In Contention

Tag: Red Hill

  • My dream Oscar ballot, part one

    For the past two years running, I’ve celebrated Oscar Nomination Eve by assembling my own ideal (and, usually, incredibly far-fetched) ballot, so here we go again. As well as a kind of last-ditch prayer to the Oscar gods, I also look on it as a salute to the worthy contenders who haven’t a hope in hell of hearing their names read out on Tuesday morning.

    At the request of some readers, I’ve bent the rules to accommodate several titles unfairly ineligible for Oscar consideration in any category: most of you are aware of the arcane ruling that has denied “A Prophet” the chance to ever compete in a non-ghetto category, while the TV airings of “Red Riding” and “Carlos” keep them out of the game too. I’m less clear on why the likes of “White Material” and “Fish Tank” aren’t on the Academy’s list of eligible titles, but they aren’t, and I must make my peace with that.

    Anyway, screw ’em: this ballot represents what I found most awards-worthy from all the theatrical features released in the US last year, and you can’t get fairer than that. I’ll begin, as usual, with the ten technical categories — in which I was pleased to end up with a healthy spread of 33 films across 48 slots. Jump in after the cut, and share your own thoughts in the comments. (Also, check out Kris’s very different ideal ballot here.)

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  • ‘Red Hill’ trailer

    Okay, so “Red Hill” has about as much of a future in awards season as I do in pro football, but I can’t resist flagging up this trailer anyway — because Patrick Hughes’s debut feature, which I reviewed in brief at the Berlinale in February, is pretty much a blast. A gleefully schlocky, but genuinely jolting, comedy-western-horror hybrid from Down Under, it’s one of the year’s most spirited and inventive genre outings, and also makes a very strong case for “True Blood” star Ryan Kwanten as a leading man. My only question is why Sony is rolling out such obvious Halloween fodder on November 5. Click on the image below to check out the trailer via Apple, or watch the embed after the jump.

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  • BERLIN: ‘Please Give,’ ‘Red Hill,’ ‘Submarino’

    Ryan Kwanten in Red HillFilm festivals have a curious way of either dulling one’s critical faculties or provoking them to an impolite degree. I almost never walk out of a screening under normal circumstances; at a festival, while compressing five-odd films into one day, it’s almost life-affirming to do so.

    Such was the case yesterday, halfway through “Caterpillar,” a Competition entry from widely admired Japanese veteran Koji Wakamatsu. An apparent Oshima knockoff combining catatonic narrative inertia with visual dinginess, it centers on a mute, limbless Sino-Japanese War vet rebuilding his relationship with his wife: “rebuilding his relationship” being a euphemism for working his way through the paraplegic Kama Sutra.

    After a sufficient number of po-faced sex scenes, interspersed with shots of cherry-blossom to indicate the passing of seasons — the film, it seems, was edited with a blunt axe — Tim turned to me and whimpered, “I can’t take it anymore.” We bailed and headed for “Gentlemen Broncos” instead; and you know now how that worked out.

    The film has its champions, mind. And I’m now convinced it will win something on Saturday just to spite me. After the cut, however, are three films I happily sat through in their entirety.

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