In Contention

Tag: London Film Festival

  • LONDON: Never let me in

    In a year that has seen me give over more of my time than is strictly sensible to covering the Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Edinburgh programmes, there’s something oddly disconcerting about attending a festival in my home city.

    Admittedly, the atmosphere is dampened by the fact that many of the London Film Festival’s biggest drawcards this year are films I already caught at, well, Cannes, Venice and Berlin — I feel rather as if I’ve betrayed the fest that’s been my cinephile lifeline for five years. More than that, however, when your thoughts between screenings are peppered with grocery lists, doctor’s appointments and other everyday intrusions, it’s hard to feel you’re at a festival at all.

    Yet a festival the LFF most proudly is, and a large one at that, incorporating over 170 new(ish) features, plus formidable retrospective and short-film sidebars. The advantage of having got a head start with many of the most anticipated gala screenings (“Black Swan,” “Another Year” and the like) is that I’ve been afforded time this year to seek more buried treasure.

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  • THE LONG SHOT: What becomes of the broken-hearted?

    (A day later than usual — apologies.)

    After the London Film Festival raised its curtain last night with a typically flashy European premiere for Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go,” this morning’s papers and breakfast TV reports have been busy with chatter about what Britfilm’s two it-girls, Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley, were wearing; how the next Spider-Man (that is, The Artist Formerly Known As Andrew Garfield) is settling into his red-carpet duties; and what the whole event promises about the beleaguered British film industry’s ability to, well, throw fancy parties.

    Something far fewer people have been talking about, however, is the film itself. That’s no great surprise: after securing eagerly awaited world premieres — “Frost/Nixon” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox” — for their last two opening nights, London fest organizers dropped the ball slightly by picking a film that bowed at Toronto last month and has already opened in the States. You can’t expect the same level of excitement for a gift that has already been opened by someone else, even if the ribbon has been retied.

    Still, the air surrounding “Never Let Me Go” was not merely one of used goods, but of damaged goods at that: yesterday morning’s press screening was characterized by a near-palpable cloud of lowered expectations, as tepid-to-respectable reviews and fizzling box-office from across the pond foretold a high-class shrug of a movie. “That’s going to get Oscar nominations?” a critic in the row behind me asked as the end credits rolled; his tone translated the question as, “Yeah, good luck with that.”

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  • Mike Leigh celebrates “hidden city” of London

    My attention was drawn to this article last week, but since the London Film Festival kicks off this week (and Mike Leigh’s “Another Year” will be competing for top honors there), now seems an appropriate time to link to it. Picking up on the role England’s capital city has played in a number of Leigh’s films — including his latest — the Wall Street Journal quotes the Salford-born director on his self-proclaimed status as an “ethnic London filmmaker”:

    It’s precisely the city’s specificity that engenders the grittiness of Leigh’s “Naked,” for example, or the quiet melancholy of “Another Year.” “By definition, London is a kind of place that means so many things,” Leigh said. “I’ve lived in London exactly 50 years. When you reflect on your life in a slab of 50 years…I adore London. I think it’s a wonderful, glorious city. That does inform the stuff that you’re talking about.”

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  • London fest honors Boyle, announces award shortlist

    The 2010 London Film Festival only kicks off in two weeks’ time, but with press screenings having started on Monday, I’m already feeling the festival spirit. (Those of you who follow my Twitter feed may have noticed some 140-character reviews trickling through.)

    Without a major world premiere like “Frost/Nixon” or “Fantastic Mr. Fox” in this year’s lineup, the LFF looks to be a more local affair than recent editions, but they’re still luring in big-name visitors — some of them with the promise of more awards hardware.

    Today, LFF organizers revealed the 11-film shortlist for the festival’s second annual Best Film award, which will be determined by the eminently classy jury of president Patricia Clarkson, Sandy Powell, Gabriel Byrne and Shekhar Kapur. (Should be a cushier judging assignment for Kapur than his Cannes juror stint earlier this year.)

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  • ‘127 Hours’ to close London Film Festival

    Last year, London Film Festival organizers managed to secure a pair of world premieres — “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and the John Lennon bio “Nowhere Boy” — to open and close proceedings. This year, they haven’t been so lucky, bookending the festival’s 54th edition with two hot tickets from Toronto instead.

    With that said, they’re still thoroughly respectable, and suitably British, picks. We already knew that Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go” would kick off the festival; now comes confirmation that the closing night gala is Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours,” which stars James Franco in the well-known survival story of mountaineer Aron Ralston. The film reunites Boyle with producer Christian Colson and writer Simon Beaufoy; you may recall that a certain other collaboration between the trio closed out the London fest two years ago.

    Both films will be making their European premieres at the festival, which runs from October 13 to 28. The news suggests that, after luring out a number of American journos last year, the LFF is setting its sights a little closer to home. Statements from Boyle and LFF director Sandra Hebron after the cut.

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  • ‘Never Let Me Go’ to open London Film Festival

    Previously a handy catch-up festival for locals who had missed out on the major premieres of Cannes and the like, the London Film Festival raised its profile significantly in the last two years by opening with major world premieres — “Frost/Nixon” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”

    They haven’t quite managed to repeat the trick a third year running: this year’s curtain-raiser, Mark Romanek’s Kazuo Ishiguro adaptation “Never Let Me Go,” will have already premiered at Toronto the month before. Still, it’s a prestigious feather in the film’s cap, a handy pick for those Europeans unable to make the flight out to Canada, and an appropriately British way to kick off the festival. Coincidentally enough, it’s the fourth year in a row that the LFF has opened with a semi-Brit pic from a North American director.

    The 2010 London Film Festival will run from 13 to 28 October. All eyes now will be on festival director Sandra Hebron’s closing night selection. Last year, the festival closed with another world premiere — Sam Taylor-Wood’s “Nowhere Boy,” which will finally make its way to US theaters this autumn — and if they plan to maintain the  international press presence they enjoyed last year, they’ll want to do the same. Shooting for the stars here, but… “Harry Potter,” anybody?

    Press release after the cut.

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  • Ones to watch at Sundance 2010… maybe

    Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling in Blue ValentineI always get a curious thrill from looking down the list of films selected to compete at the Sundance Film Festival — the 2010 batch of which has just been announced by festival directors John Cooper and Trevor Grath.

    You know there are at least one or two titles there that we’ll all be talking about in precisely one year’s time, just as “Precious,” “An Education” and “The Cove” have blossomed from festival darlings to surefire awards contenders in the space of 11 months. What’s far harder to tell is which of the 58 titles listed here might be “the one.”

    Still, last year I played something of a guessing game with the lineup, singling out one film from each of the competition’s four strands that seemed of particular interest to me: my faith in “An Education” was, obviously, handsomely repaid, while “Big Fan” (a winner at this week’s Gotham Awards), “Afghan Star” (the UK’s foreign Oscar entry) and Doors documentary “When You’re Strange” have done respectably for themselves.

    OK, I missed “Precious” — so as far as that particular game goes, I’m going to quit while I’m behind. Still, what follows is a selection of ten titles that I’m keeping an eye on.

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  • 11/3 Oscarweb Round-up

    Roger Corman• Documentary filmmaker whose work inspired the book “The Men Who Stare at Goats” seeks brutal vengeance for being “airbrushed” out of the film. [The Independent]

    • Jeff Wells sings the praises of “A Single Man” actor Nicholas Hoult. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • David Poland talks to honorary Oscar recipient Roger Corman. [Movie City News]

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  • 10/30 Oscarweb Round-up

    Sotigui Kouyate and Brenda Blethyn in London River• Brian Lowry on how The Ten is an Oscarcast producer’s nightmare. [Variety]

    • With Hugh Jackman out, Jeff Wells thinks the Oscars need to skew younger with their host. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • The producers of “London River” launch a deserved Oscar campaign for Brenda Blethyn, despite still lacking US distribution. [Notes on a Season]

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  • SHORT TAKE: “Nowhere Boy” (**1/2)

    Nowhere BoyLondon Film Festival

    A bright, slight, mostly enjoyable portrait of the formative years of John Lennon, artist-turned-filmmaker Sam Taylor-Wood’s “Nowhere Boy” opens with a nudge-nudge tease, as the singular opening chord of “A Hard Day’s Night” reverberates through the theater over a shot of the 18 year-old Lennon running to school.

    That single-second strum, however, is all we get of the ubiquitous Beatles songbook, as Taylor-Wood and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh (“Control”) go out of their way to distance their story from Fab Four iconography, even coyly dancing around any mention of the “B” word. “What do you call yourselves now?” Lennon’s weary Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas) asks her nephew over breakfast, after he announces the band’s plans to travel to Hamburg. “Do you care?” is his tart reply.

    Even if this is a little too cute, it’s cause for commendation that the film largely avoids the contrived “inspiration” cues that usually plague the musical-biopic genre. A fleeting glimpse of the original Strawberry Fields house in Liverpool is about as on-the-nose as things get; we’re spared the mandatory montages of the artist scribbling lyrics in a battered notebook, and even the Beatles cuts performed towards the film’s end are authentic fledgling efforts. (Over-familiar 1950s rock n’ roll standards comprise the bulk of the soundtrack, while Goldfrapp’s incidental score hardly registers.)

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  • ‘Nowhere Boy’ trailer

    Sam Taylor-Wood’s debut feature has its world premiere tonight as it closes out the London Film Festival. I’ll have a short take up for you later today, but for now, here’s the trailer. (I’ll say this much: Kristin Scott Thomas’s recent run of form remains unbroken.)

  • “We’re going to be fine.”

    Michael Stuhlbarg in A Serious ManThose of you who enjoy it when Kris and I butt heads over one film or another — as on the two occasions this past week alone that I’ve been unceremoniously fired — will be disappointed to hear that an entente cordiale has arrived in the shape of “A Serious Man.” (Ironic, really — since when did the Coen Brothers make movies designed to bring people together?)

    Anyway, while I don’t know yet whether my passion for the film will run quite as deep as Kris’s by the year’s end, I have no qualms whatsoever about echoing his sentiments that “A Serious Man” is an extraordinary feat.

    Novelistic in its reach and rhythms, but intrinsically cinematic in the way Roger Deakins’s calmly predatory camera investigates physical and personal space, it seems a direct (if deliciously perverse) rebuttal to claims made by the duo’s detractors that their films are overly hermetic, unwilling to engage with the world around them.

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  • ‘A Prophet’ wins top prize at London Film Festival

    Tahar Rahim (right) in A ProphetI always knew Anjelica Huston and I were of a like mind. As I reflect on the 60-odd films I’ve seen the London Film Festival, which draws to a close tomorrow, Jacques Audiard’s French Oscar contender “A Prophet” stands comfortably taller than anything else I’ve seen … and given the standard of this year’s LFF lineup, that’s no back-handed compliment.

    Ms. Huston clearly agrees: at a ceremony tonight, together with the other five members of her jury (a rum bunch including Charlotte Rampling, Matthieu Kassovitz and Jarvis Cocker), she handed “A Prophet” the festival’s inaugural Best Film award (alternatively named the Star of London). It triumphed over eight other shortlisted titles, including its Cannes conqueror “The White Ribbon.” Huston said of Audiard’s film:

    A masterpiece: “Un Prophete” has the ambition, purity of vision and clarity of purpose to make it an instant classic.  With seamless and imaginative story-telling, superb performances and universal themes, Jacques Audiard has made a perfect film.”

    “The Road,” interestingly enough, was given a runner-up “special mention” by the jury, despite its continued mixed reception. John Hillcoat’s film was singled out for its “breathtaking vision, extraordinary performances and profound political statement.”

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  • THE LONG SHOT: Mind your language

    (from left) Niels Arestrup and Tahar Rahim in A ProphetYou might not be aware of it, but the competition is already formally under way in Oscar’s most perennially problematic category, Best Foreign Language Film.

    For almost two weeks now, official Academy screenings of the longlisted contenders in the race have been in progress, and will continue through January, until all 65 titles have been subjected to the foreign-language committee’s scrutiny.

    Pete Hammond has details of the screening schedule and voting rules, as well as some gossip on audience reaction to the screenings thus far: Mexico’s “Backyard” and Switzerland’s “Home,” starring Jimmy Smits and Isabelle Huppert respectively, have apparently gone down well; Croatia’s “Donkey,” thanks to incomprehensible subtitles, not so much. Add a pinch of salt to taste.

    Coincidentally enough, courtesy of the London Film Festival, I’ve been simultaneously working my own way down the contenders list, though my personal tally has stalled at eight titles. (It could have been 11, if scheduling and admin obstacles hadn’t kept me away from the Australian, Colombian and Serbian entries. I am but one man.) Only 57 to go, then.

    I will offer a more detailed assessment of the films in another post, but by and large it’s been a pleasure making their acquaintance. Of course, my own selection has been filtered through that of the fest’s generally thoughtful programmers, safeguarding against any real horrors – but I don’t mind saying that an unembarrassing list of nominees could theoretically be assembled from just my scant sampling of the longlist.

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  • LONDON: Not so ‘Precious’

    PreciousAt this early stage in the awards race, I’ve been getting along unusually well with every major contender I’ve encountered: “The Hurt Locker,” “An Education,” “Up in the Air,” along with darker horses like “Bright Star” and “A Single Man,” have all been pleasing, giving me hope that this would be one of those rare Oscar years when I could contentedly roll with any outcome.

    Something had to break, I suppose. And it’s with not a little regret that I write this, but it broke this afternoon as I finally encountered Lee Daniels’s much-vaunted “Precious” for the first time.

    I understand and respect what has moved the critical majority so profoundly about this abrasive, eccentric film. It visits such extremities of physical and psychic pain that it does invite a kind of emotional responsibility towards its protagonist; if Daniels did have as heavy a creative hand in “Monster’s Ball” as he claims, one could draw an interesting comparison between the two films’ almost mythic excesses of female suffering.

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  • 10/26 Oscarweb Round-up

    Paul Schneider• Steve Pond chimes in on the rarity of tandem Oscarcast producing teams. [The Odds]

    • Peter Knegt reports from a women-in-film panel at London fest. [indieWIRE]

    • David Poland sits down with Paul Schneider to talk “Bright Star.” [Movie City News]

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  • LONDON: Exploding girls on trains

    Zoe Kazan in The Exploding GirlNot my most successful day at the London Film Festival today, as a communication error kept me out of the fest’s final “Samson and Delilah” screening — vexing partly because it leaves a significant gap in the collective review I had planned to do of multiple foreign Oscar contenders next week, but more simply because it was one of my most anticipated films of the festival. Can’t win ’em all, I suppose.

    Meanwhile, the Surprise Film screening, usually my favorite night of the festival, proved slightly anti-climactic for yours truly as the selection turned out to be Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” — a respectable enough choice on fest director Sandra Hebron’s part, but a film I’d already dug into at Venice. (Meanwhile, it marks the first time in four years that I hadn’t correctly anticipated the ‘surprise.’)

    In keeping with the theme of the day, then, I thought this as good a time as any to briefly round up five of the fest’s more disappointing efforts so far.

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  • LONDON: Another prophet

    Tahar Rahim in A ProphetBack in early September, which feels longer ago than it probably should, regular commenter Chris offered the following (non-Oscar-related) prediction:

    You need to see “A Prophet”, I saw it two days ago, and it’s such an amazing film. I don’t know if this makes any sense, but I’m predicting it to be on Guy Lodge’s top 10 of the year, just so you know what kind of film it is.

    Either I am terribly predictable, or Chris is a very wise man — we’ll flatter us both and say the latter — but after staggering out of this morning’s London Film Festival press screening, I see no way this doesn’t come to pass.

    There will likely be plenty of opportunities to discuss this stunner in the months to come (Kris already offered a brief take from Telluride), but suffice to say that the great Jacques Audiard has exceeded his previous career high-water mark, “The Beat That My Heart Skipped,” with this expansive, brutal, darkly funny and richly compassionate character study.

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