• Dave McNary catches up with the thin WGA field story. (Nominees will be announced later this morning.) [Variety]
• The local rag continues to step up its crafts coverage, spotlights “The Hurt Locker” sound mixer (and sound editor) Paul Ottosson. [Los Angeles Times]
• On the non-actor terminated from Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air.” [The Guardian]
Since I last analyzed the costume design category in July, a number of the contenders are still waiting to be seen, though several have opened and we’ve seen glimpses from others. While the number of movers and shakers hasn’t been enormous, there has still been enough movement – and more insight gained – to warrant another look.
One thing I do not think has changed since the summer is the category’s most likely nominee. While I’m doubtful that she will win, I’m quite confident that Janet Patterson will earn her third nomination for Jane Campion’s “Bright Star.” While the film did not catch fire to quite the extent I was expecting, I’m nevertheless confident the threads will remain in this branch’s mind until the end of the year.
In July, I was torn about whether Colleen Atwood could emerge as a double nominee this year. But “Public Enemies,” despite featuring fine period work, seems to have become a distant memory. Even so, I’d be very surprised if she failed to get nominated for Rob Marshall’s “Nine.”
The great Sandy Powell, on the other hand, has had her three potential nominees reduced to one. With “The Tempest” and “Shutter Island” moved to 2010, it’s only “The Young Victoria” that is keeping her in the race. Powell is a giant in the field. But is the film at all memorable?
• Arguing that “Public Enemies” looks “cheap” due to HD nearly three months after release. [The Huffington Post]
• Dave Karger wonders if a bona fide left-field Best Picture nominee is in the cards in a 10-nominee paradigm. [Oscar Watch]
• Getting the 70s bush right for “A Serious Man” (Amy Landecker officially rocks). [Vulture]
• Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski arrested in Zurich for 1977 rape charge. [CNN]
• Steven Zeitchik reports that Summit was set to be the first out of the gate with awards screeners this year with “The Hurt Locker.” Would it have made a difference? [Risky Biz Blog]
• Nathaniel Rogers considers Julianne Moore’s Oscar chances in “A Single Man.” [The Film Experience]
• We wrapped up Toronto as Lee Daniels’s “Precious” took the festival’s audience award, putting it on a solid track for Oscar.
• We got a look at the first trailer for “Harry Brown,” which may or may not be an awards film for actor Michael Caine. John, you’ll recall, isn’t feeling it.
• We saw ‘Meatball’ dominance at the box office in this weekend’s Sunday Cents column.
• This week’s Off the Carpet column kicked off our weekly Oscar coverage with a call for perspective on the perceived Best Picture frontrunners, while a new weekly column from across the pond — The Long Shot — introduces a different perspective mid-week.
The press release, in part:
Newmarket Films announced today that it has acquired U.S. rights to director Jon Amiel’s CREATION, a film which focuses on Charles Darwin and his family as he struggles to finish his legendary book “On The Origin of Species,” which went on to become the foundation for evolutionary biology. The screenplay was written by John Collee, based on the biography “Annie’s Box” which was penned by Darwin ‘s great-great grandson Randal Keynes using personal letters and diaries of the Darwin family. The film was produced by Jeremy Thomas at Recorded Picture Company (The Last Emperor, Sexy Beast), with BBC Films and Ocean Pictures.
CREATION stars real-life couple Paul Bettany (A Beautiful Mind, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World) and Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly (Requiem for a Dream, A Beautiful Mind) as Darwin and wife. Newmarket ’s Chris Ball and Robert Fyvolent negotiated the deal for Newmarket , and HanWay Films CEO Tim Haslam negotiated on behalf of the producer. Newmarket plans to release the film in December.
Meh…
The third installment of Oscar Talk lands as Toronto winds down and, seemingly, the season’s biggest questions are being answered. Or are they?
I’m joined by Anne Thompson of indieWIRE as always and we discussed the following:
• The Coen brothers’ “A Serious Man,” Anne’s thoughts, my thoughts, the Coens doing Woody, etc.
• The first sell of Toronto, “A Single Man” (not to be confused with “A Serious Man”), and the Oscar prospects of Colin Firth and Julianne Moore.
• Business at the fest and a shifting acquisition paradigm in the industry.
• Anne gives her thoughts on Annette Bening and Samuel L. Jackson in Rodrigo Garcia’s “Mother and Child,” great performances, but will it be picked up?
• Robert Duvall’s Oscar-worthy work in “Get Low,” a film that has yet to be picked up when it’s the sort of film that may have ignited a bidding war in years past.
• Thoughts on other films that bowed at Toronto, including “Capitalism: A Love Story,” “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” and “Jennifer’s Body” (leading to a conversation about Megan Fox’s talents that will put each of us out on a limb).
• Anne loved Edward Norton in Tim Blake Nelson’s “Leaves of Grass” but found the film on the whole to be a missed opportunity.
But nothing seems to be decided even with a bulk of the season’s offerings having been screened in Venice, Telluride and Venice. Onward!
As always you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here. (If you have some audio issues with the levels, my apologies — with Anne in Toronto and me in North Carolina, we had some technical difficulties.)
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• Matt Damon on packing on the pounds for “The Informant!,” among other things. [USA Today]
• Which earth crisis documentary is for you? [Beyond the Multiplex]
• In honor of “A Prophet,” newly submitted as France’s foreign film Oscar representative, a list of the best-ever prison films. [Awards Daily]
• Peter Travers is pissed about the “Shutter Island” bump to 2010. [Rolling Stone]
• “Me and Orson Welles” gets a distributor in Freestyle Releasing. [The Wrap]
• “The Road,” meanwhile, gets pushed to Thanksgiving, in direct competition with the Weinsteins’ other Oscar hopeful, “Nine.” [Variety]
The calm before the storm is beginning to subside. Can you sense it?
By the end of the week, the Venice and Telluride fests will be underway. A week later, Toronto will weigh in. When the smoke settles in roughly three weeks, the season will suddenly be a lot clearer…and yet so much of it will remain a mystery as latter year hopefuls limp (or stomp) into the fray in November and December.
Yes, the season is upon us. And while studios continue to think over the true value of Oscar notices, especially in a widened playing field, business marches on as usual. Venice will tell the tale for efforts like “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” “The Informant!,” and “Capitalism: A Love Story,” while Telluride could make or break the hopes of films such as “The Road” and “Up in the Air.”
Some overlap will go down in Toronto, but the most anticipated first-look there will likely be the Coen brothers’ “A Serious Man.” Meanwhile, distributors might be looking to beef up their schedules with films like “Creation” and “Leaves of Grass” looking for buyers. But for those with ponies primed and ready, these festivals are very much the starting gun for awards runs, as ever.
So before the madness ensues, we get one more stab in the dark. But given the perceived road ahead, it seems to me that films with a healthy pre-season awards profile going into the fall are in pretty good shape as it is.
• Lots of buzz over “An Education” this week, with a new trailer and poster unveiled … and the talk isn’t only about Carey Mulligan.
• We kicked off a new season of Tech Support with a look at the runners and riders for Best Cinematography.
• Darwin biopic “Creation” will open this year’s Toronto fest, while “Bright Star” and “Precious” are also in the lineup.
• Speaking of “Precious,” this week’s edition of Page to Screen examined the novel behind the Sundance sensation.
The Co-Directors of the Toronto International Film Festival took to the stage this morning at the first of three summer press conferences to begin announcing the slate of films that will comprise this, the 34th annual Toronto International Film Festival.
This morning’s announcement of 22 titles brought some pleasant surprises, as well as some expected announcements.
The Opening Night Gala will be Jon Amiel’s “Creation” featuring Paul Bettany as Charles Darwin and Jennifer Connelly as his wife.
There were several Gala Presentations announced, among them “Get Low,” a film featuring the great Robert Duvall as Felix Breazeale, a backwoods eccentric who exiles himself from society for more than 40 years. Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek co-star with Oscar winner Duvall.
As expected, Lee Daniels’s festival circuit hit “Precious” will land in Toronto, already an Oscar contender, as well as “The Invention of Lying,” directed by Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson.
I’m not quite sure why it fell to the Telegraph to unveil this trailer for Jon Amiel’s Darwin biopic “Creation,” starring real-life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, but so it has. Take that as a measure of excitement elsewhere, if you will. Anyway, some have had awards expectations of this — I can’t say I have, and this creaky 100 seconds does little to change that.
Amiel’s glory days of “Queen of Hearts” and TV’s “The Singing Detective” are long behind him. His last feature was 2003’s “The Core,” a film so appalling it sent him scuttling back to the small screen — where, coincidentally or not, this film looks to belong. (By the way, what’s up with the wholesale lifting of the beach cartwheel shot from “The Piano?” Ms. Campion, call your lawyer.)
Michael Cieply, writing at The Carpetbagger (which, if you haven’t been aware, has been transformed into a year-round film blog at The New York Times rather than solely focusing on the awards season), has put up brief addressing a few titles that, as of yet, have no U.S. distributor but are very much on the minds of studios looking for latter year Oscar hopefuls.
“It’s time to think about the Oscars,” Cieply writes, “or it is if you happen to be a film distributor with ambitions for the award season that, thankfully, won’t start for the rest of us until at least September. At least a handful of movies with awards potential, but no U. S. distributor so far, are being watched closely by players in the game.”
Cieply then goes on to list six titles in play: Alejandro Amenábar’s “Agora,” Jane Campion’s “Bright Star,” Jon Amiel’s “Creation,” Jean-Marc Valle’s “The Young Victoria” (reviewed by Guy earlier this month — he wasn’t a fan), Peter Weir’s “The Way Back” and Grant Heslov’s “Men Who Stare at Goats.” Three of those were listed specifically my year-in-advance Oscar column back in February and, of course, all but one have been listed in our contenders section for over a month. The list comes from the mouth of an anonymous industry source who’s looking, however, so I’ll admit it has more stroke than my petty ponderings.
The inclusion of the Weir film is a surprise, however. Just last month actor Ed Harris told me he was off to Bulgaria to shoot his portion of the film, a historical epic revolving around escapees from a Siberian Gulag in 1940. So that film is still very much in the making and likely won’t hit theaters (if I were to make my best guess) until 2010.
Of the others, I would bet “Agora” could really hit the ground running this season if it isn’t dashed by its own ambitions. The rest…well, we’ll see.