Back in September, at Venice, I found my senses dazzled and my brain nonplussed by Luca Guadagnino’s “I Am Love” — a fulsomely stylized family melodrama showcasing yet more marvelous work from Tilda Swinton (in Italian, to boot) over an otherwise undernourished story and ensemble.
Yesterday, I began my far-fetched wishlist of nominees for tomorrow’s announcement with a look at the technical categories. Today we move into the big races. And as much as I thought I had my favorites clearly mapped out in my head, a rundown of the eligible titles made for some very crowded races indeed.
Once again, I’ve mostly played by the Academy’s own criteria, considering only U.S. releases from 2009 — hence the slight discrepancy with my Top 10 from December. But where certain titles seemingly never made it through the administrative red tape guarding Oscar eligibility, I’ve intervened on their behalf. (Films as good as “Summer Hours” can’t go unmentioned, after all.)
Check out my picks after the cut, and share your own last-minute thoughts and hopes in the comments. My final predictions are coming shortly.
• Donna Freydkin talks to man of the hour, Christoph Waltz. [USA Today]
• Is 27 years without an Oscar too many to deny Meryl Streep in 2010? [Rope of Silicon]
• We’re happy to be among the top 50 “best blogs for moviemakers.” [MovieMaker Magazine]
Yesterday, while talking with one of my sane friends whose thoughts drift to film awards perhaps one day a year, the conversation turned to the BAFTAs, which announce the nominations for their 2009 film awards tomorrow.
“The BAFTAs, they’re like the Oscars for British films, right?” she asked.
“Not quite,” I replied. “They’re open to all films.”
“But the British films always win, right?”
“No, not always.” I stared into my pint. “Well, a lot of the time, yeah.”
“Why not just make them for British films, then?”
“Because they want to be like the Oscars.”
“So why do they keep rewarding the Brits?”
The conversation could have circled this way for some time, but fortunately, it was time for another round – and by the time I returned from the bar, the topic had shifted to Pat Robertson.
My friend’s innocent but pertinent questions only grazed the surface of the peculiar identity crisis suffered by the BAFTA Awards, a longstanding institution, kindly regarded by many, that only joined the pack of Oscar precursors nine years ago. Since they did so, it’s become increasingly difficult to ascertain who they are, what they stand for in awards season.
2005 was the year of Heath Ledger’s beautiful, moving performance in “Brokeback Mountain,” which I saw for the first time in Toronto. It instantly became the talk of the festival, and the film became the one to beat for the Academy Award.
Ledger was astonishing as the taciturn cowboy who is more surprised than anybody when his soulmate turns out to be another cowboy, portrayed superbly by Jake Gyllenhall. If there is a more deeply felt moment in film history than Ledger gently adjusting Gyllenhall’s shirt at the end of the film, his eyes filled with tears, I don’t know what it is. That’s loss, that is absolute heartbreak, that is one of the greatest acting performances of the decade.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman would win the Oscar for his transformation into “Capote” and he’s very good, but just not in the same league as Ledger. I wondered from time to time if “Infamous” had been released earlier if Toby Jones might have won the Oscar instead of Hoffman. Each becomes Capote in a very different manner, and side by side it is difficult to choose the stronger portrayal. Certainly I prefer Hoffman’s as it is darker, and for me more realistic, but there can be no denying Jones.
After premiering two films at September’s Venice fest, perhaps the most surprising thing about Werner Herzog heading the jury at February’s Berlin Film Festival is that he won’t be inflicting another film upon the competition.
I kid, I kid. Herzog, the first German jury president since Roland Emmerich in 2005, is inarguably deserving of the position, and should bring a welcome streak of eccentricity to the jury’s deliberations. The press release declares him “one of the most significant personalities of New German Cinema,” which is risking understatement.
Interestingly, the 67 year-old auteur has only twice competed at the Berlinale himself, with his 1968 debut “Signs of Life” (for which he won a special award) and 1979’s “Nosferatu.”
There’s nothing like an Oscar season to prove what a small number five (or even ten) is.
We may only be in November, but already, months of conversation, covering a broad canvas of Oscar sure-shots and long-shots alike, have devolved into a ruthless mathematical elimination process, as previously five-wide categories fill up with safe bets. Before you know it, scores of previously fancied contenders are jostling for a mere one or two supposedly “free” slots on the ballot, and with each week that passes, the pool of possibles is culled further.
This is, of course, hardest on independent or leftfield contenders. Having fought mightily even to enter the discussion in the first place, they must then rely on a flaky combination of precursors, DVD screeners and prayer to stay afloat.
Miracles do happen, of course, thanks largely to the Academy’s weighted ballot system, where a number-one vote is all. (Nobody was talking about Tommy Lee Jones to take the last Best Actor slot in 2007, but there he was nonetheless. Ditto the recent likes of Michael Shannon, Samantha Morton and “City of God.”)
With that in mind, I’d like to spotlight one contender in each major category that deserves a similarly happy outcome. Many of them are names I’ve championed before. Most of them are sitting on the furthest reaches of the sidelines. All of them deserve better.
For those of you bored of reading the same ever-narrowing list of names in the assorted Oscar-speculation pieces across the web, David Poland’s latest column is a slight breath of fresh air.
Decrying the fact that many pundits are making ludicrous long-shot calls like “This Is It” for Best Picture, while ignoring more deserving contenders who could use the attention, Poland provides a list of less-hyped contenders in the top categories that he feels merit consideration.
His definition of the term “underdog” ranges from genuinely fanciful contenders (Catherine O’Hara and James Gandolfini for “Where the Wild Things Are,” “In the Loop” for Best Picture) to names still very much in the race who have lately lost a bit of steam (Matt Damon, Jeremy Renner and Viggo Mortensen, all in the Best Actor category).
Okay, let me get this out the way: I love Emily Blunt.
On screen and off, she exudes smarts, class and a welcome streak of British eccentricity. Most still remember her principally as the girl who cut through “The Devil Wears Prada” like a hot knife through butter, though it was 2004’s “My Summer of Love” which best showcased her dramatic chops and tart sex appeal. Put simply, she’s got it.
I did not, however, love Emily Blunt in “The Young Victoria.” Usually so alert and thoughtful on camera, the actress is stifled by the bland dramatics and fussy styling of Jean-Marc Vallee’s royal biopic; a practised scene-stealer herself, she gets a taste of her own medicine as Rupert Friend walks off with the film, in an underwritten part to boot.
Meanwhile, the film that was supposed to be her star-making vehicle (and awards breakthrough) instead got shrugged off by critics, as her name tumbled down the Oscar pundits’ lists.
So why has BAFTA’s Los Angeles branch chosen this of all years to hand her the Britannia Award for British Artist of the Year?
• Pete Hammond joins the speculation that yesterday’s Oscarcast producer announcement bodes well for a Jackman repeat. [Notes on a Season]
• Nathaniel Rogers is awed in the presence of Tilda Swinton at the New Yorker Festival. (Where, apparently, “Michael Clayton” was never mentioned. Huh.) [Tribeca Film]
• David Poland brands the Gotham Awards “meaningless” for not trying to predict the Oscars. I despair. [The Hot Blog]
I realized yesterday I hadn’t updated my own Oscar predictions since July, so a spring-clean was in order. I should really wait for the end of Toronto, but I’m off on vacation on Saturday, so there’s no time like the present.
Needless to say, a lot can change in two months — particularly when those two months include the start of the festival season. Back in July, “Shutter Island” was still a fall release, Colin Firth wasn’t even on my radar and I still expected “Up in the Air” to be a minor-key adaptation of a minor-key novel. It was a more innocent time.
As always, if you want sensible, well-reasoned, informed predictions, you’re better off looking to your right.
As we sit in the flurry of festival season, with the even more flurry-ful (sorry, I’m tired) awards season upcoming, everyone’s eyes are pointed forward, as we impatiently await the supposedly Oscar-tailored collection of movies peppered across the next 3 or 4 months.
At this point, it’s easy to forget that the year is actually 12 months long, and that the warmer seasons offer their (admittedly, usually smaller) share of work worthy of celebration.
So I’m grateful to friend, reader and generally superb film writer Nick Davis for assembling this handy (though very idiosyncratic) alterna-Oscar ballot of the best work released in 2009 thus far.
Brace yourselves, folks … here’s something you never saw coming. In this afternoon’s press conference for her new film “I Am Love” (reviewed here), Tilda Swinton stated that one of the films that most inspires her is Nicolas Roeg’s “The Man Who Fell to Earth.” I mean, who saw that one coming?
Is any other actor today building as diverse a filmography as Tilda Swinton? After serving studio time last year in the one-two shot of “Burn After Button,” this year has seen hear frighten off the purple-rinsed Academy crowd that seemingly first noticed her in “Michael Clayton” with a defiant return to arthouse “difficulty” in “Julia” and “The Limits of Control.”
Not content with that, it seems, she now shows off her linguistic skills with the wholly Italian-language lead in Luca Guadagnino’s extravagant family melodrama “I Am Love” — handily announcing herself as the film’s sole raison d’être in the first place. If the subtitles don’t unnerve her newfound mainstream following, the loving close-ups of her nipples just might. Good on her.
Coincidentally enough, it’s been a morning of language-flipping crossover stars, as Charlotte Gainsbourg’s first post-“Antichrist” venture unspooled in the shape of Patrice Chéreau’s Competition entry “Persecution,” a Paris-set romantic drama that soothes the wounds inflicted upon the actress by Lars Von Trier, if not to terribly exciting effect. Short reviews after the jump.
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.”
• With J.J. Abrams’s reboot landing in theaters this weekend, and Emmy talk on the brain, Tom O’Neil asks which versions of the popular series deserved small screen awards attention. [Gold Derby]
• Geoff Boucher, meanwhile, talks to Leonard Nimoy and gets the actor to admit that some “Star Trek” fans can be “scary.” [Hero Complex]
• Sukhdev Sandhu: “Why I love Cannes.” [Daily Telegraph]
• The editing of an NPR review of “Outrage” sparks same. [indieWIRE]
• Neil Gaiman discusses the adaptation of “Coraline” across the pond. [Empire]
• Donna Freydkin talks to actress Tilda Swinton about her role in “Julia.” [USA Today]
• David Poland loses himself in a dazzling 63-second shot from Steven Soderbergh’s 1999 film “The Limey.” [The Hot Blog]
• Similarly, Glenn Kenny gets caught up on a “strangely evocative” frame from Sidney Pollack’s “Three Days of the Condor.” [Some Came Running]
• Stephen Frears talks “Cheri,” which released in the UK over the weekend. (Guy’s review here.) [The Guardian]
Ever come across a match of star, director and project so uncannily perfect it gives you chills just thinking about it? That’s how I’m feeling upon learning (belatedly, I admit) that Tilda Swinton has signed on to star in Lynne Ramsay’s long-delayed adaptation of the Lionel Shriver bestseller “We Need to Talk About Kevin.”
I’m not sure how it took the news so long to reach me (the NYT’s Carpetbagger blog reported this last month), given that “Kevin” has been my most anticipated cinematic endeavour — bar none — for several years now.
There are a number of reasons for this. Shriver’s extraordinary novel (for the uninformed, it’s an epistolary breakdown of the circumstances leading to a high school massacre, as told by the teenage killer’s guilt-ridden mother) hit me like a well-aimed punch in the gut three years ago and resonates with me still. And Ramsay utterly earned my devotion with her first two features, “Ratcatcher” (1999) and “Morvern Callar” (2002): the young Scot could have the most distinctive aesthetic sensibility of any British filmmaker currently working.
Meanwhile, the lead role is as complex and risky a challenge as any actress could hope to take on — a mother bereft of any maternal connection to her offspring from the outset, as candid as she is ultimately self-deluding, she both invites and repels empathy. Few actresses walk the line between fragility and opaqueness as intelligently as Swinton, and fewer still would be brave enough to take on such a defiantly unsympathetic part. This is a casting bullseye.
Perhaps it’s an indication of an unusually low-key festival, or perhaps (more likely) I’ve been too distracted by the steamrolling Oscar season, but either way, I’m a little disturbed that the Berlin Film Festival wrapped up this weekend and I am barely familiar with most of the prizewinning films.
I had heard some positive things about “London River,” a culture-clash drama from “Day of Glory” helmer Rachid Bouchareb, set around the 2005 London bombings, that gathered some buzz for Brenda Blethyn’s performance — but ended up taking Best Actor for Sotigui Kouyate.
And I was aware that “Sweet Rush,” which shared the Alfred Bauer Prize (which rewards “new perspectives,” apparently), is the latest from Andrzej Wajda (though word is it’s not one of his best), while I remember the Best Screenplay winner, Iraq-themed US indie “The Messenger,” gathered some notice at Sundance.
But I must admit that the winner of the Golden Bear, “The Milk of Sorrow,” skipped my radar entirely. The sophomore film from female Peruvian director Claudia Llosa, it’s a solemn-sounding effort about the lifelong trauma inflicted on a child of rape — or, if you want the more sensationalist pitch, a woman with a potato in her nether regions. It seems to have attracted mixed notices — Variety’s review admires from a distance, but Screen International finds it “mannered” and “contrived.”
Of course, one would expect a jury headed by avante-garde arthouse queen Tilda Swinton to favour the international and the eccentric, so none of this is really a surprise — especially given that they’d made clear their intent to reward politically charged work.
In any case, the Golden Bear truly hasn’t been any indicator of international success of late — the last few winners include “U-Carmen eKhayelitsha” (which really deserved a higher profile), “Grbavica,” “Tuya’s Marriage” and “Elite Squad.” I have a feeling Llosa’s film isn’t going to have much more luck crossing over, but we’ll see.
Full list of winners after the cut.