• Cathy Yan chats with “Up in the Air” star Anna Kendrick. [Speakeasy]
• James Schamus sets to work on “tragic, suicidally depressing” script for Ang Lee. Terrific. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Peter Bradshaw saddles back up to “Toy Story 2,” with a father’s eye. [The Guardian]
• A little movie called “Avatar” premiered. This week’s Oscar Talk tucked into the film.
• As “The Lovely Bones” faces a frosty critical welcome, this week’s Off the Carpet column went to bat for the film.
• We interviewed a quartet of young actors making strides this year: Abbie Cornish, Saoirse Ronan, Ben Foster and Bryce Dallas Howard.
• In The Long Shot, we examined the animation race — and stood up for under-the-radar contender “Mary & Max.”
For 17 years, Matt Tyrnauer worked for Vanity Fair writing up profiles of major artists and pop culture figures such as architect Frank Gehry, producer Robert Evans, writer Bret Easton Ellis, actor Greg Kinnear, designer Tommy Hilfiger, Martha Stewart (her post-prison cover story) and legendary designer Valentino Garavani.
That final name has made an impact on his life that will alter the course of his career as an artist, and may just land him an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary.
Having studied film in college, a life in the cinema was never out of the realm of possibility for Tyrnauer, though his work at Vanity Fair consumed a great deal of his life through the last two decades. When he decided to make a film about Garavani, he did so with an abandon that suggests a fierce passion for his subject and deep belief in what he was doing as an artist. “Valentino: The Last Emperor” was the result.
The director admits there were times he did not know what he was doing, in particular when it came to distribution, but that flying-by-the-seat-of-the-pants sensation seems to have served this likable young man very well. Confidence in his film, that it was a truthful representation of the inner world of Garavani, would also help him when his subject disliked the film upon first viewing. Garavani ultimately needed the reassurance of a standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival to convince him otherwise.
Perhaps inevitably, the bulk of online chatter about the Best Documentary Feature shortlist unveiled yesterday focused less on the films that made it, and more on those that didn’t.
It’s par for the course for the Academy’s documentary branch to ignore a major title or two, but even by their severe standards, the list of high-profile snubs was a long one: “Capitalism: A Love Story,” “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” “Tyson,” “The September Issue,” “We Live in Public,” “It Might Get Loud,” “Rough Aunties” and so on.
But for every blogger or commenter complaining about the dubiousness of the list, I can’t fight the urge to ask whether or not they’ve seen all 15 titles that have been included. In these cases, it’s always easier to say what should have got in than what should have been left out.
You can check out the full press release here. The list of 15 competing titles as follows:
• “The Beaches of Agnes,” Agnès Varda, director (Cine-Tamaris)
• “Burma VJ,” Anders Østergaard, director (Magic Hour Films)
• “The Cove,” Louie Psihoyos, director (Oceanic Preservation Society)
• “Every Little Step,” James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo, directors (Endgame Entertainment)
• “Facing Ali,” Pete McCormack, director (Network Films Inc.)
• “Food, Inc.,” Robert Kenner, director (Robert Kenner Films)
• “Garbage Dreams,” Mai Iskander, director (Iskander Films, Inc.)
• “Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders,” Mark N. Hopkins, director (Red Floor Pictures LLC)
• “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers,” Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith, directors (Kovno Communications)
• “Mugabe and the White African,” Andrew Thompson and Lucy Bailey, directors (Arturi Films Limited)
• “Sergio,” Greg Barker, director (Passion Pictures and Silverbridge Productions)
• “Soundtrack for a Revolution,” Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, directors (Freedom Song Productions)
• “Under Our Skin,” Andy Abrahams Wilson, director (Open Eye Pictures)
• “Valentino The Last Emperor,” Matt Tyrnauer, director (Acolyte Films)
• “Which Way Home,” Rebecca Cammisa, director (Mr. Mudd)