In Contention

Tag: Australia

  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Sound Mixing — Volume One

    Tech Support at In Contention“Wait a minute, wait a minute.  You ain’t heard nothing yet!”

    Those words from Al Jolson forever changed filmmaking in 1927, ushering in “talkies” and bringing about the beginning of the end of the silent film era.

    The Academy Award for sound mixing recognizes the artists who fashion a film’s audio side.  It must be distinguished from Best Sound Editing, which is the integration of artificially created sound effects into the mix.  Mixing is the blending of those effects, along with dialogue, music and any other noise captured during filming.  The Oscar awards the sound re-recording mixers in this category, who do the blending, as well as the production sound mixer, who captures the sounds on the set.

    Blockbusters, action flicks, war films and musicals usually do particularly well in this category, given the extent to which the sound tends to draw attention to itself in these sorts of films.  It’s somewhat difficult to project the category this far in advance, however, as the sound mixers for many of the films are difficult to pinpoint; mixing is one of the last tasks done on a film.  But that’s not going to stop me from trying to handicap potential contenders!

    Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man” is the sort of film that has virtually everything this branch normally goes for.  The film is filled with action and high-profile sound work.  Plus, it kicked off the summer blockbuster season with not only lots of dough for producers, but also lots of raves from critics.  Veteran Oscar winner Christopher Boyes is in charge of this crew.  I’d say a nomination is quite likely.

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  • ‘Set to Screen’ series at Apple spotlights ‘Australia’ techs

    This is actually quite amazing, and take it from those of us who’ve been covering the tech categories for years, it’s refreshing to see a major outlet paying attention as well.

    It seems Apple has started a new series called “Set to Screen,” which focuses on the various behind-the-scenes design elements of a given film.  “Australia” is the first subject, with detailed looks at on-set still photography, production and costume design, location shooting, cinematography and sound recording.  Podcasts about music composition and sound recording are still outstanding, with a “coming in September” notation.  I also assume the music playing over the various clips are snippets of David Hirschfelder’s work, but I’m just guessing.  Sounds lovely.

    Check it all out at Apple.  The clips are on YouTube as well, but I figured the best example would be the cinematography spotlight, where we finally get to meet Ms. Mandy Walker:

    I think it’s obvious by now that this film, regardless of major category potential, will be the tech giant of the year.

  • New ‘Australia’ trailer

    I decided to wait on posting this until it landed on YouTube or some other embeddable format.

    I’ve been hearing some good things about Hugh Jackman’s performance all along, but for some reason, he’s never cracked my Best Actor chart.  It’s a crowded field, but anyway, this is a great trailer.  I’m a Baz supporter through and through, and I’ve been told this isn’t the straight-up epic it appears to be from the materials released so far.  It isn’t Baz restraining his vision for the sake of a style of film he hasn’t tackled yet; it is very much a “Baz Luhrmann film,” so to speak, with his panache and sense of humor tossed in throughout.

    Have a look:

  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Cinematography — Volume One

    Tech Support at In ContentionToday we begin our in-depth looks at the individual crafts categories.  I’m a sucker for starting with my favorite: Best Cinematography.

    The art of film is reliant on the motion picture camera and those men and women who lend their talents behind the lens.  The Director of Photography is in charge of charge of capturing the director’s vision on film, not only by ensuring mood through lighting, thematic comment through juxtaposition, etc.  This work has to be done in tandem with the director, which makes it not surprising that many cinematographers and directors work together frequently.

    This category tends to award “pretty” films.  Big epics and gorgeous landscapes frequent the nominated five each year, as do war films and anything generally considered a labored task in this department.  That is not to say such efforts have a monopoly on this category –- just that they are especially apt to be nominated.

    Last year it was sad to see Roger Deakins lose for the sixth and seventh times on the same evening. I cannot deny that Robert Elswit -– a longtime favorite of mine –- was an excellent choice for “There Will Be Blood,” but the great Deakins is once again searching for his first statuette!  He will be back in contention this year, lensing Sam Mendes’ “Revolutionary Road.” This film clearly has Oscar in its sights.  While I still remain skeptical on how it will be received overall, Deakins will almost certainly be in contention should the film deliver in the slightest.

    Deakins will also be lensing “Doubt” this year, which also has the potential to be a major awards player.  Though I’m doubtful (no pun intended) about its chances in this category.

    In what would be a historic nomination, Mandy Walker will likely be in contention for Baz Luhrmann’s “Australia.”  She would be the first ever woman nominated in this category.  Yes, that’s right.  No woman has ever been nominated for Best Cinematography in 80 years of Academy history.  Lurhmann’s films are always visually spectacular and this effort in particular fits in perfectly with the sorts of epics usually nominated in this category.

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  • Best Original Screenplay: beyond the obvious

    Everyone has a favourite Oscar category, and Best Original Screenplay is mine. It’s partly because I’m a screenwriter myself, so I feel a little more invested in the outcome. My evaluation of the category often comes down to the question: “Which screenplay do I most wish I’d written first?”

    More importantly, however, it’s the category where the Academy takes its greatest artistic risks. With the Best Picture category generally weighted towards adaptations, they often use Best Original Screenplay as a way to acknowledge the edgier, more adventurous work that voters can see the greatness of, but don’t yet have the guts to honour with their biggest prize. Hell, once in a blue moon they even give it to (gasp) a foreign-language film.

    It’s this convenient ghettoising mentality that ensures the likes of “Citizen Kane,” “The Red Balloon,” “Chinatown,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Talk to Her” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” don’t go empty-handed. Sure, it sucks that they couldn’t win more. And, being the Academy, they make more than their share of screw-ups. (Let’s try and forget that, in 1960, “Pillow Talk” beat — wait for it — “Wild Strawberries,” “North by Northwest” and “The 400 Blows,” shall we?) But they occasionally hit on an otherwise-snubbed masterpiece, and for that we should be grateful.

    This year’s Best Picture slate appears to be heavy on prestige adaptations, allowing for a more idiosyncratic ragbag of contenders on the Original Screenplay front, mixing familiar Academy-anointed favourites with some exciting new voices.

    There is, of course, a chance this could be a year when the paths of the Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay races converge, principally in the shape of “Milk” scribe Dustin Lance Black. Already high hopes for “Milk” were amplified by an excellent trailer, and a number of Oscar clairvoyants are labelling it the front-runner in the top race. If this turns out to be the case, Black will likely benefit.

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  • Whoa!

    Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman in Australia

  • Baz Luhrmann on his “crushing ambition”

    I’ve already expressed my eagerness for Baz Luhrmann’s “Australia,” probably my single most anticipated film of the year. I was thoroughly enraptured by the trailer that had many others passing snide pre-judgments on the film. (Bizarrely, words like “corny” and “artificial” were frequently thrown up as pejoratives, indicating that the self-irony of Luhrmann’s previous work entirely escaped certain audiences.)

    Now my appetite has been further whetted by this lengthy profile of the film that appeared in today’s Sunday Times, in which Luhrmann and his stars make the scale of their ambition abundantly clear. And that ambition, to go by this quote from Nicole Kidman, is to create something as vast, iconic and quintessential as the title suggests:

    This is the last of a dying breed, this kind of movie. They don’t build stuff like this any more. To feel that air and see people ravaged by the elements, as hard as it is, it’s exquisite. I dreamt of making a film that had the passion and the weight of the films I grew up watching — Gone with the Wind, Doctor Zhivago. When Baz and I first started speaking about this, seven years ago, I said there needed to be a film about our land that speaks on a much broader scale.

    No pressure, then. Luhrmann, meanwhile, acknowledges the flak he will likely receive (already expressed by some readers on this site) for that bald, broad title, but his defence is both intelligent and mischievous:

    Why “Australia?” Well, first of all, to get people all uppity about it, so there’s a lot of comment. I think about films like Lawrence of Arabia, Out of Africa, Casablanca, Hawaii, by James A Michener: epics that use one word to describe a place. The film can’t be definitive about Australia, but ‘What does it mean?’ is not a bad place to start when you’re creating a story.” Sixty years ago, Casablanca meant “faraway, exotic.” I think even now, to the rest of the world, ‘Australia’ just means big, somewhat mysterious, somewhat misunderstood. This is a land far, far away. It has a sense of fairy tale about it.”

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  • Hollywood Awards get the craft races rolling

    I’ve never quite got a handle on what purpose the Hollywood Awards serve, since they frequently seem to honour achievements in still-unseen films. Their picks can be quite prescient (last year’s honorees included Marion Cotillard and Dante Ferretti), but they can frequently baffle too. (Based on “Charlie Wilson’s War,” did anyone really think that Stephen Goldblatt was the cinematographer of 2007?)

    However, following the announcement of this year’s craft honorees, I am pretty confident that we will see a couple of these names in the awards derby.

    A couple of months ago, I discussed the awards prospects of “Australia” DP Mandy Walker, so it’s nice to see she’s been named Cinematographer of the Year. The one thing that’s not in doubt about “Australia” is that it’s going to be a visual feast, so things are looking good for Walker to become the first female Best Cinematography nominee in Oscar history.

    Also on this site, Kris recently mused on the surprisingly poor Oscar record of Danny Elfman, one of the most distinctive composers in the business. He in turn has been named Composer of the Year. Elfman’s had a busy 2008, scoring “Wanted,” “Hellboy II: The Golden Army,” and Errol Morris doc “Standard Operating Procedure,” but it’s the heavily-buzzed “Milk” that could reverse his Academy fortunes.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Make way for the little guys…or not

    Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting MarriedIt may be Labor Day, but the work at hand is breathing down our necks. So it is that we come to the first weekly Oscar column of the new awards season.

    Though to be frank with you, I’m beginning to wonder whether we’ll be able to keep the conversation going, much less interesting on a weekly basis as we push through the last four months of the year. I knew going in to this year that it was going to be a somewhat low-key season, and my own worst fears have been founded in a number of pre-Toronto screenings of films that will be discussed in a week’s time, films leaving me cold, irritated or otherwise just unconvinced.

    I don’t sense a lull on the level of 2005 by any means, but I do get the feeling that after two solid years of cinematic goodness, 2008 could just be one of those “rebuilding” years, to steal a sports term and painfully attempt its application here. It’s interesting (and telling) that my two favorite films of the year are a stoner comedy and a superhero adaptation respectively (though the latter obviously has a legion of fans banking on major awards success…more on that later).

    The most intriguing component for me is the playground that Toronto will provide for a bevy of independent and genuinely smaller product. The heavy-hitters (or, at the very least, the presumed heavy-hitters) are incomplete and not prepared for fall fest unveiling (aside from “Frost/Nixon,” which has already been seen and seems to be riding a wave of confidence at Universal).

    But efforts like Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky,” Jonathan Demme’s “Rachel Getting Married,” Vicente Amorim’s “Good,” Guillermo Arriaga’s “The Burning Plain,” Rian Johnson’s “The Brothers Bloom,” Richard Eyre’s “The Other Man,” etc. — true indies with a fighting chance to turn some heads — won’t have to suffer in the shadows of big studio films angling for the press of an Oscar season starting gun.

    Meanwhile, Cannes entries such as Fernando Meirelles’s “Blindness,” Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York,” Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorrah” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” get an uninhibited second chance in front of festival audiences. Ditto Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling,” in the case of the New York fest.

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  • ‘Australia’ steps aside for Bond

    Jeff Wells reports that the release date for Baz Luhrmann’s vast period romance “Australia” has been pushed back from November 14 to November 26.

    Fair enough – I wouldn’t want to go up against “Quantum of Solace” either. Given that it seems to have become fashionable to beat up on “Australia,” sight unseen, there will no doubt be a lot of snarky speculation about what state the film is currently in – though seriously, there’s only so much that can be done in twelve days.

    As perhaps the only person on earth who loved that trailer, I remain resolutely optimistic. Luhrmann is quite possibly insane, but the world needs more of that.

  • New (ish) ‘Australia’ images

    This page of “Australia” images is a Movie City News exclusive, though at least two of the pics have been on the net in some form for a while (including the saucy rain shot that’s been sitting cropped on our buzz page for some time).  In any case, these look to be an initial set of teaser posters for the film:

    Australia posters

    I dig it.  The first shot of Hugh Jackman is the more fetching, though.  Fox is gearing up a major campaign for this film, which will likely have the full power of the studio behind it, what with Searchlight’s apparent off-year.  I’m looking forward to it, but with an odd sense of anxiety.

  • Has a woman ever been nominated for cinematography?

    In my research, for “Tech Support” (which will be starting in less than a month), I came across the question which finds itself in the title. My immediate reaction was that this is the only category (excluding male acting, obviously) where a woman has never succeeded in earning a nomination. I, of course, could do the research on this myself but if anyone knows, that would be great!

    If not, Mandy Walker could very well become the first this year for “Australia.” (EDIT: I notice Guy has already covered this in another post.)

    (Sorry to not be participating in all “The Dark Knight” posting but I don’t know what I can add to what’s already been said. While not flawless, Christopher Nolan has given us a true epic completely in his vision, full of top-notch performances by actors who know what they’re doing.)

  • Most anticipated of part two

    MGM\'s Quantum of SolaceLooking ahead to the second half of the year, there are more than a few films floating to the top of my list of anticipations.  Here’s what I’d call the top 10:

    1. “The Dark Knight” (hasn’t budged in six months)
    2.“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
    3. “House of Lies”
    4. “Quantum of Solace”
    5. “Appaloosa”
    6; “The Brothers Bloom”
    7. “Milk”
    8. “Australia”
    9. “Pineapple Express”
    10. “Religulous”

    Anticipating with caution: “W”
    Movie I hope disappears before it releases the most: “Ace Ventura Jr.”

    How about you?

  • Breaking into the boys’ club

    Quick, how many women have ever been nominated for Best Cinematography at the Academy Awards?

    Let’s just say that if you answered anything more than zero, you weren’t even close. The sad fact is that the cinematography and sound categories at the Oscars have remained gentlemen-only for eighty whole years. True, female cinematographers are vastly outnumbered in the industry, but that should be all the more reason to recognise one when she does outstanding work.

    For my money, Ellen Kuras (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Personal Velocity,” “Summer of Sam”) is one of the most exciting talents in the business. Lisa Rinzler’s work on Tony Bui’s “Three Seasons” made it one of the most painterly films of this decade. Maryse Alberti did extraordinary work on Todd Haynes’ “Velvet Goldmine” and has contributed to some of the most important documentaries of recent years, including this year’s Oscar winner, “Taxi to the Dark Side.” These, and other, female DPs have been recognised by Sundance, the Independent Spirit Awards, and even the American Society of Cinematographers, but never at the awards holy grail that is the Oscars. Yet.

    Next year, the Academy has one of their strongest chances yet to break that hex. That chance comes in the shape of Mandy Walker, the hitherto largely unheralded cinematographer of Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming epic “Australia,” who received the Kodak Vision Award at last night’s Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Awards.

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  • What next?

    As you can see in the polls archive, it looks like readers aren’t too receptive to the notion that Baz Luhrmann’s “Australia” will be a major awards contender as it sits atop the hep with four or five other “frontrunners” early in the season. Joe Wright’s “The Soloist” wasn’t far behind. We’ll see if you guys were on the money in a matter of months, but for now, we’ve got a new query for you all.

    Now that the summer movie season has exploded onto the scene in the form of last week’s “Iron Man,” what are you most excited about on the horizon? Well, speak up!

    (I went with the nine most likely choices and an “other” option as well. If you’re more psyched for something else, come back here and let us know!)

  • 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.

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