It was obvious to everyone except the brainiacs at Focus World that the marquee value of David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars would be enhanced if Julianne Moore could attract some Best Actress heat for her manic meltdown performance as an aging movie star. Focus World would not be moved….no! No late-December Oscar-qualifying run (a journalist friend told me that Focus World’s decision was set in stone), no Best Actress campaign. Mainly because they don’t have the money. And yet two days ago Cronenberg declared that shafts of light have broken through, the stone has cracked and Focus World has changed its mind. “They’re going to do a qualifying run — I think it’s in New York and L.A. — so that it will legitimately qualify for the Golden Globes and the Oscars,” he told Vulture‘s Jenna Marotta. “There was a lot of discussion. You know, they really felt that they could do a better job releasing the film in 2015, in January or February. And then, of course, the discussion was, ‘Yeah, but wouldn’t it be great if Julianne got an Oscar nomination, since she won Best Actress at Cannes?’” Moore will benefit from a two-pronged effort, of course — the Maps qualifying run plus a semblance of a Best Actress campaign, Sony Classics-style, on behalf of her Alzheimer’s performance in Still Alice.
Yes, Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn is calling Gone Girl the “film of the year”…but not for the reason you might think. Kohn is saluting Gone Girl because it delivers a kind of one-stop-shopping experience for those looking to ponder solemn social themes that have been explored in some of the best films of the year (Birdman, Nightcrawler, Maps to the Stars, The One I Love, Obvious Child, Grand Budapest Hotel).
Director David Fincher “loves characters who are difficult to love,” Kohn writes. “He shows his affection by framing them with unerring precision — and as Michael Nordine wrote in our review, it’s a level of care that often exceeds his material.
“The story of ex-journalist Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) coping with police and press scrutiny after estranged wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) vanishes under mysterious circumstances, Fincher’s prowess transforms Gone Girl into a blend of media satire and gender politics that zips along at a giddy and unpredictable pace.
“Stop to scrutinize and Gone Girl collapses into soapy melodrama” — are you listening, Scott Feinberg and Tom O’Neil? “But Fincher’s narrative command results in a movie that simultaneously embraces and mocks its own existence.
Like Kristen Stewart, John Cusack got his groove on this year with two stand-up performances — as Dr. Stafford Weiss, an unctuous TV psychologist and father of the Bieber-esque Benjie, in David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars, and as the 40ish Brian Wilson in Bill Pohlad‘s Love & Mercy, which is apparently being shunted off to a 2015 release. But in the long run it’s possible Cusack will be even better remembered for a quote about aging that he gave a Guardian interviewer five days ago. “I got another 15, 20 years before they say I’m old,” Cusack said. “[But] for women it’s brutal. I have actress friends who are being put out to pasture at 29. [Zombie studio execs] just want to open up another can of hot 22. It’s becoming almost like kiddie porn. It’s fucking weird.” What Cusack is saying is that guys with LexG-like attitudes about women are more influential than we might think, at least within the big-studio culture.
Every year there’s a lead performance or two in an indie-level film that’s so drop-to-your-knees mesmerizing that people like myself throw back the shutters and shout “definitely award-worthy…make room!” (Last year’s contender in this regard was Adele Exarchopolous in Blue Is The Warmest Color.) And every time I blow the horn the cynical, know-it-all Gurus and Gold Derby-ers say “nope…no way, Jose…the distributor either can’t afford or won’t pay for a serious awards campaign, let alone for the services of a Lisa Taback-level campaign strategist…this is a Spirit Awards contender at best.” I spit on that attitude, that corroded way of thinking. Because I’m telling you straight and true that Paul Dano‘s performance as the youngish Brian Wilson in Bill Pohlad‘s Love and Mercy, which I saw this afternoon, is almost spookily great.
Perfectly fattened-up Paul Dano as Brian Wilson in Bill Pohlad’s Love and Mercy.
Wilson’s disturbed spirit hums and throbs in the 30 year-old Dano, who looks like he gained 35 or 40 pounds to play the genius Beach Boy maestro in his mid ’60s blimp period. You can really feel the vibrations and sense the genius-level ferment and the off-balance emotionality. Inwardly and outwardly it’s a stunning, drop-dead transformation and the finest performance of Dano’s career, hands down. It is also, trust me, just as commendable as the other highly-touted, year-end heavyweight performances (including Birdman‘s Michael Keaton, The Theory of Everything‘s Eddie Redmayne, The Imitation Game‘s Benedict Cumberbatch), if not more so. You might be thinking it but don’t you dare dismiss Dano’s performance with a wave of your hand. I know what you’re going to say so don’t even say it. Just shut up.
Not to mention John Cusack also as the 40ish Wilson in the same film, which shifts back and forth between the mid to late ’60s (i.e., the recording of Pet Sounds and Smile) and the mid to late ’80s (i.e., “the Landy years”). Cusack has been on a downturn for the last three or four years, playing ghouls and creeps and psycho killers…my heart aches for the guy. True, he’s had two good roles over the last couple of years — Richard Nixon in The Butler and the husband-masseuse in David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars — but this is a revelation. Cusack plays a gentle but very solemn and intimidated Wilson during the period in which he was under the firm hand of the disreputable Eugene Landy, who died in 2006. (Landy got Wilson to lose weight and get healthier, but at a tremendous price.) Cusack is child-like and Gentle Ben-ish, and as convincing and fully submitted to his task as Dano is to his. For the first time in my moviegoing life I wasn’t bothered by two actors playing the same character — quite a landmark.
Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil is reporting that while Focus World, the nickel-and-dime, straight-to-VOD division of Focus Features, will not launch an Oscar campaign for David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars or its Cannes-honored star Julianne Moore, the producers “are in the running for Golden Globes, BAFTA, film critics’ trophies, and SAG and other guild awards. In fact, discussions are currently underway with the film’s handlers and all of those awards, which are much easier to win without hefty campaign investment required at the Oscars.
“Many of the guilds like SAG have screening committees that decide nominations and are easy to access for a reasonable investment,” O’Neil explains, “and so voters in the film-critics groups can be targeted efficiently. In fact, many of them are seeing Maps today at the Toronto International Film Festival. By contrast, to launch Maps effectively into the Oscars derby could cost up to $20 million, which is what many frontrunners have spent in recent years. Technically, a film may qualify after unspooling just one week in a L.A theater just like the Globes, but it needs a fullblown campaign to bring it to the attention of lazy Academy members who insist upon private screenings, personal copies of the DVD and more.
With Focus World having acquired David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars for an early 2015 release , there is speculation that they may not want to spring for a Julianne Moore Best Actress campaign, which of course would require an L.A. and N.Y. platform release in late December plus the usual ad coin commitment. The talk stems from Variety‘s Ramin Setoodeh and Brent Lang having written that Moore “could be sitting out awards season.” If so, odd. Moore is madly, blazingly “on” as a fading film star. She hits exactly the right notes in a film that itself is quite a careful dance — dryly farcical, creepy hah-hah, deadpannish. Easily an award-calibre performance. Here’s my 5.18 quickie Cannes review.
Maps to the Stars will open in “early” 2015, Variety says, which of course means late January, February or early March. The only reason Focus wouldn’t give Maps to the Stars a qualifying run in support of Moore…well, there is no logical reason. They have to go there. If they don’t they’ll be cultivating a bad rep with talent — a distributor that doesn’t step up to the plate during award season.
We’d already been told about the 52nd NY Film Festival highlights — David Fincher‘s Gone Girl to open, Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Inherent Vice for the centerpiece and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Birdman to close. I knew that many if not most of the remaining selections would be…what is the phrase?…”tastefully curated” given the ivory-tower likings of the selection committee. And yet a portion of the 52nd NYFF slate seems a little…what, livelier? A little raunchier and more rabbit-holey? In years past the mission had been to show aesthetically correct “spinach” movies apart from the headliners and the odd perversities (like this year’s decision to screen David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars, which I saw and quite admired in Cannes).
The basic brand hasn’t changed, of course. People still buy NYFF tickets so they can partake in or at least listen to that rarified 65th Street conversation. They want their nourishment fix from the “right” kind of filmmakers, which in many instances means watching films that have recently played in Cannes…you know what I mean. There are only so many slices in a pie in any given film year. I’m a fool for the NYFF myself. I’ve been attending since ’77. I love hanging outside Alice Tully Hall at dusk before a hot-ticket screening and chatting with the know-it-alls.
Before this morning’s announcement the only “could it possibly happen?” questions were (a) would David Ayer‘s Fury, recently spun by N.Y. Times reporter Michael Cieply as a possible Best Picture contender and now opening in mid-October (or just after the NYFF concludes), snag a last-minute slot, and (b) would Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi‘s The 50-Year Argument, a 97-minute doc about the N.Y. Review of Books, get some kind of peek-out screening prior to the 9.29 HBO debut?
The answer to both, for now, is apparently nix. The NYFF guys wanted to see Fury, I’m told, but it wasn’t ready in time. (Apparently Cieply was only shown portions of Ayer’s film.) Given the close relationship between Scorsese and NYFF director Kent Jones (they made the brilliant Letter to Elia together) I’d be surprised if it isn’t given some kind of surprise slot but…well, maybe not.
Thanks to Awards Daily‘s Ryan Adams for posting an Easy Lay, Non-Discretionary List of 2014 Best Actress Contenders…31 in all. Nice effort, a good start. But let’s cut out the chaff and get real. By current HE spitball standards there are seven female performances that may potentially shake out as highly likely or distinctly possible contenders within two or three months. Topping the list are Wild‘s Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Rigby and Miss Julie‘s Jessica Chastain and Gone Girl‘s Rosamund Pike.
I obviously know next to nothing about who’s really hot-tub but (a) I do know which roles appear to be the most substantial and awards-baity on paper, (b) I would be floored if Witherspoon, Chastain and Pike are not part of the Best Actress conversation by mid-October, (c) I do know which actresses have built up good cred and are “owed,” so to speak, and (d) I do have a fairly acute intuition about which performances are almost certain to be ignored. Here’s how it seems right now:
Highly Likely: Reese Witherspoon, Wild; Jessica Chastain, Eleanor Rigby + Miss Julie; Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl.
Distinctly Possible but don’t bet the farm: Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything; Emma Stone, Birdman (supporting); Michelle Williams, Suite Française; Amy Adams, Big Eyes; Julianne Moore, Maps to the Stars.
David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars is playing locally, and I, being a fan, wouldn’t mind seeing it again. I was amused when Stars screenwriter Bruce Wagner claimed during the Cannes Film Festival that Evan Bird‘s Benjie Weiss character, a poisonous 13 year-old superstar who immediately summons thoughts of Justin Beiber, wasn’t written or cast with Beiber in mind. A friend told me he ran into Beiber at the AMFAR during the festival. He said he didn’t ask about the Cronenberg film because such a question would have seemed rude given that Wagner had stuck to the party line, etc. “Oh, please!,” I replied. Never trust the artist — trust the tale.
Yesterday Indiewire asked me to contribute to their tabulation of favorite films and performances by Cannes-attending critics. They won’t be posting the final results until tomorrow (i.e., Wednesday), which feels a teensy bit drag-assy. The Cannes Film Festival has been over for four days now, Variety posted their critics’ faves yesterday and the world is moving on. So in the spirit of “time waits for no one” and “no dawdling,” here are the picks I sent along yesterday:
Best Film: 1. Leviathan, 2. Wild Tales, 3. Maps to the Stars, 4. Foxcatcher, 5. Lost River (A for effort, at least cribbing from the right people).
Complaint: Why have I been the only one to bluntly state the obvious after-fact that Leviathan was shafted by the jury? The 3D Godard film gets to share the jury prize and Leviathan gets a piddly screenplay award? Those who attended Cannes and saw all the films know what bullshit that was, and yet after the award ceremony they all said “oh, excellent, fine…the jury has spoken!” and “what a great year it was!” and other alpha-softball stuff.
Best Lead Performance (either gender): 1. Vladimir Vdovichenkov, Leviathan; 2. Julianne Moore, Maps to the Stars; 3. Erica Rivas, the angry, vengeful bride in Wild Tales, 4. Anne Dorval, Mommy, 5. Marion Cotillard, Two Days, One Night.
Note: I couldn’t understand more than half of Timothy Spall‘s performance in Mr. Turner as he spoke from deep inside his throat with a lower-class accent. I might have voted for him if there were subtitles.
The 67th Cannes Film Festival jury (honcho Jane Campion + Sofia Coppola, Willem Dafoe, Nicolas Winding Refn, Leila Hatami, Gael Garcia Bernal, Carole Bouquet, Jeon Do-yeon) has handed the prestigious Palme d’Or to Nury Bilge Ceylan‘s Winter Sleep, a highly respected film in some critical quarters but by no means the recipient of unqualified universal praise.
I’m in no position to applaud or disagree as I missed the Ceylan but I’m snarling anyway because the jury has also backhanded Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Leviathan with a piddly consolation prize — a Best Screenplay award, which Zvyagintsev has shared with Oleg Negin. Leviathan was/is easily the most dazzling competition film of the festival — it blew everyone away — and the jury has given it the smallest honor they could without ignoring it entirely. They knew they had to give Leviathan something with all the praise being shouted from the rooftops so they did, but they denied it the Palme d’Or, the Grand Prix and the Jury prize, at least one of which it absolutely deserved.
Brilliant, guys! If there’s such a thing as bad jury karma, Campion & Co. are feeling the pangs right now. This definitely falls under the heading of “forehead smacker.”
The esteemed Bennett Miller has deservedly won the Best Director prize for Foxcatcher, his much-admired psychological murder melodrama with Steve Carell, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo. Good fellow, superbly crafted film, etc.
The Grand Prix award (the second place Beat Picture trophy) went to Alice Rohrwacher‘s The Wonders.
The Jury Prize (i.e., the third-place Best Picture award) was split between Xavier Dolan‘s Mommy, for which honors have been widely expected, and Jean-Luc Godard‘s Goodbye to Language, which few critics except for N.Y. Times Manohla Dargis expressed much excitement about.
Julianne Moore, allegedly asked to return to Cannes for tonight’s ceremony but a no-show regardless, won Best Actress for her fading actress role (a companion to Juliette Binoche‘s in Clouds of Sils Maria) in David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars. Timothy Spall won the Best Actor prize for his lead role in Mike Leigh‘s Mr. Turner.
Xavier Dolan‘s Mommy is, for me, the third levitational flick of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, the other two being Damian Szifron‘s Wild Tales and David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars. That said, the first 50 minutes of Mommy is punishment — assaultive, infuriating, occasionally amusing but more often lemme-outta-here. But I could tell toward the end of my session with this boxy-is-beautiful psychodrama (which I was only able to watch for 75 minutes due to an appointment I was honor-bound to keep) that Dolan had gotten hold of something that was not only focused and working but was slowly building into something more. I didn’t “like” watching much of it, but Mommy is an eye-opener — a movie like no other I’ve seen during this festival. No apologies, full throttle, very few shadings…exclamation!
Mommy costars Anne Dorval, Antoine-Olivier Pilon.
I’m still no Dolan fan (Heartbeats, his second film which I saw here four years ago, sounded the first warning) and his general off-screen rep is that he’s a bit of a histrionic handful. But when I read a line from a review by Hollywood Reporter critic Stephen Dalton that “The Ego has landed,” I knew I had to submit myself.
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