In Contention

Tag: The Duchess

  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Art Direction — Volume One

    Tech Support at In ContentionThe Academy Award for Best Art Direction is somewhat of an odd category in that the art director does not actually receive a nomination or statuette.  Rather, the award is given to two individuals with unique roles in the crafting of a film’s sets.  The production designer heads up the entire art department, specifically in charge of set creation and design. The award also recognizes the set decorator, responsible for filling in the sets with details and dressing to bring them to life.

    Much like he costume designers, this branch tends to favor period and fantasy work, surely because such sets naturally draw attention to themselves.  It does tend, however, to be more kind to fantasy than the branch’s costume designing colleagues. It also usually prefers grandiose work and large-scale set pieces.

    Just as I believe is the case in Best Costume Design, Catherine Martin might be leading the way for “Australia” here this year. Martin, who won this category for “Moulin Rouge!” in 2001 and was also nominated for “William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet” five years earlier, will have the opportunity to create the interiors – and exteriors – of a rugged Australian outback filled with hubby Baz Lurhmann’s distinct vision.

    Donald Graham Burt has fashioned numerous contemporary films, or films set in the relatively recent past, in his career to date. With “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” he has the opportunity to visually wow us through eight decades of 20th century. The film, at the least, should be visually spectacular so I suspect Burt is looking extremely good for a nomination.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Costume Design — Volume One

    Tech Support at In ContentionThe Academy Award for Best Costume Design recognizes, shock of shocks, the clothes and accessories worn by actors in a film.  Clothing can add to the story and express the nature and situation of the characters who wear them.

    If a single word could be used to describe this category, it would be “period.”  31 of the 40 nominees here this decade were period pieces.  This is not altogether surprising.  Period clothes automatically draw attention by not being the sort of fashion we see every day on the street and require the costume designer to accurately portray the time in which the film takes place.

    The nominations two years ago “The Queen” and “The Devil Wears Prada” were refreshing in my opinion but extremely rare, being the first contemporary nominees in a dozen years.  Admittedly, fantasy films occasionally find a home here as well.  Seven nominees this decade fit that mold.  But even so, there is usually only one –- and never more than two –- spots available for non-period films in this category.

    This is also an arena that tends to reward many familiar faces.  In a typical year, only one or two of the nominees are first-timers, while many designers are (usually deservedly) seen year after year.  This trend has occasionally resulted in some films one would never expect to find in the awards race landing the label “Oscar nominee.”

    Catherine Martin might be leading the way this year.  She won this category seven years ago, the last time both she –- and her husband/director Baz Lurhmann -– worked.  That film was “Moulin Rouge!” and its design elements were fantastic.  Again doubling as a production designer on “Australia” this year, Martin will fashion the world of a Briton coming to a strange historical land, filled, as always, with Lurhmann’s bordering-on-fantastical elements.  The design opportunities should once again be amazing and I’d be quite surprised if Martin failed to make the cut.

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  • Listen to the scores from ‘Changeling’ and ‘Frost/Nixon’

    Fresh on the heels of Paramount Vantage’s annual Vantage Guilds unveiling, Universal Pictures has launched its For Your Consideration site this season.  The five films featured are “Changeling,” “Flash of Genius,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Mamma Mia!” and “The Tale of Despereaux.”  Currently you can check out portions of the  scores from “Changeling” and “Frost/Nixon.”

    By the way, Vantage has added some more content since we first pointed toward Vantage Guilds on Thursday.  Stills and a screenplay for “Defiance” and “The Duchess,” as well as score samples for the latter to go along with a behind-the-scenes featurette.  Nothing much for “Revolutionary Road” yet, though this pic is new to me:

    Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in Revolutionary Road

    By the way, I’ve been told the poster for “Revolutionary Road” that dropped a few weeks back is indeed a teaser and that a final one-sheet is still to come.  Looking forward to that.

  • Vantage Guilds goes live

    VantageGuilds.comParamount Vantage has proven year in and year out that it has a commitment to all of its Oscar hopefuls, from the most recognizeable of stars to the most obscure craftsmen, via the Vantage Guilds website.  This year’s rendition has finally goes live and it shows a lot of promise.

    At the moment it’s just trailers for the studio’s three contenders (and I bet three is a welcome reduction from the slates of recent years over on Melrose).  Soon enough there will be features on costume design, screenplays uploaded, scores to listen to, etc.

    Check out the early stages here.

  • 9/16 Oscarweb Round-up

    Brad Pitt in Burn After Reading• Sasha Stone rounds up a few of the foreign language film submissions coming in. [Awards Daily]

    • Peter Bart seems to think the Coen brothers’ best opening weekend yet for “Burn After Reading” has more to do with turning “cold” into “hot” than with Brad Pitt extracting laugh after laugh in trailers for the past few months. [Peter Bart]

    • Sony Pictures Classics nabs the Toronto documentary hit “Every Little Step.” [The Hollywood Reporter]

    • Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s “Still Walking” edges out “Goodbye Solo” and “The Wrestler” for the best of Toronto as Eugene Hernandez polls critics and bloggers at the fest. [indieWIRE]

    • Keira Knightley keeps the “Duchess” publicity tour going with a stop under Donna Freydkin’s microscope. [USA Today]

  • 9/15 Oscarweb Round-up

    Keira Knightley in The Duchess• Anne Thompson offers her perspective on Toronto’s winners and losers. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • Nathaniel Rogers digs back into the recent past of the festival’s Audience Award to see what is in store for “Slumdog Millionaire.” [The Film Experience]

    • Has “The Visitor” begun an award-winning streak that will culminate with Oscar recognition?  [Screen Daily]

    • Susan Wloszczyna spends some quality time with “it” boy Mickey Rourke. [USA Today]

    • Keira Knightley talks “The Duchess” and fashion with Mark Ellwood. [New York Daily News]

    • Jenni Miller sits down with “The Brothers Bloom” star Adrien Brody. [Premiere]

    • Michelle Kung gets Ed Harris on the record. [The Wall Street Journal]

    • Spike Lee puts his Clint Eastwood fued to bed…whatever. [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

  • REVIEW: “The Duchess” (**1/2)

    Paramount Vantage\'s The DuchessThere’s a startling scene near the beginning of “The Duchess,” in which the teenaged Georgiana Spencer (Keira Knightley) has intercourse for the first time with her new husband, the much older Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes). Ordered, with dispassionate reserve, to strip naked and lie on the bed, Georgiana trembles with positive terror as her husband enters her with all the wordless efficiency of a man fulfilling a prescribed brief; Knightley’s exquisite face gradually crumbles as it dawns on her that this is how it shall always be.

    It’s a brilliantly unsettling bit of visual storytelling — and it’s all the more memorable in retrospect because nothing else in this lavishly appointed historical biopic comes close to matching its emotional honesty or alluring strangeness.

    I was never bored watching “The Duchess,” but I was never exactly engaged either. The film has the slick, diverting pull of a glossy magazine article, and goes about that deep. Knightley’s Georgiana is sufficiently sympathetic to carry you with her through the various storytelling hoops, but as the credits rolled, I didn’t feel I knew her at all.

    The story of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, is simple enough. Forced at 17 into a loveless marriage to a frigid aristocrat, she has but one duty to fulfill: provide the Duke with a male heir. As she repeatedly fails to deliver on this “promise,” bearing only daughters, her increasingly cruel husband engages in a series of barely-concealed affairs, the last of which culminates in an awkward ménage à trois with Georgiana’s former confidante, the disgraced Bess Foster (Hayley Atwell). Georgiana, meanwhile, falls in ill-fated love with handsome future Prime Minister Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper).

    Even if you don’t know the history, it’s a familiar narrative with a number of clear reference points, both cinematic and historical, from the story of Marie-Antoinette (especially as told in Sofia Coppola’s impressionistic re-imagining) to that of Georgiana’s own great-great-great-great-niece, Princess Diana (the connection to which has been so crassly emphasized in the film’s marketing here in the UK).

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  • Shameless

    Sitting at a bus stop in London’s Shoreditch at 2am, waiting for the ever-elusive night bus home, I had rather a long time to contemplate the new UK poster for “The Duchess,” Paramount Vantage’s Keira Knightley costume flick…

    … and my initial reaction was that, to my surprise, I rather liked it. Clean, stark, beautifully lit (the colours are richer in print), it also squarely emphasises the basic drawcard of what looks (to me) like a rather uninteresting film: a gorgeous woman in nice frocks.

    But then I came to that tagline – “There are three people in her marriage” – and, well, ick.

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  • ‘Duchess’ website has an eye toward the threads

    www.theduchessmovie.comParamount Vantage has always been a safe haven for the crafts cateogries when it comes to the Oscar season.  Each year, the Vantage Guilds website showcases the below-the-line stuff that consistently gets the short end of the coverage stick.  (We harp on this a lot around these parts).

    With that in mind, the studio has launched an official website for Saul Dibb’s upcoming film “The Duchess.”  And as a part of the interactivity, there is a special section spotlighting Michael O’Connor’s costume designs, which could be a formidable contender for the film this year if nothing else.

    There’s also an extremely informative section called “Discover” that could keep you busy for quite a while…if Georgiana Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire does it for you, that is.  There’s tons of stuff about “the Empress of Fashion” and plenty to indicate a strong push for the design aspects of the film.

    The trailer is also included (see below), as well as the usual media bells and whistles.  Give it all a look here.  And I suppose now’s as good a time as any to remind the readership that Gerard Kennedy’s weekly “Tech Support” column will launch on Thursday, September 4.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLRoimyj9BE

  • The Guardian fires the starting gun

    No particularly new insights to be gleaned from this, but when a Limey paper declares awards season to be officially on, you know it’s here.

    Guardian writer Jeremy Kay glosses over the upcoming Venice and Toronto festivals, picking out some awards potential from the lineup. He begins by trumpeting the Best Actor chances of Mickey Rourke, rumoured to give a “standout performance” in Darren Aronofsky’s surprise entry “The Wrestler,” which I discussed yesterday. Elsewhere, however, Kay finds little to chew on in the lean American lineup:

    The Venice lineup of US entries is skimpy this year because the writers strike in the first quarter slowed down production. As a result the studios are holding back some of their big guns until later in the year because otherwise, well, they wouldn’t have much to get excited about come November and December. Mueller and his team previously announced that the Coen brothers’ dark CIA comedy Burn After Reading will open the event and, while an Oscar win for a comedy is about as unlikely as a snowstorm in July, it would take a brave pundit to bet against Joel and Ethan, who won three statuettes for No Country For Old Men back in February.

    Well, it’s a theory. Meanwhile, I’m quite confident to bet against the Coens – the Academy rarely feels obliged to reward newly-crowned directors for their follow-up efforts. (Just ask any number of recent winners: Sam Mendes, Ron Howard, Peter Jackson, Ang Lee… ) And “Burn After Reading” doesn’t exactly look like Oscar fodder. (Of course, neither, in a different way, did “No Country for Old Men.” Who knows what these guys like anymore?)

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  • New Toronto films announced

    Miramax Films\' Happy-Go-LuckyThe press office of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF for future purposes) announced some new titles for the line up at this year’s festival yesterday.

    Two Gala Presentation announcements include “The Secret Life of Bees” with Dakota Fanning, Paul Bettany, Jennifer Hudson and Queen Latifah, and “The Duchess” featuring Keira Knightley in the biographical role of a woman who brought sweeping political change to England with her progressive attitudes.

    In the Special Presentations Program we have “Every Little Step,” looking to be a fascinating documentary about the making of the Broadway sensation “A Chorus Line,” which dominated American Theatre in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was royally screwed up as a film by the vastly over-appreciated Sir Richard Attenborough.

    From the great Wong Kar-Gai comes “Ashes of Time Redux,”  while Mike Leigh brings to us the highly anticiapted “Happy-Go-Lucky”. Guy Ritchie will unveil “RocknRolla” to audiences here with Larry Charles bringing to our fair city his new picture “Religulous”.

    “Ghost Town” sounds promising, as the story follows a man portrayed by Ricky Gervais who dies unexpectedly and is revived with the powert to see ghosts. And as expected, “Waltz with Bashir” will make its North American premiere here at TIFF.