In Contention

Tag: The Dark Knight

  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Sound Mixing — Volume One

    Tech Support at In Contention“Wait a minute, wait a minute.  You ain’t heard nothing yet!”

    Those words from Al Jolson forever changed filmmaking in 1927, ushering in “talkies” and bringing about the beginning of the end of the silent film era.

    The Academy Award for sound mixing recognizes the artists who fashion a film’s audio side.  It must be distinguished from Best Sound Editing, which is the integration of artificially created sound effects into the mix.  Mixing is the blending of those effects, along with dialogue, music and any other noise captured during filming.  The Oscar awards the sound re-recording mixers in this category, who do the blending, as well as the production sound mixer, who captures the sounds on the set.

    Blockbusters, action flicks, war films and musicals usually do particularly well in this category, given the extent to which the sound tends to draw attention to itself in these sorts of films.  It’s somewhat difficult to project the category this far in advance, however, as the sound mixers for many of the films are difficult to pinpoint; mixing is one of the last tasks done on a film.  But that’s not going to stop me from trying to handicap potential contenders!

    Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man” is the sort of film that has virtually everything this branch normally goes for.  The film is filled with action and high-profile sound work.  Plus, it kicked off the summer blockbuster season with not only lots of dough for producers, but also lots of raves from critics.  Veteran Oscar winner Christopher Boyes is in charge of this crew.  I’d say a nomination is quite likely.

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  • 10/1 Oscarweb Round-up

    Danny Glover in Blindness• Kim Voynar joins Movie City News.  here’s hoping she gets paid. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Steven Soderbergh will make a third Che Guevera film if “Che” makes at least $100 million at the box office.  A.K.A., Steven Soderbergh won’t be making a third Che Guevera film. [The Playlist]

    • Blind people protest “Blindness.”  I mean, have they even seen the movie yet? [Associated Press]

    • Speaking of blindness, a ranking of the five most plausible doomsday movies. [Spout Blog]

    • The “Dark Knight” fad continues — Michael Bay will shoot some “Transformers 2” stuff in IMAX technology. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • Patrick Goldstein gets tangled in the Nikki Finke/Harvey Weinstein bullshit that just won’t go away. [The Big Picture]

    • Susan Wloszczyna digs at the heart of Jonathan Demme: what women want. [USA Today]

    • Susan King, with a nice profile of “W.” star Scott Glenn. [Los Angeles Times]

    • The French box office clash of “The Class” and “Faubourg 36.” [The Independent]

    • Kevin Costner on the “Swing Vote” circuit across the pond. [Daily Telegraph]

  • 9/26 Oscarweb Round-up

    John Wayne• David Poland takes stock 22 weeks out, and somehow thinks early buzz on Sean Penn’s “Milk” performance is “soft.” [Movie City News]

    • Warner Bros. sends out a mailer offering Academy members the choice of a Blu-ray “Dark Knight” awards screener.  Wally Pfister’s nomination moves further into place. [The Hollywood Reporter]

    • In a nutshell, “Little Children” author Tom Perrotta wonders whether John Hughes was full of shit. [The Guardian]

    • An A.O. Scott overview of the New York Film Festival. [New York Times]

    • Susan King digs into the legacy of John Wayne. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Alright, this is getting out of hand — and just stupid.  Reporting on an alleged bet on the test screening score of “The Reader” for its release prospects? [The Big Picture]

    • Top 10 tear-jerkers. [Premiere]

  • W. stars in ‘The Dark Bailout’

    This is brilliant:

    (Couresty: Overthinking It)

  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Cinematography — Volume One

    Tech Support at In ContentionToday we begin our in-depth looks at the individual crafts categories.  I’m a sucker for starting with my favorite: Best Cinematography.

    The art of film is reliant on the motion picture camera and those men and women who lend their talents behind the lens.  The Director of Photography is in charge of charge of capturing the director’s vision on film, not only by ensuring mood through lighting, thematic comment through juxtaposition, etc.  This work has to be done in tandem with the director, which makes it not surprising that many cinematographers and directors work together frequently.

    This category tends to award “pretty” films.  Big epics and gorgeous landscapes frequent the nominated five each year, as do war films and anything generally considered a labored task in this department.  That is not to say such efforts have a monopoly on this category –- just that they are especially apt to be nominated.

    Last year it was sad to see Roger Deakins lose for the sixth and seventh times on the same evening. I cannot deny that Robert Elswit -– a longtime favorite of mine –- was an excellent choice for “There Will Be Blood,” but the great Deakins is once again searching for his first statuette!  He will be back in contention this year, lensing Sam Mendes’ “Revolutionary Road.” This film clearly has Oscar in its sights.  While I still remain skeptical on how it will be received overall, Deakins will almost certainly be in contention should the film deliver in the slightest.

    Deakins will also be lensing “Doubt” this year, which also has the potential to be a major awards player.  Though I’m doubtful (no pun intended) about its chances in this category.

    In what would be a historic nomination, Mandy Walker will likely be in contention for Baz Luhrmann’s “Australia.”  She would be the first ever woman nominated in this category.  Yes, that’s right.  No woman has ever been nominated for Best Cinematography in 80 years of Academy history.  Lurhmann’s films are always visually spectacular and this effort in particular fits in perfectly with the sorts of epics usually nominated in this category.

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  • Editing honors for ‘Dark Knight,’ ‘Iron Man’

    One of the more oddly timed awards ceremonies of the year,  the Hollywood Post Alliance Awards revealed their nominees yesterday. (Variety has a report and full list of nominations here.)

    Amid the awards for lesser-recognised arts like colour grading and compositing, I was interested to see that they have a Best Film Editing category. Mashing together work from late 2007 and 2008, the nominees emerged as Lee Smith for “The Dark Knight,” Jay Cassidy for “Into the Wild” and Dan Lebental for “Iron Man.”

    Interesting that Cassidy is the only late-2007 Oscar nominee to reappear here. (For me, the finest editing achievement of last year was “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” but maybe it wasn’t rugged enough for their liking.) I highly doubt we’ll see “Iron Man” in the Oscar lineup in this category, but “The Dark Knight” is looking like a real contender.

  • Gurus back on the scene

    It looks like David Poland beat The Envelope to the punch again this year with his collective of Oscar prognosticators, the Gurus o’ Gold.  I’m back on the team again this year after missing the boat last time around.

    Poland has done away with the Gurus 2.0 experiment, which was an interesting look at what the peripheral awards sites were thinking.  I guess he decided it better to whittle it down to a refined list of guessers, while The Envelope’s thing is having casting a huge net.  There are pros and cons of each approach, but at this point in the year, we’re all guessing anyway.

    I was surprised to see “Slumdog Millionaire” make it into the Best Picture predicted five with so much authority.  And despite my recent change of tack on the major category hopes of “The Dark Knight,” I certainly wasn’t anticipating a tie for #6.

    (The Gurus’ top 10 predicted Best Picture hopefuls with commentary after the jump.)

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  • Heath Ledger’s ‘Dark’ performance inches closer to infamy

    Heath Ledger painting to be displayed in Newcastle, UKSaying that Heath Ledger gave an astonishing performance in “The Dark Knight” is bordering on the cliche these days.  There is little doubt the late actor — whether he had tragically passed in January or not — offered the most memorable portrayal of the year.

    Then today I found this bit of news from across the pound, and the inevitable crystallizes further.  It seems an up-and-coming painter has rendered a large oil painting of the actor’s performance in one of the film’s most electrifying moments, a shot that is steadily becoming the role’s signature image:

    The four foot high oil painting is part of an exhibition of White’s new works, that opens on Friday at the Opus Art gallery in Newcastle.

    Explaining why he decided to paint it, Mr White, 36, said: “I was just putting the finishing touches to my show when I saw Batman.

    “I was totally and utterly blown away. I saw the movie and just came into the studio straight away. I just had to make this image, to the best performance I had ever seen. It was teetering on insanity.”

    I think that says it all.

    The painting will accompany the exhibit to London in October, and man…I wish I was still there to see it.

  • TECH SUPPORT: Pre-Fall Contenders

    Tech Support at In ContentionWhile this week is rightly being most noted by awards-watchers for the Toronto International Film Festival, I’m actually going to go a bit of a different route today. I will be sure to comment on the movers and shakers of TIFF next week as the dust begins to settle, however.

    In a couple of weeks, I’ll start exploring each of the technical categories, one at a time, examining the potential contenders.  But right now, I think it’s a good time to look back on the contenders we’ve already seen.

    Many of the highest profile films of the year could garner nominations in the major categories at the Oscars. Heath Ledger’s classic turn in “The Dark Knight” seems almost certain to score recognition. (In my opinion, the film has much more potential than just Ledger, though that will depend on the reception of films we’ve yet to see.)

    Penelope Cruz’s work  in “Vicky Christina Barcelona” is bound to come into play during the awards season, with writer Woody Allen not too far behind. Films like “Frozen River” and “The Visitor” could wind up in contention for the performances of Melissa Leo and Richard Jenkins.

    Not to mention Andrew Stanton’s beautiful “WALL-E,” which may have had its “summer favorite” buzz stolen by “The Dark Knight,” but that does not take away from the prestige the Pixar name brings. (Though the minimal dialogue may prove a problem in garnering a screenplay nomination.)

    But as I noted in a column here two years ago, the pre-Fall months can be a major source of nominations in the crafts categories.

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  • Each to their own

    As buzz grows about “The Dark Knight” aiming to eclipse “Titanic”‘s box office record, I thought this an opportune moment to point out at least one corner of the world where that’s not going to happen. Us wily Brits, eh?

    UK Box Office

  • How ‘The Dark Knight’ beat ‘Titanic’…and scored big at the Oscars

    Warner Bros. Pictures' The Dark KnightI’ve been beating a loud drum around these parts for some time.  Backed with inarguable examples set by the Academy in the past and the knowledge that Warner Bros. isn’t one of the Oscar-grubbing studios in this town, I’ve maintained that Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” would disappoint the hordes in January when it fails to nab the big nods so many are expecting in the wake of boffo box office and critical success.

    Just yesterday I had a conversation with a publicist involved in some manner.  “So, what do you think of a major Oscar push for ‘The Dark Knight,’” I asked.  “What do you think,” she responded playfully, not offering much to go on.

    Well, here is what Warner Bros. thinks about it, and a clear show of awards-hungry support is all I really needed to jump on board here.

    Does a calculated move like this guarantee placement in major categories for the film?  Absolutely not.  But it does prove that the studio — which certainly doesn’t need the extra revenue that awards success would bring — is willing to play ball in order to ensure more than simple monetary milestones.

    Speaking of which, re-releasing the film into IMAX theaters for an exclusive run in January — “See it again, for the first time!” — could provide the right boost to push the film into truly historic territory.  About 80 million more bucks and this film surpasses “Titanic” after a decade of domestic box office reign from the James Cameron power romance.

    Here is Carl DiOrio’s mouth-watering lede:

    Batman wants an Oscar.

    To be precise, Warner Bros. wants a statuette — or 10 — for “The Dark Knight.” So the studio plans to re-release its blockbuster Batman sequel in January, the height of Academy Awards voting season.

    “It’s just a matter of bringing it back as a reminder for people,” a studio insider explained.

    Read the rest at Reuters.  And more on the chart updates next week.

  • Uhh…did Michael Caine just confirm Depp and Hoffman for the ‘Dark Knight’ sequel?

    I was with [a Warner Bros.] executive and I said, ‘Are we going to make [a sequel to The Dark Knight]?’ They said yeah. I said, ‘How the hell are we going to top Heath? And he says ‘I’ll tell you how you top Heath — Johnny Depp as The Riddler and Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Penguin.’ I said, ‘Shit, they’ve done it again!’ [Laughs]

    (Courtesy: MTV, via /Film)

  • Handicapping the race so far at The Film Experience

    Heath Ledger in The Dark KnightIn the middle of Toronto’s tiny buzz wave, Nathaniel Rogers has come back with a new “Naked Gold Man” Oscar column at The Film Experience.

    I particularly love this aside when charting the acting races:

    Only 19 actors and actress need apply for the 20 spots.  Heath Ledger’s Joker performance in The Dark Knight is still monumentally creepy to think about or be reminded of, isn’t it? Eight weeks of ubiquity, often a great inoculation for hysterically praised work, haven’t managed to dilute its feverish pull. That’s an impressive feat and a performance that once seemed like a worthy “likely contender” is now a “lock”. But we still don’t know what this means for the larger Oscar picture. And it’s all about the larger picture. “Supporting” is where Ledger’s buzz first happened. But many voices are starting to shout for “Lead” status. The Joker’s ghostly presence and penchant for chaos will affect future candidates and the Oscar race… but which one.

    Read the rest here.

  • 9/7 Oscarweb Round-up

    Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight• Peter Sciretta thinks “The Dark Knight” will eventually beat the $600 million “Titanic” domestic take with re-releases in future years.  Fair enough, but the worldwide gross is insurmountable and always will be. [/Film]

    • Tom O’Neil wonders whether Peter O’Toole has an Oscar win in store for his work in “Dean Spanley.” [Gold Derby]

    • Kevin Kelley spends some time with Brad Pitt. [Spout Blog]

    • Kim Voynar calls the newly re-edited version of Fernando Meirelles’s “Blindness” a “vast improvement” over the cut screened at Cannes. [Cinematical]

    • James Rocchi, meanwhile, talks to “Appaloosa” helmer Ed Harris. [Cinematical]

    • David Poland catches up with opinions on a few Toronto films, including “The Secret Life of Bees” from Fox Searchlight. [The Hot Blog]

  • ‘Following’ Chris Nolan at LACMA

    (from left) Christopher Nolan and Kenneth Turan at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Bing TheaterI had not seen Christopher Nolan’s directorial debut “Following” in six or seven years, which made for the perfect excuse to drop 20 bucks on a ticket to tonight’s Slamdance screening and Q&A over at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

    The film holds up as a wonderful, if slightly obscure excerpt from that sensational year of cinema: 1999.  It contains the seeds of a director’s fascination with broken narrative storytelling, borrows humbly from genre particulars already developed by David Mamet and Stephen Frears in years past (while turning them on their heads) and is a modest announcement of a significant new talent.

    Little did we know this unassuming director with a film rejected by Sundance would go on to helm one of the highest-grossing movies in film history.

    It’s a delight to listen to Nolan discuss the particulars of his craft today, with five other films under his belt and a lot of perspective to shine back on his initial cinematic foray.  The narrative with Nolan has become, “He still maintains that independent edge even in blockbuster territory.”  Yes, but it’s deeper, and yet simpler than that.  It would be fairer to say he still maintains an understanding of lean storytelling (for the most part), even in the midst of dramatically ambitious stories.

    “Following” is a case study in that.  And of course, the year-long filming process astounds me to this day, grabbing footage here and there on the weekends, the actors maintaining their appearance long enough to complete the project.  Amazing.

    Nolan spoke an all-too-brief 20 minutes to the LA Times’ Kenneth Turan (who was double-checking his notes constantly) in front of a relatively diverse crowd, bringing in examples from his steadily expanding portfolio to emboss artistic points about his view of the filmmaking process.  With Bat-hysteria flying off the rails this summer, it was a treat to listen in on a developing master’s serene take on the nuts and bolts of his art form.

    And that’s what it’s always about at the end of the day, no?

    Here is a recording of the proceedings.  Nolan is soft spoken, and Turan doesn’t exactly announce his queries with the loudest authority, but you might catch some gems of the conversation if you crank the volume:

    [display_podcast]

  • Missing the point on the Harvey thing

    Cover of Batman #397Much as I love Brad Brevet and the work he does at Rope of Silicon, the point of the Harvey Dent stuff has never been about what’s in the screenplay.

    We’ve talked about this before, but the script shows what an audience sees, not what is. What the audience was meant to see was that the character was toast, but it was a vague send-off.  Which is what has allowed for all the speculation, for Eckhart to say that he’d love to come back for a third film, for Emma Thomas to outright claim that the filmmakers left it open for interpretation, for Eckhart to even have to ASK CHRIS NOLAN THE CHARACTER’S STATUS (which of course led to yesterday’s item).

    So enough of the “How could you not know??” stuff. It’s always been up-in-the-air, if you ask me.

  • Two-Face is dead afterall…

    It’s official…and totally fucking stupid.  Way to go, Nolie.  Way to neuter the second most important Bat-villain there is.

  • OFF THE CARPET: Make way for the little guys…or not

    Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting MarriedIt may be Labor Day, but the work at hand is breathing down our necks. So it is that we come to the first weekly Oscar column of the new awards season.

    Though to be frank with you, I’m beginning to wonder whether we’ll be able to keep the conversation going, much less interesting on a weekly basis as we push through the last four months of the year. I knew going in to this year that it was going to be a somewhat low-key season, and my own worst fears have been founded in a number of pre-Toronto screenings of films that will be discussed in a week’s time, films leaving me cold, irritated or otherwise just unconvinced.

    I don’t sense a lull on the level of 2005 by any means, but I do get the feeling that after two solid years of cinematic goodness, 2008 could just be one of those “rebuilding” years, to steal a sports term and painfully attempt its application here. It’s interesting (and telling) that my two favorite films of the year are a stoner comedy and a superhero adaptation respectively (though the latter obviously has a legion of fans banking on major awards success…more on that later).

    The most intriguing component for me is the playground that Toronto will provide for a bevy of independent and genuinely smaller product. The heavy-hitters (or, at the very least, the presumed heavy-hitters) are incomplete and not prepared for fall fest unveiling (aside from “Frost/Nixon,” which has already been seen and seems to be riding a wave of confidence at Universal).

    But efforts like Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky,” Jonathan Demme’s “Rachel Getting Married,” Vicente Amorim’s “Good,” Guillermo Arriaga’s “The Burning Plain,” Rian Johnson’s “The Brothers Bloom,” Richard Eyre’s “The Other Man,” etc. — true indies with a fighting chance to turn some heads — won’t have to suffer in the shadows of big studio films angling for the press of an Oscar season starting gun.

    Meanwhile, Cannes entries such as Fernando Meirelles’s “Blindness,” Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York,” Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorrah” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” get an uninhibited second chance in front of festival audiences. Ditto Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling,” in the case of the New York fest.

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