• Michael Cieply reports from the “W.E.” press conference in Toronto, where Madonna is doing slightly better than she did over in Venice. [Arts Beat]
• Speaking of Toronto, Tilda Swinton keeps hitting the press rounds at the fest. [Speakeasy]
• Pete Hammond hears that Sony Classics wanted to lay the groundwork for a Michael Fassbender win next year in “Shame” (had they acquired it) by pushing “A Dangerous Method” ahead of it this year. I’m not sure that would have worked out. [Deadline]
• Bill Desowitz calls “The Lion King 3D,” which hits theaters Friday, “a noteworthy achievement for post-converting hand-drawn animation.” Agreed. He also talks to those responsible for it. [Thompson on Hollywood]
• Clooney: Clooney vs. Cooney just hype. [Variety]
• Shailene Woodley, meanwhile, is ready for her close-up in Toronto. [The Guardian]
• S.T. VanAirsdale looks for the upside in Eddie Murphy potentially hosting the Oscars. [Movieline]
• Nicole Sperling writes up Tilda Swinton’s tribute track at Telluride and Toronto. [24 Frames]
• Emma Stone and Viola Davis talk about “The Help”‘s appeal abroad. [The Hollywood Reporter]
Given their dual tributes at Telluride this year, it seems perfectly reasonable to revisit this gem of a scene:
And lest fellow tributee Pierre Étaix feel left out, a nod to his work after the jump.
So here I sit in Telluride, a nice view of the mountainside gondolas out the window, a swift flight and gorgeous shuttle ride later. As always, we were greeted with the festival program upon boarding the charter this morning, which also carried filmmakers Werner Herzog and Alexander Payne, actress Tilda Swinton, etc., their presence at the airport already hinting at what was likely to be inside.
The three most expected films are here: Payne’s “The Descendants,” David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method” and Steve McQueen’s “Shame.” Those will be at the top of my list this weekend. Rodrigo Garcia’s “Albert Nobbs” is, along with Payne’s film, the big first-look get for the festival. Though we’ll get looks at McQueen’s flick ahead of Venice, it appears. Also of interest to me are Cannes carry-overs “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” “Le Havre,” “The Kid with a Bike” and “Footnote.” And on the documentary front, there is Matin Scorsese’s “George Harrison: Living in the Material World” (centered on Beatle George Harrison) and Herzog’s latest, “Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, a Tale of Life.”
As some you will remember, I flipped for Lynne Ramsay’s “We Need To Talk About Kevin” back in May, and the film has yet to work its way out from under my skin. The film is heading into its second festival phase, build on its Cannes buzz at Toronto and perhaps Telluride. (It’s sure to have a high-profile gala spot at the London Film Festival too.) We’re still awaiting the US and UK marketing, but for the impatient, French distributor Diaphana has put out an intelligently cut trailer that does a pretty good job of conveying the stylized, sensually led approach Ramsay has taken to the material — but keeps the lid on Tilda Swinton’s Oscar-ready performance. The poster, however, could use some improvement. Check them out after the jump, via Bleeding Cool. (Thanks to reader Jim T for the tip.)
It’s a funny thing. For 10 days at Cannes, the Croisette hums with stimulating discussion and debate about movies; for the final two, all that chatter dissolves into a single blunt question: “What will win the Palme d’Or?” It’s a little like the Oscars, except without the initial stage of stimulating discussion and debate about movies. Let’s do it.
On the one hand, I kind of want the beautiful, punishing 160-minute anti-procedural epic of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” to win, since there’s £140 waiting for me in London if it does. (Gamble responsibly, kids.) On the other, I can make more convincing cases for a number of titles. Unlike last year, when it was easy to single out “Uncle Boonmee” and “Of Gods and Men” for the top two spots, this year’s lineup has been higher in terms of median quality, as well as more contentious — which allows for a wider range of hypothetical jury-room arguments.
Cannes Film Festival
Lionel Shriver’s 2003 bestseller “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is a rare pop novel indeed: a nippy, low-comfort social essay that lures readers into messily untied arguments on topical subject matter the talk-show circuit would have far less trouble resolving. It might have made for a cluttered, stentorian film about things, particularly as the novel’s candid, epistolary format — a series of unreturned letters from an emotionally paralyzed wife and mother to her absent husband — lends itself to reams of dense, subtext-securing voiceover.
That knowledge makes the already graceful cinematic language of Lynne Ramsay’s film adaptation (the Scottish director’s third feature, and her first in a regrettable period of nine years) all the more remarkable: altering not a jot of narrative detail, Ramsay and co-writer Rory Kinnear have ingeniously hollowed out Shriver’s wordy text into a largely tacit, imagistic memory collage that substitutes sound and vision for dialogue as extensively as possible. The woman who had a similarly unlikely literary hit, Alice Sebold’s “The Lovely Bones,” taken out of her hands by commercially-minded producers has exacted her revenge in the most rewarding of ways.
The director: Lynne Ramsay (United Kingdom)
The talent: Reigning arthouse-crossover queen Tilda Swinton leads the cast of Scottish director Ramsay’s third feature; filling the other two key roles are John C. Reilly, shifting gears from his recent run of comedy roles, and 18 year-old Ezra Miller, an effectively gangly presence in “Afterschool” and “City Island.”
Ramsay adapted Lionel Shriver’s 2003 novel with British actor (and first-time writer) Rory Kinnear, while the film’s long list of producers and executive producers includes Steven Soderbergh and Luc (son of Nicolas) Roeg. Oscar-nominated DP Seamus McGarvey (“Atonement”) is on lensing duty, breaking Ramsay’s early-career partnership with Alwin Kuchler. Most excitingly of all, Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood extends his select but impressive film-scoring CV (“There Will Be Blood,” “Norwegian Wood”).
(Updated Oscar predictions here. They’ll likely be tweaked once more before Tuesday.)
Following the Academy Award season is a little like watching a particularly low-rent TV soap: just as the mindlessness and predictability of the enterprise escalates to a point where quitting seems the only credible option, some or other narrative curveball will lure you back in.
So it was with me this week: after my column last week expressed a weary indifference to the race two weeks ahead of nomination day, along came the Academy to throw me a bone and re-pique my interest.
The bone was, admittedly, a small one — a wishbone, if you will — but it did the job. By shortlisting Greece’s disturbing, tar-black adult fable “Dogtooth” for Best Foreign Language Film, the Academy sent out a reminder to bleary-eyed awards watchers not only that it is still capable of surprising us, but that good films can sometimes endure on their own merits — even if some of them do need an executive committee vote to help them along. (Hey, anyone else starting to think an executive committee for the Best Picture category would be a fine idea?)
• Larry Getlen on Gwyneth Paltrow in “Country Strong” and the “singer-as-Oscar-bait phenomenon.” [New York Post]
• The this year’s Oscar hopefuls who got their starts as child actors. [Variety]
• In celebrating THR’s 80th anniversary, Todd McCarthy picks the 80 greatest Hollywood moments. [Hollywood Reporter]
The fifth column in our new seasonal series — if you haven’t got the drill by now, we’re rounding up the most Oscar-worthy work from the oft-overlooked first half of the year — wraps up the performance categories with by far the most competitive race of all. Conventional wisdom has it that Best Actress is the most crowded field of this year’s awards derby, and as I looked over the January-to-June release schedule, I realized that’s just as true of the early birds.
Where I admit I had embroider a little to make up five-strong fields in one or two other categories, this week’s task found me scratching my head over who to leave out. Many of the year’s most lavishly acclaimed performances jostled for position: Kim Hye-ja may have taken the Los Angeles critics’ honors, but as much as I love the demented commitment of her performance in “Mother,” I was surprised to find myself leaving her on the sidelines. Tilda Swinton is on near-peak form in “I Am Love,” and yet she too finds herself in the honorable mention category.
I was all prepared to court controversy by citing Julianne Moore’s exemplary work in Atom Egoyan’s otherwise negligible “Chloe,” but there just wasn’t room to be that playful; in a regular year, “Father of My Children” star Chiara Caselli would easily have figured in at the halfway mark. Others might make cases for Noomi Rapace or Giovanna Mezzogiorno, and I’m still hamstrung by not having had access to “Everyone Else.” The bottom line is: there was a lot to sift through before arriving at the five names below. May future years also be this good to the ladies.
I wrote at the end of my coverage of the Edinburgh Film Festival, back in June, that this year’s fest had come in for a fair bit of media flak, with many journos complaining (not entirely fairly, I thought) of a tepid film programme and minimal atmosphere. Few were surprised, then, when the fest’s artistic director Hannah McGill resigned from her post shortly afterward; speculation as to who might replace her has been coursing through the UK industry ever since.
As it turns out, the answer is nobody: under a radical new scheme for the festival drawn up by festival patron Tilda Swinton and former EIFF director Mark Cousins–the pair who previously set up their own mobile film festival in the Scottish Highlands– and newly appointed producer James Mullighan, the new-look festival will dispense with an artistic chief (as well as many of its usual parties and awards) and instead have films programmed by multiple guest/celebrity curators.
• Pete Hammond talks “I Am Love” with dark horse Best Actress contender Tilda Swinton. [Deadline]
• How DreamWorks Animation is using social gaming to boost “Megamind.” [Hollywood Reporter]
• Meet the characters of “Morning Glory.” [MakingOf]
• Jeffrey Wells does his part to re-inject Tilda Swinton’s performance in “I Am Love” back into the Oscar conversation. [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• The Academy is ready for its close-up — on Twitter! [Twitter]
• Celebrating 15 years of Fox Searchlight Pictures. [/Film]
There has been some debate this morning in the British corner of the Twitterverse about the merits of The Guardian’s inaugural Film Power 100 list, which claims to represent the 100 industry figures current wielding the most power over, and influence on, UK filmgoers.
It’s an ungainly and frequently baffling collection of names, mashing together actors, directors, moguls and journalists, but as readers pick away at the inclusion of this star over that — and non-Brits scratch their heads and wonder who the hell Claudia Winkleman is — few are arguing with the paper’s #1 choice: the long-dormant but mightily resurrected James Cameron. They explain his selection as follows:
[H]e is almost the entire reason why [3D] is no longer viewed exclusively as a sideshow gimmick … No film-maker has taken a more passionate interest and involvement in cinema technology than this Canadian-born writer-director-producer, who pushed 3D and computer-generated character creation to a point of sophistication that would enable him to make his Pocahontas-goes-science-fiction extravaganza.
A few weeks ago, I commented upon the scarcity of viable awards contenders released in the last six months, coming to the unsurprising conclusion that there hasn’t been much to, well, comment upon. In the past few days, however, Variety’s Tim Gray and EW’s Dave Karger have revisited the subject … and haven’t come up with very much either.
A common emerging sentiment is that, with such a meagre first-half slate, filling 10 slots on a Best Picture ballot could be a challenge for many voters – and could ultimately result in a decidedly weak nominee field, one with more “Blind Sides” than “District 9s.”
Sasha Stone has challenged this by suggesting that, in what she (if not everyone else) believes will be “a great year for film,” the Academy may end up looking to arthouse or non-summer genre fare to fill the gaps – though, to take two of her listed alternatives, it has to be said that while most critics would be down with “Winter’s Bone” making the list, “Shutter Island” would be a much more contentious nominee.
Has any actor in recent years put an Oscar to quite such good use as Tilda Swinton? I admit I wasn’t quite behind her win two years ago for “Michael Clayton,” but I’ve enjoyed watching how, after two decades as a kind of alien fringe goddess, she’s recently morphed into a movie star of sorts — still reassuringly batty in her decisions but now capable of propelling a foreign-language arthouse curio like “I Am Love” to healthy box-office returns in the UK. (The film hits US theaters in June.)
It’s interesting, then, to see an array of lustrous poster designs for the film all playing on the “Tilda Swinton, movie star” meme, placing her front, center and glammed-up to the hilt. Take this unused concept from UK designers All City:
