• James Franco, also starring in “Howl” this year, selects his favorite poems. [Vulture]
• In remembering film editor Sally Menke, Lawrence Bender discusses the “Hi, Sally” Tarantino tradition. [Arts Beat]
• Anne Thompson talks, well, a whole bunch of stuff with a busy Guillermo Del Toro. [Thompson on Hollywood]
If you’ve read the script for Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Network” then you know it’s powerful stuff waiting to be unleashed on the season. Well, Scott Foundas is first out of the gate with an extremely early critique of the film, and it’s all thumbs up from Brett Ratner’s best bud. To wit:
David Fincher’s The Social Network is big and brash and brilliant…It is nominally the story of the founding of Facebook, yes, and how something that began among friends quickly descended into acrimony and litigation once billions of dollars were at stake. But just as All the President’s Men—a seminal film for Fincher and a huge influence on his Zodiac—was less interested by the Watergate case than by its zeitgeist-altering ripples, so too is The Social Network devoted to larger patterns of meaning. It is a movie that sees how any social microcosm, if viewed from the proper angle, is no different from another—thus the seemingly hermetic codes of Harvard University become the foundation for a global online community that is itself but a reflection of the all-encompassing high-school cafeteria from which we can never escape. And it owes something to The Great Gatsby, too, in its portrait of a self-made outsider marking his territory in the WASP jungle.
To sayt he least, in most conversations I’m having leading up to the awards season, Fincher’s film is perhaps the most anticipated. If even half of these sentiments are fair, then I think it’s safe to say a bona fide contender is comin’ round the bend. Read the rest of Foundas’s thoughts at Film Society of Lincoln Center.
“The Social Network” opens the New York Film Festival September 24.
In the last couple of weeks the major fall film festivals have unveiled aggressively competitive line-ups, and the amount of potential awards product landing at Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York is, as usual, vast.
There are plenty of overlapping exhibitions but as for firsties, Venice will get dibs on Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” Julie Taymor’s “The Tempest,” Julian Schnabel’s “Miral,” Ben Affleck’s “The Town,” and Richard J. Lewis’s “Barney’s Version” before the films make their way to other fests. Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere” will be exclusive to the Lido.
New York, meanwhile, landed a real coup by boasting the world premiere of David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” which will not be at the other fests.
Toronto is again packed to the gills with product (too much, if you ask me, but it’s a media circus after all). Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter” will see its first bow there before heading off to New York in October. Tony Goldwyn’s “Conviction” will also debut, as well as John Madden’s “The Debt,” Rowan Joffe’s “Brighton Rock,” Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” and Nigel Cole’s “Made in Dagenham.” World premieres searching for distributors at the fest include Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator,” John Cameron Mitchell’s “Rabbit Hole” and Dustin Lance Black’s “What’s Wrong with Virginia,” any of which could end up being awards season possibilities.
• The New York Film Festival unveiled a decidedly foreign lineup, with Alain Resnais and Pedro Almodovar at either end.
• Speaking of festivals, the long-awaited “The Road” was among the titles added to the Toronto slate this week.
• With everyone excited about “District 9” this week, we took time to chat to the film’s breakout star Sharlto Copley.
• Best Film Editing was the subject of this week’s installment of Tech Support.
indieWIRE has the full lineup for this year’s New York Film Festival, which runs from 25 September to 11 October, and at a glance, it looks remarkably like a greatest-hits lineup from May’s Cannes festival.
This year, both the NYFF’s opening and closing films have been plucked from the Croisette. Alain Resnais’s “Wild Grass,” for which the 87 year-old New Wave master received a special career-achievement award at Cannes, will kick off proceedings, marking the second year in a row that a French title has taken this high-profile slot.
Palme d’Or winner “The Class” opened NYFF last year en route to an Oscar nod. Whether a similar path awaits Resnais’s film, a high-flown romantic melodrama which was very warmly reviewed in Cannes, of course depends on what the French choose as their entry from a bumper crop of possibilities.
• Tom O’Neil wonders if Bill Maher can cure his Emmy drought with an Oscar instead. [Gold Derby]
• Patrick Goldstein calls ‘W.’ a “mess,” confirming my worst fears… [The Big Picture]
• Erica Abeel corners Mike Leigh at the New York fest. [indieWIRE]
• Bill Murray talks “City of Ember,” his divorce. [Associated Press]
• Stephen Holden thinks “Changeling” and “The Wrestler” are “shameless Oscar bait.” [New York Times]
• Oscar-winner Faye Dunaway talks to Xan Brooks about her work in a new indie. [The Guardian]
• Tom Wilkinson, the actor who does it all. [USA Today]
• Jeffrey Wells continues to pass along the good “Milk” word second hand. [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• Variety’s Peter bart is blogging again after a week’s drought. Call off the search party. [Peter Bart]
• Glenn Kenny paid to see “An American Carol.” [Some Came Running]
I’ve already discussed how many critics seem to be misinterpreting Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” and its protagonist, Poppy, by interpreting it as a sheer feelgood work — and in doing so, missing much of the film’s complex, subtle social observation.
So I’m glad to see that Mike Leigh has addressed the issue at a NYFF press conference. In this video courtesy of IFC.com, Leigh and the film’s star, Sally Hawkins, discuss with Lisa Schwarzbaum the issue of Poppy’s optimism, with Leigh stressing that there is a lot more to her character than simple cheeriness. First saying that “to desribe her as being unadulteratedly happy is not really to understand her at all,” her goes on to draw an interesting parallel between Poppy and the title character in the very differently-toned “Vera Drake.”
Finally, with a grin, he insists that while “Happy-Go-Lucky” is indeed “anti-miserablist,” it’s not necessarily the start of a trend in his work: “Wait until you see how depressing the next film might be!”
More from the conference here.
• Jeffrey Wells reports that Jim Sheridan’s “Brothers” has been pushed to 2009. [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• Patrick Goldstein hypothesizes that the year-end Oscar glut is detrimental to quality films and, in a round about way, that studios should forgo the Oscar spending. Gasp! [The Big Picture]
• David Poland apparently missed the qualifier “largely” in disputing a section of Goldstein’s lede. [The Hot Blog]
• Michael Ordoña talks to the wonderful Rosemarie Dewitt about her work in “Rachel Getting Married.” Best in show, in my opinion. [Los Angeles Times]
• Tom O’Neil spotlights the tech crew of “Eagle Eye,” wonders if Oscar might be in their future. [Gold Derby]
• Karina Longworth reports on the “Wrestler” press conference at the New York fest. [Spout Blog]
• Andrew O’Hehir talks to Bill Maher — boy is he making the rounds for “Religulous.” [Beyond the Multiplex]
• Chris Ayers heads over to Ixtlan for a “W.” chat with Oliver Stone. [The Times]
• The 25 greatest movie posters of all time. Too heavy ont he vintage stuff, but a fun list. [Premiere]
• David Poland takes stock 22 weeks out, and somehow thinks early buzz on Sean Penn’s “Milk” performance is “soft.” [Movie City News]
• Warner Bros. sends out a mailer offering Academy members the choice of a Blu-ray “Dark Knight” awards screener. Wally Pfister’s nomination moves further into place. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• In a nutshell, “Little Children” author Tom Perrotta wonders whether John Hughes was full of shit. [The Guardian]
• An A.O. Scott overview of the New York Film Festival. [New York Times]
• Susan King digs into the legacy of John Wayne. [Los Angeles Times]
• Alright, this is getting out of hand — and just stupid. Reporting on an alleged bet on the test screening score of “The Reader” for its release prospects? [The Big Picture]
• Top 10 tear-jerkers. [Premiere]
• Does the Governor really deserve to top a list of the 10 most talentless people in Hollywood? [The Movie Blog]
• Richard Rushfield hangs out at the Emmys’ Governor’s Ball. [The Envelope]
• Fans ask Daniel Craig the questions. [The Guardian]
• Logan Hill’s four “must see” films at this year’s New York Film Festival. [New York Magazine]
• Chuck Palahniuk’s five favorite films. [Rotten Tomatoes]
…and that’s about it…lots of Emmy talk out there, though (not personally interested).
• “Real” men of the screen are a dying breed, according to Peter Bart. [Peter Bart]
• Journos keep beating a dead horse about the new “At the Movies” failure. [eFilmCritic]
• And again. [The Hot Blog]
• Anne Thompson salutes Telluride and New York for steering clear of high profile American cinema, but as she notes, was there really a choice this year? [Thompson on Hollywood]
• Erik Davis talks Bond with Daniel Craig and Marc Forster. [Cinematical]
• Speaking of Bond, apparently the character won’t be uttering a few of his infamous lines in the latest installment. [The Independent]
• John Horn sits down with Diablo Cody on the set of “Jennifer’s Body.” [Los Angeles Times]
• Dennis Lim, meanwhile, chats it up with “Class” director Laurent Canet in the wake of his film landing the official French foreign film selection for this year’s Academy Awards. [New York Times]
• Giles Hattersly gets some quality time with “I’ve Loved You So Long” star Kristin Scott Thomas. [The Times]
• Kevin Kelly talks to “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” director Kevin Smith at Fantastic Fest. [Spout Blog]