In Contention

Tag: Vincent Cassel

  • REVIEW: “A Dangerous Method” (**1/2)

    Venice Film Festival

    “Do you think they know we’re on our way, bringing them the plague?” So asks Viggo Mortensen’s Sigmund Freud of his younger colleague Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), as the two approach New York City to gift the untreated denizens of America with their equally grueling brands of psychoanalysis, in the closing stretch of “A Dangerous Method,” David Cronenberg’s thoughtfully embroidered account of their professional rivalry.

    It’s the sharpest line in corset-prestige specialist Christopher Hampton’s script, adapted none-too-cinematically from his 2002 play “The Talking Cure.” It is also, as most Freudophiles will recognize, one he didn’t write himself — like so many of a writer’s best moments, it was gifted to him by legend. Freud, luckily enough, had a pretty dry line in irony; drier, perhaps, than that of Hampton, who tackles his historical subjects’ rich battle of wills and philosophies with the requisite scholarly enthusiasm, but is oddly cautious,  even a little po-faced, about the way he fashions intellectual debate into drama.

    (more…)

  • 12/2 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Hickenlooper’s photo diary, the race’s generation gap and the ‘My Dog Tulip’ Oscar campaign

    • Anne Thompson has George Hickenlooper’s “Casino Jack” photo diary. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • Patrick Goldstein writes up the “My Dog Tulip” Oscar campaign. [The Big Picture]

    • Vincent Cassel on “Black Swan,” movie overkill and the politics of selling out. [Movieline]

    (more…)

  • 11/18 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: ‘True Grit’ setting profiled, ‘Buried’ vs. ‘127 Hours,’ Aronofsky’s were-swan film

    • Jennifer Boulden writes a singular piece on Fort Smith, Arkansas, her home and the setting of “True Grit.” [Awards Daily]

    • Jeffrey M. Anderson stumps for “Buried” over “127 Hours.” [Cinematical]

    • The HFPA gets grabby over a revenue dispute with Dick Clark Productions, vis a vis the Golden Globe awards telecast. [Entertainment Weekly]

    (more…)

  • REVIEW: “Black Swan” (****)

    Venice Film Festival

    It’s the juvenilization of the term “fairy tale” that has led many people to associate them inextricably with happy endings. At their most literary, fairy tales can be moral and often very unhappy narratives of yearning, obsession and eventual redemption, even if it comes with rather a large sacrifice attached; Hans Christian Andersen specialized in compromised happy endings, notably in “The Little Mermaid” and “The Red Shoes,” that would have made Walt Disney wince.

    If you squint slightly at “Black Swan,” the boldly deranged and beautifully despairing new film from Darren Aronofsky, you can see that it is, when push comes to plié, a contemporary fairy tale of sorts: the story of a little girl, in the fierce grip of controlling adults, who wants nothing more than to dance, and learns that she must exchange part of herself for the opportunity.

    That much I can say without breaking the spell for those who have not seen it. For while “Black Swan” may reveal itself as a fairy tale, that’s only after it has successfully masqueraded as a taut, witty and wickedly kinky thriller that pulls off the tricky double-bluff of following precisely the narrative course one has mapped out for it, yet emerging as all the more surprising for that adherence.

    (more…)

  • 7/30 Web Round-up

    Vincent Cassel• Jeremy Piven would like to see an “Entourage” film.  Who wouldn’t? [CNN]

    • Vincent Cassel refuses to court Hollywood.  Who needs it when you’ve got Monica Bellucci at home? [Daily Telegraph]

    • Robert Levin sits down with “In the Loop” director Armando Iannucci. [Film School Rejects]

    (more…)