• According to director Derek Cianfrance, committed actors Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams had “some real things happening” while portraying lovers in “Blue Valentine.” [Hollywood Reporter]
• Nicole LaPorte on Toronto’s Oscar-launching ground and the films that made a splash. [Daily Beast]
• Javier Bardem can’t believe he’s a heartthrob. [Daily Telegraph]
I figure I’ll offer up a chart and a space for you to discuss now that Chad has moved off the box office beat for us. And by the way, I’m just now realizing “Inception” is still in the top 10 (shows how much I pay attention).
(Courtesy: Exhibitor Relations)
Welcome to Oscar Talk.
In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, a one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday (except today) throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change on route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.
Apologies for the tardiness this time around. Anne has been in transit from Toronto and we kept missing our windows, but she’s back home now and we offer a little more for you to chew on this weekend. Let’s see what’s on the docket…
I’m very curious on this one. Every conversation I have, it seems Ben Affleck’s “The Town” is something of a breath of fresh air. It’s nothing approaching revolutionary but it doesn’t need to be. It’s a comfortable, solid, inarguable piece of entertainment that just works and it’s probably one of the few films I’ve seen this year that will get multiple viewings. Guy was a fan out of Venice. The film opens today so tell us what you thought once you give it a look.
• Jacki Weaver talks “Animal Kingdom” downunder. [New Zealand Herald]
• Rowan Joffe on how he conceived “The American” as “an almost parodic contemporary Western.” [Movieline]
• Mark Romanek on music videos vs. movies. [Wall Street Journal]
• Ben Affleck discusses “The Town” across the pond. [Daily Telegraph]
• The Best Picture race begins to take shape for Sasha Stone. [Awards Daily]
• Michael Cieply talks to Kevin Spacey about his work as “Casino Jack” and his involvement with “The Social Network.” [New York Times]
Venice Film Festival
Many actors-turned-directors use their outings behind the camera to express something of themselves that they feel hasn’t been enabled by the filmmakers they’ve worked with thus far: personal passions or preoccupations, social or political responsibilities, alternative thespian workout plans or simply a craven desire for awards they haven’t been able to win on their day job.
Ben Affleck, however, is not drawn by any of these urges. Ben Affleck just wants to make movies. And with his sophomore feature “The Town” – a crisp, grown-up, tangily written thriller one might call “conventional” if studio entertainments this efficient weren’t so hard to come by these days – he further proves that he can make very good ones indeed.
Affleck’s directorial debut “Gone Baby Gone,” a solid Dennis Lehane adaptation with a fluffed denouement, arguably received a mite more praise than it warranted due to general surprise at the sheer professionalism on display. “The Town” is a more followed-through genre effort with fewer artsy flourishes, but is perhaps destined to be underrated instead by critics expecting Affleck to develop more of an auteur’s ambition.
Without question, the film launching full speed ahead and into the Oscar season this week is Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech.” I truly haven’t heard an unkind word about the film all weekend here in Telluride, and I imagine that goodwill will continue into the Toronto fest this week as well.
I can easily see nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay and Best Art Direction. Nods for the cinematography and costumes wouldn’t be all that shocking, either, so I’d say nine is the ceiling. And I imagine we may see a win or two, as well.
Let’s face it. As overdue as Jeff Bridges was last year, there are many who think Colin Firth was robbed for his work in “A Single Man.” It could conceivably be makeup time when the Oscars roll around in February. My interview with Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Tom Hooper was interrupted Friday by a woman who wanted to let Firth know she thought he was robbed. How deep does that sentiment go with voters?
I imagine The Weinstein Company is breathing a sigh of relief with the favorable reaction, as “Miral” was met with blanket disapproval in Venice (here is Guy’s review). The studio has a few other tricks up its sleeve, but none so critical as Hooper’s film.
• 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]
• Michael Cieply chats with comeback kid Ben Affleck, whose film “The Town” is set to play Venice this week. [New York Times]
• Remember when “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” won the Palme d’Or? Parisian critics would rather not. [The Guardian]
• Catching up with Julian Schnabel, re: “Miral,” prior to Venice. [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.
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.
Ben Affleck’s “The Town” may or may not be an awards play for Warner Bros. “Gone Baby Gone” was seen as an exceptional debut and I hear this one is as solid an outing (watch the trailer here), but the priority, as always, will be business. That said, the recently released one-sheet, save for the boxed-in heads at the bottom, is kind of awesome in an irreverent kind of way. Check it out in full, courtesy of iTunes, after the jump.
Toronto International Film Festival organisers unveiled a typically cluttered lineup of galas and premieres for this year’s edition — including, as usual, a number of films pencilled in as 2010 awards contenders.
Of the 50 titles announced thus far, half will be world premieres: those include such highly anticipated works as Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go,” John Cameron Mitchell’s “Rabbit Hole,” Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator,” Tony Goldwyn’s “Conviction” and Rowan Joffe’s “Brighton Rock.” The remaining half have either appeared at previous festivals — with a hefty contingent from Cannes, including Mike Leigh’s “Another Year,” Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful” and Woody Allen’s “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” — or look set to make their debut at Venice the week before.
With Venice due to reveal its own lineup tomorrow, the fact that such still-unseen titles as Ben Affleck’s “The Town,” Francois Ozon’s “Potiche,” Julian Schnabel’s “Miral,” John Madden’s “The Debt” and Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” are all marked only as North American premieres would appear to confirm that they are all Lido-bound. (I’m surprised, however, that Guillaume Canet’s “Little White Lies” will be making its first appearance at Toronto rather than at a European festival.)
After Ben Affleck’s directorial debut “Gone Baby Gone,” his latest, “The Town,” doesn’t seem like much of a stretch creatively. But nevertheless, this looks like it could be a nice late-summer pulse-pounder (along with Anton Corbijn’s “The American”) to clear the palette before the sincere awards fare hits in the fall. Or maybe Warner Bros. has some Oscar hopes lurking with a performance or two? Probably not, but Affleck will also be visible in the Weinsteins’ “The Company Men,” so he’s doubling down. Check out the trailer for “The Town” at iTunes by clicking the image below, or watch the embed after the jump. (Jeez, lots of trailers lately.)
