• On the hunt for “Catfish”‘s Angela Wesselman-Pierce. [Los Angeles Times]
• Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes write up the beginnings of the season (with a little quotage from yours truly). [New York Times]
• Scott Feinberg makes the case for both Annette Bening and Julianne Moore getting nominated for “The Kids Are All Right.” [ScottFeinberg.com]
As you probably know, I’m rooting hard for seasoned character actress Lesley Manville to get her first Oscar nod this year for Mike Leigh’s “Another Year” — and the quality of her piercing tragicomic performance isn’t the only reason.
For a director renowned for his close relationship with a regular, rotating crew of actors, the Academy’s response to his films thus far hasn’t really reflected that loyalty. Only three thesps (all women) have been Oscar-nominated for their work in a Leigh film — a number far smaller than it should be — and all of them, oddly enough, were tapped for their first collaboration with the director. (Moreover, only one of them has since returned to Leigh: that’d be “Vera Drake” lead Imelda Staunton, who has a striking cameo in his latest.)
Should Lesley Manville manage a nomination, then, she’ll be the first of Leigh’s regular posse to be thus rewarded. Indeed, Manville is Leigh’s longest-serving ally. She first collaborated with the director on a 1979 radio play before going on to star in six of his feature films, climaxing with a stunning lead turn in 2002’s “All or Nothing” that was shamefully ignored by awards bodies on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s sweet to see the middle-aged actress finally having her moment in the sun with “Another Year” — she’s earned it.
Honestly, I’m not crazy about the execution in this case, but I’m always pleased to see poster designers trying illustrative concepts ahead of lazy photographic floating-head templates. I imagine Sony Pictures Classics will dream up something quite different for the US market. Incidentally, anybody looking to this poster for clues as to how the actors are being classified will come up empty — Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen and prime awards hopeful Lesley Manville are alphabetically billed as co-leads, which is arguably how it should be. If you need a refresher, here are my thoughts on the film from Cannes, and Kris’s from Telluride.
It wasn’t by coincidence that the three photos decorating the season’s introductory installment of this column two weeks ago represented lead actress contenders in the 2010 Oscar race. After all the talk of 2009 being “the year of the woman,” owing much to the number of female directors who found themselves in the mix (and inevitably leading to Kathryn Bigelow’s history-making moment at the Kodak), I’m sensing an even better argument for 2010 as a singular season for the fairer sex.
Let’s start with the performances. By my count, there are already eight nominatable offerings from lead actresses this year (which contrasts drastically with a dearth of supporting hopefuls). This is just going by what I’ve seen, mind you.
For starters, Natalie Portman has dazzled the early festival season with her work in “Black Swan.” Lesley Manville, meanwhile (should she remain a lead focus), sets a high bar in “Another Year.” Despite my feelings on the film, Carey Mulligan really settles into a next-level groove in “Never Let Me Go,” and Jennifer Lawrence, of course (like Mulligan last year), has already become the year’s star-in-the-making story in “Winter’s Bone.”
Dovetailing with the performances themselves, there are also films that seem to reflect the theme in narrative. In “Secretariat,” for instance, Diane Lane capably (if a bit histrionically) portrays headstrong Penny Chenery, a woman of virtue in an era when she was expected to keep her head down and clean house. Similarly, Sally Hawkins absolutely kills as the Norma Rae-ish Rita O’Grady in “Made in Dagenham,” fighting for equal pay in a similar time (and she’s likely to be joined in the hunt by co-star Miranda Richardson for a fiery supporting turn). And we can’t forget the palpable feminism apparent in summer indie “The Kids Are All Right,” where Annette Bening and Julianne Moore both bring their “A” game.
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.
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…
At Cannes, I was with the critical majority in admiring Mike Leigh’s latest, and the valentines will surely continue to roll in when the film plays Toronto next month ahead of an awards-season run. The Guardian (quite the experts lately in nabbing British trailer exclusives) has the first trailer for the film, which gives a pretty accurate sense of the film’s delicate pitch between dry comedy and crushing drama. Interestingly, rather than granting the spotlight to Lesley Manville’s showy, buzz-generating turn, it represents the film as the ensemble piece it is; one wonders if Sony Pictures Classics will be quite so democratic with the US trailer. Click on the image to check it out at the Guardian site, or watch the embed after the jump.
Now that we’re on the other side of Cannes, I felt it was a good time to put a finger to the wind, stare into the tea leaves, shake the magic 8-ball and basically just take stock of where we’re at roughly three months away from the start of the 2010-2011 film awards season.
The festival, covered diligently by Guy Lodge around these parts (we thank him), brought little to write home about where Oscar potential is concerned. The truth is, it rarely does. But as the year takes shape, things start to linger. A film like “Inglourious Basterds” can transform muted if appreciative response on the Croisette into a foaming-at-the-mouth bid for a surprise upset in just a few months’ time.
The big narrative stand-outs for most were Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful” and Mike Leigh’s “Another Year.” Perhaps the latter has an easier Oscar path ahead, given that it was more unanimously accepted and could ultimately be a soft lob for Academy types. Sony Pictures Classics swooped in and nailed down domestic distribution, so I think we’re looking at a bona fide Best Picture nominee to go along with likely bids for Best Actress (Lesley Manville) and the usual expected tip of the hat from Leigh’s fellow screenwriters. Maybe even a Best Director nod, too. And yet the film didn’t win a single festival prize. See how this works?
Okay, so that took longer than I expected. I had hoped to get this post up last night, but instead got quite easily talked into a night on the tiles with a band of merry Film Dweebs led by James Rocchi — not the wisest idea with a morning flight to catch, but by the time we found ourselves in a friendly 3am chat with Atom Egoyan about our respective issues with the ending of “Chloe,” that hardly seemed important. (Name dropped and duly picked up. Apologies.)
Anyway, after a smooth morning’s traveling, I am now writing to you from my North London living room — not quite as glamorous as the Croisette, though surprisingly, just as sun-splashed.
In a few hours, Cannes 2010 will come to a close as Tim Burton and his fellow jurors reveal their selections for the best of the fest, perhaps shedding some light on the burning question I’ve asked myself after every Competition screening: “But what does Kate Beckinsale think?”
(More analysis, and full list of predictions and preferences, after the cut.)
Nothing quite clicked into gear today, I’m afraid – the one screening I really wanted to make, Xavier Dolan’s warmly received sophomore feature “Heartbeats,” filled up before I could get in the door, while the films I did see made for a pretty uninspiring day’s viewing.
I’m usually quite a stickler for taking notes during festival screenings – overlapping and psychotically askew, given my minimal mastery of night-writing, but notes nonetheless – but today the notepad stayed largely unblemished. That usually means one of two things: I’m too lost in the film to keep jotting, or it simply provokes no thoughts from me whatsoever. Guess which one applies today.
I’m afraid it was with a mostly clear conscience that I sacrificed an early evening screening of Jia Zhang Ke’s “I Wish I Knew” in order to attend the swish London Film Festival shindig at the Palais Stephanie Hotel. (Yes, any big festival teems with parties for other festivals – just drink your champagne and go with it.) I confess I didn’t get on that well with Jia’s previous feature “24 City,” and guessed the new film would be in a similar vein – friends’ reports suggest that was a good guess.
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.