In Contention

Tag: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

  • TELLURIDE: Clooney takes center stage

    George Clooney has been tapped this year for one of Telluride’s three big tributes, and it’s certainly the biggest of the trio. Whether it’s press and patrons schmoozing with the star at yesterday’s Patron Brunch, whispers around town (“Did you hear George Clooney is here?” “I really hope ‘The Ides of March’ is a TBA.”) or the ecstatic response to Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants,” this mountain burgh has been taken by Clooney fever.

    It’s a curious thing to see happen here at a festival that is so smooth and cool and not at all phased by celebrity. Clooney changes all those rules, though. And most of it has to be owed to his trooper disposition and charming charisma. He’s always “on,” and just about everyone wants to just throw back a few with the guy. Men want to be him, women want to…well, you get my drift.

    I tend to stay away from the tributes and spend that time taking in a film at Telluride. But since the actor is set to be feted later this evening, I thought I’d at least dedicate some space to his still in-progress career and the highlights that have brought him to this point.

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  • Sam Rockwell’s campaign gears up

    Sam RockwellJust last week we told you about Duncan Jones’s concentrated grassroots effort to nab Sam Rockwell an Oscar nomination for his tour de force performance in “Moon.” It is a film that, unfortunately, came and went at the marketplace, yet was one of the best films of the summer.  And Rockwell, as he’s proven time and again for years now, has the chops and deserves the props.

    Jones has chimed in once again one the matter at his blog, Man Made Movies, and lays out all the Tweeting and petitioning goodness.  You can even buy a T-shirt for the cause.  Don’t you have a new movie to be preparing, Duncan!?

    Seriously, though, it’s worth noting that, in the wake of this, Sony Pictures Classics, as well as Rockwell’s own representation at the publicity firm I/D Public Relations, are getting serious about an Oscar campaign.  It will be an uphill climb because, due to the film being a British production, it isn’t eligible for a number of the awards that might have put it on the domestic radar, such as the Gothams or the Independent Spirits.  The film did, however, show up in a number of high-profile categories when the British Independent Film Award nominees were announced earlier in the week.

    Whether Rockwell nails the honor or not is ultimately beside the point.  “He deserves to be in the conversation,” Sony Classics honcho Michael Barker told me.  “He’s one of these guys like Philip Seymour Hoffman, who we had in films like ‘Love Liza’ and ‘Owning Mahowny,’ where you just said, ‘One of these days [he’ll be nominated].’”

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