For Your Consideration: Ida

A decade and a half after making his debut feature, a fifteenth of a century that included the superb My Summer of Love, Pawel Pawlikowski has made his first movie in Polish, the visually stunning Ida – and it’s his home country’s submission for next year’s Best Foreign Language film Oscar.

Ida (2013)

Like Elton John and Snickers bars, the eponymous Ida in Pawel Pawlikowski’s late 50s/early 60s small town Poland, spent her formative years under anther moniker. We greet her as Anna, a devout catholic dwelling under the stern silence of her convent mothers superior.

With her vows imminent, Anna’s simple god-fearing existence is rocked by a letter from her Aunt Wanda – a respected old Commy prosecutor who sent dozens of fascists to the gallows in a post-second work war frenzy of retribution. With forthright matter-of-factness, Wanda explains that catholic Anna is actually Jewish Ida, and the rest of their family were the victims of anti-Semitic murder during the war. The two endeavour to find out who killed their relatives and what became of their bodies.

Frears a jolly good fellow

Stars Al Pacino, Judi Dench and John Hurt. Director Martin Scorsese. Screenwriter Lynda La Plante. Editor Thelma Schoonmaker. Cinematographer Jack Cardiff. And producers David Puttnam and Harvey Weinstein. No, it’s not the team behind the Postman Pat sequel (don’t be daft…Jack Cardiff’s dead for cripes sake). They’re all former laureates of the BFI Fellowship. And now Stephen Frears will join them on the roll of honour.

Leicester’s third most famous export (after Gary Lineker and bland red cheese), director Stephen Frears has been announced as the latest Fellow of the British Film Institute. An award that was established to recognise individuals’ “outstanding contribution to film or television culture”, Frears has worked on big and small screen projects for the last 45 years.

With two Oscar nominations chalked up against his own name, for directing The Grifters and The Queen, Frears has helmed seven films in all that have been nominated for Academy Awards – most recently the superb Philomena.

Here’s the full list…

My Beautiful Laundrette (1985, 0 wins, 1 nom) – Frears’s first major big screen success, it was Hanif Kureishi’s bold and sensitive screenplay that was beaten to the big one by Woody Allen himself for ‘Hannah and Her Sisters’

Dangerous Liaisons (1988, 3 wins, 7 noms) – A film that was gloriously decorated in more way than one; it’s responsible for Frears’s biggest haul with three Oscars wins, which includes victory for set decoration. Gettit? Gettit?

The Grifters (1990, 0 wins 4 noms) – Possibly the biggest con job of all was convincing the Academy that this overwrought, overrated picture should earn any nominations, let alone Frears’s first for directing.

Dirty Pretty Things (2002, 0 wins, 1 nom) – Audrey Tautou and Chiwetel Ejiofor starred in this thriller, but it was writer Steven Wright that was nominated, losing out to Sofia Coppola for ‘Lost in Translation’

Mrs Henderson Presents (2005, 0 wins, 2 noms) – “You see Bob Hoskins’s cock” is how my brother described this to me. It’s still unconfirmed as to whether this was the one line itch for the movie. Judi Dench was nominated for her lead role, and the costumes were given a nod too.

The Queen (2006, 1 win, 6 noms) – Helen Mirren regally rinsed the competition, picking up the only acting Academy Award in a Stephen Frears film. And he picked up his second directing nomination.

Philomena (2013, 0 wins, 4 noms) – Said we: “a human interest story of the highest order and if, as Sixsmith grouchily asserts at the head of the tale, such stories are for weak-minded, ignorant people then my old boss is completely correct – I’m about as weak-minded and ignorant as they come”

For Your Consideration: Gone Girl

With the hype glug turned up to overdrive and a myriad of posters wallpapering the country’s public transport, you’d be forgiven for concluding that Gone Girl (the movie) is this year’s Gone Girl (the novel).

Gone Girl (2014)

I sometimes think that Ben Affleck actually likes being the centre of attention. Like the proverbial moth to the hackneyed flame, he goes from insanely high profile insane marriage to the nut from the Bronx, to directing some actually decent cinema, before signing up to play the world’s favourite bat (Batfink fans, you’re in the minority – deal with it).

I suppose choosing a vocation in acting is a bit of a giveaway too. And now it’s spreading to the characters he plays. Nick Dunne is castigated on every cable TV station in America when his ostensibly perfect wife goes missing from their Missourian home on their fifth wedding anniversary. As we see Dunne being dragged through the mire, flashbacks paint the picture of a marriage with the same trajectory as Mickey Rourke’s career; cool and sexy turning ugly and violent. But is he really any more guilty of uxoricide than I am of using online dictionaries?

Gone Girl is the celluloid equivalent of a literary page turner. Even despite its close-to-epic running time, it’s never anything other than compelling. Gillian Flynn has crafted a screenplay from her own novel that moves at pace without damaging the vital levels of suspense. And having David Fincher at the helm – a man who could direct as high quality thriller as this in his sleep – prevents any sense of a complacency that would condemn the project to the mediocrity that so often mars adaptations of crazy selling books. Fincher has been vocal in expressing his determination not to simply appeal to the prefabricated mass audience, and it shows in the quality of this polished, tense product.