In Contention

Tag: Changeling

  • THE LONG SHOT: What are precursors for, anyway?

    Anne Hathaway at the 2009 Critics Choice AwardsI didn’t time my holiday to coincide with the sleepiest week of awards season, but that’s how it panned out anyway. While I spent 10 days drinking my way along the canals of France’s Burgundy region, divorced from my computer screen and, I admit, any thoughts of Oscar whatsoever, the industry, too, took a collective siesta.

    As people assimilated the minimal revelations of this year’s festival run (Gosh, people like “Precious?” Who knew?) and steeled themselves for the annual madness ahead, the Producers Guild of America clearly aimed to take advantage of the lull by announcing the expansion of its feature film nominees to 10. The blogosphere stirred briefly, dutifully posted the press release, and went back to sleep.

    The PGA was probably hoping for more of a reaction than it got, but that’s what happens when you ape a larger organization’s move three months after the fact…as everyone suspected you would, anyway.

    The truth, however, is that the news was as dispiriting as it was unsurprising. Because for all the organization’s feeble claims that the copycat move was made purely in the interests of artistic diversity, all it does is expose a serious identity crisis that afflicts many of the season’s precursors.

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  • Want to win cinematography? An art direction nod helps.

    Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin ButtonI’m surprised I completely forgot about this little, some might say meaningless statistic, but with all the predictions for “Slumdog Millionaire” taking the cinematography win at tomorrow night’s Oscar ceremony, the Oscarweb seems to be in the same boat.

    You have to go back to 1999 and “American Beauty” to find a film that won the Oscar for Best Cinematography but was not even nominated in the art direction field.  Before that, 1995 and “Braveheart,” 1992 and “A River Runs Through It” and 1991 and “JFK.”

    “Mississippi Burning” (1988) and “The Killing Fields” (1984) were the only examples from the 1980s and then you see some more frequency in the new American cinema hey-day of the 1970s.  But if you stretch the timeline back to 1979, you only find six films in 20 years that managed to win the lensing trophy despite coming up short of a nod with the designers.

    The only films nominated in both categories this year are “Changeling,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “The Dark Knight.”  Most might use that as the ultimate excuse to throw their money behind “The Dark Knight,” which was revolutionary behind the camera with it’s implementation of IMAX technology and because, dang it, it looks amazing.  And God knows my fingers are crossed for Wally Pfister, but I think all of this might make a better case for Claudio Miranda and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final predictions

    Tech Support at In ContentionAfter six months of Tech Support previews and interviews, the films have arrived, the nominations have been announced and the guilds, the critics and BAFTA have all announced their preferences.  Today we take a final look at the races before the envelopes are opened on Sunday.

    BEST ART DIRECTION
    After guild and BAFTA wins, I would say “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” has cemented its frontrunner status in this category. Spanning decades of the 20th Century, Donald Graham Burt’s production design was impossible not to notice and gave us gorgeous backdrops for its character’s predicaments.

    The other nominees all have the odds stacked against them, whether similar work has been seen before (Michael Carlin’s “The Duchess” and Kristi Zea’s “Revolutionary Road”), is just not showy enough (Nathan Crowley’s “The Dark Knight”) or the nominee is otherwise along for the ride (James Murakami’s “Changeling”).

    Will win: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
    Could win: “The Duchess”
    Should win: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

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  • Predicting BAFTA, part one — the techs

    It’s no secret that the BAFTA awards, which unfold at London’s Royal Opera House on Sunday evening, can be one of the most contrarian and surprising events on the awards calendar – but nowhere are they more unpredictable, and occasionally inscrutable, than in their technical awards.

    Year in, year out, anybody trying to predict the BAFTAs is foiled in the tech categories, which they tend to spread far more generously than the American Academy, throwing up one (occasionally head-scratching) shocker after another. Who could foresee “Almost Famous” beating “Gladiator” to Best Sound, or “Vera Drake” getting the better of “The Aviator” in the Costume Design race?

    What few people realize is that, unlike at the Oscars, BAFTA’s tech categories (in addition to the directing and writing awards) are voted on by branch members only, rather than the entire membership – and peers can have a very different take from ours on their own craft. This makes predictions a rather thankless task, but I’m forging ahead anyway.

    (On a side note, it’s worth bearing in mind that they anticipated some tech upsets at last year’s Oscars, such the “The Bourne Ultimatum” for Best Sound and the jaw-dropping VFX win for “The Golden Compass.”)

    Best Cinematography
    “Changeling,” Tom Stern
    “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” Claudio Miranda
    “The Dark Knight,” Wally Pfister
    “The Reader,” Chris Menges and Roger Deakins
    “Slumdog Millionaire,” Anthony Dod Mantle

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final preview special, part one

    Tech Support at In ContentionFive months of Tech Support reach their climax on Thursday morning.

    This Canuck is, like the rest of the world, celebrating a new American President today. The fact remains, however, that a new set of Oscar nominees will greet us tomorrow and I can’t help but share my final thoughts on the categories.

    This is the first part of my review, including the categories of best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing and best Makeup.  We’ll chart the final five fields later today, so be sure to check back.

    Best Art Direction
    Starting with the most difficult category, there is only one film I would give the title “lock,” and it’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” I’d be stunned if Donald Graham Burt’s exquisite sets failed to make the cut.

    I suspect that Michael Corenblith is a solid bet for his detailed and realistic sets for “Frost/Nixon.” If “American Gangster” could get in last year, I would surprised if Corenblith did not score, especially considering his past success when working with Howard. James Murakami also seems a solid bet for “Changeling” for what were detailed and memorable designs of 1920s Los Angeles. His guild and BAFTA nominations suggest people remember the work.

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  • Best Actress: a tough call

    Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting MarriedRarely does the lead actress category provide more suspense than leading gentlemen and rarely is it as packed with fine performances as it is this year.  I can remember years when it was a struggle to come up with five nominees for best actress, 1975 and 1992 springing to mind.  It might have less to do with quality female performances than it does the amount of quality female roles Hollywood provides.

    But the Academy won’t have any trouble this year.  There are going to be excellent performances left off the list of nominees this year due to uncharacteristically heated competition, that is a sad fact, and there is not a thing anyone can do about it except continue to love and support the performances snubbed. In fact it is not even that they will be snubbed, it’s just that there is only room for five ladies, and this year, selecting those final five must be proving an enormously difficult task for the Academy.

    With her two Golden Globe wins, Kate Winslet seems to be a shoo-in for her superb performance in “Revolutionary Road,” a truly heartbreaking piece of acting that is sadly underseen at the moment.  Meryl Streep, meanwhile, will be nominated for the 15th time for her tyrannical nun in “Doubt” and Anne Hathaway will get a welcome to the big show for “Rachel Getting Married,” in which her caustic turn as Kym has altered the course of her career and announces her as a serious actress in the industry.

    And then it becomes tricky — those final two spots.

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  • ‘Slumdog,’ ‘Button’ lead BAFTA pack with 11 nods each

    Each year, the BAFTAs never fail to find new and frustrating ways to surprise me.

    It wasn’t hard to guess that “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Slumdog Millionaire” would come out on top here — though even as a fan of the latter film, I do wonder whether nominations for Best Production Design and Best Supporting Actress are pushing it a little. (Sure, Freida Pinto is gorgeous, but… )

    But look closer and the oddities come thick and fast. Who would have guessed, come nomination morning, that “Changeling” would land 8 nominations (including mentions for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay), while “Happy-Go-Lucky” gets zilch? I was aware that Mike Leigh’s delightful film has played better with critics Stateside than it did over here in the spring, but failing to even nominate Golden Globe winner Sally Hawkins is a blatant — and in my opinion, unforgivable — slap in the face.

    As I predicted, despite the film’s mixed reception, BAFTA voters responded well to “The Reader,” which lands in the Best Film derby alongside four of the Oscar favourites in the category. While I thought “Milk” might miss with the Brits, it was actually “The Dark Knight” that came up short — and while I’m not entirely surprised that it proved too genre-oriented for their top category, their failure to nominate Brit helmer Christopher Nolan is pretty stunning.

    Bar the Hawkins snub, the acting categories name most of the usual suspects, though there’s still room for typically BAFTA-esque eccentricities. Brendan Gleeson is an pleasant surprise in the Best Supporting Actor category, and while I anticipated Brad Pitt’s appearance in that field for “Burn After Reading,” Tilda Swinton’s Supporting Actress nod for the same film is the kind of out-of-nowhere hometown favoritism that only BAFTA can come up with. The real headscratcher in that category, however, is Amy Adams’ inclusion at the expense of Viola Davis — one has to wonder whether voters actually watched “Doubt,” or voted on name recognition alone.

    (More thoughts, and the full list of nominees, below the cut.)

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  • CDG nominees

    I’ve been out and about, so apologies for getting to the Costume Designers Guild nominees late:

    Contemporary Film
    “Iron Man” (Laura Jean Shannon and Rebecca Bentjen)
    “Mamma Mia!” (Ann Roth)
    “Sex and the City” (Patricia Field)
    “Slumdog Millionaire” (Suttirat Larlarb)
    “The Wrestler” (Amy Westcott)

    Period Film
    “Changeling” (Deborah Hopper)
    “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (Jacqueline West)
    “The Duchess” (Michael O’Connor)
    “Milk” (Danny Glicker)
    “Revolutionary Road” (Albert Wolsky)

    Fantasy Film
    “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” (Isis Mussenden)
    “The Dark Knight” (Lindy Hemming)
    “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” (Sanja Milkovic Hays)

    I have to say, while I could understand the classification for, say, the Tim Burton films, I’m increasingly agitated by the “fantasy” classification of Christopher Nolan’s Batman franchise.  And “The Dark Knight” is 10 times more “contemporary” than “Iron Man,” but whatever.  If the false classification means the films find some guild love in the fields of art direction and costume design, so be it, I guess.

    More frankly surprising guild support for “The Wrestler,” while “Slumdog” and “Button” remain the guild champs.  I’m happy “Prince Caspian” finally popped up somewhere.

    I see no real reason to change my Oscar predicitons here based on these results, but we’ll keep an eye on it as always.

  • Art Directors Guild Nominees

    The Curious Case of Benjamin ButtonPeriod Films
    “Changeling”
    “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
    “Doubt”
    “Frost/Nixon”
    “Milk”

    Fantasy Films
    “The Dark Knight”
    “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”
    “Iron Man”
    “The Spiderwick Chronicles”
    “WALL-E”

    Contemporary Films
    “Burn After Reading”
    “Gran Torino”
    “Quantum of Solace”
    “Slumdog Millionaire”
    “The Wrestler”

    Alright, so more surprising guild love for “The Wrestler.”  Very interesting.  But I’m rather shocked at the “Hellboy II” Snub in fantasy.  On the whole, though, does this clear anything up in this category?  I’ve been confused all year long.

    I’d say “Button,” “Skull” and “Slumdog” for the wins.

  • My picks for the 10 BEST films of the year

    Angelina Jolie in ChangelingIt’s no secret that I don’t expect 2008 to be remembered as a banner year for cinema, though with that said, there are plenty of exceptional films to be remembered.

    Perhaps 2007 spoiled us and got our hopes up and 2008 brought far too many let downs and disappointments from great filmmakers. Usually when I sit down to write up the year’s best, the first short list stands at around 30, perhaps 35 films that range from very good to great. This year I was at less than 20, and in some cases, I was probably stretching to allow space for this or that.

    But I got it down to 10, so here they are…

    10. “VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA”
    This film was not vintage Woody Allen, as he has grown so much as a director for anything new from him to be considered a throw-back, but it is certainly refreshing Allen.  Sexy and sleek, this film is part of the newest stage in the director’s career, moving away from the comfort and familiarity of New York to an exotic locale with Americans mixing it up and getting into all sorts of bizarre situations.  Penélope Cruz all but burns a hole in the screen with her sensuality in this film, which is terrifying because she just might be psychotic.  Welcome back Woody…we’ve missed you.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Memo to the Academy

    The Academy Awards–MEMO–

    TO: Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences
    FROM: Kristopher Tapley

    RE: The ballot you recently received

    Ladies and gentleman,

    As you sit to ponder the year’s best in your various fields of professional expertise, you might find yourself strong-armed into the consensus view 2008’s film product has been whittled down to over the last 30 days.  You might even find yourself at a loss, cramming as much as you can after a year of constantly working with nary a moment to spare a trip to the cinema.  Such last minute jitters can yield an unconsidered and, certainly, lackadaisical approach to your annual responsibilities as AMPAS members.  But I implore you to take your time with this, be measured, and above all, take pen to paper with a level of seriousness.

    While I would never presume to tell you how to go about filling in your respective ballots, I hope you don’t find it too bold of me to offer a few closing words of encouragement and suggestion as we close the book on 2008.  The glut of film awards season fades into a numbing hum you’d perhaps rather ignore until the holidays have run their course, so come back to these words at a later date if you must.  They merely represent the humble opinion of one passionate film lover who believes in the potential of your organization and the ideals it stands for.

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  • Clint Eastwood’s potential Best Actor win

    Clint Eastwood in Gran TorinoIt could happen…but it shouldn’t.

    My admiration and love of Clint Eastwood’s work as a director was enough to send me on an 18-month research and writing spree, piecing together a study of the man that should be in bookstores in a week’s time. In the forward, I make clear that had anyone suggested to me in the 1970s that Eastwood would one day be an Oscar-winning director and producer, one of the best directors working in modern cinema, and a two-time Best Actor nominee, I would have laughed, long and loudly in their face.  Certainly there could be no question about his star power…he had that.  But he was hardly a great actor.

    Earlier this year his film “Changeling” was released to strong reviews, but doesn’t seem poised to do much for him come Oscar time (a shame).  But there is talk of a Best Actor nomination for his performance as crusty, cranky, tough-as-nails Walt Kowalski in “Gran Torino.”

    Actors have won Oscars masquerading as a career achievement in the past. Hell Al Pacino must know as do we that “Scent of a Woman” is not his best work, yet he won the Oscar for it. Henry Fonda won for “On Golden Pond,” though he should have won years before for “The Grapes of Wrath,” while James Stewart took home the gold for “The Philadelphia Story,” one of his lightest performances.

    Guy put together a smart list of similar AMPAS atrocities a few weeks ago, so I won’t go into them here.  Suffice it to say, the “career achievement” Oscar is a staple of a dubious Academy year in and year out.

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  • Runnin’ on empty: the best films of 2008

    Javier Bardem and Rebecca Hall in Vicky Cristina BarcelonaJust to say it once more, because I’ve certainly brought it up enough, 2008 was not a good year for film-goers.

    That’s an incredibly subjective quip, of course, but I certainly found myself struggling with the level of quality on display with each and every screening, the oasis of the Oscar season ultimately proving to be a trickster mirage on the horizon as contenders ultimately fell flat or disappointed in various ways. And suddenly, we’re two weeks away from 2009.

    Who let the goods out?

    But a year lacking broad quality can be a fun “Where’s Waldo” for the impassioned film lover, and so it is that I found some truly wonderful, praise-worthy work from a number of driven and creative filmmakers this year. But a peculiarity began to arise as I sifted through the year’s offerings: What a load of downer cinema.

    I first noticed it in the documentary offerings, heavier on morose subject matter than any other year I can remember. Depictions of the horrors of Katrina, the passionate life and tragic death of a Neil Diamond impersonator, the work of a journalist obsessed with his own inevitable suicide, the nation’s stance on the death penalty, the life and times of a child molester, a heart-breaking family drama in St. John’s, Newfoundland, a national economy on life support, despicable soldier etiquette at our global detention facilities -– it is hardly surprising that the most well-received documentary of the year is a celebration of an “artistic crime” in James Marsh’s “Man on Wire.” But how odd that the genre’s resident cynic, Werner Herzog, was responsible for one of the few other positive doc titles that made the rounds this year?

    Moving into the realm of fiction, even the usually jubilant folks at Pixar couldn’t help but crank out their most sobering film to date, a cautionary tale wrapped in the guise of a love story that conveyed a creepy sense of inevitability despite a hopeful denouement.

    I bring these observations up for a reason, and that is to add some perspective to the list you’ll find below. 2008 was a bellwether for me personally as I began to let the idea of “best” as a definitive slip away and become something more akin to a solid if flexible representation of the times, and how those times affect the viewer.

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  • Globe cheers, jeers and predictions

    As ever, this morning’s Golden Globe announcement provided a mixed bag of talking points, with some pleasantly zany curveballs at one end of the scale, and a couple of yawnsome autopilot nominees at the other. Like most awards bodies, they’re never going to get it completely right: for every inspired inclusion or omission there’s an equally perplexing one. (Ralph Fiennes for “The Duchess,” anyone?)

    But looking at the nominees from a bargaining perspective — tempering, for example, my disappointment that Richard Jenkins didn’t make the Best Actor cut with the knowledge that Clint Eastwood didn’t either — I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m happier with them than I expected to be.

    With that in mind, I offer below a couple of my own personal highlights and low points of the nominee list (though, given that I haven’t seen “Milk” yet, I’m leaving off that heated topic), followed by some way-too-early, subject-to-change predictions. Feel free to supply your own.

    THE GOOD

    Comedy rules: The comedy/musical categories are usually a dumping ground for filler nominees in less-than-memorable mainstream products, and previously expressed fear that this year, given the lack of high-profile contenders, they could make some really desperate stretches this year. Happily, the HFPA showed genuine resourcefulness by dipping into indie waters to celebrate the oddball wonders of “Happy-Go-Lucky” and “In Bruges,” while singling out the superb, less-discussed likes of Rebecca Hall and Brendan Gleeson for recognition. With classy, intimate works like “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and “Last Chance Harvey” joining the mix, the resulting set of nominees is, dare I say it, considerably fresher than their dramatic counterparts. How often can you say that?

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Button,’ ‘Reader’ screen… uncertainty reigns

    • After a false start, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” was finally unveiled, to considerable applause… but is it too chilly?

    • Maybe. In his gutsy early predictions, Kris names “Slumdog Millionaire” the one to beat.

    • InContention readers, however, are less sure.

    • In a week of revelations, “The Reader” also screened — but the response on these pages was ambivalent.

    • Not everyone agrees, however. Which has us asking where this leaves Kate Winslet’s Oscar chances.

    • Amid the confusion, this week’s Off the Carpet column drew the conclusion that 2008 simply isn’t a vintage year.

    • Onto surer things, we wondered whether Heath Ledger is the inevitable winner of this year’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Your answer? A resounding yes.

    • Mapping out some alternative possibilities in the Best Documentary Feature race.

    • An interview with with “Changeling” scribe J. Michael Straczynski.

    • Just in case you hadn’t heard the name “Benjamin Button” enough this week, we were treated to the film’s score.

    • On the other side of the pond, meanwhile, “Mamma Mia!” continues to break records. Does BAFTA beckon?

  • 11/26 Oscarweb Round-up

    WALL-E• Jeff Wells is beside himself because Oscar prognosticators understand “Che” has a snowball’s chance in hell at a best Picture nomination. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Noah Forrest podcasts “Changeling” screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski. [Movie City News]

    • Anne Thompson gets the “Australia” goods from Hugh Jackman. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • Tom O’Neil, meanwhile, wonders if pundits are underestimating the film…nah. [Gold Derby]

    • The economy takes a bite out of one of the season’s biggest Oscar bashes. [Vanity Fair]

    • Pete Hammond is a party pooper, makes sure we all understand a SAG strike could put a damper on the season. [Notes on a Season]

    • Nathaniel Rogers talks to “Rachel Getting Married” gals Rosemarie DeWitt and Jenny Lumet. [The Film Experience]

    • Peter Bart joins my Brandon Walters bandwagon, says director Baz Luhrmann has created a star. [Peter Bart]

    • Kevin Kelly talks to “WALL-E” and “Star Wars” sound whiz Ben Burtt. [Spout Blog]

    • Patrick Goldstein digs into the emotional chill factor of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” [The Big Picture]

    • A Harvey Milk Cliff’s Notes for your “Milk” screening preparations. [USA Today]

  • INTERVIEW: ‘Changeling’ screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski

    J. Michael Straczynski“In the feature film world, we television writers barely exist,” explains J. Michael Straczynski screenwriter of Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling,” starring Angelina Jolie.  “So for this to all happen so fast is really a fairy tale year for me. I am elated with how this has all gone down and changed the course of my life.”

    Straczynski was making a fine living on the small screen, writing episodes of “Murder She Wrote” and “Jake and the Fatman” before moving on to  Showtime’s series “Jeremiah” and “Babylon 5,” two of his most well-known credits.  He had worked as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times and upon discovering the story of Christine Collins, he put it on the back burner for a few years until he found the time to do it right.

    He describes his research and fact-finding like “putting a jigsaw puzzle together” for the simple reason that facts and articles had been lost, and they simply did not have the technology then to store everything he required. Taking a year off writing television, he researched the Collins case and put a script together, which his agent sent off to Imagine Entertainment and Ron Howard.  The script was bought as is and Howard wanted to direct the film, but when his schedule became impossible, “Frost/ Nixon” looming on the horizon, he sent the screenplay to Clint Eastwood.  The grizzled vet read the work on a plane back to the States and committed to direct after the first reading.

    Yes.  This was a FIRST DRAFT that went before the cameras within a year of being sold, something rather unheard of in Hollywood unless you’re Woody Allen.

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  • In the round

    I don’t know why exactly, but the “roundtable” format of interviews that crops up a lot during awards season often strikes me as rather less fascinating than it’s meant to be. Unless the panel is very smartly chosen, I find the discussion tends to veer towards back-patting and faintly smug in-jokery, rather than stimulating argument between widely differing creative forces.

    Maybe I’m just blasé. But on reading the Hollywood Reporter’s two recent “Oscar Roundtables” with six screenwriters and six producers that THR thinks are likely to figure in the Oscar race, I couldn’t help being disappointed that, despite the level of talent involved, they didn’t have that many interesting things to say between them. (I’d go so far as to say that the best soundbite is quoted from the not-present Charlie Kaufman.)

    The selected writers are Jenny Lumet (“Rachel Getting Married”), Dustin Lance Black (“Milk”), Thomas McCarthy (“The Visitor”), John Patrick Shanley (“Doubt”), Andrew Stanton (“WALL-E”) and J. Michael Straczynski (“Changeling”). I have a hard time imagining the latter two will score writing nominations, but the race is young, I suppose.

    Writers can be pretty insufferable when talking about their “process” — I know, I am one. So there’s the usual semi-serious comparing of hours spent at the computer, feverish notebook scribbling and messy first drafts, but there isn’t much discussion of the specific screenplays and films at hand. McCarthy seems to be the most reticent of the group, only entering the discussion halfway through. A shame, really, as I’d venture that he’s possibly the best writer of the lot.

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