In Contention

Tag: Carey Mulligan

  • OFF THE CARPET: Strong year for double-dippers

    We find ourselves right in the middle of the big Toronto press junket, er, film festival, where 200-plus films are landing, many of them as world premieres, and the landscape of this year’s Oscar race is really beginning to take shape.

    As I looked out at the various films in play this year, it suddenly occurred to me that, perhaps more than ever, there are a lot of double-dipping actors and actresses in the hunt. Not all of these performances are or will be awards bait necessarily, but there could still be cases for more than a few saddling up to dual nominations this year.

    At the top of that list would have to be Brad Pitt. After already giving what many believed to be his best performance to date in Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” the paparazzi-hounded star found himself the recipient of a lot of great ink for his work in “Moneyball” when it screened in Toronto at the end of the week. Wisely, Fox Searchlight will be planning a supporting actor push for the actor in Malick’s film, which is both practical (given his clear lead in the other film), and organic (given that, at least in my opinion, he is supporting to Hunter McCracken’s lead in “The Tree of Life”).

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  • TELLURIDE: Michael Fassbender and a tale of two movies

    Today’s screening of “Shame” was the big note of anticipation for me at this year’s Telluride fest. After bowing in Venice earlier this morning to generally positive praise, my hopes were still high that Steve McQueen made good on the promise of “Hunger” three years ago. And did he ever.

    I’m tired, at the end of a four-film stretch today, so I’ll try not to wander here too much. But the story of the film is Michael Fassbender’s remarkable performance as a sex addict with a dark past that McQueen only vaguely addresses on the page, allowing the actor to indicate with subtlety and precious strokes of nuance what might be eating away at him.

    Once again, McQueen utilizes long takes to allow his actors to explore in the harsh gaze of the camera. But the technique, perhaps more than his previous effort, even, becomes a tool for navigating the viewer. When Fassbender is filmed jogging for a number of minutes, the camera dollying alongside him as he passes intersection after intersection, the effect goes beyond mere observation. McQueen is ushering us, without cheap manipulation, into the character’s mindset.

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  • REVIEW: “Shame” (***1/2)

    Venice Film Festival

    If “Hunger,” artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen’s remarkable debut feature, was a study of a body strenuously denied its fundamental needs, his satisfyingly rigorous, explicit follow-up, “Shame,” traces the very different damage done by a body over-gifted with wants.

    A sternly formalist parable on the pruning and stunting of relationships both familial and carnal in modern-day urban society, “Shame” is only for the purposes of swift summary a story of sex addiction — specifically that endured by Brandon, Michael Fassbender’s dourly handsome New York advertising hotshot. Sex, and the pursuit thereof, is what needles Brandon first and foremost, but it doesn’t take Freud (or indeed Fassbender’s own Jung from “A Dangerous Method”) to tell that it’s a displaced urge in a life whose most crippling vacancies take longer to fill than a Friday night fuck.

    “Hunger” was a film that dismantled known history and re-presented it in highly sensual, imagistic terms. The new film might be a foray into fiction for its director — working from an original screenplay by British playwright and television scribe Abi Morgan — but it performs a similar trick with psychology so embedded in the popular consciousness it would appear to offer little room for surprise.

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  • COMIC-CON: Refn’s ‘Drive’ is a bullet of vision

    I’ve had to sit on my feelings on Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive,” which had a special screening here Thursday night, because I haven’t found a window to write about it. That’s either good or bad, I don’t know, because the film has just continued to grow in my mind, but I don’t want to over-inflate expectations.

    In so many words, though, I think Refn is the most exciting filmmaker working today. And I haven’t even seen “Valhalla Rising” or his “Pusher” trilogy yet, but just to go by “Bronson” (a personal top 10er in 2009) and his latest, I feel an invigorating injection of originality in the cinema landscape.

    Guy reviewed and enthused about “Drive” at Cannes, so you’ve already digested one thorough assessment here (and one we share completely). So allow me to be a bit more abstract in my thoughts. I’ll just rattle them off as they come to me.

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  • REVIEW: “Drive” (****)

    Cannes Film Festival

    It’s not often that opening credits as hideous as the ones in “Drive” — hot-pink cursive squiggles of the kind favored these days only by nail bars in suburban strip malls — are a reassuring omen for the film to come. But Nicolas Winding Refn’s beautiful, bolt-from-the-blue genre trip is a kind of snazzily dressed, testosterone-enhanced bag lady of a movie, one that gathers all manner of tossed-out debris from the Hollywood scrapyard to demonstrate its continued usefulness.

    Accompanied by the irregular heartbeat of Cliff Martinez’s throbbing synth score, those lurid credits are the first clue that we’re in contemporary period piece territory: “Drive” may be set in modern-day Los Angeles, and its measured but grotesque bursts of violence may make use of our Tarantino-elasticated cinematic sensibilities, but in all other respects Winding Refn is partying like it’s 1985.

    Based on American pulp merchant James Sallis’ short, sharp 2005 novel of the same title, the laconic tone and clean structure of “Drive” nonetheless feel adapted more from cinema itself, and not merely from films that share its 80s-pop mood board. The Michael Mann of “Thief” and the William Friedkin of “To Live and Die in LA” may be obvious touchstones here, but so are 70s-era Walter Hall (most obviously the similarly titled and plotted “The Driver”) and even the hard 1960s strut of John Boorman’s “Point Blank.”

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  • CANNES CHECK: ‘Drive’

    The director: Nicolas Winding Refn (Denmark)

    The talent: Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan — the latter making her first significant foray into multiplex territory — are the star attractions here, but the supporting cast isn’t too shabby, either: Albert Brooks, Ron Perlman and current TV darlings Christina Hendricks and Bryan Cranston are all on board. The screenplay, adapted from a James Sallis novel, has a rather unexpected name attached to it: Hossein Amini, an Oscar nominee for 1997’s “The Wings of the Dove.” Reliable Hollywood workhorse Newton Thomas Sigel (“Three Kings,” “X-Men”) is the DP; Cliff Martinez, best known for his collaborations with Steven Soderbergh, did the score.

    The pitch: The most overtly mainstream film in Competition this year, “Drive” seemingly marks subversive Danish genre stylist Winding Refn’s shift into the realm of slam-bang Hollywood action, via the classic subgenre of the car-chase thriller. Gosling plays a movie stunt driver moonlighting as a hired getaway driver for assorted Los Angeles criminals. After one botched job for the husband of his attractive neighbor (Mulligan), he is forced to drive for his life and hers. The synopsis (and indeed the little footage we’ve seen) promises an old-school, hard-boiled entertainment in the vein of early Walter Hill or Michael Mann; not the sort of thing we usually expect to see vying for the Palme d’Or, and no less welcome for that.

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  • Best in show 2010: the year in superlatives

    The week, and with it, the bulk of my 2010 coverage, draws to a close today with a look at the best of the best. I’m offering up a personal list of superlatives, including most Oscar categories and some other fun fields thrown in for good measure. A tradition at this point.

    There will be plenty going on next week, though, despite travel and the holidays. As always, we’ll be at your disposal. But allow me to put a tidy bow on the year here and keep forging ahead…

    Best Picture
    “Exit Through the Gift Shop”

    Best Director
    Mike Leigh, “Another Year”

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  • ‘King’s Speech’ rules BIFAs, ‘Ghost Writer’ sweeps EFAs

    Apologies for getting to both these announcement so late: my laptop is currently (perhaps terminally) hospitalized, so posting is rather spotty on my end. The timing is particularly bad, since this past weekend’s awards activity included two major European ceremonies that I should have been all over.

    That said, if you paid even vague attention to the nominee lists for the British Independent Film Awards and the European Film Awards when they were announced, you probably could have guessed how they panned out without much help from me.

    In both ceremonies, the nomination leader emerged easily as top dog. With the BIFA voters throwing fewer curveballs than usual for them, “The King’s Speech” won five of its eight bids, including Best British Independent Film and three of the four acting races. It was left to scrappy sci-fi sleeper “Monsters” to disrupt the yawnfest, as debut helmer Gareth Edwards pipped Tom Hooper to the Best Director prize. (He lost Best Debut Director the same night, incidentally — such is the spread-the-wealth logic of juried awards.)

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  • Palm Springs fest to honor Portman and Firth

    The Palm Springs International Film Festival may claim independent thought in the rationing of their performance awards, but rather like Santa Barbara, any West Coast fest that takes place in prime awards-season territory can’t claim to be free of the Oscar campaign circuit.

    After all, when their press release states that the two actors being honored with their Desert Palm Achievement Awards (essentially Best Actor and Actress) “deliver Oscar-quality performances,” they’re effectively admitting to being another cog in the machine.

    So it is that for the last three years running, their male Desert Palm Achievement Award winner was gone on to scoop the Best Actor Oscar. These folks know what they’re doing. Try and conceal your astonishment, then, that this year’s honoree is Colin Firth, the unanimously agreed-upon frontrunner (and to my mind, lone contender) for the Oscar. “Colin Firth brings a regal versatility to each of his roles, but his portrayal of King George VI in his latest film, ‘The King’s Speech,’ is extraordinary,” says PSIFF director Harold Matzner.

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  • THE LONG SHOT: What becomes of the broken-hearted?

    (A day later than usual — apologies.)

    After the London Film Festival raised its curtain last night with a typically flashy European premiere for Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go,” this morning’s papers and breakfast TV reports have been busy with chatter about what Britfilm’s two it-girls, Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley, were wearing; how the next Spider-Man (that is, The Artist Formerly Known As Andrew Garfield) is settling into his red-carpet duties; and what the whole event promises about the beleaguered British film industry’s ability to, well, throw fancy parties.

    Something far fewer people have been talking about, however, is the film itself. That’s no great surprise: after securing eagerly awaited world premieres — “Frost/Nixon” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox” — for their last two opening nights, London fest organizers dropped the ball slightly by picking a film that bowed at Toronto last month and has already opened in the States. You can’t expect the same level of excitement for a gift that has already been opened by someone else, even if the ribbon has been retied.

    Still, the air surrounding “Never Let Me Go” was not merely one of used goods, but of damaged goods at that: yesterday morning’s press screening was characterized by a near-palpable cloud of lowered expectations, as tepid-to-respectable reviews and fizzling box-office from across the pond foretold a high-class shrug of a movie. “That’s going to get Oscar nominations?” a critic in the row behind me asked as the end credits rolled; his tone translated the question as, “Yeah, good luck with that.”

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  • Stone charges back with subprime ‘Money Never Sleeps’

    It’s taken me some time to get around to writing about Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” because watching the film was like have your bubble burst (no pun intended).  Where the director’s 1987 original worked from a tight, disciplined script that never took its eye off the ball, this follow-up is a loose, less refined piece of work with a forehead-smackingly bad ending.

    Also, due respect to Rodrigo Prieto (one of the best lensers working in the business), I feel there is something lost without Robert Richardson’s hand behind the camera.  The lenser hasn’t worked with Stone since 1997’s “U Turn,” but he gave the original film a palpable energy (as he does any film he shoots, whether it’s for Stone, Scorsese or Tarantino).  The energy on screen in the sequel is cooked up, awkward, false.  There’s an obsession with quirky transitions and visual flourishes (which comes to a head in an over-bearing closing credits sequence) that Stone can’t seem to relinquish.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: The year of the woman, take two?

    It wasn’t by coincidence that the three photos decorating the season’s introductory installment of this column two weeks ago represented lead actress contenders in the 2010 Oscar race. After all the talk of 2009 being “the year of the woman,” owing much to the number of female directors who found themselves in the mix (and inevitably leading to Kathryn Bigelow’s history-making moment at the Kodak), I’m sensing an even better argument for 2010 as a singular season for the fairer sex.

    Let’s start with the performances. By my count, there are already eight nominatable offerings from lead actresses this year (which contrasts drastically with a dearth of supporting hopefuls).  This is just going by what I’ve seen, mind you.

    For starters, Natalie Portman has dazzled the early festival season with her work in “Black Swan.” Lesley Manville, meanwhile (should she remain a lead focus), sets a high bar in “Another Year.” Despite my feelings on the film, Carey Mulligan really settles into a next-level groove in “Never Let Me Go,” and Jennifer Lawrence, of course (like Mulligan last year), has already become the year’s star-in-the-making story in “Winter’s Bone.”

    Dovetailing with the performances themselves, there are also films that seem to reflect the theme in narrative. In “Secretariat,” for instance, Diane Lane capably (if a bit histrionically) portrays headstrong Penny Chenery, a woman of virtue in an era when she was expected to keep her head down and clean house. Similarly, Sally Hawkins absolutely kills as the Norma Rae-ish Rita O’Grady in “Made in Dagenham,” fighting for equal pay in a similar time (and she’s likely to be joined in the hunt by co-star Miranda Richardson for a fiery supporting turn). And we can’t forget the palpable feminism apparent in summer indie “The Kids Are All Right,” where Annette Bening and Julianne Moore both bring their “A” game.

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  • 9/9 Oscarweb Round-up

    • James Rocchi previews the Toronto Film Festival with quotes from co-director Cameron Bailey and yours truly. [MSN Movies]

    • Dave Karger writes up the festival’s top 10 Oscar contenders. [Oscar Watch]

    • Regarding Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter,” Brad Brevet wonders if Warner Bros. is hiding a stinker. [Rope of Silicon]

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  • TELLURIDE: ‘Never Let Me Go,’ ‘Tabloid’

    On the first day of this year’s fest, things are off to an interesting, up and down start. I would bore you with an intro, but it’s late and I’m fading. Let’s get to the reactions…

    “Never Let Me Go” (**)

    I went back and read Guy’s summation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel “Never Let Me Go” after seeing the film tonight (I’ve never read it and knew nothing of the story’s plot going in). He wrote of a “discussion of mortality and the human condition” in an emotional context that, for a filmmaker like Mark Romanek (who knows from visual emotional storytelling — just look at the video for Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”), seemed a perfect marriage of material and artist.

    Shockingly, however, Romanek’s adaptation kept me at arm’s length from frame one. There is a distance here, a cold sense of removal from what would otherwise be an extremely moving narrative. I wanted desperately to feel for the characters and their plight (I won’t hazard particulars for fear of spoilers). But I felt nothing…at all. I wanted them to rage against their circumstances and show an ounce of the spirit they in one instance even set out to prove they have, but there was, again, nothing.

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  • 9/3 Oscarweb Round-up

    • Joe Morgenstern writes a love letter to Carey Mulligan.  It’s still all happening. [Wall Street Journal]

    • Jennifer Lawrence’s buzz wave makes its way across the pond. [The Guardian]

    • The foreign film submissions are already off to the races, and now the Netherlands (“Tirza”) declares. [Variety]

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  • Clips from ‘Never Let Me Go,’ ‘Somewhere’

    With the fall festival circuit merely hours away (Guy is already getting settling in Venice), we’ve got a pair of clips from two anticipated titles to pass along today.

    First, there is Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere,” which is exclusive to Venice and features Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning in what isn’t likely to be an Oscar movie, but could play well to European audiences on the Lido. The clip, courtesy of Reelz Channel, features some of Dorff’s performance as an actor navigating the PR necessities of his latest film.  I cracked up when he stepped off the apple box at the end.

    Meanwhile, MTV has a clip from “Never Let Me Go” that goes a long way (in just over a minute) toward indicating the thick, moody atmosphere the film will establish.  It features Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan, though it’s more of a showcase for the former.  The film will play Toronto later this month.

    Check out both clips after the jump.

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  • PAGE TO SCREEN: “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro

    SPOILER ALERT: By necessity, this article must reveal some key plot developments of the novel, though no more than you might have gleaned from the film’s recent trailer.

    “(T)hough the tears rolled down my face, I wasn’t sobbing or out of control,” writes Kathy, the young female narrator of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel “Never Let Me Go,” on its final page. She’d certainly be entitled to a good sob: over the course of 31 years and 282 pages, she has had the possibility of real life – with its attendant romance and independence and uncertainty – dangled in front of her, only to be unceremoniously denied at every turn, a Pinocchio figure resigned to eternal wooden form.

    That Kathy (to be played by Carey Mulligan in Mark Romanek’s upcoming film) remains so stoic and accepting in the face of even the novel’s most crushing revelations makes her very much of a piece with other Ishiguro protagonists; in many ways, she’s something of a modern-day sister (or daughter) to Stevens, the emotionally stunted butler later played by Anthony Hopkins in “The Remains of the Day,” the only other screen adaptation of the British-Japanese novelist’s work to date.

    Stevens denied himself feeling, but the disability of Kathy – and her classmates at Hailsham, the plush private college where they spend their entire childhood – is less autonomous than that: if her responses aren’t entirely human, it’s because she’s not entirely human herself.

    You may have heard “Never Let Me Go” described as a work of science fiction, and if you haven’t read it – and, say, are only going on the high-end, contemporary-set romance (albeit with mildly gothic overtones) of the film’s trailer – you could be forgiven for being a bit puzzled by that classification.

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  • AMPAS welcomes 135 new members

    Well, we already knew Jeremy Renner had got the nod. And no surprise that many of his fellow acting nominees from this year’s Oscar race — Christoph Waltz, Mo’Nique, Carey Mulligan, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick among them — have now been granted Academy membership. (Lest you think that the invitation automatically follows a nomination, Saoirse Ronan only gets in now, two years after her nod.)

    Other inclusions from Oscar’s class of 2009 include directors Lee Daniels and Juan  Jose Campanella, writers Mark Boal, Geoffrey Fletcher, Neill Blomkamp, Nick Hornby and Tom McCarthy, cinematographers Barry Ackroyd and Christian Berger, musician T-Bone Burnett, editors Bob Murawski and Joe Klotz, sound designer Paul N.J. Ottosson and costumer Catherine Leterrier.

    More thoughts, and the full list of 135 invitees, after the cut.

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