In Contention

Tag: Kim Basinger

  • The Great Performances: 2002

    Chris Cooper in Adaptation2002 was probably one of the greatest years for performance excellence in film history, from leading actor right through all the supporting players. They could have easily nominated 10 actors in each of the four acting categories, and still missed some.

    Though Adrien Brody won the Oscar for “The Pianist,” which was a huge shock, I have always felt that Jack Nicholson gave one of his finest performances in “About Schmidt.” I suspect he and Daniel Day-Lewis in “Gangs of New York” may have split the vote in some way, allowing for Brody’s win.

    Michael Caine was up for “The Quiet American” after that film scored with critics at many precursor fests, and Nicolas Cage was the fifth nominee in “Adaptation.” Great performances all, deserving performances all, but there were so many other noteworthy turns.  Like Robin Williams’s chilling performance in “One Hour Photo” as a deranged photo lab worker obsessed with a family. Equally brilliant was Leonardo DiCaprio as the young fraudster in “Catch Me If You Can” while Tom Cruise gave one of his very best performances in Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report.”

    One of the year’s very best films, “Road to Perdition,” contained one of the year’s best leading performances from Tom Hanks, as a lethal killer on the run from his own mob.  And though I loathe the work of Richard Gere, I must confess he did some of his finest work in “Chicago,” winning a Golden Globe for his performance, but no Oscar nod.

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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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  • The Great Performances: 1997

    Jodie Foster in Contact1997 was a great year for actors, but a tough year for Oscar; how do you choose when there are so many deserving nominees?

    It’s that age-old issue that some award-worthy performances are going to be left out, which though unfair and sad, is very much part of the Academy Awards and frankly what makes the whole thing interesting for us.  The Best Actor field ended up largely a battle of the old boys.  The acting warriors from the 1970s gave some of their finest performances in 1997, and four of the five nominees for Best Actor had been icons for 20 years.

    In fact the Academy could have allowed the one upstart to slip past and nominated Al Pacino in “Donnie Brasco,” which was the actor’s best work in years. As it was Pacino was by-passed in favor of young Matt Damon in “Good Will Hunting,” who found himself going toe-to-toe with Robert Duvall in “The Apostle,” Jack Nicholson in “As Good As It Gets,” Dustin Hoffman in “Wag the Dog” and Peter Fonda in “Ulee’s Gold.”

    I first saw Duvall’s performance at the 1997 Toronto International Film Festival and have written about it many times since.  He won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s Best Actor award, and then the National Society of Film Critics’ honor, but the Mayor of Hollywood stood in the way of Duvall’s second Oscar.

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  • THE LONG SHOT: Minority report

    PreciousWhen the Academy Awards roll around in March, it will have been precisely two decades since the unlikely figure of Kim Basinger blasted Academy voters’ conservatism on air at the 1989 ceremony, with specific regard to their sidelining of “Do the Right Thing,” Spike Lee’s groundbreaking study of urban interracial tension.

    “We’ve got five great films here, and they’re great for one reason – they tell the truth,” the star opined before presenting a clip from one of that year’s Best Picture nominees. “But there is one film missing from this list that deserves to be on it because, ironically, it might tell the biggest truth of all.”

    As if in response, later that evening, the Academy handed their top prize to “Driving Miss Daisy,” as quiet and uncontroversial a portrait of the American racial divide as you could ask for. Let it never be said that the Oscars have no sense of irony.

    20 years on, much has changed. (Basinger has become an Oscar-winning actress, for starters. No one saw that coming.) More to the point, the amount of black Oscar winners in acting categories has trebled. And just two years after Basinger’s outburst, the Academy named 23 year-old John Singleton their first black Best Director nominee.

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  • ‘Burning Plain’ is Arriaga at his best

    Charlize Theron in The Burning PlainLast night I caught Guillermo Arriaga’s “The Burning Plain,” and like Guy, I’m having trouble settling my thoughts on the piece.  I suppose our combined ponderings will have to serve as the film’s review here at In Contention, but unlike Guy’s relatively reserved recommendation, I have to say I wholeheartedly endorse it as perhaps Arriaga’s most focused and, therefore, effective work yet.

    As a screenwriter in tandem with filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu (a partnership which crumbled around the production of 2006’s “Babel”), Arriaga has proved adept at twisting his narratives with potent themes and powerful, evocative structures.  But “The Burning Plain” represents a brave move inward rather than forward.

    I agree with Guy’s notion that the debuting director may have been “looking to safely downshift gears by making a tasteful, intelligent mainstream melodrama,” but more than that, I believe the film to be Arriaga’s most successful character study to date.

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  • What a difference two decades makes

    When I caught Gregor Jordan’s “The Informers” at the Santa Barbara Film Festival earlier this year, I had one of those “Hey, neat-o” moments when I noticed both Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger were part of the film’s ensemble.  Granted, the two never share the screen and each part is minuscule, but it was a slightly intriguing throwback to the 1980s amid all the decadence of that era on display in the film (which I quite liked, however bizarre and critically ravaged).  But then I saw a shot of the two attending the Los Angeles premiere of the film and I got, I don’t know…sad.

    (from left) Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger in 9 1/2 Weeks and at the Los Angeles premiere of The Informers

  • Thoughts on ‘The Burning Plain’

    Charlize Theron in The Burning PlainI’ve been meaning to review Guillermo Arriaga’s directorial debut ever since I saw it two weeks ago, but for some reason, my thoughts on the film just won’t settle into place.

    It’s not a case of the film being particularly challenging or impenetrable — it’s Arriaga’s most structurally simple work to date, and arguably his most middlebrow too. I am, however, having trouble gauging precisely what the renowned screenwriter’s aspirations for the project were.

    If his intention was to make a searching character study for an arthouse audience, one that examines the occasionally mirroring intricacies of mother-daughter relationships from opposite ends of a slow-burning narrative candle, I’d have to deem the film an ambitious misfire, one that is too transparent in structure and thin in characterisation to bear the weight of its literary tropes.

    It is possible, however, that for his first outing in the director’s chair, the creator of such opaque, thematically dense narratives as “Amores Perros” and “21 Grams” was looking to safely downshift gears by making a tasteful, intelligent mainstream melodrama, one that operates more as an actors’ showcase than a writer’s (or filmmaker’s) platform. If so, the “The Burning Plain” — a generally compelling, well-crafted piece graced with a focused, charismatic trio of female performances — largely fulfils such a brief.

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  • ‘L.A. Confidential’ gets a deluxe DVD release

    L.A. Confidential Special Edition DVDOne of the greatest experiences I have ever had at a Toronto festival was the North American premiere of Curtis Hanson’s “L.A. Confidential,” which was instantly declared a masterpiece and one of the great film noirs in movie history.

    Dark and entertaining with a twisting and turning narrative that keep viewers guessing throughout, the film was embraced by the critical community in a huge way, topping most of the 10-best lists that year and winning best-of-the-year prizes from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the National Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics Circle.

    The film is receiving a shiny new DVD release this year and I couldn’t be more excited.  The package offers a slew of special features: commentaries from film critic Andrew Sarries, author James Ellroy , nearly the entire cast, director of photography Dante Spinotti and production designer Jeannine Oppewall; a new making-of documentary with updated interviews with the players; detailed examination of the look of the film; “From Book to Screen” with Hansen, Brian Helgeland and Ellroy; and a focus on the film’s ensemble.

    As always the star of any re-issue is the film itself,  and “L.A. Confidential” remains one of the great films of the 1990s — a sublime work of art.

    Superbly acted by Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, Kevin Spacey, Danny Devito, David Strathairn, Kim Basinger and Russell Crowe (in a star-making turn), the picture was a tight ensemble piece.  It fired on all cylinders: direction, cinematography, design elements, and a film score that effortlessly zapped us back to 1950s Los Angeles.

    Kevin Spacey, two years after winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for “The Usual Suspects,” portrayed Jack Vincennes with a Dean Martin sort of cool, an honest cop who had sold his soul to television where he worked as an adviser on a popular series. Spacey was the anchor for the film, giving a marvelous performance that the other actors bounced off of nicely. His swift and shocking end remains one of the most startling moments I have witnessed in a film. I remember gasping out loud when the tables turned so quickly.

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  • ‘Plain’ brings buzz for Theron

    I’ve already said how high my hopes are for “The Burning Plain,” the directorial debut from one of the most interesting screenwriters in the business, Guillermo Arriaga. Now the reviews are trickling in, and they’re — predictably — mixed.

    Variety, as is often the case these days, provides the major buzzkill, dismissing it as “an elaborate writing exercise” (like that’s a bad thing) with “little to become engaged with.” Happily, Lee Marshall at Variety’s UK equivalent, Screen International, couldn’t disagree more:

    A powerful contemporary melodrama, more restrained but also much cleaner, in dramatic focus and emotional thrust, than the three films Arriaga penned for Inarritu … A sombre story about an unforgivable act and its cross-generational fallout is here leavened by a greater dose of hope and redemption than Arriaga has yet allowed himself, and the games The Burning Plain plays with its audience are amply justified by the emotional punch of the film’s denouement.

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  • First look at ‘The Burning Plain’

    As I mentioned in my Venice preview, “The Burning Plain,” the directorial debut from screenwriter extraordinaire Guillermo Arriaga, is one of my most anticipated titles of the year. Now a new series of images from the film has been revealed – check them out here.

    Not much to be gleaned from them that you hadn’t suspected already – it’s clearly an intimate piece focusing on actors rather than visual fireworks, and Charlize Theron is in dressed-down (but still beautiful) mode. The synopsis provided indicate that Arriaga is playing typically complex structural games:

    “The Burning Plain” weaves together two storylines taking place in the past and present. Kim Basinger will play Gina, the mother of Charlize Theron’s character as seen in childhood. Theron will play Sylvia, who tries to find common ground with her parents after a turbulent childhood. The two narratives eventually converge.

    So far, so good. Meanwhile, the announcement that the film will also play at Toronto only emphasises that this is one to watch. Arriaga has yet to misfire in my view – incidentally, his novel, “The Night Buffalo,” is excellent too.

    We all know by now how great an actress Theron can be when she connects with her material, and Basinger, rather like her ex-husband, is a more interesting character player than she ever was a star. (I’ve squeezed the former actress into my list of predictions – you can take a look at them here.) Here’s hoping the momentum keeps building.

  • Venice puts cinema ahead of stars

    There are some major surprises in the competition lineup for next month’s Venice Film Festival, not the least of which are the global flavour and soberness of the lineup itself. In previous years, the Lido has proved a launchpad for starry, surefire awards vehicles (“Atonement” and “Michael Clayton” both made successful bows there last year, while recent festival hits include “Far From Heaven,” “The Queen” and Golden Lion winner “Brokeback Mountain.”)

    Looking down this year’s list, it’s difficult to find much that has quite the same cache – and the competition looks all the more intriguing for it. Artistic director Marco Mueller has commendably narrowed the English-language contingent, and has taken greater risks within that selection, most notably nabbing an unexpected “wet premiere” (as in straight from the lab) of Darren Aronofsky’s latest, “The Wrestler.”

    The film, about a retired pro wrestler struggling to make a comeback, sounds like an interestingly low-key change of pace for Aronofsky after his beautiful folly “The Fountain” (another Venice debutante) fell foul of pretty much everyone two years ago. This project finds the former wunderkind working from someone else’s screenplay for the first time, which could prove a healthy change, and there are some interesting changes of the guard elsewhere too – most notably swapping regular cinematographer Matthew Libatique for the exciting Maryse Alberti (continuing what might be a banner year for female DPs). With an almost too perfectly cast Mickey Rourke in the lead, and support from the ever-terrific Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood, a warm festival reception could put this on the Oscar charts.

    There will be fewer megastars parading the Venice carpet than in previous years, but when one of them is Charlize Theron, how many do you need? Together with Kim Basinger, she will be at Venice to promote the competition title that, together with the new Miyazaki, I’m personally most excited about: Guillermo Arriaga’s helming debut, “The Burning Plain.”

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  • Batman through the years

    Michael Keaton in Warner Bros. Pictures' BatmanDominic Wells of The Times has written a cross-section of Batman as seen on film through the past five decades.  I can’t believe I didn’t know this was being written under my nose.

    He takes us back to the serials of the mid-to-late 1940s and into the “Pow!” and “Bam!” psychedeliq of the 1960s TV series, through the Michael Keaton protests of Tim Burton’s re-imagining as well as Joel Schumacher’s disintegration of the franchise, before bringing us up to speed with Christopher Nolan’s vision of the character.

    I especially liked this bit of insight following an aside on Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” (and the subsequent push for a film adaptation):

    The book was a critical and commercial smash, and plans were laid for a film. Adam West, now 58, lobbied to reprise the role, which would have suited the Dark Knight Returns storyline. I met him in 1988, when Britain was again gripped by Batmania (TV-am’s ratings leapt 25 per cent after screening the Sixties episodes), and he sounded as though he’d given it considerable thought: “In the final scenes of the film, if it’s bizarre and mysterious, you can still have Alfred the butler driving the old Batmobile to the rescue. We’d have been using all hi-tech, wonderful slick new stuff, and at the critical moment, there’s Alfred, driving the old Batmobile. People would stand up and cheer.”

    But he kind of gets testy with me on this assessment of Burton’s 1989 elseworld take:

    Even so, it’s not particularly good. There are strange holes in the plot where the producer Jon Peters and Tim Burton didn’t see eye to eye, and Kim Basinger, then the producer’s real-life girlfriend, is a waste of space.

    Easy now, Dom.

    Read the rest here.  One of the commenters mentions Sandy Collora’s “Batman: Dead End,” which has always been a fun watch.  If you’ve never seen it, have a look:

    httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=Hjp0I_okX0w