In Contention

Tag: Valkyrie

  • Cinema Audio Society nominees

    Cinema Audio Society awardThe five contenders for the 2009 Cinema Audio Society (CAS) Awards are:

    “The Dark Knight”
    “Iron Man”
    “Quantum of Solace”
    “Slumdog Millionaire”
    “WALL-E”

    So this is the second “Defiance” snub that has surprised me so far, following Eduardo Serra coming up short with the lensers earlier today.

    “The Dark Knight,” “Iron Man” and especially “WALL-E” were certainly expected, but the show of support for “Slumdog Millionaire” indicates the deep industry love this film has going for it.  I wouldn’t necessarily expect this to translate to a Best Sound Oscar nomination, given the fates of films like “Finding Neverland,” “Crash,” “Babel” and “Into the Wild,” Best Picture frontrunners that scored with CAS but missed with AMPAS (though “Wild” is something of an anomaly there).

    Then again, “Slumdog” is a much more craftily conceived piece of filmmaking than those efforts.  I thought the sound was amazing, personally.  So perhaps this could be the first year since 2003 that the guild matches the Academy’s picks 5/5.

    The inclusion of “Quantum of Solace” is particularly interesting, though.  “Casino Royale” had a solid showing in the 2006 guild circuit, scoring with the art directors, costume designers, sound editors and even the visual effects artists.  But the mixers in the CAS gave it the cold shoulder where a lot of us thought the film had its best shot.  That the Society would tip its hat to the sequel is somewhat telling, I’d say.

    With that in mind, I’d be tempted to predict this quintet for Oscar as well.  The only Edward Zwick movie to miss a CAS nomination and turn up in the Academy’s tally was “Legends of the Fall” in 1994.  So there is still hope for mixing legends (and branch favorites) Anna Behlmer and Andy Nelson.  But the duo also have two other contenders in play: “Australia” and “Cloverfield,” which might be leaving their colleagues with too many choices.

    There are a number of other possible surprise nominees in the mix, all of them featuring respected sound mixing talent.  Add to the aforementioned “Australia,” “Defiance” and “Cloverfield” (my pick for the best work here in 2008) “Body of Lies” and “Valkyrie,” and you’re still looking at a number of possibilities.  And let’s not forget another Best Picture frontrunner, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” strong in this arena in a number of sequences.  But I would have expected a mention here if it was in the cards for Oscar.

    Like I said, this is a smart list to bet on, with “Defiance” as the spoiler.

  • 12/28 Oscarweb Round-up

    Viggo Mortensen in Appaloosa• Joe Morgenstern wraps up the year. [Wall Street Journal]

    • Michael Lerman on the most misunderstood films of 2008. [Spout Blog]

    • Jeffrey Wells tries to draw some parallels between the year’s Best Picture hopefuls and the presidential contenders of 2008. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • James Rocchi podcasts it up with yours truly on year-end top 10s, the season’s critical kudos and some lighter fare on a Boxing Day edition of The Rocchi Review. [Cinematical]

    • Rachel Abramowitz corners the “Valkyrie” trio. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Jenny Miller, meanwhile, spends some time with Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer. [Premiere]

    • Leonard Klady charts the year’s best with a rare “Appaloosa” inclusion. [Movie City News]

    • Speaking of top 10s, Paige Newman considers a few of the year’s lists with a much appreciated shout-out to In Contention. [MSNBC]

  • That dude who wrote ‘The Usual Suspects’ makes the rounds

    Christopher McQuarrieAlright, I’m only joshing Christopher McQuarrie with the “that dude” quip.  Count me in the “Usual Suspects” boat, a film I’ve been in the tank for ever since it sparked something in me 13 years ago (along with Michael Mann’s “Heat”).  Both movies played a serious part in forging the film lover before you.

    McQuarrie’s latest project is another Bryan Singer effort, the Tom Cruise starrer “Valkyrie.”  AP writer Jake Coyle cornered the scribe recently to discuss McQuarrie’s Oscar-winning work over a decade later as he and Singer make the press rounds on their somewhat under-reported reunion.

    In an interesting anecdote toward the end of the piece, McQuarrie notes that only after finishing production on “Suspects” did he and Singer realize they had completely different conceptions of the film’s narrative:

    “I pulled Bryan aside the night before press began and I said, ‘We need to get our stories straight because people are starting to ask what happened and what didn’t,’” recalls McQuarrie. “And we got into the biggest argument we’ve ever had in our lives.”

    He continues: “One of us believed that the story was all lies, peppered with little bits of the truth. And the other one believed it was all true, peppered with tiny, little lies. … We each thought we were making a movie that was completely different from what the other one thought.”

    So who believed what?

    With a broad grin, McQuarrie responds: “I’ll never tell.”

    Meanwhile, over at Cinematical, James Rocchi speaks with McQuarrie from New York concerning the project at hand, “working alongside the German government, how producing a mega-million [dollar] war film was like ‘drinking from a firehose,’ forgoing German accents, his possible future take on superheroic franchise ‘The Champions’ and much more.”  Listen to Rocchi’s podcast here.

  • 12/17 Oscarweb Round-up

    Roger Ebert• Jeff Wells knows how to fix “Valkyrie” after the fact. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • John Campea suffers through the worst films of the year. [The Movie Blog]

    • Scientists claim that real-life relationships can’t live up to those in the movies. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Rob Turbovsky says biopics are hijacking real life for narrative gain. [Rope of Silicon]

    • David Poland spends 30 minutes with “Che” star Benicio Del Toro. [The Hot Blog]

    • Kelley L. Carter reports from Monday night’s rainy “Revolutionary Road” premiere. [USA Today]

    • Roger Ebert gets lifetime honorary membership in the DGA. [Associated Press]

    • Reed Johnson covers the making of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” [The Envelope]

    • Mark Olsen, meanwhile, catches up with David Kross and his coming of age in “The Reader.” [The Envelope]

    • Tom O’Neil finally gets around to why Hugh Jackman is the perfect choice for Oscar host. [Gold Derby]

    • Dave Karger makes a sound argument for the Best Picture exclusion of “Doubt” and “Revolutionary Road” with 42 West honcho Cynthia Swartz’s stretch for a counter argument based totally on things that…haven’t happened yet. [Entertainment Weekly]

    • Karina Longworth lists the top 10 unreleased films of the year. [Spout Blog]

  • 10/31 Oscarweb Round-up — HALLOWEEN EDITION!

    WALL-E• Tom O’Neil podcasts it with Rosemarie DeWitt. [Gold Derby]

    • Jeffrey Wells comes back to the “Valkyrie” poster with admiration a few weeks later. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • John Campea is excited about the “WALL-E” Best Picture campaign. [The Movie Blog]

    • Debuting the new “Valkyrie” trailer. [Yahoo! Movies]

    • Anne Thompson takes her first real stab at the season. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • Can a Pulitzer Prize winner save the “Spider-Man” franchise? [The Hollywood Reporter]

    • A grown-up’s guide to Halloween movies. [Premiere]

  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Sound Editing — Volume One

    Tech Support at In Contention Swoosh.  Bang.  Grunt.  Clink.  Crash.

    These sorts of sounds can add a lot to a film’s mood and plot even though they are not recorded during filming and have to be created and mixed in later on.

    The individuals who create these effects are rewarded for their efforts in the category of Best Sound Editing.  The category used to be called Best Sound Effects Editing, which, in my opinion, is a better name.  Supervising sound editors and their teams are generally the individuals rewarded here.

    This category used to only have three nominees but was expanded to five two years ago.  This makes the category somewhat more difficult to predict, though there are five films this year that really strike me as frontrunners.

    Ever since “Monsters, Inc.” scored here in 2001, animated films, particularly those of Pixar, have fared very well.  I’d be very surprised if Andrew Stanton’s “WALL-E” failed to continue that trend.  Sound effects are key to any animated film so many of the sounds have to be created.  There is nothing to be captured while filming because, well…there is no filming!  For Stanton’s effort in particular, the sound effects were especially pivotal given the minimal dialogue.

    Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man” was another summer film where the sound effects were crucial to the film.  The explosions, clanks of armour and numerous experiments of Downey all required sound manifestation.  A huge hit and critically respected, the film in really depended on its sound editing and it flowed perfectly into the visual sights.  I’d be quite surprised if it didn’t get nominated here.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Sound Mixing — Volume One

    Tech Support at In Contention“Wait a minute, wait a minute.  You ain’t heard nothing yet!”

    Those words from Al Jolson forever changed filmmaking in 1927, ushering in “talkies” and bringing about the beginning of the end of the silent film era.

    The Academy Award for sound mixing recognizes the artists who fashion a film’s audio side.  It must be distinguished from Best Sound Editing, which is the integration of artificially created sound effects into the mix.  Mixing is the blending of those effects, along with dialogue, music and any other noise captured during filming.  The Oscar awards the sound re-recording mixers in this category, who do the blending, as well as the production sound mixer, who captures the sounds on the set.

    Blockbusters, action flicks, war films and musicals usually do particularly well in this category, given the extent to which the sound tends to draw attention to itself in these sorts of films.  It’s somewhat difficult to project the category this far in advance, however, as the sound mixers for many of the films are difficult to pinpoint; mixing is one of the last tasks done on a film.  But that’s not going to stop me from trying to handicap potential contenders!

    Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man” is the sort of film that has virtually everything this branch normally goes for.  The film is filled with action and high-profile sound work.  Plus, it kicked off the summer blockbuster season with not only lots of dough for producers, but also lots of raves from critics.  Veteran Oscar winner Christopher Boyes is in charge of this crew.  I’d say a nomination is quite likely.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: When the movies play second fiddle

    Kate Winslet and Stephen Daldry on the set of The ReaderShort column this time around because there are just a few specific things on my mind.

    It’s been a relatively slow couple of weeks in the wake of the Toronto International Film Festival.  At least on the surface.’

    Behind the scenes, studios are circling their wagons, securing Oscar ad buys, prepping their fall product and gently waiting.  “Hope you had fun at the fests,” they seem to be saying to the independent success stories of the year.  “The main event is about to begin.”

    And yet, the “main event” consistently disappoints.  Downfall can as easily be attributed to hype as it can to poor quality, an idea our own John Foote pondered last week.  Indeed, there are a few productions I expect to be rewarded for their discretion this year, lying in wait while the usual suspects empty their chambers in the loud march to Oscar.

    But it seems like casualties are already presenting themselves.  It pains me to see the Scott Rudin/Harvey Weinstein debate dragged through the mud every single day, right down to the manipulation of Nikki finke in order to make Weinstein look like an outright douche bag.  Whatever the particulars, is there any question that the real loser at the end of all of this isn’t Weinstein, isn’t Rudin, but “The Reader” itself?

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  • New ‘Valkyrie’ trailer

    And a new behind-the-scenes featurette has landed at Yahoo!

  • Sweet new ‘Valkyrie’ poster

    United Artists' Valkyrie

    I’m loving it.  Though the film still gives me some hesitation.  A behind-the-scenes featurette will debut at Yahoo! in a few hours, FYI.

  • Oops…

    I just realized that I failed to add “Valkyrie,” the Tom Cruise film that has stopped and started like nobody’s business, back to the charts in this week’s Oscar update.  Oh well, we’ll adjust the next time around (when Torotno is safely behind us).

  • Could everyone just leave Tom Cruise alone?

    Tom CruiseI don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but the en vogue nature of dog-piling Tom Cruise has started to really get under my skin.

    Sure, Rachel Abramowitz and Anne Thompson are playing the pity card in their tone, but you get the pouring-salt-on-wounds vibe nonetheless.  At Variety, Thompson calls “Lions for Lambs” a flop twice (it is, but once was enough) while Abramowitz tosses around words like “crisis” regarding the actor’s career at the LA Times, all in the service of what?

    The real story is about Paula Wagner leaving United Artists last week, and yet the desire of entertainment journalists is to shine a light on Cruise, off in the corner, making his own moves as usual, some successful, some not, and all of them in the course of a career that is, quite frankly, just fine…if in flux.  Follow-up stories have to be about something when the quote well has dried up, I suppose.

    Commentary on Cruise’s situation is fair enough, but to me it seems like another reason for people to bring up the Oprah couch-jumping “meltdown” (I’ve seen meltdowns and that didn’t come close).  It’s another excuse to discuss Cruise’s waning star.  For Thompson, it’s an opportunity to borderline play psychiatrist:

    The details on the 28th Amendment scenario reveal a good deal about what Cruise is looking for in roles. Cruise played a doctor in Eyes Wide Shut, a U.S. Senator in Lions for Lambs, and a Nazi hero in Valkyrie (a role that I hear is quite moving). Cruise also earned raves in a cameo role in Tropic Thunder as a fat balding venal producer.

    I think the implication is a leader complex.  Cruise prefers to be in positions of power on screen, that right?   I’m editorializing, of course, but that’s the gist I’m getting.  Underneath it all, what’s wrong with shying away from the role of a special ops operative because it’s treading “Mission: Impossible” territory?

    Where some are finding reason to question Cruise’s power within the system he’s triumphed for over two decades, I tend to see an actor conscious of his image while seeking out roles that at least stand out to him, mindful of regressing into a cookie-cutter tool for studio usage.

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  • PAGE TO SCREEN: “Valkyrie” by Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander

    Page to Screen at In Contention“God promised Abraham that he would not destroy Sodom if he could find just ten righteous men. I have a feeling that for Germany it may come down to one.”

    So what has Christopher McQuarrie, the man responsible for creating Keyser Soze, been up to since “The Usual Suspects” (and the oft-forgotten “The Way of the Gun”)? The answer is “Valkyrie,” an original screenplay of the true story about the men who set out to assassinate Hitler and end his regime.

    History tells us (so please, no spoiler whining) that they lose, but McQuarrie and co-writer Nathan Alexader’s script uses this to build tension and dread rather than render a yarn completely neutered. Spending time on plot seems redundant as the film is entirely plot and, naturally, there are dozens of previous films and PBS specials telling this very story.

    The script is thankfully a fairly tight one (thankfully so after the indulgence of “Superman Returns.”  It’s almost entirely dedicated to the German’s rebellious mission to kill Hitler. Only a handful of pages are focus on life outside of the plot and mission, and naturally those are given to the hero of the piece, Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, to be played by Tom Cruise.

    Stauffenberg, a German war hero (with the scars to prove it) joins the plot to kill Hitler well after it’s begun, but it’s his influence and skills that bring it to it’s true potential. The scenes that aren’t dedicated to the mission follow Stauffenberg at home with his four children, and more importantly, his wife Nina (“Black Book” breakout Carice van Houten will take up the role).

    My favorite scene, an elegantly played out wordless “conversation” between Stauffenberg and Nina, almost fails simply because it’s a shooting star in the script. It’s so good, so connectable and tells so much about these two characters and their marriage that it frustrated me to not see more of this.

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  • ‘Valkyrie’ changes tack

    Well, I’ll be. In what appears to be Tom Cruise Week in showbiz newsland, the most surprising development is the return of the long-suffering “Valkyrie” to the 2008 release slate. Bryan Singer’s WWII thriller, a project that has been maligned virtually from the get-go, will now bow on US screens on 26 December.

    That will go some way towards raising public and critical expectations for the film – which honestly couldn’t have been any lower after MGM shifted it to the February graveyard shift months ago. However, I wonder whether it can be saved. As Kris has pointed out before, the script isn’t much to write home about (regrettably so, since Chris McQuarrie can be a hell of a writer) and that trailer that mysteriously started doing the rounds in April or so didn’t really set many pulses racing.

    Most of all, I think Tom Cruise may ironically be the film’s trickiest selling-point – I simply have no idea how many people out there will pay to see him carry a film these days. There’s no denying he’s a massive media presence (as the “Tropic Thunder” hoopla has made abundantly clear), but there comes a point sometimes where the roles of celebrity and movie star are no longer synonymous. Of course, he could turn it all around if he and the film are actually – gasp – good, but he could just as easily be on the cusp of becoming the Michael Jackson of screen acting. “Valkyrie” will be an interesting litmus test to see if audiences still want to see him as someone else.

    Why the scheduling change, incidentally? The studio seems to be playing the gosh-darn-ingenuous card there, with sources saying it’s a “purely commercial” decision made after positive test screenings. The awards season is “not a factor,” apparently. Actually, I believe them – though I wonder if that isn’t a hint of an admission that the film isn’t award-worthy. We shall see.

    Finally, I had to chuckle at the other stated motivation for the move: that MGM believes the film to be a “holiday pic.” Nothing says Christmas like Nazis, right?

  • No Oscar for ‘Valkyrie’ in 2008

    I have to admit, I was looking forward to “Valkyrie,” Bryan Singer’s film about the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944. Yes, I’m aware that the film stars Tom Cruise, but the remaining cast, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh and Tom Wilkinson was intriguing. The film also re-united Singer with Christopher McQuarrie, his screenwriter from “The Usual Suspects.”

    The Sunday Times now reports that the film has been pushed to 2009. Originally scheduled for a summer 2008 release, the film received its first push-back to the fall earlier this year. The paper cites a senior executive at one of Britain’s leading cinema chains who says, “I know there have been all sorts of problems with this production and we will not be screening it at all this year.” The article also notes, ” The quality of Cruise’s German accent was widely commented on. The film has also had to have reshoots after footage was damaged in labs.”

  • The buried

    Okay, I think we’re done cleaning out all the kinks here for the night. I wanted to mention, however, that the old site is still out there in cyberspace for you to peruse. Check it out here. It’s a little buggy over there in the wake of the move, but I’ll iron all that out in due time. But now that the new design is out and about, I wanted to link back to a few posts from the last month by both myself and a few contributors, lest they be lost in the shuffle of today’s goings-on:

    1) Guy Lodge previews the Cannes line-up. (4/22)
    2) John Foote takes a look at Brad Pitt’s Oscar hopes this year. (4/21)
    3) Steve Lopez talks about his new book, “The Soloist,” in Pasadena. (4/19)
    4) The “Valkyrie” pile-on knows no bounds. (4/8) and (4/22)
    5) Anticipating the summer movie season. (4/8)
    6) Very brief notes on the “W” screenplay. (4/1)
    7) Remembering Anthony Minghella. (3/23)
    8) And of course, the year-in-advance Oscar column. (2/26)

    That should cover it.

  • Milking that ‘Valkyrie’ teet

    I don’t disagree with a lot of what Michael Cieply has to say about the counted-out “Valkyrie” in this recent New York Times piece. Indeed, the Web is the greatest offender when it comes to instant declarations. It’s a tough balance that plenty of webmasters, myself included, struggle with on a daily basis.

    Indeed, there is much from every side on this story in Cieply’s filing, if certain parties are grossly under-quoted or under-attributed for my tastes. (A closing note from Bryan Singer just isn’t enough.) But the bottom line is, hey — maybe there’s nothing to see here?

    However, when you quote executives in a context such as this:

    In the interim Mr. Cruise, his partners at United Artists and the “Valkyrie” filmmakers are bracing for what will likely be a nine-month fight to prove their critics wrong. “We will not be daunted,” Paula Wagner, chief executive of United Artists, said last week.

    During a 90-minute interview at the company’s headquarters in a Century City office tower, Ms. Wagner said she and her fellow executives were intent on overcoming negative reactions that she saw as rooted in ignorance of the process of building movie production companies.

    “Anybody trying to dismiss us or write us off doesn’t understand the business,” Ms. Wagner said. She added: “Nothing is going to stop us. We are determined to make this work.”

    How can one not smell blood in the water? Granted, Cieply might have bumped two or three of Wagner’s clearly adamant exclamations that perhaps came at varying times in that 90minute interview, but it still comes across somewhat desperate on her part.

    David Poland is busy washing his hands of all of this, making sure everyone understands that he wasn’t aiming for negativity on “Valkyrie” from the outset. Of course, he’s got that usual balancing act of bashing old media, digging up an old, probably unarchived Oscar call and running through the box office numbers again. But at least he sticks it to Roger Friedman, who Cieply should never have called for such a piece. It takes the story down exponential levels.

    Anyway, I personally could care less about all of this and wish the press would ease off of it. And I’ve said it before, but what good is it doing pulling back the layers on this one?

  • What’s the f***ing point?

    It’s one thing for a report to land by a Hollywood trade that an upcoming release is getting another bump to the next quarter for unverified reasons. But come on.

    I don’t know if it’s just me, but Slate’s Kim Masters always seems to be fishing for a story.

    I don’t take issue often because her pieces tend to have such a brief shelf life when they aim so low. The shit storm is stirred, publicity, however bad, does its job. But to poke Tom Cruise, United Artists and Bryan Singer’s “Valkyrie” with two anonymous sources and no apparent angle beyond “something thinks?” Give me a break.

    Of course, there are those who eat this stuff up. Jeffrey Wells keeps linking to and pontificating on every new point, but that’s what he does. Others spin their wheels in other, equally pointless directions. But at least they spin and then walk away. This is a full-blown report, and it amounts to nothing.

    The bottom line is this: who cares? What’s the story? And are you really prepared to justify “It must suck” as the story? Or is your aim just to take a stab at the Gray Lady seven graphs in?

    This is mean-spirited gossip-mongering posing as informative journalism. And sometimes, it just pisses me off.

    Here’s how Masters begins her “story”:

    So, the release of Valkyrie, the Tom Cruise film about the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler, has been pushed back—again—from October to February 2009. The studio says that the Presidents’ Day weekend represented an opportunity to cash in. But many see the move as a very bad sign, and, indeed, the buzz on the film is not good.

    And the wrap up:

    Certainly, Stiller has a hit coming next May in Night at the Museum 2. We hear there may be another Cruise cameo in that film (imagine—Cruise, part of Stiller’s comic gang!), though Fox denies that. Meanwhile, our Valkyrie source tells us about a bit of humor on the set. It seems some folks displayed posters of old Cruise movies—Cocktail and so on—and decorated the star’s face with eye patches. Apparently that bit of lightening up was not appreciated.

    More unsubstantiated gossip. Read the rest.