And plenty more new “W.” photos right here. I’m really getting excited for this film all of a sudden…
Tag: W
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9/27 Oscarweb Round-up
• Anne Thompson reports that Paramount Vantage will officially debut the “Revolutionary Road” trailer on Sunday’s episode of “Mad Men.” Very smart. [Thompson on Hollywood]• The toughest journalist gigs in cinema. [Time Out]
• In the introductory post of his long in the works awards blog (welcome to the fray), Pete Hammond bangs the drums for Dustin Hoffman in “Last Chance Harvey.” Overture will have a tough enough time with one Best Actor hopeful, though, let alone two. [Notes on a Season]
• Tom O’Neil rounds up a bunch of thoughts from the Oscarweb regarding potential Oscar hosts. [Gold Derby]
• Steven Zeitchick gets excited about the foreign film race. [Risky Biz Blog]
• Michael Cieply and Charles Solomon shed light on a credit dispute among the principles of Universal’s animated endeavor “The Tale of Despereaux.” [New York Times]
• John HIscock spends some quality time with “Appaloosa” star Viggo Mortensen across the pond. [Daily Telegraph]
• Oscar winner Helen Mirren is set to take on the role of an Israeli Nazi hunter with “Shakespeare in Love” director John Madden at the helm. [The Independent]
• Anthony Breznican gets a first look at Oliver Stone’s “W.” [USA Today]
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‘W.’ TV spot
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9/20 Oscarweb Round-up
• Oliver Stone wanted Christian Bale to play Bush in “W?” [GQ]• Jeffrey Wells is getting more and more excited about the film, by the way. [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• ‘Synecdoche’ and ‘Doubt’ star Philip Seymour Hoffman is set to make his mark on the London theater scene. [The Independent]
• Patrick Goldstein finishes up his “Express” spotlight with Gary Fielder. [The Big Picture]
• Wendy Ide spends some quality time with director Walter Salles. [The Times]
• Perilous times for superstars paves the way for newcomers and has-beens, says Peter Bart. [Peter Bart]
• And some lists, starting with Glenn Kenny’s 12 hard-to-see films you haven’t seen but should… [Some Came Running]
• …and Christopher Campbell’s top 10 movie titles of the last 10 years. [Spout Blog]
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9/17 Oscarweb Round-up
• One night only…ABC wants to bump the Oscars to March. [Variety]• David Poland finally reviews some Toronto films. [The Hot Button]
• Breaking down a Wired cover story, starring Charlie Kaufman. [Wired]
• Aaron Eckhart is four-square against the idea of recasting the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s Batman franchise. James Franco and Michael C. Hall can stop holding their breaths. [MTV]
• More parsing of the “Burn After Reading” numbers. Why isn’t it obvious? Brad Pitt + George Clooney = $$$. [Risky Biz Blog]
• Patrick Goldstein mines this month’s issue of Esquire for clues about Paul Thomas Anderson’s childhood. [The Big Picture]
• Ten movies to watch when feeling the financial crunch. [Spout Blog]
• From the rumor mill: Rome’s mayor wants to ban “W.” from showing at the city’s upcoming film festival? Forced denial and all. [The Guardian]
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THE LISTS: Top 10 performances you’re underestimating
Every year it seems there are a number of performers in the thick of an Oscar hunt that don’t get the same attention as the expected heavy-hitters.
It’s no surprise, of course, that Oscar prognostication would lean toward the anticipation of what lies ahead, unseen, unproven. The mystery stays in tact, if for precious few moments. But a number of nominated actors and actresses, year after year, tend to bank on the underestimation of the masses, allowing those heavy-hitters to fall by the wayside and provide just the opportunity they were waiting for all along.
Here, then, is an attempt to shine a light on 10 stealthy contenders that seem to be flying low on the radar so far this season:
10. Richard Jenkins, “The Visitor”
At the moment, “The Visitor” star Richard Jenkins might seem like the obvious bet for a list such as this. But with Overture Films planning an Oscar campaign for the character-actor-turned-leading-man and a year increasingly giving credence to smaller films, this gem of a performance from way back in the first quarter of the year could find room to make a move. A prime DVD release date will keep the film fresh in voters’ minds and perhaps divert some of the attention away from the Brad Pitts, Sean Penns and Frank Langellas for a spell. -
‘Che,’ ‘W.’ among films announced to play London fest
Looking down the list of titles in the newly-revealed lineup for next month’s London Film Festival lineup, my initial reaction was one of mild disappointment. Plenty of exciting titles, for sure, but it doesn’t quite match last year’s feast that included everything from “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” to “The Assassination of Jesse James” to “Juno” to “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.”My second thought, however, was that the lineup reflects more on what a tepid year for film 2008 is shaping up to be, rather than any lack of effort on festival director Sandra Hebron’s part. Tellingly, this morning Hebron herself cited critical opinion that, in the wake of a roundly derided Venice festival, “it wasn’t a vintage year for cinema.”
But enough of the hand-wringing. There’s still much to get excited about, including “Che,” the two parts of which, interestingly, will be screened both together and apart; Oliver Stone’s potentially polarising “W”; “Hunger,” featuring a potential dark horse for Best Actor; “Religulous”; “Rachel Getting Married,” “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist,” “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson” and, to my immense delight, “Synecdoche, New York.”
Not to mention that, as previously announced, the festival will be bookended by the world premiere of “Frost/Nixon” and Danny Boyle’s red-hot Toronto hit “Slumdog Millionaire.”
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Thandie on Condi
Of all the bizarre calls that have been made in the process of creating “W,” the one that possibly threw me the most was the casting of Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice.I’ve admittedly always been lukewarm on Newton as actress, but nonetheless, nothing about her onscreen or off-screen personae suggested that she had it in her to channel the world’s most powerful woman.
So it’s refreshing to read, in this lengthy Sunday Times interview with Newton, that she felt pretty much the same way:
“Oliver woke me up,” she says. Stone had an “absolute belief that I could play this character who was absolutely nothing like me. She didn’t look like me; she’s a couple of decades older than me. And I’m English, for goodness’ sake”.
In her favour, Newton appears to have a healthily objective stance on the character she’s playing (more so, I suspect, than her director):
Then she began working on her mannerisms, the quirks and ticks that an impressionist might exaggerate to tell you as much about a person as the “inner truth”. She won’t tell me what they are. “Look, I do have a kind of reverence for who I am playing. This is a human being, and whatever you think, as an example of discipline, she’s unbelievable … (But) seeing her in more undone situations, there was this difference in her. You can see her posture change at certain times. It’s almost imperceptible, but it’s there. I got a sense of the human being behind the construct. And I did feel compassion for her.”
She’s clearly an open and articulate interviewee — read the rest here. (Note to the interviewer, however: I know it’s customary to flatter your subject, but calling Newton’s turn in “Crash” the “definitive performance” of that film is a blatant lie. And I don’t even like “Crash.”)
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When ‘W.’ met Laura
I have to say, Josh Brolin isn’t nearly as convincing in this CNN exclusive clip of Oliver Stone’s upcoming “W.” as he has been in the other stuff we’ve seen:
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Will ‘W.’ hold a candle to ‘Nixon?’
With Lionsgate Films’ “W.” on the horizon, we are reminded of the last film Oliver Stone made about an American President: “Nixon,” a critically praised and Oscar nominated work that was the exact opposite of what most thought it would be.An angry child of the 1960s, having chronicled Vietnam on screen (some say definitively), Stone announced he was making a biography of President Richard M. Nixon and the feeling was that the film would be an attack on the man, who resigned office in 1974. Yet when the film was released and critics got a look at it, they were overwhelmed by Stone’s work. Instead of an all out diatribe, he had created a study of a man who felt unworthy of the highest office in the land, even though he spent much of his life trying to get there, and was for most of his presidency a very good Commander-in-Chief.
Stone’s film portrayed Nixon warts and all, the paranoia, the vulgar language he was known to use, his mistrust of even those closest to him, his jealousy of the Kennedy clan, and the strange hold his mother had on him, even in his later years. The film displayed a brilliant statesman who struggled with his own sense of self worth, knowing that he could never be loved as Kennedy was, yet also aware of the good he was doing.
Nixon opened relations with two communist countries, Russia and China, a huge move for him as he was a known communist hater and right hand man to no less than Senator Joseph McCarthy during the red purge of the 1950s that ruined many innocents. He would end Vietnam after having escalated a war he inherited, admitting defeat, and when the nation screamed for his impeachment just two years after being re-elected with the largest margin in the history of United States politics, he resigned in disgrace.
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More ‘W.’ footage
It looks like Access Hollywood has some more footage behind the scenes of Oliver Stone’s “W,” including an interview with actor Josh Brolin about his approach to the role. Check it out:
(Courtesy: /Film)
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‘W.’ footage hits the Internets
Access Hollywood has tossed up some interesting B-roll footage of Oliver Stone’s upcoming “W.” It gives us our first solid glimpse of Josh Brolin’s performance, and if nothing else, the guy has nailed the cadence of our bumbling Commander-in-Chief and looks to be in confident control of the role.
Take a look:
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New ‘W’ posters: “A life misunderestimated?”
The folks at Film School Rejects stumbled across a couple of new teaser posters for Oliver Stone’s “W” recently. They were sent in from a reader who scoped them out on the streets of Denver and they feature the tagline “A life misunderestimated.”
Interesting. I like the one on the right a lot:
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PAGE TO SCREEN: “W” by Stanley Weiser
“Thirty days! I’d like to shove a plate of Freedom Fries down that slick piece of shit’s throat. Givin’ me lectures? The next chance I get I’ll be glad to veto something French. Damned glad.”Those were the words that seemed to send a shot through the industry when Stanley Weismer’s script “W” made its way into a number of hands last April. The speculation set in, the timidity, and in more ways than one, it did so with good reason.
I have heard “W” praised by smart journalists and gifted filmmakers alike, but when I flipped through its pages last spring, I was met with an effort taxing in its elementary construction. Packed to the brim with dialogue meant to secure George W. Bush’s position as a simpleton who managed his way into the most powerful position in the free world, “W” reads more like a parody than the modest character study it aims to be.
The script is bookended with a device that draws a distinct clarity about the film’s ultimate point: Bush is a simple man meant for pretzels, beer and a love of baseball, not a man who should have the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. And that’s a valid enough thesis, because the narrative — to its credit — doesn’t try to lambast Dub-ya throughout.
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The Sunday Times digs into ‘W’
Yesterday’s edition of London’s Sunday Times carried a story from Christopher Goodwin analyzing the “W” phenomenon from the other side of the pond. It’s full of unoriginal information, but worth a read nonetheless.First, Goodwin gets into the obvious caveat that has a number of viewers skeptical:
Some believe Stone, 61, may even have a deep-seated personal animus against Bush. Born in the same year, he and Bush were briefly classmates at Yale, although they didn’t know each other there. Stone dropped out to fight in Vietnam, a battle-scarred journey that eventually led to his radicalisation and to two Oscar-winning films born of the experience, Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July. Bush, of course, managed to avoid going to Vietnam by somehow winning a cushy noncombatant job at home with the National Guard.
Touché so far. But then Goodwin gets into a thorough dissection of Stanley Weiser’s script to the point that we’re almost embarrassed to say we’ll be covering the work in tomorrow’s “Page to Screen” column. It seems everyone with a pulse has read this thing since it “leaked” out in April.
Here’s the Goodwin’s closer:
Stone says he’s beyond caring what people think. “I’m tired of defending the accuracy of my movies,” he says. “JFK was a case to be proven, Nixon was a penetrating biography of a complex and dark man. But I’m not bound by those strictures any more. Bush is not a complex and dark man, so it’s different. This movie can be funnier because Bush is funny. He’s awkward and goofy and makes faces all the time. He’s not your average president. So, let’s have some fun with it. What are they going to do? Discredit me again?”
Sure, if they can.
Well, all the bases have been covered, I’d say. Nothing left to do now but SEE THE DAMNED MOVIE. But maybe that was part of the strategy from the start, leak the script, get the trailer out there, pull the band-aid off quickly so that the shock of all this silliness is out of the way by the time the thing hits multiplexes.
Still…good luck swallowing this yarn. Not that it hasn’t been nearly impossible to do so in painful reality.
Read the rest of Goodwin’s story here.
