• Michael Cieply reports from the “W.E.” press conference in Toronto, where Madonna is doing slightly better than she did over in Venice. [Arts Beat]
• Speaking of Toronto, Tilda Swinton keeps hitting the press rounds at the fest. [Speakeasy]
• Pete Hammond hears that Sony Classics wanted to lay the groundwork for a Michael Fassbender win next year in “Shame” (had they acquired it) by pushing “A Dangerous Method” ahead of it this year. I’m not sure that would have worked out. [Deadline]
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”).
To judge from the press reaction to yesterday’s Venice Film Festival awards, you could be forgiven for thinking that Michael Fassbender won every single one of them, plus an extra certificate for full attendance.
That’d hardly be surprising in any circumstances, given Fassbender’s growing celebrity and the media’s reliable aversion to world cinema. Best Actor was the only major prize handed to an English-language film, after all — prompting cries of “Boring!” in many a comment board, for what in cinema is more boring than subtitles and faces you don’t immediately recognize?
But I’m being unfair. Surely one reason for Fassbender hogging last night’s Lido headlines — with Golden Lion winner “Faust” generally relegated to a grudging postscript — is that his was one choice made by the jury that nearly everyone could agree upon, and had indeed agreed upon since “Shame”‘s first screening a week before. I’d have been equally happy with an award for quick-witted “Carnage” savior Christoph Waltz, but I’m pleased the more exciting film got indirectly honored.
Guy is currently in transit from Venice (where, once again, he offered some bang-up coverage throughout — much appreciated). I’ll let him address the bulk of this when he touches down, but for now, a big win out of the festival for “Shame” in Michael Fassbender’s Volpi Cup victory. In accepting the award, Fassbender tipped his hat to actor Gary Oldman (whose “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” was at the fest), remarking, “I’ve followed him since I was 14 years old.”
Festival jury head Darren Aronofsky called this year’s crop of Venice selections “exhilarating and maddening” for the very same reason: it was a quality bunch, and whittling things down for today’s festivities was, naturally, a chore. “We have so many worthy films and so few prizes to give,” he said, before adding, “International cinema is alive and well.” And indeed, Venice’s line-up seems to get more and more impressive each year. As it should for the world’s oldest film festival.
I would say “Toldja!,” but I think that’s trademarked elsewhere. Nevertheless, as indicated here a few times, Fox Searchlight Pictures was pretty serious about “Shame” after the film bowed at Venice and Telluride on the same day over the weekend. It’s set to screen Sunday in Toronto, but ahead of that, the dependent has bravely swooped in and picked the title up. The press release, in part:
Fox Searchlight Pictures Presidents Nancy Utley and Stephen Gilula announced today that the company has acquired U. S. rights to the intimate and provocative drama SHAME…
“Fox Searchlight contacted us immediately after the screening in Telluride to tell us how much they loved the film. Their approach to marketing and distributing the film this year was incredibly detailed and impressive. We are excited to be working with them on a film that is sparking debate and a strong emotional reaction from audiences,” said Canning and Sherman.
“This is a brave statement and an important move by Fox Searchlight. I am very happy they came on board to release Shame in the U.S. It’s great to be working with a team that is so passionate about cinema,” said McQueen.
This year’s Competition strand of the Venice Film comprised 23 films — a large-ish number by major festival standards, and yet it still feels remarkably thin.
Admittedly, I’m viewing the field with a slight eyepatch on, having only seen 17 of the 23 films. Yet compared to last year’s lineup — where the successes ranged from higher-profile American auteur works like “Black Swan” and “Meek’s Cutoff” to more rarefied critical hits like “Silent Souls” and “Post Mortem,” with several heavily discussed possibilities in between — it feels this year like the Lido conversation has centered on the same small handful of titles for the past week.
Last year, Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere” was something of a shock Golden Lion winner; this year, anything that extensively discussed would be in the thick of consideration. As I wrote earlier, the extreme front-loading of the schedule, combined with the lack of breakout critical sleepers in the festival’s quiet second week, has made for a rather static buzz wave.
(Thoughts on this year’s contenders, and my own list of predictions and preferences, after the jump.)
Welcome to Oscar Talk.
In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.
Today we’re back from the Telluride film fest, but Anne is up in Toronto and things are, well, kind of nuts. She’s up against the wall trying to get to a screening so we don’t get to dig in as much as we’d like. But we try. We really try. So, let’s see what’s on the docket today…
Venice Film Festival
If “Hunger,” artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen’s remarkable debut feature, was a study of a body strenuously denied its fundamental needs, his satisfyingly rigorous, explicit follow-up, “Shame,” traces the very different damage done by a body over-gifted with wants.
A sternly formalist parable on the pruning and stunting of relationships both familial and carnal in modern-day urban society, “Shame” is only for the purposes of swift summary a story of sex addiction — specifically that endured by Brandon, Michael Fassbender’s dourly handsome New York advertising hotshot. Sex, and the pursuit thereof, is what needles Brandon first and foremost, but it doesn’t take Freud (or indeed Fassbender’s own Jung from “A Dangerous Method”) to tell that it’s a displaced urge in a life whose most crippling vacancies take longer to fill than a Friday night fuck.
“Hunger” was a film that dismantled known history and re-presented it in highly sensual, imagistic terms. The new film might be a foray into fiction for its director — working from an original screenplay by British playwright and television scribe Abi Morgan — but it performs a similar trick with psychology so embedded in the popular consciousness it would appear to offer little room for surprise.
Venice Film Festival
“Do you think they know we’re on our way, bringing them the plague?” So asks Viggo Mortensen’s Sigmund Freud of his younger colleague Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), as the two approach New York City to gift the untreated denizens of America with their equally grueling brands of psychoanalysis, in the closing stretch of “A Dangerous Method,” David Cronenberg’s thoughtfully embroidered account of their professional rivalry.
It’s the sharpest line in corset-prestige specialist Christopher Hampton’s script, adapted none-too-cinematically from his 2002 play “The Talking Cure.” It is also, as most Freudophiles will recognize, one he didn’t write himself — like so many of a writer’s best moments, it was gifted to him by legend. Freud, luckily enough, had a pretty dry line in irony; drier, perhaps, than that of Hampton, who tackles his historical subjects’ rich battle of wills and philosophies with the requisite scholarly enthusiasm, but is oddly cautious, even a little po-faced, about the way he fashions intellectual debate into drama.
“Why Venice and not Toronto?” a colleague asked when I mentioned I was heading to the Lido for the world’s oldest film festival for the third straight year. Given the North American bent of this site, it was a fair question, but also one I found easy to answer — and not just for the dully practical reason of relative airfare expense.
Toronto may have become the bigger and, depending on your field of interest, more influential festival (certainly so if you’re in the Oscar-watching business). But with its abundance of pre-premiered films and no juried competition, it’ll never have the grandeur or ever-so-slightly scuffed glamor of the Venice event, with its beachside location, soaring marble delegate halls and saturated aroma of overpriced espresso — not to mention the artsier exclusivity of its film programming, a once hit-and-miss virtue that scored a bulls-eye with a 2010 lineup that beat last year’s Cannes for range, relevance and vitality.
A bit of a diversion from the Oscar scene, though not really, seeing as Jennifer Lawrence stars (and James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender are surely not far away from their first nomination). But Fox has debuted the “X-Men: First Class” trailer via the film’s Facebook page and, if you’ve been online this afternoon at all, you’ve probably already seen it. I’m not as amped for the film as most, but the trailer certainly does no harm. If anything I’m intrigued by the potential for sparks to fly between McAvoy (as Charles “Professor X” Xavier) and Fassbender (as Erik “Magneto” Lehnsherr). We’ll see this summer. Check out the trailer by clicking the image below or watch an embed after the jump.
Only two weeks into my new feature and I’m already a day late — apologies. My laptop (now cured, at least until its next mood swing) will graciously accept the blame.
If you missed last week’s introductory instalment, the game is a simple one. In the run-up to nomination day, I’m picking five outstanding contenders in each major category in films from the first half of the 2010 release schedule: a period repeatedly neglected by voters in favor of newer, shinier delights. We started with Best Supporting Actress — during which I learned that a lot of you really don’t like Taylor Swift, but you still all saw “Valentine’s Day” — and this week we fill in the male half of the equation.
Keen as I am on all five performances I dredged up from the January-to-June wilderness, I was somewhat disappointed to note a very similar template forming to last week’s list: one French breakthrough talent, one blockbuster high point, even one star from a particular film. All accidental, I assure you… but to think I complain about “slot” mentality in the Oscar-analysis game.
I’m lousy at keeping track of pre-production news, so if you’d asked me an hour ago what British artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen was tackling for his sophomore feature, I’d have answered, “Oh, I know — that Fela Kuti biopic starring Chiwetel Ejiofor.” And I’d have been wrong.
The more clued-up folks at The Playlist report that McQueen’s next project, “Shame,” begins shooting in January and will actually reteam him with the star of his vastly acclaimed debut “Hunger,” Michael Fassbender. As you know, we love “Hunger” rather dearly here at InContention, so this is exciting news, made more interesting by the fact that it’s McQueen’s first venture into fictional narrative. Here’s the selling blurb:
Brandon (Fassbender) is a 30-something man living in New York who is unable to manage his sex life. After his wayward younger sister moves into his apartment, Brandon’s world spirals out of control… Shame is a compelling and timely examination of the nature of need, how we live our lives and the experiences that shape us.
Memo to the folks handling “The King’s Speech” at TWC: this is how you rustle up a poster for a period prestige pic. Cary Fukunaga’s adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” — the first since Franco Zeffirelli’s Charlotte Gainsbourg-starring attempt in 1996 — is one of my most curiously awaited films of 2011. The novel, a personal favorite, has been filmed multiple times, with no screen version quite hitting the jackpot: I’m intrigued, then, to see what fresh insight the young director of “Sin Nombre” will bring to the material. (Here’s hoping the corsets don’t constrict his personality the way they did the similarly indie-based Jean-Marc Vallée’s in “The Young Victoria.”)
When I heard today that Mia Wasikowska had landed the lead in Cary Fukunaga’s upcoming adaptation of “Jane Eyre” for Focus Features, my first thought was, “Well, who else?”
Not that there aren’t other suitable young actresses who could ace the part. But 20 year-old Australian Wasikowska seems to have hit a sweet spot in the Hollywood casting game. A year ago, few who didn’t watch HBO’s “In Treatment” had heard of her; today, she seems to be nabbing every plum role going in her age bracket.
Two years ago, Ellen Page’s name was linked to this latest dusting-off of the Charlotte Brontë chestnut; the eventual casting of Wasikowska suggests that even young Hollywood has its minute generational shifts.
Not that I’m complaining about Wasikowska’s sudden rise. I was as impressed as everyone else by her tangy work as a suicidal teen in “In Treatment,” and was pleased to see that promise completely followed through with a precise, perceptive turn as the daughter of Annette Bening and Julianne Moore in Lisa Cholodenko’s deserved festival hit “The Kids Are All Right.”
The BAFTA Awards take place on Sunday, but last night the UK’s premier critics’ body had their say at the London Film Critics’ Circle Awards. And what we learned is what the London Film Festival, Sight & Sound and even the BAFTA longlists already taught us: the Brits really, really like “A Prophet.”
Busting out of the foreign-language ghetto, Jacques Audiard’s Oscar-nominated prison gang saga took the night’s top award, Film of the Year. That was its lone award of the night, however — Kathryn Bigelow continued her steamroll through every directing honor in sight, while they democratically handed what would have been a rather superfluous foreign-language prize to “Let the Right One In.”
The night’s biggest winner, meanwhile, was another of my pet films: “Fish Tank” took four awards in the British categories, including Best British Film and acting honors for Katie Jarvis and Michael Fassbender. Following Bigelow, Andrea Arnold made it an all-female affair in the directing categories.
Yesterday, I began my far-fetched wishlist of nominees for tomorrow’s announcement with a look at the technical categories. Today we move into the big races. And as much as I thought I had my favorites clearly mapped out in my head, a rundown of the eligible titles made for some very crowded races indeed.
Once again, I’ve mostly played by the Academy’s own criteria, considering only U.S. releases from 2009 — hence the slight discrepancy with my Top 10 from December. But where certain titles seemingly never made it through the administrative red tape guarding Oscar eligibility, I’ve intervened on their behalf. (Films as good as “Summer Hours” can’t go unmentioned, after all.)
Check out my picks after the cut, and share your own last-minute thoughts and hopes in the comments. My final predictions are coming shortly.
• “Avatar” and “The Hangover” took top honors at a very populist Golden Globes ceremony — Off the Carpet reported from the party circuit.
• The Academy revealed the nine films shortlisted for Best Foreign Language Film; we sized up the race.
• BAFTA announced their nominations, with “An Education,” “The Hurt Locker” and “Avatar” topping the list.
• The Long Shot, meanwhile, pondered the identity crisis of this particular awards institution.