In 10 out of 14 years, the winner of the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role has gone on to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. If this year marks the 11th such congruence, Meryl Streep will take home the Oscar. Yet there is an odd circumstance with the Academy’s nominations that hurts Streep’s chances. Another one of the Academy’s Best Actress contenders also received a SAG Award Sunday night: Kate Winslet, who won the supporting actress trophy for The Reader. At the Oscars, this role has been recognized as a lead performance, one that is likely a favorite to win.

Yes, it is a strange situation, one that shocked and confused Oscar prognosticators (especially this writer) on Thursday morning. Winslet’s Reader performance was campaigned as a supporting role, and she was recognized as such by the Golden Globes, the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Chicago Film Critics Association and of course the Screen Actors Guild. A few organizations did nominate her for a lead award for The Reader, though few people take the Satellites seriously, and the BAFTA Awards are different than most in that they permit Winslet to compete against herself in the same category (she is also nominated for Best Leading Actress for Revolutionary Road).

Some now believe the Academy’s deviation will in fact cost Winslet the Oscar she could have won in the supporting field. Either voters will be confused about what film she’s nominated for (unless I’m simply less observant than elderly Academy members, which may indeed be the case), or she will now split the majority vote with Streep and thus allow Anne Hathaway or Melissa Leo to slip ahead (Angelina Jolie is believed to have no shot). Another idea is that voters will dismiss Winslet due to doubts over which category the performance belongs in. But since enough members of the Academy made it a point to nominate her as lead actress in the first place, this is hardly a reasonable theory.

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Remember Adam Resurrected, the Paul Schrader-directed, Jeff Goldblum-starring film that Paul saw at Telluride which made him admit to wanting “to make out with Jeff Goldblum in the back of his Toyota Prius”? I got an invite for a press screening for the film a couple of hours ago, which I thought was weird, because the last I heard, the film didn’t have distribution. Now Mike Jones at The Circuit has posted an item that solves the mystery: it looks like Bleiberg Entertainment, the company that financed the film, have decided that rather than wait for a distributor to pick it up and miss this Oscar season, they’ll fund a qualifying run for the film in New York and LA themselves.

Jones says producer Ehud Bleiberg was “unhappy with the offers he received after the pic’s Toronto fest screening,” Bleiberg himself implies that if any of those offers were promising in other respects, they didn’t include a timely release or support for an Oscar campaign. “Why would we screen the film at Telluride and Toronto and release it a year later,” he asks rhetorically. Considering that Goldblum’s performance is apparently so good that it propells heterosexual Midwesterners to contemplate the actor as an object of physical (and eco-friendly!) love, that question seems eminently reasonable.

The Telluride Film Festival is what Sundance would be if it took place in heaven. Every year the tiny mountain hamlet hosts four days of hassle-free cinema paradise. There were grumblings about the lack of American films, but we still found plenty to love. Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies, Vera Drake) came with his delightful new movie, Happy-Go-Lucky. He sat down for a disgruntled yet insightful interview. Paul Schrader (Affliction, Hardcore) seemed as blow away as we were by his latest film, Adam Resurrected, starring Jeff Goldblum.

 

 FilmCouch 86 [33:52m]: Play Now | Download

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

0:00 - Intro, Telluride faves: Waltz with Bashir, Revanche, The Good, the Bad, and the Weird, Tulpan, The Rest is Silence.

7:04 - Happy-Go-Lucky, with Mike Leigh interview.

19:52 - Adam Resurrected, with Paul Schrader interview.

filmcouch-86

• Prodigal Sons review
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button preview (and backlash)
• Waltz with Bashir review
• Jeff Goldblum, Media Diet interview
• Helen review
• Tulpan review
• O’Horten review
• Learning Gravity review
• Ken Burns, Media Diet interview
• You Must Remember This: The Warner Brothers Story and tribute to Richard Schickel
• ‘Movies Are Over.’ Directors, Distribs & Journos Debate Future of Film & Criticism
• Hunger, Steve McQueen interview
• Slavoj Zizek and Nazi melodrama
• Telluride 2008 photos
• Slumdog Millionaire review
• Adam Resurrected, Paul Schrader interview
• Firaaq review
• The Rest is Silence review
• I’ve Loved You So Long review
• The Good, The Bad and the Weird interview with Kim Ji-Woon
• Revanche review

(Complete interview with Paul Schrader available here.)

Adam Resurrected is the new movie by Paul Schrader (Affliction, Auto-Focus) premiering here at Telluride 2008. I was at the first screening which was also the first time Schrader ever watched the movie with an audience. “I realized watching it how exhausting it is, ” he told me right after the screening, “And it’s full of extremes. Literally, that old saying ‘you don’t know whether to laugh or cry’ is true here, and some scenes I think either emotion is fine with me.”

It’s in the navigation of extremes that my crush on Jeff Goldblum, who plays the title character, was born. I’m not one to get into Oscar buzz, but I will with Jeff and even add easily excerpted blurbs: Jeff Goldblum is magnificent. Jeff Godlblum’s peformance is a tour de force. I want to make out with Jeff Goldblum in the back of his Toyota Prius. Like how Daniel Day-Lewis’ character, Daniel Plainview (There Will be Blood), would have seemed flat or absurd in another actor’s hands, Jeff Goldblum’s wry delivery and velvet wit take the absurdity of Adam Stein and make him believable. …Read more

Jeff Goldblum is at Telluride to promote his new film, Adam Resurrected, directed by Paul Schrader. The film follows the story of a Holocaust survivor who also happens to be a clown. Committed to an asylum after the war, he becomes a ring leader of sorts. On the opening day of the festival Goldblum was graciously hugging young fans and striking odd poses for snap-shots. We got a chance to ask him about his media intake, which includes a substantial amount homework from Schrader.

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There seems to be some consensus around and abouts on the Interwebz that this year’s Telluride Film Festival line-up is a non-starter. Its collection of foreign films, documentaries and classic films - along with a smattering of the more usual fare - seems to fly in the face of the perception of the festival as a launching pad for the next great independent-minded-but-mainstream-accessible crossover hit. Considering last year’s festival included first looks at Juno, There Will Be Blood, The Savages and others that went on to some mainstream success, such reaction is to be expected.

But the - let’s generously say “oddly”  - formed 2008 list doesn’t mean a crossover success is completely outside the realm of possibility. Let’s look at five movies that could wind up getting some decent buzz coming out of Telluride and heading into the remainder of festivals and awares season.

Happy-Go-Lucky: Anything from director Mike Leigh is sure to come with some expectations around it and this is likely to be no exception. While the odds are good this will be somewhat lighter in tone than some of Leigh’s previous films I wouldn’t bet on it being any less a sharp character study. And never underestimate the power of a powerfully perky female lead, which could help Happy-Go-Lucky become a feel-good hit in the non-entertainment areas of the country that are looking for an endearing story featuring a strong love story.

Adam Resurrected: The perception - at least among the staffers at here at Spout HQ - is that a good deal of Jeff Goldblum’s appeal comes from his unpredictability. So with a career that’s had him saving the world, dodging dinosaurs and turning into a fly his latest turn is as a Jewish entertainer in Nazi Germany who survives because of his ability to entertain the children being held at the concentration camps. Combine that with the fact that he and co-star Willem Dafoe are directed by Paul Schrader and you have a film that could make a decent splash with audiences and awards voters.

I’ve Loved You So Long: Kristen Scott-Thomas stars in a story about the members of an estranged family who find themselves coming together after one of them spends 15 years in prison. The emotional arc the story is sure to take Scott-Thomas on is one that is, at least on paper, seemingly tailor-made to please critics (there’s a lot of “Best Actress Oscar” talk from those who’ve seen it). While not a crowd-pleaser it could turn out to be something along the lines of There Will Be Blood should enough critics get behind it and turn the story of someone who might not be completely likable into a must-see movie.

Youssou Ndour - I Bring What I Love: Known primarily in the U.S., I’m guessing, for his work with Peter Gabriel in the late 80’s, Youssou Ndour’s story is certainly a compelling one. There’s usually one documentary that breaks out from the pack and earns a place in the queues of people who don’t normally watch them and since the subject matter here is a tad more accessible than that of some other docs, this could be that one.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: No, it’s not actually screening at Telluride, but a sneak peak of it is being included in the presentation of Zodiac: The Director’s Cut that’s happening. If the footage that’s shown of the movie, which stars Brad Pitt as a man who ages in reverse, is any good at all, Telluride could become the launching pad for a lot of buzz going into the remainder of the year.