In Contention

Tag: Shutter Island

  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 44 — The top 10 films of 2010 (x2)

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    It’s the middle of the season, critics’ awards are set to unleash next week, the guild announcements are right around the corner, the holidays are breathing down our necks and it couldn’t be a busier time of year. There’s plenty to discuss, but Anne and I are nevertheless straying from the usual format this week…

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  • CONTEST: Win DVDs of ‘Inception’ and ‘Shutter Island’

    This morning we wrapped up a massive two-part interview with actor Leonardo DiCaprio, whose performances in “Inception” and particularly “Shutter Island” in 2010 reflected a movie star very much at the top of his game.  So in the spirit of his wonderful year of output, it seemed a good time to kick off our contests with a chance to win a DVD of each film.

    But you have to work for it.  Stretch the ole’ brain a bit and come up with an engaging piece of persuasive writing.  Using the comments section below, tell us what your favorite DiCaprio performance is to date.  That’s the full canon, starting with the groundbreaking, brilliant, truly stunning and revelatory, uh, “Critters 3,” and moving all the way through his latest portrayal in Christopher Nolan’s summer blockbuster.  Be convincing.

    It’s best to put a limit on things, for purposes of length and also to make sure we get some potent responses.  I think 100 words is plenty, so anything that goes over that mark, I’ll have to disqualify.  Have at it!

    [Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures]

  • INTERVIEW: Leonardo DiCaprio on ‘Inception’ and ‘Shutter Island’ parallels and a shifting industry landscape

    *PLEASE NOTE: There will be spoilers of both “Inception” and “Shutter Island” in this two-part interview with actor Leonardo DiCaprio.  For yesterday’s installment, featuring extended conversation with the actor and director Martin Scorsese, click here.

    Leonardo DiCaprio was very aware of the similarities between “Shutter Island” and “Inception” when he was considering starring in the latter. The idea of a man haunted by his past and living in an alternate reality, these are themes that interest him, in particular because he enjoys playing characters which are in some ways unreliable protagonists (to play on the “unreliable narrator” literary device).

    “There’s nothing obvious,” he says. “It forces you to sit with the other characters and be deceitful to yourself and to the people around you. No line is taken for what it is. You can never read a line with either of these characters and say to yourself, ‘He means exactly what he says.’ There’s a hidden agenda there. Both of these characters are lost in the labyrinth of their own mind and living an alternate life completely that they hadn’t come to terms with. And how one lies to oneself is interesting, too, with both of these guys.”

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  • INTERVIEW: Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese on building the perfect psychosis in ‘Shutter Island’

    *PLEASE NOTE: There will be spoilers of both “Inception” and “Shutter Island” in this two-part interview with actor Leonardo DiCaprio and director Martin Scorsese.

    Audience members flock the stage of the television Academy’s Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre in North Hollywood, cameras and signables at the ready, as Leonardo DiCaprio patiently weathers the Black Friday-like storm of appreciation.

    They’ve all just seen “Shutter Island,” many for the first time. During a post-screening Q&A they’ve heard him tell stories of an “anxiety-ridden,” “intense” shoot, of playing through multiple versions of his character for the purposes of creative editing and of his perspective on virtually growing up on camera over the last two decades.

    But they want to be closer. They want to be around greatness, talent, fame: that unmistakable glow of movie stardom.  And yet DiCaprio has made a career of translating his celebrity into precious fuel for an insatiable creative fire. Rather than rest on paycheck laurels of notoriety, he consistently places himself at the crossroads of art and commerce, even putting his money where his mouth is as producer if need be. And two financially successful films that embraced creative risks in 2010 prove that the actor shows no signs of changing course.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Time to flex

    All of the cards (save for the elusive James L. Brooks title “How Do You Know,” which few seem to be expecting much from at this stage — a commodity in Oscar season, actually) are on the table.

    The critics are beginning to speak up with their faves (likely to be “The Social Network” after “The Social Network” after “The Social Network”) and the working (and voting) industry is just now getting its first look at many of the films that have been stirring conversation throughout the festival season via DVDs and Academy screenings. They’ll make their voices heard with guild nominations throughout January. But now is not the time to show weakness.

    The thoroughbreds of the season remain “The King’s Speech” and the aforementioned “The Social Network.” I’m confidant “True Grit” will soon join their ranks, while “The Kids Are All Right” could be fairly considered in that group as well. And “Toy Story 3” is riding sentiment like a champ (with even more campaign strategy to come).

    “The Town” is the only other film that I know has registered in a big way with Academy types (and it’s laid back campaign approach feels like the right call). “The Fighter” screened for AMPAS this weekend and is receiving media attention at just the right time. I think it will soon prove itself to be a formidable contender in the race, if it hasn’t already.

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  • ‘Social Network’ wins big with NBR

    The National Board of Review announcement is historically considered the “official” start of the film awards season, but with things like the Gotham Awards, Indie Spirit nominations and even the Hollywood Film Awards creeping more and more into mid-fall, this doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

    Today the organization announced winners in the usual categories, winners to be honored at a New York ceremony in January.  Last year the organization picked “Up in the Air” as its Best Film winner, greatly solidifying the buzz of early December 2009.  This year, they’ve gone with David Fincher’s “The Social Network.”

    The film also took home awards for Best Director (David Fincher), Best Actor (Jesse Eisenberg), Best Adapted Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin).  Most exciting for me is to see that Lesley Manville won Best Actress for her performance in “Another Year.” The flames seemed to be dying as of late.  Christian Bale and Jacki Weaver won in the supporting races for “The Fighter” and “Animal Kingdom,” respectively.

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  • Robert Duvall takes aim at “actor’s enemy” Stanley Kubrick

    It was interesting this morning to see Robert Duvall’s recent comments on Stanley Kubrick’s process with actors making the rounds.  Duvall chimed in with trademark candor at The Hollywood Reporter’s Actors Round Table when the issue of exhaustive takes came up.  “The Social Network” director David Fincher is known for doing quite a few, and Kubrick was infamous for it.

    The actor called the work of Kubrick actors “the worst performances I’ve ever seen in movies” and even went so far as to call the director an “actor’s enemy.”  I’d maintain that Kubrick’s films have rarely been about performance above formalism, but that’s me.  Though the comments did remind me of a similar aside I had with actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

    I sat down with the “Inception” and “Shutter Island” star over the weekend to discuss, mainly, the latter and his work with director Martin Scorsese over the years.  In the midst of detailing his on-set process with the director, DiCaprio went off on a small tangent about the potential value of exhaustive takes and I thought it would make a nice rebuttal to Duvall’s point of view.  Check out the audio after the jump.

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  • THE LONG SHOT: Waiting for the miracle

    (From here on out, my nomination predictions will be updated weekly to coincide with this column. Check them out here.)

    Tweed-coated and steam-breathed, winter formally arrived in my corner of the world this week, and with it the slightly grim realization that just over seven weeks remain of this year.

    I say “grim” not so much because I’m unprepared for the rigors of Christmas shopping or because 90% of my year’s to-do list remains undone—though neither of those truths are helping—but because, from a film perspective, 2010 feels to me like it needs at least another couple of months to find itself.

    Yesterday, I found myself battling with two lists of 10 films: the first, my own provisional best-of-year collective, the second, my revised predictions for the Best Picture Oscar nominees. Neither list, in my experience, has ever had much to do with the other (of course, I’ll take that back should the Academy reveal hidden depths of enthusiasm for, say, “White Material” on nomination morning), but both the rough drafts I wound up with had one thing in common: they’re badly in need of a late-breaking great film or two.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Dolla billz, y’all!

    A reader comment got me thinking on box office and Oscar as the usual blockbuster and genre fare led the way in ticket sales this weekend.  It dawned on me that pickins might be extra slim when it comes to representing populist filmmaking in 2010’s Best Picture crop.

    Box office and finding room for ratings-friendly titles have long been assumed considerations in the decision to expand the Best Picture category to 10 nominations last year. One year after Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” nearly reached “Titanic”-level numbers and was snubbed of a Best Picture nomination, there were suddenly five more spots to be filled, widening the net.

    Academy members had seven films to choose from the $100 million-plus club in 2009 that had any legitimate excuse for being in the conversation. They were: “Avatar,” “The Blind Side,” “District 9,” “The Hangover,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “Star Trek” and “Up.” And some would consider “The Hangover” and “Star Trek” to be a stretch.  As such, they missed, and the other five made it.

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  • INTERVIEW: Patricia Clarkson

    “I’m going to bring back the letter,” a flustered Patricia Clarkson announces as she makes her way to our lunch table, ever-so-slightly rain-mussed but otherwise immaculate in black and cream, a jaunty matching fedora astride her familiar blonde mane. “I’m never late. I blame email for this. I’m only just getting acquainted with it.”

    She is, thanks to a slight communication muddle, late only to a degree most actors wouldn’t apologise for. Together with my lunchmate, Daily Telegraph critic Tim Robey, we’ve nabbed a cosy corner spot at Mayfair’s all-day Italian bistro Cecconi’s, a humming London institution of marble, green velvet upholstery and £40 white truffle starters. (Clarkson is more excited by other things on the menu: later, one eye on the menu, she interrupts her own sentence with the jubilant cry, “Meatballs! With spaghetti sauce!”)

    “This place is fabulous,” she says—that adjective’s first of many appearances in our two-hour conversation—settling into our banquette with a tidy collapse of a sigh. Patricia Clarkson, she does not mind admitting, is exhausted, and not just from her week of jury duty at the London Film Festival, where she presided over the panel that, we’d learn the next day, selected Russia’s “How I Ended This Summer” as best in show. (All she tells us is that she’s “very happy” with the “wonderful” winner they’ve chosen, though she successfully deflects our speculation as to what it might be. “Oh, the Russian film?” she shrugs, when Tim brings it up.)

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Makeup — Volume II

    As I said last week (and have said several times before), no category is year-in and-year-out more perplexing than Best Makeup. Each year, this branch finds ways to turn otherwise dubious awards contenders into bona fide Oscar nominees — dubious because often nominees might be abysmal or relatively obscure.  The branch seems to have its favorites – like Greg Cannom and Rick Baker – but nevertheless manages to snub them sometimes when they seem sure bets.

    The category remains the sole remnant of the bake-off system, where the field is narrowed to seven and the nominees chosen from that collective.  Year after year, shocking omissions occur in both rounds.

    As I stated last time, despite the general weirdness of this category, we can put some traits as more likely to be embraced than others – aging, prosthetics and illness likely top the list. Also, while the category technically rewards both hairstyling and makeup, it rarely seems to concentrate on the former (“The Young Victoria” last year is a notable exception).  So all that having been established, what do I expect to see in contention this year?

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Film Editing — Volume II

    So important but so hard to notice. That’s how I would describe the work of our best film editors – those cutting artists who blend and juxtapose frames together to make films coherent, establish a flow and also set the mood in a manner that suits the screenwriter’s words and the director’s vision.

    The Academy Award for Best Film Editing is, more than any other category, very much tied to the Best Picture race. Despite a blip from 2005-2007, this category always has at least three – usually four, sometimes all five – of its nominees also nominated in the big category. Now that there are 10 nominees, however, one cannot help but wonder if we are ever going to again see a nominee here also not cited in Best Picture.

    Apart from Best Picture contention, being a war film, action film or musical never hurts here. I must say, however, that since I last previewed this category in August, I continue to believe that the three titles I had leading the way then are still out in front.

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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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  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Bone’ boost, category debate, LFF coverage

    (A day later than usual — apologies. Friday night got in the way.)

    • The Gotham Awards served up the first nominations of the season, with indie darling “Winter’s Bone” sitting pretty.

    • With “The Kids Are All Right” and “Another Year” prodding the discussion, this week’s Long Shot column ruminated on a perennial gripe of Oscar pundits: category fraud.

    • News of a high-profile Scorsese-DiCaprio retrospective launching an Oscar campaign for the film re-opened the debate over the merits of “Shutter Island.”

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  • Scorsese/DiCaprio retrospective set to kick-start ‘Shutter Island’ campaign

    People have scoffed at the idea of a Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island” campaign for months now.  The film didn’t hit with the critics, therefore it must be an also ran, right?  The thing is, it made decent bank and is packed with elements I know for a fact are well-respected from the industry, whether it’s Thelma Schoonmaker’s typically expert film editing, Robert Richardson’s throwback lensing, Dante Ferretti’s creepy production design or, indeed, Leonardo DiCaprio’s fantastic lead performance.

    All of that goodwill can build momentum in a year of 10 Best Picture nominees, and let’s face it, every DiCaprio/Scorsese collaboration has been nominated in the top category, in years of five, no less.  With Halloween right around the corner, now is the perfect time for Paramount Pictures to remind everyone of the film.  The studio is therefore kicking off the season’s festivities with a two-day American Cinemateque retrospective on their eight-year partnership.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Cinematography — Volume II

    Today we take a look a second look at, well, certainly the most “cinematic” of categories: Best Cinematography. As I like to say, cinema is born out of the camera and those who wield these devices enrich our films more than a few words written here could possibly say. From capturing mood, lighting and atmosphere to telling the story visually and creatively, our cinematographers truly are artists in every sense of the word.

    Naturally, “pretty” films, war films and Best Picture nominees all have a knack for doing particularly well in this category.

    Now that the trailer for “True Grit” has reached the internet, I surely cannot be the only person asking…is this the film that will finally bring Roger Deakins his Oscar?  He has eight nominations (four for Coen brothers films), tragically winning zero times. The photography looks amazing, and the film is exactly the sort that would seem to excel in this category. That the film also looks like a bigger Oscar player across the board (more than I was originally expecting) is merely icing on the cake.

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 35 — ‘Secretariat’ hopes, ‘The Way Back’ enters the race, ‘Nowhere Boy,’ ‘Hereafter’ and listener questions

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    Can you believe it’s already October? Next month every film will have screened and before long we’ll be reporting National Board of Review winners. Contenders are beginning to hit theaters as we move into the fall, so let’s see what’s on the docket today…

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Art Direction — Volume II

    Oh how things have changed since I last wrote in this space. In the past four weeks, Tech Support has taken a break, allowing the dust from the festival circuit to settle, and other titles to open. Over the next 10 weeks, we’ll take a second look at each of the crafts categories, finishing in mid-December – just as awards circuit takes hold.

    Today, we take a second glance at Best Art Direction. As stated last time, this category tends to reward period and fantasy films.The branch  has some favorites, but it’s not overly incestuous. And while being a Best Picture contender certainly helps, nominees can often come from the surrounding fray.

    Perhaps I’ll start with a film that I thought would score here, but came out of Toronto in even greater shape than I expected: Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech.” With prestige and period attached, I am virtually certain Eve Stewart, who was nominated in this category 11 years ago for Mike Leigh’s “Topsy-Turvy,” will be heading to the Kodak. Not only am I confident she’ll be nominated again, I think she has excellent potential to win.

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