In Contention

Tag: Dominic Cooper

  • Mark Harris joins the discussion with fringe lead actor picks

    Two years ago author and journalist Mark Harris wrote what I think is one of the most salient Oscar season observances ever squeezed out of this unnecessary corner of the web. I always look to him for one of the most above-the-fray, but smart and informed, perspectives on a given season. And this piece over at Grantland is a great example, too.

    He reduces these early days of the awards season to the echo-chamber they’ve come to represent. And I don’t count myself out of the insanity he cuts everything down to with this precise paragraph:

    If you’re like most moviegoers, or most Academy voters, you don’t attend any of these festivals. So “buzz” is really code for a two-way conversation conducted between a handful of awards handicappers eager to anoint or dismiss potential contenders, and a handful of studio publicists and independent firms who are listening for the dog-whistle frequency that tells them that somebody thinks their movie might be in the running.

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  • Again, uh…

    Following yesterday’s thrilling/indifferent/perplexing (adjust according to age) revelation that Robert Pattinson is a likely presenter at Sunday’s Academy Awards, Sasha Stone has excavated some further hints as to who to expect on stage — and it seems Beyoncé Knowles, “High School Musical” tweens Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens, as well as young “Mamma Mia!” duo Amanda Seyfried and Dominic Cooper could all be in the mix.

    Beyoncé is a bona fide megastar and has been a regular fixture at the Oscars for some years now, so that at least makes sense. But what’s with the excessive pandering to the (pre)teen demographic? Do that many of them really watch the Oscars? Maybe they do — I’m just asking.

    But isn’t the inclusion of one pretty-but-sexually-unthreatening vampire a sufficient nod to the demographic? Efron on his own could be bearable, but let’s not kid ourselves into pretending that Hudgens, Seyfried and Cooper are movie stars just yet.

    With names like these, perhaps the whole “secret presenters” thing was just a ploy to avoid scaring us off.

  • REVIEW: “The Duchess” (**1/2)

    Paramount Vantage\'s The DuchessThere’s a startling scene near the beginning of “The Duchess,” in which the teenaged Georgiana Spencer (Keira Knightley) has intercourse for the first time with her new husband, the much older Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes). Ordered, with dispassionate reserve, to strip naked and lie on the bed, Georgiana trembles with positive terror as her husband enters her with all the wordless efficiency of a man fulfilling a prescribed brief; Knightley’s exquisite face gradually crumbles as it dawns on her that this is how it shall always be.

    It’s a brilliantly unsettling bit of visual storytelling — and it’s all the more memorable in retrospect because nothing else in this lavishly appointed historical biopic comes close to matching its emotional honesty or alluring strangeness.

    I was never bored watching “The Duchess,” but I was never exactly engaged either. The film has the slick, diverting pull of a glossy magazine article, and goes about that deep. Knightley’s Georgiana is sufficiently sympathetic to carry you with her through the various storytelling hoops, but as the credits rolled, I didn’t feel I knew her at all.

    The story of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, is simple enough. Forced at 17 into a loveless marriage to a frigid aristocrat, she has but one duty to fulfill: provide the Duke with a male heir. As she repeatedly fails to deliver on this “promise,” bearing only daughters, her increasingly cruel husband engages in a series of barely-concealed affairs, the last of which culminates in an awkward ménage à trois with Georgiana’s former confidante, the disgraced Bess Foster (Hayley Atwell). Georgiana, meanwhile, falls in ill-fated love with handsome future Prime Minister Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper).

    Even if you don’t know the history, it’s a familiar narrative with a number of clear reference points, both cinematic and historical, from the story of Marie-Antoinette (especially as told in Sofia Coppola’s impressionistic re-imagining) to that of Georgiana’s own great-great-great-great-niece, Princess Diana (the connection to which has been so crassly emphasized in the film’s marketing here in the UK).

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