In Contention

Tag: Frozen River

  • ‘Frozen River’ first out of the gate with Oscar screeners

    Sony Pictures Classics' Frozen RiverSony Pictures Classics is the first studio to send out Academy screeners this season.  “Frozen River,” which garnered considerable praise for lead actress Melissa Leo when it was released in August, landed on doorsteps over the weekend, giving the studio a head start on the race.

    With plenty of indie film performances in the mix for Best Actress in 2008, this move could go a long way to ensuring that voters consider Leo’s work.  Additionally, Leo won the Best Actress award this weekend at the San Sebastian Film Festival.  Co-stars Tsilla Chelton and Oscar Martinez also took acting honors.

    Last year Fox Searchlight was the first studio to unleash screeners, albeit during the first week of September.  The studio sent out copies of “The Namesake,” “Once” and “Waitress,” though only “Once” found its way to an Oscar nod (for Best Original Song).  Sony Classics is taking this opportunity to distinguish Leo in the minds of voters, with Kristin Scott Thomas’s work in “I’ve Loved You So Long” still to come from the studio.

    Read up on the latest “Frozen River” news here.

  • ‘Che,’ ‘W.’ among films announced to play London fest

    Looking down the list of titles in the newly-revealed lineup for next month’s London Film Festival lineup, my initial reaction was one of mild disappointment. Plenty of exciting titles, for sure, but it doesn’t quite match last year’s feast that included everything from “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” to “The Assassination of Jesse James” to “Juno” to “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.”

    My second thought, however, was that the lineup reflects more on what a tepid year for film 2008 is shaping up to be, rather than any lack of effort on festival director Sandra Hebron’s part. Tellingly, this morning Hebron herself cited critical opinion that, in the wake of a roundly derided Venice festival, “it wasn’t a vintage year for cinema.”

    But enough of the hand-wringing. There’s still much to get excited about, including “Che,” the two parts of which, interestingly, will be screened both together and apart; Oliver Stone’s potentially polarising “W”; “Hunger,” featuring a potential dark horse for Best Actor; “Religulous”; “Rachel Getting Married,” “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist,” “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson” and, to my immense delight, “Synecdoche, New York.”

    Not to mention that, as previously announced, the festival will be bookended by the world premiere of “Frost/Nixon” and Danny Boyle’s red-hot Toronto hit “Slumdog Millionaire.”

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  • Melissa Leo: could she be a frontrunner?

    So far, 2008 hasn’t presented a surfeit of cast-iron Best Actress contenders. (Consider that by this time last year, we all knew Marion Cotillard and Julie Christie were locks.)

    Angelina Jolie seems to have been installed as the de facto frontrunner since Cannes, but I’m not really buying it – her performance has some high-profile detractors, and I’m not sure many people feel she’s earned entry into the double-champ club. Sally Hawkins would be in if I had my way, but as Kris has pointed out, the performance can be divisive. For the rest, we only have unseen prospects to contemplate.

    Into this blurry picture comes 47 year-old character actress Melissa Leo, playing a broke single mother who gets involved in illegal immigrant trafficking in zero-budget Sundance champ “Frozen River.” She is currently riding a wave of unanimous critical adulation that is swiftly translating into Oscar buzz. Over at Awards Daily, Sasha Stone has been supporting her enthusiastically, bluntly stating:

    The great Melissa Leo … is going to be among those left standing by the year’s end if anyone with half a brain is paying attention. Her performance WILL stand out among the performances of this year, male or female.

    This is no blogosphere conjecture either: Leo is getting significant press coverage, most notably a major profile in the New York Times, which notes the “thrill” of watching Leo get “enough room to explore one of the complicated, surprising women she’s so good at sketching in smaller roles.”

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  • Gold Derby backs ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’

    All us awards-watchers know that Tom O’Neil’s Oscar prognostications can be a little wacky (let’s just forget that he predicted “Sweeney Todd” would sweep the top four awards last year, shall we?). Still, he knows the game better than most, and his mid-year list of frontrunners (with assistance from Pete Hammond) in the top three categories makes for interesting reading.

    All the usual suspects (“Benjamin Button,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Revolutionary Road,” etc) are present, though there are some surprising choices – he still has “Blindness” and “Synecdoche, New York” (still without a distributor) in his Best Picture shortlist, and “W” crops up there too.

    O’Neil clearly isn’t buying into “The Road,” though Viggo Mortensen makes an appearance in his Best Actor list. Meanwhile, two unexpected choices stood out for me in his acting lists: Eric Bana in the bestseller adaptation “The Time Traveller’s Wife” (a fairly unknown quantity that I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere), and the terrific Melissa Leo in Sundance champ “Frozen River.”

    What interested me the most, however, is that O’Neil singles out “Happy-Go-Lucky” for discussion, calling it:

    (The) film you may be most underestimating … Mike Leigh’s little flix are often big players (“Vera Drake,” “Secrets and Lies”) and this perky one could be the next “Little Miss Sunshine” or “Juno.” Sally Hawkins already won the Best Actress trophy at the Berlin Film Festival.

    I’ve been predicting big things for Leigh’s delightful film (which, incidentally, gets better the more I contemplate it) for a while now, so I’m pleased to see O’Neil shares my faith in it – though I’m not sure I quite agree with his comparison. It’s certainly a warm and very funny film, but there’s more melancholy and bite to it than either “Juno” or “Little Miss Sunshine.”

    Back in June, Kris wondered where “Happy-Go-Lucky” would land in Miramax’s awards priorities. Since then, the picture has cleared a little bit. With “Doubt” now seemingly the only other prestige contender on Miramax’s slate, Leigh’s film looks well-positioned to get an awards push from the studio – particularly in the event of “Doubt” disappointing. (I still don’t buy the latter as a Best Picture contender.) And with its profile further raised by its inclusion in the Toronto Film Festival lineup, the prospects for “Happy-Go-Lucky” are starting to look as sunny as its title.