In Contention

Tag: Take Shelter

  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 61 — Wrapping up Toronto, ‘Moneyball’ and Brad Pitt’s Oscar positioning, Roland Emmerich’s ‘Anonymous,’ ‘Rampart’ and turning out the lights

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    It’s a bittersweet time. Barring any set-backs, this is the last time you’ll see an episode of Oscar Talk…in this space. As revealed earlier this week, In Contention is moving over to HitFix, aiming for as early as Monday of next week. So this 61st installment of the podcast is all she wrote for these white walls, but the fun will continue at the new destination a week from today. But, for now, with Anne on her last day of Toronto coverage, there is plenty to cover. So let’s see what’s on the docket today…

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Strong year for double-dippers

    We find ourselves right in the middle of the big Toronto press junket, er, film festival, where 200-plus films are landing, many of them as world premieres, and the landscape of this year’s Oscar race is really beginning to take shape.

    As I looked out at the various films in play this year, it suddenly occurred to me that, perhaps more than ever, there are a lot of double-dipping actors and actresses in the hunt. Not all of these performances are or will be awards bait necessarily, but there could still be cases for more than a few saddling up to dual nominations this year.

    At the top of that list would have to be Brad Pitt. After already giving what many believed to be his best performance to date in Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” the paparazzi-hounded star found himself the recipient of a lot of great ink for his work in “Moneyball” when it screened in Toronto at the end of the week. Wisely, Fox Searchlight will be planning a supporting actor push for the actor in Malick’s film, which is both practical (given his clear lead in the other film), and organic (given that, at least in my opinion, he is supporting to Hunter McCracken’s lead in “The Tree of Life”).

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  • ‘Take Shelter’ and Jessica Chastain win in Deauville

    In the midst of early-season festival madness (and sometimes lost in the clutter) is the Deauville Film Festival, which concluded this weekend. Top honors went to Jeff Nichols’s “Take Shelter,” a film of which I’m a big proponent.

    To start the festival, though, one of the film’s stars, Jessica Chastain, shared the “New Hollywood” award with Ryan Gosling. It’s notable as the second festival notice for the actress, following the Gucci Award for Women in Film at the Venice fest.

    I know Sony Classics will be positioning films like “Midnight in Paris,” “Carnage” and “A Dangerous Method” for awards attention, not to mention another healthy slate of foreign film hopefuls. But I hope this gem isn’t lost in that fray this year. It’s clearly a film people are responding to (having already taken the Grand Prix at Cannes earlier in the summer.) My fingers crossed for it. More reactions will land out of Toronto as it screens throughout the week. Check out the trailer after the jump.

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  • Jessica Chastain wins award in Venice — more to come?

    Nathaniel Rogers tipped me off today to the fact that Jessica Chastain has won her first (of many?) award of the season in Venice. The prize, presented by “W.E.” director Madonna, was the Gucci Award for Women in Film. And it’s a pretty good pick when you consider how prolific she is this year.

    Chastain is at the fest with two films — “Wilde Salome” and “Texas Killing Fields” — but of course she’s been seen in everything from “The Tree of Life” to “The Help” to “The Debt” this year, with Sundance and Cannes hit “Take Shelter” and Weinstein-pushed “Coriolanus” still to hit Toronto and open in theaters. Seven movies? A little difficult to argue with that, especially since she gives quality work across the board (though I haven’t seen the Venice films).

    It really would be a shame if she couldn’t get enough of a groundswell to nab an Oscar nod for something (I prefer her in “The Help”), but she’s assured any number of precursor honors for her body of work throughout the season.

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  • Michael Shannon is a beast in the spectacular ‘Take Shelter’

    Not to overstate things, but it’s time to talk about Michael Shannon and the fact that it’ll be amazing if there is a better, more refined, more electrifying performance this year than his work in Jeff Nichols’s “Take Shelter.” This is his best work to date and it deserves a huge swell of awards support.

    I got to know Shannon a few years ago when he was on the campaign trail for “Revolutionary Road” (which yielded him a surprise Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actor at the end of the year). When you know the softhearted guy behind the work, it’s all the more impressive. And in “Take Shelter,” he covers so much performance terrain with such controlled ease that it’s just awe-inspiring. He is one of the best of his generation, hands down.

    Oh, and that the performance comes in the midst of one of the year’s standout films, surrounded by equally confident portrayals of all shades, well… How many good things can you say about something before it’s just embarrassing? Let me try.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Fall fests look to boost early Oscar hopes

    On a warm Saturday afternoon in Telluride last year, I sat in the crowded Chuck Jones Cinema and felt the warmth in the room as Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” screened for its first audience of the year. Six months later, at the end of a road with plenty of twists and turns, the film’s producers held aloft the Oscar for Best Picture.

    In 2008, Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire,” after previewing in Telluride, screened on the very same day as Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” at the Toronto International Film Festival. Six and 18 months later respectfully, same results. In 2007, Joel and Ethan Coen’s “No Country for Old Men” started its victory march at Cannes before moving into autumn fests. In 2004, Paul Haggis’s “Crash” bowed for Toronto audiences before a summer 2005 release and an eventual Oscar win.

    The obvious connection here is the festival circuit, particularly the fall festival circuit, which has become a significant launching ground for awards contenders in the last half-decade. And starting in two days with Guy’s Venice coverage, the 2011 fall festival season — and the awards potential it is sure to bring with it — officially kicks off around these parts.

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  • Telluride guessing game

    (UPDATED: 8/29)

    Now that the Toronto and Venice line-ups have been unveiled (though we have a few more Toronto announcements to come), I figured I’d take a few stabs at sussing out the Telluride crop this year. I haven’t been a good journalist and called around or anything. Just spinning my wheels.

    One studio that always has a big presence at Telluride is Sony Pictures Classics, and this year, honchos Michael Barker and Tom Bernard have a full plate once again. Of that stable, David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method” is hitting both Venice and Toronto. It’s very possible, then, that it will kick things off in the Rockies.

    Roman Polanski’s “Carnage,” meanwhile, was announced as a Venice play this morning. It would be easy enough for the team to bring the film there and not worry about getting the filmmaker in town (seeing as he can’t legally step foot in the country), saving his press run for Venice. (7/28 UPDATE: The film has been set for New York fest, so it seems unlikely we’ll see it in Telluride.)

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  • Kaurismäki, Sorrentino among early Cannes winners

    The Cannes Film Festival closes up shop tomorrow with the announcement of the Competition awards — the final competing film, Radu Mihaileanu’s “The Source,” screened this morning to a tepid reception. Before we get to that, however, a wide array of smaller juries have their own trophies to dish out, and a number of them did so tonight.

    I’ve just returned from the tuxes-and-sneakers affair that is the Un Certain Regard awards ceremony, followed by a screening of one of their prizewinners, Andrei Zvyagintsev’s stunning “Elena.” (I’ll review the film later, but for now, allow to express my bafflement that this remarkable work wasn’t in Competition, particular when the director’s previous film, no more impressive a work, was.)

    There, a jury led by previous Palme d’Or winner Emir Kusturica (choice quote in opening speech: “I was the darling of this festival, and I did not behave myself very well”) infuriated critics across the Croisette by handing half their top prize (in a tie) to one of the festival’s worst-reviewed films: Kim Ki-duk’s documentary on himself, “Arirang.” It’s a handy reminder that critical response should never be the key consideration when predicting festival awards.

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  • ‘Take Shelter’ takes first award at Cannes

    Nine days in, the Cannes Film Festival is winding down. Many of the US journos are flying home, and with Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Skin I Live In” having premiered this morning — review coming tomorrow — the superstar auteurs have all shown their hand. (That’s not to say Nuri Bilge Ceylan or Paolo Sorrentino can’t alter the shape of the festival, however.)

    But with the drop in energy comes the scent of gold, as we prepare for the annual Cannes parlor game of loudly criticizing the jury’s decisions. We’re still three days away from the Competition awards — though Aki Kaurismäki’s broadly liked comedy “Le Havre” (which I frustratingly still haven’t seen after three attempts) has emerged as the sizeable Palme d’Or favorite, while I hear rumors that Olivier Assayas is the lone “Tree of Life” fan on the jury — but the trophy run began tonight with the winners of the Critics’ Week sidebar.

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  • What will be this year’s Sundance story?

    I must confess, this year’s Sundance Film Festival kind of passed me by. Admittedly, I’ve been distracted by a busy couple of weeks on the awards circuit, but the Sundance coverage I did follow suggested a high-quality if nonetheless rather quiet festival, one with fewer noisy breakout films than usual.

    In the last few years, it’s been worth keeping an eye (or an ear, rather) on the Sundance buzz, as the festival has birthed a number of future critical hits, and even awards-season success stories: recent Best Picture nominees “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Precious,” “An Education” and now “The Kids Are All Right” and “Winter’s Bone” all premiered there, as did “Frozen River,” “Blue Valentine” and a plethora of Oscar-nominated documentaries. (No fewer than four of this year’s Best Documentary Feature nominees are Sundance babies.)

    So it’s easy to assume at least one film from this year’s Sundance crop is something we’ll still be talking about a year from now — but where the crossover potential for a film like “The Kids Are All Right,” or a performance like Jennifer Lawrence’s, was immediately evident, this year’s potential Sundance “stories” don’t seem quite as obvious.

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