In Contention

Tag: Thomas Haden Church

  • OFF THE CARPET: Strong year for double-dippers

    We find ourselves right in the middle of the big Toronto press junket, er, film festival, where 200-plus films are landing, many of them as world premieres, and the landscape of this year’s Oscar race is really beginning to take shape.

    As I looked out at the various films in play this year, it suddenly occurred to me that, perhaps more than ever, there are a lot of double-dipping actors and actresses in the hunt. Not all of these performances are or will be awards bait necessarily, but there could still be cases for more than a few saddling up to dual nominations this year.

    At the top of that list would have to be Brad Pitt. After already giving what many believed to be his best performance to date in Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” the paparazzi-hounded star found himself the recipient of a lot of great ink for his work in “Moneyball” when it screened in Toronto at the end of the week. Wisely, Fox Searchlight will be planning a supporting actor push for the actor in Malick’s film, which is both practical (given his clear lead in the other film), and organic (given that, at least in my opinion, he is supporting to Hunter McCracken’s lead in “The Tree of Life”).

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  • VENICE: ‘Killer Joe,’ ‘The Exchange,’ ‘4:44: Last Day on Earth’

    With two days to go until wrap-up, and a host of journalists having defected to Toronto, one can feel the air not-so-slowly hissing out of the Venice balloon. And while this certainly has its upsides — it no longer takes half an hour to get an espresso as the festival café, for example — it’s difficult to escape the sense that we’re drinking the dregs of the film programme. (If I had a euro for every time I’ve heard the term “front-loaded” uttered around the Lido…)

    Or perhaps not — the festival didn’t start to a tune of critical consensus, and it’s not ending that way, either. Last night, the last of the heavyweight Euro auteurs in competition, Aleksandr Sokurov, unveiled his take on Goethe’s “Faust” — and while I thought it a mostly agonizing misstep for the Russian formalist (with a bevy of walkouts suggesting others agreed), ecstatic applause all the way through the closing credits didn’t bode well for critical consensus. Sure enough, Sight & Sound’s Kieron Corless tweeted this morning that the film is “flawless,” and online bookies appear to be knocking down its Golden Lion odds. To each his own cinema, and all that — but I’ll happily let others have mine, in this case.

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  • The Great Performances: 2004

    Paul Giamatti in SidewaysIn Alexander Payne’s “Sideways,” Paul Giamatti gave the best performance by an actor in 2004, so said the New York Film Critics Circle, and how right they were.  So why, why, why was the actor denied an Oscar nomination?  Granted, it was a strong year, but his work was at the top of that heap and that snub was one of the biggest shocks of the year.

    Here was a man giving perhaps the finest performance in a comedic film since Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie.” His co-stars go were recognized, save for the equally deserving Sandra Oh, but the leading man, around whose performance the film stands, is snubbed.  All I can remember saying is: “Wow.”

    Certainly Jamie Foxx deserved the attention he received for “Ray” and Leonardo DiCaprio was astonishing in “The Aviator,” even though he drew some criticism for before too youthful in the role. Rubbish, I thought.  He was superb, inhabiting Howard Hughes as he must have been in those days, brash, cocky, wealthy and willing to do anything that interested him.

    Clint Eastwood was terrific in “Million Dollar Baby,” while Jim Carrey gave a wonderful performance in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” — a marvelous piece of acting, in fact.  Equally fine, and dark, was Kevin Bacon as a pedophile struggling to start anew in “The Woodsman,” which was one of the most daring American films in a long time.

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