• Joe Morgenstern writes a love letter to Carey Mulligan. It’s still all happening. [Wall Street Journal]
• Jennifer Lawrence’s buzz wave makes its way across the pond. [The Guardian]
• The foreign film submissions are already off to the races, and now the Netherlands (“Tirza”) declares. [Variety]
In a few hours’ time, a shiny and sensibly priced orange plane will whisk me off to the city of water, romance and the most expensive fleapit hotels this side of, well, anywhere for my second consecutive dive into the Venice Film Festival. Truth be told, I’m not quite ready for it… a surfeit of pre-travel errands has meant I’m still leafing through the fest’s vast 62-page press screening schedule, still trying to cobble out some semblance of an itinerary.
A neat, contained festival preview, therefore, wasn’t really on the cards: I tried to narrow things down to a “10 most anticipated” list, but I’m far too hungry for the entire buffet to limit myself to that.
In its place, then, I offer an indication of what the festival is serving up on a day-by-day basis; not only will you get an idea of when, in the next fortnight, your own horse in this race will come to attention, but you can also see some of the cineaste’s Sophie’s choices that lie ahead of me.
My scribbly Venice calendar after the cut.
I am marveled by the accomplishments of all the crafts artists who elevate our films, but this is particularly the case with respect to music composers. Composing equals genius as far as I am concerned.These musicians join the film at the end, when usually only the director, editor and perhaps the sound mixers are still working. But capturing the mood and feel of a film that has been created in your absence must be extraordinarily difficult.And I do not need to count the ways in which a brilliant score can make a good film truly unforgettable.
The category of Best Original Score is one of the hardest to predict in my opinion, even shortly before the nominations are announced. So what sort of music is rewarded by this branch? Certainly being noticeable in the film helps. Loud music and/or music which plays for lengthy parts of the film with minimal dialogue can do well, too. Being an animated film or a Best Picture contender hardly hurts either.
For years, we could count on John Williams to take a spot among the nominees. But given that Williams is only composing for Steven Spielberg these days, his name has been absent from the nominees for five straight years now. (I suspect we’ll see him finally move past Alfred Newman on the all-time list next year.)
Nevertheless, while the branch is not quite as insular as it was in the earlier part of last decade, it remains a fairly exclusive club. Seldom do composers get first trips to the Kodak – usually only one a year. In fact, of the past 11 years, only three have seen two new nominees, and only one has seen three.
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.
Makeup and hairstyling builds characters by transforming actors with realism or imagination that would otherwise be lacking on the screen. With the announcement that the Best Visual Effects is expanding to include five nominees this year, Best Makeup now remains the sole category to have three nominees, chosen from a “bake-off” of seven finalists which are revealed in advance of the January nominations announcement.
This award tends to cite so many different aspects that it is difficult to pin down exactly what the branch looks for. However, aging and illness are certainly well regarded, as are the creation of blood and injuries, disfigurement and turning actors into monsters and other fantastical beings.
It should be remembered that this category awards both makeup and hairstyling. However, last year’s nomination for “The Young Victoria” is a rare example of where the hairstyling portion of the category apparently played a significant role. Traditionally, facial and body makeup is far more important.
“The Tempest” is a title we’ve been waiting for for some time. It wasn’t ready last year and the back and forth with Miramax raised more questions, but slowly, surely, it’s coming down the pike. We all know Sandy Powell’s costumes will be marvelous. I hear Elliot Goldenthal’s score is remarkable. If nothing else, it’ll surely be another imaginative head trip from director Julie Taymor. The poster has hit, courtesy of Yahoo! Movies. Check it out after the jump.
Costume design in many ways represents much about the Oscars: glitz, glamor, beauty. But obviously threads do much more than make movie stars look attractive. They build character, set mood, define period and serve as a defining design aspect of a film.
Like art direction, the nominees for here overwhelmingly fall into one of two categories: period or fantasy. Indeed, when two contemporary films (“The Queen” and “The Devil Wears Prada”) were nominated in 2006, it was a rare occasion.
It’s not an exact science, but while a fantasy film is almost always nominated every year, there is usually only one as four films tend to be period. It also should be noted that recent winners in the category have all highlighted British or French royalty and high society.
Being a Best Picture contender does not hurt with this branch (same with any), but the branch also does a great deal of thinking for itself. Last year, for instance, both “Bright Star” and “Coco Before Chanel” managed nominations here, the only ones for their respective films. In the last four years, four other films (“Curse of the Golden Flower,” “Marie Antoinette,” “Across the Universe” and “Australia”) have also managed the feat, rare for crafts categories.
Days after naming Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” as the festival’s curtain-raiser, the Venice Film Festival’s have picked another not-entirely-expected title to close the fest on September 11: Julie Taymor’s long-delayed Shakespeare adaptation, “The Tempest.”
The decision to bookend proceedings with highly anticipated U.S. productions suggests the Venice brass are aiming for higher star wattage on the Lido than at last year’s low-key edition, which opened with Giuseppe Tornatore’s misfire “Baaria” and closed with the little-seen Chinese portmanteau pic “Chengdu, I Love You.” More strategically, this choice of closer seems calculated to compel journalists to stay for the full duration of the fest — something of a challenge when Toronto begins but a few days earlier.
I admit I hadn’t counted on seeing Taymor’s film, which stars Helen Mirren as a gender-switched Prospero in the director’s typically loose interpretation of the Shakespeare standard, in the fall festival pack — though distributor Disney (picking up where Miramax left off) had already confirmed a December release date.
As we like to point out in this space each year, the Academy Award for Best Art Direction is presented to two individuals who have different but key roles in designing a film’s sets and props.
The first of these, the production designer, is the director of the film’s art department, responsible for the supervision of those in it and the overall architecture of the film’s design. The set decorator, on the other hand, is responsible for filling up those sets with proper scenery to fully bring them to life. When these individuals, and those who work alongside them in the art department, do their jobs well, we can be fully immersed into the story.
Historically, the nominees in this field fit into one of two categories: historical or fantastical. At least two – usually three or four – of the nominees every year are set in the past. This is not surprising. Being set outside of day-to-day life, such films require a different sort of research and, moreover, draw attention to themselves by not appearing to be what we encounter every day.
At the same time, fantasy titles show up at least once, often more, every year as well. Last year’s winner, “Avatar,” is a good example of this. Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg created a completely different world strictly from imagination.
Hey, remember “The Tempest?” Julie Taymor’s adaptation of the William Shakespeare play — with Helen Mirren stepping into the gender-switching lead of Prospera – seems to have been on deck forever. But while I believe the film truly wasn’t completed until recently, being trapped in the sinking ship that was Miramax surely couldn’t have helped matters.
The film looks to be a below-the-line awards monster waiting to happen, with such esteemed veterans as Stuart Dryburgh, Sandy Powell and the incredibly under-appreciated Mark Friedberg on board. Now it will serve as a fixture in what could be a banner year for Mirren, as the actress has no less than four (and maybe more) films scheduled to hit screens in 2010.
A recent USA Today story is doing its part to stir early populist interest in advance of the December release date. Anthony Breznican sat down with Taymor to get the goods (and the new production still featured here).
• One day after the film’s trailer surfaced, we turned up some fresh plot information about Christopher Nolan’s “Inception.” Fan hysteria ensued.
• Just in case you’d forgotten, “Shutter Island” was booted into 2010. Fan hysteria ensued.
• To a quieter reaction, Julie Taymor’s “The Tempest” joined Scorsese’s film on the sidelines for next year.
• In submitting “The White Ribbon,” Germany gave the foreign-language race its first major official contender.
One of the films I’ve been keeping an eye on as we march up to the awards season is Julie Taymor’s “The Tempest,” a re-imagining of the William Shakespeare yarn with a female lead rather than male. Helen Mirren seemed a great bet in the lead actress race and of course design heads Sandy Powell (costumes) and Mark Friedberg (production design) were going to be in the conversation.
Well that conversation will now shift to 2010, as I just got confirmation the film would not be ready until next year due to the amount of visual effects yet to be included. That effectively leaves Miramax with the already released (and mostly forgotten) “Chéri” for its lone awards hopes. It looks like it’ll be a year away from the fray, since I don’t think Mike Judge’s “Extract” is exactly going to light up the circuit.
This also whittles the lead actress race down even further, while giving Powell the go-ahead for a potential nod for “The Young Victoria,” now that the film has a US distributor. Mirren’s “Love Ranch,” directed by husband Taylor Hackford, could still be a thread if it gets picked up by a distributor. It’s getting to be that time…
I’ll update predictions again on Monday, August 31.
Obviously Hollywood Reporter gossip hound Roger Friedman hasn’t been reading our Contenders section, or else he’d know there are plenty of lead actress hopefuls out there, not the dearth he apparently perceives.
Friedman rattles off 12 contenders in a recent piece titled Shortage of “Best Actresses in the Coming Oscar Season,” but he misses some key possibilities. Abbie Cornish in “Bright Star,” for one, who didn’t necessarily impress me much, but could certainly be in the hunt. “Precious,” meanwhile, is considered a ripe opportunity for supporting contender Mo’Nique, but lead Gabourey Sidibe could certainly find her share of notices.
Gwyneth Paltrow in “Two Lovers” and Zooey Deschanel in “(500) Days of Summer” are two extreme longshot contenders whose films have already been released, but Penelope Cruz deserves to be in the discussion for “Broken Embraces,” surely, as does Tilda Swinton in “Julia.”
Movie stars are often given much attention for the fashion that they sport off-screen. Seldom does the on-screen attire garner as much publicity.
Nevertheless, the Academy Award for Best Costume Design recognizes those talented men and women who design the threads actors wear on screen. Not only does this work add to the elegance and authenticity of the film, but it can also express the character and the period, mood and setting of the piece.
For the last three years, this category has chosen films which have highlighted the extravagant attire of the upper class from centuries ago. Period films almost always triumph in this field and, in fact, garner the vast majority of nominations, though a spot or two is usually reserved every year for a fantasy effort.
This is also a category which tends to reward designers who have been around a long time, with most nominees every year having been in the race before, although a spot or two is almost always reserved for a newcomer as well. And unlike many other crafts categories, the costume branch does not seem averse to nominating a film which scores in few if any other places.
The most likely nominee this year, if not the most likely winner (sight unseen, of course), might be Janet Patterson for “Bright Star.” This Jane Campion effort was very well received at Cannes in May and the crafts look exquisite. Patterson, who landed two of her three previous nominations for Campion collaborations (“The Piano” and “Portrait of a Lady”), looks likely to return to the race after 12 years. I’d be surprised if she failed to be nominated.
Lauded composer Elliot Goldenthal doesn’t deign to work all that much in film these days — the lure of stage and opera work is great, particularly when he gets Pulitzer recognition for it — and when he does, it’s not always in projects worthy of his gifts. (Anyone want to hazard a guess why he scored “S.W.A.T.” in 2003?)
But this year finds him thoroughly immersed in the big screen again, renewing two partnerships that have proved productive in the past. We’ve already heard his work on “Public Enemies” — his first pairing with Michael Mann since “Heat” in 1995 — which was largely muted and effective, with a contemporary acoustic edge that landed on the right side of anachronistic. (I maintain, however, that the use of Diana Krall was a miscalculation.)
But more eyes (or ears, rather) might be on his next collaboration with personal and professional partner Julie Taymor, whose screen interpretation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” is wavering between a 2009 or 2010 release. Anne Thompson profiles the composer and drops some intriguing hints about the latter project:
Goldenthal’s now finalizing the score for Taymor’s demi-musical “The Tempest,” starring Helen Mirren as Prospera and Ben Whishaw as a singing Ariel. The movie uses Shakespeare’s own songs. “It’s a challenge to find something mysterious and not arcane, and not Elizabethan sounding,” he says. “It has to sound like something you’ve never heard or can categorize. I have to compose around the Shakespeare meter.”
Ahh. The dust is settling. And on the horizon, just visible through the mist and waiting to drive us all up the wall once again: the 2009 Oscar season.
I’ve been writing this year-in-advance column for probably six years now, and I always look forward to gazing ahead. No one dives in so pathetically deep this far out as yours truly, but in exchange for not having a life for the past few months, I get to unload this burden the day after our annual season’s peak and forget about little gold men entirely for a few months.
It’s quite liberating.
The most interesting thing about the season to come, from my vantage point, is the lack of a dreaded “frontrunner status” for any of the contenders. Some might say Clint Eastwood’s Nelson Mandela project (which is not called “The Human Factor,” mind you — the director says the film is currently untitled and is based on John Carlin’s book “Playing the Enemy”).
Others might say Rob Marshall’s “Nine” (coming from a money-tight company hoping to avoid echoes of “Memoirs of a Geisha”). But I don’t see a “Geisha” from here, or a “Charlie Wilson’s War,” expected heavies waiting to miss the mark. The field is curiously flat, and as a result, excitingly broad.
Let’s get to it, shall we?