For Your Anticipation: On A Side Note...

This might as well be this film's epilogue, because I doubt will be hearing any major news from it ever again. You may remember that Miral premiered at Venice Film Festival last September to some mixed reviews, and they haven't gotten better in the months since. The film was slammed with a depressing March release date, and it hits limited theaters this weekend. The negative reception doesn't bode well for the filmmakers, most notable director Julian Schnabel, and their already meager box office reception. So it was kind of nice while it lasted, but I sensed an unfavorable stench from the first trailer. I can't say this turn of events surprises me.

"Miral" Moved to 2011

It looks like Julian Schnabel's latest is going the way of Shutter Island and The Adjustment Bureau, only worse. Miral has been pushed off this year's slate to March, 2011, which isn't all that surprising given the poor reviews that came out of Venice Film Festival this year. At least Shutter Island benefited from a consistent quality and a must see premise, along with Scorcese's guiding force. Miral doesn't really have much, if any commercial potential. I doubt we'll be hearing of this film again when it comes to major news.

Oscar 2010: Post-Telluride Predictions

This weekend a number of things happened that changed the state of the Oscar race considerably. Most, if not all of them, happened at Telluride. However, of the films weakened by their premiere, at the Venice Film Festival the most obvious has to be Miral, from director Julian Schnabel. I never had faith in the film, because I believe that a film's quality should be present in the trailer and not in the name of the man behind it, and I didn't see anything significant. Fortunately enough, Miral wasn't the only card The Weinstein Company had to play.


Lingering just a little longer on Venice, the other film that was revealed not to have as high Oscar prospects as expected was Somewhere. Do not take this at all to mean that the film isn't great. It simply isn't what the Academy is looking for, which I think will work for the better of the film. Often people set up the highest expectations for films with Oscar potential, and those expectations aren't met. Somewhere looks like the kind of film that you can enjoy without worrying whether or not it will strike Oscar gold.


Without a doubt, the biggest hit of Venice so far (as they still have the rest of the week to go) has been Black Swan. The trailer was absolutely stunning, and it put both critics and general audiences behind this film, which is no easy feat. According to the reviews, it lived up to the trailer, and I've heard plenty of nice things said about this film. Problem is, I don't think this is the sort of film that the Academy will be able to wrap their head around. It looks like a genre film and in that way it will be a success and I look forward to seeing it. It probably will earn Natalie Portman a Best Actress nomination, but for now, I'm keeping Black Swan off my predictions for Best Picture.


Passing on to Telluride, the biggest disappointment of the festival would have to be the announcement that Peter Weir's The Way Back would be released in January, thus taking it out of Oscar contention. The film has gotten good reviews, and may have been nominated if people had a little more faith in it. Other than that news, the only film of the festival that even came close to disappointing is Never Let Me Go. That film, more than any other this weekend, really divided both critics and audiences. Some people were deeply touched, while some left the theater with a cold feeling, having gotten nothing from the experience. I have my doubts on this little brit, and am keeping it out in the cold until I see it.


Now getting to the films that truly made the cut, 127 Hours made its surprise premiere, and critics really appreciated it. Despite it spending nearly the entire film in a specific environment, and being a bit shorter than most dramas, playing on the screen for just over 90 minutes, this film seems to put up enough energy to keep it from being just another film. Then, I don't think there's a thing I could say that I haven't already said about The King's Speech. It delivered, and gave Harvey Weinstein something he could put into the ring as Miral failed. We have no trailers or clips for it yet, but we're still highly anticipating the opportunity to see it.


Finally, we got some confirmation on a few things that were a little uncertain of after Cannes. Critics have clearly gotten behind Another Year, and it seems like now it's a sure thing for a nomination. As for Biutiful, the consensus is still that the film isn't all that special, but Javier Bardem's performance in it is amazing. So I'll be surprised if he is not nominated for Best Actor this year. So for now, I'm filling out the rest of my Best Picture list with four films that have yet to be formally released and reviewed: The Social Network, True Grit, Hereafter, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. Next stop is Toronto this Thursday.

Oscar 2010: Lets Get Real

We're now entering the most serious part of the year when it comes to films that could make it to Oscar glory, and there have already been hits (Black Swan) and misses (Miral). A week ago, it felt pretty well set that Toy Story 3, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, and Winter's Bone were locks for Best Picture. Now, all of the little possibilities of the fall are becoming much more real, and we may have to cope with the fact that some films that we love will be falling out. Some films that we're really looking forward to, may not make the cut (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1).


So lets dial it back a bit, and take a look at each of the films in the running as of now. Winter's Bone was an early hit of the year, and while it may be an intense and tonally brilliant film, I have my doubts that it will make it all the way to the end of the year. Not to worry though, as Jennifer Lawrence will get a Best Actress nomination. Realistically, John Hawkes' supporting performance doesn't have as much buzz going for it, and is likely to just fall out. Be ready in case the film only goes home with one nomination.


Right now, there are really only two locks for Best Picture. The first, and biggest one in my opinion, is The Kids Are All Right. That one made a big impression on a lot of people. It achieved its place as my favorite film of the summer. There's not a doubt in my mind that this will be among the nominees for Best Picture this year. The other sure thing is Toy Story 3. It's the highest grossing and best reviewed film of the year, and it completed the impossible task of besting the first two films. This film is locked. No doubt in my mind.


My doubt, unfortunate as it is to say, lies mostly in Christopher Nolan's Inception. I agree with most people that this is one of the best films to come out this year, and Nolan is the reason that the Academy expanded the category in the first place. However, for a while now, it's felt like this film has been dangling by a thread. Leonardo DiCaprio and Marion Cotillard are pretty much out of competition for the acting categories. Inception has the tech nominations locked, but even if it makes it to Best Picture, I doubt Nolan will be acknowledged for his job as director.

Black Swan just came out, and is currently being debated about, as festival releases often are. It looks like this film has a lot going for it, but we'll have to wait for the haze to clear before we learn exactly where this film will land. Miral is out, even if it wasn't in to begin with. We'll be sure to let you know about the state of the race as it progresses. As of now, you know where I stand on the race, and where I hope it will go. The sidebar predictions will be shifting a lot over the course of the next month or two. Be ready.

Venice Film Festival: Miral

For once in my life, I find myself in a position to be right. No doubt you've heard that one of the films playing at Venice is Miral, from director Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), and many have pegged this down as one of the bigger Oscar contenders. Since the trailer came out, I did not share this belief. It just felt an uneven waste of time, and I waited to be proved wrong, as I usually am. However, it turns out that the film is more or less what I expected. To help further my point are reviews from Anne Thompson (Thompson on Hollywood) and Guy Lodge (In Contention).

Lodge writes, "Enlightening neither as emotional essay nor as straight-up history lecture, then, Miral's tricksy oat-bran filmmaking seemingly lands shy of every imaginable target audience: it’s too dry for the middlebrow awards set that might otherwise thrill to its superficially good intentions, too didactic for the highbrow intelligentsia that turned out for the director’s previous outings, and too dull for just about everybody. 'I feel so useless, I really want to do something,' frets Miral midway through the movie; it’s representative of the film’s minimal emotional investment in its protagonist that the reply to this confession is: 'You have beautiful eyes.'"

Thomson has a somewhat more positive outlook on the film, but still states, "This kind of earnest agit-prop material is tough to adapt to the screen; Schnabel needed a more proficient dramatist to pull this off. He’s an elegant, visual director—he and cinematographer Eric Gautier adopt an unusual blurry technique for the more intense scenes—but this movie, while filmed on authentic Jerusalem locations, too often devolves into dull talking heads. It’s possible that the Weinsteins will fan flames of controversy around this film’s highly-charged subject. Nonetheless Miral—which will also play Telluride and Toronto—will likely remain within a narrow art-house niche."

For now, we don't have any reviews from professional critics, but it's safe to say that Miral won't be the Oscar contender everyone was hoping for. Get ready for a lot of films to drop like flies as they are brought to light. As the weather outside gets colder, the competition gets more heated.

Trailer Tuesday: The Social Network, The Town, Biutiful, Miral, Howl, Devil, Due Date, It's Kind of a Funny Story

We have a massive heap of trailers this week; more massive than we've had in weeks. So lets get right into with the first full-length trailer for The Social Network. Three weeks in a row we've had trailers from this film featured here, but now we have an actual idea of what this film is about. As rumored earlier, this is a decidedly darker film than originally expected. Then again, this is David Fincher we're talking about, so expecting him not to bring as much darkness to the foreground as possible is kind of illogical. I get the feeling that we have a smart and clever script on our hands here, and the actors seem more than capable of handling it, so consider this film a lock for a Best Picture nomination, just by this trailer.

Next is Ben Affleck's The Town, which visually looks quite a bit like his directorial debut film, Gone Baby Gone, but I also get the nagging feeling of Brooklyn's Finest spliced into this. We've got three brilliant actors at work here in the form of Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, and Rebecca Hall, and then we have Ben Affleck. If he could just stay behind the camera, I'd be fine with it. However, he seems to have some sort of vision of himself as the next Clint Eastwood, which he isn't. The plot feels a bit too predictable for my tastes, and there are some lines that feel recycled ("I'll see you again, this side or the other."). I also get the feeling that all of the action displayed here is all of the action that will actually be in the film. Call me a pestimist, but I don't see this film doing well in the awards circuit.

There are quite a few trailers out there that don't reveal much of anything about the plot, but rather show a series of images with out dialogue, while a nameless monologue continues on in the background. The international trailer for Biutiful works a lot like that, to greater affect than most of its brethren. This is a noticably dark story, and you can tell from the hue of the cinematography, the tone of the voice over, and the look on Javier Bardem's face, that this is a film that probably won't end pleasantly. This trailer has me very much intrigued, and seeing as Bardem's performance already won Best Actor at Cannes Film Festival for this role, I'd say he stands a good chance at a nomination this year. That is if it's released before the end of the year.

Then, on the lower half of the Oscar pool is Miral, a story of an israeli girl played by Freida Pinto. That's really all I could pick up from this trailer. There is some sort of uprising, somebody who can't be trusted, and I just don't understand why. This trailer has mood swings bigger and more irrational than that of Edward Cullen. It seems to me that this is a film that's trying to get all it can from the middle east setting, and it doesn't quite register with me. I don't see anything that interests me enough to catch this film in theatres, so unless critics begin praising it, count me out on this one.

Going from vague and confusing, to vague and intriguing, the trailer to Howl. Before you ask, the answer is no. This is not a werewolf movie. This movie is more in the veign of Milk, which also starred James Franco. This time Franco takes the lead role of Allen Ginsberg, a writer who penned "Howl", a poem accused of being obscene. The trailer doensn't reveal a lot, but the way it's put together puts it on the artistic side of the spectrum. I'm not quite sure of the focus of the film, but I like the combination of black and white, the old school color, and the more modern color. This film looks at the very least interesting.

Taking a short break from quality to look into the new trailer for Devil, the M. Night Shyamalan produced horror film. People have actually been defending this trailer, saying the Shyamalan didn't direct or write the film, and that he simply is producing it. While true, that doesn't excuse the fact that not much that is truly terrifying happens in this trailer. It's a bunch of stereotypes in an elevator that stop working. Apparently, the devil is in there with them, which feels like a huge stretch, which is something Shyamalan is known for. The twist ending? The elevator opens to Narnia. I don't care about this trailer, and I don't really care about the film. All I care about is that some guy who had a small role in (500) Days of Summer is in it. I hope he lives.

Finally, we have two Zach Galifianakis trailers in a row. Starting with Due Date, director Todd Phillips' followup to The Hangover. The film follows Robert Downey Jr. as he goes on a road trip with Galifianakis in order to make it to see the birth of his child. I was a little worried about this film during the first thirty seconds of the trailer when Galifianakis starts laughing at Downey Jr.'s father abandoning him. I was wondering if that was really the joke. Then Zach spoke up and said "My dad would never do that. He loved me." It's that sort of unexpected humor that made The Hangover such a knock out film, and I'm glad that they're going that route with Due Date.

The other Galifianakis trailer is for It's Kind of a Funny Story, a dramatic comedy set in a mental hospital. Picture a more lighthearted version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, with a romantic plot and Zach Galifianakis spliced into it, and you've got a good idea of what you're in for. Zach doesn't have quite the same great dialogue to work with here, but he's got a nice bit of charm to him. It's that little unknown main actor I'm most invested in though. Whenever I see an actor I don't know who really impresses me, I see it as a sign that there is still unknown talent out there. This might be a surprise success.

The Social Network Trailer
The Town Trailer
Biutiful Trailer
Miral Trailer
Howl Trailer
Devil Trailer
Due Date Trailer
It's Kind of a Funny Story Trailer