In Contention

Tag: Che

  • ‘Che,’ ‘W.’ among films announced to play London fest

    Looking down the list of titles in the newly-revealed lineup for next month’s London Film Festival lineup, my initial reaction was one of mild disappointment. Plenty of exciting titles, for sure, but it doesn’t quite match last year’s feast that included everything from “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” to “The Assassination of Jesse James” to “Juno” to “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.”

    My second thought, however, was that the lineup reflects more on what a tepid year for film 2008 is shaping up to be, rather than any lack of effort on festival director Sandra Hebron’s part. Tellingly, this morning Hebron herself cited critical opinion that, in the wake of a roundly derided Venice festival, “it wasn’t a vintage year for cinema.”

    But enough of the hand-wringing. There’s still much to get excited about, including “Che,” the two parts of which, interestingly, will be screened both together and apart; Oliver Stone’s potentially polarising “W”; “Hunger,” featuring a potential dark horse for Best Actor; “Religulous”; “Rachel Getting Married,” “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist,” “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson” and, to my immense delight, “Synecdoche, New York.”

    Not to mention that, as previously announced, the festival will be bookended by the world premiere of “Frost/Nixon” and Danny Boyle’s red-hot Toronto hit “Slumdog Millionaire.”

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  • TORONTO: ‘Che,’ ‘The Wrestler’

    Benicio Del Toro in CheTwo masterpieces, one right after the other.  This was the day I had been waiting for.  I caught Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” today, all four hours and 20 minutes of it.  It’s a glorious achievement from a brilliant mind, one of the few directors who seeks to challenge himself constantly.  “Che” is audacious and bold filmmaking because not everyone will like it or even understand it perhaps.  Soderbergh digs deep into the mind of a brilliant man and allows us a lucky glimpse.

    Moments after the film ended, with barely a moment to regroup, I saw Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” — and now I understand what all the fuss is about.  If Mickey Rourke is not nominated for Best Actor for an Academy Award, there really is no justice.  But Hollywood can be quite the unforgiving town…

    (Reviews after the jump.)

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  • Brilliant

    New York Magazine

    (Courtesy: New York Magazine)

  • ‘Che’ to be released in the U.S. by Magnolia Pictures?

    Benicio Del Toro in CheLou Lumenick is hearing some rumblings on the “Che” buyer situation in Toronto. From his New York Post blog:

    I’m hearing from an exhibition source that Mark Cuban’s Magnolia Pictures has signed to distribute Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” in the United States. The deal is expected to be announced shortly for the two-part biopic of the Argentine guerilla who worked with Fidel Castro starring Benecio del Toro, which premiered to mixed reviews in Cannes. A slightly shorter version — 4 hour 22 minutes total — will be showing at the Toronto and New York Film Festivals. NYFF will be screening “Che” at the 1100-seat Ziegfeld and don’t be surprised if that’s where this epic has a reserved-seat, Academy-qualification run beginning on December 12.

    10 p.m. update: A Magnolia rep says an announcement would be “premature,” but I hear they’re already booking theaters.

    Frankly, it sounds like a done deal to me. Magnolia is no powerhouse distributor but the company nurtures creativity and smaller efforts well enough. Each year it represents the Oscar-nominated short films, providing more exposure for them than they’d receive otherwise. But a major Oscar campaign is a tough row to hoe when it comes to a season packed with big dogs.

    We’ve got a new buzz page for the film here, by the way.

    We’ll see.

  • ‘Che’ = ‘Havana’s Gate’

    Ouch:

    Call it Havana’s Gate. Steven Soderbergh’s elephantine account of the rise and deification of revolutionary icon Ernesto (Che) Guevara could prove as deadly to the director’s career as Heaven’s Gate was to Michael Cimino’s. Running a bladder-bursting 4 hours and 22 minutes (split over two parts), it reeks of authenticity but also self-indulgence. A potentially great performance by Benicio Del Toro in the title role is buried beneath Soderbergh’s stylistic tics and an almost complete lack of dramatic tension. It feels like every plodding jungle bootstep of Che and his band of rebels is shown, first in Cuba and later in Bolivia, but we never really get to know the man whose face launched a million T-shirts.

    Pete Howell has also given high marks to Ed Harris’s “Appaloosa” and Jonathan Demme’s “Rachel Getting Married.” Neither was my cup of tea, and the former was an outright disappointment of potential, but I expect there to be plenty of fans to go around for each.  Especially “Rachel,” with a delicious duo on screen in the form of Anne Hathaway and Rosemarie Dewitt. Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh, eat your hearts out.

  • 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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  • …but will anyone release it?

    Steven Soderbergh's Che

    (Courtesy: Rope of Silicon)

  • ‘Che’ and ‘Porno’ among 20 new films announced for Toronto

    Benicio Del Toro in CheJohn hasn’t addressed this yet, so I’ll put it out there…

    Variety’s Anne Thompson is reporting on 20 new films added to the line-up of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Following suit with yesterday’s New York fest news, Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” (listed as “Part One” and “Part Two” for Toronto) will make the trip up north.

    Other special presentations of note include Rian Johnson’s “The Brothers Bloom,” Richard Linklater’s “Me and Orson Welles,” Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire,” Kevin Smith’s controversial “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” Guillermo Arriaga’s “The Burning Plain” (could be Oscar bait for actress Charlize Theron), Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” and Marc Abraham’s “Flash of Genius” (which could be an awards vehicle for Greg Kinnear).

    The big news, however, seems to be that Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling” will not be heading to the fest. Here’s Thompson on that front:

    Clint Eastwood’s Cannes Fest entry “Changeling,” which will be the centerpiece of the New York Film Festival, will not be at Toronto because there was uncertainty about new mother Angelina Jolie’s availability to participate in a gala premiere. “We would have loved to have had Clint Eastwood,” said Bailey, “but the only way to present the movie in a big way was as a gala with Eastwood and Jolie.”

    Basically, the Toronto crew can’t star-fuck, so they’d rather not show it. Gotcha.

    Anyway, read all about the new additions here. The full line-up will be unveiled next Tuesday.

  • NYFF reveals full line-up

    Mickey Rourke in The WrestlerThe full schedule of the 46th annual New York Film Festival was released today.  indieWIRE has the scoop.

    The big showcase I’m looking forward to is, of course, Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” (which I touched on yesterday).  But also landing in the Big Apple will be Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling,” Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Che.”

    Time will tell if the latter remains distribution-less after a North American bow.  Something tells me, given Soderbergh’s tenacity, that it will.

    I’m also interested in Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorrah” (with an “h” this time), which was a considerable favorite at this year’s Cannes fest, as well as Wong Kar-Wai’s “Ashes of Time Redux.”  Despite a personal distaste for the Chinese helmer, this project has a special something keeping my interest piqued.  Ari Folman’s Canne fave “Waltz with Bashir” will also make the trip.

    And then there is Steve McQueen’s “Hunger,” a meditation on the IRA hunger strike that made Bobby Sands a national hero in Northern Ireland.  I spent a weekend in Belfast while I was overseas this summer and remember coming across a giant wall mural of Sands, part of a guided tour with one of his former compatriots who also participated in the protest.

    I’ve been hearing fantastic things about Michael Fassbender’s performance in the film.  He dropped an amount of weight that supposedly makes Christian Bale look obese in “The Machinist.”  It might be one of the lowest flying turns on the awards radar so far, and if IFC Films can spin a valiant campaign around the actor, watch out.

    Check out the full roster of NYFF titles here.  The festival begins September 26 and runs through October 12.

  • Poland takes his first stab

    Benicio Del Toro in CheDavid Poland has dipped his toes into the Oscar waters of 2008 and come up with…well, the same thing we’ve all got at the moment, to tell you the truth.

    The one point he touches on that we haven’t brought up in this space yet is the notion that The Weinstein Company’s “The Reader” will likely find its way to screens in 2009 rather than this year.  There’s a discrepancy of preference between the studio and producer Scott Rudin, but we can guess who wins that battle at the end of the day.  Rudin has plenty to keep his 2008 attention with John Shanley’s “Doubt” and Sam Mendes’s “Revolutionary Road.”

    Here are Poland’s brief asides on that:

    There still could be a backdoor surprise effort, like the Weinsteins’ Scott Rudin movie, The Reader… but probably not.  (The one 2009 title that screams “They could make December!” is DreamAmount’s The Lovely Bones, though Par needs Benjamin Button to make a LOT of money and awards talk will help and DW’s side of that mountain is pushing The Soloist hard as they exit the auditorium.)…

    …The Reader also happens to be the last picture made by Mirage under Pollack and Minghella.  But, the in-control producer on board is Scott Rudin, who always has a lot of awards pictures out there and probably doesn’t want this one to threaten Doubt or his beloved Revolutionary Road (which also stars Kate Winslet).  And for that matter, Rudin is probably appalled with the idea of an appeal for The Reader being made by invoking two lost Oscar-winning filmmakers… especially Pollack, for whom Rudin went well out of his way to keep the keep the press at bay as Polack dealt with his illness and efforts at recovery.

    He’s also got his first big list of title up as well, including some love for “W” (after that trailer?) and mentions for “The Secret Life of Bees” (the one film Fox Searchlight will be taking to Toronto) and “Che” (which will go before North American audiences at the New York fest but still is unlikely to see the light of day in 2008…unless director Steven Soderbergh suddenly decides to make a buck for an interested studio rather than perpetuate his long-ish vision of the film.

    Read up on Poland’s column here, and check out his chart here.

    And check back Monday for our updated charts here at In Contention.

  • ‘Che’ trailer hits

    A trailer for Steven Soderbergh’s “The Argentine” (the first half of his “Che” epic, which received mixed reactions at Cannes this year but certainly has its devotees) has landed on YouTube. James at Cinematical points the way, but get it while it’s hot. Not that there’s a studio involved that could yank the trailer down, but I don’t imagine this was an intentional leak.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAsyGJbuU9Q

    It’s certainly not good news that the film hasn’t secured U.S. distribution as far as the upcoming awards circuit is concerned. We struck the film from the record (well, the charts in any case) a month ago because that grim feeling is starting to set in. “Che” may have to live to fight another day in 2009.  But this should be enough to whet your appetite in the interim.

  • Sean Penn defends ‘Che’

    Benicio Del Toro in CheBritish film magazine Sight & Sound has a nice new tradition of interviewing the jury president of the most recent Cannes Film Festival, which makes for interesting reading. (Last year’s prez, Stephen Frears, presciently predicted in his interview that “No Country for Old Men” would “do really well,” despite not winning anything at the festival.)

    Unsurprisingly, 2008 president Sean Penn is rather more candid in his interview with  Richard T. Kelly. After admitting that he had four clear favourites in the competition (two of which, “The Class” and “Che,” were unanimously awarded their respective Palme d’Or and Best Actor prizes), he then launches into an impassioned defence of Steven Soderbergh’s polarising opus, as well as an attack on the journalists who dismissed it:

    Right through the festival I had no awareness of what the ‘buzz’ was, and I shut people down if they tried to talk about movies in front of me. But when I did a little bit of catch-up browsing afterward I read some of the stupidest, ugliest, most cynical responses to what had gone on, and I had the front-seat to be aware of their inconsistencies.

    “Che” is a great example. I pray it finds distribution in the four-hour-plus form I saw, because otherwise people will be missing out.  The film-making is stellar: there are so many details in the execution of that huge story. Every sentiment about Guevara I’ve heard passionately expressed when I’ve travelled in Cuba and South America was not only dramatised, but without exposition, seamlessly, fulfilling the narrative. Then you have one of the first tour de force performances in film history that doesn’t rely on the close-up.

    This is a film, I later find, that had some negative responses…I was in a jury room of nine people with more expertise in their big toenails than any of the people writing in these papers: nine out of nine wanted to go out and change the world afterwards.

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  • Variety ponders the season at the mid-way point

    We’ve already been over what a thin year it’s been so far for Oscar candidates – or good films at all, for that matter. Now Variety has come to the same conclusion. In his mid-year awards-season study, Timothy M. Gray goes so far as to say that “the past six months have offered fewer potential contenders than any January-June period in memory,” and wonders if we’re seeing a return to the days when the Oscars were dominated by winter releases from the majors.

    Indeed, Gray only finds one title from the first-half of the year that he thinks has main category potential: Overture Films’ “The Visitor,” the prospects of which I discussed extensively yesterday. I’m not sure I’d boil down an entire half-year to a sole film (“In Bruges,” anyone?), but I agree that “The Visitor” has a real campaigning advantage:

    Keep an eye on Overture’s “The Visitor”: Lead actor Richard Jenkins has rightly earned awards buzz, but the film has many other virtues (Thomas McCarthy’s script and direction, the other performances, etc.). McCarthy, a talented actor in his own right, has crafted an actors’ movie — a character study with current-event concerns — that will play well on DVD, so late-year mailings could pay off.

    (Indeed, the more I think about the film’s position in the awards derby, the more it reminds me of a certain tiny spring release from last year: “Away From Her.”

    Looking forward into the rest of 2008, Gray ends up pondering most of the same questionmarks that we all are, including the following questions:

    Will the early buzz sustain for Disney-Pixar’s “Wall-E” and WB’s “The Dark Knight” and Heath Ledger?

    What effect will the Clint Eastwood double whammy — November’s “Changeling” and the December bow of Warner Bros.-Village Roadshow’s “Gran Torino,” in which he stars as well as directs — have on kudos? Similarly, Scott Rudin, who was in the winner’s circle with “No Country,” has two December openers — but will he have a third with “The Reader,” whose opening date is not yet set?

    Benicio Del Toro won Cannes’ actor award for Steven Soderbergh’s “Che,” but will it find a U.S. distrib this year and, if so, in what form will the two-part film be released?

    And then there are … other questions. In the last few years, the song category has been dominated by tunes that were production numbers (as opposed to those end-credit or background songs). So does this bode well for Disney’s “High School Musical 3” and Focus’ “Hamlet 2”? (If the song “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” can win, there may be hope for the latter pic’s “Rock Me Sexy Jesus.”)

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  • Sight & Sound weighs in on Cannes

    OK, so Cannes is old news, but for me it’s never really over until Sight & Sound prints its annual Cannes review – for my money, the British magazine offers the most expansive and thoughtful coverage of the festival around. It’s not available online, but it’s worth grabbing a copy if you can. Meanwhile, I’ve picked out a few highlights from editor Nick James’ commentary on the key festival films.

    Interestingly, James agrees by and large with the jury’s selections. He names “The Class” as his favourite film of the festival, declaring it “so electrifying, satisfying and inspiring that it’s hard to believe it isn’t the work of professional fiction weavers at the top of their trade.” He also joins the chorus of approval for “Gomorra:” “So compelling is the detail that there’s no need for thriller conventions … Garrone’s direction makes incredible use of desolate locations and the acting is impeccable.” I must admit I am getting more excited about this film with every notice I read.

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  • No surprises as Cannes jury surprises

    Well, I missed that one badly. As is so often the case, the Cannes jury threw a curveball, handing their top prize to a late-breaking film that had generated very few column inches. Admittedly, I should have paid more attention to “The Class,” French auteur Laurent Cantet’s school-based docudrama.

    I was a huge fan of Cantet’s 2001 film “Time Out,” an ingeniously constructed character study, and while his 2005 follow-up “Heading South” was a major disappointment, Cantet’s name on the competition list should have rung more bells – not least when the very warm reviews started rolling in yesterday. Variety called it “one of the most substantive and purely entertaining movies in competition at Cannes this year.”

    Congratulations to Cantet then, and to France, scoring their first home victory at Cannes since “Under Satan’s Sun” triumphed in 1987. The other awards threw up fewer surprises, with Benicio Del Toro taking Best Actor as I, and many others, predicted. Meanwhile, “Three Monkeys” and the Italian one-two punch of “Gomorra” and “Il Divo” all took home major silverware, if not necessarily in the categories that I anticipated.

    I must admit to being shocked that the widely beloved “Waltz With Bashir” went home empty-handed; an omission for which Sean Penn and fellow juror Natalie Portman seemed almost apologetic. No matter: Ari Folman’s animated war documentary leaves the festival with a dedicated following, and I’m certainly putting it on my Best Animated Feature shortlist.

    The full list of competition winners follows:

    Palme d’Or: “The Class”

    Grand Jury Prize: “Gomorra”

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  • Cannes: uneducated guesses

    Well, it’s almost over. The competition films have all been screened, picked over and digested by the world’s critics, and now all that’s left to do is that finicky business of handing out some prizes. Sean Penn and his formidable jury (Marjane Satrapi, Alfonso Cuaron and Natalie Portman are just some of those involved) will be deliberating over a crop of films that has generally been deemed a solid selection, with few outright “Brown Bunny”-style disasters.

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  • Which film will take the Palme d’Or?

    Wells is already speculating and Foote is ready to move on, but let’s think it out here. In a festival that has been a bit underwhelming to most, both artistically for the critics and fiscally for the buyers, someone’s still gotta win best in show.

    Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorra” and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Three Monkeys” might be the safe guesses, as both were quite well-received. But the Palme has made a habit of being elusive to the films one would expect to claim it.

    Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling” enjoyed a pleasant love-fest for a time, before the director was roughed up by a colleague and then hit a wall of sorts with The New York Times.

    Then there are the fringe possibilities of Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” — mixed on receipt, but that hasn’t stopped efforts in the past — and “Synecdoche, New York” from Charlie Kaufman, which has the benefit of being the last film out of the gate.

    What’s it going to be?

    If I had to bet, I’d say “Three Monkeys.” If I ventured a guess in the midst of rampant unpredictability (which is Cannes in a nutshell), I’d say “Synecdoche, New York.”

    We’ll see how it pans out over the weekend.

  • A.O. Scott on ‘Che’ and ‘Synecdoche’

    Thankfully SOMEONE took some time to properly respond to Steven Soderbergh’s one-two punch of “The Argentine” and “Guerrilla” — “Che,” for the Cannes world premiere. I respect as much as anyone the need to get the reaction out there fast, but more than a few critics were a bit hasty in rounding up extended thoughts hours after the 6:30 screening Wednesday night.

    After all, the film’s first reaction came from Jeffrey Wells, who has paced himself yet and refrained from offering a full-blown review until the dust has at least settled somewhat.

    A.O. Scott’s piece in The New York Times is part-review, part-Cannes immersion study, and he ties his thoughts to a partial reaction to Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York.” He doesn’t venture solid opinions on either effort, though he does note that the filmmakers have perhaps raised the bar too high with their previous work to judge these films as anything other than a little disappointing.

    It is regardless an intriguing think piece presenting his American perspective on the global cinema 7-11 that is Cannes:

    This is one of the frustrations of Cannes, for American critics at least. We see lots of fascinating movies — not all good, but very few completely worthless — and then wonder if we, or our readers, will ever see them again. I’m not in the movie business (a mutually beneficial arrangement, believe me), and not inclined to speculate with someone else’s money. I do hope, however, that sometime in the near future I can take part in the long and contentious conversation that “Che” deserves, and also see how my own initial ambivalence about the film resolves itself.

    (Pull-quotes on “Che” and “Synecdoche, New York” after the jump.)

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