In Contention

Tag: Dev Patel

  • ‘A Prophet’ dominates European Film Award nominations

    Tahar Rahim in A ProphetIs “A Prophet” gradually stealing awards-season momentum from “The White Ribbon?” (It’s the superior film, if you ask me.) Too soon to say, of course, but it certainly came out on top in this morning’s European Film Award nominations.

    Jacques Audiard’s searing chronicle of French prison gangs leads the field with six nominations, to four for Michael Haneke’s German Palme d’Or winner. The two films, seen by many pundits as the chief contenders for the foreign-language Oscar, also appear to be the frontrunners here, continuing a rivalry that started way back in May at Cannes.

    Also beating “Ribbon”‘s total, with five nods (six, if you include the People’s Choice Award), is “Slumdog Millionaire,” which didn’t make last year’s cut-off date. The film’s popularity clearly still lingers (to the point that it even eked out a Best Actor nod for Dev Patel, ahead of, say, Michael Fassbender), though I sense its moment has passed.

    (More discussion, and a full list of nominees, after the cut.)

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  • All together now — awwww…

    Dev Patel and Freida Pinto at the 2008 Screen Actors Guild AwardsAs if Dev Patel hadn’t had enough luck this year, he’s only gone and nabbed Freida Pinto into the bargain. The relationship between the 19 year-old Brit and the stunning 24 year-old actress has been something of an open secret for a while, but the couple have finally confirmed it to the press:

    The pair have been photographed cuddling up in Israel and ring shopping in London since the Oscar-winning film was released. The 24-year-old has now called 19-year-old Patel “a lovely boy”, according to The Sun. She added: “The friendship blossomed after the film, it got even stronger. This is all new to us.”

    Pinto’s ex, Rohan Antao, blamed Patel for their relationship breakdown. “I don’t know if they were having a sexual relationship but if I came face to face with him I would have things to say. Now everywhere I go I see them on billboards. I am devastated,” he said.

    Ring shopping! Cuddling! A love-rival barney! This riveting story was brought to you by Slow News Day, Inc. But hey, any excuse for a picture of Ms. Pinto, right?

  • THE LISTS: Top 10 pet peeves of the 2008-2009 Oscar season

    Rachel Getting Married

    The season is winding down this week.  The slow President’s Day holiday yesterday seemed to be more of a harbinger than a lull in the excitement.  This time next week, we’ll probably be over the fallout of the circuit and on to debating the contenders we’re likely to see a year from now.

    It’s a vicious, beautiful, sad, interesting circle.

    But before the 81st Annual Academy Awards telecast puts a bow on the festivities Sunday night, it seems a decent enough time to reflect.  And not to be too negative, but this became one of the most irritating seasons I’ve ever covered, both in the lack of excitement to the dichotomy that circumstance presented for me (given that my favorite film of the year has lead the field throughout).

    With that in mind, I fully expect this piece to grate the nerves of more than a few readers.  Then again, I’m sure plenty of these views are shared by a handful as well, but whatever the case, a list of pet peeves began to stack up early on in the season.  I thought it reasonable to collect them here, so feast your eyes (or roll them), this is what got under my skin this year.

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  • Standard crowns ‘Hunger’ best film

    I have to hand it to the Evening Standard Awards: they are a breath of fresh air in a suffocating awards season. While their choices can have a bit of an over-democratic, drawn-from-a-hat feel to them (Stephen Daldry for Best Director? On what planet?), they are never afraid to veer from the herd.

    And so they have done this year, justly and imaginatively handing their Best Film prize to Steve McQueen’s magnificent “Hunger” at last night’s London awards dinner. It’s a small but prestigious citation for the film, voted as it is by a panel of leading British critics, including Standard stalwart Derek Malcolm and the Telegraph’s excellent Tim Robey.

    If you ask me (which no one did, but I’ll say it anyway), they royally fluffed Best Actor, curiously settling on a tie between Michael Sheen and the admittedly very good Pat Shortt, which rather embarrassingly left Michael Fassbender — easily the most deserving nominee — the lone loser.

    They redeemed themselves, however, with an inspired choice in Best Actress. Bypassing the obvious Kate Winslet option, they instead honoured Tilda Swinton for her extraordinary, bruising work in “Julia,” which I’m beginning to think may well be the thesp’s finest performance to date. (No mean feat, that.) The fact that BAFTA essentially handed Swinton a nod for just showing up in “Burn After Reading,” but failed to even longlist her for “Julia,” is yet another reason why we shouldn’t even be paying attention to that particular shindig this year. (But hey, tune in for my BAFTA live-blog on Sunday!)

    Elsewhere, Martin McDonagh racked up another screenplay win, filmmaker Joanna Hogg deservedly took the Newcomer award (beating Dev Patel in the process), and the wonderful Sally Hawkins pipped co-star Eddie Marsan (now wouldn’t that have been a good tie opportunity?) to the Peter Sellers Award for Comedy. (I still wouldn’t quite call “Happy-Go-Lucky” a comedy, but let’s not split hairs.) Yep, the best performance of 2008 still won’t go away, no matter what the Academies on either side of the Atlantic think.

    Mike Leigh, meanwhile, bagged a career achievement award. Full list of nominees and winners (in italics) after the cut.

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  • BAFTA admits it needs mending

    Interesting. Variety reports that BAFTA is to re-evaluate its voting process — and it appears to be a direct response to the widespread criticism that greeted this year’s nominations, which baffled pundits and industry folk alike with some questionable inclusions (Tilda Swinton, Freida Pinto, a whopping eight nods for “Changeling”) and equally baffling snubs (most notoriously, a hurtful donut for Mike Leigh’s widely acclaimed “Happy-Go-Lucky”).

    To begin with, one needs to understand the eccentric, back-and-forth nature of BAFTA voting. The first round of voting produces a longlist of 15 contenders in each category — 5 of which are selected by the relevant branch (or ‘chapter’) of voters in that field (and marked as such on the ballot), with the other 10 chosen by the general BAFTA membership.

    The next two rounds of voting work in a reversal of the Oscar system. The 5 nominees are determined by the general membership, while the winners are decided by the relevant ‘chapter’ voters alone — with the exception of Best Film, Best Foreign Language Film and the four acting awards, for which all members vote.

    Confused? I don’t blame you. It’s a ludicrous system that has received a lot of flak in the industry (Mike Leigh himself has been a vocal critic in the past), not least because it frequently leads to some inexpertly chosen nominees. (This, for example, is how a film like “Mamma Mia!” lands a Best Score nod.) The obvious solution, then, would be to use ‘chapter’ voting to determine the nominees, right?

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  • Brit critics follow the script

    It seems we really have reached consensus here. The Richard Attenborough Film Awards, a relatively new set of awards voted on by regional UK critics, haved chimed in with nearly everyone else, handing their Film of the Year and Director of the Year honours to Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire.”

    They stuck with the well-awarded in the acting categories too, crowning Mickey Rourke and Kate Winslet (for “The Reader”) as Actor and Actress of the Year, respectively, while Dev Patel took the Breakthrough Star award.

    Meanwhile, I’m pleased to see Screenwriter of the Year went to Martin McDonagh for “In Bruges.” That might have been a less expected choice a month ago, before the nearly year-old release achieved a remarkable awards-season turnaround in the last few weeks.

    Four People’s Choice awards were spread between “The Dark Knight,” “Mamma Mia!” and “Slumdog,” completing a very British-leaning set of winners — hardly surprising, given that last year, the Attenboroughs were all about “Atonement.” I expect the BAFTA winners list will look somewhat similar.

    List of winners after the cut.

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  • BAFTA predictions

    The BAFTA nominations drop tomorrow, and while I hardly covered myself in glory with my foreign film Oscar forecast yesterday, I’m going to wade into the murky waters of prediction once more.

    On the one hand, it’s a fool’s errand trying to predict the BAFTA nods, as they can frequently be the most perverse and contrarian awards voters of the lot. On the other, they make the task a little easier for us pundits by releasing 15-strong longlists in each category ahead of the voting.

    As I wrote back in November, the BAFTAs can be inconsistently parochial in their voting, frequently handing multiple nods to middlebrow homegrown product, while simultaneously sidelining the most acclaimed British films of the year. A look at this year’s longlists confirms that trend, as relatively mediocre Brit flicks like “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas,” “Mamma Mia!” and “The Duchess” all received multiple mentions, while critical darlings “Hunger” and “Happy-Go-Lucky” landed in a paltry three categories each — Best Film not among them.

    The BAFTA voters’ provincialism is most shamefully evident in the Best Supporting Actress longlist, which features such bizarre inclusions as Judi Dench for “Quantum of Solace” and Rebecca Hall for her arm-candy role in “Frost/Nixon.” As for the Best Adapted Screenplay citation for “Mamma Mia!,” well, the less said the better. Of course, it’s a mistake to read too much into these lists. The idle frequency with which certain titles pop up — “Frost/Nixon” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” lead with 14 mentions each, but more surprisingly, a lightweight contender like “Burn After Reading” managed a staggering 11 — suggests the voters weren’t thinking too hard either.

    Which films will fare best tomorrow is another matter — it’s not uncommon for a film to feature strongly in the longlists only to go MIA on nomination morning. Below the cut are my best guesses, together with some thoughts on the top categories.

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  • 1/9 Oscarweb Round-up

    Michael Sheen• Patrick Goldstein is happy to NOT talk Oscar at an Oscar party. [The Big Picture]

    • Jeffrey Wells somehow reads “backlash” into a harmless, truthful quote. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • David S. Cohen considers the awards gala glut in the face of economic troubles. [Variety]

    • Tom O’Neil chats it up with “Last Chance Harvey” star Dustin Hoffman. [Gold Derby]

    • Jeremy Kay on films looking for the ticket sales boost of Golden Globe recognition. [The Guardian]

    • Brad Brevet calls Razzie founder John Wilson out on some dubious comments. [Rope of Silicon]

    • Christina Patterson sits down with “Frost/Nixon” star Michael Sheen. [The Times]

    • A brief back-and-forth with the critics’ choice for Best Young Actor Dev Patel. [Daily Telegraph]

  • 1/6 Oscarweb Round-up

    Jamie Callum• Patrick Goldstein busts Miramax’s balls for fudging a “Doubt” praise quote. [The Big Picture]

    • David Poland analyzes the top 10 collective for Oscar tea leaves. [The Hot Blog]

    • Sam Thielman reports from the NYC Lincoln Center Q&A with David Fincher… [Variety]

    • …and Lane Brown gives the director some more grief for his “charm offensive.” [Vulture]

    • Alex Billington has Jamie Callum’s “Gran Torino” music video (and the balls to state “those of you that have seen this by now know that it’s actually a great movie.”) [First Showing]

    • Paula Schwartz reports from the New York Film Critics Circle awards with a few embarrassing quotes from the always entertaining Rex Reed. [The Carpetbagger]

    • Todd Martens touches on Bruce Springsteen’s favor to Mickey Rourke and Darren Aronofsky. [Pop & Hiss]

    • Anita Singh sits down with “Slumdog Millionaire” star Dev Patel. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Susan King previews the Palm Springs International Film Festival. [The Envelope]

    • Chrissy Iley chats it up with Frank Langella. [The Sunday Times]

  • 1/3 Oscarweb Round-up

    Ralph Fiennes• Patrick Goldstein responds to that B.S. Daily Beast Penn/Rourke thing.  Probably a little too lax but at leat he somewhat lays into the “journalist” responsible for the piece. [The Big Picture]

    • Michael Cieply scopes out tobacco use in the year’s Oscar contenders. [The Carpetbagger]

    • Andrea Hubert catches up with “Slumdog Millionaire” star Dev Patel. [The Guardian]

    • Kevin Maher talks “The Reader,” among other things, with Ralph Fiennes. [The Times]

    • Susan Wloszczyna takes a first journalistic stab at Martin Scorsese’s upcoming “Shutter Island.” [USA Today]

    • A creepily in depth look at the top “Jeffrey Wells moments” of 2008.  Yeah.  We’re the story. [Spout Blog]

  • 12/24 Oscarweb Round-up

    Dev Patel in Slumdog Millionaire• “The Headless Woman,” “Night and Day” and “Tony Manero” head up a list of the year’s best undistributed titles. [indieWIRE]

    • Speaking of lists, here’s one of cult and campy holiday flicks. [Cinematical]

    • Josh Horowitz goes toe-to-toe with David Fincher. [MTV]

    • Slow down, Hoss.  Lou Lumenick thinks Dev Patel is going to beat Heath Ledger to the Oscar punch?  Anything for the clicks I gues. [Lumenick on Film]

    • David Edelstein considers nine Oscar contenders, from “Revolutionary Road” to, uh, “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” [New York Magazine]

    • Dustin Hoffman storms out of an interview with Dave Karger…all in good fun. [Entertainment Weekly]

    • Rachel Abramowitz spends some time with the actor as well…my own interview should be on the way soon enough, by the way.  It’s been ages since we sat down together. [Los Angeles Times]

  • ‘Doubt’ leads with five SAG noms

    Amy Adams in Doubt(Apologies for the delay getting these up this morning.  I had technical difficulties signing in and had to scoot shortly after the announcement.  Here are the belated nominees with commentary.)

    The Screen Actors Guild didn’t have much up its sleeve this morning for its heavily anticipated nominations announcement.  No left-field zingers, no “3:10 to Yuma” or “Station Agent” surprises, just a slick rundown of the season’s favorites so far.

    Looking deeper into the categories, we can point to a number of things.  The fact that “Doubt” leads the way is no surprise, since all four principles from the cast were nominated and, therefore, the film landed a nod for Best Ensemble.  But praise for the acting, even if that represents the biggest branch of the Academy, isn’t necessarily enough.  Will the other branches be on board for this as a “film,” or will they simply see it for what it is: a photographed play with no creative bridge to the screen?

    Dev Patel’s nomination for Best Supporting Actor is the boost he needed for Oscar, though it should be noted that the SAG likes to nominate younger actors.  Dakota Fanning, Jamie Bell, etc.  Also, it’s worth noting that Taraji P. Henson received three nominations this morning, two for her performance in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (supporting actress and ensemble) and one as part of the “Boston Legal” ensemble on the TV side of things.  Congratulations to one sweetheart of a girl.

    The absence of Sally Hawkins is a bit distressing, however.  Especially when you consider the fact that the actress categories tend to go five-for-five with the Academy.  That could of course change this year as both fields are more competitive than usual, but seemingly a sure-thing after her critics awards bonanza, it seems the lovely Hawkins is back on the bubble.

    “Revolutionary Road” is, sad to say, officially on life-support, if the night nurse hasn’t already tripped on the chord and yanked it from the wall entirely.  One nomination for Kate Winslet, nothing for Leonardo DiCaprio, nothing for the brilliant Michael Shannon.  The industry doesn’t seem to be responding to this film.  So I think the likely five have finally slid into place, and “Doubt” remains the spoiler.

    The nominees after the jump.

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  • D.C. critics chime in, ‘Slumdog’ reigns

    Rubiana Ali in Slumdog MillionaireI was totally out to lunch on this today.  “Slumdog Millionaire” continues to dominate while Heath Ledger wins his second award (after that AFI gong earlier in the week).  “Doubt” pulls down another ensemble win while truly astounding group performances from films such as “Synecdoche, New York,” “Gomorrah” and, indeed, “Slumdog Millionaire” continue to be ignored.  And Mickey Rourke picks up his first critics’ citation.

    The winners:

    Best Film: “Slumdog Millionaire”
    Best Director: Danny Boyle, “Slumdog Millionaire”
    Best Actor: Mickey Rourke, “The Wrestler”
    Best Actress: Meryl Streep, “Doubt”
    Best Ensemble: “Doubt”
    Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, “The Dark Knight”
    Best Supporting Actress: Rosemarie DeWitt, “Rachel Getting Married”
    Best Breakthrough Performance: Dev Patel, “Slumdog Millionaire”
    Best Adapted Screenplay: Simon Beaufoy, “Slumdog Millionaire”
    Best Original Screenplay: Jenny Lumet, “Rachel Getting Married”
    Best Animated Feature: “WALL-E”
    Best Foreign Language Film: “Let The Right One In”
    Best Documentary: “Man On Wire”
    Best Art Direction: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

    Sasha Stone has some historical perspective over at Awards Daily.

  • ‘Slumdog’ scores at BIFA Awards

    Thanks to bright-eyed, bushy-tailed commenter Silrone for pointing out that the winners of the British Independent Film Awards were announced while I was mired in technical problems.

    “Slumdog Millionaire” emerged as the evening’s big winner, taking Best British Film, Best Director and Best Newcomer for Dev Patel, though “Hunger” ran it close, also taking three prizes, including Best Actor for Michael Fassbender. I’m simultaneously surprised and unsurprised: “Slumdog” was certainly the obvious frontrunner, but the BIFAs have a history of not following the script.

    Such was the case in the Best Actress category, where “Happy-Go-Lucky”‘s seemingly unbeatable Sally Hawkins lost out to Vera Farmiga for “The Boy in Striped Pyjamas.” I’m disappointed for Hawkins, though she will have other opportunities this season. In any case, I’m quite pleased to see some credit for Farmiga, my admiration for whom I recently expressed on these pages.

    Meanwhile, “Happy-Go-Lucky” was rewarded with well-deserved victories for supporting stars Eddie Marsan and Alexis Zegerman, while my fellow “In Bruges” fans will be pleased to see Martin McDonagh took home some hardware for his writing.

    Incidentally, I scored 7/13 in my predictions. Poor form — hopefully it’s all up from here. Full list of winners below the cut.

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  • 10/21 Oscarweb Round-up

    Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace• Kim Voynar sets up Film Essent at MCN. [Movie City News]

    • Tom O’Neil collects some more guesses from Oscar prognosticators. [Gold Derby]

    • And he reports that “Slumdog Millionaire”‘s Dev Patel will be campaigned as a supporting actor. [Gold Derby]

    • John Campea explores the reasons why “The Dark Knight” will land a Best Picture nomination in the wake of delayed and underwhelming competition. [The Movie Blog]

    • Eugene Hernandez and Peter Knegt discuss the Gotham nods. [indieWIRE]

    • Brooks Barnes looks into Wall Street’s creative affect on Hollywood. [New York Times]

    • Brad Brevet sits down with “Happy-Go-Lucky” helmer Mike Leigh. [Rope of Silicon]

    • Lauren Schuker looks at Paramount’s two release date retreats as a sign of the economic crisis. [Wall Street Journal]

    • The meteoric downfall of Roberto Benigni. [Spout Blog]

    • Anne Thompson had a good time watching “Quantum of Solace.” [Thompson on Hollywood]