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Entries in Labor Day (12)

Friday
Sep202013

This Link Goes to 11

Movie City News Gurus of Gold update post TIFF/Telluride
Mind of a Suspicious Kind Jordan on Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners
AV Club Joss Whedon airlifted in to punch up Thor: The Dark World. (awesome photoshop) 
Deadline Matt Bomer set to play Montgomery Clift... hmmm. But I have to say this article sounds like it was written by someone who has a very vague inkling of Clift, like a Wikipedia inkling. Seriously read it. It reads that generic. 

In Contention Cate Blanchett to make her directorial debut with The Dinner, based on Herman Koch's bestseller
/Film that Labor Day poster I was talking 'bout the other day finally made it online
Variety four people will be honored by the Cinematography guild including Kris Tapley. Congrats, Kris 
Awards Daily the US trailer for Blue is the Warmest Colour 
i09 8 ways to make a female led superhero movie work 
Slant Magazine excellent piece on "the IMAX cancer" and the rerelease of The Wizard of Oz... only not the one you know. 
Happy Nice Time People Embarassing Person Glenn Beck is really upset about the possible movie about Woodrow Wilson that Leonardo DiCaprio might possibly be starring in 

Sunday
Sep152013

Podcast: All About TIFF, Our Festival Takeaways

For this week's podcast, a special Toronto International Film Festival edition. Your regular players Nathaniel, Katey and Nick welcome Tim Robey from the Daily Telegraph and Angelo Muredda from Film Freak Central to discuss our experiences at this year's TIFF. We cover festival favorites like the joyful experiment Strange Little Cat, super-lengthy documentary At Berkeley and Clio Barnard's follow up to The Arbor, The Selfish Giant and spend time with 12 Years a Slave which blew (most of) our minds. (It also blew the TIFF audience's mind and took home the coveted People's Choice prize, that Oscar bellwether, with Philomena in second place) 

We also hit mainstream titles like the Daniel Brühl pictures Rush and The Fifth Estate. No one really liked Labor Day which Angelo calls "my summer of erotic pies" and which reminds us uncomfortably of previous Kate Winslet projects. Some slightly more divisive experiences include the sci-fi wow of Gravity, Jafar Panahi's Closed Curtain, the erotic thrillers Stranger by the Lake and Eastern Boys, animation giant Sylvain Chomet's first live action feature Attila Marcel, as well as two doppelganger movies The Double &. Enemy starring Jesse Eisenberg & Jake Gyllenhaal respectively.

Mixed in with these pre-release screening buzz-discussions there's plenty to chew on in terms of Oscar's Best Foreign Film category including possible entries from Singapore (Ilo Ilo), Romania (Child's Pose), Chile (Gloria) and Cambodia (The Missing Picture). And, last but not least our panel loves Jonathan Glazer's long awaited Birth follow up Under the Skin (starring Scarlett Johansson) and offers up advice for any readers who'd like to go to TIFF next year.

Clockwise from top left: Strange Little Cat, Gloria, Gravity, Eastern Boys, and 12 Years a Slave

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download it on iTunes. 
(I tried something new in the processing / uploading so let me know if the sound is okay and how it compares to other weeks) 

TIFF 13 Takeaways

Wednesday
Sep112013

"Labor Day" in a Nutshell

If I'd have known that the poster to Jason Reitman's Labor Day, an adaptation of the Joyce Manard novel, hadn't made it online yet at this writing, I'd have snapped a picture of it. It's a beauty for its rarity. How many actual film stills are used for movie posters these days? It's usually either iconic floating heads or powerful star bodies. If not that then boring vertical / horizontal grids of star faces, or a mishmash collage.

Here's the freeze frame in question, that's only been slightly modified for the poster image...

Kate Winslet & Josh Brolin star in Labor Day

And that film still, the first image released, is truth in advertising. What's more -- and only faithful TFE readers will truly appreciate this -- it's the image that stopped me in my tracks during the movie and made me think  "That's my choice for 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot' though I promise I don't play that game with every movie I watch. 

The image is the story in a nutshell...

Click to read more ...

Monday
Sep022013

Interior. Link Post.

AV Club what if you could hit "pause" on pop culture -- what would you catch up on?
Daily Beast an uninhibited interview with the stars of Blue is the Warmest Colour on working with "fake pussies" and watching the movie with their families
Glenn Dunks enters Interior. Leather Bar 
Cinema Blend on Zach Snyder's continued defense of Man of Steel's insane body count -- which ruined the movie for a lot of people, my friends at Panel Culture included, because... seriously, what kind of hero is that?
Pajiba wants to get away from The Getaway 

The New Yorker on the list as the signature form of our time "a comic nightmare of futile enumeration"
Ultra Culture on an important underreported piece of info from that Lars von Trier Uma Thurman Nymphomaniac clip 
Awards Daily Sasha reviews Gravity which she calls a masterpiece. Here's the thing about festivals. They are both a blessing and a curse on the world. One wants to avoid the movies that have upcoming release dates but then you end up being the last person to see them -- i haven't read this for fear of spoilers I'm just saying a lot of reviews are out there now floating in space. How to resist seeing it at TIFF when there are movies that I'm much less likely to get the chance to see next month? 
In Contention on a Marilyn Monroe Bruce Dern prophecy that's coming true with Nebraska
LA Times Jason Reitman's Labor Day premieres - sucks that it isn't in theaters now during, uh, Labor Day.

Oooh, Maggie is staring at you.

That's one version of the new poster for the 50th annual Golden Horse Awards. It looks like a delicious VIP ticket, yes? Basically Maggie Cheung's eyes are the selling point on each poster. The Golden Horse Awards are Asia's oldest film awards and still its most competitive. Nominations will be announced on October 1st and will see how well this year's hot titles like Stray Dogs, A Touch of Sin, and The Grandmaster do. The awards ceremony will be held in late November. Ang Lee, who has won two Golden Horses as Best Director (Lust Caution, The Wedding Banquet) and two Oscars for Best Director (Brokeback Mountain, Life of Pi), is president of the jury this year.

Thursday
Jul042013

Will You Be Having "Labor Day" For Christmas?

Labor Day, the latest film from writer/director Jason Reitman is now scheduled to open on Christmas Day so I thought I'd post about it on Independence Day just to continue its holiday confusions!

You may remember that I had promised to read two books that y'all voted on in that "read this before the movie comes out" and this was your second choice pick (I'll read 12 Years a Slave next). I managed to get through thise runner up on flights during my recent Scandinavian trip. Joyce Manard's "Labor Day" was an easy read, actually as the novel is slim and the story is condensed to a very short time frame. I like both of its book covers though they're vague (love and peach pies do figure in but...) and its difficult to say what they're selling but the same is arguably true of the book, which I felt ambivalent about when I'd finished though it never really lost my interest in the reading.

It could make a smart tight movie about unloved middle aged people and the messy crossroads between romantic fulfillment and parenting, OR what it's like to grow up as the child of absent divorced parents but it also could make for an odd collision of coming-of-age clichés, faux thriller suspense, and romantic drama. If it's not tightly directed I could see some 'let's just watch some actors act' aimlessness happening given the novel's multiple identities. I'm loathe to give away details (though I'm 100% certain the trailer will...) but the set up is that an escaped ex convict Frank (Josh Brolin) suddenly enters the lives of a shut-in mother Adele (Kate Winslet) and her lonely teenage son Henry (played by 14 year old Gattlin Griffith from Changeling and then by 16 year old Dylan Minette who has had a few regular series gigs on TV... though it seems strange to have actors so close in age playing the same character at different ages) on a rare trip out shopping, further isolating them from the world. That's all I'm saying. 

 

I'm intrigued to see Josh Brolin and Kate Winslet work together -- seems like smart casting director match-making.

Winslet's character is a complicated one so if the movie is strong a Best Actress nomination isn't out of the question. Adele is eccentric, stubborn, moody, shut-down, delusional but also sexually vivid. She's described repeatedly in the novel as beautiful with a lithe dancers physique that's still a head turner even though she doesn't take care of herself and put herself out there visually (she seems to have no interest in dating). But based on the set photos of the costuming and styling maybe they've erred on the side of "she's a housewife that's given up!" Winslet might have to provide all the eroticism on her own. 

Dylan MinnetteBrolin is a smidge beefier than his character as described (Frank is a wiry almost gaunt ex-con) though it does look like he lost some weight for the role. But I think it's great casting emotionally since he is fairly adept at shading good guys and bad guys alike with questionable impulses and more complex character that you're able to read at first glance. 

Is this a movie you're looking forward to?
If you've read the novel what did you think of it? Do you remember Gattlin Griffith in Changeling (little Walter Collins) and if you've seen Dylan Minette on Lost or Saving Grace tell us what you think of his big screen potential?

Related Reading: 14 Books to Read Before They Hit the Big Screen (BuzzFeed) 25 Beach Reads for Summer 2013 (Vulture)