• Melissa Silverstein on female dominance in the documentary shorts field. [Women and Hollywood]
• Turns out Clint Eastwood filmed an early, unpolished draft of Peter Morgan’s “Hereafter.” Well…it shows. [Vulture]
• Speaking of which, David Cohen spotlights the impact of digital wizardry on that story-driven film as well as Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan.” [Variety]
• On the hunt for “Catfish”‘s Angela Wesselman-Pierce. [Los Angeles Times]
• Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes write up the beginnings of the season (with a little quotage from yours truly). [New York Times]
• Scott Feinberg makes the case for both Annette Bening and Julianne Moore getting nominated for “The Kids Are All Right.” [ScottFeinberg.com]
The press release, in part:
The 14th Annual Hollywood Film Festival and Hollywood Awards, presented by Starz, are pleased to announce that Academy Award-nominated actress Annette Bening will be honored with the “Hollywood Actress Award” and Oscar-winning actor Robert Duvall will receive the “Hollywood Actor Award” at the festival’s Hollywood Awards Gala Ceremony.
“It is a privilege to honor and to celebrate Annette Bening’s and Robert Duvall’s extraordinary talent as well as remarkable work and to recognize their outstanding acting achievements,” said Carlos de Abreu, Founder of the Hollywood Awards Gala.
The gala ceremony will take place at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills on October 25, 2010.
Once again, the full list honorees thus far after the jump.
With a raft of glowing reviews — for those who place stock in such things, its Metacritic score is currently an enviable 86 — and reportedly robust box office returns, it’s fair to call “The Kids Are All Right” the first all-purpose Oscar contender of 2010. So it is with a measure of indignation that some of you have emailed me to ask why we haven’t reviewed it yet.
I forgive you, folks: February was a long time ago. For those of you who missed it, or weren’t with us back in the winter months, my full-length review of the film from the Berlinale can be found here. And yes, I like it:
A spry, sun-bleached and often rather sexy study of what makes a family in modern America, “The Kids Are All Right” breezes by so pleasurably it’s easy to forget what a daring and very necessary film it is. Gift-wrapping its smart sexual politics with kicky dialogue, bright visuals and a pleasingly messy tangle of relationships, Los Angeles-born auteur Lisa Cholodenko’s fourth (and finest) feature is her most mainstream to date, but makes a virtue of those concessions.
Even in the most evenly matched and mutually dependent of ensembles, it seems, some will always be deemed more equal than others. So it is with this summer’s great white indie hope, “The Kids Are All Right.” Since the film bowed at Sundance in January, all its players have been warmly received by critics — but it was Annette Bening, as the more authoritative half of a middle-aged lesbian couple, who initially emerged as the consensus standout and likely awards player.
That’s understandable in many respects. It’s a fine performance, and arguably the film’s most surprising: Bening can be a divisively mannered actor, but this is the loosest and most spontaneous she’s yet let allowed herself to be on screen. It doesn’t hurt that, between the film’s adult characters, hers perhaps tests audience sympathies the least.
But in what is plainly a two-lead film at the very least — for my money, there’s a convincing case to be made for Mark Ruffalo’s intruding third parent as a leading player — people shouldn’t be so hasty to hand out best-in-show ribbons.
As you know, I’m a big fan of this Focus summer release, which puts a neat mainstream spin on progressive sexual politics, and boasts Julianne Moore’s best performance in eight years to boot. It’s interesting (and, I think, appropriate) to see this trailer putting the film’s comedic properties front-and-center rather than going for the highbrow Oscar grab — some viewers might find themselves surprised by how artful and moving it is. It hits screens on July 7; read my Berlin review here.
Berlin International Film Festival
A spry, sun-bleached and often rather sexy study of what makes a family in modern America, “The Kids Are All Right” breezes by so pleasurably it’s easy to forget what a daring and very necessary film it is. Gift-wrapping its smart sexual politics with kicky dialogue, bright visuals and a pleasingly messy tangle of relationships, Los Angeles-born auteur Lisa Cholodenko’s fourth (and finest) feature is her most mainstream to date, but makes a virtue of those concessions.
Since its deservedly buzzy Sundance premiere, you’ve probably already heard “The Kids Are All Right” described ad nauseum as a lesbian – or perhaps more coyly, liberal – drama. With the film having been adopted by Focus Features, who recently had success with “Brokeback Mountain” and “Milk,” it seems likely the tag will stick, particularly if award season beckons.
But such a label, however well-intentioned, does a disservice to Cholodenko’s admirable avoidance of social tract. Rather than hectoring its audience to accept its characters as normal, this film goes one better by doing just that, and not commenting on the matter any further.
1999 was a strange year. And it’s hard to believe a full decade has slipped past since. There were some great award-winning performances, to be sure, but there seemed to be just as many not nominated that certainly should have been.
Ten years later, I remain stunned that Reese Witherspoon was not nominated for her brilliant work in “Election” as a pathologically ambitious, grasping social climber student doing anything it takes to head up the student council in Alexander Payne’s astute and black comedy.
Witherspoon won the National Society of Film Critics award for Best Actress, besting eventual Oscar, LAFCA and NYFCC champ Hilary Swank in “Boys Don’t Cry.” What made Witherspoon’s work so incredible was that we all must have known a Tracy Flick during our high school days, and the actress created such an accurate depiction.
Swank was a most deserving winner for her superb performance, winning over nominees, Annette Bening in “American Beauty,” Janet McTeer in “Tumbleweeds,” Julianne Moore in “The End of the Affiar” and Meryl Streep in “Music of the Heart” (perhaps the perennial Oscar favorite’s least accomplished nominated performance).
Bening’s performance was brilliant, she won the Screen Actors Guild award for it, and though there seemed to be a swell of support for her as Oscar night approached, there was no denying Swank for her career-altering work.
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.
One of the surprises of the TIFF coverage I’ve read so far has been the notably enthusiastic reception for Rodrigo Garcia’s “Mother and Child.” It’s a film I confess hadn’t been on my radar at all until now, despite my high regard for Garcia’s quiet, character-oriented work in film and especially television.
“Mother and Child” seems to further carve his cinematic niche of tasteful, female-focused ensemble dramas, so I was expecting the same kind of warm, if slightly reserved, critical reaction that greeted “Nine Lives” and his underrated debut “Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her,” but so far, “Mother and Child” seems to be aiming higher than that.
Jeff Wells was eager to be first on Monday, gushing that it was “a super-sensitive, perfectly acted and exquisitely written adult drama” and “a Best Picture contender — guaranteed, hands down, take it to the bank.” He then rather spoiled his own party by later admitting that he’d skipped the film’s last half-hour, which he later found wanting — but still generally stands by the film.