In Contention

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  • OFF THE CARPET: King…for the moment

    Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” is on top of the world right now.  Telluride buzz was hot and it carried all the way through the Toronto International Film Festival to a coveted People’s Choice award.  The race is already being boiled down in some quarters to this old school Academy play versus a Gen-Y instant classic opening in just under two weeks.  You couldn’t ask for more if you were The Weinstein Company with this film as your prize pony…

    …except maybe a season half as long as it actually is.  Hooper’s film finds itself in a very precarious spot right now.  Just ask awards consultants at Paramount Pictures.

    After coming out strong with the of-the-moment “Up in the Air” last season, taking the same Telluride-Toronto crowd-pleasing path, their film slowly boiled down to an also ran and even came up short in the one category it seemed assured going into the Academy Awards.

    It’s easy to peak early in an Oscar season.  It takes tactical endurance to really come out on the other side with something to show for yourself and “The King’s Speech” is burning fuel fast and early.  But I imagine if anyone understands this it’s Harvey Weinstein, who, if he does find himself in a battle with “The Social Network” for the big prize, will be going toe-to-toe with one of his former Miramax executives, Cynthia Swartz (who has overseen Best Picture marches for “Crash,” “No Country for Old Men” and “The Hurt Locker” in recent years).

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  • Getting to know Bob Hoskins

    In Nigel Cole’s crowd-pleasing “Made in Dagenham,” we already know Sally Hawkins is a solid contender in a dense lead actress field for her work as Rita O’Grady, a composite character representing a number of ladies who stood up for equal pay in late-1960s England.  But one of the fringe possibilities for a Best Supporting Actor nomination is Bob Hoskins as Albert Passingham, a supportive union representative.

    Hoskins is well used but sparingly so, and in fact his character’s sudden exit from the narrative (nothing drastic happens to him, he just kind of goes away) kind of makes you wish he was still around when he’s not.  But I wonder if it’s enough to really push through here.

    Regardless, Hoskins is an actor worth championing and he’ll surely have some kind of presence in the awards season.  Recently the UK’s Guardian caught up with him in a “getting to know you” sort of session, and the actor had some insightful commentary on feminism and its place in his preparation.

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  • 9/20 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Timberlake’s Oscar hopes, Brolin’s peculiar suggestions, flurry of Toronto purchases

    • Tom O’Neil wrangles up perspectives on Justin Timberlake’s Oscar potential for “The Social Network.” [Gold Derby]

    • Steven Zeitchik sits down with “Catfish” directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Debating the ethics of movie spoilage on a user-generated web encyclopedia might be the very definition of futility, but the Gray Lady gives it a shot. [New York Times]

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  • FIPRESCI names ‘Ghost Writer’ Film of the Year

    This news actually dropped a few weeks ago, but I neglected to mention it while I was distracted with Venice goings-on. Anyway, since the award was presented at the San Sebastián Film Festival this past weekend, it seems appropriate to bring it up now.

    FIPRESCI, the international critics’ association, is best known for the independent awards they dish out at most major film festivals — which, obviously, tend to line up more with critical consensus than jury decisions. (At Venice last week, for example, they chose the widely admired Russian entry “Silent Souls.”)

    However, once a year, they poll their collected membership to elect a Grand Prix winner for Film of the Year. A list of past winners of the prize, awarded since 1999, reads rather like a greatest-hits compilation of recent arthouse cinema: “There Will Be Blood,” “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” “All About My Mother,” and so on.

    So, what’s their Film of the Year for 2010? Roman Polanski’s “The Ghost Writer.”

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  • Some predictions for a Sunday

    Okay, so it’s been almost two months since I last offered up some Oscar nomination predictions, so now that the big triple-header of autumn festivals is over, I thought it time for an update. (Remember, you can always access my predictions page at the tail of the right-hand sidebar.) With the season slowly beginning to swing — my first Long Shot column will land on Wednesday — you can expect more frequent revisions.

    I’ve marked which contenders have been subbed in and out, though the changes aren’t as numerous as I might have expected — I had a summertime hunch about “Made in Dagenham” that I’m sticking to after its warm Toronto reception, and what reason have we been given yet to doubt the likes of “Toy Story 3,” “Another Year” and “The Social Network?”

    As usual, I operate on gut feel, which is a hit-and-miss system: my misgivings about “The King’s Speech” as a major player were obviously unfounded, but until precursors show me otherwise, I’m still not buying “Inception.” As usual, look to Kris for level-headed predictions, but I enjoy trying to spot the snubs. (Last year, my dogged refusal to include “Invictus” in my Best Picture projections all season eventually paid off. Stopped clock, and all that. )

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  • BOX OFFICE: ‘The Town’ robs ‘Easy A,’ ‘Devil’ of the top spot

    I figure I’ll offer up a chart and a space for you to discuss now that Chad has moved off the box office beat for us. And by the way, I’m just now realizing “Inception” is still in the top 10 (shows how much I pay attention).

    (Courtesy: Exhibitor Relations)

  • TIFF: ‘The King’s Speech’ takes Toronto audience award

    Well, in case you weren’t already convinced, you can pretty much write a Best Picture nod for “The King’s Speech” in ink now. Following in the footsteps of such titles as “American Beauty,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Precious,” The Weinstein Company’s period drama just took the People’s Choice Award on the last day of the Toronto Film Festival — confirming that the film plays across the board.

    Of course, it oversimplifying matters to say that Toronto’s audience award equals a Best Picture play; indeed, only three winners in the last decade have gone on to secure a nomination for Oscar’s top prize. But when a film enters the festival with that much advance buzz and then makes good on it, it’s fair to say that the script is being followed.

    The runner-up prize, meanwhile, went to the British-South African co-production, “The First Grader,” an inspirational true-life drama about an 84 year-old Kenyan man starting school — seemingly the kind of  sentimental human-interest crowdpleaser that is catnip to festival audiences, even if critics have been more divided.

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  • France leads latest batch of Oscar entries

    As you may have noticed, we’ve been doing our best to keep you abreast of submissions for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar — the deadline for which is officially (but not definitively) October 1. At last count, 27 countries have entered films, and we now have a separate page where you can keep track of the growing list. (You can also find a link to it under the foreign-language category in the right-hand sidebar.)

    The most prominent contender to enter the race since my last update is France’s “Of Gods and Men,” also known on these pages as the monk movie I embarrassingly couldn’t stay awake for at Cannes, where it wound up taking the Grand Prix. (We’ll be having a rematch at the London Film Festival next month — I look forward to tackling the film again with more than two hours’ sleep behind me.)

    It’s a wholly unsurprising pick, following as it does the country’s simple selection formula since 2007: just choose the French film that took the highest honors on the Croisette. It’s worked for the last two years running, with “The Class” and “A Prophet” both landing nominations.

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 32 — What’s hot out of Toronto, ‘Social Network’ steals the thunder, ‘The Town’ comes out strong, ‘I’m Still Here’ has no clothes

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, a one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday (except today) throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change on route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    Apologies for the tardiness this time around. Anne has been in transit from Toronto and we kept missing our windows, but she’s back home now and we offer a little more for you to chew on this weekend. Let’s see what’s on the docket…

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Venice winners, Toronto bites, ‘Network’ raves

    • Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere” surprised many by taking top honors at the Venice Film Festival; we took a closer look at the Lido winners.

    • Meanwhile, we were considerably less than wowed by the festival closer, Julie Taymor’s “The Tempest.”

    • This week’s Off the Carpet column reflected on the unusual depth of this year’s Best Actress race.

    • A race that subsequently got even deeper as Lionsgate made the biggest acquisition thus far of this year’s Toronto fest: Nicole Kidman’s comeback effort “Rabbit Hole.”

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  • Oscar Talk coming over the weekend

    Anne has been hustling and bustling from Venice to Toronto and we couldn’t connect last night, missed our window this morning and she’s been in transit the rest of the day.  All of that’s a long way of saying sorry for the lack of a podcast today, but we’ll have it ready for you over the weekend.  So keep checking.

  • Oscilloscope nabs ‘Meek’s Cutoff’ for 2011 release

    Since word spread out of Venice of Michelle Williams’s strong performance in Kelly Reichardt’s superb Oregon Trail western “Meek’s Cutoff,” some of our more excitable commenters have been projecting a kind of two-pronged awards attack for the actress, who has another excellent showcase in December release “Blue Valentine.”

    We warned you all along that “Meek’s Cutoff” wasn’t likely to hit theaters in 2010, and we were right. Boutique distributor Oscilloscope has just acquired the film at Toronto, and will release it next year — the right call, given that a quiet wonder like this one would likely get lost in the crush of awards season.

    Oscilloscope (that’s Beastie Boy Adam Yauch’s outfit, in case you’d forgotten) also handled Reichardt and Williams’s last collaboration, “Wendy and Lucy”; I was hoping that their latest might prove accessible enough to attract one of the bigger boys in the indie playground, but I’m sure the company will do right by them. Yauch himself seems rather taken with the film; his statement (via indieWIRE) after the cut.

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  • Could Sorkin’s ‘Social Network’ be considered original?

    I’ve been hearing for a while now that Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay for “The Social Network,” credited in the film as an adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s “The Accidental Billionaires” (covered by Guy in Page to Screen here), could conceivably be considered an original work by the Academy.

    The first clue was the fact that Sorkin and Mezrich were writing their material separately.  My understanding was Mezrich would send Sorkin pages and they would compare ideas and notes, but Sorkin was not working from a published work and was not “adapting” it into a screenplay.  It kind of recalls the manner in which Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke worked on “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

    I’ve got a few calls out to some folks to firm this up, but I’m thinking more and more that the case may be perfectly made for an original screenplay classification.  Meanwhile there’s a big, fat (as always, amazing) Mark Harris piece in New York Magazine that deals in some detail with all of this.  But, well, it’s still just a little unclear.

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  • Tell us what you thought of ‘The Town’

    I’m very curious on this one.  Every conversation I have, it seems Ben Affleck’s “The Town” is something of a breath of fresh air.  It’s nothing approaching revolutionary but it doesn’t need to be.  It’s a comfortable, solid, inarguable piece of entertainment that just works and it’s probably one of the few films I’ve seen this year that will get multiple viewings.  Guy was a fan out of Venice.  The film opens today so tell us what you thought once you give it a look.

  • ‘Casino Jack’ trailer

    Back when it looked like the film might be called “Bagman,” a sharp trailer was released for the film (which is still called “Casino Jack”).  Now that ATO Pictures has acquired domestic rights, naturally, a new trailer has emerged.  Check it out via Apple by clicking the image below or watch an embed after the jump.

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  • 9/17 Oscarweb Round-up

    • The Chateau Marmont, setting of Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere,” is ready for its close-up across the pond. [The Independent]

    • Jay Fernandez reports from the Washington premiere of “Waiting for Superman,” which received a “monumental stamp” when Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called it a “Rosa Parks moment.” [Hollywood Reporter]

    • Trent Reznor releases five tracks from his and Atticus Ross’s wonderful score for “The Social Network.” [Nullco]

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  • Beautiful but doomed: Greece submits ‘Dogtooth’ for Oscars

    Last year, I was erroneously notified that Greece had submitted Yorgos Lanthimos’s boundary-pushing festival hit “Dogtooth” as their entry for the 2009 foreign-language Oscar. As it turned out, they hadn’t — and the film wouldn’t have qualified under the Academy’s release date requirements anyway.

    Well, one year later, and here we are again. Except this time, “Dogtooth” has officially been submitted by the Greek selectors, after taking top honors at the country’s own national film awards.

    All of which immediately positions it as one of the best films in the running for the Academy Award, as well as one of the longest shots to be nominated — unless the bluehair voters who thought “The Secret in Their Eyes” superior to “A Prophet” have suddenly acquired a taste for pitch-black adult fairy tales of sexual repression, incest and feline mutilation. But here’s hoping.

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  • Casey Affleck: “Gotcha!”

    Obviously “Catfish” isn’t the only documentary leaving people wondering whether everything we see is legitimate.  Casey Affleck’s “I’m Still Here,” a chronicle of Joaquin Phoenix’s abandonment of his acting career in favor of a passion for, hip-hop has had many puzzled since Phoenix’s awkward appearance on The Late Show over a year ago.  I’ve always felt like it was a put-on but, well, it just never let up.

    Well, Affleck would like to come clean.  The clues have been scattered around since the film bowed in Venice, but in an interview with the New York Times’ Michael Cieply, Affleck says, “It’s a terrific performance, it’s the performance of his career.”  None of it was real, despite Affleck saying he “never intended to trick anybody.”  But the great mystery is settled.

    Whether or not the film is as poignant a study of falling from grace is still up in the air.  We can’t be sure how much the idea that everything happening was real might have affected the numerous negative opinions of the film.  Then again, in Venice, Guy noted that the film “is probably more interesting viewed as an immensely committed, avant-garde performance piece by Phoenix” and “a ragged but grimly compelling essay on our vile celebrity-news culture.”

    In any case, the cat’s out of the bag, and Phoenix will land back on Letterman’s couch — out of character, this time — on September 22.

    [Photo: People]