• Pete Hammond reports on a last minute surge to get “Iron Cross,” Roy Scheider’s final film, into Oscar contention. [Notes on a Season]
• Gregory Ellwood takes note of the season’s box office champs so far: “Inglourious Basterds” and “Up.” [Awards Campaign]
• Geoff Boucher talks to “Avatar” composer James Horner. [Hero Complex]
• David Poland painstakingly seeks out assumed evidence to support his theory that “The Hurt Locker” will be this year’s Best Picture victor. [Movie City News]
• John Horn sits down with “Precious” screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher. [Los Angeles Times]
• Dave Karger chats up Viggo Mortensen and his “Road” co-star Kodi Smit-McPhee. [Oscar Watch]
• “Avatar” to hold its world premiere in Leicester Square, London, December 10. [Deadline Hollywood Daily]
• Nathaniel Rogers isn’t phased by his signed non-disclosure agreement, breathlessly (but briefly) enthuses about “Nine.” [The Film Experience]
• Johnny Depp becomes Hollywood’s highest paid actor with a £21 million ($42 million) salary for “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.” [Daily Telegraph]
In recent weeks we’ve been covering the performance categories in this space. With little else of tangible interest, what else can we possibly discuss? It’s as good a time as any to take note of what we have on our hands. Be sure to check out our looks at Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress if you missed them.
(Speaking of which, with the rise of “Crazy Heart” in this year’s race, it goes without saying Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal should be added to their respective fields as they are very much in this year’s race.)
At first glance, the Best Supporting Actor category looks fairly established this season. There have been, after all, a number of contenders already and plenty more to come. But none have really stood out from the pack yet, making this race actually as up for grabs as any other.
Possibly the most agreed-upon contender in the field has to be Christoph Waltz, who took acting honors in Cannes for his villainous portrayal in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds.” Waltz has made for quite the story off-screen as well, given his latter-career lift-off. And even detractors of the film (yours truly included) have to consider his performance a highlight of the year so far.
If anyone gives considerable chase here it’s going to be Christopher Plummer, smartly shifted to a supporting focus for his performance as Leo Tolstoy in “The Last Station.” Plummer will have sentiment (never been nominated) and added visibility (also appearing in “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”) on his side.
A while back, certain folks were (rather unfairly) dredging up the routine annual complaint about the supposed scarcity of viable Best Actress contenders. Dave Karger, however, has located the real weak spot of this year’s awards race, and it concerns the opposite sex for a change: where, he asks, are the Best Supporting Actor standouts?
Pound for pound, I tend to find Best Supporting Actor the least compelling of the acting races, a haven for affectionately regarded stalwarts in bit parts that are frequently less than challenging. The last two years have raised the bar considerably, but recent wins for Morgan Freeman, Alan Arkin and Michael Caine are typical of the laziness with which the Academy often treats the category.
Even by the category’s usual standards, however, this year’s pickings look unusually lean, as Karger narrows the serious contenders so far to a scant three.
Last year when Richard Linklater’s “Me and Orson Welles” landed at the Toronto film fest, as you know, it seemed a bona fide awards prospect for Christian McKay but likely to be picked up by a distributor if nothing else. Until a few weeks ago, the film didn’t have a pick-up, but the Frankenstein strategy is an unusual approach that Parick Goldstein thinks could be the beginnings of a new paradigm:
…for me, the reemergence of “Me and Orson Welles,” accompanied by a tie-in with a major studio DVD release and a revenue-sharing deal with a major theatrical exhibitor, offers a fascinating glimpse into the future of independent cinema. If the film finds an audience later this year, it could provide a template for success for the untold thousands of films that play film festivals around the world but never find any real theatrical distribution. If there is a real lesson behind this film’s new lease on life, it is that in today’s overcrowded marketplace, it takes a village — a village of like-minded, entrepreneurial talents — to nurture a film that appeals to a specialized audience.
• 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]
It’s funny how strong festival buzz can be frozen indefinitely as a film jumps through the increasingly complicated hoops of securing distribution — only to be thawed and reheated later. Such looks to be the case with Richard Linklater’s latest, “Me and Orson Welles” — or, to be more specific, its breakout star Christian McKay.
A year ago, the previously little-known Brit was the talk of Toronto for his apparently uncanny interpretation of Welles — even critics lukewarm on the film itself had nothing but superlatives for McKay. (Our own John Foote waxed lyrical here, while Eddie Marsan, who plays Welles associate John Houseman in the film, couldn’t stop gushing about the performance during our interview last fall.)
When I posted the trailer for Richard Linklater’s “Me and Orson Welles” earlier today, I totally neglected to mention the following clip, which appears at the film’s official site:
It seems we’ve been waiting forever for Richard Linklater’s “Me and Orson Welles,” probably because the film and, to a greater extent, Christian McKay’s supporting performance as the legendary filmmaker stirred Toronto so last year. John (who will be covering the fest once again for us next month) was a big supporter of the film, calling McKays performance “miraculous” and that he had “never seen an actor portray this character with such confidence and authenticity.”
The film, considered by Roger Ebert to be one of the best movies about the theater he’s ever seen, revolves around a teenager (played by Zac Efron) cast in the Mercury Theatre production of “Julius Caesar” that Welles directed in 1937. You can check out the official site here. It features a hilarious quote from Ain’t It Cool News’s Quint: “That guy playing Orson Welles was genius!”
The film doesn’t have a US distributor yet (nearly a year since it went before audiences in Canada), but production company CinemaNX has put together a teaser trailer nevertheless. Unfortunately it focuses more on the presumed star appealk of Efron than it does McKay’s reportedly brilliant portrayal. Maybe a buyer will come a knockin’ before this year’s Oscar season gets too far gone. Check it out after the jump.
It is somehow fitting that I meet Eddie Marsan not in the lounge of some swanky West End hotel or members’ club, but amid the worn wooden chairs and scuffed 1970s wallpaper of his local pub in the villagey West London suburb of Chiswick. For Marsan is not a movie star, but an actor — and that’s the way he likes it.
“I have friends who are leading men, and they’re only ever allowed to play leading men of a certain type,” he says over a lunchtime drink once we’re settled into a corner booth. “But as a character actor, there’s a wider variety of projects available. On the big Hollywood films, all they care about is having their lead in place, so it’s actually easier for someone like me to slip in. And I’m happy to do so.”
“Slipping in” is precisely what the 39-year-old London native has been doing to impressive effect over the last couple of years. After a long apprenticeship in British television, he can now boast having worked with such A-list auteurs as Martin Scorsese (2002’s “Gangs of New York”), Terrence Malick (2005’s “The New World”), Michael Mann (2006’s “Miami Vice”) and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarittu (2003’s “21 Grams”).
2008, however, has been Marsan’s breakthrough year, with two major credits on opposite ends of the creative scale: an appearance opposite Will Smith in summer blockbuster “Hancock,” and now, a career-best performance in Mike Leigh’s serio-comedy “Happy-Go-Lucky,” which is garnering well-deserved awards buzz for the actor in the supporting race.
The Best Actor category tends to be one of the more crowded categories come Oscar time, and 2008 looks to be no exception. To be sure, there are a handful of frontrunners as usual, but hovering behind them are another group, more than eight who could easily sneak in and nab a nomination. Last year Tommy Lee Jones was nominated for his powerful work in “The Valley of Elah,” a richly deserved nod, but completely unexpected by the majority of prognosticators. I remember smiling when I heard his name read, but it was a huge surprise.
I would expect something similar this year, as we have some of the great actors and potentially stunning performances in contention.
The obvious frontrunner at this point is Mickey Rourke, basking in the attention being given to “The Wrestler.” His performance is nothing short of miraculous, an astounding piece of acting, and it is great to see him back in the fold. But when it comes to winning the award, I have to say: not a chance. Rourke is intensely disliked in Hollywood. He’s seen as someone who basically spit on the industry to walk away and become a boxer. As a friend close to Rourke said, “A lot of people were happy when he left and don’t want this guy back.”
Frank Langella looks to be terrific in the trailers for “Frost/ Nixon.” He has always been a great actor, better known for his stage work than film, though in the last few years he has become a formidable presence on the big screen. I remember seeing him as “Dracula” both on stage and on film in the late 1970s and hoped he would go far. He did, just not in the movies, until recently.
Kris has Michael Sheen down as a lead actor possibility as well, and I agree. It’s one of those “Amadeus” situations where one performance cannot exist without the other. There is a strong chance that if the film and the actors are terrific, both of them will be nominated, though Langella certainly has the showier role of the two.
• Not that “Righteous Kill” is going to be an Oscar movie, but Brian Williams scoring a sit-down with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro for the first time is pretty sweet. [MSNBC]
• Roger Ebert clears up the TIFF tiff that the New York Daily News was dying to report. [Chicago Sun-Times]
• So far, Lou Lumenick has had nothing to say for himself. [Lumenick on Film]
• David Poland takes Mike Leigh’s advice, catches Uros Stovanovic’s “Tears For Sale.” [Movie City News]
• Recounting the decades-long journey of “On the Road” from page to screen. [The Independent]
• A solid profile of 2008 “it” girl Elizabeth Banks with a hell of a lede. [Associated Press]
• Peter Knegt, Brian Brooks and Jenny Sung chime in from Toronto. [indieWIRE]
• Xan Brooks follows up yesterday’s Sodebergh/Douglas/Liberace news with a list of the 10 most eyebrow-raising casting decisions. [The Guardian]
• Jeffrey Wells echoes our own John Foote’s sentiments that Christian McKay is a show-stopper in “Me and Orson Welles.” [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• According to Anne Thompson, the “Doubt” trailer will land on Apple some time today. [Thompson on Hollywood]
• And to whet your appetite, I found this interesting little trailer for a stage production of John Shanley’s drama in…Wisconsin. [YouTube]
Listening to the conversations of the other critics in the various theaters, it becomes very clear that this year’s fest has been something of a disappointment, the first in a long, long time.
At least one critic pointed out to me that Oscar and TIFF divorced this year, which has been mentioned ad nauseum and is probably a pretty fair assessment of the situation. A lot of the press are heading home today and tomorrow as the festival begins that slow march toward the end, always exiting with a whimper and never a bang.
These last couple of days I have screened some interesting films: a noble failure, a superb documentary, a fine war film that is still not the great film we need about Iraq. I will get to them as I can, but for now, some quick catching up…
(Reviews after the jump.)
• Nancy Kriparos keeps her Oscar diary going with looks at “Passchendaele,” “RocknRolla” and “Burn After Reading.” [Awards Daily]
• Tom O’Neil and Jeffrey Wells talk up the Oscar prospects of Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire.” [Gold Derby]
• Wells, meanwhile, seems to be talking himself out of seeing Spike Lee’s “Miracle at St. Anna” as best he can. [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• David Poland calls “Lovely, Still” the first real surprise of Toronto. [The Hot Blog]
• Anne Thompson responds positively to Richard Linklater’s “Me and Orson Welles.” [Thompson on Hollywood]
• The Kingdom of Jordan will leap into Oscar’s foreign language film race for the first time ever with Amin Matalqua’s “Captain Abu Raed.” [Variety]
John hasn’t addressed this yet, so I’ll put it out there…
Variety’s Anne Thompson is reporting on 20 new films added to the line-up of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Following suit with yesterday’s New York fest news, Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” (listed as “Part One” and “Part Two” for Toronto) will make the trip up north.
Other special presentations of note include Rian Johnson’s “The Brothers Bloom,” Richard Linklater’s “Me and Orson Welles,” Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire,” Kevin Smith’s controversial “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” Guillermo Arriaga’s “The Burning Plain” (could be Oscar bait for actress Charlize Theron), Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” and Marc Abraham’s “Flash of Genius” (which could be an awards vehicle for Greg Kinnear).
The big news, however, seems to be that Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling” will not be heading to the fest. Here’s Thompson on that front:
Clint Eastwood’s Cannes Fest entry “Changeling,” which will be the centerpiece of the New York Film Festival, will not be at Toronto because there was uncertainty about new mother Angelina Jolie’s availability to participate in a gala premiere. “We would have loved to have had Clint Eastwood,” said Bailey, “but the only way to present the movie in a big way was as a gala with Eastwood and Jolie.”
Basically, the Toronto crew can’t star-fuck, so they’d rather not show it. Gotcha.
Anyway, read all about the new additions here. The full line-up will be unveiled next Tuesday.
