In Contention

Tag: Love Ranch

  • Helen Mirren: everywhere and nowhere

    Amid the club of stars surfacing in two or more 2010 releases — Leonardo DiCaprio, Annette Bening, Chloe Moretz, and so on — has anyone been more ineffectually ubiquitous than Helen Mirren? The 65 year-old Brit has been working steadily since her Oscar win nearly four years ago, but apparently cracked the secret of human cloning this year, turning up in no fewer than six titles. (Seven if you count “The Last Station,” which most civilians only laid eyes on in 2010.)

    As much as this looks like a banner year for the actress on paper, however, her strike rate has been bewilderingly low. Brothel-madam biopic “Love Ranch,” directed by her husband Taylor Hackford, flunked with critics and audiences back in June, while “The Tempest,” her would-be highbrow awards bid, met with widespread scorn at the Venice and New York festivals.

    Two other adult-oriented dramas were left in limbo at Toronto, with John Madden’s “The Debt” booted to 2011, while “Brighton Rock” — for which Mirren ceded the critical spotlight to newcomer Andrea Riseborough — still languishes without a US distributor.

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  • ‘Love Ranch’ poster

    This is the OTHER Helen Mirren film that seems to be taking its time making it to screens:

    [Courtesy: The Hit List]

  • Scratch Mirren, Powell

    Helen MirrenOne of the films I’ve been keeping an eye on as we march up to the awards season is Julie Taymor’s “The Tempest,” a re-imagining of the William Shakespeare yarn with a female lead rather than male.  Helen Mirren seemed a great bet in the lead actress race and of course design heads Sandy Powell (costumes) and Mark Friedberg (production design) were going to be in the conversation.

    Well that conversation will now shift to 2010, as I just got confirmation the film would not be ready until next year due to the amount of visual effects yet to be included.  That effectively leaves Miramax with the already released (and mostly forgotten) “Chéri” for its lone awards hopes.  It looks like it’ll be a year away from the fray, since I don’t think Mike Judge’s “Extract” is exactly going to light up the circuit.

    This also whittles the lead actress race down even further, while giving Powell the go-ahead for a potential nod for “The Young Victoria,” now that the film has a US distributor.  Mirren’s “Love Ranch,” directed by husband Taylor Hackford, could still be a thread if it gets picked up by a distributor.  It’s getting to be that time…

    I’ll update predictions again on Monday, August 31.

  • OFF THE CARPET: Handicapping 2009 a year in advance!?

    Ewan McGregor and Hilary Swank in AmeliaAhh.  The dust is settling.  And on the horizon, just visible through the mist and waiting to drive us all up the wall once again: the 2009 Oscar season.

    I’ve been writing this year-in-advance column for probably six years now, and I always look forward to gazing ahead.  No one dives in so pathetically deep this far out as yours truly, but in exchange for not having a life for the past few months, I get to unload this burden the day after our annual season’s peak and forget about little gold men entirely for a few months.

    It’s quite liberating.

    The most interesting thing about the season to come, from my vantage point, is the lack of a dreaded “frontrunner status” for any of the contenders.  Some might say Clint Eastwood’s Nelson Mandela project (which is not called “The Human Factor,” mind you — the director says the film is currently untitled and is based on John Carlin’s book “Playing the Enemy”).

    Others might say Rob Marshall’s “Nine” (coming from a money-tight company hoping to avoid echoes of “Memoirs of a Geisha”).  But I don’t see a “Geisha” from here, or a “Charlie Wilson’s War,” expected heavies waiting to miss the mark.  The field is curiously flat, and as a result, excitingly broad.

    Let’s get to it, shall we?

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