Eye on the Prize
Tis’ the season for Academy screenings. Voters are racing to theaters and viewing “For Your Consideration” copies of films for the Academy Awards® nomination ballots, due next month.Film & Video began early research on some of the projects and talent considered potential nominees in key filmmaking categories. While this is by no means a complete list, it’s intended as a starting point for understanding Hollywood’s achievements of the past year.
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Direction
By Iain Blair
Last year Steven Soderbergh did what many thought almost impossible — earning dual Best Director nominations for Traffic (which won) and Erin Brockovich. Now Soderbergh is back with Solaris, a visually stunning, thought-provoking meditation on love, identity and predestination.
“Although it’s set almost totally in outer space in the future, it’s not sci-fi. There are no explosions and aliens with fangs,” noted Soderbergh, who teamed with producer James Cameron and also wrote, shot and edited it himself, as usual. “Although there are 112 visual effects shots [done by Rhythm & Hues and Cinesite], they’re not the main focus; the ideas are.”
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| Minority Report |
Minority Report has over 480 visual effects, the most the director has used since Close Encounters. With digital effects offering limitless potential, Spielberg noted, “I can do stuff I was able to imagine but never pull off.”
Were the award for ‘Most Directing,’ it would go to New Zealander Peter Jackson, nominated last year for his work on the first installment of The Lord of the Rings, which earned 11 nominations and over $900 million worldwide. Second in the series, The Two Towers, is again attracting attention and praise for its hugely ambitious scope and cutting edge visual effects, courtesy of Weta Digital.
Also attracting a lot of attention is Julie Taymor for her ambitious and unusual work on Frida. Shot by Mexican DP Rodrigo Prieto, the film made strong use of unfiltered sunlight and Mexico’s vibrant colors. “One challenge was actually finding locations with no pollution. Colors were so much clearer in the 1920s than they are today, especially in Mexico City,” noted Taymor, who juxtaposed a surreal approach with period realism to create a “3D live painting.”
In the film’s tour-de-force sequence where Frida and Diego Rivera first visit New York, Taymor used a black-and-white photo collage to establish the city and their reaction to it. “Not having the budget to actually shoot there pushed us to be creative in the Frida style,” she said.
Stephen Daldry, who directed The Hours, said one of the big challenges, and one of the things that made the film special, was dealing with three distinct storylines in three different periods and locations. “We shot Meryl Streep’s segment in New York, then Julianne Moore’s in Florida, which doubled for L.A. Then we went to England to do Nicole [Kidman’s] part,” he explained. “All these parts had to interlink and interlock. Obviously it’s a film very dependent on emerging thematic and emotional rhythms, so we needed to know what our approach would be before shooting each segment. To do this, I worked very closely with David Hare on the screenplay, all the way through the shoot.”
Other directors getting attention include Philip Noyce for The Quiet American, and Denzel Washington for his directorial debut with Antwone Fisher.
Alexander Payne, who won an Oscar® nomination for his Election screenplay with writing partner Jim Taylor, has attracted attention with About Schmidt. British director Sam Mendes won for American Beauty, and followed that up with this year’s acclaimed Road to Perdition. Veteran directors Martin Scorsese and Roman Polanski also have high-profile releases with the former’s Gangs of New York and the latter’s The Pianist.
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