In Contention

Tag: Jessica Chastain

  • OFF THE CARPET: Strong year for double-dippers

    We find ourselves right in the middle of the big Toronto press junket, er, film festival, where 200-plus films are landing, many of them as world premieres, and the landscape of this year’s Oscar race is really beginning to take shape.

    As I looked out at the various films in play this year, it suddenly occurred to me that, perhaps more than ever, there are a lot of double-dipping actors and actresses in the hunt. Not all of these performances are or will be awards bait necessarily, but there could still be cases for more than a few saddling up to dual nominations this year.

    At the top of that list would have to be Brad Pitt. After already giving what many believed to be his best performance to date in Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” the paparazzi-hounded star found himself the recipient of a lot of great ink for his work in “Moneyball” when it screened in Toronto at the end of the week. Wisely, Fox Searchlight will be planning a supporting actor push for the actor in Malick’s film, which is both practical (given his clear lead in the other film), and organic (given that, at least in my opinion, he is supporting to Hunter McCracken’s lead in “The Tree of Life”).

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  • ‘Take Shelter’ and Jessica Chastain win in Deauville

    In the midst of early-season festival madness (and sometimes lost in the clutter) is the Deauville Film Festival, which concluded this weekend. Top honors went to Jeff Nichols’s “Take Shelter,” a film of which I’m a big proponent.

    To start the festival, though, one of the film’s stars, Jessica Chastain, shared the “New Hollywood” award with Ryan Gosling. It’s notable as the second festival notice for the actress, following the Gucci Award for Women in Film at the Venice fest.

    I know Sony Classics will be positioning films like “Midnight in Paris,” “Carnage” and “A Dangerous Method” for awards attention, not to mention another healthy slate of foreign film hopefuls. But I hope this gem isn’t lost in that fray this year. It’s clearly a film people are responding to (having already taken the Grand Prix at Cannes earlier in the summer.) My fingers crossed for it. More reactions will land out of Toronto as it screens throughout the week. Check out the trailer after the jump.

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  • VENICE: ‘Texas Killing Fields,’ ‘Faust,’ competition stragglers

    After a ten-day, 23-film Venice Competition that started slowly but respectably, hit a healthy stride midway through and began wheezing with exhaustion in its closing stages, things have finally ground to a permanent halt with “Texas Killing Fields” (**), the sophomore feature from Ami Canaan Mann — daughter of Michael,  who predictably takes a producer credit here. Mann fille arrived on the Lido a mostly unknown quantity — her debut feature dropped 10 years ago, and appears to have been by precisely nobody in that time — and I’d love to say she proved to be something of a secret weapon up festival director Marco Mueller’s sleeve.

    Alas, the only weapons brandished by this color-by-numbers tumbleweed policier are those belonging to the dutifully scowling small-town cops played by Sam Worthington, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and one of Jessica Chastain’s recently minted clones — the ones to whom she now hands the second-string scripts that don’t quite merit her personal attention.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: And we’re off!

    This morning’s interview with “Into the Abyss” director Werner Herzog represented my last Telluride communique (though I guess I was already home) from this year’s 38th annual festivities. Five days, 18 posts, nine movies and three interviews. It was a dense sprint to start the race, and now, with Venice still in-progress and Toronto set to raise the curtain Thursday, we find ourselves in the thick of the season’s early breaths.

    Up in the Colorado mountains, the biggest takeaway was Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants.” Payne was highly visible throughout the festival, sometimes taking in six or seven movies a day, fielding compliments for his work and settling in to what has apparently become his favorite festival experience.

    His film first dropped on Thursday afternoon as a special invitation screening for press and patrons. That’s where most of the early word stemmed from as critics and bloggers (yours truly among them) raced back to offer up our thoughts on the director’s first film in seven years. But that’s not the story of that film’s life at Telluride. The story was its discovery for the rest of the attendees over the next four days.

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  • Jessica Chastain wins award in Venice — more to come?

    Nathaniel Rogers tipped me off today to the fact that Jessica Chastain has won her first (of many?) award of the season in Venice. The prize, presented by “W.E.” director Madonna, was the Gucci Award for Women in Film. And it’s a pretty good pick when you consider how prolific she is this year.

    Chastain is at the fest with two films — “Wilde Salome” and “Texas Killing Fields” — but of course she’s been seen in everything from “The Tree of Life” to “The Help” to “The Debt” this year, with Sundance and Cannes hit “Take Shelter” and Weinstein-pushed “Coriolanus” still to hit Toronto and open in theaters. Seven movies? A little difficult to argue with that, especially since she gives quality work across the board (though I haven’t seen the Venice films).

    It really would be a shame if she couldn’t get enough of a groundswell to nab an Oscar nod for something (I prefer her in “The Help”), but she’s assured any number of precursor honors for her body of work throughout the season.

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  • 9/1 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: “It” girl Chastain still on the circuit, Lindelof hearts ‘Raiders,’ ‘Ides’ first slam-dunk?

    • He puts a question mark on it but Dave Karger nevertheless calls “The Ides of March” the year’s first slam-dunk Best Picture nominee. [Entertainment Weekly]

    • Steve Pond talks to 2011 “it” girl Jessica Chastain. [The Odds]

    • S.T. VanAirsdale gets a bunch of us awards blowhards on the record for a little early discussion on what’s in store this season. [Movieline]

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  • 8/31 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Social media boost ‘The Help,’ actress Oscar plays, Bird Flu back ahead of ‘Contagion’

    • Anne Thompson talks to “Warrior” stars Joel Edgerton and Tom Hardy and director Gavin O’Connor. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • Lucas Kavner on the debt “The Help” owes to social media for its box office staying power. [Huffington Post]

    • Louis Virtel looks shines a light on five female roles that seem to have the right Oscar stuff. [Movieline]

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  • VENICE: Follow the Lido — a festival preview

    “Why Venice and not Toronto?” a colleague asked when I mentioned I was heading to the Lido for the world’s oldest film festival for the third straight year. Given the North American bent of this site, it was a fair question, but also one I found easy to answer — and not just for the dully practical reason of relative airfare expense.

    Toronto may have become the bigger and, depending on your field of interest, more influential festival (certainly so if you’re in the Oscar-watching business). But with its abundance of pre-premiered films and no juried competition, it’ll never have the grandeur or ever-so-slightly scuffed glamor of the Venice event, with its beachside location, soaring marble delegate halls and saturated aroma of overpriced espresso — not to mention the artsier exclusivity of its film programming, a once hit-and-miss virtue that scored a bulls-eye with a 2010 lineup that beat last year’s Cannes for range, relevance and vitality.

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  • 8/30 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Mirren on her bod, ‘Exotic Marigold’ gets some press, films skipping fall fests

    • Helen Mirren on “The Debt,” getting played by Jessica Chastain and everyone’s ongoing obsession with her body. [Vulture]

    • Newly minted UK resident Julianne Moore talks “Crazy, Stupid, Love” across the pond. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Susan Wloszczyna talks shooting in India with “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” principals. [USA Today]

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  • Michael Shannon is a beast in the spectacular ‘Take Shelter’

    Not to overstate things, but it’s time to talk about Michael Shannon and the fact that it’ll be amazing if there is a better, more refined, more electrifying performance this year than his work in Jeff Nichols’s “Take Shelter.” This is his best work to date and it deserves a huge swell of awards support.

    I got to know Shannon a few years ago when he was on the campaign trail for “Revolutionary Road” (which yielded him a surprise Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actor at the end of the year). When you know the softhearted guy behind the work, it’s all the more impressive. And in “Take Shelter,” he covers so much performance terrain with such controlled ease that it’s just awe-inspiring. He is one of the best of his generation, hands down.

    Oh, and that the performance comes in the midst of one of the year’s standout films, surrounded by equally confident portrayals of all shades, well… How many good things can you say about something before it’s just embarrassing? Let me try.

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 58 — Wrapping up the summer, fall festival preview, ‘Warrior’ and ‘50/50’

    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.

    After months of sporadic special edition updates, we’re back to the weekly grind today. So check back here every Friday from here on out for our musings on the Oscar season, which is right around the corner with the start of the fall festival circuit. We go on for quite a while today. Let’s jump in and see what’s on the docket…

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  • Tell us what you thought of ‘The Help’

    I haven’t yet had a chance to see the bestseller-based civil rights drama “The Help,” but I gather a lot of you have. The film — and more specifically, its first-class female ensemble — clearly hit the right note for Kris, though other reports I’m hearing suggest there’s far more to like about the film’s performances than its honey-dipped politics. (Are you, like some, bothered by a narrative in which a white character’s actions propel social change for the black ones? Or do you agree with the more sanguine view of one of my Twitter friends: in film, liberal guilt is preferable to liberal non-guilt?)

    Interested to hear views on the film that dig a little deeper, or at least a little more personal, than the blogosphere’s current fascination over what Oscar category Viola Davis should campaign in. Meanwhile, was Davis the film’s MVP for you, or did another cast member — perhaps Kris’s favorite, Jessica Chastain — steal your affections? Go.

  • ‘The Help’ and the year’s best ensemble performance…so far

    Now that I’m done crying my eyes out, a few words on Tate Taylor’s “The Help,” which I caught this afternoon.

    It’s a beautiful film, safe, sure, but it knows where to lay the emotional hammer down and where to let the rock keep skipping on the surface. Most striking is the ensemble, as there isn’t a single bad performance in the film. In fact, I’d say all of the them are comfortably above average, the highlights coming from Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer. But then Jessica Chastain was my personal favorite. Oh, and what about Sissy Spacek leaving you in the aisles?

    You see? It takes a real special touch to get this kind of across-the-board perfection out of a cast. Bryce Dallas Howard has pinpoint devilish precision. Allison Janney wiggles her way into your heart even after you don’t want her there. Ahna O’Reilly captures that locked-in submissive state wonderfully. Cicely Tyson punches you in the gut with just a few minutes of screen time. On and on. Oh, and Emma Stone…duh.

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  • Diving back into ‘The Tree of Life’ (SPOILERS)

    If you’ve been fortunate enough to catch Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” in its limited release already, don’t forget to tell us your thoughts in the reactions thread.

    I’ve written about the film at length once (during a lunch break at jury duty downtown after sleeping on it). Guy reviewed it in full out of Cannes, where the film walked away with the Palme d’Or, and we dedicated an edition of The Lists to Malick’s work earlier this week. But I wanted to include a separate space for spoiler discussion, as I’ve had a chance to re-visit the film and taken some time to mull over its particulars more over the last week. I guess I just really wanted to write about it again.

    So, if you want to stay pure, I suggest staying out of this thread. I’ll be digging into specifics of narrative and theme that you’d probably rather avoid. Or maybe you’d like to digest every morsel you can in preparation. Fully up to you, but the warning is there. SPOILERS follow…

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  • ‘Take Shelter’ takes first award at Cannes

    Nine days in, the Cannes Film Festival is winding down. Many of the US journos are flying home, and with Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Skin I Live In” having premiered this morning — review coming tomorrow — the superstar auteurs have all shown their hand. (That’s not to say Nuri Bilge Ceylan or Paolo Sorrentino can’t alter the shape of the festival, however.)

    But with the drop in energy comes the scent of gold, as we prepare for the annual Cannes parlor game of loudly criticizing the jury’s decisions. We’re still three days away from the Competition awards — though Aki Kaurismäki’s broadly liked comedy “Le Havre” (which I frustratingly still haven’t seen after three attempts) has emerged as the sizeable Palme d’Or favorite, while I hear rumors that Olivier Assayas is the lone “Tree of Life” fan on the jury — but the trophy run began tonight with the winners of the Critics’ Week sidebar.

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  • REVIEW: “The Tree of Life” (***)

    Cannes Film Festival

    Landscape has always been character in the films of Terrence Malick. The even, rolling fields of “Days of Heaven,” the sweatily green hill ladders of “The Thin Red Line,” even the dry-toast mesa of “Badlands”: all expansive, overwhelming environments that dictate the behavior of the films’ human occupants through sheer force of presence, for it’s often all they have to live in and live with. It’s an approach that, across 33 years of widely-spaced work, has drawn as many accusations of vacant pictorialism as it has rapt devotion — without the mystique Malick has accrued through his slow-loris work patterns, it’s difficult to say which camp might have emerged dominant — but it’s made for an oeuvre with a stylistic and textual throughline that belies its scattered production.

    Until, that is, “The Tree of Life,” Malick’s long, long delayed fifth feature that is at once his most interior work and his most grandiosely conceived. A fractured, impressionistic memory album documenting the roots of familial estrangement in a middle-class 1950s household in the director’s hometown of Waco, Texas, it arrives on the screen surrounded by bookends within bookends: scenes depicting the present-day social alienation of the family’s grown eldest son (Sean Penn), bracketed by vastly scaled sequences addressing more generalized concerns of theology, evolution and mortality.

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  • CANNES CHECK: ‘The Tree of Life’

    The director: Terrence Malick (USA)

    The talent: Do you need reminding by this point? The Competition’s most high-profile film stars Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and the soon-to-be-ubiquitous Jessica Chastain; the name I’m most pleased to see in the supporting cast, meanwhile, is Irish stalwart Fiona Shaw.

    The technical crew is, obviously, first-class: DP Emmanuel Lubezki, Oscar-nominated for his work on Malick’s “The New World,” returns, as does the director’s career-long production designer Jack Fisk. Also returning from Malick’s last feature: editors Hank Corwin and Mark Yoshikawa (along with three others, including “City of God”‘s Daniel Rezende) and Oscar-nominated costume designer Jacqueline West. New to Team Malick is the industry’s current favorite composer, Alexandre Desplat.

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  • Shedding more light on ‘Tree of Life’

    Apologies for the radio silence last week — Kris is still enjoying his hiatus, while I had all manner of dull earthbound duties to take care of. As I kept one eye on Twitter and my regular blog roll, however, I didn’t feel I was missing matters of paramount importance: I have nothing to say about the much-vaunted trailer for “Super 8,” though I look forward to the film, and as much as I’d love to be at SXSW right now, little about the Texan fest is crying out for discussion from a distance.

    But one thing I know we’re all hungry for is “The Tree of Life” — and with the Cannes Film Festival now less than two months away, Terrence Malick’s fifth feature is beginning to seem like a real, tangible prospect rather than a rainbow’s-end myth. To fuel the excitement stoked a few months back by the trailer (which I’ve still managed not to see), Russian site Kinopoisk has unearthed over 70 images — many of them set photos rather than stills — for the faithful to pore over. I’ve selected a couple after the cut.

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