Perhaps no film this year has been easier to make fun of in advance of its release than ‘Hyde Park on Hudson’. I know I had a few silly names for it earlier in 2012 when comparing it to something like ‘My Week with Marilyn’, but go figure…I prefer this film to that one. When I sat down to watch it during the New York Film Festival I already was aware that it had fallen from the status of being an Oscar contender, but somehow I emerged rather amused by the flick. It’s hardly great art, and is iffy as a biopic of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but it’s got some strong acting and works as a comedy of manners. Bill Murray is rather good as FDR, though the film focuses far less on him than you’d expect. More time is given to Laura Linney’s character, who’s our entry point into the story. Linney and Murray are very solid, but neither is quite nomination worthy for me. This is an easy movie to pick on, but I was charmed by what director Roger Michell and scribe Richard Nelson came up with and find myself recommending it now that it’s opening this weekend. Don’t expect it to be on the level of the awards hopefuls surrounding it, but taken on its own, ‘Hyde Park on Hudson’ is an entertaining little film.
Being that this weekend kicks off with “a date which will live in infamy,” it’s fitting that FDR makes a big-screen appearance in Hyde Park on the Hudson. Toss in some romantic comedies, some foreign features, and some drama and you’ve got some options to hold you till “the big one” next week (The Hobbit, of course).
Hyde Park on the Hudson
Language: English
Rating: R
Genre: Biography/Comedy/Drama
Director: Roger Michell
Starring: Bill Murray, Laura Linney, Olivia Williams
Forgive the obvious pun, but I’ve got my money on Ralph wrecking his competition at the box office this weekend to cap off a nice week of triumphs for Disney. Robert Zemeckis is also back at it with the help of a non-animated Denzel Washington. And perhaps a little stylized kung fu from a hip-hop chameleon to feed the eclectic palate?
I’m back once again ladies and gentlemen to do some more Sizing Up! This time around I’m going to be tackling the somewhat slight Best Actress field. For many, this is the worst category of the majors this year and for some the hardest to figure out, especially in terms of a victor. The ultimate winner won’t be of my concern too much now, but I’m seeking to try and make sense of the category and see which ladies can actually get to the final 5. Lots can change between now and the nominations, but this is where I think things currently stand, and it’s certainly a rather fluid list now. At the very least, it’ll be interesting to see how this matches up to the eventual slate of nominees, since so much is sort of guesswork with Best Actress.
A few months back, Hyde Park on Hudson looked like a premium slice of King’s Speech-style Oscar bait. Then the trailer hit, and its awards chances looked somewhat slimmer. This morning I attended a screening of the film, and if the Academy decides to reward this lacklustre exercise in dreary historical drama then I may have to take a year away from the race altogether.
I enjoy a black comedy as much as anyone, but I do require that there be a point to things. That’s an area where the well acted but hollow film ‘The Details’ utterly fails in regard to. Its tone is all over the place and never really figures out what it wants to be doing. The cast is mostly effective but writer/director Jacob Aaron Estes doesn’t quite know what to do with his material. It’s frustrating to watch because individual moments work pretty well, but the movie itself is a real mess. Tobey Maguire gives a lead performance far different than you’d normally expect from him, while Laura Linney has a scene stealing supporting role that’s pretty enjoyable, but neither is able to save this confused little film. Estes wants you to laugh at the misery that his main character is suffering through, but he never really gives you anything funny to actually cause the laughter. It’s quirky and uncomfortable, but never really funny, which is what sabotages the flick. I didn’t completely hate the film, but when such a big part doesn’t work for me, I can’t really embrace it at all. ‘The Details’ opens early next month, but I wouldn’t wait for it with baited breath. It’s just not worth that sort of effort.
Hello again to all of you film festival fans out there! Clayton was with me the past few days at the New York Film Festival taking in the sites and cinema, so you got to see his thoughts on some of the big flicks, but I’m back today to talk about some of the other screenings thus far. Friday saw 4 films being screened, though only one was from the Main Slate. That was the much anticipated “Beyond the Hills,” though we were also treated to sidebar documentaries “Punk in Africa,” “John Cassavetes,” and “Lang/Godard: The Dinosaur” (the latter two were only about an hour apiece and thus won’t get review).
Today the New York Film Festival brought a presumed Oscar hopeful, Germany’s official submission for the foreign language category at the Academy Awards, and a tender-hearted documentary that surprised the likes of many, including myself.
Hyde Park on Hudson (***)
I try extremely hard to not read reviews, especially for Oscar hopefuls. At Telluride and Toronto, Roger Michell’s Hyde Park on Hudson received mixed-to-negative reviews citing the film’s weak screenplay and other off-putting manners. Chalk this up to a guilty pleasure but I found Hyde Park on Hudson charmingly delightful. From the charismatic turn by Bill Murray as FDR to what I found to be a near pitch-perfect performance by Samuel West, the stylistic quality by director Roger Michell was satisfying. Read more on NYFF: Surprise “Hyde” Stand Out, Germany’s “Barbara,” and the Love of “Liv & Ingmar”…
Though beautifully mounted, impeccably shot and well put together by director Roger Michell, there seems to be a lack of passion within this film that is something required to help us understand what is happening with the characters.
Bill Murray as FDR, one of the greatest American Presidents, one of the great historical figures of the 20th century takes about five minutes to get settle in, and at that point we accept the actor as the great man. Murray has the speech patterns down, the physicality, but most important, he captures Roosevelt’s intellect and ferocious appetite for the female of our species. His affairs were legendary, though well concealed by his staff, at least one of them whom he was sleeping with. Common knowledge to everyone it seemed. What is it with great men and their marriages? Why can they not be loyal to the women they marry, who appear (it seems) to stand by them and support them. Look at Kennedy, or Clinton, much loved leaders who had trouble being faithful. Roosevelt, apparently was no different, and as played by Murray this manages to humanize him, knock him off the pedestal many have placed him on and allow the actor to portray him as a mere mortal. Read more on TIFF: Hyde Park on Hudson (**)…
“…no one can get at it except for me” – Daniel Plainview, There Will Be Blood
That’s how I feel about this Oscar race. I feel I see something that no one else does. I’ve been doing this a long time but I’ve never had the overwhelming feeling like I just figured out the Oscar race in August. I was sitting down to do my Oscar predictions like any other month. Making some switches, moving some contenders, and cleaning out films and performances that we thought would be coming out but still have no release date.
I stared at a few names and had an epiphany. It was as if I was Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, and the code all came off the page and circled my head in an Oscar sensation. On August 25, 2012 I’ve chosen to make my first ballsy prediction of the year. Terrence Malick and his film, To the Wonder wins Best Director and Best Picture at the Oscars 2013. How did I come to this conclusion you ask? I will discuss this in more detail on this week’s Power Hour which premieres on Monday but I’ll attempt to give you the best break down possible in the following thoughts beginning with the Director field: Read more on Oscar Circuit: “There’s a whole ocean of oil under our feet…”…
Naomi Watts stars in “The Impossible” premiering at TIFF….
Having gone through the announced films with a fine tooth comb I have come up with a list of twenty must sees, the films that will have absolute priority over everything else for at TIFF. That is not to say I will not venture into other movies, I most certainly will, but for now, the twenty discussed within are the films I am making it my mission in life to see first. Understand that the schedules have not yet been made available to the press so there will undoubtedly be overlaps in the screenings, meaning getting a ticket from the TIFF folks or speaking with the film’s publicist to land a seat. They are always helpful to me, always have been, so no problems are foreseen. And of course there are the festivals pre-screenings, which are held ten days before the start of the festival allowing press to see films that are going to be an issue because of their schedule, or in the case of the TV critics, because they will be interviewing. I so do not miss those days, being on television, listening to the producers go to war for interviews, scrambling at the last minute because they have given to us, just a nightmare. There was a time when seeing forty to forty five films was not out of the question, but by the end of the festival my brain was mush and the stories began to run together. I learned to pace myself. Of course my accident in 2001 cut down on the number of films I can see from a sheer physical stand point. Thirty to thirty five is the goal, though twenty eight is where I usually end up. Consider as well, if I am interviewing I need to give up a film here and there, and I hate that. For me TIFF is all about the films…period. That said, if the chance arises to interview some of the major players, I will be there, as always. I have to admit I am getting excited about TIFF. As the days slip past and it comes time for my girls to go back to school, I realize the festival is upon me. Different this year, very different, is Sherri is not here to share it with me. She would bring the girls into the city for the weekend, and though we did not see much of one another, we made it a point to have dinner and coffee together, and I always woke her when I got in. I will miss that. Ariana will be with me that first weekend, swimming and hanging out at the pool, and that will be cool for her, as she loves hotel life. She has never been to a GALA so I will take her to see The Silver Lining Playbook this year, as she adores Jennifer Lawrence.
Trying to sand down the rough slate that is the Actress categories is an intimidating task. The past few years, the category has produced the likes of Natalie Portman in her career-topping performance in Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan and Marion Cotillard’s transformation like no other in the Foreign Language film, La Vie en Rose.
It’s August. Summer’s coming to an end. Eight months have passed and we have one, count, one, Best Actress contender on the chart. Quvenzhané Wallis is more and more looking like the little engine that could for her heartbreaking turn in Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild. While many are shouting from the rooftops that she could be the one to hold the Oscar, barely reaching the microphone, and being a Cinderella story for the millennium, there’s no one to challenge her as of now.
In the past week, Carey Mulligan has dropped off due to the “sudden” push of The Great Gatsby to summer 2013. Was that telling of something? We’ll discuss on this week’s episode of Power Hour if it was. With Mulligan out, we are struggling to find spots filled from performances coming down the pike. Read more on “Best” Actress Award or “Whatever We Have Left Over”…
The second half of the year is upon us. The race is about to heat up with big Oscar hopefuls coming down the pike. Our John Foote will be in attendance at the Toronto International Film Festival and many films will be unveiling themselves to critics alike. There is a very unclear yet still feasible shape to the race looking from ten thousand feet.
There are internet jitters building for Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master starring Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman. With the trailers released and now the film being pushed up to September, it looks as though we may be in store for a master class in filmmaking. Phoenix also looks to be a lead contender for his first Oscar after delivering in his previous nominated works, Gladiator (2000) and Walk the Line (2005). Phoenix does have tough competition ahead of him including what looks to be a critical darling-type performance coming from John Hawkes in Ben Lewin’s The Sessions. Early word is very positive for the film and the turns by Hawkes along with co-stars Helen Hunt and William H. Macy. Since Hawkes’ initial nomination two years ago for Winter’s Bone, he hasn’t shown any signs of letting up. He was arguably left off last year in Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene and will be seen later this year in Julia Dyer’s The Playroom and Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. There seems to be a tremendous following and support for him in his current state. Speaking of Spielberg, we’re still awaiting some type of marketing material for his upcoming Lincoln biopic. No poster or trailer has been released with very few stills leaked online. One starts to think if it will even be ready in time.
Taking a break from all this Bat-talk. Trekking through the year 2000 was a daunting task. There were many films I hadn’t seen in years, while others I’ve never feasted my eyes on before. Naturally this brings on a dilemma. A 15-year-old Clayton watching movies is very different from a now, 28-year-old Clayton. I like to think there is a maturity there that lacked before. I realized that after re-watching Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In 2000, I found the film immensely overrated and couldn’t understand what people were so mesmerized by. Naturally, I’ve never officially appreciated it or thought it to be among Ang Lee’s best. Enter last weekend. Talk about being fantastic a second-time around, the film was nearly hypnotic in its style and approach. Do I consider it the best of the year? Not really. One of the best? Definitely so.
With our ACCA 2000 closing up on Friday, and winners being announced on Sunday’s podcast, I have to let you in on my favorites of the new millennium. Please include yours in the comment section and let’s see what commonalities or differences we have. Bold denotes winner. Enjoy after the jump: Read more on Davis Awards 2000 Announced!…
It’s the first of the month. Not only that, it’s the first day of the second half of the year. Anybody else feel like that was fast? Yet, here we are.
It’s time to start getting serious, Oscar-wise. Not many things have come out, and not many films are looking like Best Picture nominees from the first half. Some will argue The Avengers with a $600 million dollar bank is in talks. Some think the little indie-film Moonrise Kingdom from Wes Anderson could be our “Little Miss Sunshine” of the year. In limited release, Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild has opened and received one of the best word-of-mouth reviews of the year. Is that a contender for the big prize? I’d say it is.
I’m ready to start getting down and dirty with these predictions.
Cannes is over. We have a possible Best Picture contender in Michael Haneke’s Amour, which you can see added to the Oscar Tracker. In the past month, trailers for big Oscar contenders have dropped like Roger Michell’s Hyde Park on Hudson, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, and even as late as yesterday with Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables. Any talk circling around the notion of an Oscar nomination possibility is mere beguilement and an attempt to satisfy our obsessions during this first half of the fiscal year. But that’s why we read the Awards Circuit, isn’t? Read more on Oscar Circuit: “Right Category, Right Time”…
Based on true events, Hyde Park on Hudson stars Bill Murray as President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The film centers around the first British Monarch to ever visit the United States, when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth spent the weekend with the President in his New York cottage. During the same time, the President was having an affair with his cousin Daisy (Laura Linney). Hyde Park on Hudson also stars Olivia Williams, Samuel West, and Olivia Colman, and is directed by Roger Michell (Notting Hill).
Based on the initial trailer, the film reminds me a lot of last year’s My Weekend with Marilyn, which earned Michelle Williams an Oscar nomination. Hudson could do the same for Bill Murray in 2012. Hudson hits theatres December 7th.
Check out the trailer, poster, and official synopsis after the jump…
It’s that time of the month, so it’s time to talk about the “Oscarettes”. If you missed last month’s edition, here is a little recap of what this segment is all about.
At the start of each month, we will travel back a year at a time and discuss the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actresses of that year. I will recognize who was nominated and who won, and I will share my opinions about them, but I want yours. I want to know who you thought deserved to win and be nominated those particular years.
This week Editor-in-Chief Clayton Davis is joined by Joey Magidson, Michael Ward, and Anna Belickis speaking about everything entertainment. Here’s the profile of what is discussed:
March blues?
Any contenders so far? “The Grey” “The Lorax” “The Hunger Games”
Box Office Numbers (The Artist crossing 40 million)
Big weekend for 21 Jump Street – Golden Globe?
News & Trailers (Dark Shadows, Promethus, World War Z pushed back)
Oscar Night is February 24 (Nominations on 1/15)
TV Talk (American Idol, DWTS, Emmy and Critics Choice Television Awards)
Awards Profiles: Contenders (Gravity, Brave)
Veterans looking for some due in 2013! (Frank Langella, Billy Crystal, Julianne Moore, Laura Linney, Tom Cruise, Ian McKellen, Gena Rowlands, Kristin Scott Thomas)
NEW! Editor Movie Pick of the Week – Junebug (2005)
It begins. 2011 film year is behind us and we saw Octavia Spencer crowned Best Supporting Actress for her work in “The Help.” As we embark on the 2012 film year together, I will be breaking down each category individually throughout the month of March. I will also unveil the Awards Circuit Staff Predictions one at a time for all of you to enjoy. Trust me, we all have different takes on what the 2012 season will bring.
We break down the Supporting Actress category first. Any supporting category is difficult to analyze because you never know who will hit it out of the park with a mere eight minute screen time or what borderline Lead performance will be pushed in another category. The rankings of the Supporting Actress are ordered #1 through #25 as you see them on the predictions page but there are outside contenders that could just as easily make the lineup given a strong showing with critics and audiences.
Looking into a crystal ball, Amy Adams will be starring in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” and with three prior nominations (“Junebug,” “Doubt,” and “The Fighter”), Adams could finally score an Oscar. She also has a role in the long-awaited “On the Road” directed by Walter Salles which could catch on. Co-star Kristen Stewart can return to what we loved about her in “Into the Wild.” The question seems to be, is Oscar aching to reward Adams or does she need to be accepted as a leading lady? Have the “Twilight” franchise ruined Stewart forever? Perhaps.
Perhaps no film this year has been easier to make fun of in advance of its release than ‘Hyde Park on Hudson’. I know I had a few silly names for it earlier in 2012 when comparing it to something like ‘My Week with Marilyn’, but go figure…I prefer this film to that one. When I sat down to watch it during the New York Film Festival I already was aware that it had fallen from the status of being an Oscar contender, but somehow I emerged rather amused by the flick. It’s hardly great art, and is iffy as a biopic of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but it’s got some strong acting and works as a comedy of manners. Bill Murray is rather good as FDR, though the film focuses far less on him than you’d expect. More time is given to Laura Linney’s character, who’s our entry point into the story. Linney and Murray are very solid, but neither is quite nomination worthy for me. This is an easy movie to pick on, but I was charmed by what director Roger Michell and scribe Richard Nelson came up with and find myself recommending it now that it’s opening this weekend. Don’t expect it to be on the level of the awards hopefuls surrounding it, but taken on its own, ‘Hyde Park on Hudson’ is an entertaining little film.
