In Contention

Tag: festivals

  • VENICE: Jury duty – award predictions and preferences

    The Venice Competition lineup officially wrapped today with one of its lightest and most mainstream selections, “Barney’s Version” (reviewed this morning).

    With only the out-of-competition closing film “The Tempest” left to screen before I head back to London tomorrow evening, allow me a moment to sift through the runners and riders for the festival prizes – at the same time as Quentin Tarantino and his (hopefully) merry band of jurors much be contemplating the same thing.

    They have good reason to be merry: as a friend and I agreed this morning, festival director Marco Mueller has assembled a truly outstanding Competition field this year – thoughtfully balanced in terms of highbrow and middlebrow, genre and esoterica, veteran auteurs and younger ascending talents.

    (More thoughts, plus Golden Lion predictions and wishes, after the cut.)

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  • TIFF: ‘Conviction’ reviews trickling in

    I had hoped Fox Searchlight would screen Tony Goldwyn’s “Conviction” here in LA during Toronto, but I guess I kind of understand why they didn’t.  I’ve heard nothing but “meh” things on the film since day one (the first reaction I heard was from someone who saw it before the studio even picked it up).  That ambivalence is reflected in Brad Brevet’s C+ review of the film out of Toronto.

    Brevet calls it “a rather simple film” and notes that “the emotional impact of the story comes through in the end after what is a rather mundane and cliched story of the innocent man in jail and the person working hard on the outside to get him out.”  Well, I guess I could have gleaned that from a synopsis.  Dig, Brad!  Oh, here we go:  “At no point does this seem like new territory, but outside of being about ten minutes too long, it’s a film that works despite its rather traditional dramatic nature.”

    Wouldn’t “traditional” be a guarantee that the story would work?  In any case, I’m just having fun here.  Most I’ve talked to seem to think Sam Rockwell could charge to the front of the supporting actor derby.  Brevet writes that the actor plays the character “with enough eccentricity to make it believable, but never so much that it feels like a caricature trying to be larger than the scene.”

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  • SHORT TAKE: “Barney’s Version” (***)

    Venice Film Festival

    Too few film reviews open with the wisdom of Feargal Sharkey, so it brings me great pleasure to begin this one by saying that a good heart these days is, indeed, hard to find. That’s the chief conclusion to be taken from not just the narrative but the execution of “Barney’s Version,” a measured, thoughtful and agreeably down-the-middle adult romance that makes up in mature sincerity for what it lacks in style.

    I am, I admit, unfamiliar with the popular 1997 novel by Mordecai Richler from which Canadian TV director Richard J. Lewis’s film is adapted; it is, by all accounts, a dense, inventive and stingingly satirical work that has been substantially pared back and ironed out for the screen. This is not surprising: even without knowledge of the material, it’s easy to see where corners have been either cut or sanded smooth in the adaptation of a decades-spanning life study.

    Charting the fortunes and (mostly) misfortunes of Paul Giamatti’s eponymous anti-hero, principally his three failed marriages, Lewis and novice screenwriter Michael Konyves have fashioned a busy, baggy flashback structure that races through some key plot points as it leaves others dangling, and never makes good on its literary opening gambit to tell the story as Barney’s autobiography.

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  • VENICE: ‘Black Venus,’ ’13 Assassins,’ ‘Attenberg,’ ‘A Sad Trumpet Ballad’

    On my way to Tom Tykwer’s latest, so no time for an intro. Further rounding up highlights (and lowlights) of the Venice competition lineup:

    Expectations were appreciably high, and the press screening queue consequently doubled back on itself, for Abdellatif Kechiche’s historical drama “Black Venus” (**1/2) – after all, Kechiche had a hit on the Lido three years ago with the excellent “The Secret of the Grain,” and for those who know it, the story he’s working with here seemed overdue for screen treatment. By the time the credits rolled on this hard, dense, 165-minute slap of a movie, however, applause was more scattered than one might have expected for a display of such voluminous craft and ambition; the silence, one suspects, was that of an audience assessing which lines had and hadn’t been crossed.

    For my part, I remain stuck in a halfway house between immense appreciation that Kechiche has brought the extraordinary story of Saartjie Baartman, the black South African maid whose unusual physique (and genitalia) briefly made her the toast of the European vaudeville circuit in the 19th century, to the screen; and regret that he’s chosen to tell it in such a way that the film becomes complicit in the objectification it claims to decry.

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  • SHORT TAKE: “The Town” (***)

    Venice Film Festival

    Many actors-turned-directors use their outings behind the camera to express something of themselves that they feel hasn’t been enabled by the filmmakers they’ve worked with thus far: personal passions or preoccupations, social or political responsibilities, alternative thespian workout plans or simply a craven desire for awards they haven’t been able to win on their day job.

    Ben Affleck, however, is not drawn by any of these urges. Ben Affleck just wants to make movies. And with his sophomore feature “The Town” – a crisp, grown-up, tangily written thriller one might call “conventional” if studio entertainments this efficient weren’t so hard to come by these days – he further proves that he can make very good ones indeed.

    Affleck’s directorial debut “Gone Baby Gone,” a solid Dennis Lehane adaptation with a fluffed denouement, arguably received a mite more praise than it warranted due to general surprise at the sheer professionalism on display. “The Town” is a more followed-through genre effort with fewer artsy flourishes, but is perhaps destined to be underrated instead by critics expecting Affleck to develop more of an auteur’s ambition.

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  • TELLURIDE: That’s a wrap on the “Show”

    If you’ve been keeping up with the Telluride coverage then you know my thoughts on the 10 films I was able to catch over that four-day spread.  So I’m not going to bore you with a tedious recap here.  Instead, now that I’m back and relaxed in LA, not looking at the clock and rushing to make this or that event, I think I’ll just take a moment to reflect in general.

    On the way to yesterday afternoon’s Labor Day picnic, as I crossed over the San Miguel River on a quaint wooden bridge, I was struck with the disappointment that has been rotting at the back of my mind during the entire festival: God I wish I could take the time to smell the roses there.

    Telluride is a beautiful place to launch a film festival and its tranquility is reflected in festival-goers’ sensibilities.  There aren’t mobs of people out to see stars.  There aren’t flashbulbs popping off around every other corner.  Everyone is very much here for the movies and the chance to discover something new.  I don’t think it has been tainted, or at the very least, programmers and directors have gone a long way to keep that face out in front.

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  • INTERVIEW: Peter Weir

    Telluride Film Festival

    For director Peter Weir, the pacing of his output has become almost as measured as his brand of cinema. The Australian has built a career around art house grandeur, but his work has slowed to a handful of films per decade, in stark contrast to the frequency of the 1970s and 1980s.

    That could be reflective of a professional desire to take his time from project to project, but another hypothesis could be the fact that the general movie-going audience has shown a reluctance to the product Weir and those like him provide. The industry is changing around him, and for his part, the director appears to be a mighty oak in the storm.

    “I’ve sensed this profound change that’s occurring in the industry that’s not purely locked to the Wall Street crisis,” he says in a modest hotel room here at the Telluride Film Festival, where his film, “The Way Back,” saw its world premiere. “That’s obviously a significant part of it, but what I thought was there is a change in taste amongst a growing audience that really likes sequels and likes their films very, very simple and in the area of pure spectacle. They’re not interested in structural character, and I think the studios and others have reacted to that.”

    However, Weir says he thinks it’s all “a bit of baby out with the bath water because they then more or less said, ‘That’s it, that’s the change.’ Well people and audiences don’t change overnight. And I think there’s a large audience left high and dry, the type of people who appreciate a program like here around the world who are saying, ‘What happened? There’s nothing on.’ Everything does change but I think there’s been an over-reaction on the part of distributors and there’s been a kind of deep conservatism that has come in which has led them back to what we call the genres.”

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  • 9/7 Oscarweb Round-up

    • The Gurus o’ Gold step up to the plate of a fresh season, each of us picking 15 unranked bets for Best Picture likelihood pre-Toronto. [Movie City News]

    • Jeffrey Wells begs to differ on the notion that Gemma Arterton has a shot at awards success in “Tamara Drewe,” which he calls “the most loathsome film of Stephen Frears’ long and distinguished career.” [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • “Waiting for Superman” turns up the publicity heat and fuels the public education debate with a big ole’ spread. [New York Magazine]

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  • VENICE: ‘Post Mortem,’ ‘Essential Killing,’ ‘Promises Written in Water’

    One week into the Venice Film Festival, and I don’t mind admitting that I’m feeling a little worse for wear. (Okay, and more than a little hung over on free Prosecco.) Yesterday didn’t exactly soothe matters, serving up as it did two of the festival’s most mortifying Competition films – one of which, Alex de la Iglesia’s abominable psycho-clown melodrama “A Sad Trumpet Ballad,” I haven’t the fortitude to write about right now – and yet more wi-fi trouble in the press room, which explains yesterday’s meagre showing on my end.

    With two-thirds of the festival’s Competition lineup now unwrapped – including the surprise film, which rather anti-climactically turned out to be Wang Bing’s reportedly very nutritious “The Ditch” – some clear critical favorites have emerged.

    It is, of course, anyone’s guess what jury president Quentin Tarantino might take a shine to, but it’d be a surprise if Russian entry “Silent Souls” came away from the Lido empty-handed. Meanwhile, lingering high regard for “Black Swan” and “Meek’s Cutoff,” whether they win awards or not, points to something of a recovery for the stars and stripes after the embarrassment that was this year’s Cannes showing.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Commence au festival (season)!

    Without question, the film launching full speed ahead and into the Oscar season this week is Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech.” I truly haven’t heard an unkind word about the film all weekend here in Telluride, and I imagine that goodwill will continue into the Toronto fest this week as well.

    I can easily see nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay and Best Art Direction.  Nods for the cinematography and costumes wouldn’t be all that shocking, either, so I’d say nine is the ceiling.  And I imagine we may see a win or two, as well.

    Let’s face it.  As overdue as Jeff Bridges was last year, there are many who think Colin Firth was robbed for his work in “A Single Man.” It could conceivably be makeup time when the Oscars roll around in February.  My interview with Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Tom Hooper was interrupted Friday by a woman who wanted to let Firth know she thought he was robbed.  How deep does that sentiment go with voters?

    I imagine The Weinstein Company is breathing a sigh of relief with the favorable reaction, as “Miral” was met with blanket disapproval in Venice (here is Guy’s review).  The studio has a few other tricks up its sleeve, but none so critical as Hooper’s film.

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  • SHORT TAKE: “I’m Still Here” (**1/2)

    Venice Film Festival

    “This is the moment where the fucking good guy wins,” yells an evidently kite-high Joaquin Phoenix at a hapless member of his entourage, midway through his brother-in-law Casey Affleck’s debatable documentary portrait of the star’s much-publicized career meltdown.

    It’s a little difficult to spot the victory – or, indeed, the good guy – in this and many other such tantrums that pepper “I’m Still Here”: the film can be interpreted in a number of ways, and Phoenix comes off pretty awfully in most of them. Is it all a hoax? More specifically, could Phoenix’s actions – his abrupt 2008 “retirement” from the screen, his intended hip-hop career, his bizarre new American-Apparel-rabbi look – all be an elaborate stunt, and the film somehow not?

    Affleck was predictably unforthcoming in this morning’s press conference: “Elliptical” was his one-word answer when asked how he felt about the allegations of fakery, supported by certain scenes in the film that have obviously been (re)staged. (The closing credits feature a cast list in which not every player is billed as themselves.)

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  • TELLURIDE: ‘Black Swan,’ ‘Biutiful’

    Today was a long one here at Telluride.  Three screenings (which has been my consistency throughout the fest), an interview, transcribing, etc., etc.  The night mercifully brought little that interested me, so I’ve finally found some time to work.

    This afternoon started with a screening of one of Guy’s favorite films of the year, “The Illusionist.” I wasn’t as enthusiastic as he was, but I kind of want to hold off on putting my thoughts down while I let it marinate a bit.  It’s not a difficult film or anything, it’s just a visual feast that should be turned over a few times before settling on a view point, I think.

    After that it was off to the Venice hit, Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan.” Hundreds of people were turned away at the door and this, without a doubt, has been the festival’s hottest ticket.  The Lido can take a bow on that one.  Actually, Aronofsky’s twisted thriller seems the best place to start, so…

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  • Don’t be afraid of ‘The Way Back’

    As I write this, I can hear Peter Weir’s “The Way Back” playing at the Abel Gance outdoor cinema screen a block away.  As I passed the massive crowd that turned out for tonight’s screening, it got me thinking about Eugene Novikov’s Cinematical review of the film, which was unfortunately picked up at many outlets following Friday night’s debut.  Unfortunate because it completely misrepresents the film.

    Starting with the first line, Novikov says Weir’s film is “sadistically intent on making you feel as much of its subjects’ physical agony as possible” It’s a struggle, to be sure. This isn’t a happy time in these people’s lives. But there’s nothing here defying convention when it comes to a survival film, so why the hyperbole? And “sadistic” is an unfortunate adjective because it assumes a twisted sort of intention, which isn’t true at all. If Weir is being “sadistic,” then I’d love to hear what Novikov thinks Danny Boyle is doing in “127 Hours.”

    He goes on to say the film is “too straight up harrowing” to get awards traction. Novikov might think the film could have a tough road ahead Oscar wise, but it certainly won’t be because the film is “too harrowing.” There’s nothing here that we haven’t seen a thousand times in a thousand Oscar contenders, and that’s not to say it’s derivative (it isn’t). It simply doesn’t depict the gruesome journey Novikov projects.

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  • The Telluride sprint

    Today is the busiest day for me so forgive the drought on coverage so far.  I saw “The Illusionist” and “Black Swan” this afternoon, sat down with Peter Weir shortly after and I’m now shuffling off to catch “Biutiful.”  But check back later this evening for reactions to all of that and more.

  • VENICE: ‘Potiche,’ ‘A Letter to Elia,’ ‘Robinson in Ruins’

    Hey, did you miss me yesterday? Don’t answer that. Sorry for the radio silence, but Saturday proved to be both my busiest and most rewarding day at Venice, serving up five films — none of them stinkers, and one of them perhaps my favourite of the fest so far.

    After capping the day’s viewing with a delightful pasta dinner in the company of two of Variety’s finest, I took the water-bus back to my San Marco hotel room in a pleasant fog of good feeling and red wine, only to find the wi-fi in my hotel room had taken the night off.

    As it turned out, it was just as well: today’s festival schedule being a lean and mostly unappetizing one, I rewarded myself with my first lie-in of the week (sorry, Tsui Hark) and began afresh in the morning. Late-night reviewing is fraught with hazard, anyway, as I’d learned the night before when I nodded off in the middle of writing up “The Sleeping Beauty.” (Before you say, “How apt,” let me remind you that there is no beauty in waking up at 5 a.m. with keyboard-face.)

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  • SHORT TAKE: “Meek’s Cutoff” (****)

    Venice Film Festival

    “But nothing happens,” complained several friends to whom I had (perhaps a little too zealously) recommended Kelly Reichardt’s previous feature “Wendy and Lucy,” her pocket masterpiece about the mental unravelling of a stalled drifter in the great American nowhere.

    It’s hard to say whether such viewers will be appeased or even further dismayed by Reichardt’s subtly muscular and altogether staggering follow-up, “Meek’s Cutoff,” which sees the director taking on a propulsively linear narrative – an ox-wagon road movie driven by the most fundamental of human needs – that nonetheless still finds its greatest dramatic significance in minute human exchanges. This is a film whose story turns on one character’s offer to repair another’s shoe, the implications of this small act weighted so as to hold you in hushed fascination through every stitch.

    If, then, Reichardt remains an astute chronicler of what happens when nothing happens, “Meek’s Cutoff” affords the director her largest canvas yet on which to ruminate. A 19th century-set Western covering the most severe and spectacular stretches of the Oregon Trail to transfixingly beautiful effect, the film expands its focus from the selective character studies of “Old Joy” and “Wendy and Lucy” to ponder the fates of three families and two bookended individuals, miles from a home that does not yet exist.

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  • TELLURIDE: Boyle returns with ‘127 Hours’ in tow

    Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours” made for a fascinating companion piece tonight with Peter Weir’s “The Way Back,” which I caught (and loved) this afternoon.  Both films, at their heart, are obviously about surviving at all costs, but they come from drastically different filmmakers with drastically different sensibilities when it comes to visual storytelling.

    Where Weir chooses the majesty of epic scope and films his true story with a lingering sort of patience, Boyle sets about filming his true story with the energy and vibrant spirit we’ve come to expect of his work.  Both films, however, find their groove in the naturalistic, mundane moments that inhabit tales as harrowing as these.

    I understand Boyle’s film was very well-received this afternoon when it debuted.  My audience in the evening was slightly more muted but clearly loved the film.  It helps when you have Aron Ralston in the crowd, of course.  His is an unbelievable tale and one with a rather beautiful message about the necessity of community and society to carry us through the day-to-day.

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  • TELLURIDE: ‘The Way Back,’ ‘The King’s Speech’

    The second day of Telluride has brought treat after treat. I decided early this morning to skip the world premiere of Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours” in favor of Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” because I could slide two films in rather than the one. Peter Weir’s latest, “The Way Back” (which didn’t generate many reviews at all from last night’s premiere — most must have been at “Never Let Me Go”) was playing shortly after.

    It couldn’t have been a better decision. I was treated to both the film of the festival so far and a profoundly moving work of art from a modern master.

    Let’s dive in…

    “The Way Back” (****)

    Peter Weir has made a career out of visual feasts with thematic resilience. Some might consider him the David Lean of our time, and with good reason. But the key difference is that Weir has slowly developed an art house niche out of epic scale filmmaking.

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