In Contention

Tag: James Schamus

  • Gotham tributes for Duvall, Swank, Schamus, Aronofsky

    The press release, in part:

    The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), the nation’s oldest and largest organization of independent filmmakers, announced today that director Darren Aronofsky, actors Hilary Swank and Robert Duvall, and Focus Features CEO, James Schamus, will each be presented with a career Tribute at the 20th Anniversary Gotham Independent Film Awards™ on Monday, November 29th at Cipriani Wall Street, New York, New York.

    Signaling the official kick-off to the film awards season, the Gotham Independent Film Awards™ is one of the leading awards for independent film. Anchoring the evening’s seven competitive awards for Best Feature, Best Documentary, Breakthrough Director, Breakthrough Actor, Best Ensemble Performance, Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You and the new Festival Genius Audience Award, are four Tributes to film community icons.

    This year’s Tribute selection represents a range of individuals – all veterans well-versed in the journey between lower-budget independent films and large-scale studio releases…

    “We are moved and honored to give tribute to four cinematic film luminaries, all of whom have had their roots in independent film, and have steadfastly focused on the art of film, irrespective of the size of the budget of their work” said Joana Vicente, Executive Director of the IFP. “This year’s tributes personify independent spirit and have created an astonishing breadth of work that we are proud to celebrate. James Schamus won the producing award in 1996 and Darren Aronofsky was our Breakthrough Director in 1998. We are thrilled to honor them again for their deserving careers. Robert Duvall and Hilary Swank’s work have enriched our lives; from the smallest of indies to the largest of Hollywood features, we are in awe of their talent and look forward to what lies ahead.”

    [Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures]

  • 1/21 Oscarweb Round-up

    (from left) James Schamus and Ang Lee• Cathy Yan chats with “Up in the Air” star Anna Kendrick. [Speakeasy]

    • James Schamus sets to work on “tragic, suicidally depressing” script for Ang Lee.  Terrific. [Hollywood Reporter]

    • Peter Bradshaw saddles back up to “Toy Story 2,” with a father’s eye. [The Guardian]

    (more…)

  • ‘Milk’ing it further

    Not to spend too much time today on “Milk” stuff, but I absolutely adored WNYC writer Nathan Lee’s closing graph of a piece written largely in response to yesterday’s unfounded media flurry over the studio strategy of publicizing the film:

    Of course no one is feeling very chill at the moment, and “Milk” is no ordinary prestige picture. Here is, after all, a movie about an intensely charismatic, rhetorically gifted community organizer who rose to power with a burden of minority status. Sound familiar? Indeed, it’s impossible to watch “Milk” and not see the Obama narrative reflected in ways that are both stirring and unnerving. Were “Milk” already in theaters and chewed over by the media, it would have been sucked into the election discourse like everything else – and likely raised the subject of political assassination in ways that no one much wants to contemplate.

    Read the rest here.  Also, Focus honcho James Schamus has written a defense against the Zeitchik piece that is certainly worth a look:

    …today has been proclaimed “Focus Features Day” by the Mayor – who clearly didn’t get The Hollywood Reporter in time to understand our underhanded, apolitical approach to marketing the film.

  • 9/8 Oscarweb Round-up

    Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks in Zack and Miri Make a Porno• Jen Yamato wonders what the hell happened to Oscar-winner Cuba Gooding Jr. [Rotten Tomatoes]

    • Jeffrey Wells puts up a positive review of Kevin Smith’s “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” philosophizes on the photographical approach to actually shooting a porno. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Logan Hill profiles “The Brothers Bloom” star Rachel Weisz back East. [New York Magazine]

    • Scott Macaulay goes party-hopping in Toronto. [Filmmaker Magazine]

    • Dave Karger and Missy Schwartz put together a video mid-term report for Toronto. [Entertainment Weekly]

    • Focus Features honcho James Schamus is honored with the Trailblazer Award at the Woodstock Film Festival.  WELL deserved. [MovieMaker Magazine]

    • Lou Lumenick considers Dakota Fanning a “formidable actress” in “The Secret Life of Bees,” but doesn’t see Oscar on the horizon. [Lumenick on Film]

    • A preview of Clint Mansell’s “Wrestler” score pops up online…I’m loving it. [MySpace]

    • Tommy Lee Jones sues Paramount over “No Country for Old Men” profits.  Show me the money. [Associated Press]

    • Anne Thompson’s heart goes out to Charlie Kaufman. [Thompson on Hollywood]

  • Ang Lee takes Woodstock

    Here’s what I love about Ang Lee: there is simply no way of anticipating what his next project is going to be. So far, the decade has seen him bounce from “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” to “Hulk” to “Brokeback Mountain” to “Lust, Caution” – a group arguably linked by thematic concerns of outsider identity, but with precious little in common besides. If there’s a more adventurous filmmaker at work these days, I don’t know his name.

    Now Variety confirms that his next project sees him revisiting Nixon-era America, the period having served him well in “Brokeback” (part of it, at least) and what I believe to be his finest work, “The Ice Storm.” Not that “Taking Woodstock” – Lee’s third film in a row for Focus Features – sounds like anything he’s done before either.

    The project, which enters production this month, has been adapted by James Schamus, Lee’s regular cohort, from the memoir of Elliot Tiber, a Greenwich Village interior designer who wound up in the creation of the biggest rock concert of all time when he lent his family’s motel to the event organisers.

    In an inspired piece of casting, Tiber will be played by “The Daily Show”‘s Demetri Martin, while other members of an interesting, and evidently complex, ensemble include Imelda Staunton as Tiber’s mother, Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Tiber’s closeted lover, Emile Hirsch as a Vietnam vet, Paul Dano as a hippie concertgoer, Liev Schreiber as a transvestite, and Eugene Levy as Max Yasgur, the owner of the farm where it all took place.

    Sounds like a suitably broad canvas for Lee to paint on – this should afford him plenty of room for a typically nuanced investigation of class, sexuality and popular culture, while offering him another completely new story world to explore. I can’t wait.