In Contention

Tag: Texas Killing Fields

  • 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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  • VENICE: ‘Texas Killing Fields,’ ‘Faust,’ competition stragglers

    After a ten-day, 23-film Venice Competition that started slowly but respectably, hit a healthy stride midway through and began wheezing with exhaustion in its closing stages, things have finally ground to a permanent halt with “Texas Killing Fields” (**), the sophomore feature from Ami Canaan Mann — daughter of Michael,  who predictably takes a producer credit here. Mann fille arrived on the Lido a mostly unknown quantity — her debut feature dropped 10 years ago, and appears to have been by precisely nobody in that time — and I’d love to say she proved to be something of a secret weapon up festival director Marco Mueller’s sleeve.

    Alas, the only weapons brandished by this color-by-numbers tumbleweed policier are those belonging to the dutifully scowling small-town cops played by Sam Worthington, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and one of Jessica Chastain’s recently minted clones — the ones to whom she now hands the second-string scripts that don’t quite merit her personal attention.

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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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  • VENICE: Follow the Lido — a festival preview

    “Why Venice and not Toronto?” a colleague asked when I mentioned I was heading to the Lido for the world’s oldest film festival for the third straight year. Given the North American bent of this site, it was a fair question, but also one I found easy to answer — and not just for the dully practical reason of relative airfare expense.

    Toronto may have become the bigger and, depending on your field of interest, more influential festival (certainly so if you’re in the Oscar-watching business). But with its abundance of pre-premiered films and no juried competition, it’ll never have the grandeur or ever-so-slightly scuffed glamor of the Venice event, with its beachside location, soaring marble delegate halls and saturated aroma of overpriced espresso — not to mention the artsier exclusivity of its film programming, a once hit-and-miss virtue that scored a bulls-eye with a 2010 lineup that beat last year’s Cannes for range, relevance and vitality.

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