In Contention

Tag: The Silence of the Lambs

  • CINEJABBER: Devil’s Night in Motown

    Catch up with the idea behind these weekend posts here.

    I’m in Detroit for the game tomorrow, so movies are somewhat out of sight, out of mind.  Somewhat.

    As I drive around town, I’m reminded of some singular opportunities here for the film industry.  I don’t really know the particulars of filming in Detroit or if Hollywood really bothers.  There’s a lot of Pittsburgh filming going on these days and I imagine you get the same feel from a town like that, but kind of like Kansas City, there are unique areas here that would be unexpected gold mines for location shoots.

    It’s a sad sight, though, to say the least.  Not that that’s news.  I came through four years ago, didn’t spend much time here, and got the heck out as soon as possible because “depressing” doesn’t begin to say it.  But I have a soft spot for the town.  My fiancee is from here (grew up between 7 Mile and 8 Mile — I wonder if she ever ran into Marshall Mathers on these mean streets).

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  • THE LONG SHOT: Categorical denial

    Wild-eyed, table-banging outbursts — sometimes of enthusiasm, more often of outrage — are an essential part of the floor show at any Oscar viewing party, but I’ve rarely seen one more unhinged than a friend’s reaction to Angelina Jolie’s (widely expected) Best Supporting Actress victory at the 1999 ceremony.

    “Who the hell was she supporting?” she yelled, red wine slopping out of her glass as she pointed an accusatory finger at the TV screen. “The woman only went and swallowed the entire film without so much as chewing once, all but elbowed Winona out of every shot, and she’s rewarded for supporting her?” She was practically spitting now, so blind with fury she hadn’t even noticed the raven-haired Miss Jolie snogging her brother. “If that’s her idea of support, what happens when she’s against you?”

    I should perhaps explain that my friend’s love for all things Winona Ryder ran deep, and not a little frightening, in those days; the Academy’s heartless decision not to nominate Ryder for Best Actress that year already meant she was watching the ceremony under duress. So it probably wasn’t the best time to explain that, well, Jolie did have the secondary role in “Girl, Interrupted” and that, unfair world that this is, there was still no law preventing rising young actors from being much better than their first-billed co-stars. So we let her rant, at least until Phil Collins started singing and she had something new to complain about.

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  • THE LONG SHOT: Bait, switch

    Whether you choose to believe them or not – and speaking for myself, I don’t quite – the media powers that be have currently reduced the 2010 Best Picture race to just two titles: “The Social Network” and “The King’s Speech.” That’s entirely (and hopefully, lest things get too dull too soon) subject to change over the next four months, but given what we’ve seen at this point, it’s difficult to devise a could-win theory for many of the films most fancied for the remaining eight slots, be it “Inception” or “Another Year.”

    I don’t really blame those in the blogosphere who are narrowing things down to this pair of films: after a lackluster Toronto fest failed to turn up a hidden dragon along the lines of “Slumdog Millionaire,” the slate of contenders looks much as it did before the fall festival season began. With expectations for “Network” and “Speech” pegged high all along, meeting them was enough to seal frontrunner status.

    Moreover, the temptation to pit David Fincher’s modish Facebook story and Tom Hooper’s tony royalty porn against each other is hard to resist, given how conveniently the films are opposed: both acclaimed biopics after a fashion, but one concerned with present-day American youth, the other with British aristocracy of yore. “It’s the time-capsule piece versus the time-warp piece,” snarked one friend of mine recently, anticipating a narrative that will likely run all season, even if other frontrunners enter the fray.

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  • THE LONG SHOT: Critical condition

    Gabourey Sidibe in PreciousAhead of its U.S. release this week, there is a wave of mild surprise in the blogosphere over the fact that “Precious,” the film deemed by some (yours truly included) to be the present Best Picture frontrunner, is currently sitting on a lowly Metacritic score of 57. Fitting neatly with the largely media-fabricated talk of a backlash against the film, some commenters are citing this rather arbitrary number as a debit against the film’s chances.

    As much as I’d personally like that to believe that — and as relieved as I am to see that I’m not the only person who didn’t respond to the film – such talk will doubtless be short-lived, given the paucity of reviews making up the current score and the likelihood of raves to come. If anything, public support is more crucial than critical consensus to this film’s campaign – if audiences don’t turn up to see this grim, minority-oriented indie, many Academy members won’t feel compelled to either.

    That said, it looks increasingly possible that “Precious” (I refuse to use that lumpy subtitle all season, by the way) could turn out to be a more critically divisive item than might have been expected following an ecstatically received festival run.

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  • THE LONG SHOT: What is an “Oscar movie” these days?

    George Clooney in Up in the Air“God, that thing’s just going to shit Academy Awards out of its ass next year, isn’t it?,” I overheard a journo behind me remark to his companion, as I made my way out of the “Up in the Air” press screening on Sunday. “It’s such an Oscar movie.”

    Two things struck me as interesting about this throwaway remark, both relating to the lack of care with which both Oscar pundits and “serious” film lovers tend to regard the Academy Awards.

    The first was that, isolated and in print, the guy’s words appear dismissive of “Up in the Air,” yet they actually capped a mostly enthusiastic response to the film. His tone dipped almost apologetically as he applied the “Oscar movie” label, as if it somehow sullied an otherwise fine effort.

    More to the point, however, the remark seemed indicative of the transitive stage the Academy Awards seem to be in at the moment, as simultaneously resistant and vulnerable to industry change as the protagonist of Jason Reitman’s film – and facing a similar crisis of purpose. For 15 years ago – if not necessarily 15 years before that – “Up in the Air” wouldn’t have been decreed an “Oscar movie” at all.

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  • ‘Silence’ smack-down

    (from left) Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster in The Silence of the LambsI stumbled onto Noah Forrest’s ribbing of Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs” over at Movie City News today toward the end of this piece, and frankly, I found little I could argue with.

    Here’s the key graph:

    I think seeing Bill Hader’s brilliant impression of Jame Gumb on a recent SNL made me question a lot of things about The Silence of the Lambs. First off, Jodie Foster is plain old not good in that film. Her accent is awful and she over-emotes constantly. Secondly, Ted Levine’s performance as Jame Gumb has turned out to be the most memorable thing about that film (“Is she a great big fat person?”). Thirdly, that film is really not that great and it pains me to say that because I always held it in high esteem. In fact, it plays better as an unintentional comedy than as a thriller.

    Ever since the film was released back in February of 1991, I’ve found myself scratching my head at its somewhat over-elevated status as a modern classic.  I fully agree with Forrest’s assessment of Jodie Foster’s Oscar-winning performance, for starters, and beyond the sheer thrill-factor of the film (it can’t be said that it’s not a solid genre entry), I never…ever…understood the awards train it dominated in the fall of that year.

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  • THE LISTS: In Contention’s top 20 horror films of all time

    228 Days LaterYes, how trite.  Another list of the “best” horror films of all time.  But this really is the most subjective of genres, is it not?  What is scary to us all has slipped out of the realm of the universal and become much more of a personal thing.

    Certain films are inarguable, as our list certainly reflects here and there.  But across the landscape of horror filmmaking, you find perhaps the broadest range of creativity in the medium.  So it goes without saying that a list such as this ought to be varied.

    Unlike the other lists we’ve featured here at In Contention, our rundown of the 20 best horror films of all time did not spring from the mind of this writer or that, but is instead representative of the collective.  We’ve polled each of our six contributors to ascertain their high marks in the genre and, through a complicated process of tabulation that involved thorough computation, lots of late nights and perhaps an abacus as well, the list was whittled down to the 20 films you see here.

    There are mainstays aplenty, but we think you’ll be surprised by a few of the entries.  Each of us hold very different opinions, as should be expected when you get a southerner L.A. transplant, an Arkansas law professor, two Toronto natives 20 years apart in age, a north easterner who recently made the trek out west and a humble Brit.

    We hope you enjoy the list.

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  • Best of the 90’s

    John Travolta and Uma Thurman in Quentin Tarantino\'s Pulp FictionTime is the enemy of all films as it erodes what was once exciting and original. Truly great movies are able to withstand the test of time, but I wonder if enough time has passed to take a look back at the 1990s cinema and make some decisions.

    There was a major breakthrough in the decade with filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, who did not so much open the door for indies as he did kick it in and stomp on it with his “Pulp Fiction,” a gloriously acted, directed and written masterpiece about criminals in Los Angeles.  When Godard spoke of making films with a guy, a girl and a gun, was this what he had in mind?

    Though Tarantino has strugled to follow up his legendary 1994 effort with an equally powerful offering, there is little doubt he will, or at least could if he wanted to. (Though he keeps stopping and starting on his latest ambitious project.)  After all, he is still growing as a director.  And just look at Steven Spielberg, who for my money has grown artistically through the last 15 years more so than any other major filmmaker. It was as though “Schindler’s List” and the release of winning the Oscar set him free.

    Anyway, for the record and argument, here are my ten best films of the 1990s:

    1. “Pulp Fiction”
    2. “Schindler’s List”
    3. “Goodfellas”
    4. “Unforgiven”
    5. “Saving Private Ryan”
    6. “The Sweet Hereafter”
    7. “Magnolia”
    8. “L.A. Confidential”
    9. “The Shawshank Redemption”
    10. “The Silence of the Lambs”

    You?