Midnight in Paris – In Contention

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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September 12, 2011

8/29 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: ‘Help’ detractors racist?, Stoll on Hemingway, ‘Dangerous Method’ buzz

Welcome to the new season…

• “‘The Help’ isn’t racist. It’s critics are.” [The New Republic]

• Pete Hammond takes note of indies looking to make Oscar plays this year. [Deadline]

• Steve Pond talks to “Midnight in Paris” star Corey Stoll. [The Odds]

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August 29, 2011

“You don’t want the opinion of another writer.”

One of the biggest delights of the year for me was Corey Stoll’s performance as Ernest Hemingway in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.” I had a giant grin on my face, ear to ear, the whole time he was on screen. So I’m glad David Poland dedicated one of his long-form interviews to the actor.

August 24, 2011

OFF THE CARPET: Closing the book on summer 2011

The summer movie season has come to an end, and what an interesting season it was.

We saw three billion-dollar grossers for the first time ever in one year, let alone one three-month spread (thank you, 3D). We saw a bit of a glass ceiling for comic book movies, proving nothing is a sure thing in that game. We saw indie darlings with more stamina than the big dogs and we saw R-rated comedies find impressive footholds.

But what does it mean in the spectrum of a film awards race, seeing as we have one knocking on our door in a bit more than a week’s time? Let’s consider.

First and foremost, as reported here last year (and confirmed by Variety a few weeks ago), Warner Bros. Pictures is all set for a balls-to-the-wall Best Picture push for “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.” With 10 digits in the bank and counting, and with a breathtaking critical pass, now is the time, and it’s a smart tactic. DVDs will be out right in the thick of the season, adding fuel to the fire. And it’ll be a nice counter to the other in-houses pushes, dramas like “Contagion,” “J. Edgar.,” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” (The studio could also go screenplay hunting for Dan Fogelman and “Crazy, Stupid, Love” if it wants.)

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August 22, 2011

BOX OFFICE: ‘Cowboys’ and ‘Smurfs’ photo finish

After winning the day Friday, “The Smurfs” (which somehow has an audience) managed to dip down and line up neck and neck with the under-performing “Cowboys & Aliens.” Meanwhile, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” is on course to be the fastest worldwide billion-dollar grosser, and is likely to take the domestic crown, too (a first when the franchise was up against a “Transformers” installment). “Midnight in Paris” dropped out of the top 10 again but still managed a million more bucks.

(Courtesy: Exhibitor Relations)

July 31, 2011

BOX OFFICE: ‘America,’ f*** yeah

So “Captain America: The First Avenger” managed to hold the Harry Potter buzz wave to one weekend crown by coming out on top this week. I think it’s a pretty solid number given the givens, but anyway, my eyes are on that #10 spot. Woody Allen’s locomotive keeps chugging along.

(Courtesy: Box Office Mojo)

July 24, 2011

BOX OFFICE: ‘Harry Potter’ and the Record-Breaking Hit

We all saw this coming. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” the culmination of 10 years of filmmaking that racked up tons of dollars along the way, won the box office this weekend. Things started with the highest opening day gross of all time ($92 million, blasting away the record previously held by “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” by $20 million), before the film zipped past “The Dark Knight”‘s opening weekend record and settled at a whopping $168.5 million for the weekend. In other news, at a more modest $41.7 million, “Midnight in Paris” popped back into the top 10 and became Woody Allen’s highest grossing film to date, while “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” is now the year’s first $300 million grosser. It’s now a battle between the boy wizard and the robots for the year’s domestic crown. It just depends on how front-loaded the former is. We’ll keep an eye on it throughout the rest of the summer.

(Courtesy: Exhibitor Relations)

July 17, 2011

BOX OFFICE: ‘Horrible,’ ‘Zookeeper’ can’t stop ‘Transformers’

Not much to say. “Super 8” had another good drop, while Woody Allen fell out of the top 10, but continues to chase himself (he’ll be on the heels of “Hannah and Her Sisters” next week). And finally something takes “The Hangover: Part II” off the top of the domestic chart this year.

(Courtesy: Exhibitor Relations)

July 10, 2011

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

Welcome 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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July 8, 2011

BOX OFFICE: ‘Transformers’ way out in front

Yes, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” inevitably took the top spot this holiday weekend, but there is cause for serious sadness. “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” crossed the billion dollar mark worldwide. I weep. But “Midnight in Paris” is just a few mil away from being Woody Allen’s highest grossing film ever, so there’s that.

(Courtesy: Exhibitor Relations)

July 3, 2011

OSCAR TALK: Ep. 56 — Special Edition! — Cannes so far, ‘Tree of Life,’ Von Trier, taking the 2011 awards pulse

Welcome 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.

It has been nearly three months since we last got on the horn to talk the film wards landscape. We promised another dip during Cannes, so here we are. Today Anne and I are joined by Guy Lodge as the two of them have been working the Croisette all week. Let’s see what’s on the docket today…

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May 20, 2011

REVIEW: “Midnight in Paris” (**1/2)

Cannes Film Festival
Opening Night

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” Nobody actually quotes L.P. Hartley in “Midnight in Paris,” Woody Allen’s often charming if largely over-explicated ode to the healing and deceiving properties of nostalgia. If they don’t, however, that could just be because a spring breeze stole the last few pages of the script at some point on the shoot of this amiably unfinished choux-pastry film, and Allen didn’t feel much like rewriting them.

Up until that point, Allen hasn’t exactly shied away from obvious references or externalized subtext — this is a film that trades in emphatic cultural and historical caricature, a picture-book approach that will delight some viewers even as it strikes others as aggravatingly twee, but one Allen commits to with the take-it-or-leave-it dispatch of a 75 year-old master working in quick-sketch mode.

Either way, the tourist-style filmmaking that surfaced in such recent Allen films as “Match Point” and “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” feels more thematically motivated in “Midnight in Paris,” a study of a character not merely a traveller in his physical surroundings, but his generational ones too. I kept wondering if the film’s narrowness of perspective was that of Allen or Owen Wilson’s Allen-substitute protagonist, and what textual difference the distinction even makes.

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May 11, 2011

Cannes kicking off

I’ve been in Cannes less than 12 hours and already I can feel the sleep deficit kicking in, so I’ll keep this post short. It’s been an administrative day, anyway: unpacking, registering, collecting my press badge (in the rigid Cannes class system, I’ve been upgraded from a yellow badge to a blue one, so I guess Thierry Frémaux received my muffin basket) and moving into the apartment (improbably named Villa Romance) that I’ll share for the next 12 days with US critics James Rocchi and Aaron Hillis. (Karina Longworth joins our household tomorrow. There’s a decidedly niche sitcom waiting to be made here, folks.)

You may have noticed that this evening, and not a moment too soon, I completed my Cannes Check series breaking down the individual titles in Competition — you can catch up with all 20 entries here.

One more plug, while I’m about it: I’m taking part in Ioncinema’s 2011 Cannes Critics’ Panel, in which a selection of 16 international critics will rate the festival’s major films on a daily basis. Like an expanded version of Screen Daily’s traditional poll, it’s a handy way to monitor the consensus hits and misses; check out the full panel here.

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May 10, 2011

Woody Allen’s latest to open Cannes

The ever-informed insider Cédric Succivalli broke the news this morning that May’s Cannes Film Festival will kick off with Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” — an ensemble romantic comedy starring, among others, Marion Cotillard, Carla Bruni, Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Adrien Brody, Kathy Bates, Michael Sheen and Léa Seydoux.

It’s hardly a surprising choice. Cannes has been good to Allen over the years: recently, “Match Point,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and last year’s “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” all premiered on the Croisette, while “Hollywood Ending” also served as the festival’s curtain-raiser in 2002.

Moreover, the strong French flavor of his new project all but assured it a Cannes berth, while all that star power — plus the possibility of a certain Mr. Carla Bruni tagging along — guarantees maximum media coverage on opening night.

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February 2, 2011

Tag: Midnight in Paris