I had to hand it to /Film‘s Peter Sciretta in Telluride, who got a few minutes with “Up in the Air” director Jason Reitman right after I did. His and FirstShowing‘s Alex Billington’s idea: interview Reitman in a gondola. Get it? — up in the air.
Anyway, Reitman’s a good sport and clearly had a good time here. It’s worth a look. Peter is taking donations for a tripod:
Here’s a great chat between Anne Thompson and “Up in the Air” director Jason Reitman from Telluride (literally five minutes before I sat down to talk with him for my interview). Part one here, part two after the jump:
• James Rocchi sits down with Jason Reitman to talk “Up in the Air.” [AMC TV]
• Jeffrey Wells bangs the Best Picture drum for Rodrigo Garcia’s as-of-yet un-acquired “Mother and Child.” [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• Michael Douglas talks “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” [Empire]
(Please note, as opposed to Kris and Guy, I tend to grade films on a 5-star scale.)
Day two of the festival is always among the busiest because the major studios are here and they want you to see their films. Movies with buzz coming out of Toronto quite often end up in the Oscar race.
“Slumdog Millionaire” exploded out of this festival last year and went all the way to eight Academy Awards. Who would have thought coming in to Toronto that Danny Boyle’s film would rock the fest? So which film will it be this year?
If Venice and Telluride can tell us anything it is that Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air” is winning critics over and should land George Clooney in the Oscar race once again for Best Actor. Kris certainly loved the film when he saw it, and frankly, so did I.
But Clooney will not be alone here in the race for Best Actor. One of his good friends will be right there with him: Matt Damon for his amazing work in “The Informant!.” Today was one of those good days when I bounced from good film to great film back to good film, to great documentary. I may have seen the best of the fest on Friday.
Let’s get into some reactions…
• After weeks of hype, “Up in the Air” landed in Telluride, and delivered. (And finally got a trailer too.)
• Meanwhile, as some compare director Jason Reitman to Billy Wilder, we interviewed him at the festival.
• We also got chatty with possible awards contenders Paul Schneider and Venice prize-winner Mark Boal.
• On the other side of the Atlantic, our Venice coverage continued, including a first look at Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story.”
I’ve been keeping a steady eye on the reactions to a press screening of Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air” this morning via Twitter. The film will play to the masses tomorrow night, but so far, it seems to be landing just right across the board.
ComingSoon’s Ed Douglas noted swiftly, “Believe the Hype. This is a very special film. Loved it!” MSN’s James Rocchi, meanwhile, chimed in with, “Up in the Air: Don’t believe the anti-hype. Funny, tough, real; a big step up from all involved, and a touch of The Music Man, too.”
Finally HitFix’s Drew McWeeny seemed almost speechless, offering, “Just out of ‘Up In The Air.’ Devastated. Didn’t expect that emotional response at all” and “I walked ten blocks to the hotel, unable to look a single person in the eye. I am shredded.”
All of that was fine and good and, to a large extent, expected. But who would have anticipated a crotchety soul like Jeff Wells to call it the year’s best film and fawn over it like so…
Telluride Film Festival
Four days ago, Jason Reitman finalized his latest film, “Up in the Air,” by making one final song change. Two days ago he unveiled it to its first-ever first audience, his nerves shot. Today, somewhat more relaxed in the wake of a warm reception to the film, he’s sitting outside at a cafe on a sunny day, the famous gondolas of Telluride swinging around and up the hillside to Mountain Village behind him as he thinks back on the experience.
“It felt really good,” he says. “I’ve never had that short a period of time between finishing a film and it showing for the first time. I’m used to having a few weeks to get nervous, but I was really making creative choices up until the last second. It was almost surreal, it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m watching it with an audience.’ And there’s this moment when you give up the movie. It stops being yours and starts being everyone else’s. It’s unusual. People laugh at a certain point or they’ll find something moving that you didn’t expect. They start telling you what the movie was. I didn’t expect that emotional experience for myself. A lot came together Saturday.”
Reitman began conceiving the story of “Up in the Air” — which strays considerably from the film’s source material, a 2002 Walter Kirn novel — six years ago. (Sheldon Turner, who shares screen credit on the adaptation, penned a draft early on, but Reitman came from his own place on things.) He began turning over its themes in his head, considering them in their barest form.. “They started coalescing further a few years ago,” he says, “and then, really in the year leading up to the movie, right after ‘Juno,’ it suddenly felt like, you know, this was a question I really needed to ask. I go through the same questions that the main character does.”
In the film, George Clooney stars as career transition specialist Ryan Bingham, a hired gun terminator. It’s an element of the film that skims the zeitgeist but its the personal journey of the character that Reitman wanted to dig at, notions of one’s responsibility to engage with the world around you, with one’s family, and the idea that no man is — or at least no man should be — an island unto himself.
• If you’re dismissing the Oscar potential of “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” Gregory Ellwood says, “Not so fast.” [Awards Campaign]
• Meryl Streep on why Hollywood’s men don’t trust women. [The Times]
• Betsy Sharkey sits down with “Precious” director Lee Daniels. [The Envelope]
I guess it’s landing a little early. /Film has the exclusive teaser for Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air,” which the director conceived himself exclusively for the internet. It’s a beautiful piece that really captures the tone and spirit of the film.
I generally prefer trailers put together by filmmakers (Paul Thomas Anderson does it a lot) because they tend to be free of the usual marketing tropes and have an artistic value unto themselves. Reitman didn’t do the actual editing (he gives credit there to the folks at Acme, who also do his opening credits sequences). But still, it clearly comes from the same mind that conceived the film. You don’t get that very often. There will be another trailer down the line, something geared toward the masses, I’m sure (and there’s obviously a necessity for that), but I’m glad this one’s out there:
• Roger Deakins, Alexandre Desplat and Colleen Atwood added to Hollywood film fest honorees. [Variety]
• Matt Damon talks “Bourne 4.” [Empire]
• Viggo Mortensen planning an early retirement after the release of “The Road?” [Cinema Blend]
Friday I posted a piece asking whether Jason Reitman might be on track to becoming the new Billy Wilder (an idea first put forth by USA Today writer Anthony Breznican). The notion was met with some wicked vitriol from those who felt it a silly comparison or, at the very least, too soon to discuss.
Fair enough on the latter, as I mentioned in my piece to begin with and in the ensuing discussion. But three days later, Stephen Farber invoked Wilder’s name in his Hollywood Reporter review of “Up in the Air” and compared the film’s protagonist to the “corporate pimp” of Wilder’s “The Apartment.” And today, in going back and forth on the idea with Breznican, he has offered a clarification but isn’t backing off on his point:
“My comment is bound to provoke that sort of thing,” Breznican wrote of the reaction. “I think you got what I meant, but I probably should have been more precise. Obviously Reitman, at the start of his career, does not add up to Billy Wilder’s entire output. But of course, that wasn’t what I was saying. Rather, I meant Reitman is working with Wilder’s toolbox, and telling the kind of stories that incomparable veteran once told.
Telluride Film Festival
Jason Reitman began adapting Walter Kirn’s novel “Up in the Air” five or six years ago (in the wake of an earlier draft by Sheldon Turner). The country was on better economic turf, he wasn’t married, he didn’t have a child. He was drawn to a book jacket with a quote from his friend, “Thank You for Smoking” author Christopher Buckley, enchanted by a lead character obsessed with collecting frequent flyer miles who lives a single-serving lifestyle from airport to airport.
Today, unemployment rates are skyrocketing, tangible human connectivity is becoming a relic of another century, Reitman has settled down with a wife and daughter and futures all around are uncertain. But in some ways, there is hope, a sense of turning an all important corner. By the end of “Up in the Air,” that is just where Reitman has left his protagonist.
Meanwhile, Kirn’s novel has been transformed from an otherwise unremarkable example of corporate comedy into a piece at once deeply personal and serendipitously relevant. This is one of the year’s finest films.
George Clooney stars in perhaps the role of his career (one certainly drawing parallels to his own lifestyle) as Ryan Bingham, a career transition counselor who zips from hub to hub 270 days a year. In a nutshell, he is part of a third party firm hired out to corporations for the purposes of firing discontinued clientele. He lives a life of isolation, a stranger to his Midwest family, who sees him rarely and kills his commitment-less buzz anytime they call with an update.
He has airport check-in down to a science, stereotypically zeroing in on those who are quickest to follow behind at security, Moonwalking out of his shoes as he does so, his luggage immaculately packed, his system a work of streamlined art. When he isn’t letting people go in the name of other companies, he gives motivational addresses meant to steer attendees clear of the extra baggage in their life, their commitments, extraneous relationships, anything that keeps them from living a life as he believes it is meant to be lived: in motion.
I wouldn’t dare review Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air” via iPhone from an in-transit gondola, but I’m compelled to write something immediately.
The film is a triumph. It drips with Reitman’s passion, his love for his wife and child, his assessment of his own journey into adulthood. He just finished telling the audience at the Chuck Jones Theater that it’s probably the most personal film he’ll ever make. One can certainly understand the sentiment.
I’ll get into this more later, but I consider it a four-star knockout that couldn’t have hit the country and, to speak personally, me, at a more perfect time.
That USA Today profile on Jason Reitman, penned by IC friend Anthony Breznican, was still simmering in my mind recently when an acquaintance mentioned an intriguing comparison Breznican made on his Facebook page. “To me, this guy is the next Billy Wilder,” Breznican wrote of Reitman. “His films are hilarious, but also peer uncompromisingly into our darker sides.”
I turned it over in my head a few times and, ultimately, I couldn’t think of a reason to disagree. One of Wilder’s most defining characteristics was his versatility, so it’s a bit early to draw a parallel there. That having been said, “Thank You for Smoking” is an entirely different film with drastically different themes than “Juno,” and “Up in the Air” looks to take things in a new direction yet again.
Wilder may have exhibited less flash than Reitman, but he also placed a considerable emphasis on the screenplay. Despite Reitman’s panache (which is by no means overstated), his films, so far, have been very much made in the writing. And I’m with Breznican. It’s hard to argue that Reitman isn’t in some way interested in what lurks beneath the surface of daily niceties.
• The most complete blow-by-blow explanation of the Academy’s new rule change your likely to get. Still — the nominee thing… [Film School Rejects]
• Ever the professional, Nikki Finke is just pissed no one told her first. [Deadline Hollywood Daily]
• Anthony Breznican sits down with “Up in the Air” director Jason Retiman for a little pre-Toronto back and forth. [USA Today]
Variety’s Pamela McClintock was written a detailed piece examining the financial ins and outs of the recent postponing of “Shutter Island,” coming to the conclusion — as did Kris following the announcement — that the move is purely a practical one on the part of Paramount chief Brad Grey. Quite simply, she explains, the film stands to make more of a profit in February, free from the expense of awards-season marketing.
But while everyone has picked up on how the move potentially improves the fortunes of Paramount awards hopeful “The Lovely Bones,” McClintock suggests that it is Jason Reitman’s increasingly buzzy “Up in the Air” that is a more significant factor in this conversation. In picking Reitman’s far smaller film over Scorsese’s as a 2009 Oscar pony, the studio has pragmatically opted for the title that is cheaper to market — and to campaign:
Unofficially, Par has decided to throw its support behind George Clooney dark comedy and awards hopeful “Up in the Air,” directed by Jason Reitman. That film isn’t yet dated. Rumors are that it will be released in early December, but Par says a date won’t be decided upon until after the film makes its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival.
(You’re probably wondering why this post is gone. Well Paramount has asked us to remove the image and I see Empire, which had the original exclusive, has done the same. My best guess is it wasn’t final artwork.)
