In Contention

Tag: Shutter Island

  • Berlin bound

    In a couple of hours, I’ll be packing my bags, donning my warmest and most ridiculous-looking puffa jacket and catching a crack-of-dawn flight to the German capital. The occasion, of course: the 60th Berlin International Film Festival.

    I’ve been to Berlin before — and was thoroughly enamored of it — though this will be my first experience of the festival, and I’m not a little intrigued. Alongside Cannes and Venice, the Berlinale essentially completes the holy European festival trinity, but its position in the calendar gives it a rather different profile from its glitzier sisters.

    Where Cannes hogs the lofty auteur names and Venice always nabs a couple of big fall awards hopefuls, Berlin is a refuge for smaller fare from up-and-coming filmmakers, peppered with the occasional sexy Hollywood premiere.

    That’s not to say that the festival doesn’t launch substantial works. Two of this year’s Oscar nominees, “The Messenger” and “The Milk of Sorrow,” began their awards trails with wins at Berlin a year ago, while the 2008 competition turned up the actressy trifecta of “Happy-Go-Lucky,” “I’ve Loved You So Long” and “Julia.” Berlin hits have to ride their buzz for longer than those at Cannes, but there are almost always a couple that quietly stay the course.

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  • 2/5 Oscarweb Round-up

    Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter Island• Scott Bowles writes up the forthcoming Leo/Marty thriller “Shutter Island.” [USA Today]

    • Charting the piracy of this year’s Oscar nominees. [Waxy]

    • Pete Hammond gets James Cameron to puff his chest out on “Avatar”‘s box office potential, among other notes on the town. [Notes on a Season]

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  • ‘Shutter Island’ Super Bowl spot

  • WEEKLY WRAP: Precursor avalanche, best of 2009

    Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker• Kris wrapped up 2009 with his take on the year’s best films, also offering his own preferred nominees and winners in a range of categories. (I’ll chime in next week.)

    • “Up in the Air” led this year’s pack of Golden Globe nominees.

    • It also joined “Precious” and “Inglourious Basterds” at the head of the pack in the SAG nominations — while missing out in their top race.

    • “The Hurt Locker” emerged as this year’s critics’ favorite, earning top honors from a host of groups, including the two biggest: the NYFCC and the LAFCA.

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  • ‘Shutter Island’ to premiere at Berlin fest

    Leonardo DiCaprio and Michelle Williams in Shutter IslandDoesn’t it feel like an eternity ago that we were talking about the possibilities for “Shutter Island” in this year’s Oscar race? I’m still sulking, frankly.

    Still, compensation for the delay arrives in the shape of some European festival prestige: Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Gothic thriller will play out of competition at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival in February.

    Of course, Berlin audiences won’t be the first to lay eyes on the film: it recently had a “surprise” screening at Butt-Numb-a-Thon in Texas. Impressions are scattered around the net if you care to seek them.

    Also in the lineup is Roman Polanski’s latest, “The Ghost Writer” — a political thriller adapted from a Robert Harris novel, starring Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan. Unlike Scorsese’s film, Polanski’s will be in contention for the Golden Bear.

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  • New ‘Shutter Island’ trailer

  • New ‘Shutter Island’ trailer

    See it HD at Apple.

  • 9/10 Web Round-up

    Christian McKay in Me and Orson Welles• Peter Travers is pissed about the “Shutter Island” bump to 2010. [Rolling Stone]

    • “Me and Orson Welles” gets a distributor in Freestyle Releasing. [The Wrap]

    • “The Road,” meanwhile, gets pushed to Thanksgiving, in direct competition with the Weinsteins’ other Oscar hopeful, “Nine.” [Variety]

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Inception’ unwrapped, ‘Shutter’ unseated

    Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception• One day after the film’s trailer surfaced, we turned up some fresh plot information about Christopher Nolan’s “Inception.” Fan hysteria ensued.

    • Just in case you’d forgotten, “Shutter Island” was booted into 2010. Fan hysteria ensued.

    • To a quieter reaction, Julie Taymor’s “The Tempest” joined Scorsese’s film on the sidelines for next year.

    • In submitting “The White Ribbon,” Germany gave the foreign-language race its first major official contender.

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  • How ‘Up in the Air’ factored in the ‘Shutter’ bump

    George Clooney in Up in the AirVariety’s Pamela McClintock was written a detailed piece examining the financial ins and outs of the recent postponing of “Shutter Island,” coming to the conclusion — as did Kris following the announcement — that the move is purely a practical one on the part of Paramount chief Brad Grey. Quite simply, she explains, the film stands to make more of a profit in February, free from the expense of awards-season marketing.

    But while everyone has picked up on how the move potentially improves the fortunes of Paramount awards hopeful “The Lovely Bones,” McClintock suggests that it is Jason Reitman’s increasingly buzzy “Up in the Air” that is a more significant factor in this conversation. In picking Reitman’s far smaller film over Scorsese’s as a 2009 Oscar pony, the studio has pragmatically opted for the title that is cheaper to market — and to campaign:

    Unofficially, Par has decided to throw its support behind George Clooney dark comedy and awards hopeful “Up in the Air,” directed by Jason Reitman. That film isn’t yet dated. Rumors are that it will be released in early December, but Par says a date won’t be decided upon until after the film makes its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival.

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 1 — Best in show so far, campaign strategies, festival preview and “the 10”

    Oscar TalkWelcome to the first installment of Oscar Talk, a (hopefully) weekly podcast between myself and Anne Thompson, newly of indieWIRE.  We spend some time getting our feet wet in this introductory kudocast, but among the topics on the rundown:

    • Films screened thus far with the best Oscar profile heading into the awards season, including “The Hurt Locker,” “Up” and even some discussion on “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”

    • Meryl Streep’s performance in “Julie & Julia,” what Anne calls “the story of the summer,” and how Streep succeeds into her 60s where her contemporary actresses have not.

    • Oscar’s controversial move to 10 and what how we think it will affect the awards landscape.

    • The rise of indie studios such as Overture Films, Summit Entertainment and Apparition.

    • Shifting philosophies of Oscar campaign strategies

    • Paramount bumping “Shutter Island” to 2010.

    • All things “Avatar”: the new trailer, “Avatar” Day, etc.

    • A festival preview as Anne runs down her list of anticipations at Toronto.

    And then we ran out of steam.  For now.  I runs close to 40 minutes, but we had plenty to discuss in this first edition. We’ll whittle it down by half that in future installments, I’m sure.

    Have a listen below.  (Audio?  How novel!)  We’ll try to do another one from Telluride but the more consistent stuff will probably pick up in a month or so.

    [display_podcast]

  • Paramount moves ‘Shutter Island’ to 2010

    (from left) Mark Ruffalo and Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter IslandThis is a stunning development.  It seems Paramount has decided to move the release date of Martin Scrosese’s “Shutter Island” from October 2009, a mere two months away, to February 2010.  The move reflects a similar last minute decision to move “The Soloist” out of last year’s fall slate to the Spring 2009 frame.  Nikki Finke has the scoop.

    The obvious answer here is money.  An awards campaign was certainly in the cards for “Shutter Island,” and those aren’t cheap.  But while “The Soloist” ultimately opened and was revealed as less than Oscar-caliber, Scorsese’s film has been testing really well and was expected to be a big 2009 awards player.

    Still, these are tough times.  Everyone’s looking for ways to cut back and deal with the here and now and obviously, an Oscar campaign just didn’t seem fiscally responsible for a studio that will already have two major hopefuls in Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air” and Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones.”

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  • Japanese ‘Shutter Island’ poster — can we have this one instead?

    By now we’ve seen two versions of the poster for Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island,” each of them quite similar and not altogether appealing.  Then I saw this Japanese version and thought, “That’s what I’m talkin’ about’”:

    Shutter Island

    By the way, there’s a Japanese trailer for the film up at the official Japanese site.

  • The same, but different

    Friend and reader Nick just pointed me to this international one-sheet for Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island,” which apparently hit the web last week, though I must not have noticed.

    Hardly a drastic departure from the domestic poster we saw last month — and while I like the clearer photo-collage motif here, I think the American design has the upper hand in typography, and a more arresting expression from DiCaprio. So after an international team trounced the U.S. designers in last week’s “An Education” one-sheet showdown, the scores are now level. Riveting stuff. What do you think?

    Shutter Island international poster

  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Film Editing — Volume I

    (from left) Leonardo DiCaprio and Michelle Williams in Shutter IslandBest Achievement in Film Editing.  It’s a difficult phrase to define.  To a large extent, excellence in film editing can be editing which blends into the film, allowing the director’s vision, screenwriter’s story and actors’ performances to shine without interference.  But equally, a film that stands out as a showcase for flashy but motivated construction deserves recognition as well.

    What is certain, however, is that in the absence of editors, our films would all be more than three hours long, largely incoherent and/or tremendously boring.

    This category has historically displayed a strong correlation to the Best Picture line-up.  Last year marked a return to a typical situation – four of the five films nominated for Best Film Editing were also nominated for Best Picture, with the fifth being an action film.

    From 2005 through 2007, however, things were a bit shaken up with a two-to-five ratio.  At the end of the day, however, Best Picture contenders, thrillers and actions films always do quite well here.

    The other genre that frequently finds a home in this category is musicals.  Cutting dance numbers coherently and blending between dialogue and songs consistently clearly impresses this branch.  In light of this, I’d call “Nine”’s Claire Simpson the early favorite.  A past winner for “Platoon,” she returned to the game after a 19 year absence two years ago with “The Constant Gardener.”  Barring the film flopping, I’d say Simpson is good to go.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Whittling further as convention flees

    Max Records in Where the Wild Things AreAnother month, another step closer to the awards season.  As the summer winds down and the industry slowly begins to square itself with the off-season’s bombshell Oscar news, the picture becomes a little clearer.  Kind of.

    Universal Pictures, in a move speculated upon endlessly by now, shuffled two of its contenders — Paul Greengrass’s “Green Zone” and Joe Johnston’s “The Wolf Man” — off to 2010.  As Anne Thompson shrewdly noted in a recent item, the decision likely has everything to do with a numbers game.  The studio has experienced a rocky two quarters this year and things aren’t necessarily looking up.  Some think, in the case of “The Wolf Man,” the shift was made to avoid another box office misfire in 2009 (as by now, with push after push, the film is beginning to smell fishy).  Others say the “Green Zone” shift had a lot to do with “The Hurt Locker”‘s release pattern.

    Whatever the case, the evacuations change the Oscar landscape ever so slightly, giving us just a few more talking points in the vacuum of August before we have anything of value worth discussing when the fall festival season hits in less than a month’s time.

    Universal is now left with two critically divisive, commercially dubious titles in Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies” and Judd Apatow’s “Funny People” to hawk for awards consideration, effectively (if you’re asking me, though I realize no one is) taking the studio out of the game this year — or, at the very least, making the hill steeper.

    But taking note of the studio awards landscape, it doesn’t seem to me that anyone else is on surer ground.  As I look out at the many contenders and the campaigns being prepared for them, it appears the entire industry will be dealing with unconventional approaches and product to go along with the new changes in the Best Picture category (and all the headache that comes with them) this season.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Costume Design — Volume I

    (from left) Ben Wishaw and Abbie Cornish in Bright StarMovie stars are often given much attention for the fashion that they sport off-screen. Seldom does the on-screen attire garner as much publicity.

    Nevertheless, the Academy Award for Best Costume Design recognizes those talented men and women who design the threads actors wear on screen. Not only does this work add to the elegance and authenticity of the film, but it can also express the character and the period, mood and setting of the piece.

    For the last three years, this category has chosen films which have highlighted the extravagant attire of the upper class from centuries ago. Period films almost always triumph in this field and, in fact, garner the vast majority of nominations, though a spot or two is usually reserved every year for a fantasy effort.

    This is also a category which tends to reward designers who have been around a long time, with most nominees every year having been in the race before, although a spot or two is almost always reserved for a newcomer as well. And unlike many other crafts categories, the costume branch does not seem averse to nominating a film which scores in few if any other places.

    The most likely nominee this year, if not the most likely winner (sight unseen, of course), might be Janet Patterson for “Bright Star.” This Jane Campion effort was very well received at Cannes in May and the crafts look exquisite. Patterson, who landed two of her three previous nominations for Campion collaborations (“The Piano” and “Portrait of a Lady”), looks likely to return to the race after 12 years. I’d be surprised if she failed to be nominated.

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  • Shutter Fear

    Anthony B. mentioned the similarities between the “Cape Fear’ and “Shutter Island” posters last week, so I thought I’d toss this up now that Comic-Con craziness has subsided.  Intriguing parallels:

    (from left) Posters for Shutter Island and Cape Fear