Oscar Buzz for Martin Landau and Ellen Burstyn?

Their new film Lovely, Still just premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and has been recieving some great reviews, even hinting at Oscar buzz for past winners Landau and Burstyn.

From the TIFF website, Lovely, Still's synopsis is:

Robert Malone (Martin Landau) is an elderly perennial bachelor who leads a tidy, uneventful and some might even say empty life. This Christmas, for whatever reason, Robert is feeling the lack of family more keenly than usual. Then one day, like a single man's dream, Robert comes home from his job at a grocery store to find a beautiful woman in his house.

Her name is Mary (Ellen Burstyn), and while Robert is initially shocked and angry, she quickly explains that she has just moved in across the street, saw his door open, and was concerned for the welfare of the homeowner. Their flap settled, Mary is on her way out when she turns to Robert and pertly asks him out to dinner. A little nonplussed, Robert agrees, and thus begins a late-life courtship that leaves the bachelor in a constant state of wonderment and surprise. He eventually must admit that he is falling in love.

But there's something about Mary that seems not right. She's overeager, almost pushy, in the way she engages Robert almost every hour; within days, they are like teenagers, conjoined in first love. Robert is besotted, but soon becomes unnerved by the intensity of his love. He grows paranoid, jealous and erratic, all from fear of losing her. At this point, the narrative takes an extraordinary turn, with a development in the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock or the novelist Daphne du Maurier. This tectonic shift in perspective leads to a powerful, tremendously moving conclusion, made all the richer by a heightened understanding of what has come before.

Lovely, Still is a remarkable achievement for so young a first-time director as Nik Fackler, who understands that bringing together two Academy Award®-winning actors of extraordinary ability can only elicit great expectations from the audience. Lovely, Still meets its full potential and provides a challenging and fulfilling experience that will linger in the viewer's memory for some time to come.

Here is the first clip released for Lovely, Still, which stars Landau and Adam Scott where Robert (Landau) asks his boss, Mike (Scott) about tips for a date with Mary (Burstyn).


Can Martin Landau and possibly Ellen Burstyn get back into the Oscar race with this feel-good, tearjerker (holiday) film? And also what's interesting is that the writer/director, Nik Facker, who is 23 years old, wrote this film about a love story between two older people, and he had this idea when he was a teenager... Amazing!