In Contention

Tag: Into the Wild

  • Hal Holbrook’s awards season play, take two

    Hal Holbrook in That Evening SunOver the weekend, “That Evening Sun” star Hal Holbrook took the Excellence in Acting award at the Starz Denver Film Festival over the weekend.  When the press release landed in my inbox, it reminded me that, while I’ve been a pretty strong proponent of Patterson Hood’s original song from the film, I haven’t written about Holbrook’s performance all that much.

    It’s a beautiful piece of work.  Holbrook adds every ounce of texture, nuance, authenticity and depth that Clint Eastwood was woefully lacking in the similarly themed “Gran Torino” last year, but it’s unfair to start with a comparison, I guess.  Holbrook nails ornery to a T, and he seems to be able to work the natural rhythms of southern conversation better than anyone other than maybe Robert Duvall.

    Susan King recently talked to the actor, who said working on Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild” gave him confidence.  And not to be SO 2007, but he offers some high praise for the actor/director in the piece.

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  • ‘Murder in the First’ director Marc Rocco found dead

    Marc RoccoIt saddens me to report that filmmaker Marc Rocco, perhaps best known for directing the 1995 film “Murder in the First,” was found dead in his Northridge home over the weekend.

    I was informed of the news earlier today by a mutual friend, so I called the Devonshire division of the Los Angeles Police Department in Northridge to get the details.  It seems Rocco was found by a friend on Friday, May 1 after he had not been seen for nearly a week.  Police say there was no foul play involved and they are still awaiting autopsy results.  It appears to be a natural death, I’m told.  Five days later, nothing at Variety, nothing at The Hollywood Reporter, nothing at the L.A. Times — nothing anywhere.  According to police, no one has even called asking questions yet.  Bizarre.

    I never saw Rocco’s earliest work, 1987’s “Scenes from a Goldmine,” the Corey Feldman/Corey Haim starrer “Dream a Little Dream” and 1992’s “Where the Day Takes You.”  “Goldmine” and “Dream” both featured Rocco’s father Alex, who starred as Moe Greene in “The Godfather.”  But I always loved “Murder in the First,” which featured first-rate performances from both Christian Slater and Kevin Bacon.

    It was one of those films that sort of came and went in the early weeks of 1995.  Fortunately the Screen Actors Guild and Broadcast Film Critics Association remembered Bacon’s work come year’s end, the former nominating his career-best leading performance, the latter awarding him for it.  Nowadays it seems most people forget the film until it pops up on TNT or the like, but it was a confident showcase that proved Rocco had some real directorial chops.

    I always wondered what happened to the director after that.  He seemed to have a few projects on the horizon, according to his IMDb page, but the last two films he worked on were 2005’s “The Jacket” (story and producer credits) and 2007’s “Take” (executive producer).  He popped up two years ago to direct the music video for Eddie Vedder’s “Guaranteed” from the “Into the Wild” soundtrack, however.  Variety reported in January of 2007 that Rocco was set to adapt Jim Thompson’s “The Killer Inside Me” and that he was “mobilizing to direct” his original script “The Winter Hill Gang,” which had been set up at Paramount several years ago with Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner producing.

    Sad news.  Rocco was 43.  He is survived by his wife, sister and younger brother.

  • Best Actor watch: Hal Holbrook

    Hal Holbrook in That Evening SunIn his roundup of highlights from the Nashville Film Festival, Nathaniel Rogers chalks up a highly plausible contender for Best Actor honours this awards season: Hal Holbrook in “That Evening Sun,” an indie debut feature from Scott Teems.

    Playing an 80 year-old farmer desperately trying to hang on to his land, Holbrook’s performance has already drawn praise at last month’s SXSW  fest, where the film won an ensemble award. Amid a rave for the film itself (“an exceptionally fine example of regional filmmaking”), Variety declared Holbrook’s turn the best of his career, calling it “a vividly detailed yet subtly rendered performance.” Rogers clearly agrees:

    It’s based on the short story by William Gay about a farmer who escapes the old folks home and returns to his beloved farm only to find it occupied by new tenants. The film is well directed by Scott Teems, graduating from short films to his first feature, and an Oscar campaign could materialize for Holbrook if this movie gets a solid enough release. Holbrook plays a stubborn old ornery codger… one could say it’s an Eastwoodish role with less of Clint’s squinty menace and more of Hal’s weary sensitivity.

    There’s a theory I can absolutely buy into. From Richard Farnsworth to Richard Jenkins, the Academy has shown a soft spot for veteran character actors in gentle independent dramas, while their affection for Holbrook was made clear last year when they nominated him for a film they otherwise couldn’t have cared less about. Hell, in a weaker year, he could easily have won. (On a trivial note, the 84 year-old thesp could beat his own record as the oldest male acting nominee.)

    No indication yet of what kind of release the film might enjoy, but it sounds like one to keep an eye on. Powerful trailer after the cut.

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  • Cesar nods include ‘Class,’ ‘Loved,’ Swinton

    Now here’s a set of nominations I can get behind. As I may have mentioned before, 2008 was all about the rejuvenation of French cinema for me, with Gallic productions occupying a quarter of my year-end Top 20, including the two poll spots.

    So it’s hardly surprising that I’m immensely pleased by the list of nominees revealed yesterday for the Cesar Awards, otherwise known as the French Oscars –- not least because my two list-topping films, “I’ve Loved You So Long” and newly-minted Oscar nominee “The Class,” feature strongly.

    The former grabbed 6 nods, including a surefire Best Actress bid for the sadly Oscar-snubbed Kristin Scott Thomas, while I’m pleased to see her wonderful co-star, Elsa Zylberstein, finally getting some awards love in the supporting category. “The Class” managed five, though I’m a little disappointed to see the film’s excellent ensemble go unacknowledged, even in the ‘young actor’ categories.

    Both films feature in the Best Picture lineup, as does “Public Enemy Number One,” a sprawling biopic of gangster Jacques Mesrine that has been a local box-office smash and leads all nominees with 10 bids. Close behind, with nine, is Arnaud Desplechin’s critical favourite “A Christmas Tale,” though I’m surprised to see its two most dynamic stars, Catherine Deneuve and last year’s Best Actor winner Mathieu Amalric, both snubbed.

    Incidentally, Kristin Scott Thomas wasn’t the only Brit to receive notice: also landing in the Best Actress lineup is Tilda Swinton, for her astounding performance in Erick Zoncka’s “Julia.” Together with the insane snubs of Scott Thomas and Sally Hawkins, the fact that this fearless piece of work never even entered the Oscar discussion boggles the mind. But I digress.

    (More thoughts, and a list of nominations, below the cut.)

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  • REVIEW: “Wendy and Lucy” (***1/2)

    Wendy and Lucy(BFI London Film Festival)

    Quietly, steadily and with markedly little vanity, Michelle Williams is blossoming into a truly remarkable actress. This is not exactly a revelation: even before her Oscar-nominated turn in “Brokeback Mountain” brought her to wider attention, her work in films like “Dick” and “Me Without You,” not to mention as the most interesting member of the “Dawson’s Creek” ensemble, made it clear she was going places.

    2008 looks to be something of a watershed year for Williams, in which she has made clear strides towards identifying the independently-oriented performer she wants to be (the awkward paycheck job of “Deception” notwithstanding). Not content with holding her own in the dazzling “Synecdoche, New York” ensemble, she has, for the first time, taken on front-and-center roles in two very challenging projects.

    In “Incendiary” (reviewed here), Williams impresses by remaining focused when the film falls apart around her; happily, in Kelly Reichardt’s sad, spare and altogether beguiling “Wendy and Lucy,” she has found a project with the discipline and intelligence to match her own.

    I wouldn’t normally begin a review by foregrounding the star to such an extent, but the truth is that Williams’s performance is both integral to, and responsible for, the film’s success; without the silently expressed complexities, the shadows of days past, that she brings to the character of Wendy Carroll, the film would amount to little more than a sketch, a landscape as unmoored as its protagonist.

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  • Editing honors for ‘Dark Knight,’ ‘Iron Man’

    One of the more oddly timed awards ceremonies of the year,  the Hollywood Post Alliance Awards revealed their nominees yesterday. (Variety has a report and full list of nominations here.)

    Amid the awards for lesser-recognised arts like colour grading and compositing, I was interested to see that they have a Best Film Editing category. Mashing together work from late 2007 and 2008, the nominees emerged as Lee Smith for “The Dark Knight,” Jay Cassidy for “Into the Wild” and Dan Lebental for “Iron Man.”

    Interesting that Cassidy is the only late-2007 Oscar nominee to reappear here. (For me, the finest editing achievement of last year was “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” but maybe it wasn’t rugged enough for their liking.) I highly doubt we’ll see “Iron Man” in the Oscar lineup in this category, but “The Dark Knight” is looking like a real contender.

  • The top 10 shots of 2007: part one

    Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood2007 was, to my mind, the greatest year for cinematography in a long, long time.  I can’t recall the last time I was so thoroughly impressed with the visual artistry of film after film like I was last year, and I attribute that to the intriguing spark of creativity underway in the film medium as of late.  Newcomers and veterans alike were putting awe-inspiring images on film, some of the seasoned pros besting their already exceptional portfolios.

    I wanted to do something special in the way of commemorating the efforts of these individuals, and so I set out to interview a number of them as the year drew to a close.  Sadly, I was never able to piece those interviews together in a proper story like I would have wanted, but in recent weeks it has occurred to me that it may be just as beneficial to offer up something you don’t regularly see: a personal compilation of the greatest single images from the cinematic year.

    And so it goes that I offer the Top 10 Shots of 2007, a two part piece that will run down what I felt were the best of the best in a year full of exceptional cinematographic work.  Today, I’m running down shots 10 through 6, and tomorrow, we’ll wrap it up with the top 5.  Mixed in you’ll find sporadic comments from the lensers in question, as I feel it only appropriate that I give that small gateway into their process for readers and viewers alike.

    I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did compiling it.

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