• Michael Cieply reports from the “W.E.” press conference in Toronto, where Madonna is doing slightly better than she did over in Venice. [Arts Beat]
• Speaking of Toronto, Tilda Swinton keeps hitting the press rounds at the fest. [Speakeasy]
• Pete Hammond hears that Sony Classics wanted to lay the groundwork for a Michael Fassbender win next year in “Shame” (had they acquired it) by pushing “A Dangerous Method” ahead of it this year. I’m not sure that would have worked out. [Deadline]
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”).
• Bill Desowitz calls “The Lion King 3D,” which hits theaters Friday, “a noteworthy achievement for post-converting hand-drawn animation.” Agreed. He also talks to those responsible for it. [Thompson on Hollywood]
• Clooney: Clooney vs. Cooney just hype. [Variety]
• Shailene Woodley, meanwhile, is ready for her close-up in Toronto. [The Guardian]
• Word is one of the big Telluride surprises is the Johnny Depp starrer “The Rum Diary.” [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• At Venice, is “Contagion” following “The Town”‘s awards playbook? (Uh…yeah.) [24 Frames]
• Sticking with the Lido, Nick Vivarelli talks to “A Dangerous Method” director David Cronenberg. [Variety]
So here I sit in Telluride, a nice view of the mountainside gondolas out the window, a swift flight and gorgeous shuttle ride later. As always, we were greeted with the festival program upon boarding the charter this morning, which also carried filmmakers Werner Herzog and Alexander Payne, actress Tilda Swinton, etc., their presence at the airport already hinting at what was likely to be inside.
The three most expected films are here: Payne’s “The Descendants,” David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method” and Steve McQueen’s “Shame.” Those will be at the top of my list this weekend. Rodrigo Garcia’s “Albert Nobbs” is, along with Payne’s film, the big first-look get for the festival. Though we’ll get looks at McQueen’s flick ahead of Venice, it appears. Also of interest to me are Cannes carry-overs “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” “Le Havre,” “The Kid with a Bike” and “Footnote.” And on the documentary front, there is Matin Scorsese’s “George Harrison: Living in the Material World” (centered on Beatle George Harrison) and Herzog’s latest, “Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, a Tale of Life.”
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.
Okay, so we featured the decent French trailer for Lynne Ramsay’s blinding comeback feature only a few days ago, but this excellent one from UK distributor Artificial Eye does a better job of distilling the film’s complicated essence: it captures a measure of the film’s cruel wit, as well as Ramsay’s typically off-kilter sensory details. Those sprinklers heard at the trailer’s outset, by the way, will not leave your mind for days after seeing the film. It premiered yesterday at The Guardian — click on the image to watch it there, or check out the embed after the cut.
As some you will remember, I flipped for Lynne Ramsay’s “We Need To Talk About Kevin” back in May, and the film has yet to work its way out from under my skin. The film is heading into its second festival phase, build on its Cannes buzz at Toronto and perhaps Telluride. (It’s sure to have a high-profile gala spot at the London Film Festival too.) We’re still awaiting the US and UK marketing, but for the impatient, French distributor Diaphana has put out an intelligently cut trailer that does a pretty good job of conveying the stylized, sensually led approach Ramsay has taken to the material — but keeps the lid on Tilda Swinton’s Oscar-ready performance. The poster, however, could use some improvement. Check them out after the jump, via Bleeding Cool. (Thanks to reader Jim T for the tip.)
(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.)
Lynne Ramsay’s Cannes hit “We Need to Talk About Kevin” has found a home, and an awards trajectory is in place. The press release, in part:
May 23, 2011 Oscilloscope Laboratories announced today the company has acquired from Luc Roeg’s Independent Film Company North American distribution rights of the critically acclaimed and much talked about 2011 Cannes Film Festival competition entry WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN, the highly-anticipated third feature from director Lynne Ramsay (RATCATCHER and MORVERN CALLAR). Oscilloscope will release WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN theatrically this Winter, accompanied by an awards campaign.
A suspenseful and psychologically gripping exploration into a parent dealing with her child doing the unthinkable, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN is told from the perspective of Eva, played by Tilda Swinton in a tour-de-force performance.
Adam Yauch, head of Oscilloscope Laboratories said: “We are honored to be working with Lynne, Tilda, John, and Ezra to release this masterpiece– the most intense thriller I’ve seen since Polanski’s ROSEMARY¹S BABY. I was on the edge of my seat throughout and it was clear I was in the capable hands of a master filmmaker, who I’m now proud to see join all our other great filmmakers as a member of the O-Scope family.”
[Photo: Oscilloscope Laboratories]
It’s a funny thing. For 10 days at Cannes, the Croisette hums with stimulating discussion and debate about movies; for the final two, all that chatter dissolves into a single blunt question: “What will win the Palme d’Or?” It’s a little like the Oscars, except without the initial stage of stimulating discussion and debate about movies. Let’s do it.
On the one hand, I kind of want the beautiful, punishing 160-minute anti-procedural epic of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” to win, since there’s £140 waiting for me in London if it does. (Gamble responsibly, kids.) On the other, I can make more convincing cases for a number of titles. Unlike last year, when it was easy to single out “Uncle Boonmee” and “Of Gods and Men” for the top two spots, this year’s lineup has been higher in terms of median quality, as well as more contentious — which allows for a wider range of hypothetical jury-room arguments.
Welcome 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 has been nearly three months since we last got on the horn to talk the film wards landscape. We promised another dip during Cannes, so here we are. Today Anne and I are joined by Guy Lodge as the two of them have been working the Croisette all week. Let’s see what’s on the docket today…
Cannes Film Festival
Lionel Shriver’s 2003 bestseller “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is a rare pop novel indeed: a nippy, low-comfort social essay that lures readers into messily untied arguments on topical subject matter the talk-show circuit would have far less trouble resolving. It might have made for a cluttered, stentorian film about things, particularly as the novel’s candid, epistolary format — a series of unreturned letters from an emotionally paralyzed wife and mother to her absent husband — lends itself to reams of dense, subtext-securing voiceover.
That knowledge makes the already graceful cinematic language of Lynne Ramsay’s film adaptation (the Scottish director’s third feature, and her first in a regrettable period of nine years) all the more remarkable: altering not a jot of narrative detail, Ramsay and co-writer Rory Kinnear have ingeniously hollowed out Shriver’s wordy text into a largely tacit, imagistic memory collage that substitutes sound and vision for dialogue as extensively as possible. The woman who had a similarly unlikely literary hit, Alice Sebold’s “The Lovely Bones,” taken out of her hands by commercially-minded producers has exacted her revenge in the most rewarding of ways.
The director: Lynne Ramsay (United Kingdom)
The talent: Reigning arthouse-crossover queen Tilda Swinton leads the cast of Scottish director Ramsay’s third feature; filling the other two key roles are John C. Reilly, shifting gears from his recent run of comedy roles, and 18 year-old Ezra Miller, an effectively gangly presence in “Afterschool” and “City Island.”
Ramsay adapted Lionel Shriver’s 2003 novel with British actor (and first-time writer) Rory Kinnear, while the film’s long list of producers and executive producers includes Steven Soderbergh and Luc (son of Nicolas) Roeg. Oscar-nominated DP Seamus McGarvey (“Atonement”) is on lensing duty, breaking Ramsay’s early-career partnership with Alwin Kuchler. Most excitingly of all, Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood extends his select but impressive film-scoring CV (“There Will Be Blood,” “Norwegian Wood”).
After weeks of speculation, this year’s Cannes lineup was unveiled in spectacularly long-winded fashion by fest director Thierry Frémaux this morning. (French TV networks clearly got so bored with his sidebar discussions on each title he announced that they helpfully cut to commercial halfway through the press conference.)
Anyway, the speculation was largely borne out — most of the names you expected to see here are present and correct, including such Cannes regulars as Pedro Almodóvar, Lars von Trier, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and the Dardenne brothers.
Meanwhile, the question on whether or not Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” would play in competition has been answered in the affirmative. Malick’s inclusion makes this to second Cannes competition slate in a row to feature only one American filmmaker, though it’s something of an upgrade from from last year’s Doug Liman head-scratcher.
[More thoughts, and the full lineup, after the cut.]
I heard word last year that Larry Clark was remaking Neil Jordan’s “Mona Lisa,” but had no idea whether it was really going ahead or not. This promotional one-sheet design from All City Media, found on their spiffy new website, suggests that it might be. However the film turns out — if at all — the poster, at least, is eminently frameable.
Two more intriguing teases from All City (including one for my most anticipated film of 2011) after the cut.
Ever come across a match of star, director and project so uncannily perfect it gives you chills just thinking about it? That’s how I’m feeling upon learning (belatedly, I admit) that Tilda Swinton has signed on to star in Lynne Ramsay’s long-delayed adaptation of the Lionel Shriver bestseller “We Need to Talk About Kevin.”
I’m not sure how it took the news so long to reach me (the NYT’s Carpetbagger blog reported this last month), given that “Kevin” has been my most anticipated cinematic endeavour — bar none — for several years now.
There are a number of reasons for this. Shriver’s extraordinary novel (for the uninformed, it’s an epistolary breakdown of the circumstances leading to a high school massacre, as told by the teenage killer’s guilt-ridden mother) hit me like a well-aimed punch in the gut three years ago and resonates with me still. And Ramsay utterly earned my devotion with her first two features, “Ratcatcher” (1999) and “Morvern Callar” (2002): the young Scot could have the most distinctive aesthetic sensibility of any British filmmaker currently working.
Meanwhile, the lead role is as complex and risky a challenge as any actress could hope to take on — a mother bereft of any maternal connection to her offspring from the outset, as candid as she is ultimately self-deluding, she both invites and repels empathy. Few actresses walk the line between fragility and opaqueness as intelligently as Swinton, and fewer still would be brave enough to take on such a defiantly unsympathetic part. This is a casting bullseye.