In Contention

Tag: Jane Eyre

  • OFF THE CARPET: Strong year for double-dippers

    We find ourselves right in the middle of the big Toronto press junket, er, film festival, where 200-plus films are landing, many of them as world premieres, and the landscape of this year’s Oscar race is really beginning to take shape.

    As I looked out at the various films in play this year, it suddenly occurred to me that, perhaps more than ever, there are a lot of double-dipping actors and actresses in the hunt. Not all of these performances are or will be awards bait necessarily, but there could still be cases for more than a few saddling up to dual nominations this year.

    At the top of that list would have to be Brad Pitt. After already giving what many believed to be his best performance to date in Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” the paparazzi-hounded star found himself the recipient of a lot of great ink for his work in “Moneyball” when it screened in Toronto at the end of the week. Wisely, Fox Searchlight will be planning a supporting actor push for the actor in Malick’s film, which is both practical (given his clear lead in the other film), and organic (given that, at least in my opinion, he is supporting to Hunter McCracken’s lead in “The Tree of Life”).

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  • REVIEW: “Wuthering Heights” (***1/2)

    Venice Film Festival

    British filmmaker Andrea Arnold would have been 16 years old when Kate Bush topped the UK pop charts with “Wuthering Heights,” a swirling art-rock ballad that stripped the Emily Brontë novel for which it is named down to a few key lines and narrative details, but evoked its grand-scale tragic romance in more intuitive terms. In its wake, a new generation of schoolgirls clutched Brontë’s words tightly to their chests.

    We can only speculate how Arnold came to the novel, but her bold, forbidding and impressively reconceptualized “Wuthering Heights” appears to take the Kate Bush course of adaptation: gutted of most of its words, with some choice ones added (I haven’t read it in some time, but I’m pretty sure Brontë didn’t write the line, “Fuck you all, cunts”), the novel serves as a theoretical starting point for an artwork that redraws the story with the most immediate sensory tools of its medium. This is a “Wuthering Heights” of weather and flesh and grass and locked eyes, one that has the simple common sense and staggering cinematic wherewithal to know that great adaptations don’t beat great writers at their own game; they play a new game entirely.

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 57 — SPECIAL EDITION! — Oscar’s rule change, prospects at the mid-way point, Spielberg hitting the zeitgeist, lead actress race already looking contentious

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

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

    A month and a half since the last off-season podcast, we take the temperature one more time this summer, right at the year’s mid-way point. There have been some Academy rule changes and some news and notes in the interim, so let’s see what’s on the docket today…

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  • Fassbender’s 2011 gets busier with McQueen’s ‘Shame’

    I’m lousy at keeping track of pre-production news, so if you’d asked me an hour ago what British artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen was tackling for his sophomore feature, I’d have answered, “Oh, I know — that Fela Kuti biopic starring Chiwetel Ejiofor.” And I’d have been wrong.

    The more clued-up folks at The Playlist report that McQueen’s next project, “Shame,” begins shooting in January and will actually reteam him with the star of his vastly acclaimed debut “Hunger,” Michael Fassbender. As you know, we love “Hunger” rather dearly here at InContention, so this is exciting news, made more interesting by the fact that it’s McQueen’s first venture into fictional narrative. Here’s the selling blurb:

    Brandon (Fassbender) is a 30-something man living in New York who is unable to manage his sex life. After his wayward younger sister moves into his apartment, Brandon’s world spirals out of control… Shame is a compelling and timely examination of the nature of need, how we live our lives and the experiences that shape us.

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  • ‘Jane Eyre’ trailer

    Hot on the heels of the lovely poster unveiled yesterday, we now have a trailer for Focus Features’ spring release “Jane Eyre.” The assembly of the trailer is a touch overegged, though I’m reserving judgment — at the very least, cinematographer Adriano Goldman seems to be having the same fun with light and weather that he did in the sunnier climes of Cary Fukunaga’s debut “Sin Nombre.” Meanwhile, I get the feeling that we can pencil in Michael O’Connor (a recent Oscar winner for “The Duchess”) as a repeat Best Costume Design nominee over 14 months from now. Click on the image to check out the trailer at Yahoo! Movies, or watch the embed after the cut.

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  • ‘Jane Eyre’ poster

    Memo to the folks handling “The King’s Speech” at TWC: this is how you rustle up a poster for a period prestige pic. Cary Fukunaga’s adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” — the first since Franco Zeffirelli’s Charlotte Gainsbourg-starring attempt in 1996 — is one of my most curiously awaited films of 2011. The novel, a personal favorite, has been filmed multiple times, with no screen version quite hitting the jackpot: I’m intrigued, then, to see what fresh insight the young director of “Sin Nombre” will bring to the material. (Here’s hoping the corsets don’t constrict his personality the way they did the similarly indie-based Jean-Marc Vallée’s in “The Young Victoria.”)

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  • Ubiquitous

    Mia WasikowskaWhen I heard today that Mia Wasikowska had landed the lead in Cary Fukunaga’s upcoming adaptation of “Jane Eyre” for Focus Features, my first thought was, “Well, who else?”

    Not that there aren’t other suitable young actresses who could ace the part. But 20 year-old Australian Wasikowska seems to have hit a sweet spot in the Hollywood casting game. A year ago, few who didn’t watch HBO’s “In Treatment” had heard of her; today, she seems to be nabbing every plum role going in her age bracket.

    Two years ago, Ellen Page’s name was linked to this latest dusting-off of the Charlotte Brontë chestnut; the eventual casting of Wasikowska suggests that even young Hollywood has its minute generational shifts.

    Not that I’m complaining about Wasikowska’s sudden rise. I was as impressed as everyone else by her tangy work as a suicidal teen in “In Treatment,” and was pleased to see that promise completely followed through with a precise, perceptive turn as the daughter of Annette Bening and Julianne Moore in Lisa Cholodenko’s deserved festival hit “The Kids Are All Right.”

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  • INTERVIEW: Michael Fassbender

    Michael FassbenderMichael Fassbender is unemployed.

    This, at least, is what he tells me at the outset of our conversation, and he sounds entirely relaxed about it. As well he sound be: after 18 months of back-to-back film projects, a catholic range spanning the gruelling physical demands of “Hunger,” the arch larking-about of “Inglourious Basterds,” the kitchen-sink grit of “Fish Tank” and the blockbuster polish of the upcoming “Jonah Hex,” the 32 year-old Irish-German thesp has more than earned himself some downtime.

    Not that Fassbender is entirely sure how to enjoy it. “I don’t really know what to do with myself, to be honest,” he tells me over the phone from Los Angeles, where his next vehicle – “A Single Shot,” a “very quirky” thriller in which he has the lead role – is currently in pre-production.

    “When you’re trying to make it as an actor, all you want to be is busy. After nearly two years of bouncing from one shoot to another, even a little time off is kind of disconcerting. I don’t even really have a home at the moment to spend it in.”

    He laughs, but there is a trace of weariness in his voice, its lolloping West Irish rhythm occasionally colored with harder enunciation that only faintly betrays his half-German parentage. His professional restlessness, however, has made him one of the past year’s most visible young actors.

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