In Contention

Tag: Sebastian Junger

  • Tim Hetherington (1970-2011)

    This is terribly sad news. Tim Hetherington, the gifted British photojournalist who justly shared a Best Documentary Feature Oscar nomination with Sebastian Junger earlier this year for their joint debut “Restrepo,” has died on the front line in Misrata, Libya, where he was documenting the conflict. Also killed was his colleague, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Chris Hondros.

    I haven’t adequate words to respond to this. Hetherington, Hondros and his ilk are braver, better men than the rest of us: they risk their lives so that the rest of the world can see what would otherwise be unimaginable. “Restrepo,” which both Kris and I listed as one of 2010’s finest, is a vivid portrayal of combat unprecedented in its sensory immediacy, the result of many months spent embedded in a US Army unit in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley.

    Hetherington broke his leg on the assignment; would that the injury remained the biggest misfortune of his career. (On the same assignment, he took the now-famous shot posted below, for which he won the World Press Photo of the Year award in 2007.)

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Documentary (Feature)

    It has been noted what a solid year of documentary filmmaking 2010 was. It was well-reflected in the Academy’s initial narrowing of the feature field to 15 contenders and is certainly evident in the ultimate quintet of nominees, each of them informative and bold in their own ways.

    Still, it came as quite a shock to many that the perceived frontrunner of the year, Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting for Superman,” was left off the list. Theories run rampant, but at the end of the day, it seemed the branch just didn’t go for the film’s stretching of truths and hastily boiled-down rhetoric. Nevertheless, an opportunity may have been missed to shine a light on the issue of education reform, which is still a considerable one.

    The nominees are:

    “Exit through the Gift Shop” (Banksy and Jaimie D’Cruz)
    “Gasland” (Josh Fox and Trish Adlesic)
    “Inside Job” (Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs)
    “Restrepo” (Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger)
    “Waste Land” (Lucy Walker and Angus Aynsley)

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Giving thanks

    As we move into turkey (or tofurkey, if that happens to be your speed) week 2010, it seems proper, if a tad bit obvious, to take a moment and give thanks. So in lieu of a proper analysis of the season’s progression this week, allow me to express my boundless, breathless appreciation for the following:

    The filmmakers.

    I’m thankful for Mike Leigh’s consistently maturing perspective on life and how he manages to gift that to film audiences each and every time out, for Peter Weir’s tenacity in the face of an unfortunate shift in cinema investment and for Darren Aronofsky’s well-rewarded (in the form of a two-year studio deal) efforts pushing the envelope.

    I’m thankful for Danny Boyle’s energetic perspective on the cinema and his obsession with filling his frame with that passion, as well as for Christopher Nolan’s determination to take studio goodwill and prove that there is an audience and payoff for pricey originality.

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘Restrepo’ co-director Sebastian Junger

    It may have a hard time distracting audiences from shinier baubles on the summer-movie tree, but there are few films currently in theaters more invigorating and essential than “Restrepo.”

    An unprecedentedly first-hand war documentary, shot on the fly by a pair of filmmakers embedded in a U.S. Army unit stationed in Afghanistan’s perilous Korengal Valley, it emphatically earns the previously overused adjective “immersive”: as Taliban bullets rattle past the camera lens, the terror and confusion of combat hits harder than it has – or could – in any narrative war film.

    The film, which expands its release considerably today, leads an already impressive charge of American non-fiction cinema in 2010; it won the top prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and we can expect an outcry if due respect isn’t paid by the Academy’s documentary branch.

    The achievement is all the more impressive for being the debut film of Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington, not that either name is an unfamiliar one. Hetherington is an acclaimed British photographer who won the coveted World Press Photo Award in 2007: interestingly, for an image from the same assignment that bore this film. Junger, meanwhile, is something of a superstar journalist, an adventurer best-known for his 1991 book “The Perfect Storm.” That work may have been Hollywood-ized in 2000, but Junger’s own big-screen ambitions were rather more casual.

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  • EDINBURGH: ‘Get Low,’ ‘Restrepo,’ ‘Vacation!’

    My third day in the ‘Burgh (shut up, I have legitimately heard people call it that) wasn’t as film-heavy as the previous one: social commitments and a certain football match between Slovenia and some other country got in the way. Under these circumstances, three screenings — taken together, as disparate a cross-section of the U.S. indie scene as one could ask for — felt like an entirely honorable commitment, particularly when the first (and worst) of them rewarded me with the still-smarting black eye I mentioned yesterday.

    Chalk it up, however unfairly, as a further gripe I have with a would-be Oscar vehicle for Robert Duvall that has been pestering the festival circuit since last fall.

    “GET LOW” (**)

    Oscar-winning short director Aaron Schneider’s feature debut is the kind of prestige production that has critics reaching for adjectives like “handsome” (or, at a push, “elegant”) in the absence of any more compelling emotional connection to the material. If anything, however, the ample visual burnishment on display (it’s no surprise to learn Schneider began his career as an acclaimed cinematographer) only ends up smothering a decidedly minor-key narrative: a folksy slab of mini-Americana that Horton Foote might have penned in a particularly mannered mood, and then binned for lack of consequence.

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