In Contention

Tag: Matthew McConaughey

  • OFF THE CARPET: Strong year for double-dippers

    We find ourselves right in the middle of the big Toronto press junket, er, film festival, where 200-plus films are landing, many of them as world premieres, and the landscape of this year’s Oscar race is really beginning to take shape.

    As I looked out at the various films in play this year, it suddenly occurred to me that, perhaps more than ever, there are a lot of double-dipping actors and actresses in the hunt. Not all of these performances are or will be awards bait necessarily, but there could still be cases for more than a few saddling up to dual nominations this year.

    At the top of that list would have to be Brad Pitt. After already giving what many believed to be his best performance to date in Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” the paparazzi-hounded star found himself the recipient of a lot of great ink for his work in “Moneyball” when it screened in Toronto at the end of the week. Wisely, Fox Searchlight will be planning a supporting actor push for the actor in Malick’s film, which is both practical (given his clear lead in the other film), and organic (given that, at least in my opinion, he is supporting to Hunter McCracken’s lead in “The Tree of Life”).

    (more…)

  • VENICE: ‘Killer Joe,’ ‘The Exchange,’ ‘4:44: Last Day on Earth’

    With two days to go until wrap-up, and a host of journalists having defected to Toronto, one can feel the air not-so-slowly hissing out of the Venice balloon. And while this certainly has its upsides — it no longer takes half an hour to get an espresso as the festival café, for example — it’s difficult to escape the sense that we’re drinking the dregs of the film programme. (If I had a euro for every time I’ve heard the term “front-loaded” uttered around the Lido…)

    Or perhaps not — the festival didn’t start to a tune of critical consensus, and it’s not ending that way, either. Last night, the last of the heavyweight Euro auteurs in competition, Aleksandr Sokurov, unveiled his take on Goethe’s “Faust” — and while I thought it a mostly agonizing misstep for the Russian formalist (with a bevy of walkouts suggesting others agreed), ecstatic applause all the way through the closing credits didn’t bode well for critical consensus. Sure enough, Sight & Sound’s Kieron Corless tweeted this morning that the film is “flawless,” and online bookies appear to be knocking down its Golden Lion odds. To each his own cinema, and all that — but I’ll happily let others have mine, in this case.

    (more…)

  • The Great Performances: 1996

    Robert Carlyle in Trainspotting1996 was an odd year, a year when the independent cinema dominated the weak product emerging out of Hollywood. I am going to confess right off the top of this article (as I have numerous times before) that I was not a fan of “The English Patient,” which for me remains one of the most vastly over-appreciated films ever made.  I couldn’t stand Kristin Scott Thomas’s work, though I did enjoy the Dafoe/Binoche storyline.

    So with that out of the way, and firmly in mind, let’s go…

    The Best Actress race was clouded with the notion that Madonna was hell-bent on being nominated for her performance in “Evita,” which finally made it to the screen after years of starts and stops. Her performance split critics, but for me lacked the depth and edge that it was given on stage by Patti Lupone, and that Meryl Streep or Michelle Pfeiffer would have given the role. Her performance proved that Madonna should stop acting as she has little or no acting talent, and should stop making movies and trying to conquer Hollywood as she did the music industry.

    Honestly, the performance rarely rises above a really good community theater performance. Mercifully she was not nominated, but she did win the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical over the eventual Oscar winner, Frances McDormand in “Fargo.” The nominees for Best Actress included, McDormand, Kristin Scott-Thomas for the aforementionend “The English Patient,” Diane Keaton for “Marvin’s Room,” Brenda Blythyn in “Secrets and Lies,” and best of all, perhaps, Emily Watson in “Breaking the Waves.”

    (more…)

  • SUNDAY CENTS: A ‘Star’ is reborn

    Star TrekParamount broke the summer sophomore weekend slump with the impressive launch of “Star Trek” this weekend, earning $72.5 million for the three days and an extra $4 million from Thursday evening showtimes. On the same weekend that supposed summer blockbusters “Speed Racer,” “Poseidon” and “Battlefield Earth” all imploded out of the gate, J.J. Abrams and company successfully rebooted yet another franchise and you can expect Paramount to start production on a sequel as soon as humanly possible.

    No “Star Trek” film had ever previously opened with more than $50 million, as the series has always catered to a pretty specific niche audience. Abrams and Paramount did all they could to destroy that perception and convince people that this version was hipper, sexier and more action-packed. The buzz worked and the film should continue to perform well in the coming weeks, easily out-earning “Wolverine” in the long run and probably becoming only the third “Trek” film to pass $200 million after the 1979 original and 1986’s “The Voyage Home.”

    Summit Entertainment had the only other new release in “Next Day Air,” and they limited it to only 1,138 screens across the country. The resulting $4.0 million finish is a mediocre amount for that kind of release and didn’t really work as counter-programming like the studio probably hoped. Who would have thought that nearly 15 years after “Clueless,” Paul Rudd and Donald Faison would still have careers and Alicia Silverstone would not?

    “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” dropped a disastrous, but not unexpected, 68% to $27 million and $129.6 million total. Brett Ratner’s entry in the franchise passed $100 million in three days while Gavin Hood’s took a full week. $200 million ain’t happening and foreign grosses will have to put the gloss on this film for Fox.

    (more…)

  • Banning the paparazzi

    City Councilmember Dennis Zine has proposed an anti-paparazzi Public Safety Law in Los AngelesI’ve been mulling over this story all day, wondering where I stand, weighing the pros and cons of any legislation whatsoever that could be painted as First Amendment violation.  I’ve come to the conclusion that Los Angeles is incredibly inept at addressing serious concerns (traffic, a new spike in gang violence, managing tax dollars with an appropriate balance), let alone issues of such triviality.

    Then the local news ran a package a few moments ago, and my brains is turning over the matter all over again.

    In a nutshell, City Councilmember Dennis Zine proposed a “Personal Safety Law” in Februrary, essentially to afford a personal space of some sort for celebrities and a protection against paparazzi packs that tend to prohibit stars from entering or leaving medical facilities.  Today, a number of individuals testified on the matter, including actor Eric Roberts (spinning something about celebs naming their kids after fruits for a reason…or something) and singer John Mayer (proclaiming himself a “rock star” in the linked item, a stretch by my standards but so be it).

    Being a former police sergeant, one would think Zine would understand the futility of the attempt, just as Chief Bill Bratton does.  Of course, the ever-colorful Bratton presents a carnival of ignorance when he proclaims at press conferences, “Stay home, it’d make our job a lot easier” (quoted from the news package, not the NY Times story).

    The paparazzi issue has hit a new level of saturation in the Britney/Paris/Lindsay era, and we all recall that surfer pack throwdown on paps trying to snap shots of Matthew McConaughey.  The environment is ripe for such a legislation to recieve some fair attention, but…I don’t know…it all seems like a giant waste of time and a distraction for an underpaid, understaffed police force that is challenged with the law and order of typicality as it is.

    So what if a few paps suffer broken toes because they can’t get the fuck out of the way when a star’s SUV is plowing through?  So what if a group of paps get their asses kicked by sun-stained beach bras with nothing better to do but play out Darwin’s law for our viewing pleasure?  No one wants to suffer through something like the Princess Diana trgedy again, but this is the life.

    I spent a lot of my time writing about this Amy Winehouse breakdown or that while I was in London over the summer.  The issue of stars gone stupid isn’t relegated to La-La Land.  And of course, the morons of celebrity are not the only ones hounded (poor Eric Roberts seems unable to handle the attention in the weeks since “The Dark Knight” landed).  But presenting legislation — vague, ill-advised and thin legislation at that…sigh.  At least the local news had something to cover this evening.

    You tell me.  Am I out of line here?

    (More coverage at the Los Angeles Times.)