In Contention

Tag: Red Riding

  • BAFTA win for Rebecca Hall

    I wouldn’t ordinarily mention the BAFTA Television Awards — generally treated as the ugly sister of February’s film awards ceremony — which were dished out in London tonight, but one win in particular strikes me as worth noting.

    You know by now that I’m a great admirer of Julian Jarrold’s “Red Riding: 1974,” which was released theatrically in the U.S. a few months back, and of Rebecca Hall’s remarkable performance in it. Hall just won a well-deserved Best Supporting Actress BAFTA, and since it’s almost certainly the only awards hardware she’ll end up taking for her work, I thought it worth celebrating. (The whole series, incidentally, did less well than one might have expected, taking only two other craft trophies for cinematography and costume design.)

    Other film-related wins include Samantha Morton’s strong directorial debut “The Unloved” — also treated as a theatrical feature outside the UK — for Best Single Drama, and a triple trophy haul for “The Thick of It,” the sitcom that mothered 2009 Oscar nominee “In the Loop.” Huzzahs all round. Full list of winners here, if you’re interested.

  • 2/12 Oscarweb Round-up

    Rick Baker• Steve Weintraub sits down with likely the only major Oscar play for forthcoming flop “The Wolfman,” Rick Baker. [Collider]

    • Guy Adams on “Crazy Heart”‘s crazy trip to the screen. [The Independent]

    • Harvey Weinstein is pretty damn sure “Inglourious Basterds” is winning Best Picture. [Notes on a Season]

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘Red Riding: 1974’ director Julian Jarrold

    Julian JarroldNearly a year after they first landed on UK television screens, the three feature-length films that comprise the “Red Riding” trilogy have reached American audiences – and in the theatrical environment where they belong, no less.

    IFC is marketing and distributing “Red Riding,” an adaptation of David Peace’s decade-spanning quartet of crime novels inspired by the real-life Yorkshire Ripper murders, as a single theatrical event. The truth, however, is that these are three very distinct, even self-standing, works from three dissimilar directors: Julian Jarrold, James Marsh and Anand Tucker.

    Where “Man on Wire” director Marsh’s documentary chops are evident in a film that takes on the nuts and bolts of police corruption, and Tucker (“Hilary and Jackie”) takes a straightforward character-based approach to tie up loose ends, Jarrold’s film, the opener, is the most boldly stylized of the three.

    Following young journalist Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield) as he probes the disappearance of a young girl and becomes ill-advisedly involved with her grieving mother (Rebecca Hall), the film consciously fuses the languages of film noir and social realism to striking effect.

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  • 2/4 Oscarweb Round-up

    (from left) Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper in All About Steve• China censors Oscar nominations announcement due to documentary short nominee. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Dave Karger and Missy Schwartz run the numbers on the Best Picture and Best Actress categories. [Oscar Watch]

    • Jeffrey Wells ponders the possibility of the home video release of “All About Steve,” starring Razzie-nominated actress Sandra Bullock, hurting her Oscar chances. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

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  • Mea culpa, ‘1974’

    Andrew Garfield in Red Riding: 1974With a resurgence of talk about the “Red Riding” trilogy of films ahead of their U.S. release next month, I’ve been reminded of a critical omission I made in my Best of 2009 list a few weeks back.

    As I wrote when the films premiered on British TV around 10 months ago, they are wholly cinematic works and deserve to be considered (and distributed) as such — but because they were introduced to me as television, my mind keeps skipping over them when I think back on the year in film.

    All of which is terribly unfair on Julian Jarrold’s “1974,” the first of the three tonally and structurally separate films, which I described as follows in the spring:

    Following Andrew (”Boy A”) Garfield’s swaggering rookie journalist as he investigates the link between three missing girls and rapidly finds himself in over his head, it’s an astonishingly textured, sensory film, awash in dusk-coloured light and a gorgeous Northern soul soundtrack, that recalls “Zodiac” in its measured narrative approach and even shades of “Twin Peaks” in the alluring strangeness cast over its very ordinary locale.

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  • ‘Red Riding’ trilogy gets a poster

    These films, which I caught in their entirety at this year’s Telluride Film Festival, were not all they were cracked up to be.  (Guy had a different perspective in the spring.)

    The first installment, 1974, was undeniably the best of the lot.  And had the film received a domestic release in 2009, Rebecca Hall would have definitely made my shortlist for Best Supporting Actress.  There are some interesting performances in 1980 and 1983 just fails to bring the thing around in a satisfying manner, in my opinion.

    All of that having been said, the poster rocks:

    Red Riding

    (Source: Vulture)

  • Ridley Scott takes on ‘Red Riding’ remake

    Rebecca Hall in Red RidingYou may remember that back in March I raved about “Red Riding,” the British TV adaptation of David Peace’s quartet of Yorkshire-set crime novels that IFC will soon be distributing theatrically in the U.S.

    Specifically, I flipped for the first installment of the three-film series, Julian Jarrold’s “1974” — an exquisitely textured mood piece, with vivid turns from Andrew Garfield and Rebecca Hall, that remains one of the best films I’ve seen this year on any size screen.

    Six months later, Americans got to see what British critics had been gushing about since the spring (David Thomson overexcitedly stated that the films excelled “The Godfather” in the pantheon of crime cinema), as “Red Riding” played to a very warm reception in Telluride. (Even if Kris wasn’t entirely won over.)

    Now the buzz continues with the announcement that Columbia has acquired remake rights to the project, with director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Steven Zaillian in line to compress Peace’s mammoth narrative into a single feature film. (As a feat of adaptation, expect comparisons to what Curtis Hanson and Brian Helegeland took on James Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet.)  Scott will also produce via his Scott Free production company.

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  • THE LISTS: Top 10 actors under 30

    Abbie Cornish in CandyI wrote recently about how this year’s Best Actress race seems to ushering in a striking new wave of young talent, from the elfin throwback charm of Carey Mulligan to the rawer screen presence of Gabourey Sidibe, while a range of youthful names, from the long-hyped Abbie Cornish to the out-of-nowhere Katie Jarvis, have been racking up critical plaudits all year.

    Whether Academy voters comply or not, it’s hard to disagree that it’s a good year to be a fresh face.

    Meanwhile, the industry’s male twentysomethings may have enjoyed less frenzied acclaim than their fairer counterparts, but the likes of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ben Whishaw and – yes – Shia LaBeouf have kept things ticking over for the generation quite respectably.

    So, with the teen-driven narratives of “An Education” and “Precious” heading for theaters soon, and with the youth romance of “Bright Star” currently pleasing older arthouse audiences, it seemed an apt moment to celebrate the new guard by ranking the finest talent that the born-after-1980 generation has to offer.

    And believe me when I tell you it was one of the trickiest lists I’ve ever compiled on this site. The more I contemplated recent successes and breakthroughs, the longer the shortlist of candidates grew, spanning Academy-endorsed names already on the A-list (Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal) to quirkier talents from the indie and foreign sectors (Sam Riley, Emilie Dequenne). I like to think that the fact that I struggled as much as I did to narrow the list down to 10 names bodes very well for the future.

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  • TELLURIDE: ‘Red Riding,’ ‘A Prophet’

    Tamar Rahim in A ProphetThings are winding down in Telluride.  I saw the last film I’ll see here last night (Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet”) and have a few things to square away before I hop the shuttle for Montrose and, finally, the flight back to Los Angeles.

    The fest has been a low key delight.  An IFC-sponsored dinner Saturday night brought out a number of the principals from films on display (where I had fun throwing back a few and discussing “that moment” when you decide film will be your life with “Red Riding” producer Andrew Eaton).  Nicolas Cage was strolling the streets last night with his kid, free of the usual adoring mob.  Jason Reitman, Viggo Mortensen, Paul Schneider, Carey Mulligan, etc. have made themselves available for interviews, priming the pump for Oscar season.  Good times all around.

    The big winners of the fest, from what I can gather from conversations with a number of attendees, are Michael Hoffman’s “The Last Station,” Todd Solondz’s “Life During Wartime” and, of course, Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air,” among others.  Unfortunately, I missed (again) Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” and a number of the once-in-a-lifetime screenings from Alexander Payne’s program, but I had a full, enjoyable time regardless.  I have a few more interviews to get to today, but I thought I’d rattle off the last pair of capsule reviews before I head off into town for some meet-and-greets.

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  • IFC gets rights to UK sensation ‘Red Riding’

    Andrew Garfield in Red Riding: 1974Here’s some fantastic news. You may remember that, a couple of months ago, I totally flipped for “Red Riding,” a trilogy of British TV movies deftly adapted from David Peace’s quartet of crime novels about the Yorkshire Ripper murders of the 70s and early 80s.

    Actually, to be specific, I went crazy for the first film in the trilogy, Julian Jarrold’s “1974,” a haunting, exquisitely realized mood piece with a sterling cast led by rising Brit stars Andrew Garfield and Rebecca Hall — the latter’s sad, sensual performance even topping her breakthrough work in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” The next two films, helmed by Oscar-winner James Marsh and Anand Tucker respectively, were strong pieces of work too, but it’s Jarrold’s film that I can’t shake from my system.

    Anyway, I said at the time that the film belonged on a bigger screen, and I’ve got my wish. Fresh from their acquisition of another outstanding Brit TV effort, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Sundance winner “Five Minutes of Heaven,” IFC has picked up the U.S. rights to the entire trilogy:

    IFC plans to release The Red Riding Trilogy this autumn in theatres and on demand through its IFC In Theaters platform following a festival circuit run.

    IFC Entertainment president Jonathan Sehring called The Red Riding “an absolutely thrilling work of cinema and one of the great true crime adaptations of recent times.

    So justice is done. You’ll see what I mean in the fall. A brief taster after the cut.

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  • Yorkshire confidential

    I didn’t get a chance to mention it during our recent hiatus, but last Wednesday I saw a film that stands, for me, head and shoulders above any other 2009 release so far — one I can easily imagine still coming into play for my own Best of 2009 honours come December. A heady artistic breakthrough from a filmmaker I had never previously rated, with an immaculate cast of rising talent, it’s truly significant, surprising cinema.

    There’s a catch, however. It’s not showing at a theatre near you — or any other, for that matter. For the film I’m talking about is “Nineteen Seventy-Four,” the first part of Channel 4’s ambitious, much-hyped TV endeavour “Red Riding” — a trilogy of self-standing films chronicling the infamous Yorkshire Ripper murders of the 1970s and early 1980s.

    Deftly adapted by Tony Grisoni (“In This World,” “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”) from a quartet of novels by David Peace (a brilliant writer occasionally labelled, not without justification, as the UK’s answer to James Ellroy — he’s also behind the upcoming “Damned United”), the films examine both the social and official levels of corruption stirred by the crimes over an entire decade, but each has its own distinct thematic and cinematic character.

    I was first alerted to the project when interviewing James Marsh last year — the Oscar-winning “Man on Wire” filmmaker helmed “Nineteen Eighty,” the second instalment of the trilogy. Marsh’s contribution is a sober, intelligent piece of  procedural drama, enlivened by a terrific lead turn from Paddy Considine, but it’s really “Nineteen Seventy-Four,” the more oblique, mood-driven piece, that has stuck with me these past two weeks.

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