In Contention

Tag: Fernando Meirelles

  • Toronto reception takes ‘360’ back to zero

    The warning signs were there for “360.” An umpteenth reworking of “La Ronde” didn’t seem an obvious fit for either Fernando Meirelles or Peter Morgan — a pretty dispassionate writer even on his best form, he came badly unstuck last year when he veered from his fact-based template with “Hereafter.”

    Meirelles, too, is seeking to bounce back from a flop (2008’s “Blindness,” in case you’ve forgotten), and ensemble members Anthony Hopkins and Jude Law have of late been unreliable indicators of quality.

    Interest in the film seemed to hover mainly in how it might serve Rachel Weisz, whose multiple lead roles this year — including an acclaimed turn in “The Whistleblower” and a buzzy one in “The Deep Blue Sea” — have many wondering if a second Oscar nod could be on the cards. It might be, but tepid reviews following the film’s premiere suggest it won’t be for “360.”

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  • Meirelles’s ‘360’ to open London fest

    I’m trying not to think too much about my hometown film festival right now — with the chaos of Venice only a week away, the idea of diving into another five-films-a-day fortnight shortly afterwards seems somewhat deadly. Still, with this week essentially amounting to the calm before the storm, now is as good a time as any for the London Film Festival to announce that they’ll be kicking off their 55th edition with Fernando Meirelles’s starry erotic drama “360.”

    It’s a choice that’ll bring the requisite glamor to the fest’s opening night — the cast includes Jude Law, Rachel Weisz (set to be the fall festival season’s most ubiquitous face), Anthony Hopkins, Eminem and Ben Foster — but I must admit to being somewhat disappointed.

    The LFF raised its international profile considerably in 2008 and 2009 by opening with major world premieres (“Frost/Nixon” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” respectively), and while I’m aware of the difficulty of securing such coups, a curtain-raiser that has already been seen and critically assessed at Toronto — whatever its merits — just doesn’t carry the same level of excitement.

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  • Nolan out for third Batman? Who could step in?

    Christopher NolanBill Ramey over at Batman on Film has posted a rather disconcerting report this morning regarding the status of Christopher Nolan’s involvement with a third film in the lucrative Batman franchise.  The info, which is hardly concrete, comes from one of the numerous Bat-related sources Ramey has acquired over 12 years of focusing his site on the development of these films.

    Ramey hedges his bets and writes what we all know, that “it is far from a given” that Nolan will return for another go.  But he offers a few bullet-pointed reasons from his source that certainly make a lot of sense.  Among them, says Ramey’s guy, “the death of Heath Ledger rocked Mr. Nolan hard,” and the project is back to square one with a virtually non-existent story due to the initial planned inclusion of the Joker in the third film.

    It has been reported that Warner Bros. has a shortlist of preferred directors to step in should Nolan decide to walk away from the director’s chair.  The studio is going forward on this whether he is or not, we can all be sure of that.  “Watchmen” director Zack Snyder was one of those names, but Snyder’s people told Ramey he has no interest in tackling the project (thank God).  But if not Nolan, then who?

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  • 10/3 Oscarweb Round-up

    WALL-E• A clip from “Changeling.” [Oscar Watch]

    • And another. [The Envelope]

    • Or, if you prefer, the first five minutes of “Blindness.” [Yahoo! Movies]

    • David Poland breaks the news that “Che” will get its U.S. debut at AFI Fest here in Los Angeles — at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. [The Hot Blog]

    • Tom O’Neil makes it clear that “Elegy” screeners only went to the AMPAS acting branch. [Gold Derby]

    • Rounding up the 50 greatest animated films of all time.  Further into the tank for “WALL-E.” [Rotten Tomatoes]

    • Famous cameos.  I heart the first one on the list. [The Independent]

    • David Thompson chats it up with “Burn After Reading” star Tilda Swinton. [The Guardian]

    • Has Dirty Harry become anti-cop? [The Big Picture]

    • Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen continue to make the rounds on “Appaloosa.” [USA Today]

    • Emily Parker goes head-to-head with a thoughtful Fernando Meirelles. [Wall Street Journal]

    • Glenn Kenny doesn’t care about what you don’t care about. [Some Came Running]

    • The Big Apple’s finest thespians. [New York Magazine]

  • 9/5 Oscarweb Round-up

    Rinko Kikuchi in The Brothers Bloom• Stephen Zeitchik and Borys Kit tackle the covert war films playing this year’s Toronto fest. [Hollywood Reporter]

    • Jeffrey Wells is hearing that Danny Glover’s narration track in Fernando Meirelles’s “Blindness” has been nixed. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • And he responds unfavorably to Rian Johnson’s “Brick” follow-up, “The Brothers Bloom.” [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • James Rocchi, however, is diggin’ it. [Cinematical]

    • But back to “Blindness, Pete Hammond charts the film’s second chance following mixed-to-negative reactions in Cannes. [The Envelope]

    • The tenacious Sheigh Crabtree scores some exclusive footage from Paramount Vantage’s “The Duchess.” [The Envelope]

    • Brad Brevet begins tracking the Best Foreign Language Film race. [Rope of Silicon]

    • Regarding “Rachel Getting Married,” David Poland continues the Robert Altman comparisons in his review (which really aren’t as applicable as the critical fraternity seems to think, I must say). [The Hot Button]

    • Tom O’Neil catches up with everyone else, ponders a Toronto minus the usual Oscar heavies. [Gold Derby]

    • Why do we always get one of those “Hollywood is at a crossroads” stories every few years? [Peter Bart]

  • International ‘Blindness’ trailer

    Can this overcome the critical thumping it took at Cannes this year?  Personally, I think it looks rather good.  I’m devoted to Fernando Meirelles, even if I found “The Constant Gardener” to be overbearing and overrated.  But it’s hard to argue with talent when it’s clearly there, and this guy has it.  Check out the new trailer:

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azLX4jjngpY

  • ‘Blindness’ misses the bullseye, say critics

    Well, in my last post, I said that “Blindness,” with its immaculate credentials, could hardly miss – which of course was issuing an invitation for it to do just that. The latest from red-hot director Fernando Meirelles opened this year’s Cannes Film Festival a few hours ago, to frustratingly mixed reviews.

    In his review, Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter calls the film both “provocative” and “predictable cinema,” and while he does admire Meirelles’ craft, he ultimately finds the film emotionally lacking:

    This philosophical coolness is what most undermines the emotional response to Meirelles’ film. His fictional calculations are all so precise and a tone of deadly seriousness swamps the grim action … Removing a fable from the comfort of the printed page to the photo-reality of film can sometimes lead to its own kind of blindness.

    Variety’s Justin Chang is similarly lukewarm on the film, bemoaning its “diminished impact and excess of stylish tics,” and is less impressed than Honeycutt is by the film’s technical qualities:

    Meirelles adopts a cooler but, in its own way, no less fussy aesthetic. He often floods the screen in luminous white to mimic the sensation of blindness, at other times bathing his characters in the stuff so they appear to be, in one’s words, “swimming in milk.” This deliberately artificial effect gives the film a stagy, self-conscious air.

    However, it’s not all doom and gloom by any means. On the other side of the Atlantic, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian offers an unqualified rave of the film:

    Blindness is a drum-tight drama, with superb, hallucinatory images of urban collapse. It has a real coil of horror at its centre, yet lightened with finely judged touches of gentleness and even humour. It reminded me of George A Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids and Peter Shaffer’s absurdist stage-play Black Comedy, showing humanity groping in the darkness. This is bold and masterly film-making from Meirelles: popular entertainment with challenging ideas.

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  • Cannes arrivals: ‘Blindness’ set to bow

    Wow, that seemed to sneak up on us quickly. The 61st annual Cannes Film Festival kicks off today, with Fernando Meirelles’ hotly anticipated “Blindness” opening the proceedings tonight.

    Pete Hammond at The Envelope has a neat round-up of the Cannes arrivals, with an emphasis on the Oscar prospects of the American films in competition. (Although, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the world cinema lineup this year is equally, if not more, mouthwatering.)

    Hammond does take care to point out to the awards-watchers out there that Cannes glory and Oscar victory don’t often go hand in hand, however:

    This year, particularly with the talent involved, there is lots of speculation about Oscar potential for new Cannes entries from past academy nominees and winners like Fernando Meirelles, Atom Egoyan, Charlie Kaufman, Walter Salles, Steven Soderbergh, Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen and others, although the sad fact remains that since it won, no film other than “Marty” has gone on to win the best picture Oscar after also nabbing the Palme d’Or — and that was in 1955!

    Several Palme D’Or victors over the years, like “Friendly Persuasion,” “MASH,” “The Conversation,” “Taxi Driver,” “Apocalypse Now,” “All That Jazz,” “The Piano” and “Pulp Fiction” did go on to best picture nominations.

    Roman Polanski’s 2002 Cannes winner “The Pianist” probably came closest, taking the academy’s director, actor and screenplay awards before what we imagine had to be the narrowest of losses to “Chicago” in the big category.

    All true, of course, but still – it’s been a while since the Cannes slate featured this many Oscar darlings in the official competition. And they don’t come any more Academy-beloved than the venerable Clint Eastwood, whose “Changeling,” starring Angelina Jolie, is one of the Cannes titles generating the most buzz from the awards-geek set. I remain less excited about the film than others, but one cannot overestimate the amount of industry goodwill out there towards Eastwood (and indeed Jolie, whom many feel was unfairly snubbed by the Academy for “A Mighty Heart” – though I thought that was one of their smarter calls, personally.)

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  • ‘Synecdoche, New York’ — another makeup contender?

    Rope of Silicon recently posted a series of stills from upcoming releases, including Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” films and Fernando Meirelles’s “Blindness.” But this image from Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” has me wondering if we don’t have another major contender for Best Makeup, a category shaping up to be more competitive than in years past.

    Here’s the pic:

    In addition to this new hopeful, I’d say there are solid bets to be placed on “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Dark Knight,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” and “Tropic Thunder.” Not a shabby start.