In Contention

Tag: Mother

  • FIRST-HALF FYC: Best Actress

    The fifth column in our new seasonal series — if you haven’t got the drill by now, we’re rounding up the most Oscar-worthy work from the oft-overlooked first half of the year — wraps up the performance categories with by far the most competitive race of all. Conventional wisdom has it that Best Actress is the most crowded field of this year’s awards derby, and as I looked over the January-to-June release schedule, I realized that’s just as true of the early birds.

    Where I admit I had embroider a little to make up five-strong fields in one or two other categories, this week’s task found me scratching my head over who to leave out. Many of the year’s most lavishly acclaimed performances jostled for position: Kim Hye-ja may have taken the Los Angeles critics’ honors, but as much as I love the demented commitment of her performance in “Mother,” I was surprised to find myself leaving her on the sidelines. Tilda Swinton is on near-peak form in “I Am Love,” and yet she too finds herself in the honorable mention category.

    I was all prepared to court controversy by citing Julianne Moore’s exemplary work in Atom Egoyan’s otherwise negligible “Chloe,” but there just wasn’t room to be that playful; in a regular year, “Father of My Children” star Chiara Caselli would easily have figured in at the halfway mark. Others might make cases for Noomi Rapace or Giovanna Mezzogiorno, and I’m still hamstrung by not having had access to “Everyone Else.” The bottom line is: there was a lot to sift through before arriving at the five names below. May future years also be this good to the ladies.

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  • ‘Social Network’ rules Boston critics’ awards

    Okay, let’s lead with the really interesting news. By handing their Best Supporting Actress award to Juliette Lewis for her barnstorming, dialogue-jiggering hammery in “Conviction” (I mean that in wholly admiring terms, by the way), the Boston Society of Film Critics officially take the title for the coolest go-your-own-way pick of this admittedly young season. Is this win a one-night-only deal, or is Lewis a fun new name to add into the Oscar mix? The latter, I’m hoping.

    Beyond that, it was back to regular business, as “The Social Network” furthered its reputation is this year’s critical darling by sweeping the top categories — Best Picture, Director, Actor and Screenplay, as well as a citation of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score. Jesse Eisenberg toppled Colin Firth by a single vote to claim yet another handy precursor: that Oscar nomination is looking ever more comfortably in his grasp.

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  • Waiting on Oscar’s foreign language shortlist

    Niels Arestrup and Tahar Rahim in A ProphetLast Saturday, the Academy concluded four months of screenings of the 65 films in contention for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film award. Today, that tall pile of titles will be culled to a shortlist of just nine contenders, from which the eventual five nominees will be chosen.

    Making predictions here is a pretty thankless task, given the regularity with which this branch of the Academy slights seemingly sure-fire nominees in favour of less visible, and less acclaimed, fare. Indeed, a high-profile snub, with ensuing media outcry, has virtually become an annual Oscar tradition.

    The furore over the omission of Romania’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” two years ago even prompted a change in the voting system – to safeguard against such controversies, a smaller executive committee was appointed to add three titles to the six elected by the branch voters.

    It didn’t work: when last year’s critical darling “Gomorrah” failed to impress even the new committee, the Academy was raked over the coals once more. The bottom line, then, is that even the mightiest title can’t be called a shoo-in in this race.

    (More analysis, and shortlist predictions, after the cut.)

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  • THE LONG SHOT: Mind your language

    (from left) Niels Arestrup and Tahar Rahim in A ProphetYou might not be aware of it, but the competition is already formally under way in Oscar’s most perennially problematic category, Best Foreign Language Film.

    For almost two weeks now, official Academy screenings of the longlisted contenders in the race have been in progress, and will continue through January, until all 65 titles have been subjected to the foreign-language committee’s scrutiny.

    Pete Hammond has details of the screening schedule and voting rules, as well as some gossip on audience reaction to the screenings thus far: Mexico’s “Backyard” and Switzerland’s “Home,” starring Jimmy Smits and Isabelle Huppert respectively, have apparently gone down well; Croatia’s “Donkey,” thanks to incomprehensible subtitles, not so much. Add a pinch of salt to taste.

    Coincidentally enough, courtesy of the London Film Festival, I’ve been simultaneously working my own way down the contenders list, though my personal tally has stalled at eight titles. (It could have been 11, if scheduling and admin obstacles hadn’t kept me away from the Australian, Colombian and Serbian entries. I am but one man.) Only 57 to go, then.

    I will offer a more detailed assessment of the films in another post, but by and large it’s been a pleasure making their acquaintance. Of course, my own selection has been filtered through that of the fest’s generally thoughtful programmers, safeguarding against any real horrors – but I don’t mind saying that an unembarrassing list of nominees could theoretically be assembled from just my scant sampling of the longlist.

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  • Korea selects ‘Mother’ for Oscars, bypasses ‘Thirst’

    MotherThanks to The Film Experience for pointing out this news nugget: a month after Sri Lanka kicked off the convoluted, multi-tiered contest for Best Foreign Language Film by selecting their official entry, we have our first relatively high-profile submission, as Korea has entered Bong Joon-ho’s “Mother” into the race.

    Some might be surprised that the country’s selectors passed over Park Chan-wook’s “Thirst” — which won the Jury Prize at Cannes and has received an interesting Stateside promotional push from Focus Features — but they shouldn’t be.

    For one thing, the Koreans are probably as aware as any Oscar-watcher that the chances of the Academy blue-hairs going for an erotic vampire flick with healthy lashings of gore are, to put it gently, minimal. (It appears that “Thirst” was one of six films considered, however.)

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  • Resnais and Almodóvar bookend world-flavored NYFF lineup

    Penelope Cruz in Broken EmbracesindieWIRE has the full lineup for this year’s New York Film Festival, which runs from 25 September to 11 October, and at a glance, it looks remarkably like a greatest-hits lineup from May’s Cannes festival.

    This year, both the NYFF’s opening and closing films have been plucked from the Croisette. Alain Resnais’s “Wild Grass,” for which the 87 year-old New Wave master received a special career-achievement award at Cannes, will kick off proceedings, marking the second year in a row that a French title has taken this high-profile slot.

    Palme d’Or winner “The Class” opened NYFF last year en route to an Oscar nod. Whether a similar path awaits Resnais’s film, a high-flown romantic melodrama which was very warmly reviewed in Cannes, of course depends on what the French choose as their entry from a bumper crop of possibilities.

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