Ask anyone -- the Sundance Film Festival award that really counts is the Audience Award, and yesterday's (Saturday, 1.29) winner of that honor was Craig Brewer's
Hustle & Flow....right on. Another thing you can usually depend upon is that the Sundance jurors will give their dramatic competition Grand Jury prize to a film that a lot of people didn't get or flat-out didn't like. This was clearly the case when they give their big trophy to Ira Sachs'
Forty Shades of Blue...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:59 AM on Sunday, January 30, 2005
A few days ago Oscar handicapper Pete Hammond said in this column that if Martin Scorsese doesn't win the Director's Guild of America "outstanding directorial achievement" award for his direction of The Aviator, "all bets are off." What he meant was, Scorsese's chances of winning the Best Director Oscar will be strongly diminished. So I guess it's fair to say that all bets are indeed off since Clint Eastwood has won this award for his direction of Million Dollar Baby. Congrats, also, to Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni for nabbing the DGA's best Documentary award for ...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:06 AM on Sunday, January 30, 2005
Panel Thief
Okay, so maybe a lead story about the intoxicating elements within a certain woman's personality isn't exactly a page-one topic, but I'm covering the Santa Barbara Film Festival this weekend and for what it's worth and what-the-hell, here is Saturday's earthshaker:
Oscar screenwriting nominee Julie Delpy (for her Before Sunset collaboration with Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke) totally killed at Saturday's screenwriter's panel at the Lobero Theatre.
Actress-screenwriter Julie Delpy during Saturday afternoon's panel discussion, "It Starts With the Script," at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.
...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:56 PM on Friday, January 28, 2005
Between phone-installation delays, not enough sleep, column-posting problems, visits to medical clincs, computer spyware issues, too much stress and spending a small fortune on taxi fares, all I want is to get the hell out of here. I've seen some interesting, at times very affecting films in Park City, and yes, I will try and tap out some thoughts and impressions about some of these tomorrow morning (particularly of The Chumscrubber, which I'm seeing tonight) but after six days of this 6:30 am to 1:30 am routine your seams start to tear.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:44 PM on Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Isn't it ironic that Paul Giamatti is standing side-by-side with fellow Oscar nominees Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Jamie Foxx, et. al., on the cover of the current Newsweek ("Oscar Confidential") and his Oscar nominee status, as of this morning, is no more? It's the Eisenhower-era members of the Academy who voted against him, I suspect....or rather against Miles, his Sideways character. Giamatti's deeply touching, occasionally side-splitting performance was one of '04's finest, but Academy blue-hairs had no tolerance for Miles' morose, schlubby, wine-swigging behavior. The death blow, I'm guessing, was over Miles having stolen money from his mother's bedroom dresser.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:23 PM on Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Danced Out
And so begins my eighth and final day in Park City, Utah, and I can't think of a common thread or theme that fits the experience. The days have burned through like a lit dynamite fuse in a Sam Peckinpah film, only there hasn't been any kind of explosive finish and I don't expect there to be. I'm just looking for a clean exit.
All I want to do today is see two or three more films (Hustle & Flow again, just for fun...and then Heights, This Revolution or Ellie Parker...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:55 PM on Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Rushing It
I haven't got time to think things through or make what I'm tapping out here sound as good as it ought to, and it pains me to just put stuff up without refinements, but...
The most satisfying Sundance films I've seen over the last four days, in this order, are: Craig Brewer's Hustle & Flow, Greg Mclean's Wolf Creek (which I wrote about last Friday), and Craig Lucas' The Dying Gaul...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:08 AM on Monday, January 24, 2005
Flow Chart
I'll be banging out a Monday column, of course, but why not run some photos I took on Friday and Saturday right now (i.e., Sunday afternoon)?
Sunday's big festival news is the enormous response to Craig Brewer's astounding and immensely satisfying Hustle & Flow after an 8:30 pm screening Saturday night at the Park City Racquet Club, along with this morning's announcement that the film has been acquired for $9 million by MTV/Paramount.
Part of the
Hustle & Flow...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:25 PM on Sunday, January 23, 2005
Craig Brewer's
Hustle & Flow, so far the one absolute knockout of the '05 Sundance Film Festival, was acquired for theatrical distribution Saturday night by MTV/Paramount for $9 million. The total fee is actually $16 million for a 3-picture deal that will cover two other films to be produced and directed by
Flow...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:24 AM on Sunday, January 23, 2005
I talked to a critic last night (i.e., Saturday) who acknowledged that Craig Brewer's
Hustle & Flow is obviously well-liked by the Sundance audience so far and is "the first movie to break through" so far. However, an opinion was also confided that it's basically "bullshit" and "straight out of 1930s Warner Bros. formula." I'm sorry but this critic (a very smart fellow) has never been more wrong. I know what it feels like when a Sundance movie has gone through the roof. Okay...mountain-air syndrome, right? But I
know...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:08 AM on Sunday, January 23, 2005
"I've seen 10 Sundance films in the last two days," an exhibitor friend confides, "and the the highlight so far, unquetionably, has been Steve Buscemi's
Lonesome Jim...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:43 PM on Friday, January 21, 2005
I'm going to try and tap out WIRED stuff as much as I can between screenings. Whatever's happened, whatever shaking...and let me just say, sitting here in the Intel room at the Yarrow, that there's nothing quite so awful to listen to as the sound of forced gaiety. It sounds anxious, desperate-to-please, and bordering on panic.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:40 PM on Friday, January 21, 2005
I'm still at the Intel room at the Yarrow, and an hour ago I was shut out of seeing Warner Indepdedent's The Jacket, which started at 2:30 pm. It's some kind of Gulf War-driven time-travel nightmare psychodrama, and the advance talk has been pretty good. I guess you have to arrive at Yarrow press screenings a good 20 to 30 minutes before or forget it. It costars Adrien Brody, Kiera Knightley, Daniel Craig, Kris Kristofferson and Kelly Lynch. My next film (hopefully) is David LaChappelle's Rize, but it's screening at the dreaded Library, and that's always a hassle.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:22 PM on Friday, January 21, 2005
Sick at Sundance
I started to fall ill Wednesday evening -- coughing, congestion -- and I felt sicker all day Thursday. I did a lot of sleeping, drank a lot of water. And on top of this, I discovered Wednesday night that the phone in the condo I'm staying in has been shut off, so there's been no internet (and the phone won't be turned back on until Friday morning...great).
...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:22 PM on Friday, January 21, 2005
Blow for Freedom
I came to chortle at
Inside Deep Throat and, to be honest, maybe feel a tiny bit excited by it...but I came away feeling leveled-out, sobered-up, un-randy.
Sobered up doesn't mean bummed, which is how I pretty much felt after seeing Deep Throat itself. It was such a shitty movie...so cheesy, stupid, clueless. But it made raunch seem hip for that five- or ten-minute period in `72 or '73 with the New York Times-propagated concept of "porno chic."
...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:36 PM on Wednesday, January 19, 2005
A 1.19.05 item in the
New York Post's "Page Six" column read, "Don't assume that Golden Globes winners will walk off with Oscars next month. The idea that the Globes are still "a major influencer of the Oscar nominations or final outcome is an embarrassment," declares movie writer
David Poland, "much the same as so many Americans believing that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for 9/11." Hollywood columnist
Jeffrey Wells...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:41 AM on Monday, January 17, 2005
I'll have more to say about the Golden Globe awards on Wednesday, but aside from the surprise of Leonardo DiCaprio winning the Best Actor trophy (a fiercely committed actor who, as Howard Hughes, goes for broke, but still looks like a kid playing dress-up) and
The Aviator...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:21 AM on Monday, January 17, 2005
There's a clip in the trailer for Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbatos'
Inside Deep Throat Inside Deep Throat (Universal, 2.11) quoting a guy involved with the distribution of this infamous 1972 porn film saying, "We have so much cash, we don't even count it -- we weigh it!" This alone supports my long-held suspicion that this will be one very cool documentary...fascinating, hilarious, whatever.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:20 PM on Saturday, January 15, 2005
With Miramax's Bob and Harvey Weinstein only two or three weeks away from signing final divorce papers with Disney, there's a rumble (about two or three weeks old, apparently) about Mouse execs offering Warner Independent Pictures chief Mark Gill the job of running Miramax after the brothers depart. It's a flakey rumor, apparently...but not entirely flakey, as as the Miramax gig (presuming Gill has even discussed it) might carry a certain allure, given WIP's so-far mixed track record. As he was just starting the WIP gig in August '03, Gill told the
Hollywood Reporter...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:50 PM on Saturday, January 15, 2005
To the list of presumed front-runners for the Best Foreign Film Oscar(
Cronicas,
Downfall,
Les Choristes,
The Sea Inside,
House of Flying Daggers), I'm told I should add Darrell Roodt's
Yesterday...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:27 PM on Saturday, January 15, 2005
There's this extremely weird, slightly satiric, observational fly-on-the-wall
piece by Christian Moerk in Sunday's
New York Times about the first meeting between Paramount Pictures' recently hired film division chairman and chief executive Brad Grey and the studio's "entire senior-executive phalanx" in an executive boardroom last January 6th. There's no angle or point to it -- it's not some thoughtfully considered
New Yorker or
New York Observer...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:46 AM on Saturday, January 15, 2005
Totally Cronicas
Those heading to the Sundance Film Festival next week will be messing up hugely if they don't catch Cronicas, a creepy investigation piece and a penetrating morality tale about a tabloid TV news team on the trail of a serial child killer.
It's the first serious high-performance film I've seen this year, and if there's any justice in the world it'll be among the five Best Foreign Film Oscar nominees that are being announced on 1.25, along with Downfall, Les Choristes, The Sea Inside and House of Flying Daggers.
...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:39 PM on Friday, January 14, 2005
You can toss out the concept of Richard Kelly's
Southland Tales, which has been described in some circles as a genre hybrid of comedy/musical/thriller/science-fiction or, in somewhat plainer terms, as a big social-political satire....you can forget any ideas of it coming out in '05, despite my having listed
Tales in Wednesday's column as a hot-ticket due sometime later this year. Too bad, but there's no way it'll be out before '06. But if you want a little taste now (and I highly recommend this), click
here .
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:06 PM on Thursday, January 13, 2005
Two more connections between those sound-alike Sundance movies, Thumbsucker and The Chumscrubber. One, they were both produced by Bob Yari, a former real-estate guy who now heads a company called the Yari Film Group. And two, they both costar 19 year-old Lou Pucci. Thumbsucker, which costars Tilda Swinton and Keanu Reeves, was shot almost a year before Chumscrubber, which stars Jamie Bell, Camilla Belle (also the costar of The Ballad of Jack and Rose), Ralph Fiennes, Rory Culkin, and Glenn Close. There's also a Park City at Midnight film called Ass-Muncher....kidding!
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:38 PM on Thursday, January 13, 2005
Liam Neeson as Abraham Lincoln? Perfect...not just because of the facial and body-type similarities, but also a look of kindliness in Neeson's eyes that I've noticed in those two or three Matthew Brady portraits of Lincoln.
Variety is
reporting that Steven Spielberg has begun talks with Neeson to play Lincoln in a film based on Doris Kearns Goodwin's "The Uniter: The Genius of Abraham Lincoln," which will be published next fall. The plan is for the biopic to start production in January '06.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:17 AM on Wednesday, January 12, 2005
It would be highly unlikely, not to mention beside the point, if Kearns or Spielberg were to touch upon the recently-raised issue of the younger Abe Lincoln's alleged bisexuality, as explored by C. A. Tripp's controversial book, "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln." The focus of the Spielberg film, after all, will be the middle-aged Lincoln's grappling with the Civil War. In any event, Lincoln biographer and respected historian Gore Vidal discusses Tripp's work and the evidence about Lincoln's friendships with Joshua Speed, A.Y. Ellis and fellow lawyer Henry Whitney in a current
posting on
Vanity Fair's website.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:02 AM on Wednesday, January 12, 2005
And speaking of Neeson, it seems slightly odd to see him happily grinning alongside his
Phantom Menace costars on the
cover of the current
Vanity Fair, considering the stories that went around in '99 that the one-two punch of acting in front of green-screen digital backgrounds in that George Lucas film plus the same experience on Jan de Bont's
The Haunting led Neeson to briefly consider quitting acting...or so it was reported at the time.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:47 AM on Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Clint's Furlough
After directing films for no other studio but Warner Bros. for 28 years straight (i.e., except for Columbia's
Absolute Power), Clint Eastwood will briefly jump ship when he makes his next movie -- a time-shifting father-son World War II flick called
Flags of Our Fathers -- for DreamWorks this summer.
...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:31 AM on Wednesday, January 12, 2005
With the Golden Globes happening this Sunday (1.16), an oddsmaker for Tom O'Neill's GoldDerby.com named David Scott is asserting that Martin Scorsese's
The Aviator is a 6-to-5 favorite to win the Best Drama trophy. This implies, of course, that the Howard Hughes biopic is also slightly more favored to take the Best Picture Oscar than other contenders. I have two words for the east-coast contingent that seriously believes in the Marty/
Aviator...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:34 AM on Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Got another gig for a clever trust-fund journalist looking to build a rep. I need a 20-something man/woman to author a Hollywood Elsewhere column that almost totally rips off Defamer...same attitude, style, tone, brevity...only a bit different. And I need someone to run it -- write it, grab and crop photos, do headlines, publish it from their home/office, etc. I have no shame about ripping off other sites and columns, as long as you don't totally copy them. Get in touch and we'll talk.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:06 PM on Tuesday, January 11, 2005
As expected, it's happened -- Michael Moore's
Fahrenhit 9/11 has won the '05 People's Choice Award for favorite movie of the year. "We live in a great country and we all love our country very much and I am so amazed that you did this...the people of America...that you voted for this film," Moore said at the podium, not letting on that he'd been tipped a couple of days ago, probably because it's a fairly common practice. Moore dedicated the award to the U.S troops fighting in Iraq, and said, "I'm honored and gratified." Will this up the odds of
F 9/11Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:50 PM on Sunday, January 9, 2005
A flattering quote from
Slate critic David Edelstein on behalf of Universal's more-or-less dreadful
White Noise ran in a full-page ad in last Friday's
Los Angeles Times. It says, "I screamed louder than I've ever screamed before"...which seems odd. Knowing the film's "scary" moments to be on the cheap and hackneyed side, and knowing Edelstein to be fairly sharp and all, it seemed bizarre that he would have said this...unless, of course, he was being insincere. Then I found the original quote and discovered Edelstein more or less meant it. He called
White Noise...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:35 PM on Sunday, January 9, 2005
Much of Southern California has been taking a shower for the last several days, and it won't be toweling off until at least Tuesday or thereabouts. What this is is a kind of metaphorical cleansing, or perhaps even a metaphysical comment of some kind. It is, to me, almost the same thing as the raining frogs in Paul Thomas Anderson's
Magnolia...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:41 AM on Sunday, January 9, 2005
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:19 AM on Sunday, January 9, 2005
I'm shocked, shocked to read that Michael Moore has allegedly been tipped off in advance that Fahrenheit 9/11...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:31 PM on Friday, January 7, 2005
Son of Enchilada
I guess ’05 isn’t going to be such a bad year after all.
I asked readers to suggest upcoming film titles to complement Wednesday’s piece about the year’s most promising features (“Whole ’05 Enchilada”), and I was reminded of a few good ones. The overall list of probable good’s to very good’s is now up to 23, and the list of maybe’s and wait-and-see’s is up to 10, for a grand total of 33.
I’ve broken the whole list down into three seasonal sections in an article that follows this one.
...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:28 PM on Friday, January 7, 2005
For what it's worth, this column humbly salutes War of the Worlds director Steven Spielberg for donating $1.5 million to the post-tsunami humanitarian effort, and Sandra Bullock for putting $1 million into the same bucket. Spielberg announced it because he'd like other moneybags to follow suit.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:34 PM on Thursday, January 6, 2005
Has everyone heard? After two and a half decades of being a Grand Technological Poobah whose interest in
ars gratia artis was totally nil, George Lucas now wants to be Gregg Araki. In the new Hollywood-Oscar issue of
Vanity Fair, next to a big photo of the
Star Wars cast members, Lucas is quoted as saying that the finishing of
Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:41 AM on Thursday, January 6, 2005
Whole '05 Enchilada
Honestly? Right now? The '05 films I'm seriously excited about number exactly 22. And that's pushing it. Make it 17 picks and 5 toothpicks. And I didn't just toss this list off out of boredom. I thought hard about my quirks and prejudices and sorted 'em all out.
There are at least five or six winners I'm overlooking or haven't even heard of yet. That always happens. They'll surface soon enough. In alphabetical order...
Steven Zallian's
All The King's Men...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:12 PM on Wednesday, January 5, 2005
Jeff Leeds' weekend box-office story in today's (1.3)
New York Times...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:36 PM on Monday, January 3, 2005
Two similar-sounding, three-syllable, young-guy-with-a-problem movies are playing at Sundance '05 --
The Chumscrubber and
Thumbsucker. And are both about suburban ennui and that line of country. Not to sound harsh or dismissive, but I
really don't want to see a movie about a guy who sucks his thumb. Arie Posin's
Chumscrubber, a Premiere selection about, yes, despair and alienation in an idyllic California 'burb (is there any other kind?), costars Jamie Bell, Ralph Fiennes, Carrie-Ann Moss, Glenn Close, Allison Janey. Mike Mills'
Thumbsucker...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:58 AM on Monday, January 3, 2005
Snipers are taking shots at
Million Dollar Baby (and not just the Paulettes), and now
New York Times critic A.O. Scott has given voice to the one I've been hearing for weeks about critics liking
Sideways...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:03 PM on Sunday, January 2, 2005
In a TV clip, Don Cheadle said about the real-life story behind Hotel Rwanda: "It's Africa's holocaust, and it's still happening, and people...don't know about it." Cheadle paused between saying the words "people" and "don't," and I'm sure he briefly considered saying "don't want to know about it"...until thinking better of it.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:13 PM on Sunday, January 2, 2005
Brad Grey, the big-wheel talent manager, is "expected to be named head of Paramount Pictures as early as this week," according to a Sunday story by
L.A. Times reporters Claudia Eller and Sallie Hofmeister. The move "is likely to bring sweeping changes for the storied and recently troubled studio." Sources said Grey was in the final stages of negotiations with Paramount parent Viacom Inc. to succeed studio chief Sherry Lansing, who announced two months ago that she would retire after 12 years on the job. Grey, the story noted, "has a relatively poor box-office track record, having produced such flops as
...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:53 PM on Sunday, January 2, 2005
A filmmaker friend sat down with Harvey Weinstein in London a few days ago and says he's lost 35 or 40 pounds, and that the apparent inspiration is that he's got a new British actress girlfriend and "he's in love." I wrote a London columnist friend and asked about this....nothing back yet. Poly Giannabi, a London reader, says she "saw Harvey Weinstein on British TV, at the British premiere of The Aviator. It's true about the weight loss...he's down at least 30-40 pounds. I almost didn't recognize him."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:48 PM on Sunday, January 2, 2005
Got a hot Sundance '05 pic. Actually, just a flick I'm hearing may be one of the hotties...for GenXers with a desperate need to feel superficially hip, at least. It's John Asher and Jenny McCarthy's Dirty Love, a "Park City at Midnight" selection about a Hollywood girl named Rebecca (McCarthy)going through betrayal, homelessness and hard times. The program calls it "a laugh-out-loud, hilarious manifestation" of Asher and McCarthy's "warped minds," with "unforgettable and outrageous hijinks."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:34 PM on Sunday, January 2, 2005
