Back-to-back trailers today. A few weeks back we got a look at Peter Weir’s “The Way Back” via the UK trailer. The poster hit recently. Today, Yahoo! Movies has the domestic trailer for the film, which has the proper energy, I think. Check it out by clicking the image below or watch an embed after the jump.
As I said last week (and have said several times before), no category is year-in and-year-out more perplexing than Best Makeup. Each year, this branch finds ways to turn otherwise dubious awards contenders into bona fide Oscar nominees — dubious because often nominees might be abysmal or relatively obscure. The branch seems to have its favorites – like Greg Cannom and Rick Baker – but nevertheless manages to snub them sometimes when they seem sure bets.
The category remains the sole remnant of the bake-off system, where the field is narrowed to seven and the nominees chosen from that collective. Year after year, shocking omissions occur in both rounds.
As I stated last time, despite the general weirdness of this category, we can put some traits as more likely to be embraced than others – aging, prosthetics and illness likely top the list. Also, while the category technically rewards both hairstyling and makeup, it rarely seems to concentrate on the former (“The Young Victoria” last year is a notable exception). So all that having been established, what do I expect to see in contention this year?
The press release, in part:
The Museum of Tolerance has announced its lineup of films for the first Museum of Tolerance International Film Festival (MOTIFF) taking place November 13-18, 2010 in Los Angeles…
The opening night film will be “The Way Back,” directed by six-time Academy Award® nominee Peter Weir. Inspired by Slavomir Rawicz’s acclaimed novel, The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom as well as other real life accounts, “The Way Back” is an epic story of survival, solidarity and indomitable human will chronicling the escape of a small group of multi-national prisoners from a Siberian gulag in 1940 and their remarkable life affirming journey over thousands of miles across five hostile countries.
“We are proud that the Museum of Tolerance International Film Festival will open with ‘The Way Back,’ a timeless story of man’s eternal struggle for freedom,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, Founding Director of the MOTIFF and Founder and Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its acclaimed Museum of Tolerance .
• This week’s Off the Carpet column took a roll call of this year’s Best Actor contenders.
• Meanwhile, we interviewed one of the strongest of those contenders, “127 Hours” star James Franco.
• With “The King’s Speech,” “Another Year” and “Made in Dagenham” all in the hunt, The Long Shot mused on Britain’s back-and-forth relationship with the Oscars.
• In case you’d forgotten what day it is, Chad got into the Halloween spirit by counting down his ten favorite alternative horror movies.
I’ve written plenty about “The Way Back,” Peter Weir’s first film in seven years, here, here and here. And I talked to Weir at length about the project here. So I’m tapped out for now, though I’m eager to hear what others will have to say. The UK trailer dropped a few weeks back giving an overall sense of the scope of the endeavor (I’m told a domestic trailer is on the way), and today, we’ve been given an exclusive first look at the official poster for the film. Have a look at the full image after the jump.
So important but so hard to notice. That’s how I would describe the work of our best film editors – those cutting artists who blend and juxtapose frames together to make films coherent, establish a flow and also set the mood in a manner that suits the screenwriter’s words and the director’s vision.
The Academy Award for Best Film Editing is, more than any other category, very much tied to the Best Picture race. Despite a blip from 2005-2007, this category always has at least three – usually four, sometimes all five – of its nominees also nominated in the big category. Now that there are 10 nominees, however, one cannot help but wonder if we are ever going to again see a nominee here also not cited in Best Picture.
Apart from Best Picture contention, being a war film, action film or musical never hurts here. I must say, however, that since I last previewed this category in August, I continue to believe that the three titles I had leading the way then are still out in front.
I spent some time this morning weeding and updating my current nomination predictions, and had planned to introduce them with today’s Long Shot column. As it turns out, LFF wrap-up business, a pair of catch-up screenings (one of them with a Supporting Actress contender who you may have heard sets the screen ablaze) and a backlog of interview transcription meant the column simply didn’t get written. Tomorrow, with apologies.
In lieu of a column, however, I can at least serve up the predictions — I know how much you folks like to pick at them. Although, by this post-festival stage in the season, certain contenders are beginning to turn concrete, there’s still plenty of room to play with question marks. So once again, don’t take this omission or that against-the-grain inclusion too seriously: when it comes down to it, we’re all just trying things on until the precursors kick in.
Among the notions I’m flirting with in this update is that “Winter’s Bone” could be this year’s critical indie cause in the race, that the Bening-Moore question may be a moot one to voters watching their screeners for the first time and that they may just take a shine to “The Way Back.” Check out my updated predictions here. (Remember they can always be accessed at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar.)
[Photo: Sony Pictures Classics]
I took in a second screening of Peter Weir’s “The Way Back” last night after seeing and loving it at the Telluride Film Festival last month (enough to write about it a second time while I was there, in fact). What was confirmed for me was that the majesty of the film and the overall sense of atmosphere Weir establishes and maintains makes it one of the very best films of the year.
A few other things stuck out, too. I was always taken by Ed Harris’s “Mr. Smith” character and his fatherly relationship with Saoirse Ronan, but it’s a defining arc within the piece that is transcendent and could help make a solid case for Harris in the supporting actor race.
I was also struck by the makeup, which feels authentic and adds a notch of intrigue when this wound or that is revealed. You’ll recall “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” was nominated in the field seven years ago for similar work. Both of these aspects were touched on in the post-screening Q&A with Harris, producer/co-writer Keith Clarke, producer Joni Levin and executive producer (and longtime agent for Weir), John Ptak.
If you read around sites like The Hot Blog or Hollywood Elsewhere, you’re sure to have read some colorful commentary from “LexG.” And if you follow him on Twitter or catch his YouTube videos, you likely know it spills over. Some hate him. I love the guy.
So naturally, “Oscar Chat” caught my eye. I trust even the offended will at least get a chuckle or two. I laughed my ass off:
About a year ago I took to examining the 2009 Best Actor race. The frontrunners for five slots seemed to be, in order, George Clooney, Colin Firth, Jeremy Renner, Morgan Freeman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Viggo Mortensen and Robert De Niro.
A day later press members received their first invites to “Crazy Heart” screenings and were notified that the film would be released in 2009. Jeff Bridges hit the ground running and never let off the gas until he was past the finish line.
A year earlier we were looking at a pair of politico-biopic portrayals, either one of which would make a handsome winner: Frank Langella and Sean Penn. But we were fairly sure the latter would be on his way to the podium one more time.
But soon after, Mickey Rourke’s festival buzz caught serious fire and forged an atmosphere of doubt. The season’s narrative seemed to be changing, and yet the early buzz carried through and brought Penn his Oscar.
So that’s two drastically different directions – in as many years – that a lead actor race can take. Given the mid-October fulcrum shared here, let’s consider our perspective on the Best Actor category right now.
Catch up with the idea behind these weekend posts here.
And speaking of the weekend, thank God it’s here. That’s all I can say. I’m still pushing through Peter Weir’s catalogue. Next up: “Dead Poets Society,” which I probably haven’t watched since I owned the VHS. But more and more, I’m finding that “The Way Back” is more reflective of his early work, and it perhaps has the most in common with “Gallipoli.”
After that I’m thinking about re-visiting Kurosawa’s work. Much of the early stuff I’ve never seen, actually, and it’ll be a nice reprieve from Oscar madness during the season. Boy is that absolutely necessary.
But I also need to hunker down and finish reading Charles Portis’s “True Grit.” I’m hoping to do something special list-wise around the release of the Coens’ new adaptation and as much as I loathe the first film, I never sat down and read the novel until recently. It’s a real charmer and easy to see why the Coens were drawn to it’s no-nonsense prose.
Today we take a look a second look at, well, certainly the most “cinematic” of categories: Best Cinematography. As I like to say, cinema is born out of the camera and those who wield these devices enrich our films more than a few words written here could possibly say. From capturing mood, lighting and atmosphere to telling the story visually and creatively, our cinematographers truly are artists in every sense of the word.
Naturally, “pretty” films, war films and Best Picture nominees all have a knack for doing particularly well in this category.
Now that the trailer for “True Grit” has reached the internet, I surely cannot be the only person asking…is this the film that will finally bring Roger Deakins his Oscar? He has eight nominations (four for Coen brothers films), tragically winning zero times. The photography looks amazing, and the film is exactly the sort that would seem to excel in this category. That the film also looks like a bigger Oscar player across the board (more than I was originally expecting) is merely icing on the cake.
Last week’s query regarding David Fincher’s filmography turned out to slightly favor “Fight Club” over the rest of his work. I’ve been spending the last week or two diving back into Peter Weir’s offerings, especially topical given the recent announcement of “The Way Back” as an official contender in this year’s Oscar race. So it seemed a good time to offer up a new poll on the matter. What’s your favorite film from Weir? Let us know in the left sidebar and feel free to offer up your defense in the comments section below.
A number of people wanted Anne and I to discuss the seemingly thin Best Supporting Actress category on the podcast Friday, but we didn’t get to it. So it seemed an opportune time to dedicate this space to the discussion.
One should keep in mind that the race is still in its early days. This time last year we didn’t even know “Crazy Heart” would be in the mix, and any number of things can change. But while I have been saying for a while now that the supporting actress field is week, it does seem to be taking shape as of late.
There is no hard and fast frontrunner in the field right now. If Lesley Manville’s “Another Year” campaign were to switch gears, that would be a different story, but the only contender that feels right at the moment is Miranda Richardson as the fiery Barbara Castle in the Brit comedy “Made in Dagenham.”
On the next tier, I feel pretty good about Dianne Wiest’s chances in “Rabbit Hole,” where the three-time nominee (and two-time winner) stars as a concerned but affable mother to Nicole Kidman’s grief-stricken housewife. Meanwhile, Helena Bonham Carter could well ride the coattails of “The King’s Speech” to a nomination for the comic relief and emotional support she maintains throughout the film.
• As robust box-office returns for “The Social Network” amplified its Oscar buzz, this week’s Off the Carpet column warned that the awards race is “a marathon, not a sprint.”
• Keeping the conversation on David Fincher, we counted down the greatest technical achievements in his filmmography…
• …and invited you to name your favorite Fincher film in our new poll.
• Oscar-watchers got a new title to play with this week, as it was revealed that Peter Weir’s “The Way Back” will qualify for the 2010 awards after all.
Welcome to Oscar Talk.
In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.
Can you believe it’s already October? Next month every film will have screened and before long we’ll be reporting National Board of Review winners. Contenders are beginning to hit theaters as we move into the fall, so let’s see what’s on the docket today…
The big news earlier this week was the announcement of a one-week qualifying run for Peter Weir’s “The Way Back” (which will be discussed by Anne and I this morning in the podcast). I had my say on the film at Telluride, but today, via The Guardian, we’re treated to the first trailer for the film. It’s cut a bit intensely but you get a decent idea of the scope of the film. Check it out by clicking the image below or watch an embed after the jump.
Good news for Peter Weir fans. I’m hearing a press release announcing that the Aussie director’s first film in seven years will be given a fighting chance in this year’s film awards season is imminent.
The film, of course, is “The Way Back.” Newmarket Films was announced as the distributor on opening day of this year’s Telluride Film Festival (where Weir was in attendance for a tribute and the film saw its world premiere). It was immediately slated for a January 21, 2011 wide release date, but there was no indication that it would have a presence in the Oscar season.
Just last week, Newmarket president and co-founder Chris Ball pulled back from the company to form a new shingle, Wrekin Hill Entertainment, and “The Way Back” was announced as one of the company’s first releases (jointly with Newmarket). And today it looks like the film will be slated for a one-week Oscar qualifying run in December.