In Contention

Tag: The Social Network

  • Fall festivals ready for their close-up

    In the last couple of weeks the major fall film festivals have unveiled aggressively competitive line-ups, and the amount of potential awards product landing at Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York is, as usual, vast.

    There are plenty of overlapping exhibitions but as for firsties, Venice will get dibs on Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” Julie Taymor’s “The Tempest,” Julian Schnabel’s “Miral,” Ben Affleck’s “The Town,” and Richard J. Lewis’s “Barney’s Version” before the films make their way to other fests.  Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere” will be exclusive to the Lido.

    New York, meanwhile, landed a real coup by boasting the world premiere of David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” which will not be at the other fests.

    Toronto is again packed to the gills with product (too much, if you ask me, but it’s a media circus after all).  Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter” will see its first bow there before heading off to New York in October.  Tony Goldwyn’s “Conviction” will also debut, as well as John Madden’s “The Debt,” Rowan Joffe’s “Brighton Rock,” Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” and Nigel Cole’s “Made in Dagenham.” World premieres searching for distributors at the fest include Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator,” John Cameron Mitchell’s “Rabbit Hole” and Dustin Lance Black’s “What’s Wrong with Virginia,” any of which could end up being awards season possibilities.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Film Editing — Volume I

    I still remember when I was 12 and getting into the Oscars for the first time. My Dad said, “How can you tell if the film has good editing?” To a very large extent, I had to concede his point, as the best editing is often that which we don’t explicitly notice. Rather, it simply “becomes” the film as we become immersed in what is on the screen, not remembering that everything was staged from different angles on different days.

    Film Editing brings films to agreeable length, coherent narrative and appropriate pacing so as to engage the audience in accordance with the director’s vision.  The Academy Award for the art form has definitely shown a tendency toward “showy” editing in the past, though.  War films, musicals, action films and movies that are not told linearly all frequent this race. But perhaps the best predictor of the editing nominees is what is occurring in the Best Picture race.   Most of the nominees show up here.  Now that we have ten Best Picture nominees, I would think at least four nominees will also be there.

    All things considered, Lee Smith’s editing of Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” has got to be considered the leader in this race. The film was well received, is a Best Picture favorite, was certainly told in a “unique” manner and Smith was nominated last time he and Nolan worked together. I fully expect him to earn his third nomination this year.

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  • PAGE TO SCREEN: “The Accidental Billionaires” by Ben Mezrich

    (NOTE: This week’s Page to Screen text is the source material for David Fincher’s upcoming film “The Social Network.”)

    If, with its short, sketchy chapters and preponderance of surface-level description, Ben Mezrich’s “The Accidental Billionaires” resembles less a work of literary non-fiction than a treatment for a more substantially developed screenplay, that’s probably precisely what the author intended: after all, the movie rights to Mezrich’s thin, gossipy account of the birth of Facebook were snapped up well before he’d even finished writing it.

    Mezrich has turned this trick before: his 2003 bestseller “Bringing Down the House,” the story of a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students who managed to swindle millions out of top Las Vegas casinos, was recently turned into a reasonably profitable (if rapidly forgotten) film, “21.” Mezrich’s work certainly commands more respect from Hollywood than it does from literary critics.

    A former sci-fi author, Mezrich delights in fudging (and often blatantly fabricating) the facts in his non-fiction work: a disclaimer at the start of “The Accidental Billionaires” acknowledges that numerous “conversations and scenes [have been] recreated and compressed,” verbs that sound decidedly euphemistic by the time the writer is casually describing the interior thoughts of people he admits to never having met. (Mark Zuckerberg, the young Facebook founder at the center of Mezrich’s story, refused any meetings or interviews with the author, giving this already skimpily researched volume a distinctly lopsided perspective.)

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  • Oren Moverman, Kurt Cobain and the biopic

    One of my favorite current film writers, Ryan Gilbey, has an excellent piece in today’s Guardian on the subject of biopics — in particular, on the rise of the postmodern biopic in the face of Hollywood’s increasingly tepid stabs at the form. It’s a good read, but far better is the unabridged version of the article at Gilbey’s own blog, which contains some fascinating nuggets cut by the Guardian subs.

    Among them is this intriguing tidbit on an upcoming Kurt Cobain biopic from writer Oren Moverman. Moverman was, of course, a semi-surprise Oscar nominee earlier this year for his screenplay of “The Messenger,” but more pertinently to the subject at hand, he also co-wrote Todd Haynes’s oblique Bob Dylan study “I’m Not There.”

    Talking to Gilbey after the cut, Moverman explains that his next stab at the life of a rock icon won’t be quite as avant-garde as Haynes’s film (or Gus van Sant’s “Last Days,” for that matter), but he has no intention of ceding to the ‘greatest hits’ biopic structure so favored by Hollywood screenwriters.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: ‘Inception’ to the rule?

    As I look over the last week of activity, believe me, I’m as over-inundated with “Inception” talk as the next guy. But it is the film that captured a collective imagination throughout the country this weekend and, therefore, it has been a mainstay on the front page.

    I purposely held the latest Oscar column until today because I wanted to see how profound its release would truly be. I wanted to know what kind of a mark it would make at the box office, how the masses would react, how the critics would leverage it this way or that. And I haven’t come up with anything more or less definitive, in my mind, than what I’ve already mapped out.

    In the world of Oscar, there might just be three Best Picture nominees already in the marketplace, as Nathaniel Rogers shrewdly noted in a recent column. That’s actually kind of a miracle this early in the season. But it’s also interesting to note that each film — “Toy Story 3,” “The Kids Are All Right” and “Inception” — probably needed the extra five slots to make it in (assuming they all do get in).

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  • ‘The Social Network’ full trailer

    After a pair of nifty teaser trailers for David Fincher’s “The Social Network” hit the net over the last few weeks, as well as a first-dip poster, Yahoo! Movies has debuted the full monty.  It features the same dialogue we’ve already heard but with the actual footage, as well as a haunting cover of Radiohead’s “Creep.”  Check out the trailer by clicking the image below or watch the embed on the jump.

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  • Fincher/Sorkin = Lumet/Chayefsky?

    Steep, STEEP praise for David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin, director and writer of the upcoming “The Social Network.” The praise comes from New York Film Festival director Richard Pena in announcing the film as the opener of this year’s fest.

    From Thompson on Hollywood:

    [The film] powerfully captures the spirit of its time…David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin are a director/writer team, like Lumet and Chayefsky before them, that make this movie not only of the moment, but reflective of larger cultural issues as well, and confirm their position at forefront of contemporary cinema.

    Now, I’m not saying Fincher and Sorkin aren’t worthy of that.  I haven’t seen “The Social Network,” after all.  But I sure wouldn’t want to be in their shoes having to rise to the level of that compliment.  But then again, I consider “Network” to be the best screenplay ever written.  Hey, how about that?  “The Social NETWORK.”

    Anyway, the new trailer, also from Thompson, after the jump.

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  • Andrew Garfield is Spider-Man

    Yes, the franchise reboot — to be helmed by Marc Webb of “(500) Days of Summer” fame — has finally settled on a leading man, and it’s the 26 year-old, red-haired Brit Andrew Garfield.

    I can’t say I saw that coming, but it’s a welcome surprise. I’ve been predicting big things for Garfield for some time: he came fourth on my list of the industry’s best under-30 actors last year. This, however, should accelerate that progress big-time.

    Some of you will know him from “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” or “Lions for Lambs,” but Garfield’s most impressive work so far has come in British TV projects (that were nonetheless released theatrically Stateside) “Boy A” and “Red Riding: 1974.”

    This year should really announce him as a big screen presence, with hefty roles in both “Never Let Me Go” and “The Social Network” waiting in the wings. It’s interesting that the studios have once more opted for actorly credentials over teen-idol status: Tobey Maguire’s CV was similarly high-end (if a little more advanced) when he first donned the suit in 2002.

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  • ‘The Social Network’ trailer

    The teaser for David Fincher’s upcoming “The Social Network” hit the net at Mashable yesterday.  If you’re somehow unaware, it’s a biopic (weird to say that, no?) on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg from a script by Aaron Sorkin, based on Ben Mezrich’s novel “The Accidental Billionaires.”  There is no footage, just a lofty tease that gives the impression the film will be, shall we say, quite sincere.  It’s left to be seen how Columbia flacks and the 42 West component behind producer Scott Rudin (as always) will coalesce during the season, but it’s certainly a sight-unseen favorite for the race.  Check out the trailer by clicking the image below or watch the embed after the jump.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: One for the toys

    Despite a precious few naysayers, Pixar’s “Toy Story 3,” which hit theaters this weekend to an all-time high opening number for the studio, has become an odds-on awards season favorite.  Nominations for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and, of course, Best Animated Feature seem like no-brainers.

    Additionally, though some might make arguments for this indie title or that, I think the threequel is one of only two films to have already hit multiplexes in 2010 that have a water-holding argument for placement in “the 10.”  The other, ironically enough, is fellow animated endeavor “How to Train Your Dragon.” But as we reach the half-way point of the year, “Toy Story 3” has become the first release that could conceivably take the whole enchilada.

    It’s surprising to note that this, one of the most creatively and financially successful franchises in film history, has not one competitive Oscar to its credit.  John Lasseter received Special Achievement honors for the first installment 15 years ago, but that was it.  Something else was worth noting in 1995, however.  The first film was also the one to break a certain barrier of legitimacy for animated features in the Oscar race.

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  • ‘The Social Network’ poster

    David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” from a script by Aaron Sorkin, could be a big contender in this year’s race.  More often than not, Sony seems to chance into an Oscar competition, but this one, from producer Scott Rudin, might tap into something special.  A new website has launched for the film, featuring artwork that is kinda/sorta a poster.  Check out the full image after the jump.

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  • 8/24 Web Round-up

    Carey Mulligan in An Education• Carey Mulligan praises “An Education” writer Nick Hornby for being objective with her character. [New York Magazine]

    • Gene Simmons tapped to vocalize Del Toro’s “Wolf Man.” [Contact Music]

    • Fear not, there’s hope for more “Beavis and Butt-Head” on the horizon. [Collider]

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  • Aaron Sorkin on why he wanted to write ‘The Social Network’