• Peter Lattman sits down with “Inside Job” director Charles Ferguson. [Dealbook]
• A.O. Scott on the drive and determination of Gordon Gekko and Mark Zuckerberg. [New York Times]
• Scott Feinberg puts together a massive, comprehensive list of Oscar contenders and pundits on Twitter. Follow away! [ScottFeinberg.com]
In Friday’s Oscar Talk, Anne and I pondered the Oscar potential of Sony Pictures Classics’ typically robust stable of contenders. So far the best bet to have already hit theaters is Aaron Schneider’s “Get Low,” which could be a below-the-line play as well as a Best Actor possibility for Robert Duvall.
Films from Rodrigo Garcia, Atom Egoyan and Jean-Pierre Jeunet all came and went, while Woody Allen’s didn’t inspire much at Cannes. And that’s fine, by the way. The business isn’t all about awards, obviously, and Sony Classics knows how to make money. (There’s a reason the dependent is still standing tall.)
If we properly assume “The Illusionist” will have its day in the animated feature category, while “Inside Job” will be relegated to the documentary field, that leaves three possibilities for Oscar success: Mike Leigh’s “Another Year,” the recently acquired “Barney’s Version” and Nigel Cole’s “Made in Dagenham.” The latter is perhaps the one to watch out for.
This isn’t a revelation, of course. Guy’s first stab at predicting this year’s Oscar set noted that “the Academy frequently likes its Britpics chirpy and digestible” and that Cole’s film was “getting ‘next Full Monty’ buzz on its way to a prominent launch at Toronto.” Having seen the film last week, I have to say, I see his point.
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.
It’s a bit of a scorcher in Telluride this year. Relatively speaking, of course. I’ve got all these long pants in the suitcase but can’t seem to shake the shorts as of late.
Anyway, tonight brings “Never Let Me Go” and “The Way Back.” I’ll likely hit up the former and catch the latter sometime later in the weekend. Errol Morris’s “Tabloid” also screens late tonight, and I can’t wait to catch that one. I’m debating “Tamara Drewe” this early evening. Guy’s Cannes review doesn’t instill confidence, but I’ve heard from others that it’s quite entertaining. What to do?
By the way, there are a bunch of rumors concerning Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” suddenly popping up at Telluride because Brad Pitt is in town. Same as the rumor that “The Descendants” would show up because Alexander Payne is here. Sometimes, people just want to go see movies in a laid-back environment — even celebrities. That’s all I’m saying.
Anyway, on to the first set of capsule thoughts…
As we enter the fall festival season with an Oscar prediction sheet still covered in question marks, there is at least one category where almost all the viable contenders have already been seen. I speak, of course, of Best Documentary Feature, a race already crowded with possibilities from earlier fests and the summer release calendar, and with a submission deadline less than a week away.
Over at The Odds, Steve Pond informs us that filmmakers have until September 1 to enter their docs for Oscar consideration, having completed qualifying theatrical runs (one week minimum) in the past 12 months. Sifting through the titles in play, Pond likes the chances of such heavily-buzzed titles as “Restrepo,” “Inside Job” and “A Film Unfinished.”
All three films take on weighty subjects — respectively, the conflict in Afghanistan, the global economic crisis and (a well-known pet theme of the Academy) the Holocaust — which should stand them in good stead with a voting branch not renowned for its sense of humor.
I reviewed Charles Ferguson’s smart financial recession study at Cannes in May, describing it as “a thorough, incisive if faintly dry breakdown of the current economic crisis that plays a little like last year’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” on a heavy dose of Ritalin.” Most other critics are less measured in their praise; though there are no sure things with the Academy’s wilful documentary branch, the film looks a cinch to score an Oscar nod, and very possibly the win too. The Sony Pictures Classics acquisition will play Toronto next month, before hitting US theaters on October 8. Apple has the first trailer; click on the image to check it out there, or watch the embed after the jump.
A few weeks ago, I commented upon the scarcity of viable awards contenders released in the last six months, coming to the unsurprising conclusion that there hasn’t been much to, well, comment upon. In the past few days, however, Variety’s Tim Gray and EW’s Dave Karger have revisited the subject … and haven’t come up with very much either.
A common emerging sentiment is that, with such a meagre first-half slate, filling 10 slots on a Best Picture ballot could be a challenge for many voters – and could ultimately result in a decidedly weak nominee field, one with more “Blind Sides” than “District 9s.”
Sasha Stone has challenged this by suggesting that, in what she (if not everyone else) believes will be “a great year for film,” the Academy may end up looking to arthouse or non-summer genre fare to fill the gaps – though, to take two of her listed alternatives, it has to be said that while most critics would be down with “Winter’s Bone” making the list, “Shutter Island” would be a much more contentious nominee.
With the year nearly at its midway point, the Hollywood Reporter’s Gregg Kilday has taken on the rather fruitless task of sussing out potential Oscar contenders from the last six months of releases. As you will no doubt be shocked to hear, he doesn’t find many — declaring “Toy Story 3” the year’s first viable Best Picture nominee (just as Pixar’s “Up” wound up as the earliest release on the 2009 slate).
Not that this is a particularly new phenomenon. Bar the occasional “Crash,” “Erin Brockovich” or “The Silence of the Lambs” — films that tend to grow into their Oscar-contender status rather than have it thrust upon them — studios tend to save their prestige product for the year’s latter stages. Everyone and their pet lizard knows that.
But as Kilday points out, considering last year’s expansion of the Best Picture field was a shameless grab for more blockbuster nominees, none of this year’s summer (or spring) behemoths up to now could be deemed credible contenders. (That he even bothers to consider the chances of “Alice in Wonderland” is cause for major shuddering.)
Now that we’re on the other side of Cannes, I felt it was a good time to put a finger to the wind, stare into the tea leaves, shake the magic 8-ball and basically just take stock of where we’re at roughly three months away from the start of the 2010-2011 film awards season.
The festival, covered diligently by Guy Lodge around these parts (we thank him), brought little to write home about where Oscar potential is concerned. The truth is, it rarely does. But as the year takes shape, things start to linger. A film like “Inglourious Basterds” can transform muted if appreciative response on the Croisette into a foaming-at-the-mouth bid for a surprise upset in just a few months’ time.
The big narrative stand-outs for most were Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful” and Mike Leigh’s “Another Year.” Perhaps the latter has an easier Oscar path ahead, given that it was more unanimously accepted and could ultimately be a soft lob for Academy types. Sony Pictures Classics swooped in and nailed down domestic distribution, so I think we’re looking at a bona fide Best Picture nominee to go along with likely bids for Best Actress (Lesley Manville) and the usual expected tip of the hat from Leigh’s fellow screenwriters. Maybe even a Best Director nod, too. And yet the film didn’t win a single festival prize. See how this works?
Apologies for yesterday’s scarcity of Cannes updates: a bumper day of back-to-back screenings cut unavoidably into my writing time, particularly as “Another Year” — widely agreed, among those I’ve spoken to, to be the standout film of the Competition so far — merited a more substantial take than most. One day and several films later, Mike Leigh’s latest and its rich, teasing ambiguties are still foremost in my thoughts, and some inside Twitterers have suggested that the jury is similarly impressed.
My day could have been even busier, but I blew off an early evening screening of Canadian wunderkind Xavier Dolan’s “Heartbeats” to finish my Leigh review — only to pay the price this afternoon as I was shut out of the repeat screening. You can’t have (much less do) it all. I fully intended to make up for it with the late show of Chadian Competition title “A Screaming Man” … but if you can refuse when USA Today’s delightful Anthony Breznican offers to treat you to a steak-and-bouillabaisse dinner on the Croisette, you’re a nobler cinephile than I.
Moving on to yesterday’s decidedly mixed bag of American movies…