In Contention

Tag: Tony Manero

  • VENICE: ‘Post Mortem,’ ‘Essential Killing,’ ‘Promises Written in Water’

    One week into the Venice Film Festival, and I don’t mind admitting that I’m feeling a little worse for wear. (Okay, and more than a little hung over on free Prosecco.) Yesterday didn’t exactly soothe matters, serving up as it did two of the festival’s most mortifying Competition films – one of which, Alex de la Iglesia’s abominable psycho-clown melodrama “A Sad Trumpet Ballad,” I haven’t the fortitude to write about right now – and yet more wi-fi trouble in the press room, which explains yesterday’s meagre showing on my end.

    With two-thirds of the festival’s Competition lineup now unwrapped – including the surprise film, which rather anti-climactically turned out to be Wang Bing’s reportedly very nutritious “The Ditch” – some clear critical favorites have emerged.

    It is, of course, anyone’s guess what jury president Quentin Tarantino might take a shine to, but it’d be a surprise if Russian entry “Silent Souls” came away from the Lido empty-handed. Meanwhile, lingering high regard for “Black Swan” and “Meek’s Cutoff,” whether they win awards or not, points to something of a recovery for the stars and stripes after the embarrassment that was this year’s Cannes showing.

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  • 7/6 Web Round-up

    Daniel Radcliffe in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince• Ahead of the latest Harry Potter instalment, a profile of no-longer-boy wonder Daniel Radcliffe. [The Guardian]

    • Ever a must-read, Nick Davis continues reviewing the decade, taking on “American Psycho.” [Nick’s Flick Picks]

    • Dredging up the Marion Cotillard 9/11 “controversy” … again? Jeez. [Times of London]

    • Nathaniel Rogers tweaks his Oscar predictions, elevating “The Lovely Bones” to pole position. [The Film Experience]

    • A Brit offers his perspective on the ten-wide Best Picture field … and remains on the fence. [ScreenDaily]

    • List of the day: the top 10 “apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic” movies. [Rope of Silicon]

    • Jim Fusilli chats with “Public Enemies” composer Elliot Goldenthal. [Wall Street Journal]

    • Andrew O’Hehir catches up with the wonderful oddity “Tony Manero,” which is gradually making its way across the the U.S. [Salon]

  • Foreign film shortlist to drop soon

    Waltz with BashirI believe the 9-title shortlist for Best Foreign Language Film is due today, but details on the announcement are oddly hard to come by, so I could be wrong.

    In any case, it’s one I’m having a tough time calling. The new voting system should ensure that some of the year’s most acclaimed contenders are spared the indignity of being left off the shortlist (as happened, notoriously, to “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” and “Persepolis” last year), so it’s difficult to see favorites “Waltz With Bashir” (fresh from its Globe win) and “Gomorrah” missing the cut. 

    I’d like to say that the best film of 2008, “The Class,” is similarly assured a spot, but it’s a risky, tough-minded docudrama, and I’m not sure how the committee (even the executive panel created to keep things in check) will respond to it — especially with “Gomorrah” and “Bashir” also occupying contemporary, genre-spanning territory. Fingers crossed. 

    Beyond that, my predictions get shaky. I think my projected list is a little heavy on European entries, but it’s hard to predict which one/s will miss. The Academy invariably throws a few less-heralded curveballs into the mix, but with 67 entries to choose from (and many of them fairly unknown quantities), it’s anyone’s guess which obscurities have caught the committee’s eye.

    (More thoughts, and my predicted shortlist, below the cut.)

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  • 12/24 Oscarweb Round-up

    Dev Patel in Slumdog Millionaire• “The Headless Woman,” “Night and Day” and “Tony Manero” head up a list of the year’s best undistributed titles. [indieWIRE]

    • Speaking of lists, here’s one of cult and campy holiday flicks. [Cinematical]

    • Josh Horowitz goes toe-to-toe with David Fincher. [MTV]

    • Slow down, Hoss.  Lou Lumenick thinks Dev Patel is going to beat Heath Ledger to the Oscar punch?  Anything for the clicks I gues. [Lumenick on Film]

    • David Edelstein considers nine Oscar contenders, from “Revolutionary Road” to, uh, “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” [New York Magazine]

    • Dustin Hoffman storms out of an interview with Dave Karger…all in good fun. [Entertainment Weekly]

    • Rachel Abramowitz spends some time with the actor as well…my own interview should be on the way soon enough, by the way.  It’s been ages since we sat down together. [Los Angeles Times]

  • Best Foreign Language Film: an alternative ballot

    Last month, I played devil’s advocate a little with the Best Documentary Feature category, suggesting five less-discussed titles from the shortlist of contenders as a potential counter to the dizzying advance of the clear frontrunner, “Man on Wire” — not as a slight on the film, which is terrific, but in the interests of diversity.

    Now, as we near the end of a busy first phase of precursors, I feel the need to make a similar effort in the Best Foreign Language Film category. It’s not that the names being mentioned as frontrunners for the Oscar aren’t worthy — oft-mentioned titles like “Gomorrah,” “The Class” and “Waltz With Bashir” are more than credible contenders, with the former two among my favourite films of the year. (More on that in a couple of days.) But we all know the Academy can frequently choose to ignore the obvious in this category — and with that in mind, I’d like to point out a few interesting directions in which they can go.

    The critics certainly aren’t helping them out, after all. Excellent film that it is, “Let the Right One In” has stomped all over the precursors almost as comprehensively as “Man on Wire” has: a consensus that strikes me as both surprising and a little disappointing, given what a rich and varied year it’s been for non-American cinema. Share the wealth a little, guys. However, the fact that the Swedish vampire film is ineligible for the Oscar means the Academy’s foreign-language committee is being given very few pointers at this stage.

    So, in the interests of rectifying that, I offer an alternative ballot: four under-the-radar titles from the 67-strong shortlist of foreign-language contenders that the voters would do well to consider. There are no doubt more — I’m drawing from the pool of contenders that I’ve actually seen — but any one of these would be a most worthy, and welcome, surprise:

    “TONY MANERO” (Chile): Pablo Larrain’s wicked little festival favourite first caught my eye at the London fest in October, and has crawled progressively deeper under my skin ever since. A tightly conceived and wholly unique hybrid of black comedy, serial-killer thriller and socio-political study, it takes its title from the character played by John Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever,” a figure worshipped to a disturbing degree by the film’s own protagonist, Raul, a socially inept lowlife eking out a bleak existence in 1978 Santiago, Chile.

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  • 12/2 Oscarweb Round-up

    Baz Luhrmann• Kim Voynar wants to know where the love is for foreign contender “Tony Manero.” [Film Essent]

    • Peter Knegt and Eugene Hernandez go back and forth on the upcoming Gotham awards, among other things. [indieWIRE]

    • Jeff Wells keeps banging the drum for Richard Jenkins in a cone of silence. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Oh yeah…the Indy Spirit nods are in.  Zzzzz… [indieWIRE]

    • David Poland responds to the list. [The Hot Blog]

    • And sings his disapproval of “Gran Torino.” [The Hot Blog]

    • Tom O’Neil talks to Baz Luhrmann in the Big Apple. [Gold Derby]

    • Anne Thompson rounds up the late arrivals to the Oscar party. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • Peter Bart finds “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” both riveting and off-putting, wonders if “Slumdog Millionaire” lucked into the poll position with the Mumbai tragedy.  Basically, he’s catching up with the rest of us. [Peter Bart]

    • David Poland runs down the fate of the frontrunner, a traditional Oscar season fall from grace. [Movie City News]

  • LONDON: ‘Tony Manero,’ ‘The Other Man,’ ‘Awaydays,’ ‘Seamstresses’

    Before I continue my roundup of films from the last few days of the London Film Festival, I received an email asking why I haven’t mentioned such major festival titles as “Rachel Getting Married” and “Religulous.”

    There is little point in me reviewing titles that have already opened in the States (and which Kris has already discussed, in my opinion rather accurately), with so much coverage already available. But to deal briefly with three such films, I enjoyed “Rachel Getting Married” (***) for Jonathan Demme’s loose, funky aesthetic, but found the script disappointingly glib beneath the flashy surface wit. “Religulous” (**1/2) is entertaining but not as penetrating as it imagines itself, with Bill Maher claiming to stand for doubt, but showing precious little thereof in his one-sided argument. Meanwhile, the less said (from me, at least) about the fatuous trifle that is “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” (**), the better. Moving on:

    TONY MANERO (***)

    Chile’s official Academy Awards submission is a stark, studied and ultimately rather unsettling black comedy that provides a particularly bleak spin on the familiar character of the fame-crazed non-talent. Set in the late 70’s, against the ominous (and fascinating) political backdrop of the Pinochet dictatorship, the film centres on Raul (Alfredo Castro), a dour, dysfunctional middle-aged man whose chief pleasure in life is regular viewings of “Saturday Night Fever” at the local cinema.

    Obsessed with the John Travolta character for whom the film is named, Raul begins modelling himself on Manero, going so far as to enter a Manero lookalike contest on national TV, and leading a shabby dance troupe in meticulous pastiches of “Fever” dance numbers at a local bar. However, the startling lack of moral boundaries Raul shows in his quest to inhabit Manero leads him into a spiral of theft, lies and murder.

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