In Contention

Tag: Up

  • 5/12 Web Round-up

    Green Lantern• Alex Billington takes a few snaps of upcoming release poster artwork in Cannes (including “Shutter Island” and “A Christmas Carol”), then, the web being what it is, he slaps his watermark all over them. [First Showing]

    • Kevin Costner keeps the western’s light flickering with an upcoming A&E mini-series. [The Hollywood Reporter]

    • The top 10 movie misquotes of all time. [The Guardian]

    • Vaneta Rogers consolidates the numerous “Green Lantern” rumors flying around town.  Please, God, don’t fuck it up. [Newsarama]

    • Speaking of rumors, Drew McWeeny recounts the crash and burn of one such, this one concerning the potential casting of Christian Bale in Andrew Stanton’s “John Carter of Mars.” [Motion/Captured]

    • Roger Ebert expresses concern over the use of 3D technology in “Up,” specifically citing the potential for diminishing “brightness and delicate shadings of the color palate.” [Chicago Sun-Times]

    • Anthony Breznican previews the upcoming Cannes Film Festival. [USA Today]

    • Candace Jackson talks “The Girlfriend Experience” with director Steven Soderbergh and star Sasha Grey. [Wall Street Journal]

    • William Goss remembers 1998: the movie summer that was. [Cinematical]

    • Twitter’s potential effect on the unstable world of film criticism gets some more ink. [The Wrap]

  • All ‘Up’ all the time

    UpDisney/Pixar’s “Up” is set to open this year’s Cannes International Film Festival Wednesday on the Croisette (Guy will be all over festival coverage for you, by the way), so the papers from here to there were obviously a little toon happy over the weekend.  The most encompassing was L.A. Times writer John Horn’s look at the film’s four-year history from a passenger seat at the studio’s insider screening in Northern California last month, but it was this aside concerning deliberation over a music cue (Michael Giacchino is once again scoring) in a key sequence:

    As “Up’s” poster and trailer make clear, the film’s central image is a house, tethered to thousands of balloons, soaring into the sky. When septuagenarian Carl Fredricksen’s ( Ed Asner) residence took flight at the Skywalker screening, Giacchino’s score was big and dramatic, the kind of music that typically accompanies an action sequence.

    “What we had I think works,” said Docter. “But I didn’t feel like we were quite capturing it.” Specifically, the music wasn’t magical, poetic. The house’s taking off needed to play more like a mystical metaphor — Fredricksen’s trying somehow to join his late wife, Ellie, in the heavens — and less like a prison break.

    “There’s something about the lyricism of the floating house that appealed to me from Day One,” said Docter, a tall man whose 10-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, provided young Ellie’s voice. With a new piece of music, the scene played closer to how he always imagined it should. “Now, it’s almost like he’s waltzing with Ellie as the house takes off.”

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  • Thoughts on Cannes, Huppert and ‘Up’

    Dull but hindering circumstances kept me offline yesterday, so I couldn’t get to the Cannes/”Up” news that Kris recently posted.

    By the way, before I get into that, can I just say what a great choice the Cannes organisers have made in selecting Isabelle Huppert as their jury president this year?

    It’s been a while (8 years, to be specific) since a woman took on the role, and as one of the most adventurous, intelligent and hard-working actors of her generation, Huppert (a two-times Cannes winner herself) has earned the position. Here’s hoping she brings the same kind of fearless thinking to the panel that she does to her roles.

    As for “Up, “Being the first animated title to open the world’s most prestigious film festival is obviously a notable accomplishment — and probably an overdue one, at that.

    Chiming in with last year’s tide of critical accolades for “WALL-E” and “Waltz With Bashir” (which, of course, began its buzz at Cannes), it’s clear that the artform is increasingly nearing an equal footing with live-action filmmaking as far as cineastes are concerned — even if some conservative viewers (and of course, AMPAS voters) would like to pretend otherwise.

    However, amid the breathless reporting of “first evers,” it seems to me one crucial detail has been somewhat neglected — the film is playing out of competition.

    This strikes me as an opportunity missed. I’m guessing it was Pixar’s decision not to submit the film for competition consideration, but one has to wonder what they stood to lose by trying. Given Cannes’ arthouse bent, nobody would have expected the film to win anything anyway, but a Palme d’Or nomination could have lent the film some impressive additional cache.

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  • Pixar’s ‘Up’ to open Cannes

    Old news now but I’m just resurfacing on the east coast.  From the press release:

    UP, the new animation film from the Disney•Pixar studios, produced under John Lasseter’s supervision, will be the Opening Ceremony film of the 62nd Festival de Cannes in Disney Digital 3-D on Wednesday May 13th, 2009…

    This is the first time that an animation film, in 3-D, will be the Opening Ceremony film at the Festival de Cannes.

    Animations distinguished by their participation in the Official Selection are, DUMBO (1947), THE FANTASTIC PLANET (1973), FRITZ THE CAT (1974), SHREK (2001), THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE (2003), SHREK 2 (2004), OVER THE HEDGE (2006), KUNG-FU PANDA (2008) and WALTZ WITH BASHIR (2008)

    UP will be released in the United States on Friday, May 29th and in France on July 29th.

  • Year-in-advance winner predictions

    Yes, I’m insane, but before I leave off this year’s year-in-advance week, by request, I thought I’d throw up a random set of winner predictions and see if I was close to the target next February.  Last year I managed three correct guesses (four if you count Winslet for the wrong movie), two of them in the tech categories, so maybe I can at least up that tally.  I really want to predict Clint’s movie for Best Picture, but I have some weird sense of irritation at predicting an untitled movie.  Oh well, who cares?

    Best Picture: “Nine”
    Best Director: Rob Marshall, “Nine”
    Best Actor: Morgan Freeman, “Untitlted Nelson Mandela Project”
    Best Actress: Michelle Pfeiffer, “Chéri”
    Best Supporting Actor: Matt Damon, “Untitlted Nelson Mandela Project”
    Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique, “Precious”
    Best Adapted Screenplay: “Nine”
    Best Original Screenplay: “Up”
    Best Art Direction: “Amelia”
    Best Cinematography: “Nine”
    Best Costume Design: “Chéri”
    Best Film Editing: “Nine”
    Best Makeup: “The Wolf Man”
    Best Music (Original Score): “Broken Embraces”
    Best Music (Original Song): “Nine”
    Best Sound Editing: “Green Zone”
    Best Sound Mixing: “Nine”
    Best Visual Effects: “Avatar”
    Best Animated Feature Film: “Up”

    Those will all be wrong.  Each and every one of them.

    (And in case you missed it: OFF THE CARPET: Handicapping 2009 a year in advance!?)

  • 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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  • Pixar’s latest a “tearjerker” and a “gamble?”

    That’s what this Anthony Breznican USA Today story suggests of Pete Docter’s upcoming “Up.”  Just reading through the brief recap of a footage screening, it seems to me “WALL-E” might not be the Pixar high-mark after all (not that it is for me to begin with, mind you, but it certainly is for the great majority of film fans).  I have to say, it seems to be a story that could have a lot of resonance within the zeitgeist.  After all, who doesn’t want to get the hell away from everything after the last eight years?

    Here’s a taste:

    Instead of Clint Eastwood clashing with street gangs, the old-timer in this story (voiced by Ed Asner) decides to get off his own lawn, tying thousands of balloons to his little wooden house to float away from his troubles.

    Up opens May 29, and early footage reveals a gamble from the makers of Cars and Toy Story: a plunge into tearjerker territory. The first third of the movie establishes the main character, Carl, as a lost and angry soul after a happy, mostly quiet life with his childhood sweetheart, Ellie.

    The montage of their marriage touches on themes rarely seen in bedtime storybooks: romance, financial hardship, a lost pregnancy, loneliness and the blink-of-an-eye passage from childhood to wrinkles.

  • Disney sneak peek at ‘Up’

  • ‘Up’

  • Pixar’s ‘Up’

    Thoughts on the new poster?

    Pixar's Up

  • Behind the scenes of Henry Selick’s ‘Coraline’

    Every time I walk into the comic book store lately I feel the urge to pick up Neil Gaiman’s “Coraline.” I haven’t done so yet (mainly because I’m buried in so many other books at the moment), but it’s an interesting tale that could make a fabulous feature film.

    Henry Selick is, of course, doing just that and Rotten Tomatoes has secured a behind-the-scenes look at the film. Focus Features is set to distribute “Coraline” in February of next year, but there is still an outside shot at an Academy-qualifying run in 2008 if the film is finished in time. It would enter into the animated feature derby with “WALL-E,” perhaps Sony Classics’ “Waltz With Bashir” and DreamWorks SKG’s “Kung Fu Panda” (which is just asking to be kicked to the awards curb).

    Next year, the competiton looks to be Pixar’s “Up,” Walt Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” and Focus’s own “9.” Perhaps Robert Zemeckis’s “A Christmas Carol” will turn the tide for motion capture for the animators, but I doubt it.

    “Coraline” is currently set for release on February 6, 2009.

  • Things I care about at this year’s Comic-Con: part two

    Disney doesn’t seem to have a whole lot to offer at this year’s exhibition, though everyone will certainly be greatly anticipating any goodies from the upcoming Pixar effort “Up,” announced today as part of the proceedings.  From the press release:

    From the inventive storytellers that have taken you into the worlds of space, toys and superheroes, comes the extraordinary adventure that will take you to a lost world where anything can happen, and everything will. Meet director Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc.) as he presents the first-ever look at Disney•Pixar’s new animated 3-D adventure comedy, UP in Hall H on Saturday, July 26th 3:00 – 3:30 PM.