In Contention

Tag: Jeremy Renner

  • My dream ballot: part two

    Charlotte Gainsbourg in AntichristYesterday, I began my far-fetched wishlist of nominees for tomorrow’s announcement with a look at the technical categories. Today we move into the big races. And as much as I thought I had my favorites clearly mapped out in my head, a rundown of the eligible titles made for some very crowded races indeed.

    Once again, I’ve mostly played by the Academy’s own criteria, considering only U.S. releases from 2009 — hence the slight discrepancy with my Top 10 from December. But where certain titles seemingly never made it through the administrative red tape guarding Oscar eligibility, I’ve intervened on their behalf. (Films as good as “Summer Hours” can’t go unmentioned, after all.)

    Check out my picks after the cut, and share your own last-minute thoughts and hopes in the comments. My final predictions are coming shortly.

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  • INTERVIEW: Anthony Mackie

    Anthony MackieSome performances are so selflessly and expertly integrated into a film’s ensemble that awards voters tend to take them for granted, looking instead to more assertive scene-stealers from sometimes starrier names.

    Nobody better demonstrates that this season than Anthony Mackie, rising star of stage and screen and the secret weapon of awards heavyweight “The Hurt Locker.”

    While Jeremy Renner has deservingly caught the eye of multiple precursor bodies, many of them have curiously failed to notice that much of Renner’s performance exists in a tensely riveting pas de deux with Mackie, whose sternly pragmatic Sgt. Sanborn is not only the yin to the impetuous yang of Renner’s SSgt. James, but a striking study in its own right of internalized male insecurity.

    Together with Brian Geraghty, as a weaker soldier dependent on Sanborn’s stabilizing influence, the three actors, alongside a smart selection of cameo players, perform some of the year’s most delicately attuned ensemble playing. And even if Mackie hasn’t received quite the level of individual attention he deserves, he accepts praise for the film (and a well-earned SAG ensemble nomination) as evidence of a job well done.

    “Look, when you work on a film like this, any idea of ego goes out the window,” the 30 year-old New Orleans native tells me over the phone from New York. “This is a story about brotherhood, so it’s dependent on the synergy of a great ensemble. As actors, we were just concerned with taking care of each other, making sure we had each other’s back. It’s not about being pretty, you know?”

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  • “Dull, dull, dull”

    As is usually the case when British outlets offer Oscar analysis, there are few fresh insights to be found in Jeremy Kay’s assessment of the current race in today’s Guardian.

    Well, there is his unusual offhand assertion that “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “Star Trek” are locked-in Best Picture nominees, with “Julie & Julia” and “The Blind Side” jostling for slot #10. (Well, it can’t eventually be the same 10 titles everyone else is predicting, can it? Can it?)

    He does, however, offer the kind of forthright, subjective opinions on the contenders that some Oscar prognosticators shy away from, as when he witheringly dismisses Gabourey Sidibe in favor of Abbie Cornish.

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  • ‘Air,’ ‘Basterds,’ ‘Precious’ lead the way with SAG

    Diane Kruger in Inglourious BasterdsThere wasn’t much in the way of a surprise with this year’s Screen Actors Guild announcement.  The nods that are least likely to translate to Oscar, if I were a betting man, are Diane Kruger’s supporting actress bid for “Inglourious Basterds” and (I guess I just have a feeling) Matt Damon, supporting for “Invictus.” The rest seem like safe bets on down the line.

    I wouldn’t read too much into the ensemble snub of “Up in the Air,” though it’s curious to nominate three actors from the film and then ignore it in that field.  The ensemble category is also where “Nine” got its expected attention, though Penelope Cruz also showed up in supporting for the film.  The BFCA, you’ll recall, went for Marion Cotillard instead.

    “Precious,” “Inglourious Basterds” and “Up in the Air” had the most nominations, with three apiece.  I would have expected “An Education” to have that designation, too, but somehow Alfred Molina was ignored.  Maybe that won’t be the case with Oscar, maybe it will.

    On to the next thing.  Check the full list of nominees after the jump.

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  • ‘Hurt Locker’ sweeps Boston critics’ awards

    Jeremy Renner in The Hurt LockerAmid the anticipation for the LAFCA awards later this afternoon, you might not have realized that the Boston Society of Film Critics is also announcing its winners today. (I know I hadn’t.)

    Anyway, it’s spectacular news for “The Hurt Locker,” which emerged triumphant in five categories, including Best Picture, Director, Cinematography and Film Editing. In a most welcome surprise, Jeremy Renner took Best Actor for the film — a cheer for the underdog amid a slate of more heavily-buzzed acting winners including Meryl Streep, Christoph Waltz and Mo’Nique. Here’s hoping it’s not the last.

    Meanwhile, it fell to the brothers Coen to prevent a clean “Hurt Locker” sweep, taking Best Screenplay honors for “A Serious Man,” while the BSFC’s quirkiest move is the joint selection of “Precious” and “Star Trek” for Best Ensemble. In another gesture towards populist cinema, “District 9” took the debut director award. After some delay, meanwhile, “Summer Hours” took foreign-language honors.

    Still, the only real story here is the loud arrival of Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq actioner on the critics’ award scene. It’ll be interesting to see if the LA Critics continue the love across the country; we’ll know in a few hours. Full list of winners after the cut.

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  • Corliss declares Firth and Mo’Nique performances of the year

    Colin Firth in A Single ManWe’re currently in that month where precursors do their utmost to reduce a year’s worth of cinematic achievement to a small handful of oft-repeated names and titles. It’s understandable (if disappointing) when groups or committees compile these identikit lists — but when individuals (and serious critics at that) stick rigidly to the formula, it becomes a little depressing.

    This is my way of saying I read Richard Corliss’s Time list of the year’s Top 10 movie performances and could only say, “Really?” He watched an entire year’s worth of films and could only come up with nine heavily-publicized Oscar contenders and one token wacky/stupid/throwaway pick? (That’d be Michael Jackson, if you’re interested.)

    Make no mistake, there are a number of fine performances here. Colin Firth, Mo’Nique, Jeremy Renner, Christoph Waltz, Carey Mulligan … noteworthy work, make no mistake. I just find it hard to believe that a critic has no personal favorites that deviate slightly from the buzz-determined consensus. I’m not saying he has to pick Tilda Swinton or Tom Hardy or John Malkovich — but he must have noticed some performers that weren’t already clocked by everyone else. Why not highlight one of them?

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  • ‘Up in the Air’ wins big at NBR

    Anna Kendrick in Up in the AirThe real question with today’s National Board of Review announcement wasn’t who won, but who didn’t win.

    A couple of ties and a list of honorees that seemed to canvas the entire crop of filmmaking product from 2009 adds something of a diluted quality to the proceedings, I must say.  Of course, it is worth noting that major titles like “The Lovely Bones” and “Nine” were not only absent from the list of the group’s top 10 films of the year, but they weren’t visible anywhere, in any category.

    The big winner was Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air,” which took down Best Film, Best Actor (George Clooney in a tie with “Invictus” star Morgan Freeman), Best Supporting Actress (Anna Kendrick) and Best Adapted Screenplay.

    “Invictus” also did well, nabbing a Best Director citation for Clint Eastwood (someone the NBR has shown, time and again, that they can’t resist) in addition to Freeman’s shared award and a mention in the Freedom of Expression category.

    (More, including a full list of winners, after the jump.)

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  • ‘Hurt Locker’ tops at Gothams

    Jeremy Renner in The Hurt LockerI had a Q&A to moderate this evening, so forgive the lateness here (though these and the Indie Spirits, for my money, stopped being about true independent cinema long ago, so there was really no haste to begin with).

    Anyway, predictably, “The Hurt Locker” came out on top at tonight’s Gotham Awards.  The film won Best Feature and Best Ensemble, though lead actor Jeremy Renner was upset in the breakthrough actor race by Catalina Saavedra in “The Maid.” I’ve got that screener around here somewhere.

    Tomorrow the Indie Spirits announce their nominees, which, by the way, will not include “The Hurt Locker” because the film wasn’t eligible this year.  It was last year, when it received nods for Best Actor (Renner) and Best Supporting Actor (Anthony Mackie).  Looking for a leg up tomorrow are “Precious” and “Crazy Heart,” I’d say, though we can expect some surprises too, I guess (I hope).

    Full list of Gotham Winners after the jump.

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  • David Poland’s Oscar underdogs … where are the ladies?

    Tilda Swinton in JuliaFor those of you bored of reading the same ever-narrowing list of names in the assorted Oscar-speculation pieces across the web, David Poland’s latest column is a slight breath of fresh air.

    Decrying the fact that many pundits are making ludicrous long-shot calls like “This Is It” for Best Picture, while ignoring more deserving contenders who could use the attention, Poland provides a list of less-hyped contenders in the top categories that he feels merit consideration.

    His definition of the term “underdog” ranges from genuinely fanciful contenders (Catherine O’Hara and James Gandolfini for “Where the Wild Things Are,” “In the Loop” for Best Picture) to names still very much in the race who  have lately lost a bit of steam (Matt Damon, Jeremy Renner and Viggo Mortensen, all in the Best Actor category).

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  • Gabourey Sidibe and Jeremy Renner at Hollywood Fest

    You can head over to the Hollywood Film Festival’s YouTube channel and check out a slew of acceptance speeches from the show.  Here’s Gabourey Sidibe accepting the New Hollywood Award, presented by Taraji P. Henson:

    Jeremy Renner accepting the Hollywood Breakthrough Actor award (presented by Charlize Theron) after the jump.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Looking at the leading gentlemen

    Colin Firth in A Single ManWe’ve taken concentrated looks at the lead actress and supporting actress categories in recent weeks.  Now let’s turn our attention over to the fellas.

    Behind the Best Picture race, of course, the lead actor competition is perhaps the most hotly anticipated award of a given Oscar telecast.  Movie stars are born, Hollywood staples are rewarded and careers leap to the next level.  It makes for an intriguing annual state of the union as it pertains the the film industry’s talent roster.

    This year, one of Hollywood’s brightest stars finds himself right at the front of the conversation.  George Clooney is likely to end up with his third acting Oscar nomination, for Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air,” and he’ll owe much of that to Reitman’s powerful work on the page.

    Clooney doesn’t give his best performance to date in the film.  But the material is so cleverly built around his persona that one can’t blame the actor for saddling up to a role that fits like a glove.  And there is something to be said for the bravery of taking one’s image on like that.

    Colin Firth, meanwhile, has caused a critical stir with his leading performance in Tom Ford’s “A Single Man.” He has already won the Venice Film Festival’s acting honor and has been tapped for another at February’s Santa Barbara Film Festival.  He is pitch-perfect in the film, giving a refined performance of nuance and gesture.

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  • Renner, Stuhlbarg, Waltz among Variety’s 10 Actors to Watch

    Jeremy RennerVariety’s annual list of 10 Actors to Watch may occasionally raise questions of what constitutes a career “breakthrough” — particularly in the case of established actors who those in the know have been watching all along.

    Still, it always makes for interesting reading, not least because, in some cases, it highlights names that Variety’s editors expect to show up in the coming awards season. Last year’s list featured four actors (Melissa Leo, Viola Davis, Taraji P. Henson and Michael Shannon) who ultimately wound up in the Oscar circle. This year’s list looks unlikely to match that number (nor does it match the feminine bent of last year’s crop), but there’s some undeniably worthy talent in there:

    Laz Alonso
    Maggie Grace
    Tom Hardy
    Nicholas Hoult
    Rachelle Lefevre
    Jeremy Renner
    Alia Shawkat
    Emma Stone
    Michael Stuhlbarg
    Christoph Waltz

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  • Mulligan, Renner, Daniels, Sidibe, Neustadter, Webb to receive Hollywood film fest awards

    Jeremy Renner in The Hurt LockerThe Hollywood Film Festival has become just another stop on the awards campaign trail these days, various publicists getting in the ears of festival directors to make sure their clients get their (in most cases deserved) props as the season takes hold, amping up the exposure, etc.  So with that in mind, the list of award recipients for this year’s Hollywood Film Festival have been announced.

    Carey Mulligan and Jeremy Renner will receive the Breakthrough Actress and Breakthrough Actor awards, having made an impact in “An Education” and “The Hurt Locker” respectively.  Mulligan seems a cinch for a lead actress Oscar nomination, while Renner, in the typically more competitive lead actor category, may be somewhat on the bubble.

    Lee Daniels will receive the Breakthrough Director Award for “Precious,” while the film’s star, Gabourey Sidibe, will received the New Hollywood Award.  Both deserve any and every awards notice they will get this season.

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  • Is ‘Hurt Locker’ locked in?

    The Hurt LockerA few months ago, before the Academy completely altered the playing field for this year’s Oscars, “The Hurt Locker” looked like the longest of long shots for Best Picture consideration.

    Its unpopular subject matter, absence of stars, a respected but genre-based director, and the languishing delay between its 2008 Venice debut and its summer 2009 release — none of these factors inspired much confidence in its chances.

    But then a weird thing happened. Just after the Academy effectively doubled its chances of a Best Picture nod in June, an ecstatic wave of reviews for the film started rolling in, the ardently passionate consensus of which took many off-guard following its warm but hardly explosive reception on the fest circuit last year.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Bombshell upon bombshell

    Michael JacksonWeird, unsettling week, this. Here’s how it went down:

    • In the week’s biggest movie news, the Academy threw us all for a loop by announcing a 10-nominee slate for the Best Picture category.

    • But even that shock was dwarfed in scale by the stunning news of Michael Jackson’s passing.

    • And in a rather bleak week for losing talent, we also said goodbye to Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon.

    • On a happier note, we laid eyes on two of our most eagerly awaited films of the year — “Public Enemies” and “Antichrist” — and liked what we saw.

    • AMPAS continues its tinkering, this time in the Best Original Song category.

    • The “Transformers” sequel opened to critical scorn even accusations of racism, but is the film totally indefensible?

    • With “The Hurt Locker” finally going public today, we caught up with the film’s breakout star Jeremy Renner.

    • We revealed our age by celebrating the 20th anniversary of Tim Burton’s “Batman.”

    • Continuing the reflective mood, this week’s list considered the greatest directorial debuts of the decade.

    • Speaking of debuts, “The Proposal” gave Sandra Bullock the biggest of her career.

  • INTERVIEW: Jeremy Renner

    Jeremy Renner at the 2008 Venice Film FestivalJeremy Renner doesn’t have one of those handy “I always wanted to be an actor” stories.  His journey to the screen was, much like the man, a rather unpretentious, play-it-by-instinct series of events that began to unfold in college.

    “I was fumbling around with different majors like most people do,” the actor says, calling from somewhere on the road to Los Angeles in Northern California.  “I was a criminology major and I was interested in science.  I took an elective, which was an acting class, and that was a pretty wonderful place for me to express 19 years of repression, and I fell in love with it.  I fell in love with the stage.”

    Even though Renner is making his screen impact felt in films like “28 Weeks Later,” “The Assassinantion of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” and Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker,” opening in limited U.S. release today, he says he still holds a special place for theater.  “There’s something that you can’t get anywhere else,” he says, “that living, breathing sort of synergy that kind of happens on stage and with your audience, it’s a wonderful cohesive feeling.”

    Nothing he had performed could serve as any sort of preparation for his role as an Army bomb squad officer, a cog in the wheel of the military’s Explosive Ordinance Detail (EOD).  Mark Boal’s thoroughly researched screenplay first crossed Renner’s path when he was in London filming Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s “28 Weeks Later.”  Producer Greg Shapiro approached him with the material and the character leapt off the page at the actor.

    “It wasn’t one of those things that I needed to decide to do it or not,” Renner says.  “There was no choice in the matter to me.  I’ve never been so affected or so interested in a project.  I just thought that EOD was a whole world that had never been explored in cinema.  On paper, he was one of the best-written characters I’d seen in a long time.  I had so many questions and answers, at the same time, to what made this guy tick and I was just so curious I couldn’t wait to figure it out.”

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  • Renner on ‘Jesse James’

    Jeremy Renner in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert FordI’ve been sitting here transcribing an interview with “Hurt Locker” actor Jeremy Renner (watch for that later today or tomorrow) and came across a portion where we discussed 2007’s “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” my pick for that year’s best film and one of the best of the decade.  I don’t imagine finding a place for it in the actual interview piece but I wanted to toss up Renner’s thoughts on the making of the film:

    Andrew Dominik is great with actors but it was one of the longest jobs I’ve had.  I feel like I could have shot anything I was in in probably a week and it could have been done but it was just stretched out for so long.  But the cast is phenomenal, riding horses and shooting guns, you get to play cowboys.  That’s a little boy’s dream come true if you ask me.  There were some moments shooting this thing when I was so bored out of my mind as an artist.  I was so unmotivated.  I’m sitting with Sam Rockwell and Sam Shepard and it’s probably three degrees outside and we’re shivering, it’s four in the morning, we’ve been out there for six hours, we haven’t done anything.  We have potato sacks on our heads.  We could be anybody!  What are we doing!  We were all just very frustrated as actors.  But then I went to the monitor and saw what they were shooting down below, and “Holy moly.”  It was just moving art.  Gorgeous.  Then I’m like, “Okay, I understand.  I’m glad to be a part of this process.”  Even though it didn’t do well in the box office I think that film is going to stand the test of time.  I was so happy to be a part of that.  Very blessed.

    By the way, does anyone watch Renner’s ABC series “The Unusuals?”  I don’t follow TV news too closely so I actually found out about the show’s unfortunate cancellation from Renner himself, but I have to say, it’s one of my favorites right now.  Too bad it wasn’t picked up for another season.

  • REVIEW: “The Hurt Locker” (****)

    The Hurt Locker(Edinburgh International Film Festival)

    Put in the most glib possible terms, the longstanding industry perception of Kathryn Bigelow is that she’s something of an artistic tomboy: the girl who likes to play in the boys’ sandbox — and play roughly, at that. While true to a large extent, it’s a reputation that is rooted in the belief that genre filmmaking is principally a male preoccupation.

    Never mind that a number of her films — from vampire tale “Near Dark” to female-fronted cop thriller “Blue Steel” (to say nothing of the curious anomaly that was the brooding Elizabeth Hurley drama “The Weight of Water”) — aren’t exactly testosterone-fests; the fact that she frequently foregrounds the physical ahead of the emotional is enough to qualify her as a male-centric storyteller in most viewers’ eyes.

    So it’s somewhat surprising, upon closer inspection, to note that Bigelow has heretofore never made a film explicitly about masculinity. Yes, “Point Break” and her misfiring last feature, “K-19: The Widowmaker,” may have revolved exclusively around men, but the characters in these films were mere facilitators of action, not freestanding psychological subjects. For a woman who purportedly makes movies for men, Bigelow has never seemed particularly interested in the male experience.

    All that has changed spectacularly with “The Hurt Locker,” a formally simple but startlingly layered, savage war film that, in localizing its conflict to the internal battles between three unmoored soldiers, marries her dazzling staging abilities with a newfound level of human interest and compassion.

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