• Anne Thompson talks “Rampart” with writer/director Oren Moverman. [Thompson on Hollywood]
• Greg Ellwood ponders who got an Oscar bounce out of Toronto. [Awards Campaign]
• Simon Kinnear on the clothing designs of “Drive.” [Clothes on Film]
Tag: Oren Moverman
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9/19 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Toronto Oscar bounces, threads in ‘Drive,’ adaptng le Carre
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Moverman’s expressive ‘Rampart’ offers tour de force performance from Woody Harrelson
Oren Moverman’s “Rampart” is absolutely fantastic. Top to bottom, it’s a considerable directorial achievement, and an exciting, brazen departure from his excellent 2009 debut, “The Messenger.”The film — from an original screenplay by James Ellroy, re-written by Moverman — uses the 1999 Los Angeles Police Department Rampart corruption scandal as a frame, a state of mind, a narrative hook, an atmosphere for conveying an intense, probing, yet curiously vague character study in the form of LAPD officer “Date Rape” Dave Brown (Woody Harrrelson).
“Date Rape” got his nickname from his own scandal, the murder of an alleged serial rapist, which he explains away at a bar with a casual, “I may or may not have done it but he’ll never hurt another woman again.” That gives you an idea where this guy is coming from. The world is black and white for him (or so he’d like it to be). But he’s haunted by its inherent grays.
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Mixed reaction to Moverman’s ‘Rampart’ in Toronto, some measured praise for Woody Harrelson
One of the more anticipated Toronto bows, for me, is Oren Moverman’s “The Messenger” follow-up, “Rampart.” I was a big fan of his last effort and have been intrigued by the possibility of Woody Harrelson bubbling up in the Best Actor race (assuming a studio bites on the film).But things aren’t looking stellar for the film just yet, as most of what I’m reading is negative, with a few positive bursts here and there. (Just judging by the cross-section, though, I expect to be on board.) More reactions will come throughout the fest, so this early glance isn’t necessarily meant to establish the overall perception.
Starting with the trades, Variety’s Justin Chang calls the film “well-wrought,” singling out Harrelson by offering that the actor “is excellent as a cynical, trigger-happy officer oblivious to the fresh winds of change and accountability sweeping through his embattled department.” He nevertheless found the film on the whole to be a “not entirely satisfying character study.”
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Oren Moverman, Kurt Cobain and the biopic
One of my favorite current film writers, Ryan Gilbey, has an excellent piece in today’s Guardian on the subject of biopics — in particular, on the rise of the postmodern biopic in the face of Hollywood’s increasingly tepid stabs at the form. It’s a good read, but far better is the unabridged version of the article at Gilbey’s own blog, which contains some fascinating nuggets cut by the Guardian subs.Among them is this intriguing tidbit on an upcoming Kurt Cobain biopic from writer Oren Moverman. Moverman was, of course, a semi-surprise Oscar nominee earlier this year for his screenplay of “The Messenger,” but more pertinently to the subject at hand, he also co-wrote Todd Haynes’s oblique Bob Dylan study “I’m Not There.”
Talking to Gilbey after the cut, Moverman explains that his next stab at the life of a rock icon won’t be quite as avant-garde as Haynes’s film (or Gus van Sant’s “Last Days,” for that matter), but he has no intention of ceding to the ‘greatest hits’ biopic structure so favored by Hollywood screenwriters.
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OSCAR GUIDE: Best Writing (Original Screenplay)
Best Original Screenplay: 2009’s most difficult category to predict. Why? Certainly not because of each contender’s merits (when does that ever come into play with the Academy). No, this field is a hair-puller because you have a vibrant, likable personality up against the Best Picture frontrunner, always a recipe for a close race (and, sometimes, a recipe for upset).This year’s nominees contain four Best Picture nominees and one surprise (which thankfully ousted the most overrated indie charmer of the year). Atypically, there are as many Best Picture nominees represented here than in the adapted field, which can’t be a bad thing.
The nominees are:
“The Hurt Locker” (Mark Boal)
“Inglourious Basterds” (Quentin Tarantino)
“The Messenger” (Alessandro Camon & Oren Moverman)
“A Serious Man” (Joel Coen & Ethan Coen)
“Up” (Screenplay by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter; Story by Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Tom McCarthy) -
2/23 Oscarweb Round-up
• Peter Knegt chats with Best Actor nominee Jeremy Renner. [indieWIRE]• Oscar party kits, anyone? With bingo! [Oscars.org]
• “The Messenger” writers and Oscar nominees Oren Moverman and Alessandro Camon on their process. [MTV Movies Blog]
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1/14 Oscarweb Round-up
• Buzz Aldrin, Willie Nelson and more comment on the accuracy of a number of the season’s contenders. [Variety]• Peter Jackson and Stanley Tucci talk “The Lovely Bones.” [FearNet]
• Brooks Barnes Q&As “The Hurt Locker” writer Mark Boal. [The Carpetbagger]
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INTERVIEW: Ben Foster
Ben Foster became an actor I knew I would watch for a long time during an episode of the now canceled TV drama “Boston Public.”Foster was cast as a high school student dying of cancer and had an extraordinary monologue about wanting a Christmas with no crying, with no tears; he wanted his last Christmas to be about joy, so he kept the fact that the cancer was no longer in remission from his family. He had what Pauline Kael called, “Bite you on the nose talent.”
In the last few years Foster has slowly been building up a strong filmography that I believe has placed him as one of the most gifted and exciting young actors in American cinema. Even a role on “My Name is Earl” was electrifying. With major roles in “Alpha Dog,” “3:10 to Yuma” and now “The Messenger,” it’s a quick cross-section of a talent on the rise.
Many times interviewing young actors on the way up is an exercise in tedium because they can be so full of themselves there is barely room in the same room for us both. Not so with Foster, a thoroughly engaging, intelligent, brutally honest young man with his head firmly attached.
Films dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have not been popular with audiences or critics over the last few years. “In the Valley of Elah” was superb because of the haunting performance from Tommy Lee Jones, and this year Kathryn Bigelow gave us “The Hurt Locker,” which is easily among the best films of the year and could see her become the first women to win an Academy Award for Best Director. So I waded right in: Why this film?
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OFF THE CARPET: Original players
When I had the unmitigated gall last week to project a set of winners for this year’s Oscar race, I was a bit startled at how easy Mark Boal’s script for “The Hurt Locker” slid into the Best Original Screenplay slot. Looking over the landscape of contenders in the category, it’s a little obvious why such a somewhat non-traditional entry would be pegged as a frontrunner: this is a pretty thin year for original screenplays.That should take nothing away from Boal’s work, which is certainly commendable. But beyond Pixar’s “Up” (penned by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson) and the Coen brothers’ “A Serious Man” (my pick for best-in-show in the category), there isn’t much competition for Boal’s play at the statuette. I even find myself struggling with two more solid bets for nods after that trio.
Fox Searchlight, however, is making some pretty strong moves on behalf of “(500) Days of Summer,” written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. The pair has already been cited by the Hollywood Film Festival as well as the Hamilton Behind the Camera awards. Given the studio’s campaign prowess (and the undying spirit of the film’s champions), it makes sense to expect a spot to be reserved for the film here.
To fill out the set, you’ve got a slot that is undeniably up for grabs. So let’s dig into the field and see what we come up with.
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Oren Moverman talks ‘The Messenger’
One of these days I’m going to be getting Woody Harrelson on the horn to talk about his riveting work in Oren Moverman’s “The Messenger,” but schedules haven’t dovetailed precisely enough yet. I don’t mind saying I’m eager, because it’s one of the year’s best films.
The New Yorker’s David Denby has called the film “neither dutiful nor solemn…a fully felt, morally alert, marvellously (sic) acted piece of work,” one that “joins the group of strong Iraq-war movies that, like rejected suitors, stand hat in hand, waiting for an audience to notice their virtues.” I couldn’t agree more. And on cue, courtesy of MakingOf, here’s Moverman discussing the piece:
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11/10 Oscarweb Round-up
• Deborah Sontag talks “The Messenger” with Oren Moverman, Woody Harrelson, etc. [New York Times]• Roger Ebert sits down with the fast-becoming new “it” girl, Gabourey Sidibe. [Chicago Sun-Times]
• With movies still to be seen in 2009, Noah Forrest pegs “25th Hour” as the decade’s best. Brave choice. I’m a fan. [Movie City News]
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REVIEW: “The Messenger” (***1/2)
There is a film that succeeds as a cerebral drama, concerned with the impact of war on the individual, free of the genre’s typical tropes and remarkably fresh as a result. And believe it or not, I’m not talking about “The Hurt Locker.”Of course, it is unfair to Oren Moverman’s “The Messenger” to so quickly evoke the name of one of the year’s most critically acclaimed films by way of comparison. And Kathryn Bigelow’s sterling 2009 gem doesn’t deserve to be jerked down a peg by showcasing the merits of another, more under-the-radar film.
But the fact remains, these two efforts are departures from the status quo in a dramatic subset that is perhaps more artistically important now than it has been in 60 years. And Moverman’s film has settled, for this viewer, much more completely than Bigelow’s. It instantly stands out as one of the year’s most powerful dramas.
The nuts and bolts of the story concern a pair of military officers charged with the heavy burden of notifying next of kin in the event of a combat casualty. Woody Harrelson’s Anthony “Tony” Stone has been wading through the waters of this “sacred” task for some time and has come to identify its importance with a strict regimen followed each time out.
Ben Foster’s Will Montgomery, meanwhile, has been relegated to Tony’s charge in the wake of a heavy combat experience. He is neither comfortable with the emotional workload of the job nor, seemingly, convinced of its importance over his battlefield duties.
The narrative isn’t focused in any traditional manner. It serves up what is, essentially, a series of vignettes, Tony and Will notifying next of kin in a variety of atmospheres. These are powerfully acted by supporting, basically cameo players such as Peter Friedman, Halley Feiffer, Steve Buscemi and Angel Caban, among others.