, more “Changeling” reviews are coming through, and while the general feeling towards the film is still positive, some high-profile dissenters are emerging. The inestimable Manohla Dargis at The New York Times, usually an Eastwood die-hard, is surprisingly agnostic on the film, particularly with regard to Jolie’s performance:
Despite Ms. Jolie’s hard work and Mr. Eastwood’s scrupulous attention, the difficult, fairly one-dimensional character fails to take hold. For much of the film, Christine weeps and pleads, begging the police for help and fending off disbelievers. She clings to hope, the problem being that Ms. Jolie, whose off-screen role as Angelina Jolie is so much more vivid and all-consuming than the parts she now plays on screen, this one included, does not come across as a clinger or a whiner or a pleader or even much of a waterworks. Like Joan Crawford, Ms. Jolie seems capable now of only playing variations on herself, which is why she was more persuasive holding back her tears as a steely Mariane Pearl in “A Mighty Heart.”
On this side of the ocean, meanwhile, The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw is distinctly underwhelmed, declaring the film “long, self-conscious and cumbersome.” He goes on to say:
The film’s heart is very obviously in the right place, but it is trying to be so many things at once: family drama, cop-corruption thriller, child-snatcher nightmare – and, for Jolie, another flight over the cuckoo’s nest, only this time with far more queenly dignity than in Girl, Interrupted. Accompanied with a syrupy musical score to cushion the dramatic blows (and to ensure that the audience isn’t too horrified or upset too early on) this over-long film fails to convey – is in fact afraid of conveying – the real horror of child loss.
Finally, Jeff Wells has posted his verdict, and while he joins the yea-sayers, he ultimately deems it “not a great film, but a very fine one.”
Make no mistake, “Changeling” still sounds like a helluva contender, but it’s useful to get some balance of opinion. The industry adores Eastwood, which explains the trade papers’ lyrical reviews; but that doesn’t always make for critical consensus. With another 2008 release still on the cards for Clint, it anyone’s guess how the man’s awards season will play out. He sure keeps the game interesting.
As for the whole title issue, there still appears to be confusion – even Eastwood doesn’t know what it’s called. I say they should take a cue from Awards Daily, retitle it “The Changelina,” and stick with it.
-
Cannes update: Eastwood scores…again
Well, I’m pleased to report that my initial doubts about Clint Eastwood’s latest, “Changeling,” were obviously unfounded.His Angelina Jolie-starrer, based on a true story about a child’s kidnapping in 1920s Los Angeles, premiered this morning at Cannes, and, judging from the reviews so far, the man’s impeccable recent run of form hasn’t hit a snag yet. (Incidentally, both Jeff Wells and Screen Daily report that the film has been retitled “The Exchange,” a far less intriguing title, in my opinion. However, some trade papers are still going by the original title in the reviews, so I’m sticking with that for now.)
Clearly, however, the film’s a stunner by any name. Todd McCarthy’s rave for Variety puts it thus:
A thematic companion piece to “Mystic River,” but more complex and far-reaching, “Changeling” impressively continues Clint Eastwood’s great run of ambitious late-career pictures … Graced by a top-notch performance from Angelina Jolie, the Universal release looks poised to do some serious business upon tentatively scheduled opening late in the year.
McCarthy also puts to rest the rumours that film was a foray into hysterical genre territory, which I admit had me concerned for its awards prospects:
Fears that the story is now destined to veer off into “The Snake Pit” or, given Jolie’s presence, “Girl, Interrupted” looney-bin horrors prove largely unfounded, despite a couple of brief electroshock scenes. Rather, this is where the picture really spreads its wings, as ramifications of this tragic but unexceptional case seep through the police department, the legal system, the medical establishment and City Hall in entirely unexpected ways.
The word on the other side of the Atlantic is just as hot. In his Screen Daily review, Mike Goodridge minces no words abouts the film’s quality or its prospects:
Beautifully produced and guided by Eastwood’s elegant, unostentatious hand, it also boasts a career-best performance by Angelina Jolie who has never been this compelling. Like “Mystic River” in 2003, it should go all the way from the Palais to the Academy Awards next March.
-
Cannes arrivals: ‘Blindness’ set to bow
Wow, that seemed to sneak up on us quickly. The 61st annual Cannes Film Festival kicks off today, with Fernando Meirelles’ hotly anticipated “Blindness” opening the proceedings tonight.Pete Hammond at The Envelope has a neat round-up of the Cannes arrivals, with an emphasis on the Oscar prospects of the American films in competition. (Although, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the world cinema lineup this year is equally, if not more, mouthwatering.)
Hammond does take care to point out to the awards-watchers out there that Cannes glory and Oscar victory don’t often go hand in hand, however:
This year, particularly with the talent involved, there is lots of speculation about Oscar potential for new Cannes entries from past academy nominees and winners like Fernando Meirelles, Atom Egoyan, Charlie Kaufman, Walter Salles, Steven Soderbergh, Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen and others, although the sad fact remains that since it won, no film other than “Marty” has gone on to win the best picture Oscar after also nabbing the Palme d’Or — and that was in 1955!
Several Palme D’Or victors over the years, like “Friendly Persuasion,” “MASH,” “The Conversation,” “Taxi Driver,” “Apocalypse Now,” “All That Jazz,” “The Piano” and “Pulp Fiction” did go on to best picture nominations.
Roman Polanski’s 2002 Cannes winner “The Pianist” probably came closest, taking the academy’s director, actor and screenplay awards before what we imagine had to be the narrowest of losses to “Chicago” in the big category.
All true, of course, but still – it’s been a while since the Cannes slate featured this many Oscar darlings in the official competition. And they don’t come any more Academy-beloved than the venerable Clint Eastwood, whose “Changeling,” starring Angelina Jolie, is one of the Cannes titles generating the most buzz from the awards-geek set. I remain less excited about the film than others, but one cannot overestimate the amount of industry goodwill out there towards Eastwood (and indeed Jolie, whom many feel was unfairly snubbed by the Academy for “A Mighty Heart” – though I thought that was one of their smarter calls, personally.)
-
OFF THE CARPET: 2008, a year in advance
Another year, another set of wins…and another look ahead at what’s in store NEXT year.It’s never too late to take a long gander at what we might see dominating the film awards landscape in 365 days, and with that in mind, I’ve been doing my usual mulling over the possibilities for a few weeks to put together the sadly thorough examination of the 2008-09 award season that follows. Let’s get into it. There are some major considerations to take into account. right off the top.
Like Leonardo DiCaprio, for instance, who is set to be the entertainer of the year. With performances in “Body of Lies” (Ridley Scott) and “Revolutionary Road” (Sam Mendes), DiCaprio is working with a duo of awards-proven talent this year. Perhaps that will work against him, much like it did in 2006, and no major Oscar success will come knocking. But we’ll wait until we see the performances. Each of them could be enticing.
This year’s Best Picture Oscar victor Scott Rudin is back again, by the way, with “Revolutionary Road,” recently inherited by Paramount Vantage and probably one of the true “frontrunners” this far out that we could put our finger on. The only other film in Vantage’s arsenal is Edward Zwick’s “Defiance,” which could simply be a commercial success, but might find its way to multiple nods like “The Last Samurai” and “Blood Diamond” in recent years.