Two contenders premiered at the Venice Film Festival late this week. Oscar Winner Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere is garnering a lot of comparisons to Lost in Translation, and Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is getting comparisons to Requiem for a Dream. If both filmmakers are working in top form, they could be major competitors this winter.
The Telluride Film Festival is this weekend, and while a lot of the films are “secret screenings,” some of the films being showed have been announced. Among the bevy of possible contenders screening this weekend are several films made by Oscar nominees and winners: Mike Leigh’s Another Year, Sylvain Chromet’s The Illusionist, The King’s Speech with Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush, Never Let Me Go with Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley, Errol Morris’ Tabloid and Peter Weir’s The Way Back (see below). A full lineup can be found here.
Peter Weir’s The Way Back, his follow-up to Best Picture nominee Master and Commander, was picked up by Newmarket this week. The official word is that it will be released in January, but it will most likely get a qualifying run this December.
The Independent Spirit Awards are returning to their usual date on Oscar eve this year. Look for the awards on Saturday, February 26.
Review Round-Up
The George Clooney spy film The American opened to solid reviews, although perhaps not the raves it was hoping would push it into awards contention. It garnered a Metacritic score of 65 and a barely-rotten Rotten Tomatoes score of 59%. Roger Ebert is among the film’s strongest supporters, comparing the film to classic French heist film Le Samourai, and USA Today‘s Carla Puig praises George Clooney for taking on a roll that is “a big departure” and excelling at it. The film had other film critics calling the film boring and pretentious.
The Tillman Story is leading the pack of documentary contenders this fall, and the reviews are supporting it’s fight all the way. The certified fresh film got an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, and an 88 on Metacritic. The words extraordinary, powerful and emotional are thrown about in most every review.
Oscar Box Office
With few Oscar contenders in release last week, there isn’t any box office news to share.
New Trailers
No new Oscar contender trailers were released this week.
Oscar Farewell
As the Oscars always have a remembrance of those they have lost, I thought it would be nice each week to remember those Oscar winners, nominees and associates who we have lost that week.
Cammie King: Although she was never nominated for an Oscar, and only made three films, her small role as Bonnie Butler in Best Picture winner Gone With the Wind means that she will be remembered for as long as we watch movies. She also was the voice of young Faline in Bambi. Ms. King was 76.
As the Oscars always have a remembrance of those they have lost, I thought it would be nice each week to remember those Oscar winners, nominees and associates who we have lost that week.
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