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File under: expected move. "No, it's not just a rumor. Julian Schnabel's 'Miral' has been pushed into 2011," wrote David Poland on Twitter early this morning.
While we probably shouldn't take this as official announcement word yet, it's not much of a surprise. Originally positioned as an awards contender with a December 3, 2010 release, the film pretty much tanked upon arrival with critics at the 2010 Venice Film Festival earlier this year. This meant many critics — including our reporters in the field — skipped the film and any heat the picture might have briefly gone has evaporated.
The Weinstein Company, while seemingly bouncing back from their financial woes, still don't have a huge Oscar budget. They basically pick one show pony and ignore the rest because they essentially don't have the dough to back more than one contender. And since "The King's Speech" won the Toronto International Film Festival's audience prize (and the Hamptons film festival prize this weekend) and is already considered a major Oscar Best Picture shoo-in, it's no shocker that "Miral" is being tossed off into 2011. No doubt the studio will have to rethink the date and then reconfigure what to do with the picture.
Bit of a shame, we're huge fans of Schnabel's "The Diving Bell & The Butterfly" and "Before Night Falls," ("Basquiat" to a lesser extent), but we assume the guy had to shoot a dud one of these days. That said, we'll still give it a shot, whenever we get the chance to see it.
Adapted by Rula Jebreal's novel of the same name, the drama revolves around a real orphanage in Jerusalem set up by a Palestinian woman (Hiam Abbass). From the looks of the trailer, Freida Pinto seems to take center stage here as a former inhabitant of the orphanage. The film also stars Willem Dafoe, Yasmine Elmasri, Alexander Siddig and Vanessa Redgrave. We're sure we'll hear official word sometimes soon, but until then it's probably TBD 2011.
Update: Kris Tapley at In Contention has confirmed the report, and says that the film will be released in March 2011. According to an Variety piece from September, Schnabel has edited the picture "much differently" since debuting in Venice.
Crime stories have a long and celebrated lineage in film. Like horror, it’s a fun, but often disappointing genre. You have to wade through a lot of shit to get to the gold. But when they're good, they're really good. Great modern gangster films – the past decade has seen some bona fide new classics with "The Pusher Trilogy," "City of God," "Gomorrah," "A Prophet" and even the recent "Animal Kingdom" – transcend and twist the genre, revitalizing what was once rote.
The new British crime film, "Down Terrace," while not quite on the level of the aforementioned films (it might be on B-squad, but like Willem Dafoe in "The Life Aquatic" it's the B-squad leader, at least), is nonetheless well-made and darkly comic. It's one of the stronger comedies of the year, in fact, but also puts a fresh spin on the Brit crime movie.
When the excellent trailer hit recently, we noted other strong UK-based crime movies such as "Layer Cake," "Long Good Friday," "Get Carter" and "Sexy Beast" as "classic examples" despite the British gangster movie having "become a fairly maligned genre, swamping U.K. multiplex screens and supermarket shelves with abysmal, low-rent, laddy fare." 'Terrace,' a true gem just waiting to be discovered by the right audience (on DVD, most likely, and with some time, it could really find a strong, cult following), is successful not in its defiance of crime movie cliches, but in its embrace of them, like how a filthy shower, once scrubbed clean, can sometimes look brand-spanking new. 
Director Ben Wheatley and co-writer/co-star Robin Hill have created a new kind of crime family, splicing together the Sopranos with Mike Leigh-esque kitchen sink melodrama, and then setting them loose in a paranoiac world where everyone is a suspect, and nobody is safe. Somehow the film feels both totally believable, as if it could be happening right now in the real world, but also heightened enough like a TV sitcom. The balance struck between the two is impressive.When Bill and Karl (real life father and son Robert Hill and Robin) are released from prison in the film's opening, they celebrate and catch up with friends, but immediately begin the search for the rat. Not helping their paranoia is all the weed smoked between the two. Bill is the head of the family. His wife, played wonderfully by "Spaced" landlord Julia Deakin, seems only on the fringes at first, but is far more involved than she lets on initially (similar to "Animal Kingdom"). Karl is looking to maybe make a change, discovering he's about to become a father.
Soon enough, the body count begins to rise, and tensions are raised, especially in the final third, as we wonder just what way the son will swing in the conclusion. It's important to remember that, like "Animal Kingdom" (again), these are people near their end, paranoid, and numbing their brains just to get through these terrible things and realizations (hence all the drug use). They're all selfish, incredibly narcissistic people.
We can't stress enough how freaking hilarious this film is. It's British humor, with a capital "B." Robert Hill's portrayal of Bill is one of the best performances of the year. Charismatic and always in the right (at least from his point of view), he is a former hippie who turned to drug dealing because he had a son, and now spends his time high, singing and playing guitar, and bantering with his son (using a real father-son duo was a genius decision; you just can't manufacture this kind of familial chemistry). Even Bill's inflection is funny, which makes his dialogue that much better ("Do you have a Web presence?" he asks the family hit man).
And then there's the ending. Wow. Thankfully Wheatley has the strength to follow through on his convictions here, and push the narrative to a rather extreme and bleak conclusion. Look for subtle character moments that end up telling you a lot: Karl's girlfriend speaking up at dinner to Bill, for one; the film is littered with these. It rewards the fastidious, attentive moviegoer.
It's a lot of fun seeing these specific people go through what nearly every crime family has in the movies and TV, from the Corleones to the Sopranos. It mostly accomplishes what it strives for. "Down Terrace" doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it's not attempting that, story-wise. So it may have...let's say, low ambitions (even that feels harsh though), but that's not a bad thing when in the end, the result is a very good, well-made film. [B+]
File under: expected move. "No, it's not just a rumor. Julian Schnabel's 'Miral' has been pushed into 2011," wrote David Poland on Twitter early this morning.
