In Contention

Tag: Michael Fassbender

  • INTERVIEW: Michael Fassbender

    Michael FassbenderMichael Fassbender is unemployed.

    This, at least, is what he tells me at the outset of our conversation, and he sounds entirely relaxed about it. As well he sound be: after 18 months of back-to-back film projects, a catholic range spanning the gruelling physical demands of “Hunger,” the arch larking-about of “Inglourious Basterds,” the kitchen-sink grit of “Fish Tank” and the blockbuster polish of the upcoming “Jonah Hex,” the 32 year-old Irish-German thesp has more than earned himself some downtime.

    Not that Fassbender is entirely sure how to enjoy it. “I don’t really know what to do with myself, to be honest,” he tells me over the phone from Los Angeles, where his next vehicle – “A Single Shot,” a “very quirky” thriller in which he has the lead role – is currently in pre-production.

    “When you’re trying to make it as an actor, all you want to be is busy. After nearly two years of bouncing from one shoot to another, even a little time off is kind of disconcerting. I don’t even really have a home at the moment to spend it in.”

    He laughs, but there is a trace of weariness in his voice, its lolloping West Irish rhythm occasionally colored with harder enunciation that only faintly betrays his half-German parentage. His professional restlessness, however, has made him one of the past year’s most visible young actors.

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  • ‘Fish Tank’ poster

    A few days ago, we posted the new U.S. trailer for Andrea Arnold’s “Fish Tank,” which opens in New York next week before rolling out later. I didn’t mind it as much as some, though it didn’t capture the film’s unusual rhythmic and sensual qualities. But I do like prefer this simple, declarative poster that was released at the same time.

    You know by now that I adore the film, which I thought not merely one of the best of 2009, but of the entire decade. I’ll be posting my interview with the remarkable Michael Fassbender in the coming week. (Thanks to Stale Popcorn for the image.)

    Fish Tank

  • ‘Fish Tank’ trailer

    I caught Andrea Arnold’s “Fish Tank” during last year’s AFI Fest and frankly, wasn’t overly impressed by it.  Katie Jarvis is a real find and, of course, Michael Fassbender is and has been going places.  I liked the world it evokes feels very authentic and on the whole, it’s nice to have diversity in the marketplace.  But I just hated the narrative trajectory of the piece and whatever confused ideas it thought it was putting forth.

    But, hey, you know what they say about opinions.  Guy (who didn’t base his list on U.S. release dates) thinks it is one of the year’s very best films.

    Anyway, the domestic trailer has landed via Apple.  Have a look below:

  • ‘An Education’ leads London Critics’ award noms

    The London Film Critics’ Circle awards have their cake and eat it by having separate British film categories, in addition to some general fields where the Brits also compete. So UK productions invariably lead the field.

    Allowing for that and other oddities, this is a very pleasing list for the most part. “An Education” seals its status as this year’s British title of choice, with a leading seven nods; “Fish Tank” is close behind, with six. (I think we can count on the former triumphing at the BAFTAs next year.)

    The abundant love for “A Prophet” is probably the most unusual (and exciting) aspect here, while I’m also thrilled to see mentions for Michael Fassbender, Rosamund Pike and Michael Stuhlbarg, among others. (Also interesting: Mo’Nique and Vera Farmiga both cropping up in the lead actress category, with their female co-stars nowhere to be seen.)

    FILM OF THE YEAR
    “Avatar”
    “The Hurt Locker”
    “A Prophet”
    “Up in the Air”
    “The White Ribbon”

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  • Weinsteins promote Mélanie Laurent to lead

    Melanie Laurent in Inglourious BasterdsSome of you have already mentioned this in another thread, but The Weinstein Company, in their apparent wisdom, have decided to campaign “Inglourious Basterds” star Mélanie Laurent for Best Actress.

    Far be it from me to question the judgment of one of the greatest strategists in Oscar history, but … what?

    Laurent was, admittedly, a very dark horse in the supporting category, but as far as I can see, promoting her to lead reduces her nomination chances to nil — unless voters take the category decision into their own hands, as they did with Kate Winslet this year.

    Perhaps Weinstein is simply buying into the popular myth that Best Actress is a weakly contested category this year. But with only one slot seemingly up for grabs, and her compatriot (and fellow Weinstein Company property) Marion Cotillard muscling in on the race, the odds are firmly stacked against Laurent getting it.

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  • ‘Precious,’ ‘Fish Tank,’ ‘Vincere’ win big in Chicago

    Michael Fassbender in Fish TankOn the same day that it played to a reportedly warm reception in London, “Precious” continued its impressive streak with the festival-going public by picking up the Audience Award at the Chicago International Film Festival. In case you hadn’t got the idea by now, people really, really like this movie.

    It was another grim study of African-American youth, however, that took the festival’s top juried prize, as Tina Mabry’s autobiographical debut “Mississippi Damned” won Best Film, in addition to Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress honors for Jossie Thacker.

    The film, about three children seeking an exit from a familial cycle of poverty and abuse, has received glowing notices across the board, inviting critical comparisons to both “Eve’s Bayou” and “Ballast.”

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  • THE LONG SHOT: Post early for Christmas

    Jeremy Renner in The Hurt LockerLondon is in the midst of a postal strike. No mail, be it far-flung postcard or electricity bill, has popped through my front door for over a month. I recently had to stroll into Soho to pick up my London Film Festival accreditation pack by hand. And rather discouragingly, my local post office today put a hastily scrawled sign in the window: “Post NOW for delivery by Christmas.”

    If you’re wondering why I’ve started this week’s column with this fascinating tidbit from my domestic life – apart from the fact that, as Kris noted, the crickets are chirping in awardsville this week – it’s because, as I stared disbelievingly at the sign, it occurred to me that a similar memo should be sent to several specialty studios hoping for a stake in this awards season. (Yes, my mind works in curious ways.)

    In short: you have a little package that needs to deliver in time for Oscar consideration? Don’t wait until December. Send it out now.

    This may seem like crazy advice given Oscar voters’ ever-growing love affair with winter releases. Just last year, no pre-November release made the Best Picture cut. And Harvey Weinstein has proved time and again that substantial rewards can be reaped if you spring a film upon the Academy without giving them too much time to think about it – from “The Cider House Rules” to “Chocolat” to “The Reader,” he knows which films won’t survive a few months of critical and industry scrutiny.

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  • Supporting actors, step forward

    Christoph Waltz in Inglourious BasterdsA while back, certain folks were (rather unfairly) dredging up the routine annual complaint about the supposed scarcity of viable Best Actress contenders. Dave Karger, however, has located the real weak spot of this year’s awards race, and it concerns the opposite sex for a change: where, he asks, are the Best Supporting Actor standouts?

    Pound for pound, I tend to find Best Supporting Actor the least compelling of the acting races, a haven for affectionately regarded stalwarts in bit parts that are frequently less than challenging. The last two years have raised the bar considerably, but recent wins for Morgan Freeman, Alan Arkin and Michael Caine are typical of the laziness with which the Academy often treats the category.

    Even by the category’s usual standards, however, this year’s pickings look unusually lean, as Karger narrows the serious contenders so far to a scant three.

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  • 9/4 Web Round-up

    Spike Jonze• Steve Pond talks to AMPAS executive director Bruce Davis about the Oscars’ “crisis point.” [The Odds]

    • Redefining the cinema alien with “District 9.” [Daily Telegraph]

    • Spike Jonze and his latest gets close to 7,500 words in the Grey Lady. [New York Times]

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  • ‘Fish Tank’ trailer

    It’s been six weeks since I saw (and loved) Andrea Arnold’s Cannes Jury Prize winner “Fish Tank” at the Edinburgh fest, and the film simply will not leave me alone. Scenes and images from Arnold’s simultaneously exhilarating and devastating portrait of an Essex adolescence keep popping vividly into my head at random intervals — and I’m more and more convinced that young Katie Jarvis has given the single best performance of 2009 to date.

    I’m afraid this trailer doesn’t do a great job of selling what distinguishes the film from its kitchen-sink peers: Arnold’s impressionistic use of music and sound, its ambiguous sexual currency, the zest and rhythm of its dialogue. Just take my word for it that this is a very special piece of work. It’s out on 11 September in the UK; Americans must wait indefinitely. (It will, of course, play at Toronto next month.)

  • REVIEW: “Fish Tank” (***1/2)

    Katie Jarvis in Fish TankEdinburgh International Film Festival

    There’s a slightly condescending tendency among many critics to brand almost any British film set on a working-class council estate as “miserablist” simply by virtue of the aesthetics of its setting, despite the fact that many thousands of people live functional, three-dimensional lives in precisely such conditions.

    Of course, it’s a bias that filmmakers feed too: since Ken Loach essentially patented this sub-genre with “Cathy Come Home” in 1966, the landscape of Britfilm has been clogged with imitators piling on the grimness to perverse effect.

    Occasionally, however, the trend gives rise to a creative voice of genuine compassion and ingenuity. Recently, Lynne Ramsay and Shane Meadows have located poetry and humor in the crevices of blue-collar Britain.

    Now Oscar-winning short filmmaker Andrea Arnold joins their rank with “Fish Tank,” a deserving Jury Prize winner at Cannes that represents a quantum leap on Arnold’s already impressive feature debut, “Red Road.”

    I’d be lying if I said “Fish Tank” isn’t an often unhappy, and occasionally very angry, film. But in its detailed, immersive study of the life of an emotionally tormented, 15 year-old Essex girl (the term applied geographically rather than pejoratively, though protagonist Mia certainly has many of the vulgar physical and behavioral traits beloved of British satirists like Catherine Tate), the film seeks out moments of everyday contentment, and even cathartic bliss, that keep the proceedings in balance. (It’ll be interesting view the film in relation to its similarly-themed U.S. counterpart, “Precious.”)

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  • Teenage star of ‘Fish Tank’ wows Cannes

    Katie Jarvis in Fish TankOnly two films in so far, but it seems we have a formidable contender for the festival’s top honors in the shape of Andrea Arnold’s “Fish Tank.” The film has just screened for the press, and Arnold — who won the bronze-medal Jury Prize in 2006 with her debut feature “Red Road” — has evidently built on that success, but it seems the real revelation is the film’s 17 year-old star, Katie Jarvis.

    A non-professional making her screen debut, Jarvis is unable to attend the festival, having just given birth to her first child in her Essex hometown. But even in her absence, the young lady is generating enough to buzz to plant her as a strong contender for the Best Actress  award. IndieWire’s Eugene Hernandez calls her “the first major acting discovery” of the festival, while Screen International’s Allan Hunter gushes:

    Following in the wake of Kate Dickie’s extraordinary performance in Red Road, newcomer Katie Jarvis is every bit as impressive as Mia, finding the vulnerability of the teenager without recourse to sentimentality or surrendering any of her anger or sarcasm. It is a performance that should win her a lot of attention and add profile to a film that will have to fight for its audience.

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  • Cannes: sizing up the Competition, part one

    Penelope Cruz in Broken EmbracesWith the Cannes Film Festival only two days away, it’s time to take a long hard look (or just a look, if you prefer) at the 20 films in contention for the Palme d’Or, a typically eclectic bunch married by only one factor: all but one are from directors who have been in the race before. (And people accuse the Oscars of playing favorites.)

    Cannes is a notoriously tricky (and often well-nigh impossible) contest to predict: partly because the voting body is an ever-changing template, but largely because there’s been no time ahead of the festival for any kind of critical or popular consensus to build around the mostly unseen films on the shortlist.

    This may mean that in some cases the jury is susceptible to a film’s auteur cache — think “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” in 2006 — but it also allows for surprise attacks by less heralded titles on the basis of quality alone. Though it may seem an obvious winner in retrspect, few were talking about “The Class” last year before it snuck up on the last day and slayed the competition.

    With those caveats on the table, here’s a film-by-film (10 today, 10 tomorrow) rundown of this year’s lineup, detailing the Cannes credentials of each director, and offering some thoughts as to where they may sit in the competition. I make no promises — except that at least half my speculation will likely be proved wildly wrong in a fortnight’s time.

    “BROKEN EMBRACES” (Pedro Almodovar)

    The pitch: Already widely seen and reviewed, the film marks a return to film noir territory for the Spanish master, a complex melodrama headed by Penelope Cruz as an actress trying to rid herself of an aging lover. (Spanish dialogue)

    The history: On his two previous Competition appearances, for “All About My Mother” in 1999 and “Volver” in 2006, Almodovar entered the race as the bookies’ favourite, only to land the consolation prizes of Best Director and Best Screenplay, respectively.

    The outlook: Reviews so far have been kind, if reserved; several critics appear to delight in Almodovar’s trademark color-saturated visuals and off-kilter humor, but few have suggested that this ranks among his finest works. Almodovar is surely overdue for the festival’s top honor, but if a more unanimously lauded work like “Volver” couldn’t do the trick, my guess is that “Broken Embraces” won’t either. I think the jury may pass altogether.

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  • ‘Hunger’ poster

    Hunger

  • ‘Wrestler’ rules London crix awards

    The London Film Critics’ Circle have just announced their winners, and I have to say they’ve done a pretty terrific job. (I discussed the nominations here.) The really heartening news is that “The Wrestler” finally has another Best Picture award to its credit, five months after taking the Golden Lion at Venice — who would have thought that it’d be left to the Europeans to give this quintessential piece of Americana its due?

    Naturally, Mickey Rourke took the Best Actor award too, while Kate Winslet added yet another trophy (awarded jointly for both her 2008 films) to her crowded mantlepiece. David Fincher was a somewhat surprising winner of the Best Director award, and “Waltz With Bashir” took yet another foreign-language gong.

    If you’re wondering where “Slumdog Millionaire” features in all of this, it ruled the roost in the British Film categories, taking Best British Film and Director, and also landing Screenwriter of the Year for Simon Beaufoy. In the British races, the Londoners like to have their cake and eat it — for example, Kristin Scott Thomas took a richly deserved award for Best British Actress, but beat Best Actress winner Winslet in the process.

    Meanwhile, I’m thrilled to see Michael Fassbender getting some hardware for his staggering work in “Hunger” (which also took the Breakthrough Filmmaker prize), while in the supporting race, Eddie Marsan is another thoroughly deserving victor. Good work all round, London critics.

    Full list of winners below the cut.

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  • Standard crowns ‘Hunger’ best film

    I have to hand it to the Evening Standard Awards: they are a breath of fresh air in a suffocating awards season. While their choices can have a bit of an over-democratic, drawn-from-a-hat feel to them (Stephen Daldry for Best Director? On what planet?), they are never afraid to veer from the herd.

    And so they have done this year, justly and imaginatively handing their Best Film prize to Steve McQueen’s magnificent “Hunger” at last night’s London awards dinner. It’s a small but prestigious citation for the film, voted as it is by a panel of leading British critics, including Standard stalwart Derek Malcolm and the Telegraph’s excellent Tim Robey.

    If you ask me (which no one did, but I’ll say it anyway), they royally fluffed Best Actor, curiously settling on a tie between Michael Sheen and the admittedly very good Pat Shortt, which rather embarrassingly left Michael Fassbender — easily the most deserving nominee — the lone loser.

    They redeemed themselves, however, with an inspired choice in Best Actress. Bypassing the obvious Kate Winslet option, they instead honoured Tilda Swinton for her extraordinary, bruising work in “Julia,” which I’m beginning to think may well be the thesp’s finest performance to date. (No mean feat, that.) The fact that BAFTA essentially handed Swinton a nod for just showing up in “Burn After Reading,” but failed to even longlist her for “Julia,” is yet another reason why we shouldn’t even be paying attention to that particular shindig this year. (But hey, tune in for my BAFTA live-blog on Sunday!)

    Elsewhere, Martin McDonagh racked up another screenplay win, filmmaker Joanna Hogg deservedly took the Newcomer award (beating Dev Patel in the process), and the wonderful Sally Hawkins pipped co-star Eddie Marsan (now wouldn’t that have been a good tie opportunity?) to the Peter Sellers Award for Comedy. (I still wouldn’t quite call “Happy-Go-Lucky” a comedy, but let’s not split hairs.) Yep, the best performance of 2008 still won’t go away, no matter what the Academies on either side of the Atlantic think.

    Mike Leigh, meanwhile, bagged a career achievement award. Full list of nominees and winners (in italics) after the cut.

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  • BAFTA predictions

    The BAFTA nominations drop tomorrow, and while I hardly covered myself in glory with my foreign film Oscar forecast yesterday, I’m going to wade into the murky waters of prediction once more.

    On the one hand, it’s a fool’s errand trying to predict the BAFTA nods, as they can frequently be the most perverse and contrarian awards voters of the lot. On the other, they make the task a little easier for us pundits by releasing 15-strong longlists in each category ahead of the voting.

    As I wrote back in November, the BAFTAs can be inconsistently parochial in their voting, frequently handing multiple nods to middlebrow homegrown product, while simultaneously sidelining the most acclaimed British films of the year. A look at this year’s longlists confirms that trend, as relatively mediocre Brit flicks like “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas,” “Mamma Mia!” and “The Duchess” all received multiple mentions, while critical darlings “Hunger” and “Happy-Go-Lucky” landed in a paltry three categories each — Best Film not among them.

    The BAFTA voters’ provincialism is most shamefully evident in the Best Supporting Actress longlist, which features such bizarre inclusions as Judi Dench for “Quantum of Solace” and Rebecca Hall for her arm-candy role in “Frost/Nixon.” As for the Best Adapted Screenplay citation for “Mamma Mia!,” well, the less said the better. Of course, it’s a mistake to read too much into these lists. The idle frequency with which certain titles pop up — “Frost/Nixon” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” lead with 14 mentions each, but more surprisingly, a lightweight contender like “Burn After Reading” managed a staggering 11 — suggests the voters weren’t thinking too hard either.

    Which films will fare best tomorrow is another matter — it’s not uncommon for a film to feature strongly in the longlists only to go MIA on nomination morning. Below the cut are my best guesses, together with some thoughts on the top categories.

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  • BAFTA Orange Rising Star nominees

    Michael Fassbender in HungerGuy has already touched upon some BAFTA coverage today.  The Brits like to draw out their nominations process as long is possible, and good on ’em for it.  You gotta compete in this flurry of awards season announcements.

    Anyway, the nominees for the Orange Rising Star award were announced earlier today, and they are:

    Michael Cera
    Noel Clarke
    Michael Fassbender
    Rebecca Hall
    Toby Kebbell

    This is a tough call for me, the toss-up being Michael Fassbender and Rebecca Hall.  The former was an absolute sensation in “Hunger,” while the latter is probably the best part of Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” despite Penélope Cruz nabbing the raves.  My guess is Hall takes it.

    Here’s a bit from the press release:

    The Orange Rising Star Award is unique as it is the only Award presented at The Orange British Academy Film Awards to be voted for by the British public.  Film fans can have their say by voting via the Orange website HYPERLINK “http://www.orange.co.uk/bafta” orange.co.uk/bafta; or via text. The winner will be announced at The Orange British Academy Film Awards on Sunday 8 February 2009…

    Nominees must have featured in a film that has been entered for this year’s Orange British Academy Film Awards. Nominees will have usually already appeared in several feature films in their career so far.

    Last year’s winner was Shia LaBeouf, who announced this morning’s nominees.