• Krista Smith sits down with dark horse Best Supporting Actor contender Christian McKay. [Little Gold Men]
• Pete Hammond reports on the town’s goings-on, including Jason Reitman’s program of films for the New Beverly Theater. [Notes on a Season]
• A master list of FYC screenplays available for download. [MovieCultists]
This, ladies and gentlemen, will be the last Long Shot column I write before the 2009 Academy Award nominations are announced, and it’s not just because it’s the column’s 17th week that the well of subject matter is looking rather dry.
I have followed longer awards seasons than this one (the awards used to take place in late March, after all), but none have felt longer – thanks to this year’s eccentric, unprecedented scheduling that has most of the most significant precursor awards done and dusted before the Oscar nominations are even out.
The six weeks between nomination morning and awards night were once chockfull of awards ceremonies that could move the needle this way or that. We now have only the BAFTAs and some guild announcements to break up the more stealthy campaigning that could yet affect the race.
The result, then, is that Tuesday’s nominations seem like more of a formality than usual. By the end of the weekend, the Globes, the BFCA and the three most influential guilds will all have had their say, meaning almost every major race can be boiled down to a maximum of two contenders … before we even receive official confirmation that they’re in the race at all. If that’s the case, Lord only knows what we’ll find to talk about until March 7.
• David Poland painstakingly seeks out assumed evidence to support his theory that “The Hurt Locker” will be this year’s Best Picture victor. [Movie City News]
• John Horn sits down with “Precious” screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher. [Los Angeles Times]
• Dave Karger chats up Viggo Mortensen and his “Road” co-star Kodi Smit-McPhee. [Oscar Watch]
• “Avatar” to hold its world premiere in Leicester Square, London, December 10. [Deadline Hollywood Daily]
• Nathaniel Rogers isn’t phased by his signed non-disclosure agreement, breathlessly (but briefly) enthuses about “Nine.” [The Film Experience]
• Johnny Depp becomes Hollywood’s highest paid actor with a £21 million ($42 million) salary for “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.” [Daily Telegraph]
In recent weeks we’ve been covering the performance categories in this space. With little else of tangible interest, what else can we possibly discuss? It’s as good a time as any to take note of what we have on our hands. Be sure to check out our looks at Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress if you missed them.
(Speaking of which, with the rise of “Crazy Heart” in this year’s race, it goes without saying Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal should be added to their respective fields as they are very much in this year’s race.)
At first glance, the Best Supporting Actor category looks fairly established this season. There have been, after all, a number of contenders already and plenty more to come. But none have really stood out from the pack yet, making this race actually as up for grabs as any other.
Possibly the most agreed-upon contender in the field has to be Christoph Waltz, who took acting honors in Cannes for his villainous portrayal in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds.” Waltz has made for quite the story off-screen as well, given his latter-career lift-off. And even detractors of the film (yours truly included) have to consider his performance a highlight of the year so far.
If anyone gives considerable chase here it’s going to be Christopher Plummer, smartly shifted to a supporting focus for his performance as Leo Tolstoy in “The Last Station.” Plummer will have sentiment (never been nominated) and added visibility (also appearing in “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”) on his side.
A while back, certain folks were (rather unfairly) dredging up the routine annual complaint about the supposed scarcity of viable Best Actress contenders. Dave Karger, however, has located the real weak spot of this year’s awards race, and it concerns the opposite sex for a change: where, he asks, are the Best Supporting Actor standouts?
Pound for pound, I tend to find Best Supporting Actor the least compelling of the acting races, a haven for affectionately regarded stalwarts in bit parts that are frequently less than challenging. The last two years have raised the bar considerably, but recent wins for Morgan Freeman, Alan Arkin and Michael Caine are typical of the laziness with which the Academy often treats the category.
Even by the category’s usual standards, however, this year’s pickings look unusually lean, as Karger narrows the serious contenders so far to a scant three.
It’s funny how strong festival buzz can be frozen indefinitely as a film jumps through the increasingly complicated hoops of securing distribution — only to be thawed and reheated later. Such looks to be the case with Richard Linklater’s latest, “Me and Orson Welles” — or, to be more specific, its breakout star Christian McKay.
A year ago, the previously little-known Brit was the talk of Toronto for his apparently uncanny interpretation of Welles — even critics lukewarm on the film itself had nothing but superlatives for McKay. (Our own John Foote waxed lyrical here, while Eddie Marsan, who plays Welles associate John Houseman in the film, couldn’t stop gushing about the performance during our interview last fall.)
It seems we’ve been waiting forever for Richard Linklater’s “Me and Orson Welles,” probably because the film and, to a greater extent, Christian McKay’s supporting performance as the legendary filmmaker stirred Toronto so last year. John (who will be covering the fest once again for us next month) was a big supporter of the film, calling McKays performance “miraculous” and that he had “never seen an actor portray this character with such confidence and authenticity.”
The film, considered by Roger Ebert to be one of the best movies about the theater he’s ever seen, revolves around a teenager (played by Zac Efron) cast in the Mercury Theatre production of “Julius Caesar” that Welles directed in 1937. You can check out the official site here. It features a hilarious quote from Ain’t It Cool News’s Quint: “That guy playing Orson Welles was genius!”
The film doesn’t have a US distributor yet (nearly a year since it went before audiences in Canada), but production company CinemaNX has put together a teaser trailer nevertheless. Unfortunately it focuses more on the presumed star appealk of Efron than it does McKay’s reportedly brilliant portrayal. Maybe a buyer will come a knockin’ before this year’s Oscar season gets too far gone. Check it out after the jump.
The Best Actor category tends to be one of the more crowded categories come Oscar time, and 2008 looks to be no exception. To be sure, there are a handful of frontrunners as usual, but hovering behind them are another group, more than eight who could easily sneak in and nab a nomination. Last year Tommy Lee Jones was nominated for his powerful work in “The Valley of Elah,” a richly deserved nod, but completely unexpected by the majority of prognosticators. I remember smiling when I heard his name read, but it was a huge surprise.
I would expect something similar this year, as we have some of the great actors and potentially stunning performances in contention.
The obvious frontrunner at this point is Mickey Rourke, basking in the attention being given to “The Wrestler.” His performance is nothing short of miraculous, an astounding piece of acting, and it is great to see him back in the fold. But when it comes to winning the award, I have to say: not a chance. Rourke is intensely disliked in Hollywood. He’s seen as someone who basically spit on the industry to walk away and become a boxer. As a friend close to Rourke said, “A lot of people were happy when he left and don’t want this guy back.”
Frank Langella looks to be terrific in the trailers for “Frost/ Nixon.” He has always been a great actor, better known for his stage work than film, though in the last few years he has become a formidable presence on the big screen. I remember seeing him as “Dracula” both on stage and on film in the late 1970s and hoped he would go far. He did, just not in the movies, until recently.
Kris has Michael Sheen down as a lead actor possibility as well, and I agree. It’s one of those “Amadeus” situations where one performance cannot exist without the other. There is a strong chance that if the film and the actors are terrific, both of them will be nominated, though Langella certainly has the showier role of the two.
• Not that “Righteous Kill” is going to be an Oscar movie, but Brian Williams scoring a sit-down with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro for the first time is pretty sweet. [MSNBC]
• Roger Ebert clears up the TIFF tiff that the New York Daily News was dying to report. [Chicago Sun-Times]
• So far, Lou Lumenick has had nothing to say for himself. [Lumenick on Film]
• David Poland takes Mike Leigh’s advice, catches Uros Stovanovic’s “Tears For Sale.” [Movie City News]
• Recounting the decades-long journey of “On the Road” from page to screen. [The Independent]
• A solid profile of 2008 “it” girl Elizabeth Banks with a hell of a lede. [Associated Press]
• Peter Knegt, Brian Brooks and Jenny Sung chime in from Toronto. [indieWIRE]
• Xan Brooks follows up yesterday’s Sodebergh/Douglas/Liberace news with a list of the 10 most eyebrow-raising casting decisions. [The Guardian]
• Jeffrey Wells echoes our own John Foote’s sentiments that Christian McKay is a show-stopper in “Me and Orson Welles.” [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• According to Anne Thompson, the “Doubt” trailer will land on Apple some time today. [Thompson on Hollywood]
• And to whet your appetite, I found this interesting little trailer for a stage production of John Shanley’s drama in…Wisconsin. [YouTube]
Listening to the conversations of the other critics in the various theaters, it becomes very clear that this year’s fest has been something of a disappointment, the first in a long, long time.
At least one critic pointed out to me that Oscar and TIFF divorced this year, which has been mentioned ad nauseum and is probably a pretty fair assessment of the situation. A lot of the press are heading home today and tomorrow as the festival begins that slow march toward the end, always exiting with a whimper and never a bang.
These last couple of days I have screened some interesting films: a noble failure, a superb documentary, a fine war film that is still not the great film we need about Iraq. I will get to them as I can, but for now, some quick catching up…
(Reviews after the jump.)