This article has been corrected to include Alexander Payne’s first feature film, “Citizen Ruth.”
Alexander Payne has a near-perfect record when it comes to his movies being nominated for Academy Awards. The acclaimed writer, director, and producer — one of our very best — has made eight movies so far including his latest flick “The Holdovers” and five of them have been nominated for Oscars. Here’s the breakdown.
Payne’s debut feature film was “Citizen Ruth” (“The Passion of Martin” was only 49 minutes), which follows Laura Dern as a drug-addicted pregnant woman who finds herself in the middle of an abortion debate as she weighs up her choices regarding the pregnancy. This 1996 movie was not nominated for any Oscars.
His next movie was “Election,” which stars Matthew Broderick as a high school teacher who meets his match with Reese Witherspoon‘s over-achieving student. In 2000, the film was nominated for Best...
Alexander Payne has a near-perfect record when it comes to his movies being nominated for Academy Awards. The acclaimed writer, director, and producer — one of our very best — has made eight movies so far including his latest flick “The Holdovers” and five of them have been nominated for Oscars. Here’s the breakdown.
Payne’s debut feature film was “Citizen Ruth” (“The Passion of Martin” was only 49 minutes), which follows Laura Dern as a drug-addicted pregnant woman who finds herself in the middle of an abortion debate as she weighs up her choices regarding the pregnancy. This 1996 movie was not nominated for any Oscars.
His next movie was “Election,” which stars Matthew Broderick as a high school teacher who meets his match with Reese Witherspoon‘s over-achieving student. In 2000, the film was nominated for Best...
- 11/22/2023
- by Jacob Sarkisian
- Gold Derby
Nan A. Talese, President, Publisher and Editorial Director of her eponymous Doubleday imprint, will retire at the end of the year, bringing an end to one of publishing’s most celebrated careers that also included stints at Random House, Simon & Schuster and Houghton Mifflin.
Since starting her Nan A. Talese imprint at Doubleday in 1990, Talese, who is married to author Gay Talese, has published a list of prominent authors including Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Adam Haslett, Alex Kotlowitz, Pat Conroy, Thomas Keneally, Mia Farrow, Jim Crace, Valerie Martin, Peter Ackroyd, Mary Morris, Louis Begley, Jennifer Egan, Mark Richard, Judy Collins, Barry Unsworth, Antonia Fraser, Thomas Cahill, Janet Wallach, and George Plimpton.
Talese’s successor was not announced.
After beginning her career at Vogue, Talese joined Random House in 1959 as a copy editor, then became the first woman to hold the position of literary editor. In that role, she worked with such writers as A.
Since starting her Nan A. Talese imprint at Doubleday in 1990, Talese, who is married to author Gay Talese, has published a list of prominent authors including Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Adam Haslett, Alex Kotlowitz, Pat Conroy, Thomas Keneally, Mia Farrow, Jim Crace, Valerie Martin, Peter Ackroyd, Mary Morris, Louis Begley, Jennifer Egan, Mark Richard, Judy Collins, Barry Unsworth, Antonia Fraser, Thomas Cahill, Janet Wallach, and George Plimpton.
Talese’s successor was not announced.
After beginning her career at Vogue, Talese joined Random House in 1959 as a copy editor, then became the first woman to hold the position of literary editor. In that role, she worked with such writers as A.
- 7/8/2020
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Turner nominated artists The Wilson sisters, Louise Wilson and Jane Wilson, have been in Rotterdam this weekend for the international premiere of their new piece Undead Sun, originally presented in London’s Imperial War Museum last year.
Undead Sun sees the Newcastle-born sisters investigating the uses of disguise and camouflage in war. They regard the film as a natural successor to their 2011 work, Face Scripting: What Did the Building See. This was about the assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh by Mossad agents in a Dubai hotel.
“It was looking at CCTV and looking at covert imagery,” Jane Wilson says of a film which explores how contemporary warfare has moved from old fashioned battlefields into the luxurious confines of a modern, upmarket hotel. “What we were thinking about was how technology has developed through facial recognition and through use of CCTV.”
When the First World War started, the sisters note, there were still...
Undead Sun sees the Newcastle-born sisters investigating the uses of disguise and camouflage in war. They regard the film as a natural successor to their 2011 work, Face Scripting: What Did the Building See. This was about the assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh by Mossad agents in a Dubai hotel.
“It was looking at CCTV and looking at covert imagery,” Jane Wilson says of a film which explores how contemporary warfare has moved from old fashioned battlefields into the luxurious confines of a modern, upmarket hotel. “What we were thinking about was how technology has developed through facial recognition and through use of CCTV.”
When the First World War started, the sisters note, there were still...
- 1/27/2015
- by geoffrey@macnab.demon.co.uk (Geoffrey Macnab)
- ScreenDaily
You've never seen the Stanley Kubrick Holocaust film Aryan Papers because he never shot it. However, in the years before his death, Kubrick had committed countless hours to Aryan Papers, an adaptation of the 1991 Louis Begley novel, Wartime Lies.
But now The Guardian reports that parts of the film will be seen by the general public, with twin sisters and artists Jane and Louise Wilson bringing Aryan Papers to life in a new art installation to open at the British Film Institute on February 13th.
The sisters had been invited to look through the Kubrick archives at the University of London for something that would inspire them to create a piece for the BFI, and though the knowledge of this film was extremely limited - Kubrick was notoriously secretive about his projects - it was the project the sisters immediately took to.
"We did feel a bit like kids in...
But now The Guardian reports that parts of the film will be seen by the general public, with twin sisters and artists Jane and Louise Wilson bringing Aryan Papers to life in a new art installation to open at the British Film Institute on February 13th.
The sisters had been invited to look through the Kubrick archives at the University of London for something that would inspire them to create a piece for the BFI, and though the knowledge of this film was extremely limited - Kubrick was notoriously secretive about his projects - it was the project the sisters immediately took to.
"We did feel a bit like kids in...
- 1/6/2009
- by Colin Boyd
- GetTheBigPicture.net
This review was written for the Cannes Film Festival screening of About Schmidt.
The hints of satiric brilliance director Alexander Payne and his writing partner Jim Taylor exhibited in Election and, before that, Citizen Ruth, have ripened into the blisteringly funny and equally moving About Schmidt.
While the film, an acutely observed tragicomedy navigating the uncharted boundaries of human behavior, is quite remarkable on its own considerable merits, it's a commanding Jack Nicholson lead performance that puts it into a sublime league of its own.
Whether that's enough to put visions of Palmes d'Or dancing in the heads of this year's Cannes jury remains to be seen, but Nicholson's going to prove to be a tough act to follow.
No matter what happens Sunday, "Schmidt" is destined to be a year-end awards contender and easily Payne's strongest boxoffice performer to date.
From the moment we first lay eyes on him, Nicholson's Warren Schmidt is clearly a beaten-down man.
After spending most of his life as an actuary at Omaha's Woodmen of the World Insurance Co., he is minutes away from his retirement. Staring numbly up at the office clock, he regards the few remaining seconds of his last working day with all the enthusiasm of a death row prisoner.
The prospect of his remaining golden years provides little in the way of solace. Waiting for him back home is his wife of 42 years, Helen (June Squibb), who has successfully trained him to pee sitting down so there'll never be any question of leaving the toilet seat up. A new 35-foot motor home waits to whisk them away to destinations unknown as well as Denver, where their only daughter, Jeannie (Hope Davis), is about to marry the underachieving Randall (Dermot Mulroney), a waterbed sales dude with a thinning mullet.
Desperate to find a shred of purpose in his life, Schmidt absent-mindedly flips through the vast wasteland that is late-night television when he comes across an adopt-an-orphan infomercial hosted by Angela Lansbury.
Schmidt soon finds himself writing detailed letters to Ndugu, his new 6 year-old Tanzanian foster child. And with the sudden death of his wife propelling him on a journey of self-discovery, there's going to be no shortage of things to write about.
A synthesis of a book of the same name by Louis Begley and an early script Payne wrote called "The Coward," " Schmidt" is filled with quiet, little surprises and Teflon-smooth mood-shifts.
It's not unusual for a scene to start off side-splittingly funny and turn, quite unexpectedly, profoundly affecting, then back again without ever feeling manufactured or inappropriate.
But as good as things get there simply wouldn't be a "Schmidt" without Jack.
He's never been better, or funnier, or more touching, exhibiting the kind of command of nuance that could only have arrived at this point in a career full of great performances.
He also proves to be a master of understated physical comedy, whether attempting to calm a water bed or feeling the still-potent effects of a handful of expired Percodan left over from the groom-to-be's mother's (a wonderful Kathy Bates) hysterectomy.
Together, Nicholson and Payne (and Taylor) make for one Cannes dream team.
ABOUT SCHMIDT
New Line/Metropolitan Film Export
Credits:
Director: Alexander Payne
Screenwriters: Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor
Producers: Harry Gittes, Michael Besman
Executive producer: Bill Badalato
Director of photography: James Glennon
Production designer: Jane Ann Stewart
Editor: Kevin Tent
Costume designer: Wendy Chuck
Music: Rolfe Kent
Cast:
Warren Schmidt: Jack Nicholson
Roberta Hertzel: Kathy Bates
Jeannie: Hope Davis
Randall Hertzel: Dermot Mulroney
Larry: Howard Hesseman
Ray: Len Cariou
Helen Schmidt: June Squibb.
Running time -- 125 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
The hints of satiric brilliance director Alexander Payne and his writing partner Jim Taylor exhibited in Election and, before that, Citizen Ruth, have ripened into the blisteringly funny and equally moving About Schmidt.
While the film, an acutely observed tragicomedy navigating the uncharted boundaries of human behavior, is quite remarkable on its own considerable merits, it's a commanding Jack Nicholson lead performance that puts it into a sublime league of its own.
Whether that's enough to put visions of Palmes d'Or dancing in the heads of this year's Cannes jury remains to be seen, but Nicholson's going to prove to be a tough act to follow.
No matter what happens Sunday, "Schmidt" is destined to be a year-end awards contender and easily Payne's strongest boxoffice performer to date.
From the moment we first lay eyes on him, Nicholson's Warren Schmidt is clearly a beaten-down man.
After spending most of his life as an actuary at Omaha's Woodmen of the World Insurance Co., he is minutes away from his retirement. Staring numbly up at the office clock, he regards the few remaining seconds of his last working day with all the enthusiasm of a death row prisoner.
The prospect of his remaining golden years provides little in the way of solace. Waiting for him back home is his wife of 42 years, Helen (June Squibb), who has successfully trained him to pee sitting down so there'll never be any question of leaving the toilet seat up. A new 35-foot motor home waits to whisk them away to destinations unknown as well as Denver, where their only daughter, Jeannie (Hope Davis), is about to marry the underachieving Randall (Dermot Mulroney), a waterbed sales dude with a thinning mullet.
Desperate to find a shred of purpose in his life, Schmidt absent-mindedly flips through the vast wasteland that is late-night television when he comes across an adopt-an-orphan infomercial hosted by Angela Lansbury.
Schmidt soon finds himself writing detailed letters to Ndugu, his new 6 year-old Tanzanian foster child. And with the sudden death of his wife propelling him on a journey of self-discovery, there's going to be no shortage of things to write about.
A synthesis of a book of the same name by Louis Begley and an early script Payne wrote called "The Coward," " Schmidt" is filled with quiet, little surprises and Teflon-smooth mood-shifts.
It's not unusual for a scene to start off side-splittingly funny and turn, quite unexpectedly, profoundly affecting, then back again without ever feeling manufactured or inappropriate.
But as good as things get there simply wouldn't be a "Schmidt" without Jack.
He's never been better, or funnier, or more touching, exhibiting the kind of command of nuance that could only have arrived at this point in a career full of great performances.
He also proves to be a master of understated physical comedy, whether attempting to calm a water bed or feeling the still-potent effects of a handful of expired Percodan left over from the groom-to-be's mother's (a wonderful Kathy Bates) hysterectomy.
Together, Nicholson and Payne (and Taylor) make for one Cannes dream team.
ABOUT SCHMIDT
New Line/Metropolitan Film Export
Credits:
Director: Alexander Payne
Screenwriters: Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor
Producers: Harry Gittes, Michael Besman
Executive producer: Bill Badalato
Director of photography: James Glennon
Production designer: Jane Ann Stewart
Editor: Kevin Tent
Costume designer: Wendy Chuck
Music: Rolfe Kent
Cast:
Warren Schmidt: Jack Nicholson
Roberta Hertzel: Kathy Bates
Jeannie: Hope Davis
Randall Hertzel: Dermot Mulroney
Larry: Howard Hesseman
Ray: Len Cariou
Helen Schmidt: June Squibb.
Running time -- 125 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 12/16/2002
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.