Michael Dwyeron film
If there's any justice in the film world, there will be Oscars for There Will Be Blood, which I've had the good fortune to see before it opens in the US at Christmas and here in February. Directed with tremendous accumulating power by Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia), the film spans the period 1898-1927. It depicts its protagonist (indelibly played by Daniel Day-Lewis) as a cold, self-made, hands-on businessman who strikes oil and makes a fortune, regardless of all those he exploits in his acquisitive greed.
Anderson's riveting film, the strongest I have seen all year, features Paul Dano (who was in The Ballad of Jack and Rose with Day-Lewis, and Little Miss Sunshine) in a revelatory performance - and with a beatific but sinister smile - as Plainview's nemesis, a self-appointed religious preacher. As they clash, the intense drama unfolds to a richly imaginative, aptly discordant score by Radiohead lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood.
It will be astonishing if Day-Lewis does not collect his second Academy Award as best actor (after My Left Foot) for his portrayal of this misanthrope in all his sly charm, steely determination and volcanic ferocity. Day-Lewis gives a performance of staggering depth and complexity that is one of the greatest in the history of acting.
Academy voters catch in on DVD
The home cinema libraries of Oscar voters are swelling as DVD screeners of award contenders are dispatched to woo voters who don't get out to the cinema very often. Last month Paramount circulated 6,000 copies of Things We Lost in the Fire, starring Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro, on the day the movie opened in the US. Fox Searchlight got in even earlier, sending out screeners of Once, Waitress and The Namesake in early September.
Lights, camera, acclaim
Once cinematographer Tim Fleming, from Galway and based in Bray, was selected by the Hollywood show-biz bible Variety in its recent feature, "10 cinematographers to watch". Fleming was the lighting cameraman on three movies shown at this year's Dublin festival: Small Engine Repair, Cre na Cille and Once, which is set for DVD release here next Friday.
Hopkins takes on Hitchcock
Anthony Hopkins will play Alfred Hitchcock in a movie that, he says, is "about the making of Psycho and Hitchcock's doubts about himself". The Welsh actor is no stranger to real-life roles, among them three US presidents: George Washington (Freedom: A History of Us), John Quincy Adams (Amistad)
and Richard Nixon (Nixon). He's also played David Lloyd George three times, as well as Charles Dickens (The Great Inimitable Mr Dickens), Yitzhak Rabin (Victory at Entebbe), Bruno Hauptmann (The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case), Adolf Hitler (The Bunker), Donald Campbell (Across the Lake), Dr John Harvey Kellogg (The Road to Wellville) and Pablo Picasso (Surviving Picasso).
Tales of woe
Deservedly reviled by critics at Cannes in May 2006, Richard Kelly's Southland Tales finally opened in the US on Wednesday and will be released here on December 7th. Kelly has shorn 19 minutes from the wildly self- indulgent version shown at Cannes, although it still runs to two hours and 24 minutes. The belatedly released film is no longer as futuristic as Kelly intended (it's set on July 4th, 2008) but one hopes it will be more coherent and less tiresome and inane.
Sarah Michelle Gellar, Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock) and Seann William Scott star. Interviewed on Sci-fi Wire, Gellar chose to shoot the messengers: "Looking back, we all sort of realised, the movie takes place in Los Angeles. It is a story about here, about us, and we truly believe it should have been shown for the first time here. I think Cannes was really the wrong audience."
Which throws up several questions, such as why Kelly allowed it to compete at Cannes (where, to nobody's surprise, it failed to collect an award), and why the re-edited version will be available to people who actually don't live in LA and may never have visited there.
