Moët BIFA Awards Spread the Movie Wealth

The Stars gathered this evening in London for the Moët British Independent Film Awards which was ruled by one particular Tyrannosaur and also afforded Michael Fassbender his second best actor prize (following the Venice Volpi Cup) for Shame. He needs to keep nabbing these to stay in play for a very competitive Oscar race.

photo via @shamefilm

Photos and a list of winners after the jump.

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Distant Relatives: The Graduate and Fish Tank

Robert here w/ Distant Relatives, exploring the connections between one classic and one contemporary film.

Sedentary and Sex

So what do a rough and realistic look at poverty in London and a comedy set in the suburbs of California have in common? Well at first glance both are about the events that lead up to and follow an inappropriate relationship. For many reasons, the cinematic arts naturally drift toward stories of forbidden sex. They allow filmmakers to explore the human condition in areas that lend themselves to lack of control. They're filled with all kinds of drama and conflict. And of course sex gets people to sit and watch. But there's more to it. After all, with all of these films about forbidden sex out there, why these two that seem so different? In both The Graduate and Fish Tank, the inappropriate relationships aren't really the problem. Well, they are eventually, but initially they're just a symptom of something greater. Both films have protagonists filled with agitation, ennui, longing, and the desire to do something, anything greater than what they're doing now. And both films postulate that this puts them on the easiest possible path to seduction.

In 1967 The Graduate became a hit because as all we all know, it spoke to an entire generation. But it didn't speak to a generation because every young person in the 1960's was familiar with boinking their parent's friends. Ben Braddock, the titular character came back from school to a safe suburban existence where everyone had unique opinions on what he should be doing with his life. Yet all of these opinions came from people with lives to which he did not aspire. Benjamin's potential seemed endless yet all paths pointed to an undesirable future. Fish Tank's Mia (Katie Jarvis), although an ocean and a continent away and on the opposite spectrum of the class divide finds herself in a similar situation, however she doesn't have the benefit of unlimited prospects. At fifteen, Mia doesn't have much of a future at all. She doesn't like her mother and doesn't want to become her mother, but there doesn't seem to be too many other options. She's not one for academic pursuits and mostly dreams of being a dancer in a non-specific way.

No Someday. No Rainbow.

With Benjamin and Mia adrift, the idea of a promising future slipping further and further away, they turn their attention to the possibilities of the present. Enter someone older, desirable, representative of impulsiveness and rebellion. Both Benjamin and Mia have a need that requires filling. Love and affection? Maybe. But more so a desire to be distracted from their hopeless future, perhaps even a need to be destructive, to have some ownership over a future already in shambles by being careless and responsible for its destruction themselves.

Then there are the seducers. The Graduate's Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) is the epitome of aggressiveness. Fish Tank's Connor (Michael Fassbender) is more subtle. Then again he has to be. A movie about a fifteen year old girl being seduced by an older man has to be handled differently than a film about a male college graduate being seduced by an older woman. An aggressive Connor would have immediately upped the suspense and diminished the realism. But in both films, it doesn't take much for the deed to be done. Yet once Benjamin and Mia realize that their older suitors are still representatives of their ugly futures, they realize that they can't be a part of them. Ambiguous endings abound, though there is the sense that our protagonists have learned something. Been used to be sure, but reset onto a better path? Or do they, in the words of The Graduate director Mike Nichols "become their parents?"

If you still think the comparisons are a bit trying, consider the title of our modern film: Fish Tank. It suggest being both submerged and imprisoned at the same time. It's a clear effective metaphor, and one that The Graduate would know something about too.

 

Other Cinematic Relatives: Lolita (1962), Beau Pere (1981), Fat Girl (2001), Notes on a Scandal (2006)

The Linkers Grimm

MUBI James Benning is experimenting with John Cassavetes Faces (1968) for a "remake" installation.
Antenna has valid thoughtful concerns about both of the new fantasy series on TV, Grimm and Once Upon a Time. Many good points are raised but I can't take them completely seriously since Once Upon a Time is one of the single gawdiest and most ham-fisted things mine eyes have ever witnessed whereas Grimm was surprisingly rich in potential and beautifully made (yummy production design) and they imply that Once has more potential? Yikes.

"greens greens and nothing but greens..." Grimm's are alive. Once but dead props.

Towleroad cutest thing Zac Efron has ever done? He did Halloween as a Reno 911 officer
Go Fug Yourself Heidi Klum went as a cadaver! Heidi Klum is the most awesome Halloween party ever. Every single year she turns it out.

Dark Eye Socket this is really cool: 5 Scary Movie Masks in Non-Scary Movies
Ultra Culture the shortest review you will ever read of Tower Heist and also probably the best one; it's a Venn Diagram!
Movie|Line Naomi Watts to star in the most depressing movie indie ever. I guess she didn't read our Red Carpet Convo with Guy Lodge when we worried for the perpetual worry lines of her career.

‪Nathaniel: Naomi most certainly needs to shake off all the dour miserabilism. People have been filming her with grimy 'THIS IS DEPRESSING!' lighting for so long that I have no idea what she'd look like if she was having fun‬!
‪Guy: Well, at least Watts is coming up in J. Edgar. A Clint Eastwood movie is just the kind of fun frisky change of pace she needs.

Socialite Life Leonardo DiCaprio looking dapper on the set of The Great Gatsby. This will possibly be just what he needs after all the aging prosthetics of J. Edgar.
Hollywood Reporter interviews Michael Fassbender about his very sexual year with Cronenberg and McQueen
Cinema Blend Hilary Swank has fired most of her management team over the scandal that erupted when she attended (paid) that birthday party for the Chechnyan President.
South Asian Film Festival, about to kick off here in New York, will open with the  Oscar submission Abu, Son of Adam.
Broadway World Julie Andrews honored tonight in NYC
Threadless "one cookie to rule them all" [see pic below] LOL. I had to share since we were just talking about The Lord of the Rings here.

"cookie ringwraith" © rnlynam

Oscar in Brief
Today is the due date for all Animated Feature contenders to submit their paperwork for the Academy. So soon we'll know just how many nominees we'll get in this category which can range anywhere from 2 to 5 nominees depending on the number of submission. Meanwhile, The Wrap and In Contention both have new pieces up on the Academy's Best Foreign Language Film category. More from us here soon as we screen more entries ourselves.

Finally...  This commerical for The Immortals which I've never seen --and I've seen plenty of advertising for it -- it can't be real can it?

If so, hats off. Tellin' it like it is. I agree with everything Rich at FourFour says "Fucking Poetry"
 

Who's That Girl? It's Nicole Beharie

Kurt here. Considering the overall deficit of good roles for great black actresses (an issue to which this site is no stranger), moviegoers really can't be too hard on Nicole Beharie for offering them such rare and infrequent peeks at her remarkable talent. Still, watching those peeks (and they're watchable indeed), it's easy to send "grrrs" in this petite, 26-year-old beauty's direction, as she's thus far only appeared in five movies, two of them not even on the big screen. Why must she deprive us so? Her phone has to at least be ringing a little bit, and it can't just be about her selectivity, as the titles she's appeared in, on the whole, aren't exactly of the street-cred variety. So, what, then, has she been doing?

Quite a lot, as it turns out. My first exposure to Beharie was in early 2009, in a little film called American Violet, which screened at that year's Philadelphia Film Festival and had a very limited theatrical run. To be frank, the movie is glorified Lifetime rubbish, focusing on a real-life single mom who fought back against a corrupt system after being wrongfully charged with drug-dealing in a persecuted Texas housing project (wah-wah). But Beharie is knock-you-out stellar in the lead role, and she easily made my personal Best Actress top five. Since then the Juilliard grad has been toiling away on various projects that are slowly making their way to screens. Some may have caught her in the Precious wannabe Sins of the Mother (which, incidentally, was developed for Lifetime), while others may have seen her work in the football movie The Express, but she's also starring in at least four as-yet-to-be-released films, including everyone's favorite fleshy hype-magnet, Shame.

Beharie in 'American Violet'

In the Steve McQueen sex-addiction drama, Beharie plays Marianne, a co-worker of the lead nympho, Brandon (Michael Fassbender). She offers him a shot at pure, normal intimacy. Beharie doesn't upstage Fassbender or Carey Mulligan (it's not that kind of role), but she brings more than what you'd normally expect from such a character (SPOILER ALERT: she is introduced for the very purpose of being dismissed). Her ability to be extraordinarily sexy in a heated makeout session (which may just be the mixed-bag movie's most well-choreographed scene) is hypnotic, as much a small feat of physicality as in-the-moment focus.

With Fassy in 'Shame'Compared to her character in American Violet (a headlining part Beharie has said she doesn't expect to land again), the sidelined Marianne is rather thankless. But nothing but good can come from the fact that Beharie is starring in a movie that anyone who gives a hoot about film is absolutely going to see. It's bound to give her profile a long-overdue boost.

Beharie flicks on the horizon include the sports drama The Last Fall, and the afro-centric Small of Her Back and Woman Thou Art Loosed: On the 7th Day. Jot those titles down. Beharie will likely be reason enough to see them.

London Film Fest: "360" and "Shame"

Dave here with my first report from the London Film Festival, which Craig introduced you to on Thursday. We'll start with the Opening Night Gala.

Jude Law and Rachel Weisz as unfaithful marrieds.

Fernando Meirelles' 360 seems a fitting selection to open a film festival, sold as a "dynamic and moving roundelay" that takes us across the spectrum of people on the globe. But this is globalization for the West; just forget, for two hours, that Asia and Africa and Australia exist and that people might have sex there too. Peter Morgan's script works like a daisy chain, flimsily linking together a collection of character shells who spread out across Europe and America, reverberating off one another. Mirka (Lucia Siposova) ventures into prostitution to the disapproval of her sister Anna (Gabriela Marcinkova); Michael (Jude Law) is her first client, whose wife Rose (Rachel Weisz) is having an affair with Rui (Juliano Cazarre), whose girlfriend Laura (Maria Flor) has uncovered his lies and sets off back to Brazil, meeting John (Anthony Hopkins) on the plane...You get the idea.

Evidently, this is a film about how globalization has connected people across the globe, a decision from one changing the life of another, six degrees of separation, etcetera etcetera. It takes a delicate hand to make a daisy chain, and Peter Morgan is entirely too thick fingered and clumsy, forcing coincidence and connection between characters he forgets to give any identity to. Oddly sprightly culturally specific music crudely emphasizes the differing nationalities. Occasional split screens hilariously exaggerate the narrative parallels. Crafty editing connections verge on the farcical. Rachel Weisz is given a bad wig, Anthony Hopkins a bad monologue, and Ben Foster a luridly filmed introduction thanks to his character's sex offender status.

more 360° and Steve McQueen's Shame after the jump

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