Fish Tank

THE HURT LOCKER Wins 6 BAFTA Awards Including Best Picture

by Matt Goldberg    Posted: February 21st, 2010 at 9:34 pm

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts added momentum to The Hurt Locker awards train tonight as they award the film Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and Best Sound.  Hurt Locker‘s awards in the technical categories are particularly interesting because perhaps Academy-thinking that usually awards those categories to the big blockbuster movies, i.e. Avatar.  But perhaps BAFTA and Oscar voters on the same wavelength and despite the massive box office of Cameron’s tech demo, the Academy could recognize the impressive editing, sound, and achievement in other technical categories (although Avatar won the BAFTA for best visual effects and it’s a lock to win the Oscar in that category as well).

Other nice victories included Colin Firth for Best Actor (A Serious Man), Carey Mulligan for Best Actress (An Education), and my personal favorite: Outstanding British Debut to Duncan Jones for Moon.  He gave a very sweet acceptance speech and I’ve included video of it after the jump along with the full list of winners.

BAFTA Nominees Announced; AVATAR, THE HURT LOCKER, and AN EDUCATION Lead with 8 Nominations

by Matt Goldberg    Posted: January 21st, 2010 at 8:11 am

The Brits certainly like our flicks with Avatar and The Hurt Locker scoring eight nominations each from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).  However, they didn’t overlook one of their own accomplished films with An Education also grabbing eight nominations.  But what’s really impressive about the BAFTA nominations isn’t where they’ll most likely overlap with the Oscar nominations, but where they’re going to diverge.  District 9 has seven nominations and matches Avatar in every category except Best Picture and Best Director (but it also has a Best Screenplay nomination, while Avatar does not).  I am a little surprised that in their Best Supporting Actor category, they overlooked Peter Capaldi for In the Loop, but you have to love a country where Andy Serkis can get nominated for Best Actor (that’s not meant ironically; it truly is great–we should’ve nominated him in 2002 for Best Supporting Actor for The Two Towers).

Hit the jump for the full list of nominees.  Winners will be announced on February 21st.

Michael Fassbender Video Interview FISH TANK

by Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub    Posted: January 13th, 2010 at 8:06 pm

Opening this Friday in New York City and Los Angeles is Andrea Arnold’s Cannes Jury
Prize winner, Fish Tank.   The film is a coming-of-age story set in Britain and it’s loaded with great performances by Katie Jarvis and Michael Fassbender.  Here’s the synopsis:

Fifteen-year-old Mia (Katie Jarvis) is in a constant state of war with her family and the world around her, without any creative outlet for her considerable energies save a secret love of hip-hop dance. When she meets her party-girl mother’s charming new boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender), she is amazed to find he returns her attention, and believes he might help her start to make sense of her life.

Unlike Hollywood coming of age stories, Fish Tank feels real and not glamorized.  Absolutely recommended.  To help promote the film, I got to speak with Michael Fassbender and he explained why he wanted to make the film, working with Katie Jarvis, the unusual way they filmed the movie, and we even discussed Comic-Con and Centurion.  Watch the interview after the jump:

Duncan Jones’ MOON Wins Best Picture and Best Debut Director at the British Independent Film Awards

by Matt Goldberg    Posted: December 6th, 2009 at 9:43 pm

One of the best sci-fi films of the past several years, Duncan Jones’ Moon took home both Best Picture and Best Debut Director at this year’s British Independent Film Awards.  The was also received nominations for Sam Rockwell for Best Actor, Duncan for Best Director (a category which included both debut and veteran directors), Nathan Parker for Best Screenplay, and two nominations in the Best Technical Achievement category with Clint Mansell getting a nod for Original Score and Tony Noble for Production Design.

Any victory for Moon is an important victory because while it received large critical acclaim, its June release may have left it slightly adrift in the minds of critics and societies compiling their Top 10 of 2009 lists.  I’ll admit that it is disappointing that Rockwell didn’t win, but he did lose to Tom Hardy’s universally loved performance in Bronson so it wasn’t like the BIFA made a grievous error.  What’s important for Moon is to just make sure people don’t forget about it.

Other big films at BIFA were Fish Tank (7 nominations, 2 wins), Nowhere Boy (6 nominations, 1 win), An Education (6 nominations, 1 win), and In the Loop (5 nominations, 1 win) Hit the jump for the full list of nominees and winners.

Exclusive: Michael Fassbender calls CENTURION “A Roman Chase Film”

by Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub    Posted: November 3rd, 2009 at 3:17 pm

Earlier today I spoke with Michael Fassbender for his upcoming movie “Fish Tank”. While I’ll be posting the full interview closer to release, we talked about his upcoming Roman action flick, “Centurion”, directed by Neil Marshall’s (“Doomsday”, “The Descent”, “Dog Soldiers”) and he had some very cool stuff to say about the movie.

While the film isn’t going to be released until sometime next year, “Centurion” sounds like a very cool film and it should definitely be on your radar. Fassbender calls it “a Roman chase film” and when I asked him what it’s about, he said, “It’s basically about a group of Roman soldiers trying to get back across the border. It sort of surrounds the legend of the Ninth Legion. What happened in this myth is the Ninth Legion went over the border into the highlands to suppress this tribal community that was wreaking havoc on their outposts. They were trying to suppress this race. It was kind of like the Gaul situation where they couldn’t manage to suppress this tribal sort of community in France. So they sent the Ninth Legion in, which was one of the best Legions they had, and they disappeared. Five thousand men got wiped out. They never came back. So it’s basically Neil’s take around that myth.” For more on what he said a few images from “Centurion”, hit the jump:

Michael Haneke’s THE WHITE RIBBON Cannes Win The Palme d’Or

by Matt Goldberg    Posted: May 24th, 2009 at 10:07 pm

Michael Haneke, a director whose films are quite good but not for those looking for a nice, pick-me-up (“The Piano Teacher” has nothing do with piano lessons or teaching, I assure you), took home the Palme d’Or, the top prize at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival for his film “The White Ribbon” which is a stark black-and-white drama set in a rural German village on the eve of WWI…so still probably not a laugh-a-minute romp.

This is Haneke’s first time taking home the Palme but he’s received love from the festival before, winning Best Director in 2005 for “Cache” and the Grand Prix for “The Piano Teacher”.  Actress Isabelle Huppert, who won Best Actress for “Piano Teacher” at Cannes and served as President of the Jury this year, bestowed the award on a delighted Haneke.

Other awards include the Grand Prix for Jacques Audiard’s tough prison drama, “A Prophet,” and Sony Classics must be pretty happy right now since they bought the rights to both “Ribbon” and “Prophet” before either film screened at the festival.  That’s some nice foresight on their part.

Adding fuel to the Oscar-buzz he’s already gaining for his performance in “Inglourious Basterds”, Christopher Waltz took home Best Actor for his portrayal of Col. Landa, a Nazi “Jew Hunter” (please let the film have bagels on fishing hooks; pleeeease let the film have bagels on fishing hooks) and while Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist” provoked strong reactions from its audience, Charlotte Gainsbourg won Best Actress.

Finally, Grand Jury prizes were given to Andrea Arnold for “Fish Tank” and Park Chan-wook for “Thirst”.

Click here to see the full list of award winners.

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