The fifth annual Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking will be handed out next month in New York City, with such inveterate documentarians as Errol Morris (Tabloid), Steve James (The Interrupters) and Kevin Macdonald (Life in a Day) facing off against the upstart likes of Alma Har’el (Bombay Beach), Tristan Patterson (Dragonslayer) and Clio Barnard (The Arbor). But look no further than the Audience Choice Award nominees for the most dynamic, high-stakes clash between old and new.
See if you can spot it in the nominees announced today, on which you can vote at the Cinema Eye Honors site:
· Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press)
· The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (Göran Olsson)
· Buck (Cindy Meehl)
· Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog)
· Give Up Tomorrow (Michael Collins)
· The Interrupters (Steve James)
· Justin Bieber: Never Say Never (Jon M. Chu)
· Project Nim (James Marsh)
· Senna (Asif Kapadia)
· Tabloid (Errol Morris)
Your mileage may vary, but Bieber vs. Herzog seems to me the showdown of the 2011-12 awards season. To be fair, let’s give Jon M. Chu — the swell auteur behind Never Say Never — credit as the nominated filmmaker, but let’s also be honest about the cosmically profound implications of two 3-D films featuring two icons of our day, each reflecting the state of human culture some 30,000 years apart. The earliest known cave drawings versus the slickest statement of modern…
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Another year, another ruthless paring down of the Oscar-caliber documentary feature crop, with the acclaimed likes of Werner Herzog’s Into the Abyss, Steve James’s The Interrupters, Asif Kapadia’s Senna and others falling by the wayside as the Academy whittled its 125 submissions to 15 shortlist contenders.
And honestly, this is a list I can live with. I wasn’t crazy about Abyss and would have been more than a little frustrated to think that might finally be the film for which the Academy recognizes Herzog. Senna and The Interrupters (and, to a lesser degree, the batshit Errol Morris trifle Tabloid) got jobbed, no doubt, but when you realize that the Oscar is Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory’s to lose anyway, the bitterness abates and you just tip your cap and content yourself to watch the rest of the game from the home-video sidelines. That said: Big ups to If a Tree Falls, Bill Cunningham New York” and Pina“:http://www.movieline.com/2011/02/berlinale-dispatch-wim-wenders-takes-his-place-in-the-3-d-vanguard.php (above), a few Movieline favorites the crew here wouldn’t mind seeing advance to the Big Show.
Here are your final 15, via AMPAS; check back here Jan. 24 for the final nominees in this and the rest of the Oscar categories.
Battle for Brooklyn
Bill Cunningham New York
Buck
Hell and Back Again
If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front
Jane’s Journey
The Loving Story
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
Pina
Project Nim
Semper Fi: Always Faithful
Sing Your Song
Undefeated
Under Fire: Journalists in Combat
We Were Here
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It’s over. It can mean the best of news or the worst of news, a new beginning or the utmost in closure. Its extremity is unparalleled, its harsh clarity often benumbing. Some people found out this week what It’s over meant for them. For many of the rest of us, it couldn’t be over soon enough. But you can get all the more closer here with Movieline’s Week in Review.
· Think you had a rough week? You could have been Brett Ratner. Or Eddie Murphy. Or Brian Grazer. Or the AMPAS establishment. Brutal.
· Annnnnd, action, James Bond.
· Many thanks to this week’s illustrious interviewees Henry Cavill, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Bill Condon, Werner Herzog, Tarsem and Jay Duplass.
· At debuts from Tintin to Haywire, we had you covered at AFI Fest.
· Despite Adam Sandler hitting bottom, we chose to remember the good times.
· Go watch Melancholia. Now.
· Nice knowing you, J. Edgar Oscar hopes!
· A Where’s Waldo movie is happening, apparently. Weep accordingly.
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It was a week for real talk ‘round these parts at Movieline HQ, with everything from Halloween to Lindsay Lohan’s latest legal woes bringing everyone to terms with the truth. Like the fact that no matter how many Halloweens you live through, you’ll never match Heidi Klum’s level of kookiness. Then the awful truth about the monster flop The Wolfman broke, and America’s favorite sparkly vampire dropped some cineaste science all over the Twilight crowd. What’s going on around here?
• First, Movieline celebrated Halloween with celebs, goth heroes, unintentionally scary characters, Verbal Vogueing, and the latest Heidi Klum getup.
• LiLo was sentenced back to the clink.
• Movieline remembered the late, great Oscar producer Gilbert Cates.
• Twilight madness continues! Oh that RPattz, always dropping Bunuel references into tween movie promo tours.
• Universal prexy Ron Meyer exploded a few truth bombs all over the Savannah Film Fest, and Movieline was there to report. http://www.movieline.com/2011/11/universal-chief-ron-meyer-addresses-tower-heist-vod-fiasco-admits-cowboys-aliens-land-of-the-lost-wo.php
• A hearty thank you to this week’s Movieline Interviewees Joely Richardson, Kal Penn, Ray Liotta, Lily Tomlin, Werner Herzog, and John Cho.
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Renowned for his prolific, fearless filmmaking, Werner Herzog is in fact nothing if not a polymath: Opera director, guerrilla film-school proprietor, diarist and author, septi-continental gadabout, and actor for hire (among other interests). It’s this latter quality that he and I discussed briefly today as he made the rounds for his new capital-punishment doc Into the Abyss — a diametric opposite to the biggest onscreen gig he’s taken to date.
Word came down last month that Herzog would co-star in One Shot, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie’s adaptation of the bestselling thriller by novelist Lee Child. The ninth in the series of Child’s thrillers featuring ex-military investigator Jack Reacher, One Shot centers around the tough guy’s attempt to hunt down the cold-blooded sniper responsible for five murders in a small town, and as if the project didn’t attract enough notoriety for having Tom Cruise as its leading man and co-producer, McQuarrie intensified the spotlight by casting Herzog as Reacher’s trigger-happy adversary known simply as The Zec.
The role will supply Herzog with his highest-profile screen performance yet, one about which we spoke today in New York.
So I’ve read that you’re acting again?
Yes, I am acting again. I’m fairly good as an actor when it comes to roles of hostile or dangerous guys, or violent and debased and dysfunctional characters. And of course, since this is a big Hollywood film, they have studied my performance in other films. So I was not involved in any casting; I was just invited.
Why do you think that was?
Because I’m good! You see, when it comes to an expensive film, you can’t fool around and…
Movieline is pleased today to bring you your first look at the new poster for Into the Abyss, director Werner Herzog’s acclaimed documentary foray into the intellectual, spiritual, emotional and legal wilds of capital punishment in America. Or Texas, more specifically, where Herzog digs into the case of convicted murderer and condemned inmate Michael Perry.
Abyss opened this week’s DOC NYC festival in New York after successful debuts in Telluride, Toronto, and London; the film makes its way to limited theatrical release next Friday, Nov. 11. Drop back by next week for a review and our latest chat with Herzog, and in the meantime, check out the striking new one-sheet below. Bonus: Check out the trailer as well below that.
[Click image for bigger poster.]
While promoting Tower Heist during a recent television interview, Eddie Murphy took a moment to forecast that he will be the most awful Academy Awards host of all time. (Has he seen last year’s ceremony co-hosted by Anne Hathaway and James Franco?) Click through to watch Murphy repeatedly cut off his Tower Heist co-star Ben Stiller to predict just how bad his Oscars show will be. Spoiler alert: It ends with a powder blue suit and a golden statuette shower.
(Apologies — but you have to sit through about 90 seconds of Tower Heist director Brett Ratner raving about the wonders of Murphy while producer Brian Grazer sits by, looking utterly confused.)
· Everyone, stop what you’re doing for an important announcement: Kevin Bacon approves of the new Footloose. Straight from his Twitter feed: “F-Loose! Just saw it. Congrats to Craig, Kenny, Julianne, Dennis,Andie, Miles, and the rest of the cast. U guys roc…” [@kevinbacon]
· First the limited edition Back to the Future Nike kicks. Then the electronic DeLorean and now someone has created a real-life working hoverboard. A very rich person’s transformation into Marty McFly is nearly complete. [Live For Films]
· Werner Herzog is considering starting his own acting union — and he needs your advice! [The Wrap]
· In other news, Madonna’s brother Anthony Ciccone claims to be homeless. [LAT]
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