Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator” was kicking up some Oscar buzz before it bowed at Toronto this year. Lukewarm reactions and a March release sealed the deal that it wasn’t going to figure in the awards season. But it was picked up by Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions and could be groomed for a run later this year. The trailer has been released via Yahoo! Movies. Have a look by clicking the image below or watch an embed after the jump.
It seems Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator” has become the first significant sell of Toronto (a few things have been picked up here and there already). Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions (which is really stepping it up this year) have nailed down the domestic rights, but go ahead and strike the film from your longlists. It won’t be released until the spring, Deadline’s Mike Fleming reports.
Meanwhile, Patrick Goldstein sat down with Sally Hawkins, who has three films at the festival in “Never Let Me Go,” “Submarine” and “Made in Dagenham.” Andrea Riseborough is in two of those films (as well as “Brighton Rock”) and has been getting similar notices, but it’s Hawkins who could really make a dent on the season.
In his piece, Goldstein offers that for him, “what makes [‘Made in Dagenham’] work so well is that it doesn’t treat its story as a weighty political screed.”
It wasn’t by coincidence that the three photos decorating the season’s introductory installment of this column two weeks ago represented lead actress contenders in the 2010 Oscar race. After all the talk of 2009 being “the year of the woman,” owing much to the number of female directors who found themselves in the mix (and inevitably leading to Kathryn Bigelow’s history-making moment at the Kodak), I’m sensing an even better argument for 2010 as a singular season for the fairer sex.
Let’s start with the performances. By my count, there are already eight nominatable offerings from lead actresses this year (which contrasts drastically with a dearth of supporting hopefuls). This is just going by what I’ve seen, mind you.
For starters, Natalie Portman has dazzled the early festival season with her work in “Black Swan.” Lesley Manville, meanwhile (should she remain a lead focus), sets a high bar in “Another Year.” Despite my feelings on the film, Carey Mulligan really settles into a next-level groove in “Never Let Me Go,” and Jennifer Lawrence, of course (like Mulligan last year), has already become the year’s star-in-the-making story in “Winter’s Bone.”
Dovetailing with the performances themselves, there are also films that seem to reflect the theme in narrative. In “Secretariat,” for instance, Diane Lane capably (if a bit histrionically) portrays headstrong Penny Chenery, a woman of virtue in an era when she was expected to keep her head down and clean house. Similarly, Sally Hawkins absolutely kills as the Norma Rae-ish Rita O’Grady in “Made in Dagenham,” fighting for equal pay in a similar time (and she’s likely to be joined in the hunt by co-star Miranda Richardson for a fiery supporting turn). And we can’t forget the palpable feminism apparent in summer indie “The Kids Are All Right,” where Annette Bening and Julianne Moore both bring their “A” game.
More from Toronto tonight, so let’s dive in…
Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator” bowed this evening at a packed gala screening. At Hollywood News, Sean O’Connell brings up the already-getting-tired 9/11 parallels (which started with Patrick Goldstein earlier). He calls Redford’s casting decisions “questionable” but considers the film “a solid effort, a compelling legal drama and a determined character study that will please students of American history, modern and otherwise.”
The Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt says it “feels like a television film” but that Redford “does a good job in developing the drama” and “the film largely rests on a character played with considerable emotional energy by James McAvoy.” It’s a measured approval, in any case. The film is still seeking domestic distribution.
Things are slow moving at the start of this year’s fest. People are catching up with press screenings of this and that, some of them Venice or Telluride or Cannes, with a few Toronto first-timers thrown in.
Firstly, Scott Weinberg joins the dogpile on Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” by calling the film “outrageously bad” and noting that its ilk is “best left for the festival circuit — which is where we suffer through the indie-style artifice so you don’t have to.”
The market is in full swing, particularly around James Gunn’s “Super,” which screened late last night and stirred a lot of interest. Movieline called the Rainn Wilson starrer an “instant cult classic.” Buyers are also reportedly showing interest in Rowan Joffe’s “Brighton Rock” (as I imagined they would), so maybe we’ll see Andrea Riseborough popped up once again in that vacant supporting actress category shortly.
• Jeffrey Wells, meanwhile, re-posts his thoughts on James Solomon’s screenplay. [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• Pete Hammond reports extensively from Wednesday’s “Tangled” event on the Disney lot. [Deadline]
• Tim Gray on Venice’s unique role in film history. [Variety]
Costume design in many ways represents much about the Oscars: glitz, glamor, beauty. But obviously threads do much more than make movie stars look attractive. They build character, set mood, define period and serve as a defining design aspect of a film.
Like art direction, the nominees for here overwhelmingly fall into one of two categories: period or fantasy. Indeed, when two contemporary films (“The Queen” and “The Devil Wears Prada”) were nominated in 2006, it was a rare occasion.
It’s not an exact science, but while a fantasy film is almost always nominated every year, there is usually only one as four films tend to be period. It also should be noted that recent winners in the category have all highlighted British or French royalty and high society.
Being a Best Picture contender does not hurt with this branch (same with any), but the branch also does a great deal of thinking for itself. Last year, for instance, both “Bright Star” and “Coco Before Chanel” managed nominations here, the only ones for their respective films. In the last four years, four other films (“Curse of the Golden Flower,” “Marie Antoinette,” “Across the Universe” and “Australia”) have also managed the feat, rare for crafts categories.
Toronto International Film Festival organisers unveiled a typically cluttered lineup of galas and premieres for this year’s edition — including, as usual, a number of films pencilled in as 2010 awards contenders.
Of the 50 titles announced thus far, half will be world premieres: those include such highly anticipated works as Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go,” John Cameron Mitchell’s “Rabbit Hole,” Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator,” Tony Goldwyn’s “Conviction” and Rowan Joffe’s “Brighton Rock.” The remaining half have either appeared at previous festivals — with a hefty contingent from Cannes, including Mike Leigh’s “Another Year,” Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful” and Woody Allen’s “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” — or look set to make their debut at Venice the week before.
With Venice due to reveal its own lineup tomorrow, the fact that such still-unseen titles as Ben Affleck’s “The Town,” Francois Ozon’s “Potiche,” Julian Schnabel’s “Miral,” John Madden’s “The Debt” and Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” are all marked only as North American premieres would appear to confirm that they are all Lido-bound. (I’m surprised, however, that Guillaume Canet’s “Little White Lies” will be making its first appearance at Toronto rather than at a European festival.)
As we like to point out in this space each year, the Academy Award for Best Art Direction is presented to two individuals who have different but key roles in designing a film’s sets and props.
The first of these, the production designer, is the director of the film’s art department, responsible for the supervision of those in it and the overall architecture of the film’s design. The set decorator, on the other hand, is responsible for filling up those sets with proper scenery to fully bring them to life. When these individuals, and those who work alongside them in the art department, do their jobs well, we can be fully immersed into the story.
Historically, the nominees in this field fit into one of two categories: historical or fantastical. At least two – usually three or four – of the nominees every year are set in the past. This is not surprising. Being set outside of day-to-day life, such films require a different sort of research and, moreover, draw attention to themselves by not appearing to be what we encounter every day.
At the same time, fantasy titles show up at least once, often more, every year as well. Last year’s winner, “Avatar,” is a good example of this. Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg created a completely different world strictly from imagination.