In Contention

Tag: Paddy Considine

  • ‘Tyrannosaur’ trailer

    Paddy Considine’s directorial debut was one of the international success stories at this year’s Sundance fest, nabbing awards for both Olivia Colman and Peter Mullan’s performances, as well as one for Considine’s direction. I saw the film, a bruising, thoughtful portrait of abuse and emotional isolation in suburban England, and found the hype more than justified on the acting front. Mullan is as superbly tender-tough as we’ve come to expect from him, but it’s Olivia Colman — perhaps best known for her expert underplaying in the UK sitcom “Peep Show” — who’s the revelation here. I’ll save my full impressions of her stunning performance  for a review soon, but I will say that if Meryl Streep makes half as worthy a case for an Oscar nomination later this year, I’ll eat my literal hat.

    The film will get a fresh blast of wind in its sails at next month’s Toronto Film Festival; Strand Releasing already has the US distribution rights, but has yet to announce a release date. (UK audiences have only until October 7 to wait.) Meanwhile, The Guardian unveiled a trailer this morning that gives but a hint of the acting firepower on offer here. Check out the embed after the jump.

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  • ‘Tyrannosaur’ poster

    I’ve just come from a screening of “Tyrannosaur,” Paddy Considine’s feature directing debut that made something of a splash at Sundance in January, winning awards for Considine and stars Olivia Colman and Peter Mullan. I’ll discuss the film in more detail soon, but I’m happy to report that the early festival hype is thoroughly justified — it’s a startlingly severe but compassionate character study broken open by a tremendous pair of lead performances that merit major awards consideration. Strand Releasing have the US rights, though a release date hasn’t been confirmed; for now, however, the film’s cryptic UK one-sheet ranks as one of 2011’s finest. (No, it’s not about dinosaurs.) Check out the full poster after the jump.

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  • What will be this year’s Sundance story?

    I must confess, this year’s Sundance Film Festival kind of passed me by. Admittedly, I’ve been distracted by a busy couple of weeks on the awards circuit, but the Sundance coverage I did follow suggested a high-quality if nonetheless rather quiet festival, one with fewer noisy breakout films than usual.

    In the last few years, it’s been worth keeping an eye (or an ear, rather) on the Sundance buzz, as the festival has birthed a number of future critical hits, and even awards-season success stories: recent Best Picture nominees “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Precious,” “An Education” and now “The Kids Are All Right” and “Winter’s Bone” all premiered there, as did “Frozen River,” “Blue Valentine” and a plethora of Oscar-nominated documentaries. (No fewer than four of this year’s Best Documentary Feature nominees are Sundance babies.)

    So it’s easy to assume at least one film from this year’s Sundance crop is something we’ll still be talking about a year from now — but where the crossover potential for a film like “The Kids Are All Right,” or a performance like Jennifer Lawrence’s, was immediately evident, this year’s potential Sundance “stories” don’t seem quite as obvious.

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘Man on Wire’ director James Marsh

    James MarshIt’s a rare achievement, but through the ups and downs the last fortnight’s precursors, one film has failed to miss a beat, landing gongs from the New York, Los Angeles and Washington critics, as well as the NBR and the British Independents, not to mention Indie Spirit and BFCA nominations.

    That film would be “Man On Wire,” James Marsh’s crisp, witty and ultimately very moving documentary about Philippe Petit, the charismatic French performance artist who in 1974 committed the so-called “artistic crime of the century” — an illegal tightrope walk between the Twin Towers of the New York’s World Trade Center. Despite being what some might have seen as a niche project, it has emerged as one of the most acclaimed films (a Metacritic score of 89 speaks for itself), not to mention one of the top-grossing documentaries, of the year.

    Marsh, for one, admits to being a bit taken aback to his film’s dizzying trajectory. “It‘s both a thrill and a surprise,” he tells me on the phone, taking a breather from the deadline-driven editing of his new film. “It’s a great, hopeful story, but there’s such a tragic connotation to those buildings now that I wasn’t sure how audiences would respond to it.”

    By avoiding any 9/11 discussion in the film, however, Marsh was keen to keep the focus on themes of art and ambition, and he believes this is what so many viewers have connected with in the material. “It’s a fairytale, really,” he elaborates. “A real, true movie premise about achieving the impossible. Philippe is an adventurer, a superhero made flesh and blood. I love that what he did was in a way kind of pointless — it’s beauty for its own sake. And I love that audiences appreciate that.”

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