• Carolyn Giardina floats the possibility of “How to Train Your Dragon” beating “Toy Story 3” for Best Animated Feature with nothing but those (not unexpected) Visual Effects Society wins to justify it. [The Race]
• James Cameron thinks Christopher Nolan should have been nominated for Best Director this year. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Steve Pond explains the voting procedure of the five categories not on the ballots that went out yesterday. [The Odds]
I must confess, this year’s Sundance Film Festival kind of passed me by. Admittedly, I’ve been distracted by a busy couple of weeks on the awards circuit, but the Sundance coverage I did follow suggested a high-quality if nonetheless rather quiet festival, one with fewer noisy breakout films than usual.
In the last few years, it’s been worth keeping an eye (or an ear, rather) on the Sundance buzz, as the festival has birthed a number of future critical hits, and even awards-season success stories: recent Best Picture nominees “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Precious,” “An Education” and now “The Kids Are All Right” and “Winter’s Bone” all premiered there, as did “Frozen River,” “Blue Valentine” and a plethora of Oscar-nominated documentaries. (No fewer than four of this year’s Best Documentary Feature nominees are Sundance babies.)
So it’s easy to assume at least one film from this year’s Sundance crop is something we’ll still be talking about a year from now — but where the crossover potential for a film like “The Kids Are All Right,” or a performance like Jennifer Lawrence’s, was immediately evident, this year’s potential Sundance “stories” don’t seem quite as obvious.
Nearly a year after they first landed on UK television screens, the three feature-length films that comprise the “Red Riding” trilogy have reached American audiences – and in the theatrical environment where they belong, no less.
IFC is marketing and distributing “Red Riding,” an adaptation of David Peace’s decade-spanning quartet of crime novels inspired by the real-life Yorkshire Ripper murders, as a single theatrical event. The truth, however, is that these are three very distinct, even self-standing, works from three dissimilar directors: Julian Jarrold, James Marsh and Anand Tucker.
Where “Man on Wire” director Marsh’s documentary chops are evident in a film that takes on the nuts and bolts of police corruption, and Tucker (“Hilary and Jackie”) takes a straightforward character-based approach to tie up loose ends, Jarrold’s film, the opener, is the most boldly stylized of the three.
Following young journalist Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield) as he probes the disappearance of a young girl and becomes ill-advisedly involved with her grieving mother (Rebecca Hall), the film consciously fuses the languages of film noir and social realism to striking effect.
Things are winding down in Telluride. I saw the last film I’ll see here last night (Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet”) and have a few things to square away before I hop the shuttle for Montrose and, finally, the flight back to Los Angeles.
The fest has been a low key delight. An IFC-sponsored dinner Saturday night brought out a number of the principals from films on display (where I had fun throwing back a few and discussing “that moment” when you decide film will be your life with “Red Riding” producer Andrew Eaton). Nicolas Cage was strolling the streets last night with his kid, free of the usual adoring mob. Jason Reitman, Viggo Mortensen, Paul Schneider, Carey Mulligan, etc. have made themselves available for interviews, priming the pump for Oscar season. Good times all around.
The big winners of the fest, from what I can gather from conversations with a number of attendees, are Michael Hoffman’s “The Last Station,” Todd Solondz’s “Life During Wartime” and, of course, Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air,” among others. Unfortunately, I missed (again) Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” and a number of the once-in-a-lifetime screenings from Alexander Payne’s program, but I had a full, enjoyable time regardless. I have a few more interviews to get to today, but I thought I’d rattle off the last pair of capsule reviews before I head off into town for some meet-and-greets.
Here’s some fantastic news. You may remember that, a couple of months ago, I totally flipped for “Red Riding,” a trilogy of British TV movies deftly adapted from David Peace’s quartet of crime novels about the Yorkshire Ripper murders of the 70s and early 80s.
Actually, to be specific, I went crazy for the first film in the trilogy, Julian Jarrold’s “1974,” a haunting, exquisitely realized mood piece with a sterling cast led by rising Brit stars Andrew Garfield and Rebecca Hall — the latter’s sad, sensual performance even topping her breakthrough work in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” The next two films, helmed by Oscar-winner James Marsh and Anand Tucker respectively, were strong pieces of work too, but it’s Jarrold’s film that I can’t shake from my system.
Anyway, I said at the time that the film belonged on a bigger screen, and I’ve got my wish. Fresh from their acquisition of another outstanding Brit TV effort, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Sundance winner “Five Minutes of Heaven,” IFC has picked up the U.S. rights to the entire trilogy:
IFC plans to release The Red Riding Trilogy this autumn in theatres and on demand through its IFC In Theaters platform following a festival circuit run.
IFC Entertainment president Jonathan Sehring called The Red Riding “an absolutely thrilling work of cinema and one of the great true crime adaptations of recent times.
So justice is done. You’ll see what I mean in the fall. A brief taster after the cut.
I didn’t get a chance to mention it during our recent hiatus, but last Wednesday I saw a film that stands, for me, head and shoulders above any other 2009 release so far — one I can easily imagine still coming into play for my own Best of 2009 honours come December. A heady artistic breakthrough from a filmmaker I had never previously rated, with an immaculate cast of rising talent, it’s truly significant, surprising cinema.
There’s a catch, however. It’s not showing at a theatre near you — or any other, for that matter. For the film I’m talking about is “Nineteen Seventy-Four,” the first part of Channel 4’s ambitious, much-hyped TV endeavour “Red Riding” — a trilogy of self-standing films chronicling the infamous Yorkshire Ripper murders of the 1970s and early 1980s.
Deftly adapted by Tony Grisoni (“In This World,” “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”) from a quartet of novels by David Peace (a brilliant writer occasionally labelled, not without justification, as the UK’s answer to James Ellroy — he’s also behind the upcoming “Damned United”), the films examine both the social and official levels of corruption stirred by the crimes over an entire decade, but each has its own distinct thematic and cinematic character.
I was first alerted to the project when interviewing James Marsh last year — the Oscar-winning “Man on Wire” filmmaker helmed “Nineteen Eighty,” the second instalment of the trilogy. Marsh’s contribution is a sober, intelligent piece of procedural drama, enlivened by a terrific lead turn from Paddy Considine, but it’s really “Nineteen Seventy-Four,” the more oblique, mood-driven piece, that has stuck with me these past two weeks.
… as “Waltz With Bashir” helmer Ari Folman beat James Marsh in the Documentary category at the DGA Awards. Not that it means anything really in the grand scheme of things but, y’know, interesting.
(I’d say it seals up “Bashir”‘s probable victory in the foreign-language race, but if there’s one Oscar category that’s resistant to the notion of a ‘sure thing,’ it’s that one.)
Mickey Rourke (Best Actor, “The Wrestler”)
Michael Shannon (Best Supporting Actor, “Revolutionary Road”)
Amy Adams (Best Supporting Actress, “Doubt”)
Marisa Tomei (Best Supporting Actress, “The Wrestler”)
Danny Boyle (Best Director, “Slumdog Millionaire”) (also here)
James Marsh (director, “Man on Wire”)
Kristi Zea, Albert Wolsky (Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, “Revolutionary Road”)
Chris Menges (Best Cinematography, “The Reader”)
• After months of speculating, we finally have an Oscar host … and his name is Hugh Jackman. Bouquets all round.
• Obviously, the Golden Globe nominations were the week’s biggest news. They offered their usual dose of wacky surprises — principally the near shut-out of “Milk.”
• Sticking with the Globes, we got some of the nominees’ reactions here, before offering a subjective take on the rights and wrongs of this year’s slate.
• Elsewhere in the precursors, the Los Angeles Film Critics threw up the most unexpected — and contentious — pick of the awards race so far, handing their top prize to “WALL-E.”
• Their New York counterparts played it safer, giving Best Picture to “Milk,” but they had their own surprise package in the shape of “Happy-Go-Lucky.”
• Meanwhile, the latter film’s star, Sally Hawkins, emerged as a genuine threat in the Best Actress race, taking awards from both groups. We interviewed her here.
• The Broadcast Film Critics announced their nominations — which were more interesting for what they left out (“Revolutionary Road” in particular) than what they kept in.
• In a rare mea culpa from the Academy’s music branch, the disqualification of “The Dark Knight”‘s score was thankfully reversed.
• We chatted to the man who has so far enjoyed the smoothest ride through awards season: “Man on Wire” helmer James Marsh.
• As the prospect of an acting victory for Clint Eastwood hovers in the background, this week’s edition of The Lists examines which noteworthy actors have won for less notheworthy work.
It’s a rare achievement, but through the ups and downs the last fortnight’s precursors, one film has failed to miss a beat, landing gongs from the New York, Los Angeles and Washington critics, as well as the NBR and the British Independents, not to mention Indie Spirit and BFCA nominations.
That film would be “Man On Wire,” James Marsh’s crisp, witty and ultimately very moving documentary about Philippe Petit, the charismatic French performance artist who in 1974 committed the so-called “artistic crime of the century” — an illegal tightrope walk between the Twin Towers of the New York’s World Trade Center. Despite being what some might have seen as a niche project, it has emerged as one of the most acclaimed films (a Metacritic score of 89 speaks for itself), not to mention one of the top-grossing documentaries, of the year.
Marsh, for one, admits to being a bit taken aback to his film’s dizzying trajectory. “It‘s both a thrill and a surprise,” he tells me on the phone, taking a breather from the deadline-driven editing of his new film. “It’s a great, hopeful story, but there’s such a tragic connotation to those buildings now that I wasn’t sure how audiences would respond to it.”
By avoiding any 9/11 discussion in the film, however, Marsh was keen to keep the focus on themes of art and ambition, and he believes this is what so many viewers have connected with in the material. “It’s a fairytale, really,” he elaborates. “A real, true movie premise about achieving the impossible. Philippe is an adventurer, a superhero made flesh and blood. I love that what he did was in a way kind of pointless — it’s beauty for its own sake. And I love that audiences appreciate that.”