Thursday, January 17, 2019 at 6:07PM Other than the shorts, which we'll get to this weekend, we're all finished with our final Oscar predictions. Though we're at the top two most discussed categories, I regret to inform that this will surely be anti-climactic since I'm sticking with previous predictions in both cases. But here's why...
Thursday, January 10, 2019 at 6:24PM by Nathaniel R
Ben Foster discussing "Leave No Trace" last summer when it openedWhen I first met Ben Foster he was promoting Rampart (2011), a hard and angry movie about corrupt cops in which the acting was (unsurprisingly) terrific, he would barely speak about himself. Time has mellowed him, or at least made him more lighthearted about his own intensity. He ended our last interview begging for a screen comedy but sadly that project has never materialized. In person he's friendly and thoughtful and funny, never as impenetrable or scary or tragically sad as he has been is in his famous roles. In fact he's a happy new father, having had a daughter with his wife, the actress Laura Prepon, just over a year ago.
We met last month to discuss Debra Granik's award-winning drama Leave No Trace. He plays Will, a former soldier who has shut himself off from society with only his daughter Tom (Thomasin McKenzie) for companionship.When Will and Tom are found living in the woods at the beginning of the film, social workers attempt to reintegrate them into society. The daughter immediately adapts but the father is tougher to reach. Leave No Trace is moving and insightful and beautifully acted so that's where we begin as we discuss his career, his early days in acting, and what's next.
Our interview, has been edited for clarity and length...
with Director Debra Granik on set
NATHANIEL: Projects like Leave No Trace live or die based on the chemistry between the leads, so how can you prepare for a two-hander like this. Were you involved in casting?
BEN FOSTER: I was involved in casting so far as Debra said 'I found someone I really like, and she's in New Zealand, here's the tape'. It was recorded on her phone and I watched like 30 seconds before I was like 'Oh yeah, that's it.'
Instant approval. That's so cool.
She has a quality --you see it in person and you see it onscreen, she's lit from within. [In awe] She's one of them.
And I assume you trusted Debra a little bit on unknown actors, too, because she's famous for that Jennifer Lawrence discovery...
Saturday, December 29, 2018 at 7:16AM Please welcome guest contributor Abe Fried-Tanzer from Movies with Abe. Since we hadn't discussed Clint Eastwood's new movie, he's doing the honor...
This is not the first time that Clint Eastwood has released a film at the tail end of awards season. That strategy worked wonders in 2014 for American Sniper, which landed major Oscar nominations despite missing out on a number of precursors. A full decade earlier, Million Dollar Baby launched late and managed to overtake the Oscar frontrunner, The Aviator, to win Best Picture. Eastwood may have arrived too late to earn accolades for this effort, which marks his 37th film as director, but he’s sure to earn some fans for his performance.
The most comparable frame of reference for The Mule is the most recent film that saw Eastwood as an acting Oscar hopeful, 2008’s Gran Torino...
Saturday, December 8, 2018 at 1:56PM Thank you for your robust comments on our the Golden Globe nominations, Globe snubs, and Vice/First Man nomination theorizing! Please do enjoy your weekend but it'll be busy here non-stop through the Oscar nominations so please check back in daily... or several times a day, bitches! To wrap up our Globe nomination reaction coverage, let's get happy and gay.
We asked friends and teammates at The Film Experience to share their giddiest thoughts and we hope you'll answer these final three questions, too. Here we go...
1. Which acting nomination were you most thrilled about?
DEBORAH LIPP: Alex Borstein 4Ever! I am here for any woman who appears on television in boxer shorts.
MURTADA ELFADL: John David Washington because he is the real star born in 2018 and should be rewarded as such...
Thursday, November 29, 2018 at 5:00PM by Eric Blume
This month marked the tenth anniversary of the release of Gus Van Sant’s semi-biopic Milk, chronicling the last eight years of the life of gay politician Harvey Milk. If you’ve never seen Milk, get ye post haste to it, if for no other reason than to be fully immersed in this crucial window of history. If you saw Milk when it was released a decade ago and haven’t seen it since (which was true for me), watch it again: it’s aging beautifully.
Olympic diver Tom Daley’s husband, Dustin Lance Black, won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for this movie, and the trophy was richly deserved. Black not only manages to avoid almost every biopic cliché, he captures the beginning of the gay rights movement with precision, pain, and most importantly, humor. Black’s script starts when Harvey Milk turns forty, had been mostly closeted, and was not politically aware. He chronicles his consciousness-raising without a hint of clumsiness or fake nobility. And while Black keeps his focus squarely on Milk, his real achievement is in casting a wider net: he gives Milk’s real-life contemporaries a vivid presence, and shows us a full community within the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco. This script manages to be both macro and micro, and throughout you can see Black’s gigantic heart and passion for this story...
