David Cronenberg’s been keeping busy with his latest, Crimes of the Future. It looks like Existenz, but with major upgrades. The film stars Academy Award Nominee Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises, A History of Violence), Léa Seydoux (No Time to Die), and Academy Award Nominee Kristen Stewart (Spencer). I can’t begin to understand what the plot’s about, but given it’s Cronenberg, we’re all in.
Crimes of the Future will compete in this years Cannes Film Festival for the coveted Palm d’Or.
In a little over a month, No Time To Die is finally going to be released!
Can you believe it? A part of me feels like we’ve been waiting for this film for close to a 100 years. No Time To Die was first announced in 2016 and, like a lot of people, I was surprised and excited to hear that it would be directed by Danny Boyle. Boyle, however, left the film due to creative differences and was replaced by an equally intriguing choice, Cary Joji Fukunaga. All of the behind-the-scene turmoil and the constant rumors of Daniel Craig being tired of playing Bond gave the impression that No Time To Die was a trouble production and the frequent changing of the film’s release date didn’t help. Of course, the truth of the matter is that No Time To Die was one of the many big films that was delayed by the pandemic. Still, it has been six years since James Bond was last seen on a movie screen.
No Time To Die is going to be Daniel Craig’s last outing as Bond. There have been rumors of Craig’s Bond dying and someone else stepping up to assume both his name and his rank. I think it’s more probable that Bond either retires or fakes his own death like Bruce Wayne did at the end of The Dark Knight trilogy. The Craig Bond films have borrowed more from Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight films than most critics have acknowledged.
The final trailer for No Time To Die dropped yesterday. It seems to promise a lot of typical Bond stuff — glamorous locales, elaborate action scenes, and Ben Whishaw. It also features Craig’s rather angsty interpretation of Bond. (I’ve always felt that Craig tends to get a little bit too angsty as Bond, to the extent that he actually crossed the line from troubled to whiny in SPECTRE.) Lea Seydoux reprises her SPECTRE love interest role and Christoph Waltz’s Blofeld also makes an appearance in the trailer and it would appear that we’re still doing the whole, “Every Craig film is a part of a bigger story” thing.
Rami Malek is also prominently featured, playing a villain. Hopefully, this villain won’t be another lost relative of Bond’s. That was a narrative decision that made absolutely no sense in SPECTRE….
You may have, at this point, guessed that I’m hoping this film will be more like Casino Royale and Skyfall than like Quantum of Silence and SPECTRE. My feelings on the Craig films have been mixed but I’m an unapologetic fan of the Bond franchise so I can’t wait to finally see the new movie.
No Time To Die will be released on October 8th! I’ll be there!
Daniel Craig’s final outing as James Bond is almost upon us. With True Detective’s Cary Fukunaga taking over the direction this time, No Time to Die brings a mix of new faces and returning favorites. Though not much is truly known of the story, it looks like Bond’s relationship with Madeleine (Lea Seydoux) may be on a rocky road, enough to bring him back into service.
Rami Malek is also on board as the villain, which I’m personally excited for, and Ana de Armas (Knives Out) teams up again with Craig, though we’re not exactly sure who’s side she’s on. Lashana Lynch (Captain Marvel) looks to be a new member of the Double O ranking. Coming back are Christoph Waltz, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, Rory Kinnear, Jeffrey Wright, and Naomie Harris.
No Time to Die opens in cinemas in April 2020. Enjoy!
(SPOILERS)
Three years ago, Arleigh, Leonard, Chris Mead, and I reviewed every single James Bond films up to Skyfall. Leonard often refers to this as being our Avengers moment and it remains one of my fondest memories of my time here at the Shattered Lens. It really doesn’t matter who is playing the role or what the villain’s evil plan may be, or whether the individual film was made in the 60s or just last year, the Bond films are a lot of fun. Some of them are better than others. Sometimes, you get lucky and you get something like For Your Eyes Only and sometimes you have to settle for Die Another Day. Ultimately, every Bond film is an event and, in many ways, they are critic proof. As long we hear the iconic music, as long as Bond gets a few good quips, as long as the villain chuckles while explaining his evil plan, as long as there’s an exciting chase and a big explosion, and as long as there’s a lot of gorgeous clothes to look at and at least one tastefully lit sex scene, most viewers will be happy.
If it’s not broken…
Most viewers will probably be happy with SPECTRE, the latest Bond film. I saw the film yesterday and, even if it won’t ever make my list of top ten Bond films, I enjoyed it. Daniel Craig is back as Bond, Christoph Waltz fulfills his destiny by becoming the 9th actor to play the iconic villain Blofeld, Dave Bautista is a properly intimidating henchman, and Lea Seydoux is the strongest Bond girl since Eva Green. One thing that I especially appreciated about the film is that, in the roles of M, Miss Moneypenny, and Q, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, and Ben Whishaw are actually given an opportunity to get involved in the film’s action and all three of them are a lot of fun to watch. The film has an absolutely brilliant opening, featuring Bond assassinating a man in Mexico City and destroying a city block in the process. There’s an exciting chase scene, there’s a few moments of genuine wit, and there’s even one of those patented Bond train journeys, where sex and violence are mixed with intoxicating results. And yes, the clothes are to die for…
To Die For
It’s good and undeniably enjoyable in so many ways and yet somehow, SPECTRE still left me feeling slightly disappointed. Some of that is because SPECTRE exists in the shadow of Skyfall. After Skyfall (which I feel should have been one of the films nominated for best picture of 2012), expectation were sky high for SPECTRE. Those expectations were so high that there was no way that SPECTRE could have hoped to meet them. (You could argue that Quantum of Solace faced the same problem when it had to follow Casino Royale.) SPECTRE is no Skyfall but, then again, few films are.
Speaking of high expectations, I think we were all expecting Christoph Waltz to be one of the best Bond villains. After all, Waltz is a legitimately great actor and he specializes in the type of cheerful arrogance that has epitomized some of Bond’s greatest antagonists. (One can easily imagine Waltz playing Auric Goldfinger.) Add to that, Waltz is playing Blofeld, the ultimate Bond bad guy. As it is, Waltz gives a good performance but SPECTRE‘s Blofeld just isn’t that interesting. He has a lot more in common with the generic baddie from Quantum of Solace than with Goldfinger or the fascinated Raoul Silva of Skyfall.
As well, it wasn’t just enough for Blofeld to be the leader of a secret organization bent on world domination. It wasn’t enough that Blofeld was secretly responsible for everything that happened in Casino Royale, Quantum, and Skyfall (which, as much as some critics have complained about this particular plot twist, is actually a clever reference to Blofeld’s shadowy presence in all of Sean Connery’s Bond films). For some reason, the film’s writers decided it would be a good idea to make him Bond’s jealous stepbrother. Blofeld’s past relationship to Bond feels incredibly superfluous. I like to think that I’m pretty good at suspending my disbelief (especially when it comes to a Bond film) but I have to admit that I found myself rolling my eyes while Blofeld talked about how jealous he was when Bond came to live with his family.
We all know it’s you, Christoph…
(As well, Blofeld’s jealousy was a bit too reminiscent of Raoul Silva’s jealousy of Bond. It worked in Skyfall because we weren’t expecting a Bond villain to have a vulnerable side and Javier Bardem’s perversely charismatic performance caught the viewers off guard. In SPECTRE, it just feels like something that should have been eliminated during a rewrite.)
Daniel Craig, of course, is the sixth actor to officially play the role of James Bond. It’s always interesting to see how each actor interprets the role. The most successful Bond films are always built around the actor’s individual interpretation. For instance, it would be difficult to imagine Roger Moore in any of Sean Connery’s Bond films and, at the same time, it would be hard to imagine Sean Connery in The Spy Who Loved Me. Sean Connery was the Ruthless Bond. George Lazenby was the Insecure Bond. Roger Moore was the Bemused Bond. Timothy Dalton was the Boring Bond. Pierce Brosnan was the Suave Bond. Depending on which one of his films you see, Daniel Craig is either the Professional Bond or the Whiny Bond. SPECTRE continues the pattern that we’ve seen in the previous Craig films of presenting a James Bond who is struggling to balance his humanity with his job. When it works, like in Skyfall, it’s riveting. When it doesn’t work, like in Quantum of Solace, it runs the risk of getting rather tedious. SPECTRE finds Craig in between those two extremes. It’s an uneven performance. Craig and Seydoux have great chemistry and the scenes where Craig interacts with Fiennes, Harris, and Whishaw are fun to watch. But there are other scenes where Daniel Craig just comes across like he’s bored with the whole thing. Craig’s Bond has spent four films trying to figure out how he feels about his job. If Craig returns for a fifth film (and, as of right now, that seems to be a big if), he will hopefully have finally gotten over it.
(That said, SPECTRE was definitely written for Craig’s bond. At the end of the film — SPOILER, obviously — Bond has the choice between executing a man in cold blood or allowing the authorities to arrest him. Craig allows the man to be arrested. Connery would have put a bullet in his head and then smirked about it.)
He totally would…
And if it seems that I’m being critical of SPECTRE — well, I am. It’s one of the more uneven films in the Bond franchise, one that especially suffers when compared to some of the other spy films (Kingsman, MI: Rogue Nation) released this year. But, at the same time, SPECTRE does deliver the basics of what we expect from a Bond film. It’s entertaining and it has its fun moments. It’s no Skyfall but at least it’s better than Quantum of Solace.
Incidentally, I want to be Lea Seydoux when I grow up…
Other Bond Reviews on TSL:
Sometime around 8am in London, the 2nd trailer for Sam Mendes “Spectre” was released. The 24th film in the Bond Franchise, this one is a little similar to the Skyfall trailer in that Bond (Daniel Craig) is perhaps on the run again or is at least trying to cover his tracks. So far, it’s looking good.
Here are some of the things I’ve noticed:
1.) It’s a Snow Movie – With the exception of The World is Not Enough, most of the Bond films that take place in cold climates seem to fair better than the desert ones. As long as none of the girls aren’t named after a Holiday, this might work. Of course, that’s just my opinion there, others may of course disagree.
2.) Bond and M (Ralph Fiennes) already have issues – From the start Bond and M are at odds. That was quick. Nice to get it all out of the way.
3.) The Return of Mr. White. – One of the men responsible for the death of Vesper Lynd and member of Quantum (whatever that was), Mr. White (Jesper Christiansen) makes another appearance here. Maybe he has something important to share?
4.) Use of the theme from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – that was great to hear. Hope it’s incorporated into the film somehow. I believe that Thomas Newman (Mendes’ long time musical companion) is on board here, so maybe it’ll be used?
5.) Dave Bautista as an evil henchman. Not sure what Mr. Hinx will be doing, but there seems to be a close quarters fight in a train, reminiscent of From Russia With Love.
6.) That sweet, curvy and shiny Aston Martin DB10. Just look at it. In this movie, it goes head to head with a Jaguar CX75. As just about everyone knows, Jaguar is the Official Vehicle of Villains everywhere. Should be interesting to see how that turns out.
7.) Q finally gets a Q Branch worthy of the title. It looks like there a few things he’s working on in the background on some of the shots. One of which appears to be a flamethrower maybe, for the new car.
Enjoy! Spectre is set to release on November 5th (which as a side note of no particular importance nor relation, was the day Marty McFly arrived in Hill Valley, back in 1955). Additionally, here’s a featurette on the cars in the film.
It took me a while to come around to appreciating The Grand Budapest Hotel.
When I first saw Wes Anderson’s latest film, way back in March, I have to admit that I was somehow both impressed and disappointed. The film’s virtues were obvious. Ralph Fiennes gave a brilliant lead performance as Gustave, the courtly and womanizing concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel. As played by Fiennes, Gustave came to represent a certain type of old world elegance that, I’m assuming, died out long before I was born. As is typical of Anderson’s film, The Grand Budapest Hotel was visual delight. Even when the film’s convoluted storyline occasionally grew self-indulgent, The Grand Budapest Hotel was always interesting and fun to watch.
At the same time, I had some issues with The Grand Budapest Hotel.
One of the major ones — and I will admit right now that this will seem minor to some of you — is that halfway through the film, a cat is killed. The evil Dimitri Desgoffe von Taxis (Adrien Brody) is attempting to intimidate a nervous lawyer, Kovacs (Jeff Goldblum). Kovacs’s owns a cat and, at one point, Dimitri’s henchman, Jopling (Willem DaFoe), tosses the cat out of a window. Kovacs runs to window and sees his dead cat splattered on the sidewalk below…
And this is when the audience in the theater laughed and I got very angry.
To me, there was nothing funny about killing that man’s cat. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more that I’ve come to realize that my reaction had more to do with the audience than the film. The film was not saying that the cat’s death was funny. The film was saying that Dimitri and Jopling were evil and dangerous, as their actions throughout the film would demonstrate. It was the audience that decided, since Grand Budapest Hotel is full of funny moments and has the off-center style that one has come to expect from Wes Anderson, that meant every scene in the film was meant to be played strictly for laughs. The fact of the matter is that a typical Wes Anderson film will always attract a certain type of hipster douchebag. They were the ones who loudly laughed, mostly because they had spent the entire movie laughing loudly in order to make sure that everyone around them understood that they were in on the joke.
But that’s not the fault of the film. Despite what you may have heard and what the Golden Globes would have you believe, The Grand Budapest Hotel is not a comedy. For all the deliberately funny and quirky moments, The Grand Budapest Hotel is actually a very serious film. For all of the slapstick and for all of Ralph Fiennes’s snarky line readings, The Grand Budapest Hotel ultimately ends on a note of deep melancholy.
When I first saw The Grand Budapest Hotel, it seemed like it was almost too quirky for its own good. And, to be honest, I could still have done without some of Anderson’s more self-indulgent touches. The sequence at the end, where Gustave, who has been framed for murder, gets help from a series of his fellow hotel concierges started out funny but, as everyone from Bill Murray to Owen Wilson put in an appearance, it started to feel less like the story of Gustave and more like the story of all of Wes Anderson’s famous friends.
However, the more I’ve thought about it (and The Grand Budapest Hotel is a film that I’ve thought about a lot over the past year), the more I’ve realized that the quirkiness is only a problem if you made the mistake of thinking that the film is meant to be taken literally.
The more I thought about it, the more obvious it became that the most important scenes in The Grand Budapest Hotel were to be found at the beginning and the end of the film.
The film opens with a teenage girl sitting in front of the grave of a great author. She opens a book and starts to read.
As soon as the girl starts to read, we flashback 29 years to 1985 where the author (Tom Wilkinson) sits behind his office desk and starts to talk about the time that he visited the Grand Budapest Hotel.
We flashback again to 1969, where we see how the author (now played by Jude Law) met the owner of the Grand Budapest Hotel, a man named Zero (played by F. Murray Abraham). Over dinner, Zero tells the author the story of how he first came to the Grand Budapest and how he eventually came to own the hotel.
And again, we go back in time, this time to 1932. We see how the young Zero (Tony Revolori) first met and came to be the protegé of Gustave (Ralph Fiennes). We see how Gustave taught Zero how to be the perfect concierge. Eventually, Gustave would be framed for murdering a guest, Zero would meet and fall in love with Agatha (Saoirse Ronan), and then Zubrowska (the fictional Eastern European country in which this all takes place) would be taken over by fascists who would eventually claim the hotel as their own.
After the story of Gustave, Zero, and Agatha has been told, we suddenly flash forward to the author talking to Zero and then to the old author telling the story to his grandson and then finally back to the teenage reader sitting in the cemetery.
In other words, the Grand Budapest Hotel may be the story of Zero but we’re experiencing it through the memories of the author as visualized by the reader. Gustave, Zero, and the entire Grand Budapest Hotel are not just parts of a story. Instead, they become symbols of an old way of life that, though it may have been lost, still exists in the memories of old travelers like the author and the imaginations of young readers like the girl in the cemetery.
As I said at the start of this, I was vaguely disappointed with The Grand Budapest Hotel when I first saw it but, perhaps more than any other movie that I saw last year, this has been a film that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind. Having recently rewatched the film on HBO, I can also attest that both The Grand Budapest Hotel and Ralph Fiennes’s performance not only hold up on a second viewing but improve as well.
I still stand by some of my original criticisms of The Grand Budapest Hotel. I still wish that cat had not been thrown out the window, even though I now understand that Anderson’s main intent was to show the evil of Dimitri and Jopling. And I still find some of the cameos to be jarring, precisely because they take us out of the world of the film.
But you know what?
Despite those flaws, The Grand Budapest Hotel is still a unique and intriguing film. When I sat down tonight and made out my list of my top 26 films of 2014, I was not surprised that Grand Budapest Hotel made the list. But I was a little bit surprised at how high I ended up ranking it.
But then I thought about it and it all made sense.
If you’re a long time reader of Through the Shattered Lens, you’re probably aware that we’re all fans of the Bond franchise in some way. Around the release of Skyfall, we collectively reviewed every single Bond film. The project – spearheaded by our own Lisa Marie Bowman – was quite the success with each writer taking a film and showcasing their love (or displeasure for it). To date, I consider that our best “Avengers” moment.
Today, the Announcement for the next film in the series was made at the legendary Pinewood Studios. Director Sam Mendes introduced audiences to the 24th film, “Spectre”, which already seems interesting given the history of the evil group in Bond canon. I guess this means Quantum is no more, was a small piece of a larger puzzle, or perhaps it’s grown into something bigger? We’ll have to wait and see, but it’s up to speculation. Lee and I were actually talking about that yesterday. We do know that the production will take 007 from London to Mexico City, among other locations.
All of the actors were on hand, including new members Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained, Inglorious Basterds), Monica Bellucci (Malena, The Matrix Reloaded), and Lea Seydoux (Mission: Impossible -Ghost Protocol, Blue is the Warmest Color). Returning are Daniel Craig as James Bond, Ralph Finnes as M, Penny Dreadful’s Rory Kinnear as Tanner, Ben Whishaw (Layer Cake, Cloud Atlas) and Naomie Harris (Ninja Assassin, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom) as Moneypenny.
Although Roger Deakins won’t be on hand for the Cinematography, its okay (though he’ll be missed). Hoyt Van Hoytema is taking over the reigns. Between Spike Jonze “Her”, “Interstellar” and “Birdman”, Hoytema knows what he’s doing.
Even Aston Martin threw their keys into the ring with the new DB10, to celebrate their 50 year relationship with Bond. 10 copies were made exclusively for the film and we hope Mendes leaves them in better condition than 007 usually does.
Production starts next Monday and the film is on track for release next November.
With the Oscar nominations due to be announced this week, now is the time that the Shattered Lens indulges in a little something called, “What if Lisa had all the power.” Listed below are my personal Oscar nominations. Please note that these are not the films that I necessarily think will be nominated. The fact of the matter is that the many of them will not. Instead, these are the films that would be nominated if I was solely responsible for deciding the nominees this year. Winners are listed in bold.
You can check out my picks for 2010 by clicking here.
My picks for 2011 can be found here.
And, finally, here are my picks for 2012.
Best Picture
12 Years A Slave
American Hustle
Before Midnight
Blue Is The Warmest Color
Frances Ha
Fruitvale Station
Her
Inside Llewyn Davis
Spring Breakers
Upstream Color
Best Director
Noah Baumbach for Frances Ha
Shane Carruth for Upstream Color
Spike Jonze for Her
Harmony Korine for Spring Breakers
David O. Russell for American Hustle
Best Actor
Bruce Dern in Nebraska
Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf Of Wall Street
Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club
Joaquin Phoenix in Her
Dennis Quaid in At Any Price
Best Actress
Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine
Julie Delpy in Before Midnight
Adèle Exarchopoulos in Blue Is The Warmest Color
Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha
Amy Seimetz in Upstream Color
Best Supporting Actor
Barkhad Abdi in Captain Phillips
Kyle Chandler in The Spectacular Now
Bradley Cooper in American Hustle
James Franco in Spring Breakers
Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club
Best Supporting Actress
Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle
Eva Mendes in The Place Beyond The Pines
Lupita Nyong’o in 12 Years A Slave
Léa Seydoux in Blue Is The Warmest Color
Octavia Spencer in Fruitvale Station
Best Original Screenplay
American Hustle
Blue Jasmine
Her
Inside Llewyn Davis
Upstream Color
Best Adapted Screenplay
12 Years A Slave
Before Midnight
Blue Is The Warmest Color
The Spectacular Now
The Wolf of Wall Street
Best Animated Feature
The Croods
Despicable Me 2
Ernest and Celestine
Frozen
Monsters University
Best Documentary Feature
20 Feet From Stardom
The Armstrong Lie
Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer
Stories We Tell
Tim’s Vermeer
Best Foreign Language Film
(Please note that I do things differently for this category than the Academy. For this award, I am nominating the best foreign language films to be released in the United States in 2013.)
Beyond the Hills
Blue Is The Warmest Color
No
Renoir
White Elephant
Best Production Design
12 Years A Slave
Gravity
The Great Gatsby
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Oz: The Great and Powerful
Best Cinematography
Frances Ha
Inside Llewyn Davis
Nebraska
Spring Breakers
Upstream Color
Best Costume Design
12 Years A Slave
American Hustle
The Copperhead
The Great Gatsby
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Best Film Editing
12 Years A Slave
American Hustle
Gravity
Her
Upstream Color
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
12 Years A Slave
American Hustle
Dallas Buyers Club
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Warm Bodies
Best Original Score
Gravity
Her
Maniac
Trance
Upstream Color
Best Original Song
“Let it Go” from Frozen
“A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got)” from The Great Gatsby
“Young and Beautiful” from The Great Gatsby
“The Moon Song” from Her
“I See Fire” from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
“Atlas” from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
“Please Mr. Kennedy” from Inside Llewyn Davis
“So You Know What It’s Like” from Short Term 12
“Becomes The Color” from Stoker
“Here It Comes” from Trance
Best Sound Editing
All Is Lost
Iron Man 3
Pacific Rim
Rush
Upstream Color
Best Sound Mixing
All Is Lost
Iron Man 3
Pacific Rim
Rush
Upstream Color
Best Visual Effects
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Iron Man 3
Oz: The Great and Powerful
Pacific Rim
List of Films By Number of Nominations:
9 Nominations — Upstream Color
8 Nominations — American Hustle
7 Nominations — 12 Years A Slave, Her
5 Nominations — Blue Is The Warmest Color
4 Nominations — Frances Ha, Gravity, The Great Gatsby, Inside Llewyn Davis, Spring Breakers
3 Nominations — Before Midnight, Dallas Buyers Club, Iron Man 3, Pacific Rim
2 Nominations — All Is Lost, Blue Jasmine, Frozen, Fruitvale Station, Nebraska, Oz The Great and Powerful, Rush, The Spectacular Now, Trance, The Wolf of Wall Street
1 Nominations — 20 Feet From Stardom, The Armstrong Lie, At Any Price, Beyond The Hills, Captain Phillips, The Copperhead, The Counselor, The Croods, Despicable Me 2, Ernest and Celestine, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Maniac, Monsters University, No, The Place Beyond The Pines, Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, Renoir, Short Term 12, Stoker, Stories We Tell, Tim’s Vermeer, Warm Bodies, White Elephant
List of Films By Number of Oscars Won
3 Oscars — American Hustle, Upstream Color
2 Oscars — The Great Gatsby
1 Oscar — Before Midnight, Blue is The Warmest Color, Frances Ha, Frozen, Gravity, Her, Iron Man 3, Maniac, Pacific Rim, The Spectacular Now, Spring Breakers, Stories We Tell, The Wolf of Wall Street
Bruce Dern in Nebraksa
Here are the official winners at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival:
Palme d’Or – Blue Is the Warmest Colour by Abdellatif Kechiche
Honorary Palme d’Or – Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux for Blue Is the Warmest Colour
Grand Prix – Inside Llewyn Davis by Joel & Ethan Coen
Best Director – Amat Escalante for Heli
Best Screenplay – Jia Zhangke for A Touch of Sin
Best Actress – Bérénice Bejo for The Past
Best Actor – Bruce Dern for Nebraska
Jury Prize – Like Father, Like Son by Hirokazu Koreeda
Both The Tree of Life and Amour were nominated for best picture after winning the Palme d’Or and, in fact, it could be argued that neither one of those films would have had the momentum necessary to score an Oscar nod if they hadn’t first won at Cannes. It’ll be interesting to see if this trend will continue with Blue Is The Warmest Colour.
As for Bruce Dern — a Hollywood veteran who has appeared in a lot of iconic films but who has never won an Oscar — I have a feeling that he’ll be winning a lot of other awards before the Oscar season has ended.
I’ll be honest and admit that I wasn’t overly impressed by J.J. Abrams’ Mission: Impossible 3 and when it was announced that a fourth film in the franchise was going into production my initial reaction was an emphatic “meh”. It didn’t help when Pixar veteran Brad Bird was chosen to helm this fourth film. This was a filmmaker who did a great job with Pixar animated films, but still an unknown quantity when it came to live-action projects.
As the months passed and news filtered out from the film’s production the news was positive with many who have seen some rough footage becoming convinced that Brad Bird might know what he’s doing outside the Pixar stable. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol was soon being talked as being one of the most-awaited films of 2011. This newly-released first official trailer goes a long way into adding more positive buzz to a film already hyped up on it.
Also, it has Paula Patton in it, nuff said.
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is set for a December 16, 2011 release.
Through the Shattered Lens 