In Contention

Tag: Terrence Malick

  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 56 — Special Edition! — Cannes so far, ‘Tree of Life,’ Von Trier, taking the 2011 awards pulse

    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 has been nearly three months since we last got on the horn to talk the film wards landscape. We promised another dip during Cannes, so here we are. Today Anne and I are joined by Guy Lodge as the two of them have been working the Croisette all week. Let’s see what’s on the docket today…

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  • Thoughts on Malick’s ‘Tree of Life’

    I decided to sleep on Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life.” After a full day of jury duty, a few moments for dinner and then a trip to West Hollywood for the 7:30 screening — which let out near 10pm — it seemed foolish to jump right in to such a dense piece of work. I shutter at the thought of instant Tweet reactions from Cannes (and the one blogger who surely had little more than one-upmanship in mind when he decided to fill his brain with the film twice in Los Angeles yesterday).

    But I guess the unfortunate fact is, this is a film met with more inflated cinephile anticipation than any in recent memory. So clamoring to express thoughts on it is to be expected. Much of this is owed to Malick’s self-imposed aura of awe, retreating from the press experience in the wake of a tough “Days of Heaven” production over 30 years ago. It is seclusion as understandable as it is not. (I recall a frustrated New Line publicist in 2005: “Even Kubrick did phoners!”)

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  • REVIEW: “The Tree of Life” (***)

    Cannes Film Festival

    Landscape has always been character in the films of Terrence Malick. The even, rolling fields of “Days of Heaven,” the sweatily green hill ladders of “The Thin Red Line,” even the dry-toast mesa of “Badlands”: all expansive, overwhelming environments that dictate the behavior of the films’ human occupants through sheer force of presence, for it’s often all they have to live in and live with. It’s an approach that, across 33 years of widely-spaced work, has drawn as many accusations of vacant pictorialism as it has rapt devotion — without the mystique Malick has accrued through his slow-loris work patterns, it’s difficult to say which camp might have emerged dominant — but it’s made for an oeuvre with a stylistic and textual throughline that belies its scattered production.

    Until, that is, “The Tree of Life,” Malick’s long, long delayed fifth feature that is at once his most interior work and his most grandiosely conceived. A fractured, impressionistic memory album documenting the roots of familial estrangement in a middle-class 1950s household in the director’s hometown of Waco, Texas, it arrives on the screen surrounded by bookends within bookends: scenes depicting the present-day social alienation of the family’s grown eldest son (Sean Penn), bracketed by vastly scaled sequences addressing more generalized concerns of theology, evolution and mortality.

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  • Turning up the Malick

    Monday brings the Cannes reveal of the most anticipated movie of the festival, and for many, of the year: Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life.” Screenings will also be held throughout the day in LA (and, I assume, New York as well).

    We’ll know then whether the film measures up to perhaps the most inflated sense of expectation this side of — hell, I don’t know what film has held this sort of insular captivated pre-release awe, yet remained a bit of an unknown amongst general moviegoers.

    In the meantime, the atmosphere on both coasts is that of the second coming, as a Malick film is clearly an event. He’s a filmmaker entering his fourth decade of work but only has five (highly influential) films to show for himself. Tonight, The Elemental Cinema of Terrence Malick kicks off here in LA at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with a screening of 1973’s “Badlands.” Actors Sissy Spacek and Jim Caviezel, production designer Jack Fisk and costume designer Jacquline West will be on hand at their respective screenings to add to the aura of Malick in Q&As.

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  • CANNES CHECK: ‘The Tree of Life’

    The director: Terrence Malick (USA)

    The talent: Do you need reminding by this point? The Competition’s most high-profile film stars Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and the soon-to-be-ubiquitous Jessica Chastain; the name I’m most pleased to see in the supporting cast, meanwhile, is Irish stalwart Fiona Shaw.

    The technical crew is, obviously, first-class: DP Emmanuel Lubezki, Oscar-nominated for his work on Malick’s “The New World,” returns, as does the director’s career-long production designer Jack Fisk. Also returning from Malick’s last feature: editors Hank Corwin and Mark Yoshikawa (along with three others, including “City of God”‘s Daniel Rezende) and Oscar-nominated costume designer Jacqueline West. New to Team Malick is the industry’s current favorite composer, Alexandre Desplat.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Setting the field

    It’s a strange feeling writing about this kind of thing after last night’s news announcement. But that chapter is finally behind us, so behind us it shall remain.

    This is not an Oscar column (even though it’s labeled as such). This is not a predictions column. This isn’t even really a column. We should all continue steering clear of the “O” word until, at the very soonest, the other side of Cannes, when we could have a couple of contenders to pencil in on the radar.

    Guy will once again be covering the festivities along the Croisette this year. We’ll find out which filmmakers unveiling — from Terrence Malick to Pedro Almodóvar, Lynne Ramsay to Gus Van Sant — have what it takes. And even then, the life of a Cannes title can see ebbs and flows all the way into the season. Look for Guy’s festival coverage, already easing in with daily previews, to take off in earnest next Wednesday.

    In the meantime, I thought I’d go ahead and amass the usual throw-it-all-at-the-wall list of potential contenders for the upcoming awards season. It’s nothing you haven’t already seen or considered, I imagine.

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  • Cannes competition includes Malick, Almodóvar, von Trier

    After weeks of speculation, this year’s Cannes lineup was unveiled in spectacularly long-winded fashion by fest director Thierry Frémaux this morning. (French TV networks clearly got so bored with his sidebar discussions on each title he announced that they helpfully cut to commercial halfway through the press conference.)

    Anyway, the speculation was largely borne out — most of the names you expected to see here are present and correct, including such Cannes regulars as Pedro Almodóvar, Lars von Trier, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and the Dardenne brothers.

    Meanwhile, the question on whether or not Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” would play in competition has been answered in the affirmative. Malick’s inclusion makes this to second Cannes competition slate in a row to feature only one American filmmaker, though it’s something of an upgrade from from last year’s Doug Liman head-scratcher.

    [More thoughts, and the full lineup, after the cut.]

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  • New ‘Tree of Life’ poster, plus Brits to get first dibs?

    UPDATE: According to Anne Thompson, Fox Searchlight have denied reports of the early UK release date. Empire, however, is standing by their story, based on the word of UK distributor Icon. Watch this space.

    EARLIER: I’ll admit that when this Empire scoop first popped up on my Twitter feed, I had to check my diary to make sure I hadn’t slept through to April 1. But there it is. While Terrence Malick’s endlessly awaited “The Tree of Life” will play Cannes in May, as was confirmed last week, the film will not have its world premiere at the festival. That honor apparently falls to the UK, where the film will hit screens on May 4 — one week ahead of Cannes’s opening day, and just over three weeks ahead of its Stateside release.

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  • Shedding more light on ‘Tree of Life’

    Apologies for the radio silence last week — Kris is still enjoying his hiatus, while I had all manner of dull earthbound duties to take care of. As I kept one eye on Twitter and my regular blog roll, however, I didn’t feel I was missing matters of paramount importance: I have nothing to say about the much-vaunted trailer for “Super 8,” though I look forward to the film, and as much as I’d love to be at SXSW right now, little about the Texan fest is crying out for discussion from a distance.

    But one thing I know we’re all hungry for is “The Tree of Life” — and with the Cannes Film Festival now less than two months away, Terrence Malick’s fifth feature is beginning to seem like a real, tangible prospect rather than a rainbow’s-end myth. To fuel the excitement stoked a few months back by the trailer (which I’ve still managed not to see), Russian site Kinopoisk has unearthed over 70 images — many of them set photos rather than stills — for the faithful to pore over. I’ve selected a couple after the cut.

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  • Lubezki opens up on ‘Tree of Life’

    If, as is the accepted (if hardly certain) wisdom, the Academy makes up their debt to Roger Deakins next month, it’s tempting to speculate that 2011 could be the year for another shamefully unrewarded lenser: Emmanuel Lubezki.

    The ace Mexican DP, whom pretty much everyone but a majority of AMPAS voters agrees was robbed of the win for “Children of Men” in 2006, earned a nomination for his first collaboration with Terrence Malick on “The New World” — and expectations are already off the charts for their second teaming. (Do I need to give the title?) But while we know, from our glimpses of the loooong-delayed film thus far, to expect some lush imagery, this LA Times interview with Lubezki suggests they’re not making things easy for themselves.

    It seems Malick and Lubezki dispensed with traditional “coverage” of actors, instead taking a more intuitive approach.

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  • Robert De Niro to head Cannes jury

    Sure, that Cecil B. DeMille Award at the upcoming Golden Globes is nice enough, but this is the greater honour. Robert De Niro has been selected as the president of the competition jury at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in May — the third time this most European of festivals has tapped an American for the job in four years. (Tim Burton did the honors last year, Sean Penn in 2008.)

    For the past two years, the eventual Palme d’Or winner has seemingly, if not necessarily, borne the fingerprints of the jury president. Isabelle Huppert handed the prize to her friend and collaborator Michael Haneke in 2009 (and took a lot less stick for it than Quentin Tarantino did for rewarding his ex at Venice last year).

    Burton’s reign, meanwhile, culminated in the unusual occurrence of a fantasy film (“Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”) taking the gold. De Niro somehow seems likely to wield a less assertive stamp on the proceedings, though you never know until the post-fest gossip starts leaking out.

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  • Bring on spring already

    Okay, I know we’re all jacked up for the next few months of awards-watching, but would anyone mind if we just fast-forwarded straight to May? I’ll miss the Oscars, but frankly, the winter freeze is getting me down, the movies have petered out, and then I read a Cannes-teasing tweet like this from the ever well-informed Cédric Succivalli. Here it is, short and (very) sweet:

    Almodovar, Despentes, Kar Wai, Malick, Ramsay, Sorrentino, von Trier on their way to Cannes ’11.

    Cédric is a reliable source on all matters Croisette-related — so this would appear to cement the LA Times’s report yesterday of a “likely” Cannes debut for “Tree of Life,” though the film’s festival-shadowing US release date of May 27 was already something of a clue. In that LAT piece, meanwhile, Steven Zeitchik writes that Fox Searchlight plan to market Malick’s long-delayed opus as an “event” befitting its summer status.

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  • Affleck on working with Malick

    I’ll be posting an interview with Ben Affleck later this afternoon, but as I transcribed and put the pieces in place, it became clear to me that including much on the new Terrence Malick film would be pushing it length-wise.  I didn’t want to keep it all to myself, however, so I thought I’d share Affleck’s brief thoughts on working with a legend down in Oklahoma:

    All I can say is the guy is definitely really private and I don’t want to betray any of that.  Some people don’t mind but he’s not a guy who likes publicity.  What I will say is that it’s for sure a master class.  I’ve worked with a lot of different directors and have always tried to look for something to learn from everybody.

    You don’t have to look with Terry.  Everything you’re hearing and listening to it feels like, ‘God, I never thought of that’ or ‘I wouldn’t have done that’ or ‘I’ve never seen it that way.’  It’s like the best class you had in college or something, where it’s so wonderful to be there, it feels like you’re opening up your mind to see the world in different ways.  And I’ve probably learned more from him now because I’ve directed two movies and I understand sort of the context, I guess.

    More after the jump.

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  • Malick’s ‘Tree of Life’ gets a release date?

    Oh the drama of Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life.” At some point I just shut down and dutifully conveyed all of the pointless back-and-forth nuggets, because really, this kind of hype and spectatorship is just unhealthy for a film sight-unseen.

    But now you can mark your calendars, because according to a Box Office Mojo scheduling update, Fox Searchlight (which recently acquired the film) will be releasing the film on May 27, 2011.  If you’re keeping score at home, that’s just five days after the 2011 Cannes International Film Festival closes up shop, so I suppose it’s fair to still hold out hope for a bow at that festival.

    However, there is still the scuttlebutt regarding Malick’s history with the Berlinale, so it could pop up there first.  The film was slated by EuropaCorp for a February bow in France, but that seems unlikely to me now.

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  • 10/6 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Making the case for dual ‘Kids’ nods, FX nabs ‘Social’ rights, Stone up for Stacey

    • On the hunt for “Catfish”‘s Angela Wesselman-Pierce. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes write up the beginnings of the season (with a little quotage from yours truly). [New York Times]

    • Scott Feinberg makes the case for both Annette Bening and Julianne Moore getting nominated for “The Kids Are All Right.” [ScottFeinberg.com]

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  • ‘Tree of Life’ not waiting for Cannes?

    When Terrence Malick’s endlessly postponed “The Tree of Life” was finally handed over to Fox Searchlight and ruled a 2011 release, the conversation turned to which festival would get to host the film’s premiere. Many pundits (myself included) assumed that Cannes’s top dog status — in terms of both red-carpet allure and awards heft — would get it the gig, but if this tweet from the ever well-informed Cédric Succivalli is to be believed, we could be seeing it earlier than that.

    Succivalli writes that the film’s French distributor EuropaCorp has confirmed a February 23 release date, obviously ruling out a Cannes appointment three months later. That leaves only two major fests where it could potentially bow: Sundance (an idea Anne Thompson previously floated on Oscar Talk) and Berlin.

    Interestingly, the mid-February Berlinale was the festival of choice for both “The Thin Red Line” (which won the Golden Bear) and “The New World” (which played out of competition), even if neither film actually had its world premiere there. So it wouldn’t be entirely surprising to see “The Tree of Life” extend that relationship.

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  • Malick’s ‘Thin Red Line’ shines on Criterion Blu

    If you’re sitting there right now, reading these words, killing time, nothing much to do this afternoon, do yourself a favor — go out and buy the new Criterion Blu-ray release of Terrence Malick’s “The Thin Red Line.”

    I’ve been delighting in this top 10 all-timer all week, probably my most anticipated home video release since, oh, “Batman” hit VHS during the holidays in 1989?  Naturally, there is no on-screen involvement from Malick, but there is plenty to explore.

    First, let’s start with the film itself.  John Toll’s gorgeous, mesmerizing photography pops with crystal clarity as, finally, his work on the film gets the treatment it deserves.  The sound is also striking (though let me know if I’m the only one who notices it pop in suddenly over the title screen), the mix of elements and Hans Zimmer’s score truly immersive.

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  • Apparition looking to secure ‘Tree of Life’ distribution deal

    Boy, the story on Apparition and Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” just keeps stacking up the drama.  Mike Fleming reports this afternoon the company has obliterated much of its staff because “there were no films to distribute,” and that Bill Pohlad has been showing the film to studios and is looking for a distribution deal for the film.

    What a difference a year makes, huh?  Just 12 months ago it seemed like there might be a bright new day for indie distributors.  Companies like Apparition, Overture Films, Summit Entertainment, etc. were beginning to get a foothold in what was looking more and more like an underdog season.  The Best Picture winner was a film that came and went at the box office.  Now a guy like Peter Weir can’t get arrested and a Malick film is looking for a little help.

    I imagine at this point we’re probably looking at a 2010 release for the film after all.  Someone is bound to take the plunge (since it’s been since way back in August of last year that Apparition acquired the title).  Let’s hope so, anyway, lest we have another situation akin to “The Way Back.” Meanwhile, another home for this kind of cinema is slowly biting the dust (a downward spiral initiated with Bob Berney’s abrupt pre-Cannes departure).

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