In Contention

Tag: James L. Brooks

  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 40 — ‘The Fighter’ and ‘Black Swan’ hit AFI Fest, a riskless Hollywood and previewing the Governors Awards

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    AFI Fest has concluded, the first Academy Award ceremony of the year hits this weekend and we find ourselves in the thick of things. Between Galas, premieres, parties and the usual, there’s plenty to chew on, so let’s see what’s on the docket today…

    (more…)

  • ‘How Do You Know’ trailer

    It’s difficult to discount someone from the Oscar race when he has a 60% track record with the Academy.  Then again, James L. Brooks has only directed five films to date and his last, 2004’s “Spanglish” (which, full disclosure, I’ve always quite liked) went nowhere.  His sixth is set to hit theaters this fall from Columbia Pictures and may be a return to awards season form or not, but a new trailer from Yahoo! Movies reveals it as frothy and harmless with a fun performance from Paul Rudd, if nothing else.  Click on the image below to have a look or watch the embed on the jump.

    (more…)

  • Brooks comedy gets a title change

    James L. Brooks says he “has a tough time” with titles and that they “make [him] nuts.”  So following the switcheroo of “Betty Anne Waters” to “Conviction,” today it looks like Brooks’s “How Do You Know” will now be known as “Everything You’ve Got.” The film stars Paul Rudd and Reese Witherspoon and may or may not be an awards caliber thing, depending on the “Spanglish”-ness of the finished product.

    Capiche?

  • Not such funny people

    Judd Apatow and Leslie MannI recently discussed the positive buzz building around Judd Apatow’s “Funny People,” which has thus far turned up numerous allusions to the unabashedly sentimental seriocomic stylings of James L. Brooks — a comparison that promises either polished awards-bait, mawkish pap or both, according to taste.

    Suggesting that the Brooks similarities hold true beyond a glib glance-over of the film, Apatow fully acknowledges his debt to the “Terms of Endearment” filmmaker (with whom he worked on the 1990s animated series, “The Critic”) in this recent New York Times piece, which addresses his and his team’s weightier aims for the project:

    Asked why, at 41, he would follow movies about sexuality and childbirth with a film about mortality, Mr. Apatow was circumspect. “I’ve unfortunately been around people who have been ill and seen people figure out how to deal with it,” he said. Some, he added, “just keep plowing on forward, and they don’t seem to change.”

    “What I took from (working with Brooks) was, the audience is supposed to like the movie, as simple as that sounds,” Mr. Apatow said. “If they’re not loving it, you failed.”

    But even Mr. Apatow’s closest confederates recognize that “Funny People” may not be as easily loved as his two previous films. “I wouldn’t describe it as dark,” said Mr. Rogen, a star of “40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up.” “I would say it’s more ambitious in what it’s attempting to make light of.”

    This sober tone colours the entire piece, as Apatow expresses his desire to make a “Tuesdays With Morrie”-type story but — before you retch — with the twist that “the main character learns nothing,” while the words “grown-up”, “intensely personal” and even “existential” come up at various points. No pressure, then.

    (more…)

  • ‘Funny People’ an ‘award-level thing?’

    Adam Sandler in Funny PeopleI don’t mind admitting that I wasn’t entirely won over by the trailer for Judd Apatow’s “Funny People,” which, for all its smartness, seemed to me a little too calculated in its bid for laughing-through-the-tears pathos. Like pretty much everyone else, James L. Brooks struck me as an obvious point of reference — but whether we were talking Brooks on a good or bad day was unclear to me. It’s just a (very long and over-expository) trailer, after all.

    Now Jeff Wells has chatted to a couple of folks who have seen it, and is passing along the word that Apatow has seemingly channeled Brooks on a very good day indeed. Awards-season good, even:

    Possibly an award-level thing, a director friend said this morning, although he was just passing along the chatter. It’s more in the realm of Sandler for Best Actor and Apatow’s script for Best Original Screenplay, he speculated, than a Best Picture shot…but you never know.

    So I called a non-vested guy who’s seen it, and here’s what he said: “Really funny, a really sweet movie, a lot of veracity…really a brilliant film. Everybody’s game goes up a lot. It’s a James L. Brooks-level thing and a great role for Adam. It’s a perfect blend of everything Sandler has done in a serious vein. The film could be a bit of a marketing problem because it’s about show business but it’s so real.. It’s about a famous guy, a comedian, having to deal with the fact hat he has no life and nobody to turn to. But he gets better [through a relationship with a younger comic]…it’s basically a love letter to having a family.”

    No specific mention of Leslie Mann, who struck me on paper as the film’s likeliest awards prospect, but that was a shot in the dark. Anyway, I seem to recall hearing near-identical chatter about “Spanglish” before it finally surfaced, so I’ll remain guarded. (I’m expecting something better than that fiasco, of course, but I’m just sayin’.) Encouraging buzz, nonetheless.

  • DGA discrepancies with AMPAS are not uncommon

    Frank Darabont on the set of The MistThe announcement of this year’s DGA nominees has left the sense that the races for Best Picture and Best Director are over.  Not so.  While the guild and Academy line up most of the time, and have a decent track record with the directing branch, we must not forget the years that proved otherwise.  This could be such a year.

    Ask yourself how many times the Best Picture category has lined up perfectly with the nominees for Best Director?  Please also be aware that the DGA has awarded their prize sometimes to directors not even nominated for an Oscar: Ron Howard for “Apollo 13” and Steven Spielberg for “The Color Purple” to name a couple.  So while the race is certainly clearer, it is by means over.

    I still believe Woody Allen stands a strong chance for being nominated for “Vicky Christina Barcelona,” just as I believe that Darren Aronofsky could sneak in for “The Wrestler.”  But who gets snubbed?

    Gus Van Sant, Christopher Nolan, Ron Howard, David Fincher and Danny Boyle are worthy nominees all, most deserving of their attention and potential award.  But who of those esteemed five could the Academy allow to slip away?  It’s a tough call.

    I hate to say it, but I think Fincher is the most likely snub.  A stunning film to be sure, and likely the major nominee recipient…just as “The Color Purple” was in 1985.  My gut tells me Fincher might get the shaft only because he’s been on that side of things before, and the others are just too hard to ignore.  That said, let’s not forget that Ron Howard has been a victim of this sort in the past, for his finest work in fact, “Apollo 13.”  And Nolan is in some dicey waters, though I doubt he could be the victim of the blockbuster mentality that haunted Spielberg for “Jaws” (and much of his career).

    (more…)