If you haven’t already, don’t forget to take a stab at our “Public Enemies” poster contest. We’ll accept captions throughout the weekend.
Tag: Public Enemies
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WEEKLY WRAP: Bombshell upon bombshell
Weird, unsettling week, this. Here’s how it went down:• In the week’s biggest movie news, the Academy threw us all for a loop by announcing a 10-nominee slate for the Best Picture category.
• But even that shock was dwarfed in scale by the stunning news of Michael Jackson’s passing.
• And in a rather bleak week for losing talent, we also said goodbye to Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon.
• On a happier note, we laid eyes on two of our most eagerly awaited films of the year — “Public Enemies” and “Antichrist” — and liked what we saw.
• AMPAS continues its tinkering, this time in the Best Original Song category.
• The “Transformers” sequel opened to critical scorn even accusations of racism, but is the film totally indefensible?
• With “The Hurt Locker” finally going public today, we caught up with the film’s breakout star Jeremy Renner.
• We revealed our age by celebrating the 20th anniversary of Tim Burton’s “Batman.”
• Continuing the reflective mood, this week’s list considered the greatest directorial debuts of the decade.
• Speaking of debuts, “The Proposal” gave Sandra Bullock the biggest of her career.
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6/26 Web Round-up
• Hey, why isn’t Christian Bale on the “Public Enemies” posters, too? Money, silly. [E! Online]• Kyle Buchanan interviews Sid Ganis to get the skinny on the Academy’s big Best Picture announcement this week. [Movieline]
• The 50 greatest trailers of all time. Intriguing #1 pick. #12 really stuck out to me back in the day. [IFC]
• Kathryn Bigelow on the anatomy of a “Hurt Locker” scene. [New York Times]
• Patrick Goldstein thinks a Best picture nomination for “The Hangover” would be “fantastic.” [The Big Picture]
• John Hiscock talks “Public Enemies” with star Johnny Depp. [Daily Telegraph]
• A considerably more in-depth discussion of the film with Micahel Mann. [Roger Ebert]
• Looking back over Tim Burton’s stylistic career, for no real reason. [Empire]
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CONTEST: Win a ‘Public Enemies’ poster!
It’s been a while since we offered up a contest here at In Contention, so in honor of the forthcoming release of Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies,” I thought we’d remedy that. We’ve got two posters from the film to give away, so two separate competitions.
First, I figure a caption contest is the quickest, easiest way to go about things to start, so in the wake of recent classy drooling on my part over actress Marion Cotillard, give us your best caption for the image below and you could nab this character poster from the film.
Now let’s get a little trickier. The official domestic one-sheet is up for grabs to the first person who answers the following Mann-centric trivia question. (UPDATE: Strike the trivia question, as Mr. Gittes was way too quick to the punch on a query I actually thought would stump some folks. Oh well, here’s the question, in any case):
When Michael Mann first heard about the ongoing struggle between journalist Lowell Bergman and CBS regarding a whistle-blowing former tobacco scientist — which would become fodder for his 1999 film “The Insider” — the director was busy building projects around a number of the other stories Bergman was covering at the time. One of these came close to development and even had a title for a while. What was the title and what was the prospective project about?
Have at it in the comments section below! And yes, you can take a stab at both if you think you’ve got the chops.
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6/25 Web Round-up
• Eugene Hernandez quotes the industry on Oscar’s move to 10. [indieWIRE]• Christy Lemire goes back to the 2008 Oscar season to point out the obvious films that might have been included in the Best Picture race were there 10 nominees last year. [Associated Press]
• Michael Speier and Carolyn Giardnia write basically the same piece, angling to make a place for their outlet at the Oscar table. [The Wrap]
• And are we really willing to call something a “lock” in June? Regardless of the 10-nod news, this is crazy talk. Also, an unsourced note about “Green Zone” being a 2010 release now, which we’ve been mentioning. Nothing official yet though. [HitFix]
• Patrick Goldstein is elated at the Academy’s decision. [The Big Picture]
• Jevon Phillips, meanwhile, is already spit-balling which “fanboy” film will benefit from the widened net. [Hero Complex]
• Nathaniel Rogers responds with typical thoroughness, with Academy member reactions to boot. [The Film Experience]
• A.O. Scott looks back at Hayao Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke.” [New York Times]
• Kelley L. Carter talks to “Public Enemies” star Johnny Depp. [USA Today]
• With “Brüno” on the way, here’s a list of the 10 most offensive movies. Some silly choices. [The Times]
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“There was something…really dark about me.”
What is beautiful/sexy anyway these days? Is classic back in? Does bombshell still register? Who knows, but for me, very much so lately, actress Marion Cotillard seems to be a certain embodiment.A taste thing, obviously. Subjective. But I put her near the head of the pack in a business so hung up on boiler-plate image that it tends to miss gems like Cotillard. Fortunately, thanks to an Oscar and prime film gigs, audiences Stateside are making her introduction.
It is with these, perhaps overly dude-ish thoughts that I read Heather Hudson’s unique profile of the actress in London’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. Painting a portrait of depth at the very top of the piece, Hudson begins to capture a quite complicated, attractively thoughtful actress. The writer details a “propensity for complicated emotion” and conversations concerning “intrinsic worth” that absolutely captivates. Or maybe it’s just another crush.
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Wells on ‘Enemies’
Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, which premiered last night in Westwood, is glorious and levitational — the most captivating, beautifully composed and freshly conceived gangster movie since Bonnie and Clyde. It’s an art film first, a Mann head-and-heart trip second, a classic machine-gun action pulverizer third, and a conventional popcorn movie fourth. The schmucks will go “meh” and the people who are hip enough to understand what this movie is doing/has done will retire to tens of thousands of nearby cafes and talk it over for at least a couple of hours.
The rest (though there’s not much — no full review) here.
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REVIEW: “Public Enemies” (***1/2)
Los Angeles Film FestivalThere is a moment very early in Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies,” featured today as the centerpiece exhibition of the Los Angeles Film Festival, when Depression-era criminal John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) stares into the dying eyes of friend and mentor Walter Dietrich (James Russo) as his band of cohorts flees the scene of a somewhat botched prison escape attempt. The sequence is at once curiously beautiful and unmistakably somber, of a piece with the filmmaker’s coldly calculated vision of a man caught up in the freedom of his rebellious lifestyle, yet haunted by the specter of his own obsolescence.
The film marks an exciting return to muscular, patient storytelling form for Mann. After dubious stabs at commercial appeal in “Collateral” and “Miami Vice,” films that certainly have followers and admittedly plumb thematic depths no other filmmaker would have reached, the director has painted his most resonant character study since 1995’s “Heat.”
Headlined by an emotive, at times unsettlingly internalized performance by Depp, the film amplifies Mann’s penchant for nuance while marrying it with a well-exercised gift for staging unique if not inimitable action set pieces. But for all the director’s classic cinematic accoutrement, the film nevertheless stands apart from Mann’s portfolio for its fully realized vision of a doomed romance highlighted by, rather than merely peripheral to, the machismo on display.
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2009’s Oscar drought…same old song and dance
Over at Variety, newly minted editor-in-chief Tim Gray writes what we’ve been mentioning around these parts for a while: the first half of the 2009 film year is decidedly bereft of anything that might be deemed “Oscar-worthy” come January 2010.Aside from “Star Trek” and “Up,” the recognized critical faves of the year thus far, the best films I have seen are Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker,” Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s “Sugar,” Duncan Jones’s “Moon” and Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies,” but I expect only two of those could stir the awards pot.
Critics have also responded, intriguingly, to Sam Raimi’s “Drag Me to Hell,” but I think we all know it’s safe to strike that one from the awards roster. And Focus Features’ “Coraline” is likely to make an impact on the animated feature race, but beyond that, you’d be hard-pressed to offer much in the way of a solid list as we approach the mid-way point.
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David Thomson on Christian Bale
Christian Bale has been given something of a rough ride of late, with the combination of unfortunate media attention and a dreary turn in the woebegone “Terminator Salvation” slightly stripping the varnish from an otherwise solidly built career. Thankfully, Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies” has arrived just in time to restore some respectability, though early word on the film places him very much in the shadow of Johnny Depp.However, critic and “Biographical Dictionary of Film” author David Thomson’s admiration for Bale remains undimmed:
If you remember the remake of 3.10 to Yuma, it wasn’t the swagger of Ben Foster and Russell Crowe that stayed in the mind. Theirs were flashy or lazy performances, compared with the haunted gaze and stillness of Bale as the ordinary man who had seen that he was going to die.
Indeed, he’s acted as if he felt like a character actor, and as if he saw no reason why anyone could expect to be mature until 35 or so – his age now. If I were Johnny Depp, I’d be worried – after all, you know what Depp’s going to do in Public Enemies, don’t you? He’s going to shoot you down and grin – it’s an old movie habit. But the killers on the side of the law are often darker figures, because they believe it is their duty. Ever since Empire of the Sun it has been clear that Bale understands madness, and can do it without being melodramatic.
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Bigelow and Cameron on ‘The Hurt Locker’
In this weekend’s Sunday New York Times, film critic Manohla Dargis falls in love with director Kathryn Bigelow all over again. I wouldn’t necessarily say the astutely written profile fawns over the “Hurt Locker” director, but it’s a more passionately open and admiring piece than one typically expects from the usually biting and removed Dargis.As you would expect, much of the piece concentrates on Bigelow’s unlikely career in an industry dominated by men. But for Dargis, the fascination of the subject, of course, lies in Bigelow’s artistic attraction with the concerns of men. That attraction is rendered with penetrating character strokes in “The Hurt Locker,” which Guy recently reviewed out of Edinburgh. The film is a meditation on war as an addiction, packed with some of the year’s finest performances and calculated in its delivery. In that way it is actually intriguing that the film will share multiplexes with Michael Mann’s similarly measured “Public Enemies” in a few short weeks.
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WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Enemies’ surfaces, Edinburgh launches
• Michael Mann’s much-awaited “Public Enemies” finally peeked out from behind the covers, generating much early discussion, if no permitted reviews.• A rumor circulated that Christopher Nolan might leave the Batman franchise, prompting heated speculation over a potential replacement.
• Across the pond, we kicked off our coverage of the Edinburgh Film Festival, with Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” chief among the early highlights.
• Speaking of which, we wondered whether Bigelow’s film could be one of those that prove their legs when awards season rolls around.
• “The Hangover” maintained its hold on the box-office, securing its position as the surprise of the season.
• Meanwhile, the newly released trailer for “2012” carried the scent of a more traditional summer blockbuster.
• While we’re talking about money, Harrison Ford is still apparently making more of it than any other actor.
• And finally, ahead of Sunday’s paternal celebrations, this week’s list paid tribute to the joys of father-son moviegoing.
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6/18 Web Round-up
• Reed Johnson talks “Whatever Works” with Larry David. [Los Angeles Times]• Donna Freydkin, meanwhile, chats up Woody Allen. [USA Today]
• Lou Lumenick breaks the “Public Enemies” embargo with an unthoughtful, painfully ignorant review. (Updated now, redacted at Universal’s request.) [New York Post]
• Speaking of which, check out a new clip from the film. [Yahoo! Movies]
• Shanghai film fest jury president Danny Boyle speaks out against Chinese restrictions on freedom of speech. [The Guardian]
• Is technology ruining movies? [Rope of Silicon]
• Uhhhh…an “Antichrist” video game? [/Film]
• Kevin Maher gets some quality time with “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” director Michael Bay. [The Times]
• People actually think Christopher Nolan is in a position where he has to fish for more money from Warner Bros.? [CHUD]
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Nolan out for third Batman? Who could step in?
Bill Ramey over at Batman on Film has posted a rather disconcerting report this morning regarding the status of Christopher Nolan’s involvement with a third film in the lucrative Batman franchise. The info, which is hardly concrete, comes from one of the numerous Bat-related sources Ramey has acquired over 12 years of focusing his site on the development of these films.Ramey hedges his bets and writes what we all know, that “it is far from a given” that Nolan will return for another go. But he offers a few bullet-pointed reasons from his source that certainly make a lot of sense. Among them, says Ramey’s guy, “the death of Heath Ledger rocked Mr. Nolan hard,” and the project is back to square one with a virtually non-existent story due to the initial planned inclusion of the Joker in the third film.
It has been reported that Warner Bros. has a shortlist of preferred directors to step in should Nolan decide to walk away from the director’s chair. The studio is going forward on this whether he is or not, we can all be sure of that. “Watchmen” director Zack Snyder was one of those names, but Snyder’s people told Ramey he has no interest in tackling the project (thank God). But if not Nolan, then who?
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Michael Mann goes deep on ‘Public Enemies’
There’s a reason Michael Mann is my favorite working director. Consistently saddled with accusations of unyielding perfectionism and idiosyncrasy, he is a filmmaker who sets out to make exactly the film he wants to make every time, and he has the goods to back up the artistic aggression. The last two times out of the gate (2004’s “Collateral” and 2006’s “Miami Vice”) didn’t exactly capitalize on his considerable talents, but when “Public Enemies,” which I saw last night, plays the Los Angeles Film Festival next week and eventually opens nationwide July 1, I think audiences and critics alike will see it as a return to muscular, yet patient storytelling form.Patrick Goldstein, writing at The Big Picture blog in the Los Angeles Times, has crafted a wonderfully fair and engaging interview piece with the director (which is also a coup for Universal publicity). He doesn’t skirt the issue when it comes to Mann’s industry infamy, dedicating a considerable chunk to the director’s professional head-butting with Sony honcho Amy Pascal concerning the particular’s of 2001’s “Ali.” But the work stands head and shoulders above the off-the-screen conflicts every time. Says Pascal in the piece, “You forget about the pain of childbirth too. I mean, whatever you go through, you still want another baby. It’s like that with Michael too.”
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Summer hopefuls that can go the distance
Over at Examiner.com, Jeff Sneider (you know him around these parts as “The InSneider”) has put together a rundown of the 10 summer movies that have a shot at awards glory. In my post-Cannes Oscar column I mentioned how dreadfully quiet the first half of the year has been for awards hopefuls. After all, this time last year we’d already seen “The Visitor” and “WALL-E” as viable contenders, but this year — nothing.Sneider is hanging his hat on a number of films he apparently hasn’t seen yet (Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies,” Judd Apatow’s “Funny People,” etc.), but most of the love goes to Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker,” which I’ll be getting to in due time. And I can’t say I disagree. Along with the perennial Pixar entry of the year, Bigelow’s Iraq character study clearly has the stuff if Summit is willing to go there. It needs to make money first, of course, which is why we’re getting trailers and posters that amp up the action elements. But it’s Bigelow’s best work ever and features awards caliber performances from Anthony Mackie and especially Jeremy Renner, both of which are mentioned in Sneider’s column.
