In Contention

Tag: Fox Searchlight

  • Bring on spring already

    Okay, I know we’re all jacked up for the next few months of awards-watching, but would anyone mind if we just fast-forwarded straight to May? I’ll miss the Oscars, but frankly, the winter freeze is getting me down, the movies have petered out, and then I read a Cannes-teasing tweet like this from the ever well-informed Cédric Succivalli. Here it is, short and (very) sweet:

    Almodovar, Despentes, Kar Wai, Malick, Ramsay, Sorrentino, von Trier on their way to Cannes ’11.

    Cédric is a reliable source on all matters Croisette-related — so this would appear to cement the LA Times’s report yesterday of a “likely” Cannes debut for “Tree of Life,” though the film’s festival-shadowing US release date of May 27 was already something of a clue. In that LAT piece, meanwhile, Steven Zeitchik writes that Fox Searchlight plan to market Malick’s long-delayed opus as an “event” befitting its summer status.

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  • ‘Margaret’ will see light of day, says Searchlight

    Last year, I dedicated a couple of posts to the mysterious case of “Margaret,” Kenneth Lonergan’s seemingly terminally delayed follow-up to his 2000 directorial debut “You Can Count on Me.” The film, a character drama starring Anna Paquin as a traumatised witness to a bus accident, with Mark Ruffalo and Matt Damon in support, was shot in 2005 — but has been stuck in the editing suite ever since.

    Working from a vast, ambitious 168-page script, Lonergan has reportedly been unable in four years to complete a cut of the film that pleases him. (This extensive LA Times report details the financial and legal consequences of his creative blockage.) However, just as the issue had slipped from memory — with many assuming the film would never be released at all — Anne Thompson dropped this brief but encouraging update from distributor Fox Searchlight a few days ago:

    Searchlight states: “we do have a finished cut by Lonergan and we plan to release the film sometime in 2011.”

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  • Searchlight backs Bridges’s “performance of a lifetime”

    Jeff Bridges in Crazy HeartWhen I first began compiling my Oscar nomination predictions back in May, I took a wild-card Best Actor punt on Jeff Bridges in a little, then distributor-less indie called “Crazy Heart.”

    In truth, I had little basis for the guess other than the strong reputation of the 1987 source novel, and the fact that Bridges is surely one of the most sorely Oscar-overdue actors in the business. Like Ed Harris, he’s one of those dependable American stalwarts, well-liked by all, who you think must win at some point, but rarely land roles showy enough for the winner’s circle.

    “Crazy Heart,” however, gives Bridges the opportunity to play a washed-up, alcoholic country singer seeking to get his life and career back on track — now just count the Oscar hooks in that sentence. How can he lose?

    So I was interested to see my idea given at least some credence by Fox Searchlight, who recently acquired global rights to the film for a seven-figure sum.

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  • EDINBURGH: ‘Humpday,’ ‘Adam’

    HumpdayMy last full day at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (which wraps up on Sunday) served up a pair of comparatively conspicuous U.S. titles. Both are comic ventures of a sort that made a splash (one via widespread critical and audience enthusiasm, the other via a high-profile pickup by Fox Searchlight) at the Sundance Film Festival, but otherwise represent opposite tonal ends of the spectrum of American independent comedy.

    Before I get into those, however, a quick shout-out for another marvelous French title, Sylvie Verheyde’s “Stella,” which merits further discussion down the line. A loose-limbed, autobiographical picaresque of sorts following the misadventures of a neglected working-class 11 year-old girl in a posh Parisian school, the film transcends standard coming-of-age territory via the protagonist’s mordant wit and an astonishingly assured lead turn from young Leora Barbara. This one’s also playing at the L.A. fest — catch it if you can.

    HUMPDAY (***)

    Since its attention-grabbing debut at Sundance in January, “Humpday” has become one of those odd items whose premise far precedes it: even those with only a scant working knowledge of American independent cinema can tell you that it’s a comedy about two straight dudes who get it into their heads to make a gay porno, even if they couldn’t supply a single other detail about the film.

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  • 6/3 Web Round-up

    Steve• Steve Martin: banjo enthusiast. [CNN]

    • The complete “Terminator” timeline. [Empire]

    • Speaking of which, Ben Child spends some time with the best part of “Terminator Salvation,” actor Anton Yelchin. [The Guardian]

    • Nancy Utley and Stephen Gilula ascend at Searchlight. [indieWIRE]

    • Brooks Barnes on the swath of upstarts leaping into the CGI animation fray. [New York Times]

    • Revisiting the summer of 1997. [Cinematical]

    • Nathaniel Rogers does some Oscar predix clean-up, joins the “Precious” train. [The Film Experience]

    • John Horn previews this weekend’s Produced By Conference with a producers roundtable. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Top 10 hockey moments in non-hockey movies.  Yeah. [Premiere]

    • Alonso Duralde on the many faces of Vegas on celluloid. [MSNBC]

    • Patrick Goldstein wants to know why Israel’s biggest box office success of 2008 has yet to secure U.S. distribution. [The Big Picture]

  • The trouble with ‘Margaret’

    Anna Paquin in MargaretLast month, I discussed my frustration over the terminally delayed status of Kenneth Lonergan’s sophomore feature “Margaret,” while sharing a slender hope that linking of composer Nico Muhly to the project might bode well for its eventual completion.

    Unfortunately, an extended LA Times investigation into the matter suggests that “Margaret” is a long way from seeing the light of day — if that ever happens at all. John Horn’s interesting piece provides by far the most comprehensive breakdown to date of the factors delaying the film, and it doesn’t make for encouraging reading. With Lonergan apparently incapable of completing an edit that satisfies him and/or the film’s backers, “Margaret” is now deeply tangled in legal limbo.

    A number of producers and editors — including (Scott) Rudin, (Sydney) Pollack and Martin Scorsese’s legendary editor, Thelma Schoonmaker — have tried but failed to help Lonergan complete his movie, court documents and interviews show. With his financing from (Gary) Gilbert and Fox Searchlight cut off, Lonergan borrowed more than $1 million from actor and close friend Matthew Broderick (who has a small part in “Margaret”) in an attempt to complete the editing of the movie, according to a person close to the production.

    The film’s lengthy post-production sparked two lawsuits, which are scheduled to be tried in June and September. Last July, Fox Searchlight sued Gilbert and his production company, claiming he failed to pay the studio half of the film’s production costs. Two months later, Gilbert’s Camelot Pictures sued Fox Searchlight and Lonergan, alleging that the studio and Lonergan thwarted Gilbert’s many attempts to finish the movie, forcing Camelot to pay for “a clearly inferior and unmarketable film” that Lonergan, several people say, will not support.

    There’s a lot more messy detail where that came from, and the article lays it out better than I can. Horn also offers the bittersweet revelation that the troubled film buried beneath these unfortunate circumstances may well be worth saving.

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  • Romanek begins shooting ‘Never Let Me Go’

    Never Let Me GoLast week, I mentioned how fully in the tank I am for Lynne Ramsay’s upcoming “We Need To Talk About Kevin.” Today, meanwhile, brings updated news of another British-funded adaptation with a mighty literary source, perfect-on-paper cast and exciting filmmaker who has been quiet for too long.

    The film in question is Mark Romanek’s take on Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 masterpiece, “Never Let Me Go.” Both Fox Searchlight and Film4 (a pairing that previously brought us “Slumdog Millionaire”) have a hand in the project, which started principal shooting today in the UK. Anyone familiar with Ishiguro’s novel will see why it’s a potentially snug fit for Romanek, the music video auteur extraordinaire who hasn’t settled on a feature-length vehicle for his gifts since the mixed bag that was 2002’s “One Hour Photo.”

    Ishiguro’s supremely elegant science-fiction tale — a romantic dystopian narrative hard to synopsise without entering spoiler territory — should provide the right balance of elegiac emotional texture to complement Romanek’s sometimes distancing visual sheen. With Alex Garland (“The Beach,” “28 Days Later”) handling script duties, the project promises a very exciting merger of three pristine stylists.

    Meanwhile, the cast — a veritable showcase of Britain’s brightest rising talent — isn’t too shabby either: Sally Hawkins has just been added to a roster that already includes Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield (so riveting in “Boy A” and “Red Riding”), with Charlotte Rampling adding veteran class.

    Even if you don’t know the source material, you have to admit this sounds pretty exciting on paper. Of course, Ishiguro’s opalescent, china-fragile prose (okay, I’m a long-time devotee) provides numerous opportunities to trip up less delicate filmmakers — but as the Merchant-Ivory team proved back in 1993, it can be done, and with less intrinsically cinematic source material to boot. I’m sensing something special in the works here.

  • Are you there, Fox? It’s me, ‘Margaret’

    I have to say, I’ve all but given up hope that Kenneth Lonergan’s “Margaret” will ever see the light of day. For years now, I’ve kept an optimistic eye out for the film, kept putting it on my early Oscar prediction lists, kept checking the Fox Searchlight release schedule — only for the film, originally shot in 2005, to fall further and further beneath the radar.

    There’s talk of an unruly, wildly overlong shooting script as being to blame, while chronic perfectionism on Lonergan’s part has also been rumoured. I’m not sure what to believe — but as someone who thinks that “You Can Count on Me” is looking to remain one of the decade’s finest American films (yeah, we have to start thinking about such things, don’t we?), it’s certainly a frustrating state of affairs.

    It’s certainly hard to imagine a film of “Margaret’s” pedigree — to jog your memory, the cast includes Anna Paquin, Matt Damon and Mark Ruffalo, while Scott Rudin and the late duo of Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack all have producer credits — just falling by the wayside.

    So I was intrigued to stumble upon this news tidbit that suggests the film hasn’t been entirely forgotten — and that it doesn’t only share a trio of producers with last year’s “The Reader.” It would appear that prodigious young composer Nico Muhly has taken on the job of scoring the film, which may or may not mean anything. Searchlight’s website offers no helpful information, for one thing. Still, it’s nice to hear that “Margaret” hasn’t completely vanished off the face of the earth.

    (Coincidentally, this is the second time Muhly has cropped up in my thoughts today. This morning, I was checking out the lineup for the ATP UK Weekend, a music fest I’m attending in May — and lo and behold, there he was, alongside the likes of The Jesus Lizard and Spiritualized. Dude’s got it going on.)

  • Thumping ‘Slumdog’ soundtrack to be released

    Cover of Slumdog Millionaire original motion picture soundtrackThank God.  I was hoping Fox Searchlight would find a way to market this amazing material.  It worked well for them last year, albeit in the grungy, alt-rock vein.  But the music in “Slumdog Millionaire” is like a two-hour celebration, and it’s dying to be collected.

    The track listing, from MTV, has a lot of the A.R. Rahman stuff, of course (all of it exciting).  But M.I.A. pops up on there as well.  “Paper Planes” is put to great use in a montage that you wish would never end mid-film.

    The final track, as expected, is “Jai Ho,” the Bollywood number Searchlight is hoping will make some noise in the Best Original Song category.

    Check out the full story at MTV.  Here’s the track listing:

    1. “O… Saya” Performed by A R Rahman & M.I.A.
    2. “Riots” by A R Rahman
    3. “Mausam & Escape” by A R Rahman
    4. “Paper Planes” Performed by M.I.A.
    5. “Paper Planes” DFA REMIX Performed by M.I.A.
    6. “”Ringa Ringa” by A R Rahman featuring Alka Yagnik & Ila Arun
    7. “Liquid Dance” by A R Rahman featuring Palakkad Sriram & Madhumitha
    8. “Latika’s Theme” by A R Rahman featuring Suzanne
    9. “Aaj Ki Raat” Performed by Sonu Nigam, Mahalaxmi Lyer & Alisha Chinoi
    10. “Millionaire” by A R Rahman featuring Madhumitha
    11. “Gangsta Blues” by A R Rahman featuring BlaaZe & Tanvi Shah
    12. “Dreams on Fire” by A R Rahman featuring Suzzanne
    13. “Jai Ho” by A R Rahman featuring Sukhvinder Singh, Tanvi Shah & Mahalaxmi Iyer

  • INTERVIEW: Danny Boyle

    Danny BoyleRoughly halfway through my interview with Danny Boyle, the small, rather alarmingly wallpapered room we’ve been seated in is, by some technical error, suddenly flooded with the opening beats of “Orphans,” the first track off Beck’s “Modern Guilt” album.

    Boyle immediately leaps to his feet to report the problem, though he can’t help nodding in
    time to the music. “That’s the new Beck, isn’t it,” he notes excitedly. “Fantastic stuff. Now’s not the time, but fantastic stuff.” The music vanishes. Boyle flops back onto the couch, straightening out his rumpled plaid shirt.

    It’s a fittingly surreal interlude for an audience with Boyle, demonstrating both his utterly unflappable personality and his keen interest in every sight and sound around him — whether invited or not. It’s a heightened awareness that is apparent in every one of his films; few directors make films as busy as Boyle’s, films as alive to the possibilities of environment, movement and music. His is a sensation-driven cinema that comes into full fruition in his astonishing new film “Slumdog Millionaire,” a breathless rush of visual and narrative energy that marries fanciful storytelling to a rich, perceptive study of a 21st-century nation.

    It’s also his first film with an entirely non-Western context, something which seems to have further fired Boyle’s creative impulses. “India is just … everything at once,” he enthuses, gesticulating wildly to convey the scale of it all. “It’s got these amazing extremes of wealth and poverty and religion and landscape, but in the West we go to a lot of trouble to separate those extremes. Nothing is separate in India. That makes it an incredible place to set a story, particularly one that is so tough and so joyful all at once.”

    True to form, “Slumdog Millionaire” tells a pretty incredible story, a rags-to-riches tale in the most literal sense. It’s a story that hinges on the fairytale conceit of destiny, but as Boyle notes, that notion still plays into contemporary Indian society. “There’s a bond between the classes there, however far apart they are in terms of wealth. They get each other because they pretty much come from the same place — destiny makes all the difference.”

    Boyle pauses to pour himself a fresh cup of tea, cheerfully dismissing the waitress’s offer of bottled water. (An Englishman through and through, he still resides in Mile End, an unfashionably working-class corner of East London.) It’s late in the day, he’s tired and, he sheepishly admits, a little hung over — the previous night saw “Slumdog” close out the London Film Festival, with all the flashing lights and partying that entails.

    While it should be noted that a “tired” Boyle still projects more energy than most of the normal human population, this level of media attention is new to him. For all the acclaim his previous work has garnered, he’s never before made a film that received the awards buzz that “Slumdog Millionaire” is receiving (remarkably for an edgy, foreign-set picture with not a single name star attached).

    “It’s brilliant, it’s insane,” he says, shaking his head. “It seems I just came here from L.A., and now I’m off to L.A. tomorrow. But you can’t release a film like this, something so potentially alien to audiences, and not work hard to promote it. Fox Searchlight are working me ragged, which is fantastic.”

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  • “An Oscar-less Toronto” — but not for Searchlight

    Anybody who’s kept even half an eye on film news recently knows by now that, compared to previous years, the consecutive Venice and Toronto festivals have done little to illuminate the Oscar race. (Unless, I suppose, you were one of those predicting major glory for “Miracle at St. Anna.”)

    The Hollywood Reporter adds their verdict to the pile here, quoting an executive as declaring the fest “an Oscar-less Toronto.” There’s little new perspective in the article, but it’s a handy enough precis. They do think one race has benefited from the festival:

    But the festival might have helped clarify at least one category: the best actress race. The beneficiaries have been Anne Hathaway in Jonathan Demme’s dysfunctional-family drama “Rachel Getting Married”; Sally Hawkins in “Happy-Go-Lucky,” the Mike Leigh film about a chipper young schoolteacher; and, if Searchlight chooses to make an awards push for her, “The Secret Life of Bees” star Dakota Fanning.

    Hmmm. It’s not as if Hathaway and Hawkins weren’t deemed contenders before Toronto. (The Golden Globes may as well drop the other three slots for Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical, right?) And Dakota Fanning? With those reviews? Yeah, right.

    In any case, as they acknowledge, Searchlight has other priorities now, having nabbed the two hottest Toronto titles:

    The lone film that has emerged as a genuine standout is Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler,” which went in as a question mark and will leave as a contender in pretty much every major awards category. To a lesser extent, Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” also is generating awards talk, though its cast is entirely unknown.

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  • Fox Searchlight picks up ‘The Wrestler’

    This morning’s poll wasn’t even an hour old before Anne Thompson reported that Fox Searchlight won a bidding war for Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler.”  Hell, I didn’t even get a chance to vote in it myself.

    Here’s what she has to say:

    In the first major buy of the Toronto International Film Festival, Fox Searchlight won an intense all-night bidding war for Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, which days before had won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Fest. Searchlight acquired U.S. rights for about $4 million.

    After the packed screening of The Wrestler at Toronto’s Elgin last night, buyers huddled on the street and eventually, made their way to the Four Seasons Hotel to make their bids and pitch their release plans. An Oscar-campaign for Mickey Rourke’s rough-and-tumble, vulnerable performance as a wrestler on the ropes was an essential component of the deal. Most distribs were offering a Monster-style Oscar-qualifying late-year platform with a wider release in January.

    Frankly, I’m somewhat surprised.  “The Wrestler” isn’t in the Searchlight wheelhouse, exactly.  Not that versatility is the issue, but I honestly expected Sony Classics or Miramax to dive in deeper.  But this adds to a new narrative coming out of Toronto: Fox Searchlight is walking out of the fest with a hell of a one-two punch in this and Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire.”  And the studio has proven time and again that it knows how to usher films to Oscar pastures.

    Boy did this race change in the course of a week.  We’ve got a new poll up now, so tell us how you feel about this acquisition.

    Here’s some footage from the film with Aronofsky and Rourke talking their process. I love that Aronofsky told it like it was to Rourke, RE: the actor’s washed-up career:

  • POLL: Which studio will pick up ‘The Wrestler?’

    Mickey Rourke in The WrestlerUPDATE 9:24 a.m.: Boy, I expected this to have a short shelf-life, but not an hour or two!  Anyway, check here for the latest and check out the new poll in the sidebar.

    EARLIER: This poll might have a short shelf life, since studios are chomping at the bit in Toronto right now and a deal could be made as early as today, but I thought I’d put it out to the readership.

    Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” is one of the hottest Toronto tickets this year, but which studio seems most likely to pick it up for domestic distribution?  Keep in mind, a purchase doesn’t necessarily mean a 2008 release.  As one industry friend mentioned earlier this week, it’s just as likely that a studio with a lead actor heavy could pick up the film and save it for next year’s season.

    Bit with that in mind, let’s look through the possibilities:

    Sony Pictures Classics tends to nurture work like this.  One of the most tried and true dependents in the game, the studio doesn’t have a major actor horse in the derby and could be just the thing for Mickey Rourke’s campaign.

    Magnolia Films, meanwhile, is apparently in talks to distribute Steven Soderbergh’s “Che,” which shares a production company with “The Wrestler” in the form of Wild Bunch.  Maybe.  (The majority of IC readers seem to think a two-film release plan for “Che” could hurt its Oscar chances, by the way, judging from last week’s poll.)

    What about Miramax Films?  Lots of ladies on the studio’s docket, but nothing much for the men.  A Philip Seymour Hoffman here and a Mark Ruffalo there could easily take a backseat to an all-engines-go shove for Rourke.

    Focus Features?  “Milk” is going to be the clear focus (no pun intended) for James Schamus and company.  Fox Searchlight?  Peter Price and his team of savy campaigners already picked up an awards heavy in “Slumdog Millionaire” recently.  Are they ready to throw another log on the fire?

    I don’t expect Paramount Vantage to make any purchases at the fest, and most of the majors seem to be satisfied with their still unseen fall product, so I’d say these three are the best bets.  So let’s hear it from the readers…

    Which studio will pick up “The Wrestler?”