Telluride Film Festival

Michelle Williams Joins Julianne Moore in Todd Haynes' 'Wonderstruck' — Indiewire's Monday Rundown

Zack Sharf — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 21:22:00 GMT

In what is surely the best casting we've heard all year, Michelle Williams is officially joining the cast of Todd Haynes "Wonderstruck," which already includes Julianne Moore. The film, produced by Amazon Studios, is based on the novel by Brian Selznick about two children from different eras who both embark on different quests that unfold in parallel fashion. Williams will play a mother of one of the children. "Wonderstruck" will be Haynes' followup to his six-time Oscar nominee "Carol," and it will be his first with Moore since "Far From Heaven." Christine Vachon’s Killer Films is producing along with Pam Koffler and John Sloss. Brian Bell is exec producing.

Read below for more of today's breaking news stories:

- The Telluride Film Festival is announcing its call for entries in all categories, including student, short and feature length films. The submission period begins April 15, and entry forms are available on the TFF website: www.telluridefilmfestival.org.

- Amazon announced that an independent Prime Video subscription is now available for $8.99 a month, positioning them to become more competitive to Netflix.

- Kevin Bacon is joining Kathryn Hahn in the pilot for Jill Soloway's new Amazon series "I Love Dick." The show is based on Chris Kraus’ 1997 novel and centers on a struggling married couple and their obsession with a professor named Dick. Bacon will be tackling the title role.

Watch the trailer for Todd Haynes' "Carol" below...

Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our newsletter here.

WATCH: Oscar Winner, 'Shape Shifter' Brie Larson on the Challenges of Making 'Room' (EXCLUSIVE VIDEO)

Anne Thompson — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 19:23:00 GMT

Rising indie distributor A24 harbored high awards hopes for Lenny Abrahamson's intense prison escape drama "Room," so they took the film to world premiere at Telluride, where it popped with audiences and critics, and then to Toronto — both of which Larson thanked in her winsome Oscar acceptance speech for giving the movie "a platform." It's holding its own at the box office, with $23 million worldwide in the till so far. The film's rising star, Brie Larson, also landed Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, and Indie Spirit wins on the way to the Oscar.

Finally, with "Room," Larson, who was so fine as a conflicted social worker in "Short Term 12," after supporting roles in "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," "The United States of Tara," "The Spectacular Now," "21 Jump Street," and "Don Jon," gets a role worthy of her abilities (unlike follow-ups "The Gambler" and "Train Wreck"). She's a kidnap victim who has given birth while imprisoned in a single room for seven years, and struggles to raise her child (Jacob Tremblay), who is now five, without damaging him by revealing how depressed and sad she is. Finally, she realizes on his fifth birthday that he's old enough to help them to escape.

But once they get out, what will become of them? This movie plays like an intense thriller, where the outcome (especially if you have not read the book, which Emma Donoghue adapted herself), is far from certain. In movies today, unpredictability is a prize commodity.

READ MORE: Brie Larson Has a Breakout Year and Role in 'Short Term 12' (Exclusive Video)

Larson, 25, has been paying her dues since she was a child actress, changing like a chameleon for each role. In our TIFF interview, she talks about the changes wrought by her breakout in "Short Term 12," and how she feels now that she's in-demand.

Certainly, she proves that she can carry a challenging role like "Room," in which she subsumes herself as Ma, who lives for and through her child. Larson tuned into young Tremblay to help him stay focused and alert. "7 to 8 year old boys are pretty fidgety, they get distracted," said Abrahamson at Toronto. "Brie became my collaborator in making the film; she was able to hold herself, reach an emotionally intense spot in scene, and get him to look at her...To be able to be generous enough to bring the boy to the point he needed to be at, that takes a special actor."

"Growing up I just loved movies," said Larson as she accepted the IMDb StarMeter award in Toronto. "It was how I saw the world, which I wanted to learn more about. I started watching so many different types of women, saw all the complexities of them, all the ways and the look and shapes they could be, and I felt it was missing for me in American film, I didn't see anybody I was watching in movies that felt like me. I felt rather tortured and lonely about it. I wasn’t perfect and didn’t have it together, I felt alone. So through acting, I decided to be a shape shifter and with every role become the character instead of being myself. It meant about 10 years of no one knowing I was the same person in every movie."

Now casting directors — and moviegoers — know who Larson is.

Still to come is Larson's long-in-the-works Bollywood musical "Basmati Blues," as well as movies with Todd Solondz ("Wiener-Dog") and Ben Wheatley ("Free Fire"), a chance to play Billie Jean King in tennis duel "Battle of the Sexes" and a big-budget popcorn movie, "Kong: Skull Island."

Watch: 'Marguerite' Hits a High Note in Feel-Good Trailer for Festival Sensation

Kristen Santer — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 18:48:18 GMT

READ MORE: Cohen Media Group Acquires Venice Premiere 'Marguerite'

Xavier Giannoli's "Marguerite" premiered to rave reviews at both the Telluride and Venice Film Festival last year. The movie is loosely inspired by the life of Florence Foster Jenkins, an American socialite who was ridiculed for her poor singing ability. Catherine Frot stars in the titular role, and she's accompanied by André Marcon, Michel Fau, Christa Théret and Denis Mpunga.

The film is set during the 1920s in Paris, as a wealthy women spends most of her time singing opera and performing in elaborate costumes. Marguerite is an enthusiastic performer, but she is also terribly and comically out of tune. She eventually is deluded into thinking that she's a talented diva.

"Marguerite" will be released in New York this April. No other release date information has been set. Watch the debut trailer above.

WATCH: How Golden Globe Winner Kate Winslet Warms Up 'Steve Jobs' (EXCLUSIVE VIDEO)

Anne Thompson — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 15:41:00 GMT

"Steve Jobs" came out of Telluride with a good head of steam, and received a boost at the New York Film Festival. I spoke to Kate Winslet at Telluride, where she told me how her makeup artist turned her on to the movie, and how she chased down director Danny Boyle at just the right time, telling him "I will be the person you never have to worry about." After winning the Golden Globe Sunday night, following a Screen Actors Guild nomination, Winslet should easily score her seventh Oscar nomination (she won Best Actress for "The Reader" in 2009) for her crucial role as Macintosh marketing chief Joanna Hoffman, who helps to show Jobs (and us) his humanity. She told Boyle, "Joanna had to have Steve's back the whole time."

Winslet admits that she and co-star Michael Fassbender had to use all their combined wisdom and acting chops to maneuver with an extraordinary text by Golden Globe winner for Best Screenplay Aaron Sorkin, who structures a dense, dialogue-driven narrative around three "ten-minute" run-ups to Apple co-founder Jobs' unveilings of the original Macintosh computer in 1984, his NeXt black cube in 1988, and the iMac in 1998. She and Fassbender thanked God "we have film experience," Winslet said.

It was a smart move to marry sensual visualist Boyle with Sorkin's 182-page screenplay (most are 100), largely set inside the bowels of three auditoriums, where the actors rehearsed before each of the three segments. The movie rides the flow of Sorkin's dialogue with propulsive movement and varied settings. "The pace is like an action movie with people talking," Seth Rogen told Winslet.

At Telluride, Boyle praised Fassbender for somehow absorbing into himself Sorkin's massive pages of dialogue, never checking a script or sides on set. Winslet reports that they did run lines together every morning in the makeup trailer. "He set the bar so high," Winslet says of Fassbender.

"The film you are going to see tonight has some of the best acting in it I've ever seen," Boyle told the Telluride crowd. "It was the challenge of my career, without a doubt." I can't disagree. Fassbender as the driven Apple co-founder and Winslet as his Eastern European work wife both dazzle with their fleet-tongued performances, unlike anything they have done before. Fassbender is playing a monster, in many ways, who is also a genius who believed his computer would change the world. Boyle describes Part One, shot in gritty 16 mm with flashbacks to the famous garage where Apple was born, as an origin myth. It is thrilling. The filmmaker compares Sorkin's fictionalized portrait to a flawed but compelling protagonist from Shakespeare. Sorkin takes quite a few liberties—and was able to interview both Hoffman (as did Winslet) and Jobs' daughter Lisa, who did not participate in the biography.

Boyle shot each section of the movie separately, mostly in two-shots along with long Steadicam sequences, insisting on filming in the (expensive) San Francisco Bay area. The second section was shot in 35 mm, the third in hi-res digital. "I tried to create a space for these actors to act these extraordinary scenes as written," he said. Sorkin jams the most dramatic moments in Jobs' life into highly stressed pre-show encounters with his principal antagonists, masterfully managed by his personal timekeeper Hoffman with a Moliere-like efficiency as she shuttles her boss from one backstage location to another. "He needed her and knew she would always be honest with him," she says of Hoffman, who was legendary for standing up to her boss.

Somehow, this gifted filmmaking ensemble brings to life this complex man, who past his death still fascinates the billions of people around the world who are in love with Apple products. The filmmakers seek to redeem him via the adoring gaze of Hoffman and his daughter Lisa. Will the Academy and audiences warm up to this? It's must-see one-of-a-kind cinema that cannot be ignored.

Watch: 'Viva' Trailer Exposes the Heart of Ireland's Foreign Language Oscar Contender

Riyad Mamedyarov — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 21:00:07 GMT

READ: Telluride Review: 'Viva' Finds a Familiar Queer Dilemma in Cuba

Following an overwhelmingly positive critical reception at the 2015 Telluride Film Festival, Paddy Breathnach's "Viva" finally has a breathtaking tailer that takes viewers down a dark, tumultuous, and inspiring tale of perseverance, tenacity and love.

Starring Héctor Medina and Luis Alberto García, the film follows the tale of Jesus, a cross-dressing hair stylist chasing his dream of breaking free of his strained existence and gaining a chance of becoming what he has always wanted: a famous cabaret drag queen.

The film is one of the first ventures by Breathnach into the world of serious drama. He has up until now been primarily known for his work in comedies and horrors, such as "Blow Dry" and "Shrooms," respectively. Academy Award-winning actor Benicio Del Toro serves as an executive producer, and the film has been selected as Ireland's official entry for the Best Foreign Film Oscar.

Magnolia Pictures will release the film on February 5.

READ: Magnolia Pictures Acquires Ireland's Oscar Submission 'Viva'

'Viva' Director Paddy Breathnach on Making an Irish Film in Cuba and Visceral Transformation

Carlos Aguilar — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 21:49:38 GMT

"Viva" is Ireland's Official Submission in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 88th Academy Awards. ISA: Mongrel International. U.S. Distributor: Magnolia Pictures

Authenticity is what filmmakers strive for when their characters are grounded on real life hardships and situations. To be able to capture a cinematic version of truth and put it up on the screen is an accomplishment not many can claim. The search for this dramatic honesty becomes immeasurably more elusive when dealing with experiences that are foreign to us, those that take place in places far away from our comfort zone, and where people face daily life in ways that could seem unfathomable for outsiders. It’s due to fact that he successfully created a truly authentic film under those circumstances that Paddy Breathnach’s “Viva,” an Irish production set in Havana, Cuba, has been met with acclaim and admiration since its debut in Telluride this fall.

The idea of an Irish director making a film about Cuban drag performers could make many suspicious or dubious about his intentions or raise concerns about Cuban representation, but all these should be put to rest because in “Viva” Cuba shines with its own light in a vibrant manner that never hints at the fact that the film was crafted by foreign hands. It’s impeccably genuine.

The film’s protagonist, Jesus (Héctor Medina), a young gay man, discovers that the only time he is free from life’s pressures and struggles is when he is on stage transformed into Viva, his beautiful alter ego that bares her soul on stage lip-syncing to classics songs of unattainable love and raw pain. His dream, however, clashes with his alcoholic father’s standards of masculinity. Angel (Jorge Perugorría), a macho ex-boxer who spent several years in prison and who was never part of Jesus’ life, returns to impose restrictions on how his son can live his life. Their mutual need for affection, their financial instability, and their opposing views create constant confrontations as they seek to reach common ground.

“Viva” is a striking blow of emotion that disarms you with the unflinching heartbreak of the musical performances, the tragic humor of its world, and the passionately nuanced acting on display. Here is our conversation with the Breathnach on the peculiarities of making an Irish film in Cuba, his love for visceral transformation, and finding one’s identity both individually and within those who we accept as family.

"Viva" will open in theaters in U.S. through Magnolia Pictures by on February 5th, 2016

Carlos Aguilar: What sparked your interest to make a film about this particular type of performers in a country like Cuba ? One of your producers, Robert Walpole, has mentioned the idea came from a show you attended while visiting the island.

Paddy Breathnach: The film had a couple starts. What Rob talked about was the genesis of our desire to make a film in that world. There was a moment that evening when a performer got up on stage and was singing this incredible and emotional song. We had been talking to two women sitting beside us. One of them started crying and I turned to her and said, “Why are you crying?” She said, “That’s my brother, and this is the only time he is happy, when he is on stage.” I thought, “That’s a world that’s interesting. There is something about that world that I have to explore more. “ The visceral power of that performer miming to these wonderful songs, the effect that it has on family, and what’s behind the performance, that’s what was very interesting.

That was the genesis of my interest in doing something in that world, and then we went and got Mark O'Halloran, the writer. Mark writes in a very authentic and realistic way, his research would be meticulous, and he has very fine intuitive senses. He had a sense of responsibility towards portraying this culture in the right way. He wouldn’t take it lightly and he has the instincts to know when he is not doing that or when he is stepping right on the mark. I went over to Cuba with him quite a few times to do research. Then he’d write, and then we’d go back to do more research on that world. We talked to a lot of the performers. I filmed a lot of those performances and the songs being performed. I built up a library that included the type of music that I wanted, the nuances those performances had, why they were powerful, and why I liked them. There was a lot of research done in advance.

The story, the dialogue, and the performances feel incredibly authentic. Did you have any fears or hesitation about the challenges of crafting a film in a foreign language and in a foreign country?

Paddy Breathnach: There is still trepidation about going into something like this. Once it was done we delivered the script to Cuban talent for the translation process - it was written in English. We wanted to make sure that we hadn’t stepped on any landmines or that we weren’t inauthentic in some ways. They couldn’t believe that a Cuban hadn’t written this script. I was involved in the translation process as I’d spent some time learning Spanish and I knew the script backwards both in English and in Spanish. I knew the language of the film, and I could communicate that in Spanish. It felt I had a basis, but until I started working with the actors I was very conscious that I could have missed nuances and that there were certain things I could be blind to. I had to very careful about that.

Once the audition process started it became clear to me that 90% of it was instinct and intuition. My choices and judgments were always the same as the casting directors. We chimed on that and I knew that I was able to make certain judgments in the right way. I felt confident about my judgments. There were some areas, particularly with humor, where they might be some difficulty in the translation. If you know there is something that isn't working about the scene - even if you don't know what it is - or if there is an element missing, you dig into the line, you dig into what it's supposed to be, and you discover what that was. I ironed must of that out through the rehearsal and the audition process.

What was your approach while on set in terms of working with the actors? Did the language barrier influenced the way you interacted with them and in turn their performances?

Paddy Breathnach: I worked on a lot of the dialogue with the actors in terms of just conversations about what it was, what I felt it meant, and what the characters were. When it came to shooting I had done my work. I didn't know what to expect, but I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to construct the performances. Luckily I had very good actors and because of that it worked out well. I think it's difficult when you are directing in a language that isn't your first language when you have actors that aren’t good because then you need your language to construct that performance. With good actors you can say something to them in whatever language you have, engage with them, and instinctively they’ll understand what you are talking about. Good actors get up to speed on that very quickly and I found that to be the case here.

I found that I was able to just take a nuance and say something, like an optional choice, and it would come back to m. I understood that it had come back to me in the way that I wanted it to. Also I had a very good translator. The first AD was also an interpreter, and sometimes I called on him. Equally, I discovered that actually my own body language and my own energy was as important as my definite in language. If I used an interpreter they missed my inflections and my feeling. As I said, with good actors, they read that and they know what you want. In any case, my Spanish was reasonably good at the time. I could work in it. I was nervous, but I began to learn that I didn’t need to be that nervous because I had a lot of tools that I could draw upon and the most important ones I had. I began to realize this in the audition process. I knew that it wasn’t going to be a disaster [Laughs].

The political and economic situation of the country is present and unavoidable. We are aware of it but it never becomes the focus of the film, which is what might happen when you make a film about such a politically charged place as Cuba. How did you work around this in order to make a humanistic film rather than a political one?

Paddy Breathnach: Domestic films have a voice in one way and then there are films that are made by people that come from outside and those are another type of cinema. Cuba has a romance about it and a certain atmosphere, and a lot of the times the films made by people who come from outside romanticize the country in a way that contains a lot of clichés. We very quickly said, “OK, we are going to be careful about anything that possibly resembles a cliché.” Mark again, as a writer, would be very good at that. He has a strong intuition on that. We sort of avoided those moments.

I’m not a political filmmaker with a capital “P.” I came form a philosophy background in college and university and I was very interested in a particular philosopher called Herbert Marcuse, who was a political philosopher in many ways. However, his view was that the power of art is in the beautiful. It’s not in its overt ideas of what is political. It’s in its substance, in its sensuality of what characters desire to be. That’s more important than the political ideas around that. I don’t know if I completely hold to that, because of course certain films need to be political, but I wouldn’t be a political filmmaker with a capital “P.” I don’t have the ability to be that. My own tone would be to avoid that overt political calling and try and bury and charge those ideas into something that’s a little bit more in the substance of the story or the texture of the story.

At some point we thought we should call the film it “Transformista,” because that’s the name for Cuban drag artists. They are known as Cuban “transformistas.” This is a film about transformation. There is transformation in lots of different ways. It’s a film about a country that is changing and needs to change at a particular time. It very much needs to change in the context of generosity. If it’s a very rapid change and it’s a change that isn’t grounded in it’s own culture, it could end up being a very savage and dangerous change. Equally, if it doesn’t move forward through the generosity of the older generation, that younger generation, who may have been repressed in terms of their talents, won’t have the energy or the ability to push that through in a coherent way. It has to be a marrying of the past and the future for that change to develop. These were some of the ideas that I had in the background so they didn’t need to be in the foreground. It’s not a political film.

Tell me about your decision to not subtitle the lyrics of the songs in the performances. These verses are very profound and heartbreaking, but in a sense the performances speak for themselves emotionally. Did you feel subtitles would take the audiences away from the scene?

Paddy Breathnach: That’s a question that’s come up at festivals. It splits the audience. My answer, I think, wins over the audience generally, but there are still people who don’t agree and I might be wrong. The songs and the performances have a real visceral power and I felt that if they were subtitled you would be in the process of reading and not watching. You wouldn’t be completely present to the power of those performances and in a way the power of those performances is what drew me to make a film in the first place. I made the decision not to do that. Spanish speakers get a little bit of an extra element to it, and maybe in the future on whatever platforms the film is available you might be able to have the option to subtitle that part. Maybe a distributor will twist my arm, who knows. I wanted, particularly in the two final performances, to have that strong, visceral, physical, energy dominate and I didn’t want an interface between that and us. Even though you might think, “I want to know what he is singing about,” I think you feel it. It’s a very emotional film, so the feeling has to be unbridled.

What did you want to convey with such a stunning character like Viva, who is essentially Jesus’ alter ego? Viva is freer and happier version of himself. Viva also means alive in Spanish, which seems like a fitting description for how Jesus feels once he has transformed.

Paddy Breathnach: For me he is a character that has to find his voice in life. It’s not enough for him just to choose that voice. He has to find it in a way where he is both the master of this own individual identity but also of his group identity. He needs to know he has a place within the group because those two aspects of our identity are very powerful to us. He needed to have a sense of family and community and also a sense of his won distinctive individual voice. That’s what his journey is about, to try and reconcile those two things. In the end when he performs there is a sort of triumphalism about it even though there is a little bit of grief in the performance as well. Still, there is a sense of triumph that he’s married those two things. At that moment, in the very last couple frames, you see him and say, “He is Viva now.” At that point he is completely Viva. He’s become Jesus a little bit before that in a fuller way as well, but Viva exist as its own character at the end. This other character is now there. I talked a lot to Hector about it and the need for a progression. We had to arrive at that moment at end. He couldn’t be good too early. He had to still maintain some of Jesus in those performances early on, but by the end we had to release the full power of Viva. Luckily I had a very good actor who was able to make that journey.

Watching Héctor Medina's performance one could think that he comes from that world because it seems so natural and real, but I've heard his personal experience is nothing like Jesus'.

Paddy Breathnach: He is a straight guy who likes women a lot and who is very gregarious. He is the center of fun and likes to go out and party, but there is a part of him that’s like Jesus in the sense that he is a very good person. He is a good man. He is a very kind and descent person, I know that because of how he treated me and the other cast members. Generally he is just a descent person.

How difficult was that transformation for him as an actor? It's an emotionally demanding role that has two distinct sides to it.

Paddy Breathnach: For him initially there was a huge sense of fun about it because it meant it was a challenge and he had to go there. By the end of the shoot I think it was hard for him. There were a couple moments in particular. One was when we shot the finale. I had to reshoot a little bit of that because he peaked and spent himself emotionally too soon. He gave me the anger and grief the first time and the second time I got the contentment, the sort of sense of completion, and the triumph about it. I marry the two sequences. I pushed him and then he pushed himself more. He pushed himself so far emotionally that I think by the end of the last two or three days of the shoot he’d given everything to us. He is the sort of actor that wouldn’t talk too much about it. He goes deep into a place to get there. He’d go to a dark deep place.

There seems to be a recurring theme or concern regarding Jesus. It seems like he doesn't think he is a good person despite the fact that everyone reminds him how kind he is. He forgives his father, which is a great personal feat.

Paddy Breathnach: I don’t think he thinks he is bad, but there is a lack of confidence in himself. He doesn’t value his own voice and he doesn’t value his won pain. Maybe the goodness, or being a good boy, is mixed with being used. The other side of the coin is being used. He is willing to help people, he is willing to give, but he is used. It’s a double edge sword in that regard. But then as he develops that confidence his sense of himself is given worth and value and that encompasses his goodness. It gives him conviction and confidence. It’s important for him to treat his father with love, and because he does he enables the father to express his own emotional life to Jesus in a way that he wants to but is too inarticulate to do so. He frees his father and in doing so in the end allows himself to be freed because of that goodness. This lets him become the master of those two worlds: his group and his own identity.

Jorge Perugorría, who plays Jesus’ father Angel, was in an Academy Award-nominated Cuban film called “Strawberry and Chocolate” back in 1993. It's interesting to see him in this hypermasculine role here, which is the opposite of the character he played then.

Paddy Breathnach: Yes, he played the gay character in that film. I’d seen “Strawberry and Chocolate” and I looked at him and said, “I don’t know if he’ll ever do this,” because his name came up as a person of interest. I researched a few other films and I saw a film called “Guantanamera” that he made, which is by the same director Gutierrez Alea. He is like a Cuban George Clooney, this is like 20 years ago, and he is so handsome, but masculine as well. Suddenly I said, “OK, I’ve seen him in this other film where he plays a gay character, and I’ve seen him in this now, so he is obviously a good actor and he can do it.” He also had that charm that you need when you are playing a character that is so horrible in many ways and who treats his son so badly. His language is rough, he is trough, and even brutish. You need that charm to be there because that way the audience hates him but they hope he’ll turn. That charm is what let that hope live and Jorge had that. He’s been working for a long time in Cuba and he is a successful actor, but it’s lovely to have this as a marker to his career that includes “Strawberry and Chocolate” and now this film. I think there is a nice journey between these two films. For the world audience to see him again I think it’s kind of a nice journey.

In terms of the cinematography, was the visual approach shaped by the limitations or constraints of shooting in Cuba regarding equipment or production facilities? There is definitely film production there, but tools are probably not as available as in countries where there is a larger industry.

Paddy Breathnach: We limited ourselves partially because we had a tight budget, so that was a restriction. We didn't want to load the cranes, dollies, tracks and all that. I said, "OK, we don't need them." Luckily it makes it an easier type of shoot. It suited the aesthetics and the practicalities. I think when you are making a low budget movie the aesthetic has to honor the practicalities, because if you try to fight them it just doesn't work. You have to marry the two and choose a style that works. We tended to light 360. We used very fast lenses so we could shoot in most locations we were going to be and shoot in every direction, which allowed the actors great freedom. This allowed me to respond to the actors’ performance. My DP, Cathal Watters, is also a very good handheld-cameraman in terms of reading actors as well and capturing little movements and nuances. He brought in a lot of those moments.

What about the locations? Did you use spaces and items that were already there or did you have to construct the character's world from scratch with your art department?

Paddy Breathnach: We didn't have a huge amount of money for the art department, but I also didn't want to spend money on the art department because I wanted to choose real locations. I wanted to shoot in real locations as much as possible and use the relationship between one apartment and another apartment. Where Cecilia lives and where Jesus lives they are just around the corner and you can make that journey. We do it in the film when he walks around. What we tended to do was clean things out a little bit in terms of de-propping spaces and be very specific about where we chose to put the props. I had a very good production designer who is excellent at set dressing as well. It was more about control. It wasn’t about big spends or getting lots of things. Also, in Cuba you could walk to somebody's house next door and they’d have like 20 table lamps that go from the 1930s to the 1950s. If those were here they'd be fetching thousands of dollars as collector’s items, but there they are available for people to use. There were a lot of resources on the ground that were available to us. It was about saying, "What style and what technique do we want that maximizes the value out of the place that we are in. “ It was an organic style.

All things considered, what would you say was the most difficult challenge, logistical or otherwise, about making the film on location in Cuba? Did the limitations helped your creative process in any way?

Paddy Breathnach: The biggest challenge for me was that going into it I didn't know how good the actors were going to be. Until I started auditioning I thought I was going to shoot it in a naturalistic style, and I might have gone even more naturalistic than I did if I hadn’t discovered how great the actors were. Once I discovered how good they were, I allowed the style to be a little bit more beyond complete naturalism because I just knew they would bring something special to that. I knew it was a challenge, but it also became a big opportunity. As soon as I realized that was there, it expanded the horizons of the film for me a lot.

There were definitely production problems in terms of transferring money from A to B. Also, in Cuba you can’t just walk down to a shop and buy costumes, but I really didn’t want to do that. I wanted costumes that somebody else had already worn. It suited the film. Small things we had to get in advance. One of the characters has tattoos and you can’t just walk down and buy tattoo transfer, so we had to make sure that came over from Ireland. Another thing were wigs. The things we found difficult to find there are the same things artists find difficult to get. Getting shoes, getting wigs, getting make up, those sort of things had to come from outside. We already knew that from our research because we’d go back and forth between Ireland and Cuba and bring stuff back as present for some of the drag performers because we understood they needed them. We knew they had value there. We already knew those sorts of things and factored that it.

I would say that there were more opportunities than challenges. The limitations completely worked for us. I was aware of them going into it and I knew we had to honor and find the opportunity within them. A lot of films I’ve seen made by people from outside tend to light Cuba in way that tries to double up on its colorfulness. They use color gels and all of sorts of lights that bring all these mucky colors in and that’s not what Havana is. It doesn’t look that way. They tend to over-light things. It’s over-lighting without a lot of big lighting equipment. It’s a weird thing. Trying to light too much with limited resources is an awful thing to do. We’d seen that problem and we tried not to make that mistake.

Would you say "Viva" is an Irish film, a Cuban film, a Cuban film seen through and Irish lens, or an Irish film about a Cuban story? What's your take on this relationship between the story and the talent behind the scenes?

Paddy Breathnach: I think every film becomes itself. It has its own journey. You make it and then the rest of the world will see what happens with it. It’s a very Irish film to the extend that it has an Irish director, an Irish writer, it was an Irish idea, and it’s Irish financed. It was conceived in Ireland and a couple of other key creators are Irish as well. But we are sort of vagabonds in the sense that people from small countries always travel. You use up your curiosity fairly quickly in a small country. You need to travel and go. It’s in the history of our country. We’ve gone to all sorts of places as a nation to find something interesting for ourselves. Even that in itself is quite an Irish thing, but I think the story is an important story in Cuban terms at the moment.

The Cuban cast and the Cuban crew completely embrace it as theirs, see it as theirs, and celebrate it as theirs, so I would like to think that it’s a sort of marriage between the two. I’d like to think that’s what it is. Now, I know that ‘s true of the crew and the cast, whether it’s true of the public we don’t know because they haven’t seen it. I’ll be very excited and nervous when they see it. It’s not important that they like it, but it’s important that it’s true. It’s important that they feel there is truth in it. They don’t have to agree with it, but I hope they feel that it doesn’t misrepresent them. I don’t want to steal their voice. It’s very important that we don’t rob their voice.

Ireland is a country that was colonized, so we understand that. We have an intuitive sense, and I think Cubans recognize that about us. We are both island countries and have both have a history of colonization. We just have an awareness of the importance of that. I think we’ve done OK by doing that but I can’t know yet. Somebody else would have to say that, but I think there was a very fruitful relationship and genuine engagement between us both. We needed to get that and I think they were very generous to offer that to us.

Drag performers are often associated with satire, comedy or exaggerated personas, but the ones depicted in your film embrace a much more dramatic type of performance. They are really heartbreaking and raw. Is this what you think makes them different from similar acts in other countries?

Paddy Breathnach: They do have comedy there, but what really stroke me were two specific things. One was the emotional power of the performances and the particular type of songs, which aren’t all Cuban songs. Some of them are Puerto Rican, Argentine or Mexican songs. It was that raw emotional power that drew me. It’s something you see in the drag world there. We really liked that.

The other thing that I think is very interesting and unique I witnessed in one of my visits. I’d just got off the plane and went to a show, because I was hungry to see as many shows as I could. You don’t always know whether there were going to be any shows or not. I went to one that was sort of in a blue-collar suburb and blue-collar crowd, it was a small backward. They put up a red curtain and one spotlight and that was a theater. I thought the alchemy of transforming this ordinary backyard into a place of dreams, theater and magic by just putting one curtain and one spotlight, cut to the heart of transformation. It says something about how the human spirit can become something else and how it pushes on to become something else. It tell us about what is it about art that allows us to imagine beyond our here and now into something really special. That was something that I think their situation and circumstances brings to that world of drag that another country doesn’t have.

Their economic deprivation and the history of it needing to be clandestine, it doesn’t need to be clandestine anymore but when I started making the project it was clandestine, bring a certain power to that world. Singers like Lucecita Benitez, whose songs we wanted to use but we couldn’t clear them in the end, were the type of singers that I wanted to use. Maggie Carles was another one, and we actually used some her songs. These are many of the songs that Luis Alberto García's character, Mama, sings in the film. They are raw and powerful songs by women in their 40s talking about loss and plaintively asking questions, “Why did you do this to me?” and all those raw emotions. I love that about that world.

There are many Vivas in the world, people trying to discover who they are and a way to show to the world. Do you hope the film connects with people at a crossroads in this discovery?

Paddy Breathnach: I think so. I think there is part of that world that's about finding your own sexual identity, but I think that in a broader sense it’s about finding your place and being both yourself and also being able to be part of your family. Increasingly I think individual identity is important. We’ve gone through a period where the need to discover our own individual identities was so important, but I think we have to reconcile that with our community as well because it’s part of our identity. We are ourselves as individuals but we are also members of group whether that is nations, genders, or political groups. We belong to things in groups and that’s a really important instinct that we have. I think the film can appeal to people in that universal way.

There are several instances in which Jesus' clothing or even his umbrella resemble the colors of the Irish flag. Was this a small way to pay homage to your homeland or was it subconscious?

Paddy Breathnach: It isn’t actually [Laughs]. It wasn’t deliberate. It was about what colors would work in those places. If you look at the very beginning of the film there is a strange moment, which was the very first shot we took. Jesus is with Cecilia and she asks him to go out because she wants the apartment. Jesus is walking across a square just before he meets Don. As he walks, there is somebody, who isn’t an extra, coming towards the camera as we are panning with Jesus. This Cuban man was wearing a t-shirt that says "Ireland" on it. I didn’t do it! I thought to myself, “People are going to think I did this!” It was just weird.

The sequence that plays during the credits where Don, the male prostitute, reappears, tells us a lot about what a family could be and also about the lives this characters will continue to live. Was that an important final message you wanted to get across? I've also heard your daughter appears in the film.

Paddy Breathnach: She is in the film, at the very end of the film. She is the little baby. At the time she was eight months and she became like a mascot for the crew. At lunchtime everyday they hand her around. She knew them all. We scripted that scene, but I think we scripted it during the shot actually. Don, the character, is in the film s few times and I said “Wouldn’t it be great if he comes back and the next time around with a cast on his leg?” Then we thought, if we do it a second time then we had to finish with the guy,” so we gave him a neck brace. I always feel that when you finish a movie it’s always great to finish it with a bit of energy at the end, so that it gives people something to talk about. If you conclude the film too much in the film itself, it’s all answered. You want the audience to finish the film on their own. I wanted to say that there is life for these characters after the film, that there are different types of families, and that this world is changing. Although it’s a positive moment, partially we are also saying this character is still selling sexual favors. We are not saying that there are magic wands being waved and everybody can stop doing that. The truth is those necessities and the reasons they do it run deep. We wanted to end it on something positive and have that happy feeling about it, but at the same time you are also saying, “Well, some things have changed, but other things haven’t.”

The final performance is such a riveting moment. It's a triumphant scene, but it's also devastating. Viva wins her battle in a sense.

Paddy Breathnach: I’m very happy with that scene. That song is great.We did a take where he finishes defiant and I didn’t want it to be defiant. I wanted one that said, “I’ve arrived. I’m here.” I wanted that openness, because that’s what the triumph. Not that he wins, but that he wins by being himself and being open and truth to his emotional spirit. That’s the real triumph, that you can win by being truth to yourself.

"Viva" will open in theaters on February 5th, 2016

Director Tom McCarthy Puts 'Spotlight' on Sexually Predatory Catholic Priests

Anne Thompson — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 20:30:00 GMT

Tom McCarthy is not only a veteran actor—he was the young Baltimore Sun reporter in Season 5 of "The Wire"—but a gifted writer-director. "Spotlight" is rare for several reasons: it's an original script about real people devoted to their jobs who remind us of what great journalism is supposed to be. Like Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein (depicted in the 1976 Alan Pakula classic "All the President's Men"), the Boston Globe's Spotlight investigative staff of four (an editor and three reporters) brought to light an ongoing crime that had been hidden for decades. It's hard to remember where we were before this Pulitzer-prize-winning team exposed this story.

McCarthy and Singer dug deep into the research and deliver a smart emotional drama that is free of the usual formulas of Hollywood studio filmmaking. Of course that means they had to raise independent backing; indie veteran Tom Ortenberg's Open Road is releasing the movie and after its rousing reception at Venice, Telluride and Toronto, the film should play for critics, audiences and awards voters alike.

McCarthy's first two films, "The Station Agent" and "The Visitor," were followed by another smart relationship film, "Win Win" (Q & A here), and McCarthy put in some time with the Pixar brain trust on "Up," for which he shared an original screenplay Oscar nomination. While McCarthy's actors admit that he's tough, he aways pulls superb performances from them—although few folks went to see his last, "The Cobbler," starring Adam Sandler. He has quickly been redeemed, as "Birdman" star Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and Liev Schreiber all shine in this intense and emotional investigative drama.

I interviewed McCarthy and Singer in Telluride, below.

Anne Thompson: One reason the movie is very good is the screenplay. Tell me where you started, how long it took, what was the process?

Tom McCarthy: Well, with my co-writer, Josh Singer, we started this probably in 2012. We started with just sitting with the reporters — going up to Boston.

Was there a book?

No. They had published one at that point, but it was about everything that transpired in the investigation — so it was everything after our movie ends. Our script was much more concerned with the investigation, the genesis, and how it evolved. So that wasn’t much help. It’s an interesting read; it’s kind of the “result of.” It picks up where we left off. Sadly, there was no book. It really was a story that was culled from what probably turned out to be hundreds of hours of conversation — not just with reporters, but lawyers, some of the reporters past and present, former editors, former publishers. Anyone we can talk to, so it quickly turned into our investigation of their investigation.

It reminds me a little of “Zero Dark Thirty” in that way, except that you’re dealing with the past. It’s not breaking news.

It was, and so, therefore, it took a little more time. You’ve got to go back to someone three or four times before you really put the pieces together, and we were cobbling it together from a number of perspectives, including Marty Baron at "The Washington Post," tracking different reporters down who were so keenly involved. When Marty saw the movie — which he very much liked —

Which must have been a relief. He’s an imposing guy.

A big relief. He was so happy with the spirit, and how it captured these investigations. One thing he said was, he actually learned something, because of course he wasn’t privy to a lot of this. He didn’t know what people were saying; he could feel it. And he would know what was happening in the investigation. He was kept up to date. It was fascinating to see it from another perspective.

I like that you put in all the church spires.

We ended up taking some out. My editor was like, “One montage when there’s probably four of them,” because they were just everywhere! Some we removed digitally; some, we just didn’t use the shot.

But you did it on purpose. You showed school buses —

Well, we were shooting to show that that architecture is key to the power of church and understanding it in Boston. In fact, I think it was Richard Sipe —you know who plays him? Richard Jenkins —he said, "when a church started to lose its power, and when it had to pay up, it would lose its real estate." And as churches started to shutter — which they have all over Boston — more and more victims see that as a weakness, and they would come forward to speak out. That’s exactly what happened.

How did you boil it all down, because you have to follow these characters, get their point of view, make all the details clear, get the drama going, and not overwhelm us?

That was always our goal: “Let’s make this for the journalists, and the lay people won’t always know exactly what’s happening, but they’ll catch up, and we’ll find our points where we need them to check in and stay with the story.” When I was initially screening this, people said, “I was definitely losing this for a while, and then I caught up again.” I feel like, ultimately, smart audiences appreciate that, because they feel like you’re not taking the time to underline every idea. And, quite honestly, Josh and I had so much material to get through, we couldn’t afford that. We didn’t have the real estate for it; we didn’t have the time for it. We had to stay with the story, and it gave us a great appreciation for the amount of information these reporters made their way through, and it’s really impressive.

Josh Singer: Tom had this vision of verisimilitude, getting it right, and not being interested in the standard collapsing of characters — letting it be as messy as it was — combined with the fact that we didn’t have any source material, we had to spend so much time interviewing other reporters, other folks at the Globe. Going back to the Fall River case, in ’93, we talked to some reporters who covered that. We tried to get into the community, to get into the fabric of the story.

You took the time to show us many visual details, while you have voiceovers as you reveal information— like showing all the research files. Doing the period — that must have been fun.

Singer: That was a fun night shooting, because we went to the library of the Globe, and we were just rooting around, getting the clips of the moment, picking out photos.

McCarthy: That is the Globe library. We didn’t have to dress it. We just said, “Can you do the microfiche for us?” And they said, “Do you want me to print it?” They gave us an appreciation of how analog this process was, and how important that is.

It’s a lot like “All the President’s Men.” That must have given you something to think about.

McCarthy: Well, it’s a seminal movie, and I think all journalism movies live in the shadow of that great film and [director Alan Pakula], but we tried to have our own take on it. We obviously stopped watching it a long time ago, because, you know…

Singer: We talked a lot about how they had a book for “All the President’s Men,” because Bernstein wrote a book. Whereas we didn’t, and one of the things to Tom’s credit is that his vision was always about verisimilitude: let’s get this right. It’s important to get right what these guys do because, from early on, we were both stepped in journalism and what’s happened in the world of journalism over the last ten years, which I think has been sort of tough — especially with investigative journalism.

Which you showed in “The Wire.” You must have learned a little from that. Did you talk to David Simon?

McCarthy: Yeah, exactly. I talked to him a little bit, but I read a lot about it, and I read a lot of David, who writes and speaks so clearly and beautifully on this. For me, it was incredibly informative and inspirational. Being on the show, I learned a lot.

You can feel it. But you also didn’t glamorize it. Thank you for Mark Ruffalo. How much like the real guy is he?

Singer: A lot.

McCarthy: Mark spent a lot of time with Mike Rezendes. Pound for pound, the work he’s doing physically, emotionally, he’s just at the top of his game and the top of his field; every character is so complete. It was wonderful watching these actors work; they’re all so good and have such a communal experience. I think, collectively, they raise the bar. I think they can look around the room and realize everyone was doing high-level work, and you start to feel an ensemble raise their game like that.

How did you shoot it? You got a lot of reaction shots, silence, Michael Keaton reacting.

McCarthy: Well, this was a little unique in that way: we had five or six people sitting around and listening. Which is difficult to do, and so you have to rely on people who remain active and remain very connective. That means your actors have to understand not only what’s happening in every scene, but what it means to every moment past and present and future; they have to understand where they are in their investigation.

For instance, there’s one scene — which is one of my favorite scenes — when Jenkins is telling them, over the intercom, how they’re reacting within that scene, to each other, you can tell they really understand when new information’s come in. Rachel and Mark, specifically, in that scene, are so wonderful. Those, to me, that’s when you realize you’re working with great actors. It’s almost easier when you are talking in a scene, because you have something to ride — you have a wave. When you don’t, you have to remain really connected to it, and I think great actors are great listeners.

How easy was it to make this film, without chase scenes or romance, in Hollywood today?

McCarthy: Horrible. This movie was dead three times — I mean, dead on the table. Flatlining. Even with this cast and what I think was quite a strong script, a movie that all of our producers and even studios felt passionate about, still the equation for putting it together in today’s culture was very difficult. I was just saying this to Josh or someone recently, was that Michael Bederman, who was our line producer on this, was just relentless to make sure this movie got made. There were many times when this movie was dead and I’d say, “What are you doing?” He’d say, “I’m flying up to Toronto.” I said, “We’re dead,” and he said, “I know, but I’m doing to scout and you should come meet me.” You need people like that to believe the movie’s going to get made. He was putting things on his own credit card; he was deeply in debt by the time we got some money coming in. He just… I couldn’t thank that guy enough.

Singer: I totally agree, but I would also point to Tom. He was cutting “The Cobbler,” and we were nowhere. We had nothing; we didn’t have anybody attached. We had had financing and it had fallen apart. He said, “Okay, I’m in California and we’re going to spend,” on a script that, by the way, all sorts of people thought was pretty good to begin with. He said, “We’ve got to get it better.” And we spent three or four weeks starting to pound, before Mark signed onboard.

Did you add the money scene where Mark can completely unleash? You built up to it so beautifully.

McCarthy: There was probably always some element of it in there. Yeah. That scene, for me, was always really important. These guys are much like us: they have a lot of ego and a lot of competition, and it’s actually very healthy, to some degree, because it pushes them to a better product. But there comes a point, as we know, in our processes where that can become disruptive, and there comes a point where that can lead to conflict, which isn’t always in the best interest of the project. But I think that scene was a little bit about that, and a lot more about the emotional state of Mark — what he was experiencing after having read those letters. How deeply those resonated to his core, and forced him to feel something he wasn’t even aware existed in him, which was some deep-seeded connection to the Catholic Church that he had long denied on an intellectual level, but was still emotionally very connected.

To me, that was always so powerful. He speaks about it in the scene afterwards with Rachel, that scene on the back porch. I think that movie speaks to a lot of Catholics right now. I know very good Catholics who are frustrated with the church, but they still want to raise their children in the Catholic church. They want a base for their spirituality, but they’re so completely, if not disgusted, very frustrated with the institution.

We were raising our daughter in the Catholic Church around the time all this stuff started to come out. I gave up on attending; I couldn’t do it. But we’ve got a good Pope now.

McCarthy: Very common. This guy is very interesting. As you know, we premiered this in Venice, and it went really well. There was a lot of talk about the Pope; a lot of talk about what I thought, what they thought. By and large, I think everyone is encouraged by him, and some people are maybe a bit more optimistic about just how effectively he can actually cause change within the church. At the end of the day, even as we saw with Obama, he walks into the White House and he gets hit with the reality that is the U.S. government. This Pope has a lot of great ideas. I love the way he talks; I love the way he reduces things. But that is a big ship, the Catholic Church.

You were raised Catholic? And did you see Alex Gibney’s movie at some point in this process?

McCarthy: Yes, so powerful and so disturbing. I probably didn’t see that until we were kind of into it. You know, there’s that one scene between Rachel and Father Ronald Paquin that was so disturbing. A lot of people say, “Is that real? Do people really talk like that?” And you see there’s such a disconnect.

Review: Heavy-Handed 'Suffragette' Starring Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, Meryl Streep, More

Chris Willman — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 22:39:00 GMT

This is a reprint of our review from the 2015 Telluride Film Festival.

If only Carey Mulligan had been inspired to protest for the right to a better script for "Suffragette," an overly schematic look at the struggle for women’s voting rights in 1910s Britain that almost gets by on the strength of a great slow burn of a lead performance. As much as the movie wants to overplay its hand at virtually every turn, Mulligan just as surely undersells the transformations that her initially mousy laundry worker undergoes on the way to suffragette city. She deserves a vehicle that’s worthier of her nuance, but she’ll pick up a lot of women’s (and men’s) votes in early 2016 anyway.

If your idea of the English suffrage movement was mostly informed by Mrs. Banks in "Mary Poppins," director Sarah Gavron and writer Abi Morgan want to give us something that feels closer in spirit to "12 Years a Slave." The lack of the vote is just the tip of the subjugation and degradation iceberg here. Husbands remind their wives that they’re property, throwing them into the street if they get political or uppity; police beat female demonstrators bloody with batons, then imprison them under false pretenses; bosses grope and threaten female sweat-shop workers in front of the entire workplace; mothers don’t even have the right to keep their children if a father wants to give them away. All these abuses certainly happened in the era depicted, and they all happen in fairly short order to Maud (Mulligan), so that we might buy her accelerated transformation from mild-mannered housewife to bomb-lobbing domestic terrorist.

READ MORE: Watch Carey Mulligan And Meryl Streep Fight For Equality In The U.K. 'Suffragette' Trailer

Maud almost accidentally becomes a suffragette when, intending just to visit a government hearing about workplace abuses, she gets drafted to give her testimony as the co-worker who was supposed to speak gets roughed up. From there, her enlightenment and persecution proceed in parallel measure. As soon as her husband (Ben Whishaw) assures her he’s only trying to look out for her, it’s clear he’s destined to join the film’s brigade of unrepentantly sexist villains. As things go from bad to worse for Maud, and then even more dire still, a truly militant feminist played by Helena Bonham Carter inducts her into a cadre of street soldiers who believe that “war is the only language men understand.”

That last line is actually uttered by Maud, as is, “We’re in every home. We’re half the human race. You can’t stop us all!” She blurts out these slogans as a kind of confession to her chief pursuer, Brendan Gleeson’s Inspector Steed, who keeps arresting her and then eventually letting her go. His Irish accent accentuates the nagging feeling that — with all the discussion about the need for violent resistance — we’re really watching a movie about the IRA. You keep hoping they won’t have cast an actor as capable as Gleeson to be the stock bad guy his introductory scenes suggest, and the movie does eventually give him at least some conflicted brow-furrowing, but the actor is still overqualified for the role.

That goes quadruple for Meryl Streep, who, you may have already heard, has only one scene and about three minutes of screen time as Mrs. Pankhurst, one of the few real-life characters to figure into this fictionalization. Her stunt cameo is quite good — surprise — as she shows up to deliver an inspirational hotel-balcony speech to hundreds of women who’ve furtively gathered on the street below. If she didn’t already seem Churchillian enough, Streep crosses paths afterward with Mulligan just long enough to impart a battle cry: “Never surrender! Never give up the fight!”

That’s a fairly hammy moment, but the film occasionally lightens up on its heavy hand long enough to manage a moment of subtlety. Mulligan’s testimony in front of that government committee early on is a thing of actorly wonder. One of the few sympathetic men in the film asks her what good might come if women got the vote, and she confesses she never had cause to consider the after-effects because the very idea had seemed so ludicrous. The barest flicker of unforeseen hope registers on her face, and while it’s easy to imagine this close-up as corny in almost any other actress’s hands, Mulligan beautifully underplays it as an almost imperceptible eureka moment.

"Suffragette" too rarely seems terribly interested in her or anyone else in the movie as a living-and-breathing character, as opposed to a message-movie totem. This is underscored by the climax, which, without giving too much away, is one of the few moments where a bit of actual history is recreated amid the fiction. A subsidiary character drives the action in this final scene, leaving Maud as basically a bystander in the final minutes of what’s supposed to have been her movie. There’s apparently no need to linger over character beats or wonder what will become of the heroine when the film is rushing toward a closing crawl that gives one last bit of historical information about the global women’s rights struggle.

But Mulligan makes you care about what Maud’s life will be like in the days and months to come, even if the script doesn’t. Before the film’s Telluride Film Festival premiere, the director noted that the actress wanted to be on hand but couldn’t because she’s expecting “her suffragette baby.” Indeed, if the film does wind up imparting that fighting spirit, and carries the movement in whatever measure to the next generation of viewers, perhaps it will have succeeded in its aims. [C]

'Steve Jobs' Soars: Danny Boyle and His Cast Ride Aaron Sorkin's Exhilarating Screenplay

Anne Thompson — Thu, 08 Oct 2015 16:44:00 GMT

The most anticipated studio debut of the fall festivals, "Steve Jobs" rests on an extraordinary text by "The Social Network" Oscar-winner Aaron Sorkin, who structures a dense, dialogue-driven narrative around three "ten-minute" run-ups to Apple co-founder Jobs' unveilings of the original Macintosh computer in 1984, his NeXt black cube in 1988, and the iMac in 1998.

It was a smart move to marry sensual visualist Danny Boyle with Sorkin's 200-page screenplay (most are 100), largely set inside the bowels of three auditoriums. After seeing the finished movie—which rides the flow of Sorkin's dialogue with propulsive movement and varied settings--it's easy to understand why then-Sony motion picture chairman Amy Pascal twisted herself into a pretzel over green-lighting the picture after Christian Bale left. There were too many risks for a studio head already on the ropes. (The Sony hack emails on "Steve Jobs" are fascinating; read its turbulent history here.)

Producer Scott Rudin (one of many) pulled the movie from Sony; Boyle spent a day going to the studios with the "Steve Jobs" pitch. Donna Langley at Universal (which is enjoying flush times) quickly snapped up the audacious biopic (which is based on Walter Isaacson's bestseller) with Michael Fassbender attached.

At the first screening at Telluride, the filmmaker praised Fassbender for somehow absorbing into himself Sorkin's massive pages of dialogue ("the sound of Jobs' mind"), never checking a script or sides on set. (Kate Winslet reports that they did run lines together in their trailers.) "The film you are going to see tonight has some of the best acting in it I've ever seen," Boyle told the Telluride crowd. "It was the challenge of my career, without a doubt."

WATCH: How Kate Winslet Warms Up 'Steve Jobs' (EXCLUSIVE VIDEO)

I can't disagree. Fassbender and Winslet as the Macintosh marketing chief Joanna Hoffman both dazzle with their fleet-tongued performances, unlike anything they have done before. Fassbender is playing a monster, in many ways, who is also a genius who believed his computer would change the world. Boyle describes Part One, shot in gritty 16 mm with flashbacks to the famous garage where Apple was born, as an origin myth. It is thrilling.

The filmmaker compares Sorkin's fictionalized portrait to a flawed but compelling protagonist from Shakespeare. Sorkin takes quite a few liberties—and was able to interview Jobs' daughter, who did not participate in the biography. At Telluride, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak told me that he didn't interact with Jobs at these launch events and never called his "friend" "an asshole"; his call about getting credit for Apple 2 went to Jobs' hand-picked CEO John Scully (Sorkin's "Newsroom" star Jeff Daniels). But while Jobs mellowed in later years, Wozniak said, at the time of the iMac launch he was still "pretty brutal."

Boyle shot each section of the movie separately, mostly in two-shots, insisting on filming in the (expensive) San Francisco Bay area. The second section was shot in 35 mm, the third in hi-res digital. "I tried to create a space for these actors to act these extraordinary scenes as written," he said. Sorkin jams the most dramatic moments in Jobs' life into highly stressed pre-show encounters with his principal antagonists, masterfully managed by his personal timekeeper Hoffman with a Moliere-like efficiency as she shuttles her boss from one backstage location to another.

There's his ex-girlfriend Chrisann Brennan (Katharine Waterston), who fights for support for his child Lisa, who he refuses to admit is his. Sorkin and Boyle recognize, as Alex Gibney does in his excellent Steve Jobs documentary, that Lisa humanizes Jobs. He's tender with her, at the same time that he insists that he did not name his computer after her.

There's also father-figure Scully, who pushed the Apple board to fire Jobs after the first Macintosh didn't sell—after Jobs ignored Hoffman's warnings not to overhype his product—and his chief engineer Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg), who did in fact advance $25,000 for Lisa's tuition to Harvard.

Somehow, this gifted filmmaking ensemble brings to life this complex man, who past his death still fascinates the billions of people around the world who are in love with Apple products. Jobs tells the disgruntled Wozniak (well-played by Seth Rogen), "I play the orchestra." But Fassbender reveals a damaged man who sacrificed himself to fight for his impossibly high standards.

WATCH: Michael Fassbender in First Three Clips from Danny Boyle's 'Steve Jobs'

The risk is that this Hollywood take on Jobs is almost too warm and fuzzy as the filmmakers seek to redeem him via the adoring gaze of Hoffman and his daughter. Will the Academy and audiences warm up to this? It's must-see one-of-a-kind cinema that cannot be ignored.

From Telluride Boyle and his editor returned to the editing room to put the finishing touches on the movie before it played to applause at the New York Film Festival. Critics are rapturous; audiences will weigh in next.

Watch: Oscar Winner Davis Guggenheim Shares Why 'He Named Me Malala' Had to Be a Documentary (Exclusive)

Sonya Saepoff — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 16:53:20 GMT

READ MORE: Watch: Malala Yousafzai Leads an Impassioned Campaign For Girls' Education in 'He Named Me Malala' Trailer

Academy Award-winning documentarian Davis Guggenheim ("An Inconvenient Truth") joined the International Documentary Association (IDA) to discuss the making of his highly anticipated documentary, "He Named Me Malala," with Indiewire Editor-in-Chief Dana Harris. The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on September 4, and it later screened at the Toronto International Film Festival to much praise.

The official film synopsis reads: "In October 2012, at the age of fifteen, Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head in while riding home on a bus in Pakistan's Swat Valley. She had been targeted by Taliban militants for her outspokenness in support of girls' education. She survived the attack and relocated with her family to England, where she is continuing her studies. In the meantime, she has authored the bestselling memoir 'I Am Malala' and campaigned for girls' rights around the world."

The must-see documentary will hit theaters October 2 and is sure to catch awards notice thanks to its director and its engaging subject matter. Check out all of the highlights from the "He Named Me Malala" IDA discussion, starting with why it was necessary for the film to be a documentary in the video above.

Guggenheim on Malala's father, Ziauddin Yousafzai.

Guggenheim explains his use of animation in the film.

Guggenheim on Malala's deep connection with children.

Watch: Horse Freaks Out in Exclusive Clip From Award-Winning Documentary 'Unbranded'

Sonya Saepoff — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 15:12:01 GMT

READ MORE: Gravitas Ventures Acquires Award-Winning Adventure Doc 'Unbranded'

Starting as a Kickstarter campaign, "Unbranded" has become an award-winning documentary and is set to be released in theaters and On Demand this weekend. The film took home the Audience Awards at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival -- where it had its world premiere -- and the Telluride Mountainfilm Festival this year. The movie was directed by Phillip Baribeau ("Mountain Men"), who also served as co-cinematographer with Korey Kaczmarek ("American River Renegades").

The official film synopsis reads: "Sixteen mustangs, four men, one dream: to ride border to border, Mexico to Canada, up the spine of the American West. The documentary...tracks four fresh-out-of-college buddies as they take on wild mustangs to be their trusted mounts, and set out on the adventure of a lifetime. Their wildness of spirit, in both man and horse, is quickly dwarfed by the wilderness they must navigate: a 3000-mile gauntlet through five states that is equally indescribable and unforgiving. In this story of rugged independence, [the film] reveals the true interdependence of man, animal and nature."

Gravitas Ventures will release the award-winning documentary feature in theaters nationwide and on VOD tomorrow, September 25. Watch the exclusive clip above and prepare to sympathize for the horses.

READ MORE: Adventurers Face Danger in Exclusive 'Unbranded' Poster

Telluride Review: Davis Guggenheim’s ‘He Named Me Malala’

Rodrigo Perez — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 21:20:00 GMT

The anticipated opening day screening of the Telluride Film Festival is an event that journalists not only routinely attend, they usually race to their computers afterwards to deliver a cogent, but timely review. But with the walk-don’t-run and ho hum “He Called Me Malala,” pundits politely clapped and leisurely walked to their next screening, no one really compelled to review or be perceived as being uncharitable to a genuinely inspirational figure by proxy (conservatively, some thirty-something journalists saw it; five reviews exist on Rotten Tomatoes so far).

Davis Guggenheim’s documentary “He Named Me Malala” begins with an animated storybook tale of how young Malala Yousafzai was given her name by her father Ziauddin. It’s both a mythical and prescient story —she’s named after a legend about a young Afghani folk hero who sacrificed herself to inspire and save her village. It’s fatefully eerie considering Malala Yousafzai was infamously shot by the oppressive Pakistani Taliban in 2012 for speaking out against them, nearly died, but miraculously recovered and went on to become an internationally renowned advocate for female education and human rights causes. And it’s fitting, as we learn that Ziauddin set a strong example for his daughter about outspoken bravery, a thirst for knowledge, carving out your own identity, and the empowerment that comes along with discovering your voice and the courage of your own convictions.

But you know most of this because you’ve read Wikipedia and have a cursory understanding of news events over the last three years. And so if there are deeper insights to be found about Malala and her father beyond loving and enabling parents and a daughter who took their cues, they’re not really here. Also, if the sentimentality of this largely sweet story should be counterbalanced with another mood, that doesn’t really arrive either.

Guggenheim’s movie is largely content to be a would-be inspiring celebration of the young Nobel Peace Prize laureate. And while it’s hard to indict the movie for wanting to admire and honor this extraordinary girl, the movie loses its own inherent potency with a haphazard structure that jumps around far too much in time and a monotonous narrative about Malala overcoming oppressors to bravely speak out and inspire the world.

So yes, it’s hard to fault with “He Named Me Malala” for its impulse to act as a kind of glorified educational infomercial for all of Malala’s courageous exploits. She is bold, she is remarkable, she is also just an average girl who likes Brad Pitt and handsome soccer players. Malala is inspiring, no question. But anyone who knows even just the surface elements of her story — the struggle, recuperation and comeback as voice of change — will pretty much know and understand the full narrative presented in this thin documentary. “He Named Me Malala” dives deeper into the details, but fails to illuminate anything other than the idea that Malala is a remarkable girl who survived unspeakable actions.

“He Named Me Malala” purports to be a father and daughter story, but the parental section of the film eventually fades to the background as Guggenheim focuses on Malala’s resolve and accolades. While the “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Waiting for Superman” filmmaker has good intentions, and he can make the most of an inspirational moment or idea, he is very much enamored with the subject. Hearing Malala’s impassioned speeches about education for women as a basic human right is rousing stuff, but dialing up stirring, but familiar notes to underscore your admiration is about the only trick this movie has.

In many ways, “He Named Me Malala” is an aftermath movie, Malala and her family trying to cope and adjust to the world simply beyond her recovery. The family is extricated from the Swat valley in Pakistan for their safety, likely never to return, and so in Birmingham, England, all they really have is each other in a strange land and foreign culture that is not their own. And while this texture is nice and paves the way for humanizing Malala and her family, it feels included out of obligation instead of acting like crucial footage that makes or breaks the doc.

Even at 90 minutes in length — which feels more like two hours — ‘Malala’ suffers from serious repetition issues. It’s not that the subject can’t sustain that runtime (quite the contrary) but you can only hear the movie articulate how brave she was to speak out in the face of oppression with the same overcooked heart-swelling music so many times.

Malala Yousafzai is a very worthy Nobel Peace Prize laureate and simply being in the presence of her committed and passionate words is awe-inspiring. Her undeterred fearlessness in the face of extremists should be applauded, and she is rightfully a model for young women around the planet. But ultimately, this amazing girl is underserved by an unremarkable, congenial and safe portrait. It’s hard to begrudge a filmmaker that doesn’t draw outside the lines for a special subject like this, but at the same time, it’s hard to recommend the documentary other than to suggest it should be shown to kids of all ages in schools everywhere. [C+]

Browse through all our coverage of the 2015 Telluride Film Festival to date by clicking here.

The Inadvertent Telluride Silent Film Festival

Meredith Brody — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 17:02:31 GMT

Film festival buffs know that every attendee has their own festival. Even in the famously intimate Telluride Film Festival (aka the Show), where you'll run into seemingly everyone you know beating it up and down Colorado Avenue from the Palm to the Werner Herzog Theatre, the briefest conversation will reveal that you're on different paths.

There's an entire showbiz-and-art documentary track that I could happily follow, spending my entire day in the Backlot. Oscar Nostradami obsessively parse the possibilities of mainstream movies -- and non-mainstream; shortly before the festival, "Ixcanul" was chosen as Guatemala's first-ever submission for the foreign Oscar.

Every year Telluride features a silent film with live musical accompaniment, usually sourced from the annual Pordenone Silent Film Festival, and a must in my schedule. But this year I found that there was dazzling silent film content on a daily basis -- and I was a moth to its flame. Or "Flamme," as in Serge Bromberg of Lobster Film's dazzling and delightful program, "Retour de Flamme," in which he presents restorations and rarities of early cinema.

Day One of Telluride and I was tucked into the five-and-a-half-hour "Die Nibelungen" (Fritz Lang, 1925), the first program of the day. Festival director Tom Luddy had urged me to choose "Die Nibelungen" over anything else. "I've seen it, you know," I said to him and another Telluride dust, film deity Pierre Rissient. "No you haven't," they both said.

I also apologized to Tom: I said I'd be leaving the screening a half or three-quarters of an hour early, in order to see Todd Haynes' "Carol," screening as part of a tribute to Rooney Mara, complete with clip show and an onstage interview with Mara -- at the Palm, at the other end of Telluride.

"You won't be able to leave," Tom said. And he was right.

The intertwined love stories of Siegfried and Kriemhild, and her treacherous brother and his wife, famously inspired Wagner's four-opera "Ring Cycle." The Thea von Harbou adaptation verges on the soap-operatic, but it's the glorious sets and costumes -- a seductive mashup of medieval, gothic, Secessionist, and Pre-Raphaelite tropes -- that gleam in this gorgeous restoration, introduced by Paolo Cherchi Usai, co-founder of the famed Pordenone silent film orgy, and German producer Eberhard Junkersdorf.

There was an intermission, midway, which featured a free groaning board of bratwursts, rolls, mustard, and sauerkraut, as well as tangy beer to wash it all down.

Afterwards the stately pace of the first half was replaced by an increasingly frenzied rout of blood lust and revenge -- impossible, as Tom had predicted, to tear oneself away -- especially as accompanied by a wonderful recording of the original propulsive orchestral score by Gottfried Huppertz.

Day after day, as Tellurideans asked me what my favorite movie was, I couldn't help but tell them about "Die Nibelungen," which was, happily for those who missed it, repeated on Labor Day -- but in a much smaller and less well-equipped theater. The Herzog is state-of-the-art, with superb sightlines and an impressive Meyer Sound system -- especially impressive, as it can be un-installed to reveal a winter hockey rink.

Day Two commenced with a delirious, obsessive presentation by Georges Mourier about the latest work restoring Abel Gance's 1927 "Napoleon," following earlier efforts by Henri Langlois and Marie Epstein in 1953-1959; Kevin Brownlow, who started his work in 1969, showing a version in Telluride in 1979 (with the 90-year-old Gance in attendance), which subsequently toured the US under the auspices of Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope, with a pastiche score by Carmine Coppola; and then a longer version (five-and-a-half hours) overseen by Brownlow which played in 2012 under the auspices of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival with a pastiche score by Carl Davis.

In the early '90s a film scholar with the improbable name of Bambi Ballard uncovered new material and began piecing it together, with the assistance of Mourier.

The basis for Mourier's present work is Gance's recently discovered paper archive, including extensive notes, and 400 boxes of previously unseen film, gathered from the Cinematheque Francaise and a number of other archives around the world. It seems that in addition to the four-hour commercial version that debuted in April of 1927 — aka the "Opera" version, for a run of four days, May 8-11, 1927 — a version of nine-and-a-half hours was screened (aka the "Apollo" version). For professionals only!

Mourier showed samples of several different versions — four at a time, in different corners of the screen — demonstrating missing shots and scenes and different angles. The Langlois/Epstein and the (many) Kevin Brownlow versions mix material from both the Opera and Apollo versions. It seems that in a few years an even longer "Napoleon" will debut — possibly at Telluride. It was moving to see Mourier -- who said this was his first-ever presentation in English -- be himself moved by the fact that he was standing on the same stage of the 1913-vintage Sheridan Opera House, where Abel Gance stood.

Directly after the "Restoring Napoleon" presentation, the ebullient showman Serge Bromberg presented his "Retour de Flamme" program at the Sheridan. One of Bromberg's stage tricks is to set a short length of nitrate film aflame, and Tom Luddy suggested me as the stage stooge who holds the 35mm metal film reel that Serge drops the flaming nitrate into. I quickly declined the honor and volunteered Kent Jones, the director of programming for the New York Film Festival, in Telluride to present his new documentary "Hitchcock/Truffaut," both for his height and his deadpan wit, and it proved a winning combination.

As were the trilogy of beautifully-restored shorts that Bromberg introduced and accompanied on the piano: Charlie Chaplin's "The Bank," 1915, put together from four different elements; Buster Keaton's 1922 "Day Dreams," in which I recognized Joe Keaton, Buster's father, but not Renee Adoree as the love interest (I just thought the girl was wonderful-looking!); and the cherry on the sundae, the hotly-awaited world premiere of one of the holy grails of silent film comedy, the complete version of Laurel and Hardy's "Battle of the Century," long only glimpsed in a compilation film called "The Golden Age of Comedy," its epic pie fight lost until recently rediscovered when Jon Mirsalis found it in his purchase of the Berkhoff collection of silent film. Bromberg's shows always sell out, and many Telluride attendees were disappointed that a second showing of "Retour de Flamme" never materialized.

On Day Three, Bromberg introduced Lobster Films' dazzling restoration of the dizzying 1924 "The Inhuman Woman," about a successful Parisian opera diva (the art deco hood ornament Georgette Leblanc), who toys with the affection of powerful men, including a boyish blond scientist whose laboratory must have thrilled the steampunk avant-la-lettre Alloy Orchestra when they saw the film: it seemed to be designed with their trademark heavily metallic orchestration in mind. As did the surroundings of the Galaxy, whose decorations include large neon mad-scientist machines flanking the screen, usually turned off during screenings, but appropriately gleaming during "L'Inhumaine." Director Marcel L'Herbier was ably served by his cadre of designers and artists, including Robert Mallet-Stephens, Alberto Cavalcanti, Claude Autant-Lara, Paul Poiret, and Fernand Leger. "L'Inhumaine" came second only to "Die Nibelungen" in my affections as a peak cinematic experience.

Day Four also held a final silent film: The director of the George Eastman House, Paolo Cherchi Usai's experimental feature, "Picture," which combined the familiar count-down picture leader; calligraphy hand-written directly on 35mm blank film stock by Brody Neuenschwander, Peter Greenaway's house draughtsman; glimpses of a female Tasmanian drummer playing to a recorded Alloy Orchestra score; shots of a relentless metronome; and a live Alloy Orchestra score, resulting in a determinedly challenging and theoretical whole. The resulting 68 minutes were occasionally transcendent, occasionally mind-numbing.

But the inadvertent Telluride Silent Film Festival that I created for myself was transcendent indeed. I yearn to see "Die Nibelungen" again; I anticipate George Mourier's "Napoleon" reconstruction with pleasure; I'll buy the "L'Inhumaine" DVD. In Telluride, over a long weekend, all of these elements rubbing up against each other were greater than the sum of their (already great) parts.

Telluride Snapshots

Leonard Maltin — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 18:28:28 GMT

As much as I enjoy watching movies at the Telluride Film Festival, I also enjoy snapping pictures. Here are some of my favorites from this year’s gathering, with some thoughts about the filmmakers and the work they brought with them.

Master animator Richard Williams and his wife Imogen Sutton show off a poster for Richard’s new short subject, which debuted in Telluride. He says it’s the best work he’s ever done. I didn’t get to see it over the busy weekend (to my regret) but I look forward to a Los Angeles screening sometime soon.

Director Todd Haynes and Rooney Mara, who costars with Cate Blanchett in his new film Carol, chat with The Hollywood Reporter’s chief critic Todd McCarthy. Mara is one of the youngest actresses to receive a Telluride tribute, but Carol has been commanding a lot of attention since its debut at Cannes in May.

After a showing of the new documentary He Named Me Malala, its “star,” the remarkable Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai, appeared via satellite for a brief interview with filmmaker Ken Burns. She couldn’t attend in person because she is in the midst of exams in her adopted home of Birmingham, England. She’s applying to colleges right now, including Oxford. I have a feeling that if she writes “Winner, Nobel Peace Prize” on her application it may cut through some red tape.

Director Danny Boyle chats with his collaborator on Steve Jobs, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. Boyle joined the project after David Fincher dropped out, but it’s hard to picture anyone else getting more out of Sorkin’s expansive screenplay, which bears echoes of Citizen Kane.

Talk about a talented trio: director Tom McCarthy hits a bull’s-eye with his new film Spotlight, which he also co-wrote, about the Boston Globe’s 2001 investigation of sexual abuse in the Catholic church. Michael Keaton delivers another great performance as the leader of the editorial team. Meryl Streep plays women’s rights advocate Emmeline Pankhurst in Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette, and even though it’s a cameo appearance, she was proud to represent the film in Telluride.

Rachel McAdams costars in Spotlight as one of Michael Keaton’s dogged reporters; it’s a great part, based on a real-life journalist. The film brings to mind All the President’s Men—in the best possible way.

Davis Guggenheim is a second-generation documentarian, following in the footsteps of his father Charles, with an Oscar to his credit for An Inconvenient Truth. His latest endeavor is He Named Me Malala, which opens theatrically in October. With him is writer-director Alexander Payne, who came to Telluride as a Guest Director several years ago and got hooked; now he’s a regular attendee.

Brie Larson gives a standout performance in Lenny Abrahamson’s Room, opposite a precocious young Jacob Tremblay. It’s also on the October release schedule. Here she is following an outdoor panel following Telluride’s Labor Day picnic.

Chapin Cutler and his team at Boston Light & Sound equip and run all the venues at Telluride, including several that are “invented” every year out of a high school gymnasium, a conference center, and a skating rink. This is the projection booth at the Chuck Jones Cinema, equipped with digital equipment as well as film projectors. At the far right is a 16mm machine!

2015 Telluride Wrap-Up: The 5 Best Films, Awards Season Notes & More

Rodrigo Perez — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 15:55:00 GMT

The Telluride Film Festival had what some might describe as an “off year,” but it really depends on your perspective. What was clear, were some subtle-but-perceptible changes. The festival lead by Tom Luddy and Julie Huntsinger doubled-down on “serious” advocacy programming, going so far as to talk up smaller gems to the press, figuring that bigger prestige and studio pictures could do the talking for themselves. To that end, Telluride originally recoiled at surprises like “Argo” and “Frances Ha” — two films that weren’t announced, but appeared suddenly and secretly (to some extent anyhow) in the 2012 line-up.

In fact, other than some restorations announced after the fact, Telluride 2015 had zero surprise screenings — all the TBAs in the schedule were slots of already announced films aside from two restorations. Perhaps to demonstrate how serious the festival organizers were in trying to honor the spirit of TFF––films before awards season noise, something they clearly grapple with–– they gave their opening day patron screening (normally something they preserve for the “Argo,” “12 Years A Slave,” “Wild” and the would-be Oscar-contenders), to Fox Searchlight’s documentary “He Named Me Malala” (celebratory, but ultimately kind of dull).

Still, try as they could to keep the awards season discussion to a minimum and keep the focus on the films, some of contenders in their programming stuck out. Here are the five best films I saw; a recap because many of them have already been reviewed and discussed, and to keep it interesting (for myself), I’m also going to discuss their awards-season potential.
1. “45 Years”
What an exquisite and beautiful film, not to mention a huge leap for English filmmaker Andrew Haigh. His debut “Weekend” was good, but “45 Years,” is a stellar film about a sexagenarian couple about to celebrate their 45th year wedding anniversary when things begin to unravel and a secret from their past starts to drive a wedge between them. No, it’s not a thriller, but a deeply intimate film and a gorgeous reflection of the interior heartaches we cannot express. Beautifully shot (huge props to Lol Crawley for the best looking English countryside shots you’ll ever see) and oh-so-delicate, one could argue it even outdoes “Carol” at its exquisitely tender and fragile touch. Tom Courtenay is terrific in the film, but it’s ultimately Charlotte Rampling who devastates. Indie studio Sundance Selects doesn’t seem big enough to earn Rampling a nomination, until you remember they were able to achieve exactly that for Marion Cotillard last year with the Dardenne’s unflinchingly honest “Two Days, One Night.” How great would the 2015 season be if we could just hand Rampling the award now and forego the eventual squabbling. (Our review from Berlin.)

2. “Son Of Saul”
This is a stunning directorial debut for 38-year-old László Nemes. After you see the picture you can understand why there was so much drama at Cannes over “Son Of Saul” not winning the Palme d’Or top prize (it won the Grand Prix runner-up prize instead). A harrowing holocaust movie that brings to mind rats running the maze of Dante’s Inferno, the confidence on display in the claustrophobic, bravura filmmaking is off the charts. While it’s unrelentingly grim and bleak––essentially a kind of roving thriller about a man who wants to give a proper burial to his illegitimate son at all costs, including his own life––the movie ripped me apart by the time it reached its dynamic and poignant ending. Hungary has selected "Son of Saul" as its official entry in the Foreign Language Film category for the Academy Awards, and you can guarantee it will make the final five, if not win outright (and for the record, Sony Pictures Classics are shooting for a Best Picture nod as well). (Our review from Cannes.)

3. “Carol”
Todd Haynes’s drama is already beginning to suffer from too much hype. It’s a bit of a cold, emotionally aloof film––maybe too much so for the Academy, who could find it chilly––but it’s immaculately crafted on every single level. In a perfect world, all the artisans of the film are nominated, because its look, design, technique and craft is stupendous. Edward Lachman captures some of the most gorgeous images rendered on celluloid––shot in super 16MM no less––Sandy Powell’s costumes are breathtaking, the production design and art direction by Judy Becker and Jesse Rosenthal are masterful, and Carter Burwell’s score is properly crestfallen. And of course, the movie features two terrific leads in Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett, as two tentative lovers with a gulf of expressive ache and longing between them. The slight knock on the film is maybe it’s just too perfect; not one hair is out of place and the spotlessness of the film may suck the oxygen out of it for some audiences. Regardless, it's still unquestionably a captivating and lovely film, and no one loses when a film that excels on so many levels is applauded and awarded. (Our review from Cannes.)

4. “Steve Jobs”
There are certainly some critics in the “Steve Jobs” for and against camps, but more power to them I suppose. I unapologetically loved almost every minute of this incredibly propulsive, symphonic and unconventional biopic. What’s special about its dynamism is that kineticist filmmaker Danny Boyle usually coaxes acceleration through his films visually. Here, he cedes the authorship to screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, which is a nice, surprising change of pace. It’s Sorkin’s film, which means rapid fire and assaultive dialogue, and Boyle largely serves that through vigorous editing, music and an orchestral-like swirl to this razor sharp drama about a man that helped transform our digital world. And then there’s of course the actors, Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jeff Daniels and others, who make the material sing effortlessly. "Jobs" is of the greatest roller coaster rides you’ll take this year, and it also examines the binary notion of where and when genius develops. (H ere’s my review.)
5. “Spotlight”
At first Tom McCarthy’s “Spotlight” seems like a solid thriller, but as the movie gains steam, it becomes a terrifically humanist picture about faith, the lack thereof, and the workmanlike pride of getting it right. Comparisons to “The Insider” and “All The President’s Men” seemed far-fetched at first, but as McCarthy and Josh Singer’s script begins to coil, it becomes an equally gripping exposé about process, investigation, and the guilt that amounts when horrible things happen during on your watch. There aren’t too many stand-out players in the movie (it’s an ensemble picture) but Michael Keaton still could earn himself another nom. It should be said that while their roles are fairly small, and maybe even too small for a Best Supporting nomination (depending on how the year shakes out anyhow), Stanley Tucci and Liev Schreiber are just outstanding in the film. (Here’s our review from Venice.)

The Rest/Films With Awards Season Potential
As suggested from Mark Harris, perhaps the greatest thing to come out of Telluride this year was the lack of superlative Oscar proclamations (in 2013 when “12 Years A Slave” first screened, pundits were declaring the Oscar race over). The awards season roar was dull, which is perhaps what Luddy and Huntsinger had hoped for.

A24’s “Room” made a big splash thanks to the tremendous performances of Brie Larson and newcomer Jacob Tremblay, but some of the reaction on the film was mixed (I was one of them, but still largely positive). It’s going to be a crowded year, so it’ll be interesting to see if A24 can penetrate the Oscars. Indie Spirit Awards, Gothams, and others.

I’m really going to need to see Cary Fukunaga’s “Beasts Of No Nation” again (here’s our Venice review). It’s a grim and brutal film that I feel somewhat ambivalent about. It’s terrific filmmaking, but I was so exhausted when I saw it; I felt pummeled by the movie experience. Normally, a film that has that kind of wallop is a good thing, and it probably still is, but I’m not sure I can say I loved being brutalized by it in the same way I was by “Son of Saul,” which had a similar affect on me, but with a different result. Idris Elba is great in it too, but if Netflix hopes the film will be a big Oscar contender, they’ve made their first critical error––the movie is too grim and dark for the Academy. If it does score nominations, I predict the movie will go the way of “Selma," a congratulatory “good job” nod or two that pretty much goes nowhere.

“Black Mass” seems like a film that is going to award pundits their yearly dose of amnesia, in other words, a film that the Golden Globes and the Hollywood Foreign Press are going to eat up, but, it’s doubtful the movie is going to make much of a serious Oscar dent. Johnny Depp is certainly a thousand times better than he has been in his McFranchise work, but that’s not saying too much. Scott Cooper is director one can admire, but hardly really love. “Black Mass” looks great thanks to Masanobu Takayanagi, but it’s like a painting you can admire, though it does nothing for you emotionally or spiritually. (Here’s our Venice review which I completely agree with.)

How much does “Suffragette” want Oscar-nods? Well, Meryl Streep shows up for one small scene just to give the grandstanding speech you'll be sure to see in some Academy reels. Directed with skillful craft by Sarah Gavron, and starring a very good Carey Mulligan, “Suffragette” is otherwise really conventional and by-the-book. I didn’t dislike it as much as Chris Willman did in his Playlist review from Telluride, but I felt deeply unmoved throughout. The problem was the very predictable script and the very familiar tone. Still, as unforgettable as it was, this is the type of film that is manna to Academy voters, so I’d expect it to score several nominations including Best Picture and Best Actress. But if it wins anything, I’d genuinely be really surprised.

Let’s get out of the way right now that “Anomalisa” is not an Oscar film at all and that’s completely ok. Charlie Kaufman’s first film in seven years, co-created with animator Duke Johnson, “Anomalisa” is a dark, absurdist treat about male existential crises, the crushing banality of life, the bizarre nature of business travel, and the strange social transaction that occurs. It’s intimate, erotic and nightmarish at times and it’s a hilarious hoot. Here’s my review.

I still need to review “He Named Me Malala” which I didn’t care for, and Charles Ferguson’s climate control doc “Time to Choose” which is an urgent call to arms. "Time to Choose" is very good as it mixes hope within its overwhelming statistics about where the planet it headed, but I worry that the layman might be scared off by its dense delivery of information. It’s still a very well-crafted doc that could turn up in the conversation at the end of the year too. I saw the Cuban drag queen/father and son drama "Viva" as well, but it's underwhelming.

I immensely enjoyed Jafar Panahi’s “Taxi,” a playful and sly meta-political comedy (essentially) with a feeling closer to documentary. Banned from filmmaking for 20 years under Iran’s regime, the great contradiction is that the Iranian cultural minister congratulated Panahi when “Taxi” won the Golden Bear top prize in Berlin earlier this year. The even greater irony is though “banned” from filmmaking and once under house arrest, Panahi is now much more free and has actually given interviews in Iran. This hypocrisy and laziness of their own misguided laws is what Panahi explores in “Taxi.” It’s a dissident statement and indictment of Iran’s laws, but its done with great humor and whimsy. (Read Jessica’s review from Berlin here.)

Here's what I saw with my personal grades.

“Anomalisa” [B+, read my review]
“Beasts of No Nation” [B]
“Black Mass” [B-]
“Carol” [B+]
“45 Years” [A]
“He Named Me Malala” [C+]
“Room” [B, read my review]
“Son of Saul” [A-]
“Spotlight” [A-]
“Steve Jobs” [B+/A-]
“Suffragette” [C]
“Taxi” [B+]
“Time to Choose” [B]
“Viva” [C+, read my review]

Browse through all our coverage of the 2015 Telluride Film Festival to date by clicking here.

Telluride Review: Paddy Breathnach’s Queer-Positive, Father/Son Drama ‘Viva’

Rodrigo Perez — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 20:02:36 GMT

There’s two identities at war with themselves in director Paddy Breathnach’s tender, but uneven “Viva,” a queer-positive movie about drag queens, queer communities and self-expression in the slums of Havana, and a father and son story about estrangement and reconciliation. In truth, these interwoven ideas should be complementary; a homophobic and domineering father, a gay and timid son and the young man’s discovery of a passionate creative outlet in the midst of bleak poverty and few opportunities: the cathartic escapism of drag expressiveness. The foundational elements have all the necessary ingredients for compelling conflict. But despite an expressive visual eye, a strong capacity to communicate empathy and good craft, the promising “Viva” is hampered by a predictable narrative overburdened with one too many cliches that divide the movie’s strengths. Its normcore story meets its unique queer-core sensibilities and both cancel each other out — or at least don't add up as much as they should.

“Viva” takes place on the decaying streets of Havana, vibrantly captured in all their dilapidated beauty by cinematographer Cathal Watters; the faded colors, the chipped paint, the cracked cobblestones, and all the rest. And wandering the streets in search of himself is the young and lithe 18-year-old Jesus (Héctor Medina). Trying to avoid the gay sex trade most of his friends are forced to endure, Jesus cuts hair, mostly for an elderly clientele with little cash, to get by. He also fixes the lavish wigs for Mama (Luis Alberto Garcia), the she-boss of a local drag establishment and bar. Without a mother, father, or guidance, Jesus is directionless and perhaps a little spiritually lost; a dreamer who doesn’t know what he’s looking for.

And just as Jesus begins to discover what makes him feel alive has been right under his nose the whole time — getting on stage to perform in drag — much to the resent and risible scorn of the veteran queens on the circuit, his long-lost father, ex-boxer and convicted murderer Angel (Jorge Perugorría) appears out of nowhere to rain on his parade and give him a bruising smack to add insult to narrative injury.

Angel’s timing is not only super convenient, it slashes across and interrupts the more interesting and vivid drag queen, gay and trangendered flavor of the movie in favor of a much more ordinary father and son story, and one that really doesn’t make much sense in practice.

The narrative tells us that Jesus lost his mother years ago and barely knew his father. “I never knew any different,” the streetwise teen remarks when asked what it was like growing up without a father figure. And yet, when the drunken, intolerant, asshole Angel appears — and commandeers his son’s house, booze and food to boot — the effeminate Jesus seems not only ridiculously accommodating to this abusive parent, he suddenly seems to long for the father figure the movie has told us the independent man never needed. Frustratingly on top of all that, Angel gives Jesus absolutely zero reason to love him and yet he still does.

The brutish Angel has his problems, but they are of his own machismo making and he is largely unredeemable. An inveterate bastard who forbids his son to perform — which largely makes the drag scene disappear from the movie — father and son try and come to terms with each other. And as if right on cue, before Angel can even begin to understand his gay son, the former pugilist’s drinking and smoking reveals an terminal illness that takes the movie into a maudlin, “Terms Of Endearment”-esque direction.

There are further crucial problems along the way too. Apart from an impassioned closing performance that brings down the house with Jesus’ writhing in emotional pain with mascara tears running down his face, most of the drag performances in the movie are actually unremarkably shot. Jesus is supposed to be mediocre in his stage skills and slowly improving throughout the movie and impressing the clientele, but the otherwise convincing Héctor Medina can’t really lip-synch for shit at any point in the movie, nor are any of the performance scenes, save the last, his strong suit. There’s an awkward stiltedness to Medina’s stage presence even though drag is supposed to be the character’s spiritual sense of liberation. It’s not always overly pronounced, but its perceptible enough to mar many of the movie’s performance scenes. Breathnach seems to be aware of this as well, over-compensating and even hiding the inadequacies of the performance at times. The world and cast of characters of the drag scene is rich throughout the movie and yet their ultimate release on stage often underwhelms.

Apart from this odd, particular problem “Viva” just often feels far too familiar, predictable and too eager to embrace the melodramatic. The disapproving dad who gets sick and then forgives his son (or relents to letting him perform, because fuck it, I’m dying) is a fairly cheap conceit and Angel doesn’t really come to terms with his son as much as he just has no choice (perhaps the point, but it still doesn’t feel right).

“Viva” becomes extremely maddening in the sense that it has so many promising elements going for it, but they never coalesce in any real way we haven’t seen in a dozen movies before. Medina and Garcia in particular, are strong performers, but the movie's feelgood tendencies never quite connect in the emotionally honest manner it hopes to.

Havana makes a nice character in the film. Almost anywhere Breathnach points the camera there is cracked splendor to be found. The filmmaker also scores emotional points with shots of silent contemplation; Jesus staring off into the setting-sun distance, dreaming of a more fulfilling life. Stephen Rennicks’ score (he wrote the quirky music for “Frank”) is also quite beautiful, flecked with balsa-wood acoustic notes of deep longing and wistfulness.

But while these beguiling qualities give the movie brief respite from its familiar conventions, they do not rescue it. “Viva,” which means live in Spanish, has some good ideas floating around in its balmy evening air. But it’s akin to going out on what feels like a magical evening that turns out to be rather uneventful and typical night. Jesus finally goes for broke in the film’s final dynamic musical sequence; pounding on his chest with rousing fervor singing a final cri du coeur for all the suffering he’s endured throughout. It’s a an emotionally charged and even electrical sequence, but it sums up “Viva” well; a moving movie that tries too hard to please and thus never truly satisfies. [C+]

Browse through all our coverage of the 2015 Telluride Film Festival to date by clicking here.

Alfred Hitchcock, Laurel & Hardy and Cutting-Edge Cinema

Leonard Maltin — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 18:44:54 GMT

The Telluride Film Festival is actually many festivals rolled into one. You can pursue world cinema and see the work of up-and-coming filmmakers, concentrate on documentaries, focus on revivals (including silent films with live musical accompaniment), or get the jump on the hottest films of the fall season. Making choices over the jam-packed Labor Day weekend event is always a challenge and this year was no exception.

Although I did see some high-profile films and got to interview director Danny Boyle onstage before a screening of his dazzling Steve Jobs, the two programs that meant the most to me were Kent Jones’ documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut and Serge Bromberg’s presentation of restored Chaplin and Keaton shorts, along with the world premiere of the long-lost Laurel and Hardy comedy The Battle of the Century. Everyone I spoke to who attended these shows agreed that they were highlights of the festival.

Serge Bromberg wears many hats: archivist, scholar, distributor, pianist, and showman. All were on display as he treated the audience at the Sheridan Opera House to meticulous restorations of Charlie Chaplin’s The Bank (1915) and Buster Keaton’s Daydreams (1922). He demonstrated how he and his colleagues compared multiple prints of each short in order to pick the best-looking shots—and sometimes the best frames—in order to achieve optimal results. He also treated us to recently discovered Keaton footage from The High Sign and Hard Luck.

Then came the pièce de resistance: the first public screening of Laurel and Hardy’s The Battle of the Century (1927). Renowned for its epic pie fight, it became famous when Robert Youngson excerpted it in his landmark feature The Golden Age of Comedy (1958)…but that tantalizing extract was all that seemed to survive.

In introducing Serge I explained that I almost made history with this film in 1976, when I was curating the Museum of Modern Art’s salute to American comedy. To my astonishment, I discovered that MoMA held a 35mm nitrate print of Battle’s first reel in its vaults. It was sitting there for years but no one realized it. I practically burst with excitement as I watched it and programmed it for a Sunday showing with other comedy shorts. But that Sunday the projectionist was fearful that a torn sprocket could ignite the highly flammable film. He refused to run it, which was his prerogative—but also a great disappointment. At least Reel One was now spoken for and subsequently preserved.

Then, this summer, film collector Jon Mirsalis discovered the complete Reel Two among the titles he purchased from the Gordon Berkow estate—including prints he acquired from the collection of The Golden Age of Comedy’s producer, Robert Youngson. It seems Youngson struck at 16mm print for himself while he had access to the 35mm negative in the 1950s.

There is still some missing footage from the end of Reel One in which Eugene Pallette sells Oliver Hardy accident insurance on his pal Stan Laurel. Years ago, Blackhawk Films covered this gap with a pair of stills and two title cards when they released the incomplete film on 16mm.

Reel Two, however, is intact—and was well worth waiting a lifetime to see. Youngson chose the shots he liked best for his compilation feature and did a seamless job of editing, but the complete pie fight is longer and funnier. What a glorious comedy this is. (It’s also notable for its credentials—including supervisor Leo McCarey and cameraman George Stevens, both of whom went on to stellar filmmaking careers—and the incidental presence of a young Lou Costello in the front row of spectators at Stan Laurel’s prizefight.)

Seeing The Golden Age of Comedy at the age of 7 changed my life and sent me to the library to read everything I could about the silent film era. A decade later, the publication of Hitchcock/Truffaut had a similar impact on me and many other film buffs of my generation. This book-length conversation between the brilliant auteur François Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock explored every film by the Master of Suspense in exquisite detail.

Now, almost fifty years later, the man who collaborated with Martin Scorsese on the notable documentaries My Voyage to Italy and A Letter to Elia has made a heartfelt film about the Hitchcock-Truffaut enterprise. Kent Jones draws on the original audiotapes, Philippe Halsman’s photographs of their interview, and generous excerpts from Hitchcock’s films. He then enhances this raw material with articulate observations from some of today’s leading directors who grew up with that influential book, including David Fincher, Richard Linklater, Wes Anderson, Olivier Assayas, Peter Bogdanovich, James Gray, and Scorsese, among others. The result is a joyous experience for any movie lover, especially if you love Hitchcock. It’s also heartening to know that so many of today’s finest filmmakers carry a deep knowledge of (and appreciation for) Hitchcock’s work with them.

Hitchcock/Truffaut, written by Jones and Serge Toubiana, will have a long life, I’m sure, following its film festival exposure and theatrical release. Coproduced by Cohen Media, it will undoubtedly be released on DVD and Blu-ray and become required viewing, just as the book that inspired it has become a standard work. A filmmaker friend who saw the documentary at Telluride told me that it fired him up to start working on a new script, right away.

That’s the beauty of the Telluride Film Festival. It’s not a marketplace or a paparazzi haven: it’s a magnet for movie lovers of all stripes, including moviemakers. Later this week I’ll share some of my snapshots and thoughts about some of the contemporary films I saw, when I wasn’t caught up in the beauty of that Rocky Mountain village.

Laurie Anderson's Puppy Love Paean 'Heart of a Dog' Warms Telluride and Venice

Ryan Lattanzio — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 18:02:30 GMT

"Heart of a Dog" is Laurie Anderson's cinematic collection of remembrances of her late, beloved, piano-playing, finger-painting dog Lolabelle. Melding real-life footage and imagined sequences of the dog after death, the film also touches on Anderson's experiences in New York post-9/11.

Famous for her experimental performance art, beginning in the late-1960s, Anderson has had a productive art rock career sparked by her 1982 album debut "Big Science," which included the minimalist single "O Superman." She has directed movies, including 1986 cult concert film "Home of the Brave."

Abramorama will open "Heart of a Dog," which premiered in Telluride before heading off to the Venice competition, theatrically on Wednesday, October 21st before it hits HBO in 2016. It's also playing in Toronto.

Variety:

Dogs have clearly become an avant-gardist’s best friend. First Jean-Luc Godard delivered a funny 3D valentine to a pooch named Roxy Mieville in “Goodbye to Language,” and now the New York-based musician/performance artist Laurie Anderson has woven a tide of personal stories, insights and visual-musical riffs into a more accessible but no less singular consideration of the species in “Heart of a Dog.” While this alternately goofy, serious, lyrical and beguiling cine-essay serves primarily as a loving tribute to the memory of Anderson’s rat terrier, Lolabelle, its roving, free-associative structure brings together all manner of richly eccentric musings on the evasions of memory, the limitations of language and storytelling, the strangeness of life in a post-9/11 surveillance state, and the difficulty and necessity of coming to terms with death.

Indiewire:

"Heart of a Dog" contrasts the absurdities of modern times with sweeping observations that dwarf such concerns. Using a personal style reminiscent of Chris Marker's diary films, Anderson develops an eloquent treatise on the nature of canine obsession that dovetails into post-9/11 anxieties, ruminations on the afterlife, and the fragility of every waking moment. Her fragmented observations organically sway from warm nostalgia to utter dread. "As a child, I was a kind of sky worshipper," she says early on, as the screen turns blue, setting the stage for a wide open investigation into the desire to understand forces just beyond human comprehension.

The Hollywood Reporter:

From a sensory point of view, the film is a pleasure, the images having been manipulated in various ways to evocative effect, Anderson’s voiceovers proving more amusing than not, and the music taking mostly lively turns. But most of all, you leave feeling that Lolabelle was very lucky in her choice of owner.

Screen Daily:

Anderson’s breathy delivery and the exaggerated infusion of magic realism in her reminiscences may rub some audiences the wrong way. Her sense of loss in this amalgam of media can’t be denied.

Critics Pick the Best Films and Performances from Telluride 2015

Steve Greene — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 16:12:40 GMT

After a startling premiere at Cannes back in May and now an impressive showing in the mountains of Colorado, "Son of Saul" continues to be a critical standout.

The debut feature from director László Nemes, following a harrowing tale of survival inside the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, was selected as the best film of the 2015 Telluride Film Festival by a collection of critics covering the festival in our Criticwire Network.

We asked a dozen writers to send us their favorite films and performances from the films from this year's lineup. Using a simple scale (five points for a first-place mention, four for second-place, etc.), we were able to come to a mini-consensus.

On the acting side, Brie Larson was a near-unanimous selection, with her turn in the eerie "Room" mentioned on all but a single ballot as one of the top performances from the festival. Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, anchoring the front-of-camera success of Todd Haynes' "Carol," also finished in the upper acting tier.

The top directing and supporting role slots both went to "Beasts of No Nation," with Cary Fukunaga and Idris Elba finishing strong. Elba topped his respective category, while Fukunaga came in only second to Nemes.

WATCH: Michael Keaton Takes on the Catholic Church in 'Spotlight' Trailer

"Spotlight" established its bonafides as an ensemble piece, with four different cast members getting nods and three of them finishing in the top five. And while the film may not have landed at the top of the Telluride favorites, Danny Boyle's "Steve Jobs" was the film that graced the most number of ballots.

Commendations in the documentary section were fairly spread out, but top films to appear on a handful of ballots include Kent Jones' "Hitchcock/Truffaut" and Charles Ferguson's climate change warning "Time to Choose."

If you're curious to sift through the individual ballots, we've collected them all on the following page. The top results are included below:

Critics' Favorites of Telluride 2015

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE

1. Son of Saul

2. Spotlight

3. Steve Jobs

4. Anomalisa

T5. 45 Years
T5. Beasts of No Nation

BEST DIRECTOR
1. László Nemes, Son of Saul

2. Cary Fukunaga, Beasts of No Nation
3. Todd Haynes, Carol

4. Lenny Abrahamson, Room

5. Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson, Anomalisa

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Brie Larson, Room

2. Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs

3. Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years

4. Rooney Mara, Carol

5. Cate Blanchett, Carol

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation

2. Jacob Tremblay, Room

3. Liev Schreiber, Spotlight

4. Michael Keaton, Spotlight

5. Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight

For a full list of critics' ballots, see the next page.

Nick Allen, RogerEbert.com

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE

1. Beasts of No Nation

2. Anomalisa

3. Steve Jobs

4. Heart of a Dog

5. Room

BEST DIRECTOR

1. Cary Fukunaga, Beasts of No Nation

2. Danny Boyle, Steve Jobs

3. Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson, Anomalisa

4. Todd Haynes, Carol

5. Laurie Anderson, Heart of a Dog

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Carey Mulligan, Suffragette

2. Brie Larson, Room

3. Tom Noonan, Anomalisa

4. Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs

5. Rooney Mara, Carol

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation

2. Cate Blanchett, Carol

3. Jennifer Jason Leigh, Anomalisa

4. Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

5. Seth Rogen, Steve Jobs

Alex Billington, FirstShowing.net

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE

1. Beasts of No Nation

2. Steve Jobs

3. Spotlight

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

1. Sherpa

2. Time to Choose

3. He Named Me Malala

BEST DIRECTOR

1. Cary Fukunaga, Beasts of No Nation

2. Jennifer Peedom, Sherpa

3. Danny Boyle, Steve Jobs

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Abraham Attah, Beasts of No Nation

2. Johnny Depp. Black Mass

3. Brie Larson, Room

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight

2. Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation

3. Jeff Daniels, Steve Jobs

Gregory Ellwood, Hitfix

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE

1. Son of Saul

2. Spotlight

3. Room

4. Beasts of No Nation

5. 45 Years

BEST DIRECTOR

1. Cary Fukunaga, Beasts of No Nation

2. László Nemes, Son of Saul

3. Tom McCarthy, Spotlight

4. Lenny Abrahamson, Room

5. Andrew Haigh, 45 Years

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Brie Larson, Room

2. Cate Blanchett, Carol

3. Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years

4. Johnny Depp, Black Mass

5. Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

2. Michael Keaton, Spotlight

3. Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation

4. Tom Courtenay, 45 Years

5. Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight

David Ehrlich, TimeOut

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE

1. Carol

2. Son of Saul

3. Anomalisa

4. 45 Years

5. Steve Jobs

BEST DIRECTOR

1. Todd Haynes, Carol

2. László Nemes, Son of Saul

3. Andrew Haigh, 45 Years

4. Jafar Panahi, Taxi

5. Jayro Bustamante, Ixcanul

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Cate Blanchett, Carol

2. Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs

3. Brie Larson, Room

4. Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years

5. David Thewlis, Anomalisa

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Rooney Mara, Carol

2. Michael Stuhlbarg, Steve Jobs

3. Jacob Tremblay, Room

4. María Telón, Ixcanul

5. Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE

1. Room

2. Spotlight

3. Carol

4. Steve Jobs

5. Beasts of No Nation

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

1. Hitchcock/Truffaut

BEST DIRECTOR

1. Todd Haynes, Carol

2. Danny Boyle, Steve Jobs

3. Tom McCarthy, Spotlight

4. Lenny Abrahamson, Room

5. Andrew Haigh, 45 Years

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs

2. Brie Larson, Room

3. Geza Rohrig, Son of Saul

4. Rooney Mara, Carol

5. Jacob Tremblay, Room

6. Abraham Attah, Beasts of No Nation

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation

2. Denis Mpunga, Margeurite

3. Michel Fau, Margeurite

4. Helena Bonham Carter, Suffragette

Eric Kohn, Indiewire

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE

1. Son of Saul

2. Anomalisa

3. Room

4. Beasts of No Nation

5. Steve Jobs

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

1. Heart of a Dog

2. Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom

3. Time to Choose

4. Taxi

BEST DIRECTOR

1. László Nemes, Son of Saul

2. Cary Fukunaga, Beasts of No Nation

3. Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson, Anomalisa

4. Lenny Abrahamson, Room

5. Todd Haynes, Carol

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Brie Larson, Room

2. Abraham Attah, Beasts of No Nation

3. Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs

4. Rooney Mara, Carol

5. Johnny Depp, Black Mass

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Michael Keaton, Spotlight

2. Seth Rogen, Steve Jobs

3. Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation

4. Tom Courtenay, 45 Years

5. Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

Tomris Laffly, Film Journal International

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE

1. Carol

2. Spotlight

3. Room

4. Steve Jobs

5. Suffragette

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

1. Heart of a Dog

BEST DIRECTOR

1. Sarah Gavron, Suffragette

2. Todd Haynes, Carol

3. Grímur Hákonarson, Rams

4. Laurie Anderson, Heart of a Dog

5. Jayro Bustamante, Ixcanul

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Brie Larson, Room

2. Rooney Mara, Carol

3. Carey Mulligan, Suffragette

4. Charlotte Rampling. 45 Years

5. Michael Fassbender. Steve Jobs

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Jacob Tremblay, Room

2. Rachel McAdams, Spotlight

3. Liev Schrieber, Spotlight

4. Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

5. Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation

Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE

1. Son of Saul

2. 45 Years

3. Carol

4. Steve Jobs

5. Spotlight

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years

2. Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs

3. Cate Blanchett, Carol

4. Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation

5. Brie Larson, Room

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Jacob Tremblay, Room

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE

1. Anomalisa

2. Spotlight

3. Son of Saul

4. Beasts of No Nation

5. Room

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

1. Sherpa

2. Hitchcock/Truffaut

BEST DIRECTOR

1. Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson, Anomalisa

2. Cary Fukunaga, Beasts of No Nation

3. Lenny Abrahamson, Room

4. Tom McCarthy, Spotlight

5. László Nemes, Son of Saul

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation

2. Brie Larson, Room

3. Rooney Mara, Carol

4. Michael Keaton, Spotlight

5. Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Liev Schreiber, Spotlight

2. Jennifer Jason Leigh, Anomalisa

3. Joan Allen, Room

Nigel Smith, The Guardian

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE

1. 45 Years

2. Son of Saul

3. Carol

4. Spotlight

5. Steve Jobs

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

1. Mom and Me

BEST DIRECTOR

1. László Nemes, Son of Saul

2. Andrew Haigh, 45 Years

3. Ken Wardrop, Mom and Me

4. Todd Haynes, Carol

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years

2. Geza Rohrig, Son of Saul

3. Rooney Mara, Carol

4. Michael Fassbender, Jobs

5. Johnny Depp, Black Mass

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Katherine Waterston, Steve Jobs

2. Michael Keaton, Spotlight

3. Liev Schrieber, Spotlight

4. Julianne Nicholson, Black Mass
5. Jacob Tremblay, Room

Fred Topel, Crave Online

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE

1. Steve Jobs

2. Spotlight

3. Room

4. Tikkun

5. Anomalisa

BEST DIRECTOR

1. Lenny Abrahamson, Room

2. Sarah Gavron, Suffragette

3. Tom McCarthy, Spotlight

4. László Nemes, Son of Saul

5. Avishai Sivon, Tikkun

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Brie Larson, Room

2. Michael Keaton, Spotlight

3. Geza Rohrig, Son of Saul

4. Hector Medina, Viva

5. Carey Mulligan, Suffragette

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Jacob Tremblay, Room

2. Rachel McAdams, Spotlight

3. Jorge Perugoria, Viva

4. Michael Stuhlbarg, Steve Jobs

5. Seth Rogen, Steve Jobs

Chris Willman, The Playlist

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE

1. 45 Years

2. Son of Saul

3. Anomalisa

4. Steve Jobs

5. Spotlight

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

1. Time to Choose

2. Hitchcock/Truffaut

3. Cocksucker Blues

BEST DIRECTOR

1. László Nemes, Son of Saul

2. Andrew Haigh, 45 Years

3. Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson, Anomalisa

4. Lenny Abrahamson, Room

5. Cary Fukunaga, Beasts of No Nation

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years

2. Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation

3. Catherine Frot, Margeurite

4. Brie Larson, Room

5. Tom Courtenay, 45 Years

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight

2. Liev Schreiber, Spotlight

3. Joel Edgerton, Black Mass

4. Michael Stuhlbarg, Steve Jobs

5. Anne-Marie Duff, Suffragette

Telluride: 4 Female-Centric Films About to Make a Splash This Awards Season

Tomris Laffly — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 15:00:00 GMT

We need no reminders that the 2014-15 awards season didn’t fare particularly well for women in front of or behind the camera. Among the eight Best Picture Oscar nominees, none were about a woman, and Ava DuVernay's "Selma" was the only work by a female filmmaker. DuVernay was eventually snubbed out of a nomination in the Best Director category.

Awards nods, snubs and trends surely don’t come out of nowhere. The crisis that leaves women out of serious conversations is systemic, and the resulting awards are simply a symptom of greater inequality imbedded within the industry. And this symptom generally comes into sharp focus right around the fall film festivals, when one can take a brief look at the on-paper Oscar hopefuls and get a rough lay of the land of which films will compete -- and how imbalanced the landscape is for women.

So how did the Telluride Film Festival -- which has screened all the Best Picture winners since 2010 and has just come to a close this year -- fare for women?

Bad news first. Among its full program of 46 feature films, only four were directed by women: “Suffragette” by Sarah Gavron, “Heart of a Dog” by Laurie Anderson, “Sherpa” by Jennifer Peedom and “Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict” by Lisa Immordino Vreeland. The last three are documentaries, so don’t expect to see an equal divide between male- and female-directed feature films come Oscar time.

But there is good news too. Unlike last year’s slate, female-led stories were in abundance at Telluride’s 42nd edition. Written and directed by Jayro Bustamante, “Ixcanul” captivated audiences with the story of a 17-year-old Mayan girl and her struggle in the face of poverty and an unplanned pregnancy. As Guatemala’s submission for the Oscars, the Kino Lorber-distributed film will play next at Toronto. Xavier Giannoli’s “Marguerite” (co-written by Giannoli in collaboration with Marcia Romano), a “Sunset Boulevard”-esque tragicomedy set in '20s France following a talentless opera singer (played by veteran Catherine Frot), became a word-of-mouth favorite with an added screening on Monday. Andrew Haigh’s "45 Years" also dazzled audiences with an increasingly suspenseful domestic drama and a remarkable performance by its co-lead Charlotte Rampling.

Additionally, two of this year’s top-tier awards-bound films included meatier-than-usual supporting roles for women, with characters doing a lot more than “standing by their men.” Danny Boyle’s “Steve Jobs” gave us an excellent Kate Winslet playing the savvy marketing guru and Jobs' confidant Joanna Hoffman -- a role she simply aces. The terrific investigative journalism procedural “Spotlight” by Tom McCarthy was elevated by a pitch-perfect performance from Rachel McAdams, playing the real-life journalist Sacha Pfeiffer (as part of a remarkable ensemble) who helped blow the lid off the systemic child molestations within the Catholic Church in 2002.

Beyond these, below are the four most prominent Telluride films that are either directed by women or that have central/strong female characters currently occupying awards chatters:

1. “Suffragette” (directed by Sarah Gavron)

How it played: Checking both the "female-directed" and "female-led" boxes, “Suffragette” was surely a title all eyes were on prior to its world premiere on the festival’s first day. The outspoken feminist Meryl Streep -- who has a very short but crucial role in the film -- was in town for support, giving interviews with a feminist angle. Yet the initial word on “Suffragette” (before it screened) was cautionary, with concerns that the film might not live up to its powerful premise.

Thankfully, Friday’s premiere helped ease the early fears. “Suffragette,” a potent period drama about women’s voting rights set during the suffrage movement in 1910s England, is indisputably powerful and effective. With an inspirational, solid script from Abi Morgan (“The Iron Lady”), stellar work by an ensemble cast led by the always-great Carey Mulligan and sure-handed direction from Sarah Gavron, “Suffragette” is an assured and important piece of filmmaking and a rare treat produced, written and directed by women. Yet the word on the ground is still mixed. But given how few films are made of this nature, “Suffragette” should still have legs outside the festival circuit before it opens on October 23.

Awards Prospects: So far, lead Carey Mulligan looks like the surest bet for a nomination. Yet, for a timely film that captures the feminist zeitgeist and relates to contemporary times in profound ways, “Suffragette” is likely to play well with audiences outside festivals, and loud-enough support around it might yield additional nominations. As far a stretch as it might be currently, writer Abi Morgan, director Sarah Gavron and the picture itself could be in the conversation as a result.

2. “Room” (directed by Lenny Abrahamson)

How it played: Brie Larson plays a young woman in captivity with her 5-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) in this stunning psychological thriller-meets-domestic drama. Directed by Lenny Abrahamson, the Toronto-bound “Room” is adapted for the screen by Emma Donoghue from her own novel with the same title and unapologetically conveys a female point of view through two mother-child stories. The screening I attended had a long standing ovation for the cast (including Brie Larson and Joan Allen), as well as the director, Jacob Tremblay and writer Emma Donoghue. I have heard some complaints about the story’s second half, when Joan Allen enters the picture, but overall, the word on the street (and in queues) was overwhelmingly positive.

Awards Prospects: Once again, lead actress Brie Larson looks like the most likely nomination here. Yet if the film finds an enthusiastic audience in Toronto and outside of festival circles (with the inventive distributor A24 in charge), there is a scenario where Joan Allen and writer Emma Donoghue could also go far as a result of a collective momentum.

3. “Carol” (directed by Todd Haynes)

How it played: Coming out of Cannes with almost unanimous praise, Todd Haynes’ “Carol” centers on the love affair between two women (played by Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara) in '50s America. The film is simply gorgeous, with top-notch, heartbreaking performances from both of its leads. “Carol” found buzz and critical praise here at Telluride, too, but perhaps on a quieter and more divisive scale.

Awards Prospects: With a special Telluride tribute for the film’s young star, “Carol” distributor The Weinstein Co. is prepping for a major awards push for Rooney Mara. Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg predicts that she will be running in the lead category, whereas Blanchett will be pushed for supporting. Among all the noteworthy films with central female characters, “Carol” is the most likely one to go beyond scoring nominations for its cast and bring its writer Phyllis Nagy a nomination in the Best Adapted Screenplay category (the film is based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel “The Price of Salt”), as well as nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Score and Best Costume for Sandy Powell, who once again does exceptional work alongside the costumes of “Cinderella” this year.

4. “He Named Me Malala” (directed by Davis Guggenheim)

How it played: First shown on the festival’s opening day at a private press and patron screening, Davis Guggenheim’s documentary on Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize winner and an influential activist for equal education rights for girls, made for an emotional screening, with Malala joining the post-screening Q&A via satellite. Yet the film ended up being a critical let-down. Guggenheim’s questionable structure, which often jumps back and forth chronologically, unfortunately failed to connect its incredible subject and rich material with the audience on an emotional level, and played more like a glorified newsreel than a complete and gripping character study.

Awards Prospects: Even though the critical reception of the film was underwhelming, there is undeniable power in the film’s timely topic and its instantly relatable and unquestionably loveable subject Malala Yousafzai. Helmed by Fox Searchlight, it is likely for the film to surpass its poor critical response and score a nomination in the Best Documentary category.

The upcoming Toronto and New York Film Festivals and the official releases of many more films will surely fine-tune and change the course of this awards season, with female-centric titles like “Freeheld”, “Joy”, “Truth” and “About Ray” still on the horizon, and early-in-the-year favorites like “Brooklyn” poised to continue their buzz throughout the fall. And while we will once again undoubtedly have plenty of films telling the stories of “brilliant men doing brilliant things,” this time, the female-centric titles in the funnel might just give the boys a run for their money.

Tomris Laffly is a freelance writer and film critic based in New York. She writes for and has contributed to outlets such as Movie Mezzanine, Film Journal International, TimeOut New York and Indiewire among others, and has been covering both Sundance and Telluride Film Festivals since 2013. She frequents art houses in NYC (especially Film Society of Lincoln Center) and tweets from @TomiLaffly.

Toronto Film Fest Won't Screen Aretha Franklin Doc Either

Ryan Lattanzio — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 17:54:09 GMT

The Toronto International Film Festival has cancelled its upcoming September 12 screening of Sydney Pollack's finally completed Aretha Franklin concert doc "Amazing Grace."

The news arrives just after a Colorado federal judge granted the injunction to block Telluride's planned screening on September 4. Franklin's attorneys argue that Pollack—who died in 2008, over three decades after shooting the film in 1972—said he wouldn't use the footage he shot of Franklin without her consent.

As reported out of Telluride over the weekend, after a 90-minute hearing, the judge stated that Franklin had granted permission to shoot "Amazing Grace" but producer Alan Elliot, who grabbed rights to the movie in 1998, needed her permission to release the film and did not have it.

Toronto, which will instead screen "Northern Soul," issued the following statement Tuesday:

We are extremely disappointed that Toronto audiences will not be able to see this extraordinary piece of art. The footage in the film is truly a cinematic treasure of twentieth century music and we hope global audiences will have opportunity to experience this film once a resolution is found.

READ MORE: Aretha Franklin Blocks Screening of 'Amazing Grace' at Telluride

Telluride Buy: Kino Lorber Takes Jewish Faith Drama 'Tikkun' (Trailer)

Ryan Lattanzio — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 17:40:00 GMT

With shades of Dreyer and Bresson, buzzed-about "Tikkun," Avishai Sivan's drama about an ultra-Orthodox man grappling with questions of faith in Jerusalem, has been acquired by Kino Lorber for US release.

Winner of top honors at the 32nd Jerusalem Film Festival, including best film, best screenplay, best cinematography (Shai Goldman) and best actor (Khalifa Natour), the film took Locarno's Special Jury Prize before making its US premiere at Telluride. Further US festival dates will be announced soon, before a full theatrical, VOD and home media release in 2016.

Here's the synopsis:

Haim-Aaron (played by Aharon Traitel) is a bright, Ultra-Orthodox religious scholar living in Jerusalem. One evening, following a self-imposed fast, Haim-Aaron collapses and loses consciousness. The paramedics announce his death, but his father (played by Khalifa Natour) takes over resuscitation efforts and, beyond all expectations, Haim-Aaron comes back to life.After the accident, try as he might, Haim-Aaron remains apathetic to his studies. He feels overwhelmed by a sudden awakening of his body and suspects that this is a test from God. He wonders if he should stray from the prescribed path and find a way to rekindle his faith. His father, noticing his son’s changed behavior, tries to forgive him – but is also tormented by the fear of having crossed God’s will on the night he resuscitated his son.

The black-and-white film has scored raves on the festival circuit, with Screen Daily writing, "Avishai Sivan lays down a marker as the potential Carl Dreyer or Lars Von Trier of Israeli cinema with 'Tikkun,' an impressive but relentlessly austere depiction of a crisis of faith."

READ MORE: What We Learned About the Oscar Race at Telluride

First Reviews of Eddie Redmayne in 'The Danish Girl': A Landmark, or 'Transgender for Beginners'?

Sam Adams — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 17:29:45 GMT

It's sometimes considered an axiom of film criticism that you review the film its creators made rather than they one you wish they'd made. But with "The Danish Girl," which was unveiled over the weekend at Venice and Telluride and will have its official North American premiere in Toronto this week, it's not simply a matter of wondering what, say, Edgar Wright's "Ant-Man" or David Fincher's "Steve Jobs" might have looked like. Since the minute Eddie Redmayne was cast as Lili Elbe, a trans woman who was one of the first to undergo what is now known as gender confirmation surgery, critics and activists have decried the choice to use a cisgender actor in the role — a part, incidentally, once considered for Nicole Kidman. Redmayne, who researched the part extensively, has approached the transgender community with due deference, and director Tom Hooper has said he "would champion any shift where the industry embraces trans actors. and celebrates trans film-makers," pointing out that he cast dozens of trans actors as extras and in small roles. The implicit argument is that movies like "The Danish Girl" will either be made with cis actors in the lead roles or they won't be made at all. But is that true, and if it is, is it possible it might be better not to make them? Transition stories present a special challenge, one that "Orange Is the New Black" met by casting Laverne Cox's twin brother as her character's pre-transition self. But that problem could be solved by moving past Hollywood's almost monolithic attraction to transitioning, with its prefab metaphors of self-discovery, and dealing with characters, and actors, who are already trans, and whose conflicts aren't solely defined by their gender identity.

Reviewing "The Danish Girl" presents critics with a dilemma, or at least a tricky navigational challenge. Some argue that in the year of Caitlyn Jenner's Vanity Fair cover and "Tangerine," a Sundance crowd-pleaser that stars trans women Mya Taylor and Kitana Rodriguez, Hollywood is out of excuses (an argument that might apply equally to the TV series "Transparent"). Others suggest that it takes middle-of-the-road entertainments to move society forward, and "The Danish Girl" will reach audiences that "I Am Cait" simply does not. ("Tangerine's" U.S. box office is just over $600,000; "The Danish Girl's" budget is reported as $15 million.) "It may be Transgenderism for Beginners," writes the Playlist's Jessica Kiang, "but then most people are beginners when it comes to trans issues." You could look at the reviews as a referendum on whether critics think movies need to educate their audiences or audiences need to educate themselves.

The danger with the latter position is that it's easy to slide into being an apologist for the status quo, or to risk sounding like one of the critics who praised Paul Haggis' "Crash," whose reputation had already begun to turn sour before its Best Picture win and now stands, just over a decade later, as one of the Academy's canonical embarrassments. Reviews that praise Alicia Vikander's performance as Lili's wife, Gerda, who struggles with and eventually comes to accept her husband's true self, subtly hint that the movie's real point of identification is not Lili, however sympathetic she may be, but the character who watches from outside and is changed by the experience — the movie's cis audiences, in other words. That may be an accurate characterization, but there's something deeply discomfiting in a high-profile movie about a trans character whose trans audiences are only let in through the side door.

There will, of course, be thinkpieces galore as "The Danish Girl" continues its path towards a late November opening and its all-but-certain march towards next year's Oscars. But as those who've argued that critics of "The Danish Girl" should wait to see the movie start to do just that, they should be aware that the terms they're setting are being watched closely, and may have an effect beyond the rise or fall of a single film.

Reviews of "The Danish Girl"

David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

The correctness and careful sensitivity of the film's approach seem somehow a limitation in an age when countless indie and cable TV projects dealing with thematically related subject matter have led us to expect a little more edge. But if the movie remains safe, there's no questioning its integrity, or the balance of porcelain vulnerability and strength that Eddie Redmayne brings to the lead role. One might have wished for a more adventurous approach to this moving story, particularly at a time when transgender representation has taken over from gay rights as the next equality frontier. On the other hand, maybe the film's conventionality is exactly what's needed at this time to enlighten mainstream audiences on transgender issues?

Peter Debruge, Variety

Clearly, this was never not going to be a "prestige" picture. And while that ultra-respectful approach will engender allergic reactions in some, who'd sooner see a gritty, realistic portrayal — a la Jill Soloway’s terrific "Transparent" series for Amazon — than one seemingly tailored for the pages of fashion and interior-design magazines, there’s no denying that Hooper and screenwriter Lucinda Coxon have delivered a cinematic landmark, one whose classical style all but disguises how controversial its subject matter still remains. For rowdier crowds, there will always be "Myra Breckinridge." In order to penetrate the conversation of "polite" society, however, one must play by its rules, and "The Danish Girl" is nothing if not sensitive to how old-fashioned viewers (and voters) might respond, scrubbing the story of its pricklier details and upholding the long-standing LGBT-movie tradition of tragically killing off the "monster" in the end.

Alonso Duralde, The Wrap

For all its period setting and opulence, "The Danish Girl" is less removed from our own era than you might think; the physical violence and medical ignorance that Lili faces over the course of her evolution remain in place today. And while this film should by no means be the last word on an under-explored subject in mainstream cinema, it makes an interesting guidepost toward bolder stories in the future.

Jonathan Romney, Guardian

Einar/Lili is played by Eddie Redmayne, who is certain to reap plentiful laurels in the forthcoming awards season, with another role — following his Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything" — about a slow process of physical and psychological transformation. And no doubt this sumptuously mounted, high-minded and unabashedly Oscar-baiting undertaking will overall emerge dripping with honours. But well-meaning and polished as it is, "The Danish Girl" is a determinedly mainstream melodrama that doesn’t really offer new perspectives its theme; and in the year of Caitlyn Jenner, it's a theme on which mainstream audiences are ready for more trenchant insight.

Jessica Kiang, The Playlist

So yes, we might wish there were less of the feeling of Hooper, smelling salts on hand, gently settling the grandparents of the world onto lavender-scented chaise longues in order to tell them a story about how a person who looks and talks and lives as a man might actually be a woman. But "The Danish Girl" is so primly told (bar perhaps one tucking scene), and it treads so delicately around even the most conservative sensibilities, that it might just work to change some minds, which makes it valuable in a way an edgier, swifter, more urgent, individual, or exciting film (for it is none of those things) might not be.

Geoffrey Macnab, Independent

At times, the film feels too well-mannered and tasteful. Costume and production design are immaculate, in best heritage-movie fashion – but often a little fussy, too. You could easily imagine "The Danish Girl" being made in a far rawer, more stylized and stridently melodramatic way by a film-maker such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder. He would have egged up scenes like the early one in which we see Einar hiding his penis between his legs, or the later one in which he is assaulted by homophobic thugs. Instead, Hooper aims for subtlety and understatement. Some of its visual gambits – notably the poetic shots of Lili's scarf floating on the wind – verge on the trite.

Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com

While "The Danish Girl" is scrupulous in its 21st-century Distinguished Film tastefulness — my, the gorgeous cinematography, gee, the nuanced but nevertheless heartstring-tugging Alexandre Desplat score — it is also largely free of special pleading. Its signal virtue is in not treating Einar Wegener, Redmayne’s character, as a Special Other, or in slavering Straight Person Compassion on him or her. At its best moments it maintains a discreet detachment.

Dave Calhoun, Time Out

"The Danish Girl" is meticulously made – not a hair is out of place. What Hooper fails to do is get to grips with sexual identity in any way that's intellectually or emotionally provocative or surprising. That makes for a cold, pretty, delicate movie – one that too often relies on scene-stealing production design or the overwhelmingly insipid score for its otherwise strikingly absent emotional power.

Nicholas Barber, BBC

"The Danish Girl" ends by sandblasting away every last trace of ambiguity. First we have Lili announcing, "I am... entirely... myself." Then Hooper makes use of a deeply symbolic silk scarf. And then, just in case anyone in the cinema is still not sure what the film has been about, there is a final, painstakingly worded caption: "Lili's pioneering story can be thought of as paving the way for the modern transgender movement." Yes, obviously it can. But it might have been better if Lili's story could be thought of as, well, Lili's story. She deserves to have been portrayed as an actual person rather than a shiny monument to a cause.

Robbie Collin, Telegraph

“I believe I am a woman,” Lili says haltingly, as if the words still strike her as somehow embarrassing, or ridiculous. Gerda turns to the doctor and says very calmly: “I believe it too.” That, perhaps even more so than the surgery, is the transformation that counts.

Demetrios Matheou, Thompson on Hollywood

I'd argue that Lili is a better performance than Redmayne's Oscar-winning Stephen Hawking. The Brit happens to have such delicate features that when Einar emerges as Lily she is remarkably convincing as a woman (even if that's not really the point); more importantly, Redmayne also has a delicate range of expression that can suggest Lili's myriad feelings – the bewilderment, sadness, excitement, fear – in such a way that we accept the emotional tumult, are deeply moved by it, yet never feel that we're being assaulted by histrionics or confection. The actor has a power of empathy that results in consummate subtlety – a skill that's easily taken for granted.

John Bleasdale, Cine-Vue

There's a valid film to be made here about a heroic figure of the transgender movement. However, Hooper continues to burnish his prestige cinema credentials following the successes of "The King's Speech" and "Les Misérables," shooting a film that is overwhelmed by its own visual wealth. Costume and make-up Oscar nominations could be posted immediately as the film foregrounds these elements as part of its narrative. Danny Cohen's cinematography aspires to a painterly beauty but there are moments when the sumptuousness becomes intrusive — the tactile fetishism a little dull. Vikander is initially annoying in an over-fussy performance, a bit like a young Emma Thompson, but later on her humour becomes a necessary antidote to the high melodrama that drowns the stage with tears. Redmayne, by contrast, seems lost in the role and not only due to his initial gender confusion. Just as feminists occasionally rail against transvestites for reproducing a misogynistic performance of womanhood, so Redmayne bats his eyelids and flashes a nervous smile, looking for all the world like Jessica Chastain.

Zhuo-Ning Su, The Film Stage

This being a Hooper film, everything looks and sounds exceedingly agreeable as expected. Danny Cohen’s cinematography, in particular, captures the soft texture and lovely hues of the Danish harbor city to delicious effect. The production and costume designs, from the Oscar-nominated teams behind "The King’s Speech" and "Les Misérables," make no bold statements in their choices but pretty they certainly are. All these acting and technical achievements ultimately culminate in a whole that feels decidedly less than ambitious and way too eager to please. Considering it tells such a singular and important story, one only wishes "The Danish Girl" could have been made with a lot more edge and not the usual Academy-friendly faux-progressiveness.

Jonathan Romney, Screen Daily

The film’s most obvious appeal to audiences will be as a love story, with the interplay between Redmayne and Vikander centrally effective. Unfortunately, they don’t always seem to be acting together, or in the same film. Vikander stresses Gerda’s sexual and social confidence, but makes the character’s knowingness too archly emphatic throughout. Redmayne's performance, meanwhile, comes across as narcissistic in a way that his Stephen Hawking, in "The Theory of Everything," was not. That’s unavoidable, no doubt, in a film whose protagonist spends so much time examining his/her body language, but he's overdependent on a range of coy moves and gestures that may make viewers feel that they’re being flirted with a little strenuously.

Telluride: With Its Adventurous Netflix Deal, Can 'Beasts of No Nation' Work on the Small Screen?

Eric Kohn — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 15:47:48 GMT

READ MORE: First Reviews of "Beasts of No Nation"

There's an accidental symbolism in the opening shot in "Beasts of No Nation," a movie that has generated nearly as much attention for its distribution plan as its content. Writer-director Cary Fukunaga's camera peers through a hollowed-out television at a soccer game featuring a group of adolescent boys in an unnamed West African country. Slowly, he pulls back to reveal the beguiling image of the empty device in the middle of a vacant field, setting the stage for a drama that pushes beyond the limitations of Western media analysis.

However, it's also an apt metaphor for the multiple ways in which "Beasts of No Nation" will be presented to the world in the near future: Netflix plans to open the movie globally on its platform on October 16, the same day that audiences can see it in theaters. This is hardly a new approach — the day-and-date strategy has been part of the specialty business for years now — but for a lush, visually spectacular wartime drama engineered for wide release, the strategy represents a new kind of choice.

In "Beasts of No Nation," young Agu (Abraham Attah) survives a vicious attack on his village by local militants who kill the rest of his family. Escaping into the dense jungle, he quickly runs out of resources, only to be rescued by yet another band of violent revolutionaries led by the menacing Commandant (Idris Elba). It's here that he's trained in the horrific antics of invading other villages and committing the same atrocities that destroyed him family. Fukunaga, who also serves as the cinematographer, maintains full control of his immersive canvas. The spectacular wide shots and vivid colors of the jungle scenery are constantly at odds with the mounting violence.

One could argue that Fukunaga, whose previous work ranges from the immigration drama "Sin Nombre" to the first season of "True Detective," uses a lyrical visual style that fetishizes the abstract "African war zone" where the action takes place. Yet that same element is embedded in the material, which draws from the 2005 novel by Nigerian author Uzodinma Iweala. In both cases, the epic scope of the canvas represents a vibrant environment filled with mysteries for the young protagonist.

Attah's performance, whose character narrates the story as it moves along, marks one of the most impressive screen debuts in recent memory. His ambiguous expressions suggest a sense of deep contemplation and uncertainty, but not the intellectual tools to fully understand the chaos around him. Taught to hack up one captured local with a machete ("It's like chopping wood," the Commandant casually suggests), Agu experiences his first kill in haunting slo-mo that takes on a lyrical dimension as it might for more traditional rites of passage. Even when he's brainwashed by the Commandant to go on murderous rampages, he sees rich, exciting possibilities. That makes "Beasts of No Nation" into a graphic coming of age drama under the guise of a visceral war movie.

Miles ahead of Fukunaga's other projects in terms of breadth and thematic sophistication, "Beasts of No Nation" blatantly recalls "Apocalypse Now" for its spectacular use of scenery to convey the mixture of excitement and dread unique to the warzone. In that respect, the movie demands to find its audience on a big screen, where the immersive palette and detailed landscape take on a sharp expressionistic quality. Anyone watching "Beasts of No Nation" on their high definition television, skipping out on the limited theatrical run, misses one crucial part of the equation.

However, Fukunaga shows less interest in exploring the horrors of war than their traumatic impact on an innocent target. "Beasts of No Nation" is never less than a strikingly intimate tale, lingering often on Attah's face as Agu witnesses a series of atrocities or attempts to understand the Commandant's own vain mission.

To that end, "Beasts of No Nation" works as two different kinds of movies. Both poetic depiction of anarchic conflict and intimate portrait of a shifting belief system, it offers dueling access points that depend on the conditions where it's experienced. The possibility that anyone will bother to see it in theaters is a different story, but it certainly seems engineered to succeed in both arenas.

Wherever they're seen, the gorgeous textures of many scenes should deliver. "Fighting is what we do," the Commandant asserts, in a call-to-arms that energizes young Agu to the point where he becomes trapped in a new reality. At one point, in the midst of an ongoing slaughter, the greenery fades to a forbidding red. With so many images to soak in, characterization winds up the weakest link. Though Elba brings much to the role, the Commandant is ultimately a feeble villainous creation whose corruption seems almost too precise. Of course, that itself speaks to Agu's narrow understanding of the forces surrounding him.

Despite its two-and-half hour running time, "Beasts of No Nation" offers few major plot developments (another area where the "Apocalypse Now" comparison doesn't hold up). As a mood piece, however, it sounds a sharp, alarming note by implying that Agu may never recover from his experiences. "I cannot go back to doing child things," he asserts, but the finale suggests anyone in his situation can at least try. The closing image mirrors the first shot, this time without the television frame. Whether or not viewers see "Beasts of No Nation" through one of their own, the movie provides an effective window into an underrepresented world.

Grade: A-

Netflix releases "Beasts of No Nation" on its platform and in limited theaters on October 16.

READ MORE: The 2015 Indiewire Telluride Bible

Charles Ferguson Explains Why Nobody Can Make a Good Movie About Hillary Clinton

Eric Kohn — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 14:17:54 GMT

WATCH: Clip From Charles Ferguson's Telluride Doc 'Time to Choose'

Charles Ferguson has only made three movies, but has already conquered bigger issues than many filmmakers tackle in a lifetime. The former MIT scholar and internet entrepreneur first shifted gears to the documentary arena with "No End in Sight," a searing look at the institutional forces behind the Iraq war, which he followed up with his Oscar-winning "Inside Job," a breakdown of the factors behind the 2008 economic crisis. Then, for several years, he stumbled through troubled projects about Julian Assange and Hillary Clinton that never came to fruition.

Over the weekend, Ferguson cropped up at the Telluride Film Festival — which he has attended for 20 years, long before he became a professional documentarian — with a very different sort of exposé: "Time to Choose," an alarming overview of various ways in which environmental neglect is having a direct impact on global society.

Pairing lush imagery with tragic stories of damaged lives, Ferguson develops a ruminative essay film that methodically explores the various factors involved in environmental problems. The use of coal, electricity, oil, deforestation and processed foods are all scrutinized as Ferguson scours the world for examples of health problems and climate decay. But these upsetting stories come paired with a galvanizing message, as Ferguson offers examples of environmentally-friendly solutions with the capacity to improve the situation. The movie ends by anticipating a December summit in Paris to discuss environmental regulations, making "Time to Choose" the first of Ferguson's films to include a direct call to action.

Despite his obvious passion for the subject, Ferguson may never have made "Time to Choose" if his career had taken other directions in the aftermath of his Oscar win. At Telluride's Sheridan bar, Ferguson sat down with Indiewire before his Q&A to discuss those earlier challenges and explain how he shifted gears to focus on his latest work.

It's been five years since "Inside Job." What have you been doing in all that time?

This film took up the last two years of my life. Before that, I was involved in one classic and one not-classic movie industry disaster.

Meaning?

I was hired by HBO to make a narrative feature about Julian Assange. That turned out to be this amazing movie industry clusterfuck. It was nobody's fault, it was everybody's fault. Get me drunk sometime and I'll tell you everything that happened.

In general terms, why did the Assange project fall apart?

There were three drafts of the script and it got worse with each one. So did the fights. Finally, everybody just kind of gave up.

So what did you next?

I made an agreement with CNN to make a documentary about Hillary Clinton. That was a very different disaster, but it was also an interesting learning experience about where the dynastic portions of American politics is now.

How did it go awry?

So I make the deal with CNN. They're great — they give me enough money, they give me final cut. Then I start trying to make the movie, and I encounter a wall of silence the likes of which I have never encountered before. Nobody would talk to me. Nobody who knows the Clintons, nobody who likes the Clintons, nobody who hates the Clintons. At a certain point, the Clinton people got in touch with me directly and said, "We really don't want you to make this movie. Go away."

This was after the deal was signed?

Yes. CNN wanted me to go with it. They had a very good intelligence service. They were aware of the film before the contract was signed. The day after it was signed, we got a call from Hillary Clinton's press secretary, saying, "Let's talk. We have a problem."

So after a little while, I went to the head of CNN and said, "Look, they're trying to make me go away. I think we should make a public announcement that we're making a film to make it clear to them that we're not going away." If they're just being obstructionist, it's not going to do any good.

So we did that. Well. [long pause] Twenty-four hours after this public announcement, the chairman of the Republican National Committee calls a press conference and announces that if the film goes forward, the Republicans will wipe out CNN from all presidential debates and presidential coverage. Twenty-four hours after that, a very senior person in the Democratic party did not call a press conference. They privately called a very senior person at CNN and said, "We're not going to announce anything, but if this film goes forward, we're going to do the same thing."

Wow. What did you make of that?

I thought, "These people don't scare me; I'm not going to let this stop me." I decided, "I'm going to fucking make this film." Well, I found out that I wasn't making the film. I could have done something purely out of archival footage, but even that was an issue, because they were putting pressure on the networks not to give us footage.

Could you have tried to make the movie without CNN?

I had a contract, but nevermind the contract. How am I going to make the film? No one will talk to me. Absolutely no one. It's not even clear that I can get the archival footage.

Would it be easier to make the movie now that Hillary's campaign has started?

It's going to be just as bad now for several reasons. Obviously, wanting to win the election is one of them, and both the Republicans and the Democrats thought I would be a problem for them from that point of view. The other thing is that many of those people want jobs in the Clinton Administration. If they disobey her by talking to me then they won't get those jobs. But only about 10 percent of those people are actually going to get jobs. So after the election, if she wins, once she announces her cabinet, then it's going to be much easier to make a film.

Do you still want to do it?

I have an ambivalent feelings about its worth. I know a lot about the Clintons. Their story is interesting. He was always very manipulative. Always. But she was not. She started out as a very sincere, committed person. That remained true for quite a long time. There were some pressures and compromises when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas and she went on the board of Walmart, which was somewhat questionable. But still, she was a very committed person...until what they went through in the White House. Some of that is known, some of it is not. It changed her a lot.

So that would have been the narrative arc?

Yes. Someone did try to make a narrative about this and encountered the same problems.

Did you ever have a moment during this experience or while you were working on the Assange film where you thought, "I won a fucking Oscar. Why is this so hard?"

I wouldn't say I was shocked. I know a lot of people in the industry who have told me a lot of stories. I've read a lot of classic books about movie industry screw-ups. I knew what could happen. It's just always different when it happens to you. One very clear lesson about the stories and the books is that a lot of these things just happen because it's a crazy industry. In the case of the Julian Assange film, there were three people that I would have been happy to kill. But most of the people working on it were very well-intentioned. It was just group dynamics, timing, legal problems…

In any case, now your filmography is three very different documentaries about institutional problems — war, the economy and now the environment. How did you wind up shifting onto that third topic?

It's always important to me to have intellectual variety in my life in a number of different ways. My undergraduate degree is in mathematics and my Phd is in political science; I studied several different things quite seriously. The kind of education I got was very good, general-purpose capital equipment for a lot of things. That's one thing I loved about making films: Every project can be different.

What was the starting point for the environmental focus in particular?

When I was an undergraduate a long time ago, I spent a year living in rural France. I was 19. This was the late seventies. The idea that you would go to a supermarket to buy food was ridiculous. No one would ever do that. The idea that you would buy something packaged or processed was weird. Nobody did that. The way you bought your food was that you went to the market — that is, the place where all the farmers were four times a week. So I've always had an affection for nature, agriculture, food, those kinds of things.

Like everybody else, I saw "An Inconvenient Truth" and thought, "This is a really awful problem and there's nothing I can do about it." Then around two years ago, I ran into a guy who said, "Actually, this is a totally solvable problem. People don't understand this, but solar power has come along way and so has wind power. We don't have to just sit around and wait for this to kill us." So that led me to start looking into this. I learned a lot about the problem and the solution.

It's a huge topic, but your film is divided up into three chapters. How did you start to narrow it down?

The scope of the issue was a surprise to me. When I was stimulated to start looking, I realized fairly quickly this was much larger, more complicated — but also much richer and more interesting — set of issues. In the process of making this film, it really blew my mind. Various friends in the environmental world had told me about the effects of the palm oil industry on deforestation. But there's nothing anyone can tell you that compares to what you can see. That was totally transformative for me.

In what sense?

The nation of Indonesia is intrinsically beautiful — 3,000 islands, very complicated. It is also one of the darkest, most corrupt, violent, horrific places on earth. If you've seen Josh Oppenheimer's films ["The Act of Killing" and "The Look of Silence"], it really is like that. And it's being destroyed at a very high rate — unless this stops, in another 10 or 15 years, it will be gone. The whole country will be gone. Someone can tell you this many square miles are being deforested, but you have to see it. It is unimaginable. The smoke from the fires is so dense that we could not get in there for four days because all of the airports in the region were closed. When we finally found an open one and flew, conditions were very bad. No pilot in the United States would take off in those conditions. Visibility was less than a quarter mile. We flew for hours. When you see the vastness of the destruction, it never ends.

Nearly a decade has passed since "An Inconvenient Truth." Why do you think environmental messages still struggle to reach people?

Until very recently, people couldn't do anything. If it's all pessimism, people just tune out. The other thing is that there are enormous public organizations associated with this problem — it's a global, abstract, long-term collective thing. I wanted to show something that is in fact true: This same long-term, global, abstract problem also causes immediate problems. If we could get away from that, we could really benefit the world right now. Have I succeeded? I don't know.

What can people do?

Many things. The answer isn't the same if you're in Indonesia, China, Brazil or here. It's different if you're a mayor of a city or running a business. But there's a lot that you can do.

Let's say you're just somebody who saw the movie at the Telluride Film Festival — the typical Telluride customer who might be upper middle class, but not some hugely influential public figure.

It depends on the details, but you can put solar panels on your house, use LED light bulbs, get a hybrid or electric car. If you can afford a Tesla, they're incredible cars. The sticker price is high, but you save several thousands of dollar per year on gasoline.

Plus, as you note in the film, they're very cool.

They're incredibly cool. The first car that Tesla made was a convertible, which is an absurdly cool car. To have a car like that goes really fast and is incredibly fun to drive — and is also good for the planet — that's cool.

But it sounds like real change can only happen once these technologies are even cheaper.

We're getting very close to that point. Of course, oil companies are fighting it. They're going to lose, but the problem is that they may not lose fast enough. We need to deal with this soon. When you talk to scientific people about the impact — if we don't fix this, it's going to get really scary.

Do you feel as though awareness has shifted in any substantial way?

Some of the immediate problems are themselves getting noticed. For example, air pollution and food problems in China. Chinese people are obsessed with this. When I went back twice for this film, I hadn't been for about five years. I was stunned. The air in Beijing isn't as bad as Indonesia but it's really bad. I would say five percent of pedestrians in Beijing wear masks. And it keeps getting worse. It's all over the media in China. Everyone is obsessed whether they can raise their child in this, will it kill them, is the food safe. The political leadership actually has to worry about this.

The movie closes by anticipating a gathering of world leaders in Paris this December to discuss environmental policies. What do you think will happen there?

I'd like to know. Whatever happens with commercial distribution, we're already arranging for a number of screenings in Paris before and during the conference — and also other screenings for various political leaderships.

Do you see any hope on the horizon?

People do seem to be moderately optimistic that for the first time we'll actually make some progress. It won't be perfect or definitive. It's not like we'll get a treaty this December and then we can all walk away. But people do think there's a good shot at getting to the first step. Part of the reason for that is that people who understand these things are really getting scared. This isn't 50 years ago. We have really serious problems now. Beyond the necessity for it, there's the opportunity — we actually can do something about this.

READ MORE: The Indiewire 2015 Telluride Bible