August: Osage County (2013)

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Re: August: Osage County (2013)

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"August: Osage County" Film Delays Release Until Holiday Season

By Adam Hetrick
and Michael Gioia (Playbill)
21 Jun 2013


The upcoming film adaptation of Tracy Letts' Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama August: Osage County, starring Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, has delayed its release to Dec. 25, according to Showbiz 411.

The darkly comic drama is a large ensemble piece (with three sisters at its core) set in a rambling house in Oklahoma. Two-time Tony Award winner Letts (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) also penned the screenplay.

John Wells (TV's "E.R." and "Shameless") directed the film adaptation that was first announced for a Nov. 8 release. "August: Osage County" will now arrive in theatres Christmas Day.

Oscar winner Roberts ("The Normal Heart," "Erin Brockovich") plays Barbara, the oldest Weston daughter, with Streep ("The Devil Wears Prada," "The Iron Lady") as cancer-stricken drug addict Violet Weston.

The cast also features Sam Shepard (Heartless), Oscar nominee Juliette Lewis, Ewan McGregor (West End's Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs, "Moulin Rouge"), Olivier Award winner Benedict Cumberbatch (Frankenstein, "Sherlock"), Tony nominee Margo Martindale (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), Oscar winner Chris Cooper ("Adaptation"), Dermot Mulroney ("My Best Friend's Wedding") and Oscar nominee Abigail Breslin (The Miracle Worker, "Little Miss Sunshine").

The Weinstein Company film is a Jean Doumanian / Smokehouse production produced by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, Jean Doumanian and Steve Traxler. Claire Rudnick Polstein is the executive producer.
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Re: August: Osage County (2013)

Post by jack »

I have no idea what this play and film is about, but after reading the Movie Freak review/reaction all I can think of is Home for Purim from For Your Consideration.
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Re: August: Osage County (2013)

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As some of you were all so quick to remind me, the rapturous early fan reviews for Les Misérables were from fans of the show. These two ecstatic reviews originated on a Broadway blog that caters to N.Y. theater buffs. Critics and the general public may look at it differently. Still, there are enough Meryl/Julia fans out there to make it a financial success, if not necessarily a guaranteed acting win for Meryl. Her competition this year could include four formidable actresses playing real people, always an Oscar draw, Naomi Watts as Princess Diana in the last years of her life in Diana; Emma Thompson as Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers in Saving Mr. Banks opposite Tom Hanks as Walt Disney; Nicole Kidman as Grace Kelly in Grace of Monaco opposite Tim Roth as Prince Rainer and Judi Dench, directed by Stephen Frears, as the Irish mother searching for the son taken from her decades earlier only in Philomena.

Oh, and promoting Julia for support has already begun with those prognosticators our there who are already making predictions.
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Re: August: Osage County (2013)

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Mister Tee wrote:The only thing worse than such a patent fraud (the character being, if anything, the play's true lead) is the fact that people seem determined to discuss the prospect for A FULL FRICKIN' YEAR!
Well, I mean, why not? What else is there to talk about right now? Michele Bachmann? March Madness? The countdown to the season premiere of "Mad Men"? Also, predictions made now that carry out into next year are worth quite a lot (see: Eric's very early call of Best Supporting Actress for Mo'Nique in '09 or, more recently, my steadfast prediction that Quevanzhané Wallis would receive a Best Actress nod.)

I think the prospect of Julia Roberts being shoehorned into support is probably the most disgusting piece of category fraud there will ever have been. With Harvey Weinstein attached, you can pretty much count on it, too. And what a disservice to someone like Margo Martindale.
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Re: August: Osage County (2013)

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The only thing worse than such a patent fraud (the character being, if anything, the play's true lead) is the fact that people seem determined to discuss the prospect for A FULL FRICKIN' YEAR!
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Re: August: Osage County (2013)

Post by The Original BJ »

Oh god, are we really going to have to deal with a SUPPORTING actress campaign for Julia Roberts for this part?

I can't. I just can't.
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Re: August: Osage County (2013)

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These are pretty rapturous reviews. I think we need to seriously start considering Meryl's fourth. I'll be interested to see how they craft the narrative of her campaign.
"The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely in her shoulders. She was twenty five and looked it."

-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
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Re: August: Osage County (2013)

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From Movie Freak in Awards Daily forum:

Ok, goyles here goes. I wasn't forced to sign an pesky confidentiality agreement so I can spill all the T. First of all, the film itself is really good. I think they did a great job capturing the feel, the setting and how isolating and barren the local can be. It is very classic in it's approach (it felt like it could have been made in the 70s or 80s), yet Letts' dialogue keeps it very fresh. They stayed extremely close to the source material; almost scene for scene really. However, the pacing was a bit off and I'm sure they'll work on that for the final cut. The acting is of course the story here and for the most part, the entire cast delivers. They all had great chemistry and played off of one another really well. The whole thing truly felt like an ensemble. But, this really is an AD actressing wet dream come to life and I'll go through everyone quickly one by one.

Meryl Streep: Let me tell you people this right now, you can say that I'm a Meryl fanboy or whatever ever, but this performance was literally everything. This is a pure tour-de-force, acting with a capital A showstopper. The entire cast is very strong, but Meryl devours them all. She gets to be funny, mean, loud, hammy, crazy, physical, subtle all at the same time. You hate her and your heart breaks for her. Even people who don't typically love this type of performance should find something here. This is a role made to win awards and I can easily see her becoming undeniable despite her recent win just like DDL did. This is complete and utter Oscar BAIT.

Julia Roberts: I have to say that she was the biggest surprise of the cast for me. I thought she did a terrific job. This is a great character on paper and she really had me believing her. There was no vanity or any Julia-isms. She also gets to run the gamut of emotions and does a terrific job. I was really impressed and surprised that for the most part she held her own against Meryl. The role is obviously leading, but I think it'll be tough for her to compete alongside Streep. In supporting, she would be a total slum dunk, even for a possible win.

Margo Martindale: She was good, just like she always is. Her character has a lot of comic relief and she does that well. She also had great chemistry with Cooper and she was terrific in her big emotional scene. I like her and I'm rooting for her, but I question if there's enough there for a nomination. I hope so.

Julianne Nicholson: I really like this character and she does a good job with it, but her fate will really depend on the reviews and the campaigns. She also really nails her climactic scene, although Julia is a big part of that as well.

Juliette Lewis: Oh poor, poor, sweet Juliette. Poor out of her depth Juliette. I mean the character is kind of ridiculous (and in that sense she was perfect for this role), but Juliette is even more so. I like her and I was rooting for her, but it was all I could do from laughing out loud during her big final scene. Of course, I do love a good hot mess, so I enjoyed her, but no lol.

Abigail Breslin: I'm not sure who it was that said she had a good role here and more to do than in the actual play, but no, I think it's actually the opposite. Either way, I'm glad that's the case. I don't care for her or this character.

Ewan McGregor: He was fine, but completely reactionary to Julia. I don't see him happening.

Benedict Cumberbatch: I really liked him a lot; he was really sad and heartbreaking, but he really doesn't have all that much to do here. It's too bad that his character gets robbed of a reaction to the big reveal.

Chris Cooper: Has the best male role and by far the most sympathetic character in the film. His telling off of Margo Martindale's character got applause from the audience, so if many of the men get any traction, it'll be him.

On a side not, I need to read the theater I saw this in for filth. About 30 minutes till the end of the film, the projector broke and it took then another 30 minutes to fix it. Just as I was in my Meryl haze, I had to sit there (without a cell phone mind you) and wait while some woman looked for her hat in the seats in front of me. I was not there for that. I'm sure Harvey was not happy that this happened during the first screening ever of his biggest Oscar horse this year.
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Re: August: Osage County (2013)

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OscarGuy wrote:They are dumping in the celebs to this and it's being directed by John Wells? I sense a Shipping News-type disaster...
You might want to start rethinking this. This review is quite fangirl-ish, but seems to quell a lot of early concerns...

Meryl Streep, a Date with Oscar and a Test Screening
Posted by Sasha Stone on Mar 19, 2013 in Meryl Streep | 34 comments

Twitter was a-flutter with reactions from a test screening of the Meryl Streep/Julia Roberts film August: Osage County. I never trust test screenings where Oscar is concerned because they are almost always wrong. Moreover, they can sometimes set expectations too high for a film to then meet those expectations. I hate it when that happens. But you can’t put the genie back in the bottle once it’s out and so August: Osage County is not quite getting the Les Mis treatment yet but it might be headed in that direction. Remember: you need critics to see a movie to know if it’s going to be a Best Picture contender at the very least. Over the years test screening reactions have almost always turned out to be misleading.

Here’s what we know before we ever even go read those: Streep brings it. She brings it in bad movies (The Iron Lady) and brings it in great movies (Adaptation) — so there isn’t likely going to be anything disappointing about Streep in this film. Therefore, it isn’t that surprising that the early word from the screening is a sploogegasm on the order of MERYL STREEP WILL WIN HER FOURTH OSCAR. And she very well might. Since Hollywood, and the industry, really really really doesn’t like movies with strong female leads in them, and that there are barely enough of them to go around at all, it seems plausible that Streep’s tour de force could blow out any potential competition.

But enough of my empty, pointless speculation — on to the tweets. A reader named Daniel sent this in (I hope he doesn’t mind if I post it):

And I have to tell everyone that I loved it.

I was very nervous about this adaptation because I loved the play so much. I saw it 6 times on Broadway, and was really worried about Julia Roberts taking on the Amy Morton role.

Julia Roberts, while no Amy Morton, acquits herself nicely, and does some of her best acting in years. However, this is Streep’s movie, and she really sinks her teeth in to the part. The dinner scene stands out as a really strong moment (and always was one of my favorites in the play). She is totally unrecognizable in the first few scenes, and tears threw them brilliantly.

Tracy Letts does a nice job adapting his work for the screen. Everything is very faithful to the original material, but more opened up for the big screen. There is an addition to the end that i didnt’t care for, but overall I thought everything worked really nicely.

The biggest surprise for me was Benedict Cumberbatch. He took a very minor character who was never someone I liked onstage, and made me care about him.

Margo Matindale was the casting I was most excited about for this film and she totally delivered. She is an excellent Mattie Fae, and i hope that she can score a supporting nod.

Overall, I think this is easily one of the best films of the year, and I can’t wait to see this again.

http://www.awardsdaily.com/blog/2013/03 ... screening/
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Re: August: Osage County (2013)

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OscarGuy wrote:They are dumping in the celebs to this and it's being directed by John Wells? I sense a Shipping News-type disaster...
Yes, I agreed.

Firstly it should have been directed by an non-American to give the somewhat soapy material a foreign freshness. Ferzan Ozpetek, a Turkish born Italian director would be my choice. Over the last years he has made a number of gorgeous looking ensemble pieces with somewhat mixed results.

I saw a production of the play in 2010 which was performed by members of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre. I had mixed feelings about the material but the actors (all unknown to me) were excellent and the set simply amazing.

The casting for this film is uniformly terrible and John Wells one directorial effort, The Company Men gives no hint that he is remotely suitable for this material.

I would have preferred an unknown cast.
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Re: August: Osage County (2013)

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They are dumping in the celebs to this and it's being directed by John Wells? I sense a Shipping News-type disaster...
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Re: August: Osage County (2013)

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Ewan McGregor and Misty Upham join the cast. McGregor will play Bill, the husband of Julia Roberts' character and the father of Breslin. 2 more roles to go.

Beverly Weston - Sam Shepard
Violet Weston - Meryl Streep

Their daughters
Barbara - Julia Roberts
Ivy -
Karen - Juliette Lewis

Bill (Barbara's husband) - Ewan McGregor
Jean (Barbara's daughter) - Abigail Breslin

Mattie Fay Aiken (Violet's sister) - Margot Martindale
Charlie (her husband) - Chris Cooper
Little Charles (their son) - Benedict Cumberbatch

Johnna (the housekeeper) - Misty Upham
Steve (Karen's fiance) - Dermot Mulroney
Dean (sheriff) -
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Re: August: Osage County (2013)

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Sam Shepard joins the Weston family as Beverly Weston, the husband of Streep's character.
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Re: August: Osage County (2013)

Post by Cinemanolis »

According to imdb and Hollywood Reporter Dermot Mulroney and Benedict Cumberbatch are the latest additions to the cast.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/b ... rts-365235

Cumberbatch is IMO perfectly cast as Little Charles (son of Margo Martindale and Chris Cooper) and Mulroney as Steve (Juliette Lewis' fiance). The big roles not yet cast are Bill (Julia Robert's husband) and Ivy (one of Streep's daughters). There is also a rumor that Tom Wilkinson is in talks to play Streep's husband.

So the family tree goes like this:

Beverly Weston -
Violet Weston - Meryl Streep

Their daughters
Barbara - Julia Roberts
Ivy -
Karen - Juliette Lewis

Bill (Barbara's husband) -
Jean (Barbara's daughter) - Abigail Breslin

Mattie Fay Aiken (Violet's sister) - Margot Martindale
Charlie (her husband) - Chris Cooper
Little Charles (their son) - Benedict Cumberbatch

Johnna (the housekeeper) -
Steve (Karen's fiance) - Dermot Mulroney
Dean (sheriff) -
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Re: August: Osage County (2013)

Post by Cinemanolis »

flipp525 wrote:
Cinemanolis wrote:
I had heard that Beverly Weston will be played by Robert Redford.
That's sounds wonderful. However i suspect that Beverly will appear very briefly in the film. In the play he only has an 8 minute monologue at the first scene of the play. So i suspect that it will be mainly voicework by Redford.
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