Last night In Contention‘s Kris Tapley posted an assessment of the Best Actor situation, and in so doing declared there’s only one slot open once you factor in Birdman‘s Michael Keaton, Foxcatcher‘s Steve Carell, The Imitation Game‘s Benedict Cumberbatch and — last but far from least — Eddie Redmayne‘s turn as the afflicted Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything.
(l.) The distinctly nominatable Tom Hardy, star of the Locke and The Drop; (r.) In Contention columnist Kris Tapley.
The piece contains one questionable call and one glaring omission.
Tapley’s not wrong about Keaton, Cumberbatch and Redmayne but holdupski on Carell for one minute. Carell has carved himself a rep as Mr. Career Balls. The fact that he really burrows into the psyche of the late, very creepy multi-millionaire John Dupont is proof of that. But the reason Carell is considered a lock is because (a) he’s a rich and famous comic actor (he still makes awful, Norbit-like mainstream comedies like Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day), and because he (b) played Dupont with a kind of spazzy-wonky accent and (c) wore a prosthetic hook nose.
It’s not that Carell doesn’t deserve to be in the conversation. I fully respect what he did in Foxcatcher. I just don’t think he’s a stone-cold lock. Remember what Denzel Washington said before he announced that Nicole Kidman had won her Best Actress Oscar for The Hours? “By a nose…” Prosthetic noses are very big deals with the Academy. Be honest — would Carell be a presumed Best Actor lock if he hadn’t worn a fake schnozz?
Who could slide into Tapley’s rhetorical fifth slot? I’ll tell you who absolutely fucking should slide into it, and that’s Tom Hardy for delivering two ace-level, world-class performances this year — firstly his solo turn in Locke, easily one of the year’s best films and yet all but ignored by the know-it-alls because there’s no campaign afoot and they don’t see anyone buttering their bread, and secondly as the quiet, low-key barkeep in The Drop — a man of few words but with a cagey nature and an iron will. The year’s biggest take-away line — “Nobody ever sees you coming, do they, Bob?” — alludes to Hardy’s character in this film.
Today the Los Angeles Film Critics Association did a fine if startling thing by giving Tom Hardy their Best Actor trophy for two excellent 2014 performances — in Locke, a solo turn about Hardy’s urban contractor dealing with personal problems as he drives along a British highway in the wee hours, and The Drop, in which Hardy plays a low-key, New York-area bartender. I’ve posted riffs two or three times about Hardy being one of the most deserving actors in this 2014 awards race, but the idea didn’t have a great deal of traction until today. Cheers, back-pats and high-fives to Hardy, who’s now shooting The Revenant with Alejandro G. Inarritu and costar Leonardo DiCaprio.
With an apparently straight face, MCN’s David Poland has stated that Interstellar‘s Matthew McConaughey has a shot (i.e., “not so long a shot”) at being nominated for Best Actor. What is it about the words “forget it” that Poland doesn’t understand? Love Is Strange‘s John Lithgow has a better shot at being nominated than McConaughey. People just want McConaughey to back off. The more he weeps about missing his children in Interstellar, the worse it’ll be. Zip it.
But Poland is just getting warmed up. His next statement comes close to dismissing this aspect of the Oscar tea-leaf perceptions of In Contention‘s Kris Tapley. “I don’t buy into the idea — at all — that there are four locked places in Best Actor,” Poland says. “That doesn’t mean that I think that four of the current five frontrunners won’t end up making it,” he explains. “That could well happen. But the only actor I consider cemented into a nomination is Michael Keaton. Great performance, great story, super-strong movie. In.
Rupert Wyatt, William Monahan and Mark Wahlberg‘s The Gambler will have its big debut next Monday, 11.10 at the Dolby theatre at 7 pm. The idea is to nudge Wahlberg into Best Actor contention (who’s vulerable among the so-called locked-in gang of four?) and maybe John Goodman also in the Best Supporting Actor race….hey, why not? J.K. Simmons and Edward Norton could use the competition. And what about Jessica Lange (who obviously nails her role as Wahlberg’s mom) elbowing her way into the Best Supporting Actress arena? If Wahlberg really scores it would be him, Birdman‘s Michael Keaton, Foxcatcher‘s Steve Carell, The Imitation Game‘s Benedict Cumberbatch and Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything. Except I believe in Tom Hardy (Locke, The Drop) more than Carell.
On 9.20 director Ava Duvernayscreened about five minutes’ worth of Selma (Paramount, 12.25), the broad-canvas ’60s-era civil rights drama, at the Urbanworld Film Festival. It was announced today that a bit more Selma footage — 30 minutes’ worth — will be screened at the Egyptian theatre on Tuesday, November 11th, as part of AFI Fest. A discussion between Duvernay, star David Oyelowo (pronounced “oh-yellow”) and producers Oprah Winfrey, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner will follow. Based on this gradual emergence strategy, one can surmise that the full movie will be press-screened sometime around Thanksgiving or soon after.
Selma director Ava Duvernay, star David Oyelowo.
The only impression that came out of the Urbanworld viewing was from Blackfilm‘s Wilson Morales, who wrote that Oyelowo’s performance as Martin Luther King “is good enough to be in conversation for one of the five Best Actor slots…he embodies King.”
So why hasn’t Tilda Swinton‘s heartily-praised performance in Luca Guadagnino‘s I Am Love popped through in this year’s Best Actress conversations? For one thing I Am Love is not universally admired. It’s all lavish and cranked up in a orchestrated Visconti-ish sense. That’s what’s sublime about it, of course, but at the same time it feels like an art-film exercise in “quotes.”
And yet the reviews Swinton got were something. “Tour de force” and all that. Consider this paragraph from New Yorker critic Anthony Lane, written as part of his I Am Love review last June:
“This is the film toward which Tilda Swinton has been tending. Put together the chill of her majesty in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; the brunt of her motherly love in The Deep End; the leonine wildness that ate her up, in Erick Zonca‘s Julia; and the awful sense, in Michael Clayton, of a woman waiting to buckle beneath the formal demands of a working life — package all that, and you get Emma Recchi, winding the ribbon from a newly unwrapped gift around the spool of her worried fingers.”
But by Oscar season rules, it’s probably naive to think that a performance might rank as a contender for one of the Best Actress slots on mere “quality of performance” alone. And it’s pretty clear to everyone, I think, that Swinton’s Love performance just isn’t punching through. She’s not percolating. She has no heat. The last thing Tilda did that got people’s attention was that Laurel & Hardy flashmob dance number at the Edinburgh Film Festival.
On the strength of her performance alone (and I Am Love itself, which is like Visconti back from the dead) Swinton is quite mesmerizing. Quite the passionate woman, and slightly mad by way of erotic abandon. But I don’t have to tell anyone that the game, certainly at this stage, is about much more than that.
In a few weeks, I’m told, Swinton will be in LA for a big round of screenings and then on to New York. Magnolia will be sending screeners to the entire Academy, SAG Nominating committee and HFPA for starters.
In an email, columnist Scott Feinberg says that Swinton “has a very real shot at a Best Actress nod. Obviously the field is very crowded, and it may be tougher to get some voters to watch a two-hour foreign-language flick that came out months ago, but I suspect that those who do will not only vote to nominate her but place her very high on their ballots.
“Keep in mind that she’s very popular among her fellow actors, who I imagine admire her fiercely independent streak on-screen and off. While her supporting performance in Michael Clayton — which was good, but far from her best — lost the SAG Award, it won the Oscar, and it’s worth considering who she beat if you want to appreciate just how well-liked/respected she is.”
Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone says “you never know with Tilda” and that “nothing is set in stone right now.”
Cinemablend‘s Katey Rich says this reminds her of “last year’s situation with Julia, another tiny movie with a terrific Tilda Swinton performance that couldn’t get any traction. During the NYFCO vote for Best Actress there was a strong cadre of support for Swinton, but Meryl Streep wound up winning anyway. This year it feels like even fewer people have seen I Am Love, and plus the performance is a lot less baity — more restrained, more technically impressive but less gritty, desperate, that kind of flashy stuff that really gets you noticed.
“So she probably doesn’t have a chance. And with plenty of other female performances out there that need a champion — Jennifer Lawrence, Nicole Kidman, maybe even Lesley Manville — there just might not be room for Tilda.”
Swinton’s p.r. rep claims that “there are many champions for this film out there. Like Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson, Richard Jenkins in The Visitor and Melissa Leo in Frozen River, this is a performance and film that was the talk of the fest circuit at Toronto and Sundance last year, and the film did very well for a foreign film at box office. Buzz may not be crackling at the moment but it’s out there. Actors have seen the film although several key awards-season bloggers calling the race haven’t yet.”
In Contention‘s Kris Tapley says, “I still need to watch it. It’s sitting on my DVD player. I imagine it’ll be the same for Academy members all season long unless they feel a great need to give it a look.”
Coming Soon‘s Edward Douglas says he “barely got through 45 minutes of the movie.”
The Oregonian‘s Shawn Levy says he “can’t see” a Swinton headwind kicking in “but then I was an outlier on this: I believe I gave I Am Love its lowest score on Metacritic. I found it unbearable. But bully for Ms. Swinton if they can do it, I guess.”
Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson says “the only way for Tilda Swinton — who is admired by critics and art house audiences alike — to make the best actress Oscar grade this year for I Am Love is for critics to make a fuss over her in their year-end wraps and ten-best lists, and for critics groups and the Golden Globes to reward her and thus turn the screener into a must-see for SAG and Academy actors. Swinton has been nominated once (and won, for Michael Clayton).
“Metascore critics (32) gave it a 79, which is a strong score — they love Swinton’s performance. Who will the critics groups single out for best actress? Will Tilda Swinton beat out Nicole Kidman, Natalie Portman, Annette Bening, Jennifer Lawrence, Lesley Manville and Diane Lane? The problem is that someone has to mount a viable campaign for her. Magnolia has not beaten the bushes for Oscars in the past. But the movie reached an almost $5 million gross which is good in today’s market.
“It’s not impossible.”
Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet says, “I’m probably not the best one to ask when it comes to this film, as I didn’t like it in the slightest. I can understand where people are coming from when they found it sensuous and passionate, like biting into that perfectly ripe piece of fruit, but it didn’t move me in that way. In fact it moved me in the opposite direction.”
But there are plenty of admirers out there, enough so that one can say that Swinton ought to at least be in the running along with the others. Do I think she has an actual prayer as things stand? Nope. I mean, not the slightest tendril of a slender reed of hope. But maybe I’m wrong, and I wouldn’t mind at all if I was.
Inception review sample #1: “Inception is a movie so vibrant, so alive, so relentlessly original that it can be forgiven its transgressions in an instant. It’s an entertainment with vivid, profound ideas, precisely the kind of daring that ought to be backed by big money.” — In Contention‘s Kris Tapley.
Inception review sample #2: “Imagine a film being made in 2010 where you have absolutely no idea where it is going or how it will end. These were the worlds created by revolutionary filmmakers, like Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, David Cronenberg and David Lynch. With Inception we have a film and a filmmaker that has broken new ground and very nearly reinvented the form, and without 3-D. Nolan gets there on the power of the story. See it on IMAX and it will blow your mind. I am sure more than a few will discover that seeing the movie in an altered state will also blow your mind, not that I’m advocating that.” — Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone.
Inception review sample #3: “Inception is a masterpiece. Making a huge film with big ambitions, Christopher Nolan never missteps and manages to create a movie that, at times, feels like a miracle. And sometimes it doesn’t even feel like a movie; while presented in woefully retro 2D, Inception creates a complete sense of immersion in another world. The screen before you is just another layer of the dream.” — CHUD’s Devin Faraci.
Inception review sample #4: “Is it the first great movie of the summer? No — Toy Story 3 is. But Inception is probably the second great movie of the summer. Understand, a single viewing is hardly enough to come to terms with the film, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page and Tom Hardy as a crack team that invades Cillian Murphy‘s dreams and find unimaginable perils in the subconscious. But that first viewing is enough to realize that Inception is a dense, stylish, thorny, dazzling film that delivers as a thrill ride but gives viewers lots to chew on and puzzle through. It is not a typical summer movie, but it’s bold and imaginative in the vein of the best summer movies; it’s way too big and spectacular to be an art film, but it can leave you scratching your head in a good way.” — TheWrap‘s Steve Pond.
Inception review sample #5:”A Kubrickian masterpiece with heart, Inception delivers and then some, thanks to clever original screenwriting and exhilarating mise-en-scene. When it opens July 16, this eye-popping film will wow moviegoers all over the world — its complexities will only encourage debate and repeat viewings — and should also score well with critics and year-end awards groups. Oscar nominations in technical categories are a certainty, but Inception is also a strong contender for multiple nominations, including Best Picture.” — Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson.
Inception review sample #6: “If movies are shared dreams, then Christopher Nolan is surely one of Hollywood’s most inventive dreamers, given the evidence of his commandingly clever Inception. Applying a vivid sense of procedural detail to a fiendishly intricate yarn set in the labyrinth of the subconscious, the writer-director has devised a heist thriller for surrealists, a Jungian’s Rififi, that challenges viewers to sift through multiple layers of (un)reality. Nolan places mind-bending visual effects and a top-flight cast in service of a boldly cerebral vision that demands, and rewards, the utmost attention. Even when its ambition occasionally outstrips its execution, Inception tosses off more ideas and fires on more cylinders than most blockbusters would have the nerve to attempt.” — Variety‘s Justin Chang
Inception review sample #7: “If you don’t follow [every aspect of Inception], join the club. It will perhaps take multiple viewings of these multiple dream states to extract all the logic and regulations. (At least that’s what the filmmakers hope.) Something else might come more easily on subsequent viewings: With incredibly tense situations suspended across so many dreams within dreams, all that restless energy might induce a kind of reverse stress in audiences, producing not quite tedium, but you may want to shout, ‘C’mon, let’s get on with it!’ This is especially true when the hectic action in one dream, a van rolling down a hill with its dreamers aboard, causes a hotel corridor to roll in another, producing a weightless state in the characters. Even Fred Astaire didn’t dance on the ceiling as much as these guys do.” — Hollywood Reporter‘s Kirk Honeycutt.
Inception review sample #8: “A stunning achievement and the most completely entertaining film I’ve seen in years. [Nolan] has made an utter crowd pleaser, an epic piece of entertainment that ultimately feels so simple precisely because of all of its complexity, and one that rouses and inspires and excites in the same way as blockbusters comprised of pure spectacle.” — Cinematical‘s Todd Gilchrist.
Inception review sample #9: “Inception, like Nolan’s earlier work, deals with a broken man, determined to fix his mistakes but only making things worse in the process. That could easily describe Memento or The Prestige or The Dark Knight or even his one remake, Insomnia. Yet even with Nolan returning to this idea, worrying at it, exploring different ways it can play out, he doesn’t feel like he’s stuck or marking time. I’d argue the opposite is true: by refining this idea over time and over different films and in different ways, Nolan is becoming merciless in his ability to engage both intellectually and emotionally. As a result, Inception flattened me, and even now, more than a week after my first viewing of it, I find myself turning over images and ideas from the film almost constantly.” — Hitfix‘s Drew McWeeny.
Inception review sample #10: “In terms of sheer originality, ambition and achievement, Inception is the movie of the summer, the movie of the year and the movie of our dreams. Director Christopher Nolan’s heist film about a group of dream extractors who can invade a person’s subconscious to steal — or plant — vital information may remind you of James Bond, The Matrix, or even Nolan’s own Memento, when in fact it’s unlike any other. A bold, inventive, audacious entertainment, Inception charts a new course for motion pictures and sets the bar very, very high. Matrix-style business should be in order, even though audiences will have to pay strict attention to get the full experience (perish the thought). Simplistic moviegoers who like their blockbusters cooked in predictability may not get it but Nolan fans and those who like their action married to new ideas will flock to multiplexes for repeated viewings.” — Boxoffice‘s Pete Hammond.
Inception review sample #11: “What is most infuriating about Inception is how close it gets to being something really great. Instead, we’re left with Solaris (but never as existential or as meditative) meets On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (but never as fun or thrilling). Compared to most of this year’s releases, Inception should still impress and, at the very least, inspire some worthwhile discussion, but it’s hardly the heady blockbuster summertime savior that audiences have been waiting for.” — Coming Soon‘s Silas Lesnick.
In Contention‘s Kris Tapley‘s hasn’t read the script for Chris Nolan‘s Inception, but a source has so KT has decided to pass along a second-hand synopsis of the plot. He says he can’t be 100% sure of the particulars because WB publicity won’t comment “but it all seems fairly legitimate to me.”
The Big McGuffin, he says, is that some kind of ability/technology used by a team of shady espionage operatives led by Leonardo DiCaprio‘s “Cobb” to nefariously dive into people’s dreams and extract information.
Leo’s team members (this will eventually become a kind of Mission Impossible-like TV series with operatives hired each week to solve a problem by mind-scanning this and that “mark”) include Joseph Gordon-Levitt‘s Arthur, Tom Hardy‘s Eames and Ellen Page‘s Ariadne, a college student studying in Paris.
Jacob’s team, says Tapley, “creates” the dreams and Ariadne is an “architect” or “engineer” of sorts. I’m already lost. If Team Leo is diving into people’s dreams and extracting info, how and why would they want to create dreams? Wait…perhaps they don’t just steal information from people’s minds but implant information of their own? Information that is (a) designed to manipulate and (b) may or may not be false?
Jacob’s team enters this and that dream via some kind of injection, and the technology can easily be transported in a suitcase, Tapley says. “In one scene (featured briefly in the trailer?), the team actually enters a person’s dream while on an airplane,” he writes.
Cillian Murphy stars as Fischer, “a business-type who is soon to become the head of a company. Jacob’s team is attempting to insert an idea into Fischer’s mind to compel him to separate the company into two smaller companies.
Ken Watanabe plays Saito, a character who’s blackmailing Jacob. Aside from Watanabe there is no classic villain in the story, but Cobb’s wife (Marion Cotillard) causes some trouble.
“Cobb and wife at some point find themselves stuck in many levels of a dream and she tries to convince him to stay in that world, that it is much better than real life. However, Cobb wants to return to his children and the real world.
“This plot point is a bit unclear, but I’m told that Lisa commits suicide in the dream in order to return to the real world. When Cobb himself returns, he is charged with his wife’s murder and has to flee with his children.
“The film will not be typical sci-fi fare at all,” Tapley conveys. “It’s set in the present-day real world” but with “virtually all of the ‘action’ scenes taking place in the dream environment. This should go a long way toward explaining the ‘Your mind is the scene of the crime’ tagline that accompanied the trailer. Ultimately it seems like a grounded, more tangible blend of Minority Report and The Matrix.”