Two days into the Venice Film Festival, and still the only film I consistently hear people talking about is “Black Swan” — even as the film accrues its share of detractors, it seems Venice fest director Marco Müller has broken the traditional curse of festival curtain-raisers, kicking off this year’s Lido activity with a film people actually give a damn about. (As Variety’s Justin Chang rather succinctly put it on Twitter: “In the battle of opening-night films: Venice 1, Cannes 0.”)

Meanwhile, its kinship with Aronofsky’s previous feature, “The Wrestler,” has grown from an interesting side-note broken a few days ago into the most recurrent point of discussion around the film; Aronofsky addressed the matter directly in the film’s press conference yesterday, from which USA Today offers this quote:

The more I looked into the world of ballet, I actually started to see all these similarities to the world of wrestling … They both have these performers that use their bodies in sort of extremely, intense physical ways. Their entire performance is based on intense physicality.

Continue reading »

I’m heading out to catch my flight for Telluride in a bit, but I wanted to turn your attention to this before I take off.  Rachel Portman hasn’t been in Oscar’s good graces for 10 years now, but she has a hell of an opportunity this year with a beautiful score for Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go.” The album hits stores September 14, but Portman’s compositions were made available on iTunes Monday.  Beautiful, haunting melodies.  A real home run of emotion.  I imagine she’ll be back in the hunt this year.

Michael Cieply chats with comeback kid Ben Affleck, whose film “The Town” is set to play Venice this week. [New York Times]

Remember when “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” won the Palme d’Or?  Parisian critics would rather not. [The Guardian]

Catching up with Julian Schnabel, re: “Miral,” prior to Venice. [Variety]

Continue reading »

Venice Film Festival

Coming as it does from a filmmaker whose previous work has bent over backwards to reclothe and perfume the unglamorous body of the prestige biopic, the opening beats of Julian Schnabel’s latest, “Miral,” couldn’t be more prosaic.

For a good few minutes, the credit sequence offers the eye little more than a dawdling pan over a fuzzy map of the Israel-Palestine region, ennobling music thrumming away. (The blocky purple credits themselves are hideous, by the way, but that’s already the least of our problems.) Surprises aren’t exactly forthcoming when we the credits wrap and our geography lesson is complete: “My name is Miral,” intones Freida Pinto in a helpful introductory voiceover. “I was born in 1973, but my story really begins in 1947.”

Except it doesn’t; another woman’s does, however, and it’s the first of several admissions of the film’s own uncertainty as to why it’s here in the first place. The first of Schnabel’s biopics to come with a moderate fictional sheen, it’s scripted by Rula Jebreal — an international political journalist who became conscientized during her teenage years at an embattled Jerusalem orphanage — from her openly autobiographical novel, though it loftily purports to be about three generations of Palestinian women working toward independence.

Continue reading »

I don’t remember there being an earlier “For Your Consideration” ad than September 1 before, but nevertheless, DreamWorks Animation has seized an opportunity to surge out in front of the fray on behalf of “How to Train Your Dragon” with the first ad of the season, as well as the first FYC site.  The ad primes the film for not just an animated push, but an all out Best Picture push as well, and it hits at a time when toon competitor “Toy Story 3” is bringing in record-breaking box office.

And why not?  It was one of the most critically and popular films of the first half of the year, even if its accomplishments have been eclipsed by Pixar’s this summer.  I sometimes go back and forth on which film I like better.  I’ll bet there are Academy members who’ll be doing the same.  And will Disney be as aggressive with its campaign?  Will the studio even feel a need to be?  Time will tell.

The ad and site also promote upcoming screenings for the film in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and London, all of them happening in the next two months.  So, start your engines.  It looks like we’re already off to the races.  Check out the full ad after the jump (and note the “visual consultant,” who seems to be making the animated rounds lately.)

Continue reading »

I’ve had my eye on Paul Haggis’s “The Next Three Days” for a few months.  It’s probably not much of an awards play for Lionsgate, though the studio doesn’t have a lot to work with (unless Tyler Perry officially joins the party).  I don’t think we featured the trailer when it dropped a few weeks ago, but it certainly looks like a nice star role for Russell Crowe.  The poster hit today.  Check it out in full after the jump.

Continue reading »

Catch up with the idea behind this series here.

Kubrick gets robbed again as his visionary, “A Clockwork Orange” loses out to a well-executed genre flick in 1971. The Oscars like nothing more than a slightly better version of the crap that Hollywood continually churns out. It’s almost as if one film doing it really well justifies them lazily attempting to film the same thing over and over. All that said, “The French Connection” is quite good.

You can directly trace the recent win for “The Departed” back to this precedent, not to mention the debt Eminem and Three 6 Mafia owe to Isaac Hayes, who picked up a Best Song Oscar for “Shaft” this year.

“The Godfather” won in 1972 and nobody can really complain about that, can they? Apparently, “Cabaret” was the heavy favorite at the time, but thank Christ that didn’t happen (although it did win Best Director and seven other Oscars). The ceremony is best remembered as the one where Marlon Brando sent an Indian to turn down his Oscar.

It also saw 14-year old Michael Jackson perform the nominated song, “Ben.”

Oh, and Peter O’Toole lost.

Continue reading »

Hey, did you get that I kinda liked “Black Swan?”

I hope you did, because it’s really the only thing to write home (or, indeed, to you) about from my first official day at the Venice Film Festival – a day that looked better on paper than in practice, owing a little each to the films themselves, scheduling overlaps in the programme and my own neglect and/or incompetence. (I willingly sacrificed one screening slot to write my “Black Swan” review, but the next was less sensibly given over to a red-herring panic attack over a missing passport that, as it turned out, was merely out on an errand.)

Having missed Robert Rodriguez’s “Machete” for the less stupid of those reasons, I attempted to catch up with it at its midnight show an hour ago, but after spending 30 minutes standing in a motionless queue for a screening that was already running significantly late, I concluded that while there are some films I’d be willing to go to bed at 3 a.m. for, one directed by Mr. Rodriguez doesn’t really fit that description, however much fun several critics say it is. Hey, I tried. (Here’s Anne Thompson’s enthusiastic take on it.)

Continue reading »

Yesterday we featured the trailer for official Toronto selection “Beautiful Boy,” which could be an acting play in the awards season for stars Michael Sheen and Maria Bello.  Today we get a look at the poster, which has Sheen front and center.  Check out the full image after the jump.

Continue reading »

• Thomas Gladysz on the rarity of giving an Honorary Oscar to a film historian, in this case, 2010 honoree Kevin Brownlow. [The Huffington Post]

• Roger Ebert sprinkles four stars on “The American,” which opens today. [Chicago Sun-Times]

• Gregory Ellwood makes 10 predictions about the 2010-2011 Oscar season. [Awards Campaign]

Continue reading »

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 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.

Continue reading »

UPDATE (9:37am): Here is the officail release at Deadlin.

EARLIER: Notorious Hollywood blogger Nikki Finke has scooped up longtime Oscarologist Pete Hammond for awards reporting duties at Deadline.com for the upcoming Oscar season.

Hammond — who as of late has been writing a seasonal column for the LA Times — knows his stuff, has plenty of resources at his disposal and offers a unique insider’s point of view, fitting right into Finke’s industry-focused wheelhouse.  I imagine the work will be very similar to the man-about-town stuff we’ve been reading at The Envelope for the last few years.

Meanwhile, I’m told a deal has been struck whereby all of Hammond’s material that runs at Deadline will also run at Movieline.com, so make that two outlets getting into the Oscar game in a big way this year.  The reason, if one couldn’t guess, is simple: dollars and cents.

Continue reading »

I’ve spaced it a bit on Shawn Ku’s “Beautiful Boy,” which is set to play the Toronto film festival next month.  There’s something a bit opportunistic and obvious to me about making a movie concerning the impact of a school shooting on the shooter’s parents, but nevertheless, Michael Sheen and Maria Bello appear to be bringing their “A” game here.  If a buyer looking for an acting awards run bites, that could change the course of the season somewhat.  We’ll know in a few weeks.  Check out the trailer after the jump.

Continue reading »

I’m getting a look at Randall Wallace’s “Secretariat” tonight.  It may or may not be an awards play for Diane Lane.  I’ve heard both sides of the argument.  In the meantime, a new poster has been released by Disney, and yeah, it looks a little familiar.  But what else are you going to put on a poster about horse racing?  Check out the full image after the jump.

Continue reading »