In Contention

Tag: Sigourney Weaver

  • Moverman’s expressive ‘Rampart’ offers tour de force performance from Woody Harrelson

    Oren Moverman’s “Rampart” is absolutely fantastic. Top to bottom, it’s a considerable directorial achievement, and an exciting, brazen departure from his excellent 2009 debut, “The Messenger.”

    The film — from an original screenplay by James Ellroy, re-written by Moverman — uses the 1999 Los Angeles Police Department Rampart corruption scandal as a frame, a state of mind, a narrative hook, an atmosphere for conveying an intense, probing, yet curiously vague character study in the form of LAPD officer “Date Rape” Dave Brown (Woody Harrrelson).

    “Date Rape” got his nickname from his own scandal, the murder of an alleged serial rapist, which he explains away at a bar with a casual, “I may or may not have done it but he’ll never hurt another woman again.” That gives you an idea where this guy is coming from. The world is black and white for him (or so he’d like it to be). But he’s haunted by its inherent grays.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: All Globed out

    Jeff Bridges at the 2010 Golden Globe AwardsAs it turned out, the only celebration I made it to last night was Fox’s Globes after-party at Craft in Century City.  Given that “Avatar” and “Crazy Heart” were two of three films to win more than one Globe (the other being Pixar’s “Up”), it kind of felt like the place to be.

    The early part of the evening was dominated by the “Crazy Heart” crew.  I came in with Ryan Bingham and Scott Cooper, the latter dumbfounded at how certain celebs were getting his number to send well-wishes and praise for his little film.  Bingham, meanwhile, told me he was at the bar when the Best Original Song category was announced, which explains why T Bone Burnett accepted solo.  “Sorry for partyin’,” Bingham told me.  “Story of my life.”

    Burnett, it turns out, will be producing Bingham’s next album.

    Meanwhile, you could follow the bursts of applause to locate Jeff Bridges, who took down the Best Actor in a Drama trophy when many thought George Clooney would register with the, shall we say, star-friendly HFPA.  Then again, whoever said Bridges wasn’t a star?  And judging by the standing ovation, his second of the weekend (everyone was on their feet Friday, too), you can expect his steamroll through the season to continue next weekend at the Screen Actors Guild Awards and then, ultimately: the Oscar.  Interesting to note his lawyer advised him not to take the part, I assume thinking it wasn’t high enough on a scale of exposure.

    And yet here we are.

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  • Reminder

    Sigourney Weaver is doing SNL tonight.  Nice PR positioning for a film that obviously doesn’t NEED PR positioning, but hey, should be fun.

  • ‘Avatar’ on late night

    Sigourney Weaver stopped by The Ed Sullivan Theater last night to talk “Avatar” with David Letterman.  My jaw dropped when she explains that the Weta guys spend 47 hours of manpower per each 1/24th of a second in translating the data received from the motion-capture sensors.  Wow.

    Check out the clip below, and after the jump, Conan O’Brien has a bit of fun with the Na’vi language.

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  • Sell it, Sig

    Now a UK cinema-going institution, this series of Orange cellphone ads consistently pokes fun at the career doldrums of Hollywood has-beens — so it’s ironic that their newest features a star of the season’s biggest film. Anyway, Sigourney Weaver is the latest name to the long line of good sports, from Anjelica Huston to Rob Lowe.

  • 11/20 Oscarweb Round-up

    Michael Keaton• With his directorial debut “The Merry Gentleman” on the way, Michael Keaton gets a profile across the pond. [The Guardian]

    • Laura Almo sits down with “Up in the Air” editor Dana Glauberman. [Editors Guild Magazine]

    • “Avatar”‘s Sigourney Weaver remembers the days when James Cameron’s crews didn’t live in fear. [Vulture]

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  • The Great Performances: 1999

    Terence Stamp in The Limey1999 was a strange year.  And it’s hard to believe a full decade has slipped past since.  There were some great award-winning performances, to be sure, but there seemed to be just as many not nominated that certainly should have been.

    Ten years later, I remain stunned that Reese Witherspoon was not nominated for her brilliant work in “Election” as a pathologically ambitious, grasping social climber student doing anything it takes to head up the student council in Alexander Payne’s astute and black comedy.

    Witherspoon won the National Society of Film Critics award for Best Actress, besting eventual Oscar, LAFCA and NYFCC champ Hilary Swank in “Boys Don’t Cry.” What made Witherspoon’s work so incredible was that we all must have known a Tracy Flick during our high school days, and the actress created such an accurate depiction.

    Swank was a most deserving winner for her superb performance, winning over nominees, Annette Bening in “American Beauty,” Janet McTeer in “Tumbleweeds,” Julianne Moore in “The End of the Affiar” and Meryl Streep in “Music of the Heart” (perhaps the perennial Oscar favorite’s least accomplished nominated performance).

    Bening’s performance was brilliant, she won the Screen Actors Guild award for it, and though there seemed to be a swell of support for her as Oscar night approached, there was no denying Swank for her career-altering work.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Looking at the supporting ladies

    Vera Farmiga in Up in the AirA few weeks ago in this space I took a dedicated look at the lead actress category.  With little in the way of actual development (this season is curiously divided on the timeline as we’ve got maybe another month before more major titles begin screening), I figured it would be a good idea to keep things going on that front and take a look at the supporting actress race.

    It’s a little difficult to ignore the fact that Mo’Nique stands way out ahead of the pack in this race for her work in “Precious.” Unless her reported behind-the-scenes drama-queen tactics somehow poison the cause, she should be holding a statue in four months’ time.  She is fierce and focused in a monstrous role and when viewers get over the initial “she had this in her?” shock, they’ll also see it for the expert piece of acting that it is.

    Mo’Nique is joined in her film, however, by what I’d call an awards-worthy turn from Mariah Carey.  The singer-turned-actress has been lurking in Mo’Nique’s shadow throughout the film’s publicity and festival tour this year, and she also lost something of a diva battle with Mary J. Blige to have a featured track in the film.  The poor girl can’t catch a break here, but I think she deserves a look from voters and, perhaps, even prognosticators.

    A few weeks ago I mentioned in an episode of Oscar Talk that “Up in the Air” star Vera Farmiga would be pushed as a lead actress.  Some things have changed.

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  • The Great Performances: 1997

    Jodie Foster in Contact1997 was a great year for actors, but a tough year for Oscar; how do you choose when there are so many deserving nominees?

    It’s that age-old issue that some award-worthy performances are going to be left out, which though unfair and sad, is very much part of the Academy Awards and frankly what makes the whole thing interesting for us.  The Best Actor field ended up largely a battle of the old boys.  The acting warriors from the 1970s gave some of their finest performances in 1997, and four of the five nominees for Best Actor had been icons for 20 years.

    In fact the Academy could have allowed the one upstart to slip past and nominated Al Pacino in “Donnie Brasco,” which was the actor’s best work in years. As it was Pacino was by-passed in favor of young Matt Damon in “Good Will Hunting,” who found himself going toe-to-toe with Robert Duvall in “The Apostle,” Jack Nicholson in “As Good As It Gets,” Dustin Hoffman in “Wag the Dog” and Peter Fonda in “Ulee’s Gold.”

    I first saw Duvall’s performance at the 1997 Toronto International Film Festival and have written about it many times since.  He won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s Best Actor award, and then the National Society of Film Critics’ honor, but the Mayor of Hollywood stood in the way of Duvall’s second Oscar.

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  • EW’s Wonder Women panel at the Con

    I was bummed I had to miss yesterday’s Entertainment Weekly-sponsored women’s showcase here at Comic-Con, but luckily the mag has video snippets available for viewing now.  No embed feature, though, which is unfortuate, but go give them a look anyway.  Panelists included Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana, Elizabeth Mitchell and Eliza Dushku.

  • COMIC-CON: James Cameron unveils impressive ‘Avatar’ footage

    AvatarJames Cameron made his long-awaited trip to San Diego this afternoon for the world premiere of 25 minutes of footage from his upcoming film “Avatar,” and the reaction was as enthused as it could have been.  A scene-by-scene description is probably the best way to go about this, so first that, then quotes from the post-screening discussion.

    If you’d prefer to stay pure on this film and would rather skip the scene descriptions, go ahead and scroll down to the quotes section, indicated in bold below.  Also, for those hungry for any and all info, before I dig into the specifics of the presentation, you should really read through Cameron’s E3 address to get an idea of the film’s plot, or else you’ll be quite lost.

    Seven sequences were unveiled, beginning with a “Full Metal Jacket”-like military briefing with actor Stephan Lang front-and-center.  The scene also introduces us to the central character in the film, Jake Sully, a crippled former military officer himself with an eye toward the cosmos and the planet Pandora.

    The next scene reveals the avatars, genetic bio-suits constructed from the DNA of the Na’vi, tall, blue-skinned warrior natives of Pandora.  Floating in a tank of fluid, being prepped for integration with human consciousnesses, the imagery is quite beautiful in this scene, the avatars in a docile, tranquil state, Sully peering at them, recognizing in them the chance to walk, however virtually, once again.

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  • THE LISTS: Top 10 lines from ‘Ghostbusters’

    GhostbustersAs I briefly noted yesterday, “Ghostbusters” has just celebrated the 25th anniversary of its June 8, 1984 release.  The film went on to make considerable box office dollars and launched the post-SNL careers of Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, along with co-stars Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson, further into the stratosphere.  Okay, well, Hudson’s career never really took flight, but still.

    The anniversary is certainly not going by unnoticed.  Sony is prepping the Blu-ray release of the film for next week while Atari, Inc. is all set to launch the heavily anticipated cross-platform video game on June 16.  I knew I wanted to do something special for the site, but I just couldn’t come up with the right idea.  Then it hit me.

    In my view — and this is, of course, quite the disputed opinion — “Ghostbusters” is the most quotable movie of all time.  And it’s not just the one-liners that have me howling every time I give the flick another look (which understandably dominate the list below), but it’s the thoroughness of the comedy.  Witness, for instance, Egon Spengler’s (Harold Ramis) description of the consequences of “crossing the streams,” or the way Louis Tully (Rick Moranis) rifles off the particulars of Ted and Annette Fleming’s fiscal business at a dreary clients’ party.  It is, quite frankly, one of the most ingenious comedy screenplays ever assembled.

    So…why not a list of the film’s 10 best lines?

    This quickly became a painful process.  I ended up with at least a dozen lines that, on another day, might have made the list.  Annie Potts’s “I’ve quit better jobs than this,” or Hudson’s sincere, “That’s a big Twinkie.”  I wanted to give a shout-out to “Let’s run some red lights” and “Somebody blows their nose and you want to keep it,” and especially a personal favorite that hits my funny button more firmly than others: “I looked at the trap, Ray.”  Not to mention “Yes it’s true, this man has no…,” well, you get the picture.  But you have to whittle it down, and so I have.  On to the list.

    And Happy Birthday, “Ghosbusters.”

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  • 1/13 Oscarweb Round-up

    Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight• Tom O’Neil chats with Pete Hammond and Anthony Breznican about possible repeat victors from Sunday night’s Globe ceremony. [Gold Derby]

    • Sasha Stone reminds that Kate Winslet is much more due in 2009 than Sigourney Weaver was in 1988. [Awards Daily]

    • David Carr catches up with Danny Boyle at the Fox Searchlight Golden Globes afterparty. [The Carpetbagger]

    • John Wayne and Heath Ledger make Steve Mason’s list of the best final performances ever. [/Film]

    • Anita Singh reports the Oscar odds in Kate Winslet’s favor. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Danny Boyle says he’ll never be a “proper director.” [The Guardian]

    • Rebecca Ascher-Walsh gives a quick preview of the 2009 film year. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Christopher Campbell goes with Sam Mendes for the lone director spot.  Hmm… [Spout Blog]