In Contention

Tag: Up in the Air

  • 10 most anticipated films of the season

    No fanfare.  A legitimate installment of The Lists on another topic will drop from Chad later today, but here’s what has me stoked:

    1. “Up in the Air” (Paramount Pictures)
    2. “Avatar” (20th Century Fox)
    3. “The Tree of Life” (Apparition)
    4. “Where the Wild Things Are” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
    5. “A Christmas Carol” (Walt Disney Pictures)
    6. “Invictus” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
    7. “Capitalism: A Love Story” (Overture Films)
    8. “2012    ” (Sony Pictures) –> guilty
    9. “Precious” (Lionsgate)
    10. “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” (Sony Pictures Classics)

    You?

  • 9/1 Web Round-up

    Jason Reitman• The most complete blow-by-blow explanation of the Academy’s new rule change your likely to get.  Still — the nominee thing… [Film School Rejects]

    • Ever the professional, Nikki Finke is just pissed no one told her first. [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

    • Anthony Breznican sits down with “Up in the Air” director Jason Retiman for a little pre-Toronto back and forth. [USA Today]

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Take a deep breath…

    George Clooney in Up in the AirThe calm before the storm is beginning to subside.  Can you sense it?

    By the end of the week, the Venice and Telluride fests will be underway.  A week later, Toronto will weigh in.  When the smoke settles in roughly three weeks, the season will suddenly be a lot clearer…and yet so much of it will remain a mystery as latter year hopefuls limp (or stomp) into the fray in November and December.

    Yes, the season is upon us.  And while studios continue to think over the true value of Oscar notices, especially in a widened playing field, business marches on as usual.  Venice will tell the tale for efforts like “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” “The Informant!,” and “Capitalism: A Love Story,” while Telluride could make or break the hopes of films such as “The Road” and “Up in the Air.”

    Some overlap will go down in Toronto, but the most anticipated first-look there will likely be the Coen brothers’ “A Serious Man.”  Meanwhile, distributors might be looking to beef up their schedules with films like “Creation” and “Leaves of Grass” looking for buyers.  But for those with ponies primed and ready, these festivals are very much the starting gun for awards runs, as ever.

    So before the madness ensues, we get one more stab in the dark.  But given the perceived road ahead, it seems to me that films with a healthy pre-season awards profile going into the fall are in pretty good shape as it is.

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  • How ‘Up in the Air’ factored in the ‘Shutter’ bump

    George Clooney in Up in the AirVariety’s Pamela McClintock was written a detailed piece examining the financial ins and outs of the recent postponing of “Shutter Island,” coming to the conclusion — as did Kris following the announcement — that the move is purely a practical one on the part of Paramount chief Brad Grey. Quite simply, she explains, the film stands to make more of a profit in February, free from the expense of awards-season marketing.

    But while everyone has picked up on how the move potentially improves the fortunes of Paramount awards hopeful “The Lovely Bones,” McClintock suggests that it is Jason Reitman’s increasingly buzzy “Up in the Air” that is a more significant factor in this conversation. In picking Reitman’s far smaller film over Scorsese’s as a 2009 Oscar pony, the studio has pragmatically opted for the title that is cheaper to market — and to campaign:

    Unofficially, Par has decided to throw its support behind George Clooney dark comedy and awards hopeful “Up in the Air,” directed by Jason Reitman. That film isn’t yet dated. Rumors are that it will be released in early December, but Par says a date won’t be decided upon until after the film makes its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival.

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  • Richard Kind in ‘A Serious Man’

    Richard Kind in A Serious Man

    More photos from upcoming Oscar season contenders, including “Up in the Air,” “The Lovely Bones” and “The Informant!” at MTV.

  • New tune contenders from ‘2012,’ ‘Wild Things’ — what else?

    Adam LambertBoy, the “Where the Wild Things Are” items are coming fast and furious this morning.  I didn’t plan it this way, I swear.

    Anyway, generally around late August I begin to start compiling a list of the original song contenders.  It’s generally the last category that begins to fall into place after all, so it’s folly to speculate from too far out (which is why you’re greeted with the “coming soon” note in the sidebar for seven months out of the year).

    A potential nominee could be in our midst with Karen O’s “All is Love” from “Where the Wild Things Are,” which you can listen to over at MySpace.  Any fan of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is bound to enjoy this bouncing little ditty.

    Meanwhile, Queen guitarist Brian May was apparently “blown away” by Adam Lambert’s original song for Roland Emmerich’s “2012.”  I’m sure that combination is nails on a chalkboard for more than a few people.

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  • Another ‘Up in the Air’ poster

    Is this one any better than the first?  I actually like it more.  Hat tip to /Film for the exclusive (and the film’s first official image after the jump):

    Up in the Air

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  • ‘Up in the Air’ poster

    (You’re probably wondering why this post is gone.  Well Paramount has asked us to remove the image and I see Empire, which had the original exclusive, has done the same.  My best guess is it wasn’t final artwork.)

  • Keeping score with ‘Up in the Air’

    Jason Reitman is proving very forthcoming when it comes to sharing details of his progress on “Up in the Air” via Twitter. Earlier today, he divulged the film’s running time as 108 minutes — surely music to the ears of those of us weary of Hollywood’s increasingly bloated productions.

    And speaking of music, he just posted this cute pic of composer Rolfe Kent barefoot at work. “The score is coming to life,” apparently. Apropos of nothing, really, but it’s a slowish day and I’m really starting to look forward to this film. Are you?

  • Test screening adoration for Reitman’s ‘Up in the Air’

    George ClooneyYesterday’s Oscar update featured a number of prediction hikes for Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air,” including firm placement among the predicted Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress nominees.  As I wrote in the column, the film has been getting great notices out of test screenings and the studio seems to be pretty invested in an awards run.

    Today (and I never do this, but it’s positive, so I’ll go for it) Jeff Wells has received a test screening review of the film and posted it up at Hollywood Elsewhere.  It’s a giant gusher.  The guy calls George Clooney’s leading performance “Cary Grant crossed with Warren Beatty” and the role one the actor “was born to play.”  Even though it was a test screening, the reviewer calls it a “near perfect film” and describes a trippy dream sequence that sounds creatively intriguing and narratively fascinating.

    In a nutshell, the guy is head over heels for the flick.  Take it or leave it, but it sounds mostly legitimate to me.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Whittling further as convention flees

    Max Records in Where the Wild Things AreAnother month, another step closer to the awards season.  As the summer winds down and the industry slowly begins to square itself with the off-season’s bombshell Oscar news, the picture becomes a little clearer.  Kind of.

    Universal Pictures, in a move speculated upon endlessly by now, shuffled two of its contenders — Paul Greengrass’s “Green Zone” and Joe Johnston’s “The Wolf Man” — off to 2010.  As Anne Thompson shrewdly noted in a recent item, the decision likely has everything to do with a numbers game.  The studio has experienced a rocky two quarters this year and things aren’t necessarily looking up.  Some think, in the case of “The Wolf Man,” the shift was made to avoid another box office misfire in 2009 (as by now, with push after push, the film is beginning to smell fishy).  Others say the “Green Zone” shift had a lot to do with “The Hurt Locker”‘s release pattern.

    Whatever the case, the evacuations change the Oscar landscape ever so slightly, giving us just a few more talking points in the vacuum of August before we have anything of value worth discussing when the fall festival season hits in less than a month’s time.

    Universal is now left with two critically divisive, commercially dubious titles in Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies” and Judd Apatow’s “Funny People” to hawk for awards consideration, effectively (if you’re asking me, though I realize no one is) taking the studio out of the game this year — or, at the very least, making the hill steeper.

    But taking note of the studio awards landscape, it doesn’t seem to me that anyone else is on surer ground.  As I look out at the many contenders and the campaigns being prepared for them, it appears the entire industry will be dealing with unconventional approaches and product to go along with the new changes in the Best Picture category (and all the headache that comes with them) this season.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Antichrist’ and action

    Willem Dafoe in Antichrist• Scandalising media and polarising critics, Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist” emerged as the undisputed talking-point of the Cannes Film Festival.

    • That firestorm even managed to overshadow the Cannes debut of Quentin Tarantino’s divisive “Inglourious Basterds.”

    • In other news from the Croisette, “A Prophet” impressed critics, while “Taking Woodstock” took a hit.

    • We celebrated the start of summer (and provoked some argument) with a list of the all-time Top 10 action sequences.

    • Unfortunately, our review deems “Terminator Salvation” unlikely to earn a place on any such future lists.

    • In the wake of that disappointment, “Up” happily lived up to expectations.

    • In box office news, “Angels and Demons” turned out to be a pale shadow of its predecessor.

    • This week’s edition of Page to Screen reviewed the literary source for Jason Reitman’s upcoming comedy “Up in the Air.”

    • John delved further through his personal cinematic treasure trove, returning to the 1990s, and reappraising last year’s “Revolutionary Road.”

  • PAGE TO SCREEN: “Up in the Air” by Walter Kirn

    Cover of Up in the Air by Walter Kirn“Airworld” is novelist Walter Kirn’s term for the impermanent realm of regional American air travel, a sleek network of bland local airports and adjacent beige hotel rooms, linked by the plush grey trails of business-class flights. It forms the scattered but otherwise constant home to thousands of American corporate drones, and is the simultaneously alien and mundane setting for “Up in the Air” – soon reaching your screens courtesy of writer-director Jason Reitman and star George Clooney.

    Droll, dry and ultimately rather heartless, it’s clear that Kirn (“Thumbsucker”) positioned his novel as a kind of “Bonfire of the Vanities” for post-millennial readers, a work that diagnoses the ills of corporate America and chimes in with a wider sense of social malaise.

    The novel, however, had the misfortune of hitting the shelves shortly before the events of 9/11 forever shifted the rules of his own Airworld. By the time it appeared in paperback, not only had Kirn’s milieu rapidly dated, but few readers were keen to enter that territory, and “Up in the Air” never took off as was perhaps intended.

    Whether by accident or design, Reitman’s adaptation of the novel also comes along at a time when the material couldn’t be more touchily topical, albeit for different reasons. Its anti-hero of sorts is Ryan Bingham, a 35 year-old human resources exec and first-class Airworld citizen, whose field of expertise is “Career Transition Counseling” – in other words, someone brought in by companies to tactfully fire employees, a self-proclaimed Grim Reaper to white-collar America.

    It’s a nervy subject for a feature film in the midst of a global economic recession that is providing plenty of business for men like Bingham, if few others; but whether audiences will be any more willing to embrace this than they were Kirn’s novel remains to be seen, and will largely depend on the warmth and lightness of touch Reitman and his universally liked leading man can bring to the material.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Handicapping 2009 a year in advance!?

    Ewan McGregor and Hilary Swank in AmeliaAhh.  The dust is settling.  And on the horizon, just visible through the mist and waiting to drive us all up the wall once again: the 2009 Oscar season.

    I’ve been writing this year-in-advance column for probably six years now, and I always look forward to gazing ahead.  No one dives in so pathetically deep this far out as yours truly, but in exchange for not having a life for the past few months, I get to unload this burden the day after our annual season’s peak and forget about little gold men entirely for a few months.

    It’s quite liberating.

    The most interesting thing about the season to come, from my vantage point, is the lack of a dreaded “frontrunner status” for any of the contenders.  Some might say Clint Eastwood’s Nelson Mandela project (which is not called “The Human Factor,” mind you — the director says the film is currently untitled and is based on John Carlin’s book “Playing the Enemy”).

    Others might say Rob Marshall’s “Nine” (coming from a money-tight company hoping to avoid echoes of “Memoirs of a Geisha”).  But I don’t see a “Geisha” from here, or a “Charlie Wilson’s War,” expected heavies waiting to miss the mark.  The field is curiously flat, and as a result, excitingly broad.

    Let’s get to it, shall we?

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  • Is Vera Farmiga about to go big?

    I love Vera Farmiga.

    I realize that means nothing to you, and I should remain more analytical and level-headed on this site. But we all have our favorites, and Ms. Farmiga is one of mine. Whether cheekily stealing scenes in “Breaking and Entering” or fearlessly carrying the searing “Down to the Bone,” she has an unusual onscreen empathy and intelligence that has long reminded me of pre-stardom Cate Blanchett, which is about the highest compliment I can pay.

    Since surprising virtually everyone by taking the 2005 LA Critics’ Best Actress award for “Down to the Bone,” she has seemed on the cusp of big things, but things haven’t quite clicked into place. She should have been an Oscar contender the next year for her precise, sexually calibrated turn in “The Departed,” but she somehow slipped by unnoticed amid the testosterone-charged ensemble. Oscar rumblings have been heard again this year for “Nothing But the Truth,” but the film doesn’t seem to be generating much heat.

    So I was excited to learn today that she’s landed her most mainstream lead role to date: a romantic comedy opposite George Clooney, no less. “Up in the Air” will be the third feature from this year’s surprise Best Director nominee, Jason Reitman, which makes for an intriguing match-up of talent all round. Variety reports as follows:

    Story centers on a human resources exec whose only joy in life comes from the prospect of notching his millionth frequent-flyer mile, a goal he pursues with zeal as the rest of his life falls apart because he is constantly on the road.

    Farmiga will play a businesswoman who develops a romantic relationship with Clooney’s character through meetings in airports and hotels around the country. Reitman adapted the screenplay from Walter Kirn’s novel of the same name.

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