In Contention

Tag: Paul Giamatti

  • Mark Harris joins the discussion with fringe lead actor picks

    Two years ago author and journalist Mark Harris wrote what I think is one of the most salient Oscar season observances ever squeezed out of this unnecessary corner of the web. I always look to him for one of the most above-the-fray, but smart and informed, perspectives on a given season. And this piece over at Grantland is a great example, too.

    He reduces these early days of the awards season to the echo-chamber they’ve come to represent. And I don’t count myself out of the insanity he cuts everything down to with this precise paragraph:

    If you’re like most moviegoers, or most Academy voters, you don’t attend any of these festivals. So “buzz” is really code for a two-way conversation conducted between a handful of awards handicappers eager to anoint or dismiss potential contenders, and a handful of studio publicists and independent firms who are listening for the dog-whistle frequency that tells them that somebody thinks their movie might be in the running.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Strong year for double-dippers

    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”).

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  • REVIEW: “The Ides of March” (***)

    Venice Film Festival

    “I’m not a Christian. I’m not an atheist. I’m not a Muslim. I’m not Jewish. I believe in the American constitution,” intones a spiffily-suited and even fresher-faced-than-usual Ryan Gosling as the opening line of “The Ides of March,” George Clooney’s crisp, diverting and typically (even overly) studious political thriller.

    Standing at the podium, he hesitates a moment — teasing us with the tantalizing possibility that he might launch into an even less rhythmic rendition of the rap interlude from Madonna’s “American Life” — before the camera pulls back to reveal the context of the rhetoric: he’s merely timing an address that his boss, a Brylkreem-slick presidential candidate played by Clooney himself, will deliver later.

    It’s the first of several occasions where the film strips political speech down to its mere machinations, and where the mind of one character is filtered through the voice of another. It’ll come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Clooney’s work as a filmmaker and as an activist that “The Ides of March” takes a wearily disapproving stance on the manipulations and (mostly bad) manners of US politics, prizing the candid idealism of Stevie Meyers, Gosling’s gifted 30 year-old press secretary, over the more urbane truth-parsing of Clooney’s Democratic hopeful Mike Morris — loosely inspired, as in the play, “Farragut North,” from which the film is adapted, on failed 2004 campaigner Howard Dean.

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  • Five things I learned from the Golden Globes

    Appropriately enough for the occasion, I watched last night’s Golden Globe awards in a celebratory alcoholic fog (the night having coincided with a friend’s birthday) so thick it took most of today to sleep it off — hence the apologetically late posting.

    My memory of the evening’s finer details is therefore about as clear as, say, Ricky Gervais’s, though I do recall cheering so manically for “Carlos”‘s win in the TV Miniseries category (even if the film is, by its director’s own admission, a work of cinema) that I inadvertently tossed red wine in my hair. That, and so many green dresses on screen that I briefly wondered if the collected stylists of Hollywood had been roped into a particularly gratuitous product placement scheme for the weekend’s box office champ.

    The awards themselves, meanwhile, were both well-judged and helpful, tying (or at least tidying) up a few loose ends remaining on the circuit — and even allowing me some minor bragging rights for calling the widely unfancied Paul Giamatti. (For an hour, at least, until my inevitably doomed prediction of a Best Picture upset missed outright — awards season giveth, and it taketh away.)

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  • 12/3 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: ‘Black Swan’ costumes, Tarantino roasted, ‘Harry Potter’ tries for Oscar one more time

    • David Poland writes up the history of Oscar coverage. [Movie City News]

    • Costume designs from Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan.” [Daily Telegraph]

    • Paula Schwartz reports from the Friars Club Roast of Quentin Tarantino. [The Carpetbagger]

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Leading men in the spotlight

    About a year ago I took to examining the 2009 Best Actor race.  The frontrunners for five slots seemed to be, in order, George Clooney, Colin Firth, Jeremy Renner, Morgan Freeman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Viggo Mortensen and Robert De Niro.

    A day later press members received their first invites to “Crazy Heart” screenings and were notified that the film would be released in 2009.  Jeff Bridges hit the ground running and never let off the gas until he was past the finish line.

    A year earlier we were looking at a pair of politico-biopic portrayals, either one of which would make a handsome winner: Frank Langella and Sean Penn.  But we were fairly sure the latter would be on his way to the podium one more time.

    But soon after, Mickey Rourke’s festival buzz caught serious fire and forged an atmosphere of doubt.  The season’s narrative seemed to be changing, and yet the early buzz carried through and brought Penn his Oscar.

    So that’s two drastically different directions – in as many years – that a lead actor race can take.  Given the mid-October fulcrum shared here, let’s consider our perspective on the Best Actor category right now.

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  • 9/22 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Carrey’s Oscar potential, ‘Inception’ with a joystick, demanding to see ‘Beaver’

    • Sasha Stone ponders Oscar possibilities for Jim Carrey in “I Love You Phillip Morris” as the hate-mongering right looks to block the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. [Awards Daily]

    • Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy reunite to celebrate 25 years of “The Breakfast Club.”  Come on, Emilio.  Too cool for school?  (See what I did there?) [People]

    • Christopher Nolan briefly mentions that he’d like to develop “Inception” as a video game (and if you have a film-related news feed then you’ve already seen plenty of webmasters climbing over themselves to re-report this). [Variety]

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  • TIFF: ‘Barney’s Version’ returns home, raves for Giamatti

    Last night’s North American premiere of “Barney’s Version” in Toronto was something of a homecoming for the Canadian production — it was, of course, first unveiled on Friday at the Venice Film Festival, where its soft-centered middlebrow appeal rather stood out against the more rigorous auteurism of its fellow Competition titles.

    If Richard J. Lewis’s film proved too MOR to impress Quentin Tarantino’s jury (even Paul Giamatti, much fancied for the Best Actor prize, left empty-handed) it was nonetheless enthusiastically received on the Lido, earning sustained applause, and even a few whoops, at the industry screening I attended. You’d expect, then, its home audience to be similarly receptive, though word seems pretty quiet so far.

    Via Twitter, Anne Thompson echoes a view I expressed in my own positive review, saying that “if [Sony Picture Classics] play their cards right, Paul Giamatti could get an Oscar nom” for his performance as a dissolute, thrice-married TV producer. (She later adds that the film’s after-party was “lame,” but I’m sure she won’t hold that against him.)

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  • VENICE: Jury duty – award predictions and preferences

    The Venice Competition lineup officially wrapped today with one of its lightest and most mainstream selections, “Barney’s Version” (reviewed this morning).

    With only the out-of-competition closing film “The Tempest” left to screen before I head back to London tomorrow evening, allow me a moment to sift through the runners and riders for the festival prizes – at the same time as Quentin Tarantino and his (hopefully) merry band of jurors much be contemplating the same thing.

    They have good reason to be merry: as a friend and I agreed this morning, festival director Marco Mueller has assembled a truly outstanding Competition field this year – thoughtfully balanced in terms of highbrow and middlebrow, genre and esoterica, veteran auteurs and younger ascending talents.

    (More thoughts, plus Golden Lion predictions and wishes, after the cut.)

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  • SHORT TAKE: “Barney’s Version” (***)

    Venice Film Festival

    Too few film reviews open with the wisdom of Feargal Sharkey, so it brings me great pleasure to begin this one by saying that a good heart these days is, indeed, hard to find. That’s the chief conclusion to be taken from not just the narrative but the execution of “Barney’s Version,” a measured, thoughtful and agreeably down-the-middle adult romance that makes up in mature sincerity for what it lacks in style.

    I am, I admit, unfamiliar with the popular 1997 novel by Mordecai Richler from which Canadian TV director Richard J. Lewis’s film is adapted; it is, by all accounts, a dense, inventive and stingingly satirical work that has been substantially pared back and ironed out for the screen. This is not surprising: even without knowledge of the material, it’s easy to see where corners have been either cut or sanded smooth in the adaptation of a decades-spanning life study.

    Charting the fortunes and (mostly) misfortunes of Paul Giamatti’s eponymous anti-hero, principally his three failed marriages, Lewis and novice screenwriter Michael Konyves have fashioned a busy, baggy flashback structure that races through some key plot points as it leaves others dangling, and never makes good on its literary opening gambit to tell the story as Barney’s autobiography.

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  • 9/2 Oscarweb Round-up

    • Michael Cieply chats with comeback kid Ben Affleck, whose film “The Town” is set to play Venice this week. [New York Times]

    • Remember when “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” won the Palme d’Or?  Parisian critics would rather not. [The Guardian]

    • Catching up with Julian Schnabel, re: “Miral,” prior to Venice. [Variety]

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  • ‘Barney’s Version’ teaser

    Hat tip to The Playlist for reminding us of this brief trailer for Richard J. Lewis’s comedy “Barney’s Version,” which will premiere in competition at next month’s Venice Film Festival, before moving on to Toronto. (It’s a couple of months old, but for many, the film only hit the radar recently.) There is too little here to draw any firm conclusions, though it does strike me as an unusually chipper American selection for Venice’s big league. I have yet to read the popular source novel — if there’s time, I might cover it in Page to Screen — and Paul Giamatti is an actor to whose charms I remain curiously immune, so I’ll sit out for the moment. Watch the treaser after the jump and see what you think.

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  • The Great Performances: 2005

    Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain2005 was the year of Heath Ledger’s beautiful, moving performance in “Brokeback Mountain,” which I saw for the first time in Toronto.  It instantly became the talk of the festival, and the film became the one to beat for the Academy Award.

    Ledger was astonishing as the taciturn cowboy who is more surprised than anybody when his soulmate turns out to be another cowboy, portrayed superbly by Jake Gyllenhall. If there is a more deeply felt moment in film history than Ledger gently adjusting Gyllenhall’s shirt at the end of the film, his eyes filled with tears, I don’t know what it is. That’s loss, that is absolute heartbreak, that is one of the greatest acting performances of the decade.

    Phillip Seymour Hoffman would win the Oscar for his transformation into “Capote” and he’s very good, but just not in the same league as Ledger. I wondered from time to time if “Infamous” had been released earlier if Toby Jones might have won the Oscar instead of Hoffman. Each becomes Capote in a very different manner, and side by side it is difficult to choose the stronger portrayal. Certainly I prefer Hoffman’s as it is darker, and for me more realistic, but there can be no denying Jones.

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  • The Great Performances: 2004

    Paul Giamatti in SidewaysIn Alexander Payne’s “Sideways,” Paul Giamatti gave the best performance by an actor in 2004, so said the New York Film Critics Circle, and how right they were.  So why, why, why was the actor denied an Oscar nomination?  Granted, it was a strong year, but his work was at the top of that heap and that snub was one of the biggest shocks of the year.

    Here was a man giving perhaps the finest performance in a comedic film since Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie.” His co-stars go were recognized, save for the equally deserving Sandra Oh, but the leading man, around whose performance the film stands, is snubbed.  All I can remember saying is: “Wow.”

    Certainly Jamie Foxx deserved the attention he received for “Ray” and Leonardo DiCaprio was astonishing in “The Aviator,” even though he drew some criticism for before too youthful in the role. Rubbish, I thought.  He was superb, inhabiting Howard Hughes as he must have been in those days, brash, cocky, wealthy and willing to do anything that interested him.

    Clint Eastwood was terrific in “Million Dollar Baby,” while Jim Carrey gave a wonderful performance in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” — a marvelous piece of acting, in fact.  Equally fine, and dark, was Kevin Bacon as a pedophile struggling to start anew in “The Woodsman,” which was one of the most daring American films in a long time.

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  • The Great Performances: 2003

    Sean Penn in Mystic RiverThere is little doubt in my mind I am going to take some heat this week, so let’s kick it off right away with my belief that Sean Penn deserved his Best Actor Oscar for “Mystic River,” a performance of overwhelming ferocity and staggering emotional power.

    Yes, I too loved Bill Murray in “Lost in Translation,” and would have loved to have seen him win, but he didn’t, and frankly he lost to a stronger performance (in my opinion). I know it is a cliche to say the nomination is the reward, but I would hope that Murray would be happy with that.

    But there were so many great male performances in 2003!

    Robert Duvall was superb in “Open Range” as the wily old rancher who ends up in a gunfight for his life with his friend, played by the also fantastic Kevin Costner, by his side. Tom Cruise gave a great performance in “The Last Samurai” for director Edward Zwick, while Russell Crowe was again brilliant in “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” adding to his string of stunning performances.

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  • Confirmed: ‘The Last Station’ goes to Sony Classics

    (from left) Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer in The Last StationA few days ago there were whispers on the winds that “The Last Station” had been picked up by a specialty division with a number of art house releases primed for the season.  All signs pointed to Sony Pictures Classics.

    Today we get a confirmation (and I’ve independently verified) that, indeed, the film is a new awards hopeful in the Sony Classics stable.  This has been the natural fit, in my view, since I saw the film at Telluride.

    So, expect lead acting campaigns for Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren, the latter being a definite possibility.  Also, I’m sure supporting campaigns for James McAvoy and Paul Giamatti will be in store, odds on the former more than the latter.

    And cngrats to Michael Hoffman for finding a home for his film, a tight, warm, well-made piece of work that deserves a look if only to see these wonderful actors working off of one another.

    Thge film will hit theaters in limited release on December 23.

  • Best actor contenders join an eclectic list of recent winners

    Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro and Frank Langella seem to be the names bandied about for Oscar consideration this year, which would place them in some impressive company of nominees and winners these last 20 years. Of course, that said, there have also been some bizarre choices for the Best Actor award, which has often left me shaking my head in disgust and wondering what these voters were actually seeing.

    Since 1988, there have been 10 winners that perhaps should not have been, the award arguably deserved by another of the nominees, or worse, an actor not nominated! Consider Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man,” a widely acclaimed performance that asked that he not connect with anyone in the film, never make eye contact, rock back and forth and speak in a nasally voice.

    Stop what you are doing right now and try what he did in the film, and trust me it is very easy to do. Now do you deserve an Oscar for doing what Hoffman did in that film? The real perfortmance in “Rain Man” was that of Tom Cruise, who we watched evolve over the course of the film, and of course the best performance of that year was Gene Hackman as the tough investigator in “Mississippi Burning.” Hackman was nominated, but he stood no chance in the wake of the juggernaut of support for Hoffman, who in fact should have won years before for his miraculous work in “Tootsie!”

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  • John Adams rides off into the sunset

    Well I held back on talking about HBO’s “John Adams” after viewing the second episode last month, but now that it’s over, allow me to speak up on what has become a very popular mini-series event.

    I was happy to see that the Alien and Sedition Acts finally made an appearance last week, albeit a sweeping one designed to show Adams’s supposedly intense personal anguish at the bills. Of course. But before I dig into the issues I took with this 7-part event, let me point out the obvious praise-worthy elements.

    Laura Linney is at the tip of any such list. Her removal from the story in tonight’s denouement was felt deeply. She carried this project through some of the rougher points and brought quite a vibrant characterization to the screen. Not so much Paul Giamatti, who gets his due praise over at Awards Daily. Personally I felt his entire portrayal a stretch throughout.

    When the Emmys roll around, I think we’re guaranteed an appearance by both, though I wish Tom Wilkinson’s brilliant turn as Benjamin Franklin had more meat on its bones for some potential notices. Maybe he’ll still show up in some quarters.

    HOWEVER…the final moments of tonight’s installment were dead on for the actor. Despite a stilted, choppy and over-long (like much of this mini-series) structure of the sequence, Giamatti’s portrayal of Adams’s final moments was a massive high mark in his repertoire so far, the clip they should save from “John Adams” for posterity, if any.

    Mainly, I took issue with this series from the start because a 7-part fold-out didn’t make much sense to me. The structure milks certain elements for all they are worth, and for the better, in a precious few instances. Some scenes do feel like short films unto themselves with currents of subtext and meaning…but they are few and far between. For the most part, each sequence needed substantial trimming that might have brought the series all the way down to maybe three films, but that clearly wasn’t the intention of director Tom Hooper in company.

    Even at this robust level of play, it is quite the accomplishment to maintain such thematic complexity, even if the script does hit the nail a bit too firmly on the head from time to time.

    But enough of 18th century presidential shenanigans. Bring on “Recount!” And “Generation Kill,” I must say, has a lot of promise.