In Contention

Tag: Burn After Reading

  • Under the radar: ‘Disgrace’

    With the Toronto festival just around the corner, one title set to bow there that isn’t garnering that much attention yet is Australian production ‘Disgrace,’ the long-gestating adaptation of Nobel Prize-winner J.M. Coetzee’s searing 1999 masterpiece.

    That’s not exactly surprising, given that it’s a sophomore effort from a director, Steve Jacobs, whose previous credit, the flavourful but slight comedy “La Spagnola,” didn’t make much of an international ripple in 2001. The film is tiny; it also promises to be (if they do it right, at least) intensely bleak. The lone ‘name’ involved, John Malkovich, is something of a niche figure. Suffice to say that there are any number of starrier, sexier prospects in the TIFF lineup.

    But in a quarter already boasting its fair share of prestigious literary adaptations (“Revolutionary Road” and “The Road” being just two of the most anticipated), this is the title that has me most intrigued. I admit my South African bias possibly comes into play here. But you don’t have to be from the country to know what an astonishing novel “Disgrace” is – one that picks apart the moral identity of post-apartheid South Africa with a precision and ruthlessness of Dostoyevskian proportions. In 2006, The Observer named it the greatest “British” (cheekily including the Commonwealth) novel of the last 25 years.

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  • 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?)

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  • Wells joins the guessing game

    In response to Tom O’Neil’s contender shortlist that I discussed yesterday, Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere has come up with his own list of Best Picture frontrunners – and predicted also-rans. (O’Neil has since significantly amended his list, by the way – wisely removing “Blindness” and “Synecdoche, New York” from Best Picture consideration, and adding some titles including, bizarrely, “Mamma Mia!” Meanwhile, names like Tommy Lee Jones, Rachel McAdams and Kristin Scott Thomas enter the actors’ mix.)

    Wells’ top choices include “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (which he describes as “not the front-runner,  but the contender with the best script”), “Milk,” “Doubt,” “Gran Torino,” “Frost/Nixon,” “W” and “The Visitor.” “W” is a predictably contentious selection; I certainly know a few people who would disagree with his assertion that it “works on the page.”

    Rather more fun is Wells’ rundown of the titles that he thinks don’t have a prayer, which he breaks down as follows:

    “Appaloosa” (possibly worthy Ed Harris western but New Line leftover status dooms it); “Burn After Reading” (a dry Coen brothers goof, not an Oscar film); “Body of Lies” (I know nothing about this brilliant Middle Eastern spy thriller that would qualify it as Oscar bait); “Changeling” (Best Actress nom for Angelina Jolie but the film, while dramatically solid and well made, just isn’t stratospheric enough); “The Dark Knight” (are Tom and Pete having us off?); “Defiance” (an Ed Zwick World War II movie about Russian-Jewish resistance guerillas…hello?); “Mamma Mia!” (all right, that’s enough); “Miracle at St. Anna” (a Spike Lee movie in which a bank teller is shot by an old guy having a memory seizure?) and “Vicki Cristina Barcelona” (can’t and won’t happen).

    I must say I agree with him on most counts there – in particular, I’ll be somewhat surprised if “Miracle at St. Anna” and “Defiance” even turn out to be good films, let alone Best Picture possibilities. I can’t help thinking, though, that some little picture that’s slipped through all these lists will sneak up on us later this year. We sure weren’t talking about “Juno” a year ago.

  • ‘Burn’ poster

    Thanks to Cinematical:

  • Pitt finally going to get some Oscar love?

    Over the course of his impressive career, Brad Pitt has not always been appreciated for the fine actor he is. This is an actor who could easily take the cheap way out and do one goofy romantic comedy or silly film after another, but who instead takes bold risks with his career, always challenging himself, and though sometimes falling flat on his face, growing as an actor.

    Pitt is not the first actor to grow in maturity through the years; look at John Wayne, badly under appreciated for much of his career, though his work in “The Quiet Man”, “Rio Bravo” and especially “The Searchers” was astounding. His last performance, as the gunfighter dying of cancer in “The Shootist,” richly deserved Oscar attention which sadly never came.

    Actors, the great ones, live to challenge themselves, never content to continue doing what they have done before, they need change, they live for challenge.

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  • 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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