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Who Wants To Be A ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ Distributor?
3:55AM Kyle Buchanan | Though Warner Independent Pictures no longer exists, it’s comforting to know that WB’s deeply boneheaded decision to let Fox Searchlight snatch Slumdog Millionaire away is still immortalised on their website. More »
‘Slumdog’ BacklashWatch: Slum Parents Step Up For Fox
3:05AM STV | After so many years of tired Oscar-campaign squabbles unfolding in our backyard, we’re quite liking the change of scenery to the exotic slums of Mumbai. More »
‘Slumdog’ BacklashWatch: Fox Calls Us, India Calls the Cops
5:45AM STV | You know you’re an Oscar frontrunner when the defensive becomes the default. Ask Fox Searchlight — they’ll tell you. More »
Is Exploitation Charge The Only Thing That Can Sink ‘Slumdog’?
7:58AM STV | Maybe it’s the work of a crafty saboteur worried about going 0-for-13 on Oscar night, or maybe it’s unfounded. But whoever’s leading the anti-Slumdog Millionaire effort may find its Achilles’ heel in Mumbai. More »
3 Reasons Why ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ is Guaranteed a Best Picture Oscar Nod
7:02PM STV | If or when the U.S. Treasury stumbles too badly to stop America’s slide into recession, we’ll always have Fox Searchlight to bail us out. The mini-major had another specialty smash last weekend with Slumdog Millionaire, the Mumbai-based genre-bender whose $35,043 per-screen average was the fourth best of any film this year, trailing The Dark Knight by less than $US1,300 per location. And if a quick scan of the Searchlight record tells us anything, the numbers will continue to astound — and they portend even better things for the Oscar race. More »
Mickey Rourke’s Oscar Pitch: ‘You Change, or You Blow Your Fucking Brains Out’
5:00AM STV | After picking up its hardware in Venice and a distribution deal in Toronto, Mickey Rourke’s comeback The Wrestler screened for the first time in the United States this morning in New York. We crashed the joint, and we can confirm that everything you’ve heard about Rourke’s Oscar future is essentially on the nose: He’ll nab a Best Actor nomination for his performance as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a 40-something pro wrestler on the downswing with pretty everything in his life including his relationship with his daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), his hang-ups with a stripper (Marisa Tomei) and his own tormented perspective on aging. That said, it’s sort of a marvel of accessibility and not nearly the downer we expected from feel-bad master Darren Aronofsky; after the nihilist pageantry of last year’s There Will Be Blood, the Academy will eat this up come February.
‘Choke’ Star Sam Rockwell On Sex Addiction, Going Full-Retard and How to Follow ‘Fight Club’
7:40AM STV | Arguably the first film to pack sex, autoasphyxia and colonial American angst into the same tidy bundle,Choke (opening Friday) features Sam Rockwell as Victor Mancini, a generally kindly sex addict whose professional pursuits include sponging off benefactors who happen to have saved him from choking. In his off-time, he susses his father’s identity from visits with his ailing mother (Anjelica Houston) and a doctor (Kelly Macdonald) who reckons Jesus had something to do with it. Strippers, anal beads and hormonally charged 18th-century re-enactments round it out — perhaps the very least one might expect from an adaptation of the prodigiously perverse Chuck Palahniuk. More »
‘Wrestler’ Officially Headed For Oscar Push, Less Vulgar Promotional Art
3:50AM STV | After The Wrestler’s more-than-well-received premiere last week in Venice, where star Mickey Rourke was forewarned that Oscar would likely forbid his puppy onstage next February, word out of Toronto confirms that Darren Aronofsky’s drama was picked up over the weekend by the awards-season whizzes at Fox Searchlight. The sale went down for about $4 million and all but assures Rourke of a Best Actor nomination if not a win, similar to the arc following Searchlight’s push on Forest Whitaker’s behalf for The Last King of Scotland. So early congrats to him. But there’s still work to do, as we’ve discovered after the jump. More »
Telluride Round-Up: Brad Pitt Qualifies For Oscar in 20 Minutes Flat
6:20AM STV | And just like that, the Telluride Film Festival is over — the sequestered Colorado tradition known for anointing and/or unveiling awards-season front-runners en route to Toronto and beyond. But with no Juno this year to charm visiting critics and distribution bosses alike, Labour Day came and went instead with rangy early takes on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, David Fincher’s long-awaited (and reportedly just long) saga of Brad Pitt aging backwards. While we had pretty much gotten used to the film’s stirring Spanish-language trailer, a few closer reads of previews emerging from the Rockies suggest the final result might be a little more complex: Extraordinary digital effects! Romance! And, alas, disappointment:
