In Contention

Tag: O Brother Where Art Thou?

  • TELLURIDE: Clooney takes center stage

    George Clooney has been tapped this year for one of Telluride’s three big tributes, and it’s certainly the biggest of the trio. Whether it’s press and patrons schmoozing with the star at yesterday’s Patron Brunch, whispers around town (“Did you hear George Clooney is here?” “I really hope ‘The Ides of March’ is a TBA.”) or the ecstatic response to Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants,” this mountain burgh has been taken by Clooney fever.

    It’s a curious thing to see happen here at a festival that is so smooth and cool and not at all phased by celebrity. Clooney changes all those rules, though. And most of it has to be owed to his trooper disposition and charming charisma. He’s always “on,” and just about everyone wants to just throw back a few with the guy. Men want to be him, women want to…well, you get my drift.

    I tend to stay away from the tributes and spend that time taking in a film at Telluride. But since the actor is set to be feted later this evening, I thought I’d at least dedicate some space to his still in-progress career and the highlights that have brought him to this point.

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  • The Coens abide

    (from left) Ethan Coen and Joel CoenI’ve been chewing on the Coen brothers’ “A Serious Man” like a thick piece of spiritual jerky ever since I walked out of the Clariety screening room in Beverly Hills yesterday evening.  I’ve retweeted other perspectives, exchanged emails with industry types equally leveled by it and, in my own way, started banging the drum for a film I think everyone should see.

    It’s sticking with me in the best of ways, I guess you could say.  It’s illuminating unexpected corners.  It really is settling in and staying there.

    So I was quick to devour this piece in The Toronto Star by Chicago Sun-Times religion columnist Cathleen Falsani.  Falsani is also the author of the book “The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers,” which explores the spiritual messages found in the Coens’ films.  So she was more than qualified to write up the siblings’ most personal and, certainly, most spiritual film to date.

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  • The new millennium Oscars?

    Viggo Mortensen in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the KingLooking back over the previous Oscar winners for Best Picture since 2000, the start of a new century (and a new millennium), I find myself wondering sometimes what the hell the Academy was thinking.  It’s no secret I disagree with the Academy a lot, but I can also admit that when they get it right, they get it right.

    But since 2000, their Best Pic choices have run the gamut from incredibly ridiculous, “Gladiator” and “A Beautiful Mind” being just goofy, to bang on, with “The Departed” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.”  I am told the Academy is moving in a more progressive direction, willing to take more risks, and I suppose some of these winners do just that.  But they could have gone further.

    Year by year, here’s a quick look, with some thoughts about who might have won, and who should have at least been nominated…

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