• “Up in the Air” gets a December release date to avoid Clooney vs. Clooney at the November box office. [Variety]
• Karen O channels Daniel Johnston for “Wild Things” soundtrack. [The Playlist]
• Steve Pond on the forthcoming Oscar short deadline. [The Wrap]
Toronto Film Festival
“I have two lives, mate,” Clive Owen says with clear-eyed certainty. “My work, and when I am done, my home life. There is no question to me which is more important. My wife and children are everything to me.”
Owen is as intense in person as he is in some of the roles he played on screen the last few years. Best known as a tough guy type in films such as “Sin City” and “Shoot ‘Em Up,” he is also brilliant without the edge, as evident in “Bent” and his Oscar-nominated turn in “Closer.” He sits close to me, his eyes never leave mine, and when I glance down to make a note he is still staring at me. But when he smiles his eyes smile as well. As Scott Hicks says, “Clive loves his life, he loves his family, his girls, his work, and his success…he loves his life.”
I wondered how much that love for family and life allowed Owen to tap into the mind of the character he portrays so very well in “The Boys are Back,” the new film from Aussie director Hicks, who first made an impact here back in 1996 with “Shine.” Owen has emerged as one of the great British actors in recent years, his scalding performance in “Closer” an extraordinary poiece of acting that seemed to blow everyone else in the film off the screen, no mean feat considering the quality of the acting in the movie. Julia Roberts and Natalie Portman gave career best work in the film, many of their scenes coming opposite the actor in front of me.
Owen’s road to this place began in television, with his first memorable film performance coming in the powerful drama “Bent,” based on the play by Martin Sherman about Hitler’s massacre of homosexuals during the Holocaust. It was “Gosford Park” that next earned him strong notices, followed by a role in “The Bourne Identity” with Matt Damon.
After the box office failure of “King Arthur,” Owen was back in theaters with “Closer,” which changed the course of his career. Brilliant work in “Children of Men,” “Inside Man” and, more recently, the under-appreciated “Duplicity,” have made him one of the top stars working in film today, and among the busiest. At one time he was among the leading contenders for the role of James Bond, a role that eventually went to Daniel Craig. He possesses a Bogart tough guy persona, but with a soft side buried within. There is certainly an edge to his work, but there is a heart there as well.
Whenever an awards shortlist is announced, people will inevitably spend as much time, if not more, pondering its omissions as they will its inclusions. And so it has been this week, in the wake of the Academy’s announcement of the 15 titles shortlisted for Best Feature Documentary.
Some are curiously kvetching that Bill Maher’s sporadically amusing but ultimately pedestrian “Religulous” got slighted, instead of commending the Academy for looking beyond the obvious. Others (including yours truly, admittedly) are puzzled that the excellent “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired” didn’t make the cut, while some are surprised that last year’s winner in the category, Alex Gibney, was frozen out this time. (Well, had “Gonzo” been half the film “Taxi to the Dark Side” was, he might not have been.) And then there’s “American Teen” and “Bigger, Faster, Stronger” and … well, you get the idea.
The conclusion to draw from this is twofold. First of all, in this category, name recognition isn’t always a deciding factor. Second of all, and more simply, the shortlist is, even with these high-profile exclusions, a markedly strong one. Boiling it down to fifteen titles was clearly a harder task than one might have guessed.
I’m not sure enough people are recognising the breadth and the depth of the competition in this category. Amid the various reactions I’ve read to the shortlist, I’ve noticed the same small handful of contenders coming to the fore: “Standard Operating Procedure” from previous champ Errol Morris, “Encounters at the End of the World” from the long-slighted Werner Herzog, Sundance victor “Trouble the Water,” and the film widely deemed the one to beat, “Man on Wire.”
I’m less convinced. Yes, they’re all highly acclaimed conversation pieces. (Well, almost — Morris’ film appears more polarising than the rest.) Yes, they all have enjoyed comparatively prominent releases. But, like the notoriously wilful Best Foreign Language Film category, this category doesn’t always reward a high profile. For every time they’ve embraced a populist frontrunner like Michael Moore, they’ve ignored a supposed shoo-in. Just ask, well, Errol Morris and Werner Herzog — both previously snubbed for some of their most lauded work.