In Contention

Tag: Carey Mulligan

  • ‘Never Let Me Go’ trailer

    I don’t know anything of the book, but this Mark Romanek adaptation is hotly anticipated by many.  After a look at the trailer, I’m still not feeling why, but I’m willing to dive in and see given the talent involved.  Obviously lead actress potential for Carey Mulligan.  I imagine Keira Knightley has something to chew on here and any reason to see Andrew Garfield work is a good one.  And is that the score for “The Door in the Floor?”

    Click on the image below to see the trailer via Apple.  Embed after the jump.  (NOTE: Guy will be covering the source material in next week’s installment of Page to Screen.)

    (more…)

  • PAGE TO SCREEN: “Brighton Rock” by Graham Greene

    Welcome to 2010’s first installment of Page to Screen, our summer series in which I spotlight the source material behind some of the year’s most notable forthcoming adaptations.

    After a spectacularly prescient 2009 season – in which I blew my load over “Chéri,” largely dismissed the awards potential of “Up in the Air” and didn’t even notice “A Single Man” hovering in the wings – I’m all set to further prove the vast creative chasm that can lie between paper and celluloid, amplified by the fact that this year presently looks shorter on prestige literary adaptations than most.

    When in doubt, however, it is best to begin with a classic – and if there are many 2010 titles adapted from classier sources than Graham Greene’s 1938 novel “Brighton Rock,” I am not yet aware of them.

    “An Entertainment” is the rather perverse subtitle Greene attached to his novel on its initial publication, thus distinguishing it from what he regarded as more serious literary output; he could be as snootily blasé about his own oeuvre as a studio-dabbling auteur. Certainly, the descriptor isn’t unmerited: “Brighton Rock” is a tight, terse little underworld thriller, easily devoured in a single day of reading, with a blatant view, even then, toward the mainstream movie-house.

    (more…)

  • SHORT TAKE: “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” (**1/2)

    Cannes Film Festival

    “Is greed good?” Gordon Gekko asks near the beginning of Oliver Stone’s glib, gleaming and endearingly trashy sequel to his 1987 corporate morality tale. Delivering the line, a looser-haired but stiffer-skinned Michael Douglas can barely resist licking his lips and winking; this is his earlier, Oscar-winning performance turned inside-out, emerging as lascivious pantomime, and he wants us to be certain he’s in on the joke.

    Provided you are, too, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” is one of the more pleasantly surprising studio pictures of the year thus far, and a significant improvement on its po-faced (and, 23 years on, now fearsomely dated) predecessor. If the sequel could never have been deemed “necessary,” it’s certainly as handily timed as can be. As the original served as dumb but not ineffective allegory for the coke-fuelled iniquities of 1980s capitalism, the new film not only does the same for credit-crunch sobriety in the post-2000s, but allows Stone his “Toldja!” moment to boot.

    Not that the film is nearly as concerned with socio-economic commentary as it is with smirking self-parody: it arguably blew its best gag in the trailer, as Gekko’s bread-loaf-sized cellphone is returned to him on his exit from prison, but there’s plenty more idle fun where that came from, culminating in a slithery cameo from the original film’s star, a bronzed glamazon on either arm, that may as well have been credited: “and starring Charlie Sheen as himself.”

    (more…)

  • Fletcher rides Oscar momentum to directorial debut

    In retrospect, Geoffrey Fletcher’s Best Adapted Screenplay win for “Precious” at last month’s Academy Awards shouldn’t have come as quite the shock it did. In the last few years, Oscar voters have been especially kind to newcomers in the writing races, with this year’s pair of freshman winners, Fletcher and Mark Boal, coming on the heels of three others who struck gold for their first feature credit: Michael Arndt, Diablo Cody and Dustin Lance Black.

    How do you follow that kind of debut success? In the case of many of those names, we’re on the verge on finding out. Arndt has lain low since striking gold with “Little Miss Sunshine” in 2006, but will be back on the radar this summer with “Toy Story 3” — for which, unusually for a Pixar production, he has sole script credit.

    Cody may have struck out with “Jennifer’s Body” last year, but is having more luck on the small screen with “The United States of Tara.” Boal, meanwhile, is continuing his happy partnership with Kathryn Bigelow, as the two are readying the South American-set thriller “Triple Frontier” for shooting.

    (more…)

  • Mulligan set for ‘My Fair Lady’

    Between Carey Mulligan and Mia Wasikowska, it seems the industry has no need for other 20-something actresses — they’ll divvy up all the plum parts between them.

    Days after Mulligan’s name was connected to the English-language remake of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” comes the news that she’s to play Eliza Doolittle in the long-mooted remake of “My Fair Lady.”

    Almost two years ago, it was announced that a new version of the 1964 Best Picture winner was in the works, with Keira Knightley and director Joe Wright in the frame. Some games of musical chairs have apparently been played since then — John Madden (“Shakespeare in Love”) in now in the director’s chair, while Emma Thompson is on script duty.

    At last night’s premiere for the “Nanny McPhee” sequel, Thompson confirmed that Mulligan — with whom she co-starred, of course, in “An Education” — is on board, adding that she “would love” Hugh Grant to fill Rex Harrison’s Oscar-winning shoes as Professor Henry Higgins.

    (more…)

  • Fincher and Mulligan for ‘Dragon Tattoo?’

    Noomi Rapace in The Girl With the Dragon TattooAs hard as it is to imagine the button-cute Carey Mulligan festooned with body art and facial piercings, kicking all kinds of corporate ass, it’s an intriguing possibility we must now consider.

    Over the past few days, the newly-minted Oscar nominee’s name, along with that of director David Fincher, has been connected with the much-fancied Hollywood remake of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” Nothing has been confirmed, but Fincher and Mulligan would be a suitably A-list fit for a project that already boasts Scott Rudin as producer, with a script by Steven Zaillian.

    The original Swedish thriller, based (in case you’ve been living under a rock these past few years) on the first part of Stieg Larsson’s bestselling “Millennium” trilogy, just opened in the UK to sturdy business for a foreign-language title, and lands Stateside on Friday.

    (more…)

  • Ranking the categories

    The Hurt LockerAh, Oscar lists — the gift that keeps giving. I’m not going to ape Kris’s impressive ranking of all the nominated features: we’d have the same #1, for starters, and we’re agreeing on far too many things these days. So here’s something else to play with.

    I’ve had a number of emails asking me how I would rank the 10 Best Picture nominees, were I filling out the preferential ballot. I was happy to oblige, but then went a little crazy and applied the same process to all the other races. Hey, Oscar day comes but once a year: get your geek on. With that, my personal Oscar ballot, in full preferential order:

    Best Picture
    1. “The Hurt Locker”
    2. “A Serious Man”
    3. “An Education”
    4. “District 9”
    5. “Inglourious Basterds”
    6. “Up in the Air”
    7. “The Blind Side”
    8. “Up”
    9. “Avatar”
    10. “Precious”

    (more…)

  • 3/2 Oscarweb Round-up

    Carey Mulligan in An Education• Pete Hammond says the Best Actress race is close, pats himself on the back for the fact that one of the countless early ideas he threw at the wall actually stuck. [Notes on a Season]

    • Rachel Abramowitz notes Carey Mulligan’s rise to stardom via Julian Fellowes, well, via an assistant friend of an assistant to a casting director who knew Fellowes’s wife.  You follow? [24 Frames]

    • The 20 best Oscar night dresses of the last 20 years. [Entertainment Weekly]

    (more…)

  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Actress

    Helen Mirren in The Last StationThis year’s Best Actress race is easily the most debated of the major categories. Though one can’t help but wonder why that is, as the writing has seemingly been on the wall for a number of weeks now, stretching back to before the nominations were announced.

    It was also one of the easiest fields to call, pre-nominations, as both lead acting categories had actually coagulated somewhat. The SAG slate was mirrored by the acting branch of the Academy, offering a nice mixture of young starlets and veteran standbys. The winner in the field, however, might be somewhere in the middle of that cross-section.

    The nominees are:

    Sandra Bullock, “The Blind Side”
    Helen Mirren, “The Last Station”
    Carey Mulligan, “An Education”
    Gabourey Sidibe, “Precious”
    Meryl Streep, “Julie & Julia”

    (more…)

  • 2/24 Oscarweb Round-up

    Ryan Bingham• Elysa Gardner catches up with Ryan Bingham in New York. [USA Today]

    • John Ratzenberger talks Pixar across the pond. [The Independent]

    • Steve Pond chats with “An Education” star Carey Mulligan, who seems to be hitting the pavement a bit late in the game. [The Odds]

    (more…)

  • 2/23 Oscarweb Round-up

    Jeremy Renner• Peter Knegt chats with Best Actor nominee Jeremy Renner. [indieWIRE]

    • Oscar party kits, anyone? With bingo! [Oscars.org]

    • “The Messenger” writers and Oscar nominees Oren Moverman and Alessandro Camon on their process. [MTV Movies Blog]

    (more…)

  • ‘The Hurt Locker’ sweeps BAFTA Awards

    Kathryn Bigelow at the 2009 BAFTA AwardsThe writing, in case you hadn’t already read it, is on the wall.

    In the biggest BAFTA haul for a non-British production since “American Beauty” a decade ago, Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq drama took six awards at the Royal Opera House, including Best Film, Director and Original Screenplay. Next up: Oscars. And plenty of ’em, I’m guessing.

    I did respectably enough in my predictions, nailing 15 out of 21 categories, though I missed the big one, thinking homegrown favorite “An Education” would come out on top. The Brits did, however, vote local in the lead acting categories, with Colin Firth and Carey Mulligan taking well-deserved honors — probably their last of the season.

    “An Education” lost both the top awards it was up for, as the ever-selective Best British Film committee once more looked to the fringes to reward Andrea Arnold’s “Fish Tank” instead. I’m thrilled to see a major award for my #2 film of last year, after it was blanked entirely in the general categories. Continuing a good night for my pet films, meanwhile, “A Prophet” took foreign-language honors.

    (more…)

  • BAFTA predictions

    Carey Mulligan in An EducationEnjoying a curious position this year as the only televised awards ceremony between the Academy Award nominations announcement and Oscar night itself, the BAFTAs will no doubt be relishing their precursor status even more than usual.

    Since they made the move to precede the Oscars nine years ago, BAFTA hasn’t slavishly anticipated the bigger awards (they’ve matched the Academy’s Best Picture pick only three times), but they have sometimes been at the crest of new waves in voting: late surges of momentum for the likes of Marion Cotillard, Tilda Swinton and Alan Arkin all made their first appearance on BAFTA night.

    This year, however, I’m suspecting that the Brits will voluntarily isolate themselves from the Oscar-influencing game. Never ones to shy away from patriotic voting, BAFTA has handed its top prize to a homegrown production for three years running – it’s highly likely that Oscar longshot “An Education,” which leads the nomination count with two U.S. productions, will make it four.

    (more…)

  • ‘A Prophet,’ ‘Fish Tank’ lead London Critics’ awards

    Best British Actor winner Colin Firth at the London Film Critics' Circle awardsThe BAFTA Awards take place on Sunday, but last night the UK’s premier critics’ body had their say at the London Film Critics’ Circle Awards. And what we learned is what the London Film Festival, Sight & Sound and even the BAFTA longlists already taught us: the Brits really, really like “A Prophet.”

    Busting out of the foreign-language ghetto, Jacques Audiard’s Oscar-nominated prison gang saga took the night’s top award, Film of the Year. That was its lone award of the night, however — Kathryn Bigelow continued her steamroll through every directing honor in sight, while they democratically handed what would have been a rather superfluous foreign-language prize to “Let the Right One In.”

    The night’s biggest winner, meanwhile, was another of my pet films: “Fish Tank” took four awards in the British categories, including Best British Film and acting honors for Katie Jarvis and Michael Fassbender. Following Bigelow, Andrea Arnold made it an all-female affair in the directing categories.

    (more…)

  • SANTA BARBARA: Directors on directing, Virtuosos, ‘Provinces of Night,’ Bigelow

    Jamie Lee Curtis in Blue SteelThe fest feels incredibly easy-going this year.  More than last.  Maybe that’s because there aren’t as many films I’m interested in seeing.  After “The Secret of Kells” last week and Atom Egoyan’s “Chloe” later this week, nothing really strikes my fancy.

    Yesterday before darting back down the 101 for a Super Bowl party in LA, I caught about an hour or so of the directors panel, “Directors on Directing.”  It was an engaging discussion between Kathryn Bigelow, James Cameron, Lee Daniels, Pete Docter, Todd Phillips and Quentin Tarantino, and absolutely packed house.  Jason Reitman couldn’t make it.

    The most interesting bit that I saw was Tarantino discussing the immersive experience of “Avatar,” how when filming “Kill Bill,” he was very interested in the experience of a movie and making the audience feel participatory in some way.  He said he thinks he failed to do that, though some sequences, namely the House of Blue Leaves sequence, were close, but when he saw “Avatar,” he said, “That’s it.  That’s the ride I was thinking about.”

    (more…)

  • Julian Fellowes on the rise of Carey Mulligan

    Carey MulliganRemember when Oscar pundits were calling this year’s Best Actress race a coin-toss between Carey Mulligan and Meryl Streep? It was a dispiritingly long time ago. With the unexpected explosion of “The Blind Side” arose an industry narrative about the unprecedented box-office muscle of middle-aged female stars, and awards season adjusted accordingly — making this one of the rare Oscars years where ingenues find themselves on the outside looking in.

    Not that Mulligan has too much to be upset about: an Oscar nod for one’s first leading role is nothing to sneeze at, and with prominent and/or prestige projects like “Never Let Me Go” and  “Wall Street 2” on her 2010 slate, the “next big thing” talk can continue unabated. (And without the pressure that accompanies an Oscar win, at that.)

    The latest contributor to this conversation is Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes (“Gosford Park”), who cheers the actress’s Oscar nomination with a rather touching personal tribute in the Daily Telegraph. (If the near-miss of Emily Blunt for the Fellowes-scripted “The Young Victoria” dampened his mood, he doesn’t mention it.)

    (more…)

  • THE LONG SHOT: Now what?

    Jeremy Renner in The Hurt LockerA whole 31 days ahead of the 82nd Academy Awards ceremony, the race already feels like it’s winding down.

    Of the precursors, only BAFTA and the lesser guilds (sorry, WGA, but you brought irrelevance upon yourself) lie in wait to distract us from a month of wafty speculation and idle editorializing. Trust me, you’re going to get very sick of the phrase “battle of the exes” before the month is out … if you aren’t already.

    For me, a trip to the Berlinale next week couldn’t be better timed – a few days of seeing and discussing some new films, including several of this year’s hot Sundance titles, will be a welcome vacation from the ever-dwindling pool of names and titles we’ve been talking about since the fall.

    But if you’re not one of the lucky few who can make it to a festival – or if you’re as uninspired as everyone else by the new releases of the last few weeks – fresh perspective needn’t come only from fresh films. I recently had the pleasure of rewatching “The Hurt Locker” and getting happily reacquainted with it as a movie, rather than as the industry story it has grown into over the months.

    Awards season can sometimes smother the movies it celebrates, turning them into representations of competing social and artistic ideals that they were never intended to be. As the competition narrows, these definitions get progressively more binary – and the side-taking more vicious. (You only have to look at Roger Ebert’s online opposition of “Avatar” to see what the season can make us do to movies we even like.)

    (more…)

  • How we did today (not bad) and a year out (not so much)

    Brian Geraghty in The Hurt LockerI forgot to sit down and take a look at my year-in-advance predictions for this year and see how I did.  Not too great.

    In the Best Picture field (before the announcement of an expanded category, mind you), the only film I listed that made it through was “The Hurt Locker.” Kathryn Bigelow was also the only director I correctly projected, so that’s 1/10 and 1/5 in the top two categories.

    Morgan Freeman, Carey Mulligan, Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz were the only actors I got correct, while in the screenplay categories it was just “An Education,” “A Serious Man” and “Up.”

    All in all, including the crafts categories, I got 24 nominees of the 88 I predicted in 18 categories.  I’ve lost track of how well I’ve done with this silly experiment over the years, but I don’t think that’s one of the better tallies.  Maybe it is.

    Which brings me to this announcement.  After a lot of consideration I’ve decided to forgo my nearly decade-old process of predicting the nominees a year in advance.  There will be no post-Oscar assessment of the year ahead.  The reasons are plenty.

    (more…)