In Contention

Tag: Elle Fanning

  • OFF THE CARPET: Strong year for double-dippers

    We find ourselves right in the middle of the big Toronto press junket, er, film festival, where 200-plus films are landing, many of them as world premieres, and the landscape of this year’s Oscar race is really beginning to take shape.

    As I looked out at the various films in play this year, it suddenly occurred to me that, perhaps more than ever, there are a lot of double-dipping actors and actresses in the hunt. Not all of these performances are or will be awards bait necessarily, but there could still be cases for more than a few saddling up to dual nominations this year.

    At the top of that list would have to be Brad Pitt. After already giving what many believed to be his best performance to date in Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” the paparazzi-hounded star found himself the recipient of a lot of great ink for his work in “Moneyball” when it screened in Toronto at the end of the week. Wisely, Fox Searchlight will be planning a supporting actor push for the actor in Malick’s film, which is both practical (given his clear lead in the other film), and organic (given that, at least in my opinion, he is supporting to Hunter McCracken’s lead in “The Tree of Life”).

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  • COMIC-CON: Francis Ford Coppola takes Best in Show

    My Comic-Con coverage came to a close this morning with Francis Ford Coppola’s first appearance here in 19 years, and a glimpse of his latest film, “Twixt.” There’s still the “Cowboys & Aliens” screening tonight, but reviews will be embargoed, so my big send-off is the master himself. And what a send-off it was.

    “Twixt” is film chock-full of genre trappings starring Val Kilmer as Hall Baltimore, a genre writer working on a new premise based on a grisly discovery in a seedy town, where he’s holed up for a book signing. Edgar Allan Poe shows up. In a dream. Like Virgil to Baltimore’s Dante. (And based on an actual dream Coppola had.)

    There are vampires. A seven-sided clock tower tells seven different times. 3D is employed here and there, but not for the whole film. (We wore Edgar Allan Poe masks outfitted with 3D lenses.) Elle Fanning is a pasty living-dead pixie. Bruce Dern is creepy. But let’s get into why this is the best Comic-Con panel I’ve ever seen.

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  • Super h8ed it

    Where to begin on “Super 8?” It’s so clearly the kind of film directors tend to make, unmolested, after a major hit, the kind where someone really needed to be pulling the strings and smoothing the edges and seeing the forest through the trees. “But I’m J.J. f***ing Abrams.” (I’m sure he’s a splendid chap.)

    It’s a nostalgia wank, but you already knew that. I find myself wondering if the pitch meeting was little more than Abrams promising Steven Spielberg that the famed director’s oeuvre would be all but gilded and bronzed right there on the screen. But that can be forgiven…if there’s a story.

    And there’s not. Well, there’s not a complete story. There’s a lot of mayhem that feels injected into a coming-of-age yarn that itself needed some tinkering, and then there’s a climax that is meant to bring it all together, but ultimately whiffs worse than Begbie’s scratch in “Trainspotting.”

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  • 1/4 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: 2010 in cinematography, ‘True Grit’ vocal ticks, Affleck on Postlethwaite

    • Jordan Raup gets into the game of recognizing the year’s best in cinematography.  (My annual “Top 10 Shots of the Year” column will hit later this month, FYI.) [The Film Stage]

    • Stephen Schaefer bemoans the broadcast realities and “cookie cutter sameness” of critics awards in the 21st century. [Boston Herald]

    • David Poland captures a great moment from Ben Affleck re: Pete Postlethwaite. [The Hot Blog]

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  • 12/10 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: ‘The Fighter’ moves in, Sturgess taks ‘The Way Back,’ Timberlake gets serious

    • Elle Fanning: the next Golden Child. [New York Times Magazine]

    • Pete Hammond joins the flavor of the week: “The Fighter” is insinuating itself into the Best Picture race in a big way. [Deadline]

    • Anne Thompson chats with “The Way Back” star Jim Sturgess. [Thompson on Hollywood]

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  • REVIEW: “Somewhere” (***1/2)

    Venice Film Festival

    Who’d be Sofia Coppola? (As an artist, I mean – I’m sure plenty of women would gladly trade for her beauty, wardrobe and Parisian rock-star husband.) No sooner had her bijou, highly personal breakthrough picture netted her an Oscar, atop countless critical valentines, than an acidic chorus of detractors began chiding her for aiming too low. When she shot for postmodern history and swirling visual excess in her strong follow-up, “Marie Antoinette,” the same people gleefully decided she was reaching too high this time.

    So when the pitch surfaced for her fourth feature film, it seemed that Coppola may have been cowed into submission by her critics: another story of a disaffected Hollywood actor adrift in hotel world, its apparent similarities to “Lost in Translation” could scarcely pass without comment. Was Coppola playing it safe, or worse, exposing a limited creative arsenal?

    The answer to both questions, happily, is no. With the wry, shimmery and thoroughly beguiling “Somewhere,” Coppola has perhaps made exactly the film she needed to at this point in her career: one that calmly takes stock of her abilities and interests rather than pushing them too severely.

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  • Sofia Coppola checks into ‘Somewhere’

    Sofia CoppolaIt seems to have become fashionable to dismiss Sofia Coppola as a lightweight in recent years, so news of her fourth feature film may be greeted with trepidation by some folks.

    Not me, though. My relationship with “Marie-Antoinette” has shifted over time from guarded admiration to fully-blossomed love, while “Lost in Translation” remains, for me, the impeccably judged mood piece I always thought it was. (Detractors call it “slight”; I prefer “fragile.”)

    In any case, the many who were on board with “Translation,” but disembarked at her hyper-stylised period piece, will probably be relieved to hear that, for her next effort, Coppola is returning to the contemporary, serio-comic territory (and studio) of the former film — luxury hotel setting included. Variety reports:

    Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning will star in the Focus Features dramedy “Somewhere,” which Coppola penned. Story centers on a bad-boy actor stumbling through a life of excess at the Chateau Marmont. With an unexpected visit from his 11-year-old daughter, he is forced to reexamine his life.

    The filmmaker, who said she has been looking to make “an intimate story set in contemporary Los Angeles,” received permission to shoot at the hotel, which has become notorious in recent years as a popular address for tabloid-friendly celebs. Film will lense in L.A. and Italy in June and July.

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