Thompson On Hollywood

Cannes Watch: Indiana Jones

I saw it coming. Ever since Paramount announced that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Kingdom of the Crystal Skull would not screen for anyone before its May 18 unveiling at Cannes (in advance of its worldwide launch May 22), I felt that Spielberg and Co. might be setting themselves up. The anticipation of this film is too great, the pressure for information is wrecking havoc on the internet. As the NYT reports, several exhibitor screenings have added to the din surrounding this film. So far the PR strategy has been to dole out interviews to press who have not yet seen it; Vanity Fair, EW, the LAT and others have played ball.

And at Cannes, select press are being invited to do interviews before the official press screening at 1 PM on May 18. This will add more pressure to the press conference that day. UPDATE: Paramount is also not throwing a party, instead sticking to a small exclusive film dinner. That's not winning them any popularity contests.

Sony learned the hard way the power of a roomful of 4000 critics waiting to find a movie wanting at Cannes with the Da Vinci Code. Moviegoers ignored their complaints and made the film a worldwide blockbuster. But the filmmakers had hoped to score a prestige win at Cannes. Ron Howard and Brian Grazer left Cannes with their egos badly bruised.

Spielberg, who is staying in one of the big yachts in the harbor, may be hoping to return to the site of his early career triumphs with Sugarland Express and E.T., which was such a huge smash at Cannes that it burnished Spielberg's profile as a star director with a special place in filmgoers' hearts. Indiana Jones is a favorite franchise returning after 18 years. It may fulfill all that is hoped for; it will certainly score a huge global opening. That's not the issue. It will be fascinating to see if Cannes gives back to Spielberg what he may be hoping to get from it.

If the audience skews older, as I suspect it will, I wonder if Paramount might not have lured more of the key younger demo by waiting to open the film after they get out of school. It's early summer days yet.

Rudin, Miramax and Red Envelope Push Reprise

Introducing a new foreign-language auteur to American moviegoers has never been tougher.

So producer Scott Rudin is lending his name to the upcoming Norwegian film Reprise to provide an extra push.

Shocked to discover that Norwegian shorts writer-director Joachim Trier's stylishly hip feature debut, which earned strong reviews at Sundance and New Directors, New Films in 2007, didn't have distribution, Rudin persuaded Miramax to release the story about two fledgling novelists who respond to early literary success in radically different ways. Netflix's Red Envelope is partnering on the release. Here's the full story.

Here's the trailer:

Cannes Update: Blindness to Open, What Just Happened To Close Fest

As expected, Fernando Meirelles’ Blindness will open the Cannes Film Festival, screening in the competition, while Hunger, from Brit director Steve McQueen, will kick off Un Certain Regard. The Cannes Fest has also added Laurent Cantet's Entre les murs to the competition entries, along with James Gray's Two Lovers, an additional American title. Robert DeNiro will accompany Barry Levinson's Sundance entry What Just Happened? to the fest for closing night May 25, and will present the Palme d'Or at the award ceremony. DeNiro stars as a Hollywood producer modeled on writer Art Linson, who penned the screenplay; Cannes jury president Sean Penn co-stars with Robin Wright Penn and John Turturro.

Cannes Fest Lineup Includes Americans Eastwood, Soderbergh and Kaufman

The Cannes Film Fest announced its lineup Wednesday, and lo and behold, Steven Soderbergh's two Che films were included in the competition after all, as one four-hour entry. There had been some question if Soderbergh could finish the pics in time. Clint Eastwood's The Changeling and Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut Synecdoche, New York are the three American films in the competition. Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and DreamWorks Animation's Kung Fu Panda will show out of competition. Spielberg will return to the Croisette for the first time since The Color Purple in 1986. New films from Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Walter Salles, Wim Wenders and Atom Egoyan will also be in competition. The opening and closing films have not been announced--Fernando Meirelles' Blindness, an Agnes Varda doc and Barry Levison's What Just Happened? were expected to be in the line-up.

Sean Penn will lead the main jury, comprised of Sergio Castellitto, Natalie Portman, Alfonso Cuaron, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Alexandra Maria Lara, and Rachid Bouchareb. UPDATE: Penn has programmed a U.S. film by Alison Thompson, The Third Wave, as a special jury president presentation. Interestingly, Penn won an Oscar for Mystic River under the direction of competition director Eastwood, so that complicates the jury/competition dynamic just a tad.

Americans Abel Ferrara, Kelly Reichert and James Toback have films in the official Un Certain Regard selection, while David Lynch sprig Jennifer Lynch of Boxing Helena fame is in the midnight category.

The full line-up is on the jump:

Stateside, the Tribeca Film Fest kicked off Wednesday night in New York with Tina Fey's comedy Baby Mama. Still to unspool are David Mamet's jujitsu drama Redbelt, Errol Morris's Abu Ghraib doc Standard Operating Procedure and the Wachowski's family FX adventure Speed Racer.

Legende Goes Hollywood

La Vie En Rose producer Alain Goldman is launching Légende Films, Inc., a subsidiary of his Paris-based production house Légende. Former Hollywood journalist Nancy Griffin (Premiere, AARP Magazine, Hit and Run, co-authored with Kim Masters) will head development and production in Los Angeles.

“We have been growing the company with the intention of developing more films for the international market," says Goldman, "and the moment is right to establish ourselves in the U.S."

Goldman has secured a new financial partnership with the French investment company Serendipity, co-owned by industrialists Bouygues and Pinault and headed by Patrick Le Lay, which now holds 35% of Légende. The company has also extended its worldwide (except U.S.) distribution deal with StudioCanal.

Founded in 1992, Légende started out with Ridley Scott’s big-bucks Christopher Columbus epic 1492. The company co-produced Martin Scorsese’s Casino with Universal and TF1 and also produced Roland Joffé’s Vatel. In France, Légende produced The Crimson Rivers 1 & 2, L'Enquête Corse, La Vie en Rose and 99 Francs. Legende has completed production on the upcoming summer release Babylon AD for Fox and StudioCanal, starring Vin Diesel.

Goldman wants to work with English-speaking directors, writers and actors on a variety of genres.

Hong Kong Stars: Unstoppable

Richard Corliss explains why Hong Kong stars like The Forbidden Kingdom's Jet Li and Jackie Chan are unstoppable.

Weinsteins Embrace Asia Fund

The Weinstein Co. is eager to claim a piece of The Forbidden Kingdom, which Lionsgate and TWC will open wide April 18, as the first film from its $285-million Asian Film Fund. TWC plans to continue financing the development, production, acquisition, marketing and distribution of a large slate of Asian-themed films. Next is Mikael Håfström's 40s action epic Shanghai, starring John Cusack and Gong Li, and a contemporary remake of Akira Kurosawa's classic Seven Samurai.

The Forbidden Kingdom marks the first-ever onscreen pairing of martial arts superstars Jackie Chan and Jet Li. American teenager and Kung Fu fanatic Jason (Michael Angarano) finds an antique Chinese staff in a pawn shop, which turns out to be the legendary stick weapon of Chinese warrior the Monkey King (Jet Li). Jason is suddenly transported back to ancient China where he meets the drunken kungfu master, Lu Yan (Jackie Chan), who helps him on his quest to return the staff to its rightful owner. The film is shot by Peter Pau (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and choreographed by Woo-Ping Yuen (Crouching Tiger, The Matrix, Hero).

Written by Hossein Amini, Shanghai starts shooting on May 5th in London, and then moves to Thailand. (Word is the production is still unable to get permission to shoot in China.) The Weinsteins plans to release Shanghai in North America on December 25, 2008.

TWC is in talks to hire a director and cast on Seven Samurai, and is hoping to start filming in the last quarter of 2008.

Almodovar Launches Blog

Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, who is just as entertaining as his films, is launching a tri-language blog. I'm there.

Film Critics: New York and New Wave

In the latest issue of New York celebrating its 40th anniversary, David Edelstein lists his fave the movies that most define New York, including Annie Hall (pictured).

The New Yorker is keeping its profile of the French New Wave's Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard behind its firewall, damn them. (I have a sub, but I can't link to the full profile.) Here's a slide show and audio interview with the writer Richard Brody.

I got a huge kick out of showing Godard's Alphaville to my USC film criticism class. Godard's reviews are fun to read, especially on Hitchcock. It's heady to see his pieces move from an enthusiastic embrace, appreciation and analysis of American movies to full-blown treatises on cinema, as Godard works out his ideas and starts to put them on film.

This ongoing debate about film criticism may be missing a crucial point. When the cinema was still a young medium--and the critics were figuring out their role in relation to it--everyone was making discoveries. The auteur theory was created so that critics addressing a backlog of movies accumulated over decades could codify and index them.

Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris were battling over different ways to read movies. Sarris was the more learned and academic; he was really an historian. Kael was a popularizer and passionate advocate, and wrote far more entertaining prose.

We haven't seen their like since for several reasons. The explosion of movies in the 60s and 70s has subsided. Critics became more established, and they stopped arguing about their modes of discourse. In the end, Kael won the battle. Learned auteurist Dave Kehr is not a film critic at the NYT, although many point out that reviewing DVDs is a far better job. The New Yorker's Anthony Lane is the quintessential reviewer as entertainer, where it's less about what he has to say than how he says it.

China Cracks Down on Lust, Caution Star

In a blatant case of sexism run amuck, China is banning media coverage of Lust, Caution actress Tang Wei while her co-star Tony Leung remains unscathed. Here's more on the China crackdown.

Rush Hour 3 Top DVD Rental of 2007

Brett Ratner's Rush Hour 3 beat out some pretty big heavyweights as top DVD Rental of 2007, generating $71.2 million in rental revenue, according to Home Media Retailing. Rush Hour 3 out-performed Spider-Man 3, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and Shrek the Third.

Mummy 3, Red Cliff, Forbidden Kingdom Shoot in China

The China Film Group, which wields an unusual amount of clout over who can do what and where moviewise in China, is going public. The more I learn about this mysterious organization, the more I want to know.

One person who seems to understand its workings is producer Bill Kong, who is featured in my column on how Hollywood is taking big-budget productions to China, including Rob Cohen's The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, starring Brendan Fraser, Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh; and Rob Minkoff's The Forbidden Kingdom, starring Li and Jackie Chan. It took four Asian countries to finance John Woo's $80-million Red Cliff, starring Tony Leung.

Here's The Forbidden Kingdom trailer. The movie opens April 18.

Obit: Robbe-Grillet Dies

A friend writes: "Someone is killing the great modernists of Europe. Antonioni. Bergman. Now..." I confess that aside from writing the great screenplay for Alain Resnais' classic Last Year at Marienbad, nouveau roman novelist/screenwriter/director Robbe-Grillet was never my cup of tea. I encourage fans of Robbe-Grillet to post comments about what made him great. Here's Glenn Kenny.

This Last Year at Marienbad clip gives you the general idea: gliding camera, voiceover, narrative disjunction:

And for fun, Blur's homage to Marienbad:

Trailer Watch: The Forbidden Kingdom

With The Forbidden Kingdom, Rob Minkoff (The Lion King, Stewart Little) takes on a martial arts action adventure laced with humor--and Jet Li vs. Jackie Chan. And in the upcoming epic-scale sequel The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, which Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story) filmed in Beijing and Shanghai, another historic martial arts confrontation takes place: between Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh. Lionsgate and The Weinstein Co. release the Forbidden Kingdom April 18; Universal opens Mummy 3, which just wrapped, on August 1.

Here's an unofficial, non-studio, non-pro Mummy 3 teaser (the studio hasn't finalized its first trailer yet):

Trailer Watch: John Woo's Period Epic Red Cliff

John Woo's bid to deliver his own epic period adventure on a Kurosawa-scale is the $75-million Red Cliff, his first Asia-shot film since 1992's Hardboiled. Set in the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history, the epic was filmed over four months in mainland China.

This trailer took my breath away. My only regret: that Chow Yun-Fat, fresh from working on a Jerry Bruckheimer-scale Pirates of the Caribbean sequel, couldn't work things out with his former director. (Woo and producer Terence Chang weren't willing to meet his sky high perk demands.) Tony Leung, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Zhang Gengyi star in this pan-Asian production which has backers from Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Woo filmed two two-hour films to be released separately in Asia in July and December 2008, with a two and a half hour cut going out in the rest of the world. (I wonder what will show in Cannes?) Summit is selling international rights at Berlin.

The Orphanage handled the VFX.

Check out Woo's trademark white dove.

Sundance Watch: Trouble the Water Q & A

Atonement Leads BAFTA Noms

OK, so it doesn't look good for Atonement for a best picture Oscar slot. What about McAvoy, Knightley and Wright, pictured here? It's such a competitive year. I'm still scratching my head about why so many folks haven't responded to this wonderful movie the way the British Academy of Film & Television Arts did. Of course, the Brits are rewarding their own. Atonement led the BAFTA pack with 14 noms.

Was the structure too strange? The central figures not likable enough? The Academy usually loves the Brits, the period, the scale and scope of a movie like this. I come back to the same thing. Despite Focus Features' best efforts not to let this happen, the early fest raves in the fall, combined with the withholding of screenings, led to the film finally not meeting expectations. It's doing some business. But this film did not perform with the Guilds the way I expected it to. One other culprit: the high end reviews that knocked it, led by A.O. Scott in the NYT.

The awards ceremony will take place on Sunday, February 10 at the Royal Opera House in London; stateside it's on BBC America on Feb 10 at 6 PM Eastern.

Oscar Shuns 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days

Oscar foreign film committee head Mark Johnson's worst fear has been confirmed. The nine films advancing to the next round of voting in the Foreign Language Film category for the 80th Academy Awards do not include Cristian Mungiu's lauded Romanian abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and the European Film Award, as well as landing on many ten best lists.

Also not included, perhaps because voters expected it to turn up in the animation category, was Marjane Satrapi's artful adult animated feature, Persepolis, which was France's Oscar submission. The country might have been better off submitting La Vie en Rose, which was a stateside crowdpleaser and a rare foreign-language hit. The Golden Globes nominated both 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days and Persepolis in the foreign language category. "I'm mortified," said one Academy member.

One way to alter the foreign-language voting is to have foreign branch members serve a limited term, and rotate in and out, so that the same people aren't always voting. "People should show they've seen a certain number of foreign language films during the year to qualify," suggested one Oscar publicist. "They should be aware of foreign language films."

The films, listed in alphabetical order by country, are:

Austria, “The Counterfeiters,” Stefan Ruzowitzky, director Brazil, “The Year My Parents Went on Vacation,” Cao Hamburger, director Canada, “Days of Darkness,” Denys Arcand, director Israel, “Beaufort,” Joseph Cedar, director Italy, “The Unknown,” Giuseppe Tornatore, director Kazakhstan, “Mongol,” Sergei Bodrov, director Poland, “Katyn,” Andrzej Wajda, director Russia, “12,” Nikita Mikhalkov, director Serbia, “The Trap,” Srdan Golubovic, director

The first phase of voting consisted of several hundred L.A.-based Academy members who each saw a selection of the 63 qualifying films. (Not qualifying were France's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Israel's The Band's Visit.) From Friday, January 18, through Sunday, January 20, in both Hollywood and New York City, a second phase committee comprised of ten randomly selected members from the first phase plus invited ten-member groups in NY and LA, will view the nine film shortlist and select the final five nominees. They will be announced January 22.

UPDATE: I've talked to many people about this, all of them depressed by the way the Academy voting went. In the end, whatever the foreign committee's motives--rewarding lower-profile films that needed a boost, voting for films with familiar and beloved directors who they had nominated before, like Mikhalkov, Arcand, Wajda, Bodrov, and Tornatore, or going with old-fashioned taste and not being willing to embrace the new--the Academy foreign branch selections do not reflect the best foreign films of the year. Pure and simple. While I have not seen all the films, nor am I dissing the ones on the list, too many excellent films, like Persepolis, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, Caramel, The Orphanage, Silent Light, Secret Sunshine and Edge of Heaven, were not selected.

Golden Globes: Cotillard Wins

Marion Cotillard has won for La Vie en Rose. Remember it's the FOREIGN PRESS! Bush is sounding horrified and complaining that the film was not a comedy or a musical, but a drama with singing. He was rooting for Ellen Page; she's a North American actress, and very new at that. The Oscars will come through with a nom for her, but she may not win that one either. Cotillard will be up against Julie Christie for the Oscar.

Strike Watch: WGA Turns Down Waivers for Golden Globes and Oscars

The WGA is playing hard ball with the Hollywood Foreign Press's Golden Globes and the Academy Awards, denying them waivers for their respective televised awards shows, reports Variety. This means celebrities may not want to cross picket lines, and it means a relatively simple litany of ad-libbed acceptance speeches for those who do. Here's Film Experience on what to expect.

Golden Globe Nominations: Atonement Leads Pack with Seven

With seven nominations, Joe Wright's Atonement led the field of Golden Globe nominations Thursday morning. It was a good day for Denzel Washington, who stars in two films out of seven in the motion picture drama category: American Gangster, in which he stars as a Harlem kingpin, and The Great Debaters, a heart-tugging period drama about an upstart debate team at a black college who take on Harvard, which he also directed. He was also nominated for best actor for American Gangster.

The 80 or so Hollywood Foreign press voters wound up with three ties for fifth place, they say; hence the seven drama slots.

Michael Clayton earned five noms, including George Clooney, Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson. Cate Blanchett landed two noms, for dramatic actress in Elizabeth: The Golden Age and for her supporting role as one of six Bob Dylans in I'm Not There. And Philip Seymour Hoffman won two comedy side noms, as best actor in The Savages and supporting actor in Charlie Wilson's War.

While considered a bellwether for the Oscars, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association generously breaks its best picture and actor candidates into two categories: drama and musical/comedy, while the Motion Picture Academy does not. Thus, on January 22 the Academy may not find room to reward all the musical/comedy Globe entries: Across the Universe, Hairspray, Juno, Sweeney Todd and Charlie Wilson's War, which landed five noms.

The director category reveals the strongest five Globe candidates: Sweeney Todd, No Country for Old Men, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, American Gangster and Atonement. I would not be surprised if those five also wound up as Oscar's best on January 22. While its youthful director Jason Reitman did not land a director Globe mention, Juno, which got nods for comedy, actress (Ellen Page) and screenplay (Diablo Cody) is gaining momentum in the Oscar race.

There's no question that Hairspray got a significant boost from the Globe nominations, especially John Travolta in the supporting actor category, who had been overlooked by critics' groups. Also getting much-needed recognition was Casey Affleck for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Among the Globe surprises that may not be mirrored on the Oscar side of the ledger:

David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises and star Viggo Mortenson earned drama nods.

Angelina Jolie landed a dramatic actress nom for A Mighty Heart.

Jodie Foster was recognized for her role as a Manhattan vigilante in The Brave One.

On the musical/comedy side:

Hairspray's Nikki Blonsky and Sweeney Todd's Helena Bonham Carter landed noms.

Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts won noms for Charlie Wilson's War.

John C. Reilly landed a nod for the musical comedy Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

Ryan Gosling got a much-needed boost for the indie flick Lars and the Real Girl.

Of the musical/comedy actor nods, the likeliest one to score with the Academy voters is Sweeney Todd's Johnny Depp.

Because the Globes have less stringent criteria for inclusion in its foreign film category, several films that are not eligible for the Oscars made the cut: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Lust, Caution and The Kite Runner. Nominees 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (Romania) and Persepolis (France) are considered strong contenders in the foreign Oscar race.

While many would-be awards-season contenders are crying in their beer today, all is not lost. It is possible to forge ahead without Globe noms, as Half-Nelson star Gosling did last year.

The full list of movie nominations is on the jump.

Oscar Watch: Foreign Film

If you're interested in the foreign Oscar race, The Film Experience, which collects info on all 63 foreign Oscar submissions, is a good place to start. And Cinemascope takes the temperature of the foreign race.

Awards Daily projects that one surefire Oscar contender will be the Austrian submission The Counterfeiters, which Sony Pictures Classics is releasing. I agree that it's a strong competitor. It's an old cliche that the Academy is susceptible to a good holocaust drama, but in this case, the movie is based on a true story with an unusual twist. A concentration camp sets up an elite unit of skilled prisoners with a mission: to print money to fund the Nazi war effort. The prisoners want to survive, but they also want the Germans to lose. The movie delivers.

Other strong contenders include the Palme d'Or and European Film Award winner from Romania, the abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (IFC Films), Mexican Carlos Reygados's pastoral Silent Light (Tartan), Italian Giuseppe Tornatore's melodramatic The Unknown Woman (Outsider Pictures), Lebanon's Caramel (Roadside Attractions), German Fatih Akin's Edge of Heaven (Strand), and Marjane Satrapi's animated French film, Persepolis (SPC).

Here's the Counterfeiters trailer:

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days Wins at European FIlm Awards

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, the Cannes Palme d'Or winner and the Romanian Oscar submission, has won two European Film Awards, it was announced December 1 in Berlin:

EUROPEAN FILM 2007
4 LUNI, 3 SAPTAMINI SI 2 ZILE (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), Romania directed by Cristian Mungiu produced by Mobra Film SRL

EUROPEAN DIRECTOR 2007
Cristian Mungiu for 4 LUNI, 3 SAPTAMINI SI 2 ZILE

EUROPEAN ACTOR 2007
Sasson Gabai in BIKUR HATIZMORET (The Band’s Visit)

EUROPEAN ACTRESS 2007
Helen Mirren in THE QUEEN

EUROPEAN SCREENWRITER 2007
Fatih Akin for AUF DER ANDEREN SEITE (The Edge of Heaven)

EUROPEAN CINEMATOGRAPHER 2007
Frank Griebe for DAS PARFUM: DIE GESCHICHTE EINES MÖRDERS (Perfume:
The Story of a Murderer)

EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY PRIX DEXCELLENCE 2007 Uli Hanisch for Production Design DAS PARFUM: DIE GESCHICHTE EINES MÖRDERS

EUROPEAN COMPOSER 2007
Alexandre Desplat for THE QUEEN

EUROPEAN DISCOVERY 2007
BIKUR HATIZMORET (The Bands Visit) by Eran Kolirin, Israel

EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY DOCUMENTARY 2007 - Prix ARTE LE PAPIER NE PEUT PAS ENVELOPPER LA BRAISE (Paper cannot Wrap up Embers) by Rithy Panh, France

EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY SHORT FILM 2007 - Prix UIP ALUMBRAMIENTO by Eduardo Chapero-Jackson, Spain

THE PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD 2007
LA SCONOSCIUTA by Giuseppe Tornatore

EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY CRITICS AWARD 2007 - Prix FIPRESCI COEURS by Alain Resnais

EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Jean-Luc Godard

EUROPEAN ACHIEVEMENT IN WORLD CINEMA 2007 - Prix Screen International Michael Ballhaus

PRIX EURIMAGES
Margaret Ménégoz and Dr. Veit Heiduschka

HONORARY AWARD
on the occasion of the 20th European Film Awards Manoel de Oliveira

Indie Spirit Noms: I'm Not There Leads Field

The Indie Spirit Awards announcement this morning raises some interesting questions:

Did I'm Not There, the front-runner with four noms and the Robert Altman award, really cost less than $20-million, the supposed cap for Indie Spirit consideration? The film's official budget is $20 million. No Country for Old Men and There Will be Blood weren't eligible because they were well over the cap.

There's an abortion theme this year, with the Romanian 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days and Tony Kaye's doc Lake of Fire both getting nominations in the foreign and doc categories, respectively. Even Juno features a teen girl who refuses to have an abortion. Juno also got an Oscar boost with four noms--actress Ellen Page and screenwriter Diablo Cody will keep moving forward during the awards season.

Philip Seymour Hoffman got nommed for The Savages--which also landed four noms, including two for Tamara Jenkins for directing and writing--over Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, which landed a first screenplay nom for Kelly Masterson as well as a supporting nom for Marisa Tomei. I'm not feeling real Oscar heat for the hardboiled Sidney Lumet picture, which didn't land director or feature slots here. Unfortunately for its Oscar hopes, The Weinstein Co's Grace is Gone, which features a lauded performance by John Cusack as a military man who loses his wife to the Iraq War, was overlooked by the Spirits.

The French-language The Diving Bell and the Butterfly presumably was eligible for the best feature category because its two producers, Kathleen Kennedy and Jon Kilik, are American. Four Spirit noms will definitely help the pic, which is playing well at guild screenings as it pursues Oscar attention (although director Julian Schnabel's recent swing through L.A. may have set the movie back a few notches). Janusz Kaminski and Ronald Harwood, especially, are strong Oscar contenders for cinematography and adapted screenplay.

On the other hand, Ireland's English-language Once is nominated in the foreign language category! While Ang Lee's Chinese-language Lust, Caution didn't make the cut for foreign film or best feature, it did score best actor and actress for Tony Leung and Tang Wei. And Israel's The Band's Visit, which has too much English in it to be Oscar-eligible, nabbed a foreign nom here.

A Mighty Heart's Angelina Jolie will duke it out for best actress with Juno's Ellen Page, I suspect.

Lust, Caution: Don't Try the Sex Positions at Home

This story about China's warning to the folks who might get some ideas from Ang Lee's Lust, Caution is hilarious.

AFI Fest: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Back in Cannes in May, when the critics returned from the screening of 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, they were raving. (Here's the review). And at fest's end, the low-budget Romanian abortion movie won the Palme d'Or. I can see why it's been a fest circuit hit. I finally caught Romania's foreign Oscar entry, which IFC Films will open in January, at the AFI Fest last week. It has already screened well for the Academy foreign branch and should land a foreign Oscar slot.

It packs a punch. First, like the similarly extraordinary Death of Mr. Lazarescu, which was also shot by DP Oleg Mutu, the 35 mm movie is comprised of a series of long hand-held shots. It is strictly told from the POV of the friend of the young college student who is trying to get an illegal abortion during the 80s, during the oppressive regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu. [SPOILER ALERT]

At the Q & A, director Cristian Mungiu explained how this true story haunted him for 15 years. "For a long while I never thought I'd make a film about it," he said. But as he was trying to write a short film about his generation in their 20s, he saw the emotional potential in this story for his second film. (His first debuted in Cannes in 2002.)

He had to fly his lead, Anamaria Marinca, in from London, where she's in demand after winning a BAFTA for the Brit TV series Sex Traffic. (She's also in Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth.) Marinca gives an astonishing, authentic, heart-breaking performance during a complex set of unfolding scenarios full of danger and menace.

At the start of the story she's in love, in a relationship with someone who could become her life partner. By movie's end, she's no longer in that place. And helping her roommate to get an abortion---because she would expect the friend to do the same for her---ruins her life. Turns her into a criminal. Changes how she sees men. A lot of things.

Anyone who has been through an abortion will find this a tough slog. The film is provocative and timely and a must-see for any cinephile. I disagree with some who interpret this as an anti-abortion film. While it doesn't say that going through an abortion is a good or easy thing--and late-term abortions are certainly not advisable--this film says that we should not turn women who choose to have abortions into criminals.

"I rely on these actors who are very natural," said Mungiu, who shot the film in 31 days. "These ten minute shoots are difficult to shoot. They have to remember so many lines at once in a precise script. And be very focused. I liked that they never faked the emotions they were having."

Mungiu makes careful decisions about what he shows and does not show. Some are controversial. He shot things several different ways, and made the final decision in the editing room to reveal an aborted fetus. "My attempt was to be very honest," he said. "As soon as I edited the film it was obvious that this moment had to be in the film."

Here's the trailer:

Awards Gauntlet Syndrome

Pity the poor filmmaker with an Award season movie to flog. If it's good enough to have a shot at some awards attention, then the distrib is going to make you do the rounds: the guild screenings and Q & As, the dinners, the AFI Fest, the Hollywood Fest, the Variety screening series, my UCLA Sneak Previews class, the Behind the Camera Awards--and that's just the beginning. As we go on there's the gauntlet of awards ceremonies, the LA and NY critics, the Board of Review, the Indie Spirits, The Gothams, the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards. The real horror is keeping the thing going all the way to the Oscars. If I were Julian Schnabel, I'd pack my PJs and head back to NYC right now.

On Friday night, after a long Miramax dinner, he and producers Kathleen Kennedy and Jon Kilik, screenwriter Ronald Harwood, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, and stars Mathieu Amalric, Max Von Sydow, Marie-Josee Croze, and Emmanuelle Seigner all trooped onto the stage at the Fine Arts Theatre to talk up The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, for which Schnabel won the directing prize in Cannes. The hirsute Schnabel ran the show from center stage, wearing a skirt and fuming a cigarette.

Schnabel promoted the movie's soundtrack, and pimped Seigner's new record, too. It was important, he said, to shoot at the real maritime hospital in Berck where Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby had stayed after his stroke, to pick up the atmosphere, the accidents, the inspiration from the place. One day, Schnabel saw the tide going out past a big rock and arranged to shoot Amalric on it, in his wheelchair, a stunning image.

The movie is beautiful, poetic, moving. Schnabel pointed out that the precise, purposefully distorted mise-en-scene and messy POV shots by Kaminski involved virtually no VFX (except for a digital image of a butterfly coming out of a cocoon). Kaminski did all the superimposition inside the camera, by running the film twice. Amalric paid tribute to his fellow actors, who are amazingly direct and communicative when acting to panes of glass, as they perform straight into the camera. Amalric got huge applause from the Fine Arts crowd for his role as the paralyzed editor who emotes --and dictates an entire memoir--with mere blinks and twitches.

Von Sydow admitted that he submitted to a real close razor shave from Amalric--and got cut. And it was the first time, he said, that he had to deliver his first day's work on a film over the telephone. The scenes between Amalric and Von Sydow are among the most powerful; Schnabel had just lost his father when he took on the project, which was originally to star Johnny Depp. Kennedy and Kilik moved the movie over to Pathe in France when Universal passed. It's hard now to imagine it not being done in authentic French.

I ran into a smaller subset of the Diving Bell gang at The Highlands supper club on Sunday night, when Schnabel was the last presenter at Hamilton Watch's Behind the Camera Awards. Schnabel lectured host Anne Volokh, publisher of Hollywood Life Magazine, about the lousy acoustics in the room--"build a wall," he ordered her--then offered up his hearfelt tribute to his long-time producing partner, Kilik. "It's a great honor for him to be a friend of mine," he said, forgetting to give him the trophy. I think he truly meant it.

The Behind the Camera Awards were short and sweet. Jodie Foster expressed the pleasure she had "bathing in the light" of cinematographer Philippe Rousselot on Sommersby and The Brave One--which she found both "lonely and gratifying."

Seth Rogen figured everyone in the room probably had a crush on the ruggedly handsome Hamilton Watch guy, who was funny and hot enough for him to blow--but he hadn't gotten a watch yet. Rogen gave the screenwriter award to Knocked Up's Judd Apatow, who expounded (there being a writers strike, after all) on his sister's recent birth experience. She pushed her baby out in five minutes, he said, because "her vagina is huge."

Charlie Kaufman raved about production designer Mark Friedberg, who not only designed Julie Taymor's visually dazzling Across the Universe, but Kaufman's recently wrapped directorial debut, Synecdoche.

Jason Reitman, just returned from showing Juno at the Denver Film Fest, recalled running into his presenter, Rainn Wilson, at a Starbucks in Vancouver and asking him to work with him on an upcoming ninja movie. Wilson agreed to collaborate on the upcoming Bonzai Shadowhands.

Sean Penn described how long-time editor Jay Cassidy lived in a bungalow behind his house in San Francisco as they edited Into the Wild and was available to him at any time, 24/7. When Cassidy accepted the award, he admitted that it was true, and asked Penn to consider directing a comedy next time. "That's really hard," he said.

Coppola's Youth Without Youth Review, Hearts of Darkness on DVD

This Variety Rome Film Fest review of Francis Ford Coppola's return to personal filmmaking, Youth Without Youth, reminds me that I still need to check this movie out for myself. Here are two Rome fest Coppola AP stories. And interestingly, George Hickenlooper's famous doc Hearts of Darkness about the making of Apocalypse Now is finally coming out on DVD, reports Filmmaker Magazine's blog.

Oscars: No Lust, Caution Taiwan Nomination?

The deadline for foreign Oscar submissions was October 1 and the Academy has been weighing eligibility. The final list was announced today, reports Variety's Shalini Dore, and Ang Lee's Lust, Caution was deemed not Taiwanese enough. Lee himself is from Taiwan, but the film was shot in Shanghai. Here's reaction from Film Experience. I hope that the Academy at large gives Lee's gorgeous movie--which yes, is very Asian--due consideration in such categories as writing, directing, costumes, cinematography, art direction and score. Best sex is not a category, unfortunately. It's the best sex I've ever seen in a movie. Anyone?

Eastern Promises: Cronenberg Gets Naked

It was David Cronenberg who realized how to play the infamous steambath fight scene in Eastern Promises. As written by Steve Knight (Dirty Pretty Things), the script basically said, "they fight with knives."

Cronenberg never uses storyboards, he told us at a Focus Features press party Thursday in Beverly Hills. That limits the actors, to just execute the moves you lay out for them. The director prefers to block the scene on set with input from the actors, then tell the camera crew what they've decided to do. He gave the actors carpet knives, figuring their characters could carry them in their pockets and tell the police they used them to cut carpets.

I was surprised to hear that the steambath fight scene--which features Viggo Mortensen fighting two vicious attackers in the nude--only took two days. It was really rough on Mortensen, Cronenberg said, because he had no protection, no padding, and got very bruised.

Cronenberg is not happy about the planned remake of The Brood and hopes it never happens. That's because it's one of those personal movies that was created by him. It's hard to imagine someone else remaking it. But he does not own the rights and there's nothing he can do. And yes, he remade The Fly. But he doesn't think that's the same thing. A remake of Scanners is also in development.

Here's NPR's Mortensen interview. And here's Movieweb's Cronenberg interview:

And Variety's New York screening series video.