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Prison thriller “A Prophet” has been selected to represent France in the foreign-language film category at the Academy Awards.
Directed by Jacques Audiard, a master of French genre films — notably “The Beat That My Heart Skipped” — “A Prophet” won the Grand Jury Prize in Cannes and is screening at the Toronto Film Festival in the Masters category.
The pic stars Tahar Rahim as a troubled, aimless French-Arab man who’s sent to jail where he toughens up and learns how to become a respected mob leader.
Pic was produced by Why Not Films’ prexy Pascal Caucheteux and co-produced byCelluloid Dreams, which also handles international sales.
The pic has been picked up in most territories, including in the U.S., Canada, Japan and the U.K.
In the U.S., Sony Pictures Classics plans a one-week limited run in December, followed by a wider release early next year.
Since its Gallic bow on Aug. 26, the film has attracted 769,126 admissions. UGC Distribution handled the release.
Pic was tapped to rep France at the Oscars by a committee that included Cannes fest topper Thierry Fremaux, prexy of the Cesar Academy Alain Terzian, thesp Jeanne Moreau, and helmers Jean-Jacques Annaud, Costa-Gavras and Regis Wargnier.
BERLIN – Steve McQueen’s “Hunger,” about the final weeks in the life of imprisoned Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands, has won the Grand Prix at the Era New Horizons Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland.
Fest is the country’s biggest film showcase.
Screening in the international competition, “Hunger” beat Craig Baldwin’s U.S. title “Mock Up on Mu” and Alain Cavalier’s French drama “Irene” for the E20,000 ($29,000) prize, the fest’s highest honor, on Sunday.
“Hunger” also took also the critics award, worth another $14,400.
The audience prize went to “Oxygen,” by Russian helmer Ivan Vyrypayev.
Nik Sheehan’s documentary “Flicker,” about artist-inventor Brion Gysin and his contraption that promised a drugless high, won best film ($14,400) in the Film on Art Intl. Competition. Johan Grimonprez’s “Double Take” received a special mention.
In the New Polish Films sidebar, the $36,000 Wroclaw Film Prize, founded by local mayor Rafal Dutkiewicz, went to “Snow White and Russian Red,” by Xawery Zulawski. Katarzyna Roslaniec, director of “Mall Girls,” won the New Director prize, worth $14,400.
The 11-day fest unspooled 242 films from 45 countries plus 303 shorts. More than 122,000 viewers attended the event’s 564 screenings.
Quelque 36,3 millions de télespectateurs américains ont suivi dimanche soir la 81e cérémonie des Oscars, soit quatre millions de plus que l’année dernière, qui avait marqué la plus faible audience télévisée de l’histoire des Academy Awards.
Aux États-Unis Si la chaîne ABC était rassurée par ces résultats, en particulier chez les jeunes, seules deux autres cérémonies ont été moins suivies que cette année, selon les chiffres de l’institut Nielsen Media Research. L’an dernier, quand “No Country For Old Men” avait remporté l’Oscar du meilleur film, seuls 32 millions de télespectateurs avaient regardé la cérémonie. Ils étaient 33 millions en 2003, année de la victoire de “Chicago”.
ABC notait toutefois que l’audience de dimanche était la plus forte pour un programme en prime time depuis deux ans. Le record d’audience des Oscars remonte à 1998, l’année du triomphe de “Titanic”, avec 55,2 millions d’Américains. AP
List of winners at the 81st Academy Awards, which have been held in Los Angeles.
Best picture: Slumdog Millionaire
Also nominated: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Frost/Nixon; Milk; The Reader
Best director: Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire
Also nominated: Stephen Daldry – The Reader; David Fincher – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Ron Howard – Frost/Nixon; Gus Van Sant – Milk
Best actor: Sean Penn – Milk
Also nominated: Richard Jenkins – The Visitor; Frank Langella – Frost/Nixon; Brad Pitt – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler
Best actress: Kate Winslet – The Reader
Also nominated: Anne Hathaway – Rachel Getting Married; Angelina Jolie – Changeling; Melissa Leo – Frozen River; Meryl Streep – Doubt
Best supporting actor: Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight
Also nominated: Josh Brolin – Milk; Robert Downey Jr – Tropic Thunder; Philip Seymour Hoffman – Doubt; Michael Shannon – Revolutionary Road
Best supporting actress: Penelope Cruz – Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Also nominated: Amy Adams – Doubt; Viola Davis – Doubt; Taraji P Henson – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Marisa Tomei – The Wrestler
Best original screenplay: Milk
Also nominated: Happy-Go-Lucky; Wall-E; In Bruges; Frozen River
Best adapted screenplay: Slumdog Millionaire
Also nominated: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Doubt; Frost/Nixon; The Reader
Best animated feature film: Wall-E
Also nominated: Bolt; Kung Fu Panda
Best animated short film: La Maison en Petits Cubes
Also nominated: Lavatory – Lovestory; Oktapodi; Presto; This Way Up
Best foreign language film: Departures – Japan
Also nominated: Revanche – Austria; The Class – France; The Baader Meinhof Complex – Germany; Waltz With Bashir – Israel
Best documentary feature: Man on Wire
Also nominated: The Betrayal; Encounters at the End of the World; The Garden; Trouble The Water
Best documentary short subject: Smile Pinki
Also nominated: The Conscience of Nhem En; The Final Inch; The Witness – From the Balcony of Room 306
Art direction: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Also nominated: Changeling; The Dark Knight; The Duchess; Revolutionary Road
Costume design: The Duchess
Also nominated: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Australia; Milk; Revolutionary Road
Make-up: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Also nominated: The Dark Knight; Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Cinematography: Slumdog Millionaire
Also nominated: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Changeling; The Dark Knight; The Reader
Best live action short film: Spielzeugland (Toyland)
Also nominated: Auf der Strecke (On The Line); Manon on the Asphalt; New Boy; The Pig
Visual effects: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Also nominated: The Dark Knight; Iron Man
Sound editing: The Dark Knight
Also nominated: Iron Man; Wanted; Slumdog Millionaire; Wall-E
Sound mixing: Slumdog Millionaire
Also nominated: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; The Dark Knight; Wanted; Wall-E
Film editing:Slumdog Millionaire
Also nominated: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; The Dark Knight; Frost/Nixon; Milk
Best original score: Slumdog Millionaire
Also nominated: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Defiance; Milk; Slumdog Millionaire; Wall-E
Best original song: Jai Ho – Slumdog Millionaire
Also nominated: Down To Earth – Wall-E; O Saya – Slumdog Millionaire
Most Oscars experts are betting that the award for best foreign-language film will go one of two flicks: “Waltz with Bashir” (France), which won best picture from the National Society of Film Critics and best foreign film from the Golden Globes and Critics Choice; or “The Class” (France), winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
But don’t go gambling your ranch on either Oscars outcome. For starters, “Waltz with Bashir” is animated and there’s such a strong bias against such fare among Oscar voters that the academy had to create a separate category for best animated feature seven years ago. Sometimes voters include art-house foreign-language hits in that category — like 2002 champ “Spirited Away” (Japan) — but they didn’t pick “Bashir” among the nominees this year. It got bumped by the superhero doggie, “Bolt.”
The Oscars’ foreign-film race is one of those select categories where only academy members who attend screenings may vote, so merely a few hundred people choose the champ. One of them told Gold Derby that he and some other voters thought “The Class” was rather boring and revealed that he voted for Japan’s “Departures.”
A few days ago Gold Derby reported exclusively that “The Class” got nominated thanks to the new procedure that permits the academy’s internal foreign-film committee to overrule voters and add as many as three titles to the five in the category. The new rule was instituted to dispel the kind of outcry that followed last year’s omission of previous Cannes winner “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days” (Romania).
Now Gold Derby can tattle a bit more. An excellent source tells us that the committee used its prerogative fully, bumping three films nominated by normal procedure in order to add their own choices. What were the other two? We don’t know for sure, but it seems logical to assume that they were other art-house darlings beloved by film critics who’d probably raise a ruckus if they were overlooked. Of the four remaining nominees, two fit that bill: “Waltz with Bashir” (Israel) and “The Baader-Meinhof Complex” (Germany). It’s doubtful that there’d be much fussing and screaming if lesser-known “Revanche” (Austria) or “Departures” got skunked.
Voters who decide the winner are mostly the same ones who shrugged off “Waltz with Bashir,” “The Class” and “The Baader-Meinhoff Complex” initially. So why should Oscar prophets believe that they’ll suddenly vote for one of them as winner now?
I’m betting on “Departures” based upon the reax of two actual voters. Only one told me which film he voted for, but the other praised “Departures” the most among the five nominees when we chitchatted casually.
Kris Tapley of InContention.com has seen all five entries and is betting on “Bashir,” but acknowledges that “Departures” poses a serious threat: “It’s a beautiful film in a lot of ways, certainly not a more artistic achievement than ‘Waltz’ but the kind of soft, safe, solid work that tends to take out the front-runner in this category time and again. It deals with death in a really affecting way, at once eerie, humorous and, ultimately, moving. When it threatens to pass into trite territory, it finds a way to stay fresh and alive, very human and absolutely satisfying.”
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The Oscar shorts offer a more accurate, more complete glimpse of the state of cinema than the features. The shorts did not enter the world on a cushion of prestige or a vapor trail of hype, and they offer concentrated doses of visual ingenuity and narrative discipline. Not all are masterworks, by any means, but each at least rewards the modest investment of attention it demands.
The most interesting live-action candidates — “New Boy” and “The Pig,” from Denmark — are concise, witty excursions into complicated contemporary realities. Both deal with the growing pains of multicultural Europe, and they do so with more wryness than didacticism. Rather than teaching lessons in tolerance, they show how tricky such lessons can be, to teach or to learn.
If the live-action shorts are characterized by realism and local knowledge — each offering a few moments of immersion in the particulars of individual or family life — their animated siblings explore the universality of film language. The five (“This Way Up,” from England, and the French jeu d’esprit “Oktapodi” complete the field) employ various visual techniques, traditional and newfangled, but what they have in common is an almost complete lack of dialogue. They provide a reminder of how expressive, how moving, pictures can be. “Lavatory Lovestory,” an arrangement of black lines on a white screen with a few judicious touches of bright color, is a charming little romantic poem, perfect in its small proportions.
A program of short films. The animated “Lavatory Lovestory” by Konstantin Bronzit, Russia; “La Maison en Petits Cubes (House of Small Cubes)” by Kunio Kato, Japan; “Oktapodi” from Gobelins, l’École de l’Image, France; “Presto” by Doug Sweetland, United States; and “This Way Up” by Alan Smith and Adam Foulkes, Britain. The live-action “Auf der Strecke (On the Line)” by Reto Caffi, Switzerland and Germany; “Grisen (The Pig)” by Dorthe Warno Hogh, Denmark; “Manon Sur le Bitumen (Manon on the Asphalt)” by Elizabeth Marre and Olivier Pont, France; “New Boy” by Steph Green, Ireland; and “Spielzeugland (Toyland)” by Jochen Alexander Freydank, Germany. Released by Shorts International and Magnolia Pictures. Total running time: 2 hours 11 minutes. These films are not rated.
(Focus features) Gus Van Sant/Sean Penn
In this week’s issue of The New Yorker, the critic David Denby argues that although
this year’s nominees have their charms, except for “Milk” they are not the “best picture” type. Is this a weak year for movies as reflected in the five nominees for picture? The Bagger thinks not. The Bagger is (understatement alert) a bit of a homer when it comes to movies – he generally likes what he sees – but he thought it might be useful to put this year’s bunch up against those that made the cut in the past few years and see if they suffer by comparison. These comparisons are necessarily rough and highly subjective, but then that’s why the overlords of the Interweb invented comments, no?
“The Reader”
Far from a perfect film, the Stephen Daldry-directed film suffers from a third act problems as he tries to supply the Ralph Fiennes character – the young lover of the prison guard now grown up – a reason for existing. And as Manohla Dargis wrote in her review, David Hare’s “apparent attempt to deepen or underline the novel’s ideas about the past informing the present, by kinking up its linear chronology with flashbacks, proves crippling: scrambling the time frame, so that the story repeatedly points to the past, only exposes the deep vein of self-pity that runs through the novel.” But that doesn’t necessarily mean the movie does not belong in the company it is keeping. Big themes (nature of guilt, accountability and man’s inhumanity to man) come under significant and sometime subtle examination. Sure it has flaws, but was “Munich,” another film that attempted to personalize tragic human history a perfect film? Hardly. “Munich” used a quasi-documentary approach that left many viewers struggling to catch up, but still made it to the show in 2005.
“Frost/Nixon”
A popular theater piece that was put on steroids to render into cinema, “Frost/Nixon” may blow a little too much air into the actual historical event, but is it any less notable than say, “Good Night, and Good Luck,” another film where journalism gets a rare workout as heroic and the performances dominate. Nominated in 2005, “Good Night, and Good Luck” had its ferocious advocates. That film’s director, George Clooney, limited his palette to black and white and gave it an evocative period feel, but it is a movie with significant flat spots that simplified some very complicated matters.
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
This is not a film that hit the Bagger’s buttons, but its 13 nominations testify to the ability of the director David Fincher to use cutting edge technology in seamless ways. The narrative has some leaps and gaps that brought to mind “Atonement,” another piece of directorial craft that had a big, sprawling love story that clanked off the rim a few times when it overreached.
“Milk”
Not even Mr. Denby argued about its inclusion this year. Everyone talks about Sean Penn’s performance, but as A.O. Scott marveled in his rave of a review, this is perhaps Gus Van Sant’s best work yet. The power of the movie, he writes, “lies in its uncanny balancing of nuance and scale, its ability to be about nearly everything — love, death, politics, sex, modernity — without losing sight of the intimate particulars of its story.” Nominated in 2005, “Capote” brought a vivid contemporary American figure to life, but where that film relied on mood and style, “Milk” grabs onto a complicated figure and shoots him from every conceivable angle.
“Slumdog Millionaire”
The Bagger and the legions of fans of this movie have little patience for the folks who suggest that this portrait of kids rowing away from the slum fanciful or prurient. Danny Boyle has been clobbered for making a movie that is too pretty, of all things. Yeah sure, the game show device has a slickness to it, but the rest of the movie has so much integrity and impact within each scene that it can take your breath away. “Babel,” which was nominated in 2006, was another movie that spanned the world and was rendered in more than one language, has the same virtue, but without the knitting that made “Slumdog” such a deeply satisfying movie-movie experience.
