• Anne Thompson ponders how the year’s mainstream studio pics might fare with Oscar. [Thompson on Hollywood]
• Patrick Goldstein catches up with Tom Hooper and the director’s Hollywood education. [The Big Picture]
• Steve Pond dutifully reports from a “Biutiful” post-screening Q&A with members of the crew. [The Odds]
• Sasha Stone on the season’s screenwriting contenders. [Awards Daily]
• “The King’s Speech” director Tom Hooper also hates the poster everyone has been knocking. [Movieline]
• David Poland split screens “The Social Network” star Armie Hammer. [The Hot Blog]
Unlike, say, the Venice fest – where the jury’s failure to reward any of the (lousy) Italian films in competition is cause for a media strop — the London Film Festival has often seemed somewhat embarrassed by the homegrown portion of its programme, perhaps granting a big red-carpet date to the odd bit of tony Oscar bait while shoving newer and/or independent British filmmakers into shadowy side slots.
This year, however, the festival appears to be wearing its flag quite contentedly. This week’s lavish gala screenings have included such big-draw Britpics as “Another Year” and “The King’s Speech” – but rather less predictably, Peter Mullan’s hard bit of Scottish urban realism “Neds” was afforded similar treatment, while tonight’s hot ticket is local TV comedian Richard Ayoade’s Toronto-acclaimed (and Weinstein-acquired) debut “Submarine.” With Joanna Hogg’s bare-bones sophomore feature “Archipelago” also premiering tonight – and unexpectedly shortlisted for the fest’s Best Film award – programmers seem bent on drawing attention to the multitude of approaches in contemporary UK cinema.
If you’ve been keeping up with the Telluride coverage then you know my thoughts on the 10 films I was able to catch over that four-day spread. So I’m not going to bore you with a tedious recap here. Instead, now that I’m back and relaxed in LA, not looking at the clock and rushing to make this or that event, I think I’ll just take a moment to reflect in general.
On the way to yesterday afternoon’s Labor Day picnic, as I crossed over the San Miguel River on a quaint wooden bridge, I was struck with the disappointment that has been rotting at the back of my mind during the entire festival: God I wish I could take the time to smell the roses there.
Telluride is a beautiful place to launch a film festival and its tranquility is reflected in festival-goers’ sensibilities. There aren’t mobs of people out to see stars. There aren’t flashbulbs popping off around every other corner. Everyone is very much here for the movies and the chance to discover something new. I don’t think it has been tainted, or at the very least, programmers and directors have gone a long way to keep that face out in front.
Telluride Film Festival
For actor Geoffrey Rush and director Tom Hooper, David Seidler’s script “The King’s Speech” came to them by serendipity. Still in stage play format, it arrived at Rush’s Melbourne residence with a note apologizing for a cold call avoiding the traditional agency pipeline. For Hooper, it came to him because his mother happened to be Australian.
“My mom was invited by some Australian friends to a fringe theater play reading of this unproduced play, having never been to a play reading in her life,” the director says, tucked into a booth with Firth and Rush at Telluride’s Rustico restaurant. “They were like, ‘We need some Aussies in the audience, would you come along?’ She called me up and said, ‘I think I may have just seen your next film.’ She sent it to me and it sat on my desk. Two or three months went by and I read it in one sitting. I rang her up and said, ‘You’re absolutely right.’”
Rush politely declined the offer to star in a play that was “trying to be ‘Henry V,’” but noted that the central idea of Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue assisting King George V with his stammer could make for quite the film. His copy of the script, by the way, was accompanied by a DVD of the very reading Hooper’s mother attended.
The second day of Telluride has brought treat after treat. I decided early this morning to skip the world premiere of Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours” in favor of Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” because I could slide two films in rather than the one. Peter Weir’s latest, “The Way Back” (which didn’t generate many reviews at all from last night’s premiere — most must have been at “Never Let Me Go”) was playing shortly after.
It couldn’t have been a better decision. I was treated to both the film of the festival so far and a profoundly moving work of art from a modern master.
Let’s dive in…
“The Way Back” (****)
Peter Weir has made a career out of visual feasts with thematic resilience. Some might consider him the David Lean of our time, and with good reason. But the key difference is that Weir has slowly developed an art house niche out of epic scale filmmaking.
In a recent interview, Michael Sheen bristles at being labelled an impressionist. Understandably so — he’s a fine actor. However, the answer may be to stop doing quite so many biopics of figures from recent British history: so far, we’ve had Tony Blair (twice), David Frost, Kenneth Williams and now Brian Clough, the controversial British football manager whose brief, ill-fated attempt at heading up Leeds United in 1974 is the subject of “The Damned United,” which drops in the UK on March 27.
Originally developed with Stephen Frears but now helmed by TV journeyman Tom Hooper (“John Adams”), the film also represents yet another dip into fact-oriented waters for writer Peter Morgan — another talented man who I’d like to see try his hand at something different. The trailer below looks jaunty and entertaining enough (though I don’t see the heavily football-steeped story resonating much across the pond), but am I the only one feeling a bit of déjà vu?