In Contention

Tag: Sundance Film Festival

  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Slumdog,’ Sundance, Santa Barbara

    It slipped my mind to do this yesterday, but here’s the week that was:

    • “Slumdog Millionaire” steamrolled through the week’s precursors, taking the Producers Guild Award…

    • … before landing top honours at the SAG Awards, which we live-blogged for your pleasure.

    • Still on “Slumdog,” a potential smear campaign against the film was duly foiled.

    • No surprise, then, that this week’s Off the Carpet column declared the race pretty much over.

    • The Academy settled “The Reader” producers’ dilemma by breaking its ludicrous “three-nominee” rule.

    • Meanwhile, some are wondering whether Harvey Weinstein’s tactics could harm the film’s chances, particularly in the Best Actress race.

    • Away from the Oscar race, gritty urban drama “Push” cleaned up at Sundance.

    • The Santa Barbara fest carried on, with an interesting screenwriters’ forum among the highlights.

    • Still at Santa Barbara, Danny Boyle, Kate Winslet and this year’s six Virtuoso stars were among those celebrated.

    • Could “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” really go 0-for-13 on Oscar night?

    • Finally, rounding off a very “Slumdog”-flavoured week, be sure to check out our interview with the film’s brilliant craftsmen.

  • 1/28 Oscarweb Round-up

    Kate Winslet at the 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards• Trying to get in on more of that tech action, Elizabeth Snead talks to “Benjamin Button” costumer Jacqueline West. [The Envelope]

    • “Push” and “Cove” top the critics’ picks for the best of Sundance. [indieWIRE]

    • Despite a nation-wide ban on Israeli products, two brave souls screen “Waltz with Bashir” in Beirut. [The Guardian]

    • The Stanley Kubrick Holocaust film (and shining new ingenue) that almost was. [The Independent]

    • Giving Kate Winslet shit across the pond for forgetting Angelina Jolie’s name at the Globes. [Daily Telegraph]

    • The top 10 most bewildering Best Picture nominees. [Rope of Silicon]

  • Anyone over this story yet?

  • ‘Push’ sweeps at Sundance

    It had become quite clear over the past few days that Lee Daniels’ sophomore feature “Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire” was one of the few titles raising pulses at a very quiet Sundance Film Festival. The film, a hard-hitting urban tale of an African-American teenager overcoming merciless parental abuse in 1980’s Harlem, has received breathless critical notices across the board, with Variety declaring it “a diamond – clear, bright, but oh so hard.”

    So hardly anyone is surprised that the film cleaned up at yesterday’s Sundance Awards, nabbing both the Grand Jury and Audience Prizes in the U.S. dramatic competition — only the third film ever to achieve that double. It also received a Special Jury Prize for the performance of Mo’Nique as the protagonist’s monstrously neglectful mother.

    Sundance Awards have a spotty record of indicating future success: looking down the list of previous Grand Jury Prize winners, for every “You Can Count on Me” or “Frozen River” that rides its momentum all the way to Oscar night a whole year later, there’s a “Quinceanera” or “Forty Shades of Blue” that pretty much sinks without trace. “Push” certainly sounds like a tough sell for future awards attention, but if the critical championing continues, it’s hard to predict what might be in store.

    One winner we seem increasingly likely to hear more about as the year progresses is Lone Scherfig’s British charmer “An Education,” which inspired a heated bidding contest between specialty studios, and last night landed the Audience Award in the world dramatic competition, as well as a gong for cinematographer John De Borman. (Check out Todd McCarthy’s unabashed rave for the film here – we haven’t seen too many of those lately.)

    Meanwhile, the jury’s choice in the world dramatic section was Chilean class-themed comedy “The Maid,” while directing and screenwriting honours went to Oliver Hirschbiegel’s “Five Minutes of Heaven,” a study of political conflict in 1970’s Northen Ireland headlined by Liam Neeson. After the disaster that was Hirschbiegel’s first English-language effort, “The Invasion,” it’s nice to see the “Downfall” director getting back on track.

    A full list of the (many) feature awards dished out is below the cut. For more details, check out Variety’s report here.

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  • Mulligan makes her move

    Don’t say I didn’t give you the heads-up on this one. Looking over the Sundance lineup last month, I singled out Lone Scherfig’s “An Education” as a title about which I was particularly excited — not least because it stars Carey Mulligan, a lovely young Brit for whom I’ve been predicting big things for some time.

    Well, once in a blue moon, I’m right.

    “An Education,” a 1960s-set coming-of-age drama penned by Nick Hornby, recently bowed at Sundance, and while the notices for the film itself are warm, the real buzz centers on 23 year-old Mulligan. A star, it appears, is born. Jeff Wells was first out the gate, and it’s fair to say that he’s besotted with both star and film — which he reckons we may still be talking about this time next year:

    The best film of the Sundance Film Festival, a finely tuned and deeply engaging film by regular popcorn-watching standards, an award-calibre drama that will definitely be in contention at the end of the year, and a movie that has launched a genuine movie star in an old-fashioned and yet very new-fashioned sense — 23 year-old Carey Mulligan. I know that special old-soul-mixed-with-youthful-effervescence quality that you see in very few actors and actresses over the years, and trust me, Mulligan has it.

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  • Calm before the storm

    It’s awfully quiet in Oscar blog country, isn’t it?

    Admittedly, it’s not unusual for this point in the season. All the possible precursor cards have been dealt ahead of Thursday’s nominations, and in a year that offers fewer possibilities than most, all we can do is wait, shuffling and reshuffling the same predictions in vain hope of a ‘eureka’ moment. Meanwhile, with Tuesday’s rather more significant ceremony looming, it’s hardly surprising people’s minds are elsewhere.

    We could usually rely on Sundance to keep us distracted during this lull, but as Kris and others (including the travelling Bagger) have noted, there’s even less noise emerging from Park City. I’ve been dutifully reading the reviews coming out of the festival, and have yet to get even politely excited about any of them. So, “Brooklyn’s Finest” was the first big buy of the festival, but how much anticipation can one really muster over an Antoine Fuqua cop drama starring Richard Gere?

    Beyond that, going by Anne Thompson has to say, mumblecore comedy “Humpday” sounds like an amusing diversion, with the Bagger suggesting it’s the first film at Sundance to “break through and connect.” An improv-based effort about two straight college buddies who make a self-starring gay porno, I’m guessing (and hoping) its charm exceeds that of the pitch.

  • It seems like everyone’s out of town — then again…

    Sundance Film FestivalYou can still find a number of Sundance prep pieces across the Web.  And it seems more and more, the geek press will be out in force, as they were at Telluride last September, much to the surprise of a number of industry folks.  So I was starting to be quasi bummed that I couldn’t make the fest until that “Sundance is going to be a ghost town” stuff started to get louder and louder.

    Karina Longworth tracked down a few journalists to find out why they’re not going to Park City this year.  The reasons she came up with are the economy (duh), competing film festivals, the notion that New Media outlets getting the Sundance smackdown when applying for credentials, the Prop 8 protest and Sundance boycott and the fact that the trip just isn’t worth “the pain in the ass.”  And there’s always the inauguration to consider, for those making the trek to Washington on Jan. 20.

    Here’s one feisty journo on the supposed harshness of the festival:

    “Let’s be honest,” says Film Threat’s Lewis. “Sundance is an enormous pain in the ass. That’s not a knock against Sundance, it’s a fact. It’s cold, it’s crowded, it’s slippery, it’s hard to find time to eat and sleep, there’s thousands of looky-loos crowding the screenings, the movies are a total crap shoot and everyone ends up sick. As much as I’m sure I’ll be sorry I missed it this year, as of right now, we’re all kind of glad we aren’t going.”

    Read all about it here.

    I’ve never been to Sundance, but I’d love to go.  Typically I rail against the festival circuit because to me, it’s the least ideal environment for viewing a film.  Not to mention the fact that studios have, by and large, seized these events as their own publicity tour stops, drowning out the innocence of competition that might have been.  Still, there are those that seem to shed this stygma.

    With that in mind, I’ll be covering this year’s Santa Barbara Film Festival for 10 days starting Jan. 22.  I’ll make the drive up the coast after we finish processing the Oscar nominations and will set up shop from there all week (with a short trip back Jan. 30 to cover the USC Scripter Awards Gala).  Tune in.

  • Sundance competition lineup revealed

    For those who really want to get an early start in the awards-guessing game, the lineups of films competing for honours at next month’s 25th annual Sundance Film Festival has been announced. As usual, the competition is split into four sections — US dramatic, US documentary, world dramatic, world documentary — with 16 films competing in each.

    Looking down the list of films, it’s pretty much impossible to anticipate hits or highlights based on name recognition alone. After all, the whole point of Sundance is for unexpected successes to emerge out of nowhere. This time last year, who could have predicted that a miniscule, star-free picture called “Frozen River” would be making waves on the awards circuit following a win at Sundance? Nobody. That’s the beauty.

    With that in mind, I’ve selected one film from each section that piques my interest — either I’ve been following its progression for some time, or I simply like the pitch and/or people involved.

    AN EDUCATION (World Dramatic) I’ve been intrigued by this one for a while, partly because it’s written by Nick Hornby, and partly because it stars the incandescent young Carey Mulligan, who blew me away as Nina in last year’s Royal Court production of “The Seagull” (now on Broadway). I predicted then and there she’d be a star, so I’m interested to see if this demonstrates her potential. She plays a smart teenager in 1960’s London who falls under the spell of a debonair older man. Peter Sarsgaard, Emma Thompson and Sally Hawkins are also in the impressive cast, while Lone Scherfig, best known for “Italian for Beginners” (an unusually cuddly work from the Dogme sect), directs. I’m in.

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