Pitt, Hathaway, Kinnear have Oscar buzz

Alonso Duralde Film critic

Summer, that season that’s mostly about Hollywood big-budget pyrotechnics, is behind us once more. Selling those hot-weather hits is all about reaching as wide an audience as possible, which is why venues like the “American Idol” finale and the annual MTV Movie Awards are so highly prized by studios out to shill their product.

As the leaves turn color, however, so do many of the movies climb the “brow” scale from low to middle and even high, which requires a completely different kind of sales pitch. That’s where the Venice, Telluride and Toronto film festivals come into play, generating excitement and early international press for those movies that will most aggressively be gunning for Oscar attention at the beginning of next year.

“Brokeback Mountain” began its avalanche of acclaim by winning the top prize at Venice and going on to rave reviews in Toronto; last year’s “No Country for Old Men” began generating steam at the early-summer Cannes festival and never stopped.

Here’s a look at some of the performances that have already inspired critics and pundits to start throwing around the O-word. The 2008 alums of the big fall festivals are an interesting mix of performers, from celebrated megastars to performers who in recent years had been finding themselves in the whatever-happened-to column:

Carlo Allegri / AP

Mickey Rourke, “The Wrestler”: Once considered to be one of Hollywood’s most promising young stars — circa his acclaimed early work in films like “Diner” and “Barfly” — Rourke had become something of a joke in the industry, only making headlines for public bad-boy behavior or speculations about his latest plastic surgery. A well-received supporting role in “Sin City” made critics take notice, and now everyone who’s seen his latest film claims it’s a new career high for Rourke. Directed by visionary Darren Aronofsky (“Pi,” “The Fountain”), “The Wrestler” tells the story of over-the-hill pugilist Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a one-time star of the ring now reduced to matches in backyards and school gyms. The parallel between character and actor — and Hollywood’s love of second acts — bodes well for Rourke, particularly since Fox Searchlight plans a major awards campaign when the film opens in December.

Fred Prouser / Reuters

Anne Hathaway, “Rachel Getting Married”: The one principal from the “Brokeback” cast not to score an acting nomination from the Academy, Hathaway has spent the last few years building up her box-office clout with hits like “The Devil Wears Prada” and “Get Smart,” while also racking up lots of favorable publicity as the wronged party in her recent breakup with alleged scam artist Raffaello Follieri. With “Rachel Getting Married,” the latest from director Jonathan Demme (“The Silence of the Lambs”), Hathaway is getting kudos from all corners for her portrayal of a drug addict who checks herself out of rehab to attend her sister’s wedding. A young, pretty box office sensation giving a gritty performance for a filmmaker who’s already steered two actresses (Jodie Foster in “Lambs,” Mary Steenburgen in “Melvin and Howard”) to gold statuettes? The well-dressed Hathaway should start picking out red-carpet couture.

Guillaume Horcajuelo / EPA

Kristin Scott Thomas, “I’ve Loved You So Long”: She may be a British actress, but 2008 is turning into the year when “English Patient” star Scott Thomas has made her biggest impact en Français. She made up part of the ensemble of the summer art-house hit “Tell No One,” and now she’s got journalists raving about her work in “I’ve Loved You So Long.” In this new film, she gives what’s been called a “harrowing” and “landmark” performance as a woman just out of prison following a 15-year sentence. The fact that the role offers a minimum of dialogue — with Scott Thomas apparently doing very little that can be pegged as “acting” — has observers all the more enthusiastic about her work and her chances for an Oscar nomination.

Those three performances have gotten the most across-the-board raves from festival observers, but several other actors have their champions for the awards season to come:

Mark Blinch / Reuters

Jeff Goldblum, “Adam Resurrected”: Sometimes interesting movies come from the oddest combination of elements. This film mixes a) Goldblum, who’s spent the last decade popping up in eccentric supporting roles in films like “Fay Grim” and “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou”; b) director Paul Schrader, a titan of ’70s and ’80s cinema whose recent work includes a barely released prequel to “The Exorcist”; and c) a story about clowns and concentration camps, a combination thought to be taboo ever since Jerry Lewis’ infamous and unfinished “The Day the Clown Cried.” Nonetheless, the film’s screenings at festivals elicited very positive word-of-mouth for the movie itself and especially for Goldblum’s powerful performance.

Mark Blinch / Reuters

Brad Pitt, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”: Granted, no one’s seen the entirety of the new film from David Fincher, about a man who ages in reverse from senior citizen to infant, but the 20 minutes that Fincher presented at Telluride this year was enough to start buzz about Pitt’s Oscar chances. With Pitt’s significant other Angelina Jolie getting raves of her own at the Cannes Film Festival for her lead role in Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling,” watch for the paparazzi to go insane if this power couple winds up arm-in-arm on the Kodak Theatre red carpet.

Simon Mein / AP

Sally Hawkins, “Happy-Go-Lucky”: While not yet a household name in the U.S., British actress Hawkins has elicited superlatives for her effervescent performance in the latest film from Mike Leigh. But given what Leigh did for the careers of Brenda Blethyn (“Secrets & Lies”) and Imelda Staunton (“Vera Drake”), don’t be surprised if Hawkins becomes Hollywood’s favorite new “discovery,” never mind the fact that she’s been doing film and TV in England for the last decade.

Jonathan Hayward / AP

Greg Kinnear, “Flash of Genius”: If you think selling people on a film about a harlequin in the Holocaust is tough, try getting them excited about a biopic about the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper. That’s precisely what “Flash” is about, and Kinnear — who stars as real-life engineer Bob Kearns — emerged from Telluride and Toronto bestowed with the mantle of “possible Oscar nominee.”

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