In Contention

Tag: Jim Broadbent

  • OFF THE CARPET: Commence au festival (season)!

    Without question, the film launching full speed ahead and into the Oscar season this week is Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech.” I truly haven’t heard an unkind word about the film all weekend here in Telluride, and I imagine that goodwill will continue into the Toronto fest this week as well.

    I can easily see nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay and Best Art Direction.  Nods for the cinematography and costumes wouldn’t be all that shocking, either, so I’d say nine is the ceiling.  And I imagine we may see a win or two, as well.

    Let’s face it.  As overdue as Jeff Bridges was last year, there are many who think Colin Firth was robbed for his work in “A Single Man.” It could conceivably be makeup time when the Oscars roll around in February.  My interview with Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Tom Hooper was interrupted Friday by a woman who wanted to let Firth know she thought he was robbed.  How deep does that sentiment go with voters?

    I imagine The Weinstein Company is breathing a sigh of relief with the favorable reaction, as “Miral” was met with blanket disapproval in Venice (here is Guy’s review).  The studio has a few other tricks up its sleeve, but none so critical as Hooper’s film.

    (more…)

  • TELLURIDE: ‘The Illusionist,’ ‘Another Year’

    The final trio of films I caught at this year’s Telluride fest, which is slowly winding down this holiday, were a bit of Cannes catch-up.  The first, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful,” I responded to yesterday.  The other two come from Sony Pictures Classics, which has a whopping five films in play here, and will have nine at Toronto later in the week.

    Before getting to those reactions, though, I have to say that this year’s program has been absolutely wonderful.  I’m only on my second year, but long-timers seem to concur that festival directors Tom Luddy, Gary Meyer and Julie Huntsinger really outdid themselves this time.

    I’ll talk more in the way of wrapping things up sometime later tonight or tomorrow.  For now, I have just enough time to offer up these capsules, update the predictions sidebar and contenders section, hopefully make it to an interview with Darren Aronofsky (which may have to wait until post-fest) and prepare for a 3:30 departure.  The latest Off the Carpet column will come later.

    Let’s get on with it…

    (more…)

  • REVIEW: “Another Year” (***1/2)

    Cannes Film Festival

    “On a scale of one to ten, how happy are you?” asks one character of another in Mike Leigh’s new film “Another Year.” “One,” is the doleful reply, as if Leigh himself is swearing off the sunnier skies of his previous feature, “Happy-Go-Lucky.”

    He needn’t have made the point so emphatically. For a director who has worked, across his career, with a thriftily light bag of oft-used themes, milieus and even actors, Mike Leigh has remarkably never settled for making the same film twice.

    His detractors paint much of his oeuvre with the broad brush of kitchen-sink miserablism, ignoring the considerable tonal and structural differences between a “Naked” and, say, an “All or Nothing” – but then overestimating the radicalism of a “departure” like the aforementioned “Happy-Go-Lucky,” a tarter and more searching film than the feel-good breeze many pretended it was.

    Detractors and admirers alike will probably label Leigh’s latest a return to normal service for the prickly Brit: a leisurely character study, sober-sided but flecked with streaks of broad humor, dwelling on the personal insecurities of London’s tea-swilling middle classes. A cast peppered with familiar faces from past Leigh works – Jim Broadbent, Lesley Manville, Ruth Sheen, Imelda Staunton and so on – will further the impression of business as usual, but “Another Year” turns out to be one of the filmmaker’s most structurally ambitious and emotionally expansive works.

    (more…)

  • The Great Performances: 2001

    Gene Hackman in The Royal TenenbaumsIn one of the weakest years in memory, not just for performances but for great films, 2001 saw Denzel Washington and Halle Berry knock “two birds out with one stone,” as the former declared on Oscar night, as two African Americans won the top acting prizes for the first time ever.  And it was difficult to argue with either.

    Washington was superb in “Training Day,” clearly loving his role as crooked cop Alonzo, walking the line without ever going over the top, blowing everyone off the screen. In many ways it was a make-up award for his having lost for “Malcolm X” in 1992 to Al Pacino’s ranting work in “Scent of a Woman” and perhaps, though lesser so, for his loss for “The Hurricane.”

    Berry gave a raw, sexually charged performance in “Monster’s Ball,” one of such searing truth and rage you could never look away from the screen. Robert Duvall called her performance the finest by an American actress he had ever seen and was not the least bit surprised when she won the Oscar for Best Actress.

    My question remains: Should Denzel Washington have won over the non-nominated performances of Gene Hackman in “The Royal Tanebaums” or the vastly under-appreciated Jack Nicholson in “The Pledge,” one of his finest recent performances? Don’t think so.

    There was a lot of love shown to Tom Wilkinson for his heartbreaking work in “In the Bedroom” as well as Russell Crowe (again) for his performance in “A Beautiful Mind,” which eventually won the Best Picture Oscar. I was very surprised that Sean Penn was nominated for his performance in “I Am Sam” because though I consider Penn one of the greatest actors in the history of the cinema, his work in that film represents one of the very few times I could “see” him acting.

    (more…)

  • Focus backs Mike Leigh’s latest

    Mike LeighHere’s something to brighten the day. It would seem that a new Mike Leigh joint (sorry, I couldn’t resist) is on its way sooner rather than later — great news considering the four-year gap between “Vera Drake” and “Happy-Go-Lucky.”

    Screen International reports that Focus Features International has secured worldwide rights to the still-untitled project, and will co-fund the film together with the UK Film Council and Film4 (the same folks behind the auteur’s last effort). Poignantly, this will be the last producing credit for the dearly departed Simon Channing Williams, Leigh’s longtime collaborator.

    If memory serves, this marks Leigh’s first go-round with Focus, and it sounds like a pretty good pairing to me — perhaps a necessary change after Miramax’s slightly indifferent handling of “Happy-Go-Lucky.”

    A formidable cast of Leigh veterans is already in place, with the “Vera Drake” team of Imelda Staunton and Phil Davis being joined by “Topsy-Turvy’s” Jim Broadbent — a heavyweight trio, by any standards. No plot details, of course, though the article promises “an intimate portrait of people’s lives” (from Leigh? I’d never have guessed) based on “unique improvisational techniques.” (Well, knock me down with a feather.)

    I’m totally in. But you knew that.