In Contention

Tag: Jessica Haines

  • 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.

    (more…)

  • INTERVIEW: ‘Disgrace’ star Jessica Haines

    Jessica HainesWhen I begin my phone conversation with Jessica Haines by telling her how insistently I prodded her publicist to set up our interview – the reverse is so often the case – she responds with a bashful laugh. “I can believe that,” she says, in a warm South African drawl. “Not many journalists have bothered tracking me down to Tunis!”

    Haines sounds endearingly surprised that anyone might be interested in her away from the cinema screen, where she made such a startling arrival this year in Steve Jacobs’s “Disgrace” – which opens in the UK today, on the heels of an all-too-brief Stateside run in the fall.

    This speaks both to the 30 year-old newcomer’s natural humility – if she is aware of just how good she is, she certainly hides it well – and her relative unfamiliarity with the ropes of the industry.

    As if to literalize the point of just how far removed Haines is from Hollywood, I learn that she is in Tunisia not, as I had assumed, on some remote location shoot, but for a decidedly simpler reason: it’s where she lives, thanks to her husband’s banking career.

    “I don’t really know where to call home at the moment,” she says. “My family’s in Natal [the East Coast of South Africa], but I studied in Cape Town and do a lot of work in Johannesburg. My husband’s job is taking us from Tunisia to Kenya soon. I’m just flying in and out all the time.”

    (more…)

  • THE LONG SHOT: Consider this

    John Malkovich and Jessica Haines in DisgraceThere’s nothing like an Oscar season to prove what a small number five (or even ten) is.

    We may only be in November, but already, months of conversation, covering a broad canvas of Oscar sure-shots and long-shots alike, have devolved into a ruthless mathematical elimination process, as previously five-wide categories fill up with safe bets. Before you know it, scores of previously fancied contenders are jostling for a mere one or two supposedly “free” slots on the ballot, and with each week that passes, the pool of possibles is culled further.

    This is, of course, hardest on independent or leftfield contenders. Having fought mightily even to enter the discussion in the first place, they must then rely on a flaky combination of precursors, DVD screeners and prayer to stay afloat.

    Miracles do happen, of course, thanks largely to the Academy’s weighted ballot system, where a number-one vote is all. (Nobody was talking about Tommy Lee Jones to take the last Best Actor slot in 2007, but there he was nonetheless. Ditto the recent likes of Michael Shannon, Samantha Morton and “City of God.”)

    With that in mind, I’d like to spotlight one contender in each major category that deserves a similarly happy outcome. Many of them are names I’ve championed before. Most of them are sitting on the furthest reaches of the sidelines. All of them deserve better.

    (more…)

  • 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).

    (more…)

  • Just a friendly reminder…

    Gregoire Colin and Mati Diop in 35 Shots of Rum… to any American readers privileged with access to a good arthouse cinema, that Claire Denis’s wondrous “35 Shots of Rum” finally bows Stateside this weekend. I’ve been raving about the film — a sweetly melancholy, impeccably detailed study of a devoted Parisian father and daughter gradually separating their lives — since I saw it at the Edinburgh fest in June, and it remains in my top three for 2009 thus far.

    You don’t have to take my word for it, though: as much as I dislike people who quote Metacritic stats as some kind of inarguable gospel, it’s fair to say that a film with an MC score of 96 is likely to quite good. To jog your memory, my brief Edinburgh take on “35 Shots of Rum” is here. (With the benefit of hindsight, that 3.5 star rating would certainly get bumped up.)

    Meanwhile, with the similarly excellent “Disgrace” also opening in limited release today, discerning New York moviegoers have a rich selection before them. I just got off the phone with the film’s breakthrough star Jessica Haines (watch out for our interview in the next few weeks), and she discussed the tortuous path the film has taken to finally reach American screens after debuting on the festival circuit a full year ago. Same goes for the Denis film.

    So it’d be nice if some people bothered to see them. Take a chance.

  • SHORT TAKE: “Disgrace” (***1/2)

    John Malkovich in Disgrace“As long as one is alive, one is all right.”

    These words, spoken with pithy irony by John Malkovich halfway through Steve Jacobs’s brilliant, bruising adaptation of J.M. Coetzee’s novel “Disgrace” — which opens Stateside tomorrow — encapsulate a post-apartheid South Africa more riven by crime and inequality than the bandages of democracy can cover. It’s a world where survivor’s grief is constantly chased by the threat of a more fatal occurrence; where, with no commodity more valuable than security, ugly human compromises must be made.

    Published in 1999, Coetzee’s novel was a well-aimed bullet to the heart of a nation still negotiating its social and racial prejudices, laying them bare with few pointers towards reconciliation. Denounced as racist in some quarters of the ruling African National Congress, it doesn’t cast any social group in a particularly flattering light. Rather, it focuses on individuals, and the very different ways they manage their escalating mistrust of the other.

    The story’s dependence on the country’s multi-splintered cultural differentiations makes the outside-in achievement of Australian director Jacobs (and his wife Anna Maria Monticelli, who wrote the screenplay) all the more miraculous. I can’t recall another feature film that so tangibly evokes the country that I grew up in, from its point-on account of lingering (and shifting) master-servant acrimony to minute details of production design.

    (more…)

  • Superb ‘Disgrace’ trailer goes online

    As I’ve said before on these pages, I’ve been looking forward to Aussie filmmaker Steve Jacobs’ film adaptation of J.M. Coetzee’s “Disgrace” for some time.

    It’s a novel very close to my heart, John Malkovich seems ideally cast in the lead and, though it’s a South African-set story, its stark, ruminative nature sits comfortably in the groove of great Australian cinema. A warm reception at Toronto (where it won the FIPRESCI award) only amplified my anticipation.

    Now a trailer has finally appeared, and from where I’m standing, it looks excellent: spare, understated, with a fine feel for the severe beauty of the Eastern Cape landscape.

    Malkovich, who appears in some ways to be channelling Coetzee himself, seems to have captured the character’s balance of affectation and disengagement, and South African newcomer Jessica Haines looks equally promising. This should really be one to watch in 2009.

    It’s not available to embed yet, but check out the trailer here. (Thanks to Stale Popcorn for pointing it out.)