Venice: A Second Take on "Carnage"

[Editor's Note: Ferdi, pictured left, is one of our two correspondents in Venice this year. Which affords us the rare pleasure of reading two pieces on the same movie back to back. I hope you're feeling appropriately spoiled since we're getting original photography and everything! Here's another opinion on Carnage. -Nathaniel R.]

Carnage (2011)

80 acid minutes of poison, screams, metaphorical scratches, literal vomits and memorable laughs. God, this movie rocks. Maybe it’s the original stage material which is so funny, clever and so well translated to the screen. Maybe it’s the eye of European mega-auteur Roman Polanski, who has rarely taken a misstep in his career. Maybe it’s just me: I love movies where all the focus is on the actors branch. The fact is I can’t stop thinking of Carnage since this early morning press screening.

What else can I say? You have to sit and watch and have fun. You're taken by the tension of the story without even taking a breath from start to finish. It’s a pitch-perfect arthouse movie, a little, subversive masterpiece about verbal violence and adult hypocrisies; a complex, powerful, crazy kammerspiel that begins, as many of you already know, as a polished comedy of manners and ends as a cruel psychological massacre. 

Christoph and Kate are "best in show" says Ferdi

The pleasure of seeing these incredible actors going so over the top has no price. John C Reilly is surprisingly right for the part, hilarious and totally convincing. Christoph Waltz is once again genius and effortless as in Inglorious Basterds. Maybe the weak link is Jodie Foster who has some great moments that prove she can be very funny but she is too tight and anxious from the very beginning. (She is a great straight-forward physical actress but the part required something more subtle.) In fact, Foster doesn’t really seem to catch the satirical tone of the pochade; she goes more and more hysterical from one scene to the next instead of being multi-dimensional. This is were Kate Winslet excels. She’s the real standout, absolutely exhilarating without even doing too much.

All that said, I don’t see any Oscar play for anyone (Winslet aside, maybe, as supporting actress, but it would be a category fraud, because they all are leads), neither for the movie, which is possible too cynical, dark, weird and beautiful by Academy standards.

Kate Winslet in Venice © Fabrizio Spinetta

Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz in Venice © Fabrizio Spinetta

Venice: "Ides" and Oscar, Winslet in "Carnage", Madonna for "W.E."

[Editor's Note: I told you we'd have two correspondents in Venice this year. Doubleplusgood. You've already heard from Ferdi from Italy. Now we have Manolis from Greece. We're very happy to have them both covering the fest this year. Show them comment love. -Nathaniel R.]

Hello Film Experience fans. I’ve been a reader myself for many years and i am happy that this year i have the chance to cover the festival for Nathaniel and for the Greek site Cinema News. English is not my native language but I hope you'll enjoy my coverage. 

DAY 1: Venice at this time of the year is at its finest and busiest. The festival is of course the main attraction but there are many unaware tourists that are wondering what all these people with the badges around their necks are here for.  The event of the day was the opening ceremony of the Festival with the premiere of George Clooney’s The Ides of March. Even though The Ides of March is a political film the atmosphere at the press conference was not heavy at all. Most of the questions were aimed at George Clooney who once more ‘played’ the room as he answered questions with wit and humor. What else could he do when the questions varied from "Is this movie a comment about Dominique Strauss Kahn?" to "Have you ever thought of running for president?". He also joked about the amount of research he did for his character in Ocean’s 11 -- "I spent years researching for this role in Las Vegas" -- and he joked that the right side of the movie's poster was better looking than the left.  

Which side do you prefer?

He also said that Gosling was his first choice for the role and that the production of the film was postponed because after Barack Obama’s win everybody was very hopeful about the future of polictics in the U.S. and the timing wasn’t right for it. 

Of Day One's three other press conferences, the most compelling was the Jury of the Competition Section. This year's president Darren Aronofsky and his jury members were here to discuss how they will pick their winners. Todd Haynes got the most interesting question when asked how partial he could be in judging Kate Winslet’s performance in Carnage so soon after working with her in Mildred Pierce (which is also showing at the festival).

He answered politely and predictably and persuaded nobody. 

I am happy to say that The Ides of March is a very good film, directed with passion and care for detail. However it's the kind of film that everyone likes and respects but nobody is really passionate about. Ryan Gosling is excellent in the lead role and has the audience on his side even when he makes the wrong decisions; he could very well be nominated. One of the difficult things to judge is whether the supporting players will feature in the Oscar race. I would say that Clooney has the best chance in the Supporting Actor category, as he portrays a charismatic character (not an acting stretch, I know) that has faults and is vulnerable. Paul Giamatti and Phillip Seymour Hoffman are marvelous actors but they don’t do anything we haven’t seen them do before. (Giamatti and Marisa Tomei are in very little of the movie.) Evan Rachel Wood on the other hand has an important role and a lot of screen time and has a good shot at a nomination. If I had to pick the surest nomination that would be in the Adapted Screenplay category since the dialogue is excellent and the the scipt (Written by Clooney and his creative partner Grant Henslov) is the strongest element of the movie.

W.E. and Carnage after the jump

Click to read more ...

Hey, who Abducted my links?

Taylor Lautner, that's who!
and Kate Winslet but we'll get to her in a minute.
Michael Musto wonders if Taylor Lautner can be a film star outside of Twilight. My guess is no... but that he'll be crying all the way to the bank for the rest of his life by association. But, really, if you can't even sell a performance (Abduction) for two minutes in a trailer, how are you going to carry an entire film? 
Ultra Culture also has some words about the disingenousness of the promotional efforts for Taylor's BabyBourne film and...
Movie|Line giggles about how desperately Abduction wants to be seen as Teen Bourne.
Biblioklept "all four Twilight books in one comic" by Lucy Knisey is totes funny so read it. Unless the previous words about Taylor hurt your feelers.

P.S. I don't follow these things: Is there another Twilight about to come out or something? Cuz why is everyone talking Twilight again just as Harry Potter finally shut up? Blargh! Put new things into the world. Why is 2011 just like 2007? Noooooooo

And since you're all talking about it in the comments without me even posting it, here is an early teaser/trailer (?) for CARNAGE.

For those of you who haven't seen the play you're seeing two of the three big moments from Winslet's character.... and almost none of anyone else's. Which is interesting choice for marketing... but doesn't necessarily mean anything in terms of the movie as a whole.

Miscellania
My New Plaid Pants "who the hell wears this to dinner?" Sophia Loren, that's who!
Lemonwade the author of War Horse already has another film adaptation of his work, lined up. Private Peaceful is about two young farm brothers and, like War Horse, also takes place during The Great War.
Art & Design on the Jim Henson exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image and Cookie Monster's origins. Have I ever told you how much I love Cookie Monster? Probably not. I do.
Towleroad True Blood's Carrie Preston records an "It Gets Better" video.  (Loooooove her. Wish she'd do more supporting roles in movies as the last few were awesome)
Towleroad I'm not one for bathroom humor but Anderson Cooper is the world's cutest giggler - totally loses it when discussing Gerard Depardieu's urination incident.

Sick Character Posters for "Contagion"

 

Paolo here, apologizing for the pun. If you'd like, you can leave yours in the comments section unless you think it's too early for that kind of fun.

Because the 'city' poster for Steven Soderbergh's new film Contagion wasn't enough, MovieLine via Yahoo! has uploaded the new character posters for the film, bearing the images of its six major stars. This is much better than the boring poster designs wherein actors faces are separated by boxes. The sepia tone also works well here. But the unfortunate thing about character posters in this case is that it doesn't convey the interpersonal and global reach that should come with films about diseases or plagues. But if we're looking to see how these characters are connected to another, the trailer (previously discussed) conveys that pretty well.

Gwyneth Paltrow (the first victim) has the strongest poster. The other ones aren't as exciting, with Beth's husband (Matt Damon) being scared, Marion Cotillard running or driving away from something within the big city, Jude Law in plastic and Laurence Fishburne and our girl crush Kate Winslet's character Dr. Erin Mears frantically talking on their phones. Someone tweeted to me that only Larry and Kate look good in these posters, the rest of the actors rightfully mangled within the drama of their scenes. [For larger images, click the actor names.]  

A little factoid that you all probably know is that Gwynnie and Kate to the left were both in the running for the Oscar winning role of Viola de Lesseps in Shakespeare in Love. Both women frequently show up in Miramax/Weinstein films but they're lending their talents to the Warner Brothers this year.

Why aren't we getting Bryan Cranston and John Hawkes character posters? You want to see them right?

Yes, No, Maybe So: Contagion

In this edition of Let's Count the Oscar Winners, err, Yes, No, Maybe So, we take a look at Steven Soderbergh's Contagion. Details of this film had been kept quite secret until this trailer was released a few days ago. I'd seen snippets from the film at a distributors event a few months ago but they highlighted star wattage over plot. So now the trailer has arrived and in a move that has some condemning Soderbergh for spoiling his own film, he pulls off a Game of Thrones seconds into the trailer (at the bottom of the post)

YES - That cast!

All of them either have Oscars or have been nominated on multiple occasions but the best part is that they're not just "movie stars", they're all incredible actors. Is this like the "serious version" of Ocean's 11? Soderbergh gets bonus points for that The Talented Mr. Ripley reunion, but where is Cate when you need her?

NO - How can Steven Soderbergh deliver such a superb trailer and threaten us with early retirement? Also, considering he has developed a tradition of delivering one artsy film followed by a fun one, which one is this? His last movie was a documentary, so does it count or should we use The Informant as reference? The director has a tendency to work with genre and this looks like it could be his take on the psychological film or the disaster movie (I smell a fun double bill with Melancholia!)

Soderbergh is also one of the most ambitious directors in contemporary history. Most of the time he gets away with whatever he wants, but given the political references spotted in this trailer this could either be brilliant or end up turning into a bland piece of meh like Blindness.

MAYBE SO - With the revelation that Gwyneth Paltrow's character dies, we have to ask ourselves, how much will this affect the rest of the film? Some people have already called this a monstrous spoiler and are pissed at the director for letting this piece of information come out.

 PSA: Gwyneth Paltrow in The Perils of Gambling!

Killing one of your main stars isn't something completely new but it still sends waves of how-dare-they and where-are-we-going-now terror among audiences who want it the easy way. This revelation tells us that either her character was meaningless and there are bigger shocks to come or that Soderbergh is the kind of director you want to work with so badly that you don't care if he kills you before the movie is even released. 

I for one am beyond excited to see what he has up his sleeve this time. How about you? Are you as impressed by the cast? Should Soderbergh retire yet?