In Contention

Tag: Kevin Costner

  • The Great Performances: 2005

    Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain2005 was the year of Heath Ledger’s beautiful, moving performance in “Brokeback Mountain,” which I saw for the first time in Toronto.  It instantly became the talk of the festival, and the film became the one to beat for the Academy Award.

    Ledger was astonishing as the taciturn cowboy who is more surprised than anybody when his soulmate turns out to be another cowboy, portrayed superbly by Jake Gyllenhall. If there is a more deeply felt moment in film history than Ledger gently adjusting Gyllenhall’s shirt at the end of the film, his eyes filled with tears, I don’t know what it is. That’s loss, that is absolute heartbreak, that is one of the greatest acting performances of the decade.

    Phillip Seymour Hoffman would win the Oscar for his transformation into “Capote” and he’s very good, but just not in the same league as Ledger. I wondered from time to time if “Infamous” had been released earlier if Toby Jones might have won the Oscar instead of Hoffman. Each becomes Capote in a very different manner, and side by side it is difficult to choose the stronger portrayal. Certainly I prefer Hoffman’s as it is darker, and for me more realistic, but there can be no denying Jones.

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  • 5/12 Web Round-up

    Green Lantern• Alex Billington takes a few snaps of upcoming release poster artwork in Cannes (including “Shutter Island” and “A Christmas Carol”), then, the web being what it is, he slaps his watermark all over them. [First Showing]

    • Kevin Costner keeps the western’s light flickering with an upcoming A&E mini-series. [The Hollywood Reporter]

    • The top 10 movie misquotes of all time. [The Guardian]

    • Vaneta Rogers consolidates the numerous “Green Lantern” rumors flying around town.  Please, God, don’t fuck it up. [Newsarama]

    • Speaking of rumors, Drew McWeeny recounts the crash and burn of one such, this one concerning the potential casting of Christian Bale in Andrew Stanton’s “John Carter of Mars.” [Motion/Captured]

    • Roger Ebert expresses concern over the use of 3D technology in “Up,” specifically citing the potential for diminishing “brightness and delicate shadings of the color palate.” [Chicago Sun-Times]

    • Anthony Breznican previews the upcoming Cannes Film Festival. [USA Today]

    • Candace Jackson talks “The Girlfriend Experience” with director Steven Soderbergh and star Sasha Grey. [Wall Street Journal]

    • William Goss remembers 1998: the movie summer that was. [Cinematical]

    • Twitter’s potential effect on the unstable world of film criticism gets some more ink. [The Wrap]

  • Define ‘upset’

    Let’s get this straight: an upset and an injustice are two very different things. When a nominee that isn’t widely expected to win beats one that is, that’s an upset. When a highly deserving underdog loses to a less deserving favourite, that’s an injustice. The latter arguably happens more frequently in Oscar history than the former, but that’s no reason to blur the line.

    I mention this in connection with a poll that Sasha Stone spotted yesterday, in which the following were named the biggest Oscar upsets of all time in the Best Picture category:

    1. “Shakespeare in Love” over “Saving Private Ryan” (1998)
    2. “Crash” over “Brokeback Mountain” (2005)
    3. “Dances With Wolves” over “GoodFellas” (1990)
    4. “Rocky” over “Taxi Driver” (1976)
    5. “How Green Was My Valley” over “Citizen Kane” (1941)

    Now I remember the 1990 awards clearly — I was 8 years old, and it was the first Oscar season that I followed keenly from beginning to end. And even I, at that tender age, knew that “Dances With Wolves” was a gimme, a slam-dunk, a no-brainer. However critically acclaimed Scorsese’s masterpiece was, it hadn’t a prayer against the film that swept the Guilds and the Globes — Kevin Costner enjoyed as great a stranglehold on the Oscar as Danny Boyle does today. “GoodFellas” winning would’ve been the upset, not the other way round.

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  • 10/1 Oscarweb Round-up

    Danny Glover in Blindness• Kim Voynar joins Movie City News.  here’s hoping she gets paid. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Steven Soderbergh will make a third Che Guevera film if “Che” makes at least $100 million at the box office.  A.K.A., Steven Soderbergh won’t be making a third Che Guevera film. [The Playlist]

    • Blind people protest “Blindness.”  I mean, have they even seen the movie yet? [Associated Press]

    • Speaking of blindness, a ranking of the five most plausible doomsday movies. [Spout Blog]

    • The “Dark Knight” fad continues — Michael Bay will shoot some “Transformers 2” stuff in IMAX technology. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • Patrick Goldstein gets tangled in the Nikki Finke/Harvey Weinstein bullshit that just won’t go away. [The Big Picture]

    • Susan Wloszczyna digs at the heart of Jonathan Demme: what women want. [USA Today]

    • Susan King, with a nice profile of “W.” star Scott Glenn. [Los Angeles Times]

    • The French box office clash of “The Class” and “Faubourg 36.” [The Independent]

    • Kevin Costner on the “Swing Vote” circuit across the pond. [Daily Telegraph]

  • 9/14 Oscarweb Round-up

    Danny Biyle• Anne Thompson wraps up this year’s Toronto/Telluride corridor. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • Jeffrey Wells, meanwhile, recaps the Toronto fest. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • David Poland thinks Toronto’s “car wreck for expectations” might be a good thing. [The Hot Blog]

    • Peter Scieretta reports on a release date for “The Wrestler”: December 19. [/Film]

    • James Rocchi chats it up with David Poland via podcast in Toronto. [Cinematical]

    • Oscar-winner Kevin Costner defends his Hollywood legacy — and he damn well should. [The Times]

    • Patrick Goldstein spends some time with Toronto “smart shoppers” Tom Bernard and Michael Barker, co-chiefs of Sony Pictures Classics. [The Big Picture]

    • Kevin Kelly talks to filmmaker Danny Boyle, fresh off his People’s Choice win in Toronto for “Slumdog Millionaire. [Spout Blog]

    • Geoffrey Macnabb welcomes Mickey Rourke back to the top with open arms. [The Independent]

  • Stone’s ‘W’ could be his ticket back to Oscar

    I like the films of Oliver Stone, though I am acutely aware he tends to pound us over the head to get his message across, is known to bully his actors and audiences, and from time to time has bent history to suit himself and the film he is making.

    That said, it cannot be denied Stone creates powerful, visceral films, beginning with the vastly under appreciated “Salvador” back in 1986 that was somewhat overshadowed by his Vietnam drama “Platoon” which won the Oscar for best film and director making Stone a household name. Aside from being the most realistic film about the war in Vietnam, “Platoon” obliterated those terrible comic book style films like “Rambo: First Blood Part II” and “Missing in Action” in which the war had been reduced to a comic book and a single American could go back and win it!!

    Three years later he won his second Academy Award and Directors Guild Award for “Born on the Fourth of July” a film he had wanted to make for years, at one point in the 70s with Al Pacino as Ron Kovic. Both Vietnam films were powerful and deeply moving, populated with strong performances that drew the viewer into the story. In between those pictures he made “Wall Street,” now horribly dated, and “Talk Radio,” an underrated little film based on the hit play.

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  • Actors winning Best Director — always deserved?

    Of course not. Quite often the Academy gets behind an actor for the simple reason they pulled of the film without screwing too much up.

    How else can one explain Mel Gibson’s win for “Braveheart” but failure to be nominated for his masterpiece “The Passion of the Christ” and “Apocalypto,” easily two of the finest directed films of the last ten years? Somewhere along the road, the Academy fell in love with actors who try their hand at directing (unless your name is Sean Penn or Barbara Streisand) and began giving away Oscars, quite often over more deserving directors.

    Poor Martin Scorsese has watched actors win the Best Director prize over his work three times. In 1980, of course, Robert Redford won for his drama “Ordinary People” over Scorsese’s searing “Raging Bull,” while ten years later Kevin Costner won the Oscar for “Dances with Wolves,” besting Scorsese for “Goodfellas.” But hey — this is the Academy…right? Clint Eastwood also bested Scorsese’s “The Aviator” in 2004 with a win for “Million Dollar Baby.”

    One year after Redford won his Academy Award for Best Director, Warren Beatty took home the award, much deserved for his criminally under-appreciated epic “Reds.” But he would watch in shock as “Chariots of Fire” ran to the Best Picture award over his film. The following year, a minor British actor, Richard Attenborough directed “Gandhi,” which the Academy fell in love with, honoring the achievements of the film’s subject rather than the effort itself, which even at the time seemed old-fashioned and rather ordinary. Attenborough himself, on the way to accept the Directors Guild Award for the film, stopped to chat with Steven Spielberg to make clear what everyone in the room seemed to know: that Spielberg should have won the award for “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial!”

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  • The LA Times points and laughs at poor bastards

    It looks like LA Times is still beating that Oscar drum for the old media sect. This week, Susan King writes up the lackluster career choices that followed a number of Academy wins throughout the years.

    Here’s a look:

    Just because you win an Oscar doesn’t mean that every subsequent film you make will be Academy Award-caliber stuff. In fact, Oscar winners inevitably make incongruous missteps in their career after they pick up an Academy Award.

    Just look at Kevin Costner. After being on top of the world when he won the best director Oscar for the 1990 best film, “Dances With Wolves,” he made the gargantuan turkey “Waterworld” and then directed a three-hour celluloid nightmare called “The Postman,” which was DOA with critics and audiences alike. No sooner did Julia Roberts earn an Oscar for “Erin Brockovich” than critics soured on her talents in the ill-fated comedy “America’s Sweethearts.” And what was Oscar-winner Tommy Lee Jones thinking when he signed up for the yawn-inducing comedy “Man of the House,” a film so tepid that it wasn’t even screened for critics?

    She goes on to pour salt on the wounds of Al Pacino, Halle Berry, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams and Nicole Kidman, among others. But I’m left wondering what good a piece like this serves.

    Now I’m no elitist. I understand we all have to stretch for awards content and perspective from time to time. And typically, the LA Times and its awards site, The Envelope, nail down interesting subject matter in that regard. But this piece is like one of those throwaway photo galleries that land on a weekly basis over there on a weekly basis.

    Obviously this was a buttress piece for Patrick Goldstein’s latest think piece (regarding the downward spiral of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino), but I don’t know. It seems a little cheap and unnecessary to me.

    Check out the rest of King’s piece here.