Tag: Cannes Film Festival

Oscar Watch: Personal Shopper

The French psychologist thriller Personal Shopper from director Olivier Assayas has hit domestic theaters in limited release this weekend. It was nearly a year ago that eyeballs first saw it at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016. Assayas was honored with the Best Director Award, which he shared with another filmmaker.

Now that stateside audiences are getting a look at it, the buzz for its star Kristen Stewart is increasing. Many critics are calling it her finest work. She plays the title character – an American working for a celebrity in Paris in this pic said to have supernatural overtones. Shopper stands at 78% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Stewart has worked with Assayas before in Clouds of Sils Maria, which also whipped up some chatter for an Academy nod for the actress. It didn’t pan out then and may not here, but look for her name to be in the mix as the months roll along.

My Oscar Watch posts will continue…

Oscar Watch: I, Daniel Blake

It won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. Critical raves for it have continued as it’s screened in Toronto. So the time has come to bring up I, Daniel Blake in the Oscar Watch posts.

The pic comes from acclaimed 80 year-old British director Ken Loach and focuses on an Englishman (stand-up comedian Dave Johns) battling the health care system. Blake is said to be the quite the emotional experience with a powerful performance from its lead.

If some of the later fall release don’t pan out, I could see Oscar voters turning their attention to this for consideration. A Best Actor nod for Johns is probably a long shot (even though this particular category isn’t ultra competitive yet like Actress is). However, keep this in mind as a dark horse for Picture and Director.

Oscar Watch: Hands of Stone

Having premiered at the Cannes Film Festival yesterday, the boxing biopic Hands of Stone hopes to be the next film in that genre to garner Oscar attention, much like Rocky, Raging Bull, and The Fighter before it.

The pic focuses on the legendary Roberto Duran, played here by Edgar Ramirez and casts Robert De Niro as his trainer Ray Arcel. Of course, Mr. De Niro won his only lead Actor gold statue for his lauded role as Jake La Motta in Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull in 1980 and he would competing here for Supporting Actor.

Hmmm. A legendary actor with an acclaimed pugilist picture to his credit maybe making a return to the Red Carpet? Sounds a bit like last year when Sylvester Stallone was nominated for Supporting Actor for Creed and surprisingly lost to Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies. In order for Hands of Stone to receive serious Academy attention for the big race (Picture), it would’ve needed even better reviews than Creed. While early reviews are fairly solid, that didn’t happen and you can pretty much count out that possibility. Same goes for Ramirez in Actor.

As for De Niro, the Weinstein Company (who are no slouches at awards campaigning) may pull out all the stops for their actor being recognized. It’s unlikely to occur, however. The great story with Stallone was the near 40 year lay-off between nominations and the connection with him playing the same role being recognized so many decades apart. De Niro, on the other hand, was just nominated four years ago for his work in Silver Linings Playbook. 

While Hands of Stone (being released domestically on August 26) could be a mid-size hit come late summer, Cannes has shown it’s improbable that it’ll be on the minds of Academy voters.

 

Oscar Watch: Loving

loving

Earlier this year, I wrote an Oscar Watch post for the Jeff Nichols sci-fi drama Midnight Special, which premiered to mostly positive feedback at the Berlin Film Festival. Yet since then – it was released to soft box office numbers and its awards prospects have considerably dimmed.

Nichols, director of acclaimed pics such as Take Shelter and Mud, may have another Oscar ace up his sleeve though as Special is not his only 2016 feature. His 1950s set interracial romance Loving has just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and early word is encouraging. Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga star as a Virginia couple whose marital union was illegal at the time. Both performances are garnering strong notices and it’s possible that both could find themselves factors in the Actor and Actress categories. Frequent Nichols collaborator Michael Shannon has a supporting role that’s said to be too small for any legit chance in Supporting Actor.

Helping even further, Focus Features has set a U.S. release date of November 4, right in the heart of Oscar season. If Loving is able to break through with audiences in the way it’s currently doing with the festival crowd overseas, it could find itself receiving Academy love in the Picture and Director races, too. Time will tell.

Oscar Watch: Macbeth

The 2015 Oscar race, still in its infancy, got a dose of Shakespeare today at the Cannes Film Festival when Macbeth premiered. The adaptation comes from director Justin Kurzel and features Michael Fassbender as the title character with Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth. Both performers have immediately vaulted to the top of the list for Best Actor and Actress. The film itself has received early raves and could be a contender for the big race. If so, it’d be the first screen treatment by the author to be recognized since 1968’s Romeo & Juliet.

This would mark Fassbender’s second nomination after being in the Supporting Actor mix in 2012 for 12 Years a Slave. For Cotillard, it would mark her second Actress nod in two years as she made the cut last year for Two Days, One Night. She won the award in 2007 for La Vie en Rose. It is only May and yet we may already know two of the nominees in those categories – Fassbender and Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl for Actor and Cotillard and Cate Blanchett for Carol in the Actress race.

Per usual, the Cannes fest has given us another Academy hopeful in the form of Macbeth.

Oscar Watch: Inside Out

The Cannes Film Festival has given us yet another Oscar contender in its screening process today and it’s a relatively unexpected one: Disney/Pixar’s latest certain summer blockbuster Inside Out. The computer animated feature premieres statewide June 19.

There’s never much doubt that Pixar flicks are going to make a boatload of cash. And it is also a virtual certainty that their products become automatic contenders, if not outright front runners, for the Academy’s Animated Feature race. Based on reviews streaming from the south of France, Inside Out is undoubtedly going to be nominated in that category. Yet a nomination in Best Picture seems much more possible today than it did yesterday.

Inside Out features the voices of Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Mindy Kaling, and Lewis Black, among others. The story is told inside the mind of an 11 year old girl and explores the joys and challenges of her young life. Critics so far have been over the moon with one prominent writer proclaiming it’s the studio’s finest effort since 2009’s Up. Variety went as far to proclaim it as “the greatest idea” that Pixar has ever hatched. Strong words indeed.

The Up comparison is likely no accident as it shares the same director, Pete Docter. Up was the last Pixar product he directed and it is the only one of the bunch that received a Picture nomination. That bodes well for Inside Out if the fawning praise continues, which is probable.

Usually it is dramatic material and independent pictures that gather steam at Cannes. Today it was the studio that Mickey built gaining momentum.