In Contention

Tag: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

  • Schnabel holds ‘Miral’ for Venice

    One of the more eyebrow-raising omissions from the Cannes official selection announced this morning was Julian Schnabel’s “Miral.” The New York artist’s biopic of Hind Husseini, with a cast including Hiam Abbass, Willem Dafoe and Freida Pinto, had been widely deemed a good bet for the competition lineup, given its lofty arthouse profile and the Cannes success of Schnabel’s last feature, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” for which he won the Best Director award.

    Roger Friedman reports, however, that this year Schnabel was offered only an out-of-competition slot by festival organizers. The director declined the offer, choosing instead to unveil the film on the fall festival circuit: “Miral” will therefore premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September, before moving on to Toronto.Venice, of course, is where Schnabel premiered “Before Night Falls” in 2000 — he has form in both festivals.

    If the film turns out well, it won’t be the first time Venice has successfully fed off the bigger festival’s leftovers: both “Vera Drake” and “Brokeback Mountain” debuted on the Lido (and went on to win the Golden Lion) after being turned down by the Cannes selection committee.

  • THE LISTS: Top 10 Oscar nominee fields

    Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's ListIn exactly one week’s time, we’ll have a brand new list of Oscar nominations to pore over, pick apart and eventually file away in our subconscious with the other 81 editions of this annual collective. For Oscar geeks, nomination day is in many ways more exciting than the ceremony itself, celebrating a broader spectrum of work and throwing up far more surprises along the way.

    For all that, once the winners are announced, the nomination list as a whole tends to be disregarded, returned to only by trivia buffs and the geekiest of Oscar geeks. (Guilty on both counts.) And that’s shame, because a field of five nominees can often be more illuminating viewed collectively than even the worthiest of individual champions.

    Today’s list, then, is devoted to that most elusive of Oscar holy grails: the perfect nominee field.

    Yes, more often than not, the Academy will nominate several notable achievements in a single category. But rarer than hen’s teeth are the robust Oscar categories that feature a full house of five outstanding nominees, five contenders that would all be worthy of a win in any other year. No unremarkable coaster nominees sliding in on the coattails of a popular picture. No bad films with an expensively studio-bought  nominations. No filler. No fat. Just five superb achievements.

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  • The best films of a decade

    Tom Cruise in Minority ReportThis column has been the elephant in my living room for months.

    Putting together a list of the year’s best films is easy. It’s fresh. It’s in your mind. It’s, in many ways, the expected culmination.

    Putting together a list of the decade’s best films is a different chore altogether. Yearly rankings fly out the window as a proper gauge, because tastes shift and impacts either dwindle or deepen. Revisiting films is called for, but fitting in the works you missed along the way is also imperative. It can be maddening.

    And the truth is, you can’t see everything. All you can do is try to be as honest about how you feel as you can. And even then, no list can be definitive on a personal level, let alone authoritative.

    And so the whittling begins, and in many ways, the process is the reward. The ultimate collective is a mere reminder of the journey through 10 years of film product. But some things stuck out along the way.

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  • ‘4 Months’ takes BBC award

    The BBC Four World Cinema Award is an endearingly unassuming, low-fi ceremony — so unassuming and low-fi, in fact, I’d forgotten it took place until I happened upon the TV broadcast earlier this evening. (It seems nesting on a Saturday night has the odd advantage.)

    It’s a simple enough prize. UK critics elect a shortlist of the five outstanding foreign-language releases of the year, upon which a jury of industry figures convenes to choose to best of them. The award is now in its sixth year: previous winners include “Belleville Rendezvous,” “The Return,” “Downfall,” “The Death of Mr Lazarescu” and “Pan’s Labyrinth.” This year’s list, heavy on 2007 films that only received a UK release last year, went as follows:

    “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” (WINNER)
    “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”
    “Gomorrah”
    “The Orphanage”
    “Persepolis”

    Jury head John Hurt said the verdict was unanimous. Not a very surprising, or very arguable, result — though with a list of that calibre, it’s hard to go wrong. (Only “The Orphanage,” I think, is a little out of its depth here.) By the way, can you spot what the five shortlisted films have in common? Yep, all were either snubbed or ineligible for the foreign-language Oscar. Make of that what you will.

    Meanwhile, Werner Herzog picked up a lifetime achievement award and gave one of the most eloquent speeches I’ve heard all season. I know he doesn’t really have a shot in hell, but I’d sure love to see him on the Oscar stage. (EDIT: If you’re interested, you can watch the ceremony here.)

  • Harwood and Oliver share Humanitas Prize

    To revisit some old friends from the 2007 awards season, the Humanitas Prize in the feature film category has been jointly awarded to Ronald Harwood, for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” and Nancy Oliver for “Lars and the Real Girl.”

    The prize is a screenwriting award aiming to honour achievements that “explore the human condition and reveal our common humanity.” (Previous winners include “Crash,” “You Can Count on Me” and “The Shawshank Redemption.”) Under those criteria, both winners strike me as worthy — even if I find Harwood’s script a rather more substantial achievement.

    Amusingly, the tie leaves Diablo Cody as the lone unrewarded nominee in the category — somewhat appropriate given the lack of maturity or insight she recently displayed in her online hissy-fit. Oh well, to borrow her words, at least she still has her fake name engraved on an Oscar.

    Elsewhere, the Sundance Feature category was awarded to the TV-movie adaptation of “A Raisin in the Sun” over Tom McCarthy’s “The Visitor,” which strikes me as a little odd. But humanity isn’t exactly a quantifiable achievement, is it now?

  • Is ‘Slumdog’ really a slam dunk?

    It’s no secret that Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” is shaping up to be one of the indie darlings of 2008. The film was the uncontested hit of the Telluride festival, bowing to sensational reviews, of which Todd McCarthy’s (key phrases: “a blast;” “fantastic energy;” “a vital piece of work”) represents the consensus.

    Almost immediately, Oscar buzz began building around the film, with pundits suggesting that the film’s combination of gritty sociological themes and ultimately uplifting narrative would prove irresistible to voters seeking to annoint this year’s ‘little film that could.’ (Glib comparisons have been made to “Juno,” based on, well, nothing really — except it’s a small film that audiences like.)

    Now, the latest to board the “Slumdog” train in Toronto are Tom O’Neil and Jeffrey Wells. In this video from Gold Derby, O’Neil says the film has the “passionate rooting factor” that a film needs to get those first-place votes on the nomination ballot. In closing, O’Neil and Wells agree that the film is “without question” one of 2008’s five Best Picture nominees. Article continues after the cut:

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  • Forster on Bond: It’s about character

    Odd to be linking to Time Out twice in one day, but I couldn’t let this interview with Marc Forster, director of the keenly awaited “Quantum of Solace,” go by. The interview finds Forster in London, scrabbling to complete the first edit of the latest 007 outing in a fortnight’s time.

    Many eyebrows were raised when it was revealed that the low-key director of “Monster’s Ball,” “Finding Neverland,” and “The Kite Runner” was taking on this most commercial of franchises – I always thought it rather a nice fit. For me, Forster never injected much individual flair or perspective into his otherwise workmanlike ‘serious’ pictures; I have a feeling more of his creative personality might emerge when working against the grain of his interests. Certainly, Forster doesn’t seem to be radically modifying his storytelling approach – he believes he was hired because the producers wanted a more “emotional component” to the film:

    Several times (Forster) mentions what he believes will be at the heart of the new film: character. ‘The great thing is that Daniel and I had an intense relationship, so between us we could always go back to the character … There’s this conflict going on: he’s an assassin, but he’s also lost someone he loves. We’re asking: where’s the psychological conflict in that?

    Sounds good to me. Other promising tidbits include Forster citing genius production designer Ken Adam, who worked on the first Bond films, as an influence on his creative vision, and a sneak peek at what promises to be the most exciting foe in some time for 007:

    We see a flash, too, of the new Bond villain, French actor Mathieu Amalric, who plays a character with the decidedly unvillainous name of Dominic Greene. ‘In the old Bond films, it was clear who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. Today, it’s not so clear. I feel like Mathieu looks so sympathetic and normal, the type you can’t see right away is the villain.’

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  • Battsek in the pink ‘un

    Flipping through the Financial Times earlier today (a British newspaper famous for the pink paper on which it is printed — “Give me a pink ‘un”), I came across a profile of Miramax honcho Daniel Battsek that made for a pleasant read amid all the TPG and Bernanke mumbo-jumbo.

    In a lot of ways the story is rather derivative and even stale. Nothing we’ve not read elsewhere, especially after an Oscar season that saw “No Country for Old Men,” “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” and “There Will Be Blood” tear through with the media latching on for the ride.

    But Battsek is one of the good guys. Any ink, really, is good ink, considering what he’s done with the company in the wake of the brothers Weinstein. And hey, he’s a hell of a nice guy.  That’s reason enough for me to pass it along.

    Matthew Garrahan has the byline. Here’s a look:

    Making films that achieve critical and commercial success “is not rocket science…and it’s not as complicated as some people make out”. Still, it is not easy. “You have to be very sure of yourself when you acquire the material. You have to be very conscientious and detailed when you’re working with your filmmakers. And you have to find ways of being able to make [the film] as quickly as possible.”

    The physical process of making a film is not of great personal interest. “I’ve never had the movie-making bug. Sitting on a set watching a scene being filmed doesn’t turn me on at all. But I love being in a cinema watching a film. I love the creative side, working with filmmakers, writers, actors . . . and I love the production process.”

    The rest.