Not much going on today, so I’ve added a few new buzz pages to the collection: “Blindness,” “Gran Torino,” “I’ve Loved You So Long,” “Synecdoche, New York,” and “The Wrestler.”
As always, you can take a look at all pages by checking out the Contenders page, or by clicking on various links in the predictions sidebar. Still a little ways to go, but we’re almost complete.
“I didn’t buy all this stuff blockhead. I’ve lived here for fifty years. A man stays in one place long enough he tends to attract a decent set of tools.”
There are a lot of admirable things about “Gran Torino,” a simple yarn precariously told by screenwriter Nick Schenk. It wallows unforgiveably in the bigotry of its central character, Walt Kowalski (to be played by Clint Eastwood), pushing that boundry to laughable distances at times. But thematically, it works.
Walt hates gooks, chinks, slopes, call the Asians who’ve moved onto his block what you will. He’s a Pabst-chugging, VFW-trolling, inner-child- and soft-undberlly-suffocating ex-military man with a chip on his shoulder for religion and a dysfunctional relationship with his children. He’s pretty standard, by all indications.
We come into Walt’s life at the funeral for his deceased wife, Dorothy, and we’re given the immediate indication that this won’t be a weeping widower. Walt looks on as a fresh-faced preacher hangs a string of fancy words out over the crowd, and in ironic disgust he can only mutter, “Jesus.”
When a Hmong family moves next door, it seems to be the last straw for Walt, who has watched the neighborhood’s decline for a number of years. His house is pristine amid the rubble of homes unkempt by their Asian inhabitants, so it’s one more log for his racist fire.
The thematic thread woven into the character from the start is Walt as the fixer. A former Ford employee of 30 years, Walt’s prized posession is the 1972 Gran Torino sitting under a tarp in his garage. He has a tool collection to rival a small construction outlet and is persistent with maintenance and upkeep. The tendency drifts to the people in his life as well, always finding a solution to whatever he perceives as a problem. It’s the workhorse in him — even if, ultimately, he won’t be able to fix himself.
I’m about half-way through Nick Schenk’s script “Gran Torino,” the Clint Eastwood surprise of 2008 waiting to jump up and bite us all in the ass this December. So far it’s a really casual, satisfying read. Some bumps in the first act as Schenk has some trouble settling into the style of the narrative, the consistent racial slurs and the hard-ass Walt Kowalski character (to be played by Eastwood), but it settles in soon enough.
Kowalski is an interesting mix of Paul Newman’s Sully from “Nobody’s Fool” and Eastwood’s own portrayal of Frankie Dunn in “Million Dollar Baby.” Maybe even a dash of Walter Matthau’s Max Goldman thrown in. In fact, I’d place “Torino” right in “Baby”‘s wheelhouse so far, lots of that young-people-shedding-light-on-an-old-codger’s-life stuff going on.
More on Tuesday, when we review “Gran Torino” in our Page to Screen column.
Rope of Silicon beat us to the punch and posted the new shots from Warner Bros. Pictures’ fall preview press kit. There are new shots from “Appaloosa,” “Body of Lies” and “Yes Man,” among others. Then you get to the one we’re all foaming at the mouth for in anticipation, Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino,” and there’s nothing. Just this bit of prose:
Clint Eastwood stars in the drama “Gran Torino,” marking his first film role since his Oscar-winning “Million Dollar Baby.” Eastwood also directs the film in which he plays Walt Kowalski, an iron-willed veteran living in a changing world, who is forced by his immigrant neighbors to confront his own long-held prejudices.
Wow. Thanks, WB.
Anyway, I especially dig this new “Appaloosa” image:
The season is upon us. One month from today the industry’s first major stepping stone on the way to the Kodak Theater will arrive in the form of the Toronto International Film Festival: 10 days of put up or shut up by a number of the year’s prospective contenders.
Oddly enough, however, there will be a few considerable no-shows at this year’s festivities. In a business increasingly proving the precariousness of an early “frontrunner” status, studios and publicists seem to be slowing the machine down…but a few hands have been forced this season.
Heavily anticipated entries like “Revolutionary Road” and “Milk” will be absent at Toronto next month. Neither is expected to be ready, actually. Sam Mendes has been hard at work on “Farlanders,” while Focus Features would probably prefer to take the slow road after emerging from Toronto as the “frontrunner” in 2005 and 2007, but ultimately coming up short on Oscar night.
This is probably for the best on both. Gotta maintain those expectations. Early raves are as dangerous as early pans.
Meanwhile, the lineup is currently littered with modest independent efforts that depend on the festival circuit to find their groove: “Happy-Go-Lucky,” “The Other Man,” “Rachel Getting Married,” “The Secret Life of Bees,” etc. The major stuff — so far — seems to be steering clear.
Regardless, we’ve got one more month of full blown speculation before the season begins to settle into a tangible state…so let’s get to it.
Now I know I mention British film publication Sight & Sound quite often (I don’t work for them, honest), but they keep printing such good stuff. The September issue, just out, has an extensive career profile, with accompanying interview, on Clint Eastwood – a happy coincidence in the week that our friend Mr Foote’s book on the man has emerged.
The piece, by the venerable Geoff Andrew, echoes the oft-stated view – one I understand, but still don’t share – that Eastwood is America’s finest living filmmaker, one who “believes in the old-fashioned art of drawing us into a film rather than in displays of virtuosity.”
There’s also an evaluation of “Changeling” in which Andrew disagrees with S&S’s editor, and matches the breathless trade paper reviews at Cannes, making lofty comparisons to “Chinatown” and “LA Confidential” to boot:
J. Michael Straczynski’s deft script and Eastwood’s measured, quietly meticulous mise en scene manage to fashion (many) disparate elements into a complex, multi-stranded but entirely coherent drama … What’s possibly most impressive is the way Eastwood makes it all look so easy; as the story steadily grows broader and deeper in its import, it still feels like a damned good yarn.
With each review I read, I change my mind regarding the contender status of this oddly-scheduled film – Andrew’s take certainly suggests it has the gravitas to the distance, though there’s nothing on Angelina Jolie’s much-hyped performance. (Neither the profile nor the interview, however, feature any reference to “Gran Torino,” which is still something of a mystery package sitting in prime awards-season territory.)
In response to Tom O’Neil’s contender shortlist that I discussed yesterday, Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere has come up with his own list of Best Picture frontrunners – and predicted also-rans. (O’Neil has since significantly amended his list, by the way – wisely removing “Blindness” and “Synecdoche, New York” from Best Picture consideration, and adding some titles including, bizarrely, “Mamma Mia!” Meanwhile, names like Tommy Lee Jones, Rachel McAdams and Kristin Scott Thomas enter the actors’ mix.)
Wells’ top choices include “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (which he describes as “not the front-runner, but the contender with the best script”), “Milk,” “Doubt,” “Gran Torino,” “Frost/Nixon,” “W” and “The Visitor.” “W” is a predictably contentious selection; I certainly know a few people who would disagree with his assertion that it “works on the page.”
Rather more fun is Wells’ rundown of the titles that he thinks don’t have a prayer, which he breaks down as follows:
“Appaloosa” (possibly worthy Ed Harris western but New Line leftover status dooms it); “Burn After Reading” (a dry Coen brothers goof, not an Oscar film); “Body of Lies” (I know nothing about this brilliant Middle Eastern spy thriller that would qualify it as Oscar bait); “Changeling” (Best Actress nom for Angelina Jolie but the film, while dramatically solid and well made, just isn’t stratospheric enough); “The Dark Knight” (are Tom and Pete having us off?); “Defiance” (an Ed Zwick World War II movie about Russian-Jewish resistance guerillas…hello?); “Mamma Mia!” (all right, that’s enough); “Miracle at St. Anna” (a Spike Lee movie in which a bank teller is shot by an old guy having a memory seizure?) and “Vicki Cristina Barcelona” (can’t and won’t happen).
I must say I agree with him on most counts there – in particular, I’ll be somewhat surprised if “Miracle at St. Anna” and “Defiance” even turn out to be good films, let alone Best Picture possibilities. I can’t help thinking, though, that some little picture that’s slipped through all these lists will sneak up on us later this year. We sure weren’t talking about “Juno” a year ago.
Had anyone said to me in the 1970s that Clint Eastwood would in time become one of the finest and most important American directors in modern cinema, I would have laughed — quite loudly — in their collective faces.
The star of “Dirty Harry” and “Every Which But Loose?” The guy who shares the screen with apes? Are you kidding??? Yet here we are, 37 years after he first pulled that 44-Magnum (“The most powerful hand gun in the world”), and things have changed. He has won four Academy Awards — two as director, two as producer. He has been nominated for each on two other occasions and has two Best Actor nominations to his credit as well. He has twice been honored by the Directors Guild of America for and won countless critics awards.
Eastwood is indeed among the filmmaking elite. And with the upcoming releases of “Changeling” and “Gran Torino,” he looks primed to flirt with the film awards season yet again.
While researching my book “Clint Eastwood: Evolution of a Filmmaker,” my respect and admiration for the man has grown considerably. Obviously there was a great deal of admiration to start, otherwise I wouldn’t even begin a bhook on the subject. But leanring more and more about Eastwood and his work has, understandably, taken things up a level.
Eastwood challenges himself each time he makes a film. His choices to act in films such as “Any Which Way You Can” were driven by the fact that he knew the studio would then finance a personal project such as “Bronco Billy.” What really astounds me, though, is his growth as an actor through the years.
We’ve already been over what a thin year it’s been so far for Oscar candidates – or good films at all, for that matter. Now Variety has come to the same conclusion. In his mid-year awards-season study, Timothy M. Gray goes so far as to say that “the past six months have offered fewer potential contenders than any January-June period in memory,” and wonders if we’re seeing a return to the days when the Oscars were dominated by winter releases from the majors.
Indeed, Gray only finds one title from the first-half of the year that he thinks has main category potential: Overture Films’ “The Visitor,” the prospects of which I discussed extensively yesterday. I’m not sure I’d boil down an entire half-year to a sole film (“In Bruges,” anyone?), but I agree that “The Visitor” has a real campaigning advantage:
Keep an eye on Overture’s “The Visitor”: Lead actor Richard Jenkins has rightly earned awards buzz, but the film has many other virtues (Thomas McCarthy’s script and direction, the other performances, etc.). McCarthy, a talented actor in his own right, has crafted an actors’ movie — a character study with current-event concerns — that will play well on DVD, so late-year mailings could pay off.
(Indeed, the more I think about the film’s position in the awards derby, the more it reminds me of a certain tiny spring release from last year: “Away From Her.”
Looking forward into the rest of 2008, Gray ends up pondering most of the same questionmarks that we all are, including the following questions:
Will the early buzz sustain for Disney-Pixar’s “Wall-E” and WB’s “The Dark Knight” and Heath Ledger?
What effect will the Clint Eastwood double whammy — November’s “Changeling” and the December bow of Warner Bros.-Village Roadshow’s “Gran Torino,” in which he stars as well as directs — have on kudos? Similarly, Scott Rudin, who was in the winner’s circle with “No Country,” has two December openers — but will he have a third with “The Reader,” whose opening date is not yet set?
Benicio Del Toro won Cannes’ actor award for Steven Soderbergh’s “Che,” but will it find a U.S. distrib this year and, if so, in what form will the two-part film be released?
And then there are … other questions. In the last few years, the song category has been dominated by tunes that were production numbers (as opposed to those end-credit or background songs). So does this bode well for Disney’s “High School Musical 3” and Focus’ “Hamlet 2”? (If the song “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” can win, there may be hope for the latter pic’s “Rock Me Sexy Jesus.”)
…didn’t we already know this? Variety’s Pamela McClintock is claiming it as an exclusive, but the film has been on our contenders charts for at least a month now. And Guy Lodge was talking about “Gran Torino” and “Changeling” looking “to keep [Eastwood’s] profile high in 2008” just last week.
Let me begin with something very personal, something I prefer not to do in this column. Movies have not mattered much this past week, as my wife of 18 years, the love of my life was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. This Thursday we journey to Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto to allow the finest surgeons in the country to go in and take the tumor out, with the hope she does not have to have chemotherapy or radiation. There is a chance I could lose her, and that I couldn’t bear. The past few days have been a blur, and yet it is her who urged me back to the computer, with a gentle, “You can’t let the movie writing stop because of this…please…write…” God I love that girl. She is at this moment snoozing behind me as I write this.
Later this year we will see the release of “Changeling,” the latest from Clint Eastwood who over the last 16 years has become one of the finest directors working in movies. Now seriously, had anyone ever told me in the 70s that one day I would be celebrating the works of Eastwood the director by writing a book about him and his work, I would have laughed in their face at the thought.
Dirty Harry, the man who acted with apes, becoming a world class director? Yet here we are in 2008 and Eastwood has won two Academy Awards for Best Director, twice been honored by the Directors Guild of America, and won countless critics prizes for his work. Revered by actors, beloved by the studios for whom he works, and respected by his colleagues, he has quietly risen to the very peak of the directing world, sitting alongside Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese. His films have the lean feel and look of the best work of John Huston and Howard Hawks to whom story was paramount.