• Rose Byrne, leading lady at last. [Daily Telegraph]
• More on the story that won’t go away as the “Moneyball” drama spills into the pages of Vanity Fair. [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• Stephanie Zacharek wonders whether the “Judd Apatow moment” might be over. [Salon]
Am I the only one who had completely forgotten that “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh” was even coming out in two weeks’ time? Read into that what you will, but you’d expect the adaptation of a novel as successful and widely beloved as Michael (“Wonder Boys”) Chabon’s 1988 debut to be a bigger deal.
Still, that’s what happens when you hand it to the writer-director of “Dodgeball” and cast the yet-to-ignite likes of Sienna Miller. And its reviews at last year’s Sundance fest didn’t exactly set the world alight. Neither, for me, does this trailer. File this under “wait and see.”
The British Independent Film Awards are an odd, under-the-radar institution that frequently like to avoid the obvious and champion the underdog. Last year, for example, they bypassed the starrier likes of “Eastern Promises” and “Notes on a Scandal” to award their top prize to Anton Corbijn’s magnificent, under-rewarded “Control.” The previous year, they were even more daring: Best Film justly went to “This Is England” over “The Queen,” while Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker — gasp — lost to the unknown leads of Andrea Arnold’s “Red Road.”
So it is this year that the nominations feature one doozy of a snub: while the top prize, Best British Independent Film, features such obvious contenders as “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Hunger,” Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” is nowhere to be found. Ditto Best Director and Best Screenplay — the omission particularly galling when the likes of (gack) “Son of Rambow” made the cut. Did Leigh run over the voters’ dogs or something? Sanity at least prevailed in the acting categories, where Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan and the wonderful Alexis Zegerman all made the cut.
Zegerman’s category, Best Supporting Actress, is an indication of how slim the pickings were this year: nods for the mediocre likes of Hayley Atwell in “The Duchess” and Sienna Miller in “The Edge of Love” don’t suggest a very deep pool of nominees. Meanwhile, Kristin Scott Thomas’ mention for the fun but flimsy trifle “Easy Virtue,” which I saw this morning at the Festival, is clearly an indirect nomination for her ineligible awards-bound work in “I’ve Loved You So Long.”
Still, there’s plenty to cheer about here, not least the impressive showing for Martin McDonagh’s superb “In Bruges,” which jointly leads the field with “Hunger,” both films receiving seven nominations. The inevitability of the nominations for “Hunger” and “Slumdog Millionaire” doesn’t make them any less deserving, and “Man on Wire” is a pleasingly left-field choice in the top category.
The news that Scott Rudin and Harvey Weinstein are in a tug-of-war over the release date of “The Reader” isn’t really news at all. We were talking about this over a month ago, back when it seemed Rudin had won the debate. But the pieces slowly fell into place and a 2008 release became a reality, so here we are.
The problem: the film isn’t finished yet. That’s all well and good. Neither is “Revolutionary Road” or, last I checked, “Milk.” The issue with “The Reader” is that it likely won’t be finished by the time Weinstein wants to release the film, and that is where the efforts of those involved could go to waste at the whims of an awards-hungry big-wig desperate for a major Oscar contender for the first time in four – count ’em – four years.
What’s worse — or at least could be perceived as worse — is the notion floating out there that Weinstein is banking on good will for “Reader” producers Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack. Both filmmakers passed away earlier this year. Steven Zeitchik aludes to this in his Hollywood Reporter piece.
Zeitchik has a lot of smoke but not much fire, though, since both Weinstein and Rudin declined commen. And he’s likely peddling anonymous quotes from publicists on one side or the other — sentiments we’ve all heard, and probably from the same publicists.
My guess, at the end of the day (and as one of Zeitchik’s sources concludes), is that Weinstein wins the battle. He’s proven recently enough that he’ll push something down the collective AMPAS throat if he doesn’t have the goods (Sienna Miller in “Factory Girl.”) It’s that insatiable awards appetite. The tragedy this time around isn’t that he won’t have the quality, though, but, more likely, that he’ll have an incomplete product that could have been better serviced. We’ll see how it turns out, but here’s a look at Zeitchik’s collection of a month-and-a-half’s worth of rumors:
Weinstein is pushing for a December release for the movie, which director Stephen Daldry is working on in post. The romance set in postwar Germany and based on Bernhard Schlink’s novel already has buzz from strong test screenings, though there are post elements left to be completed…
Rudin, however, has been lobbying hard for a 2009 release. The producer already has two Oscar candidates — “Revolutionary Road,” with Leonardo DiCaprio and Winslet as a married couple in the 1950s, at Paramount Vantage, and the Broadway transfer “Doubt,” toplining Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, at Miramax — and a third would mean he is vying heavily against himself.
The producer faced a similar scenario last year when his “No Country for Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood” competed against each other for Oscar kudos.
The fact that Winslet stars in both “Revolutionary Road” and “The Reader” would mean the actress too could wind up competing against herself.
The rest.