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Hollywood Elsewhere - Movie news and opinions by Jeffrey Wells

“There’s Hollywood Elsewhere and then there’s everything else. It’s your neighborhood dive where you get the ugly truth, a good laugh and a damn good scotch.”
–JJ Abrams
(Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Super 8)

“Smart, reliable and way ahead of the curve … a must and invaluable read.”
–Peter Biskind
(Down and Dirty Pictures Easy Riders, Raging Bulls)

“He writes with an element that any good filmmaker employs and any moviegoer uses to fully appreciate the art of film – the heart.”
–Alejandro G. Inarritu
(The Revenant, Birdman, Amores Perros)

“Nothing comes close to HE for truthfulness, audacity, and one-eyed passion and insight.”
–Phillip Noyce
(Salt, Clear and Present Danger, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Dead Calm)

“A rarity and a gem … Hollywood Elsewhere is the first thing I go to every morning.”
–Ann Hornaday
Washington Post

“Jeffrey Wells isn’t kidding around. Well, he does kid around, but mostly he just loves movies.”
–Cameron Crowe
(Almost Famous, Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky)

“In a world of insincere blurbs and fluff pieces, Jeff has a truly personal voice and tells it like it is. Exactly like it is, like it or not.”
–Guillermo del Toro
(Pan’s Labyrinth, Cronos, Hellboy)

“It’s clearly apparent he doesn’t give a shit what the Powers that Be think, and that’s a good thing.”
–Jonathan Hensleigh
Director (The Punisher), Writer (Armageddon, The Rock)

“So when I said I’d like to leave my cowboy hat there, I was obviously saying (in my head at least) that I’d be back to stay the following year … simple and quite clear all around.”
–Jeffrey Wells, HE, January ’09

“If you’re in a movie that doesn’t work, game over and adios muchachos — no amount of star-charisma can save it.”
–Jeffrey Wells, HE

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43 Comments
Let It Go

Disney Studios chairman Rich Ross speaking to Deadline‘s Pete Hammond: “The theory is pretty simple for us…It’s thrilling that there is a separate category for animation and that allows animated movies to be recognized but for some reason an animated film has never gotten Best Picture and I always wondered was there not an appetite? We decided this year we have the biggest and best reviewed film of the year. If not this year, and not this movie, when?”

HE answer: Never, that’s when. It’s not going to happen so forget it, Rich. Animation is its own realm, and a beautiful and transporting one it is. Toy Story 3 is unquestionably one of the the best films of the year, but it’s an animated thing and that puts it on the other side of the Rio Grande reality realm. And you, due respect, are denigrating your own thing by clamoring for a Best Picture Oscar, which obviously implies that you feel there’s something second-class about a Best Animated Feature Oscar. That’s in your mind, fella.

Best Picture Oscars are for movies that present biologically realistic images of flesh-and-blood people living and struggling in more or less recognizable real-world realms. And which generally don’t cater to family-style emotionality or try to excite children with cartoony tropes and extra-radiant, killer-diller digital imitations of real-world forms and textures. As tightly written and smartly structured and emotionally engaging as Michael Arndt‘s script is, what I’ve just described is the realm and the style of Toy Story 3. As on-target as the characters are and as spiritually complete as the film is, Toy Story 3 is a first-class, triple-A fucking cartoon. Deal with it, live in that territory, embrace that thing and shut up.

If a critics group gives TS3 a Best Picture award, cool. If several critics groups give it their Best Picture awards, cool. But winning the Best Picture Oscar is out. Stay on your side of the fence, be proud of your own thing, and be happy in your work.

November 21, 2010 12:01 pmby Jeffrey Wells
54 Comments
What I've Learned

I’ve tried to follow the example of Cary Grant in my life, and the effort that has gone into this has served me well. Always try to be gracious and gentlemanly. Stay as trim as you can. Be a cheapskate. Try to eat less. Enjoy good wine but stay away from the booze. LSD is good for the soul. Don’t go bald.

You must have good wifi everywhere, at all times, forever. Even after death.

It’s a good thing to own a baseball mitt, and to have a catch with someone on a big green lawn every so often. Preferably when the light is just starting to go down. And it’s okay to groan like John McEnroe when you throw the ball.

The more free food and drink you consume, the better you’re doing in life. Free movies, free trips, goodie bags, etc. Paying for things always feels bad.

You don’t need an education that will set you back $150,000 and keep you in debt for over 20 years if you have curiosity. That’s what John Huston used to say, and is what Owen Wilson believes right now.

You really do need to know everything about something and something about everything. And if you don’t know something you just have to be curious about it. Easy.

When all the right things are aligned (talent, tune, purpose, spirit), there are few things in life more transporting than electric guitar and bass and drums. Forget the vocals.

People have an unmistakable gleam in their eye when they’re 18 or 19 and about to start college. A gleam that says, “Holy shit, I can’t wait…all this stuff to savor, all these things to learn, all these places to see.” By the time most people have hit 43, that gleam has been diminished if not snuffed out. That’s what I saw at my 25th high-school reunion. No more adventures, thank you. I’ve got my deal more or less worked out and I love my wife and my kids and my weekend routine, and we go to Mexico or the Caribbean once a year. But about 5% of the people at that reunion still had that gleam. Thank God for that.

People spend way too much time sitting around with friends and blah-blahing about next to nothing in bars and restaurants. It feels good to do this — I get that — but the less time you spend shooting spurious shit with fair-weather friends, the better.

Life is nothing without travel to exotic places that other Americans don’t go to because the hotels aren’t swanky enough.

Woody Allen and Rod Stewart were right. Some people are just lucky and don’t have to sweat it all that much. Their genes and heritage have paved a path. Life is unfair. But if things go too easily or too well for anyone too early, they always seem to suffer on some level. It’s best to come into the really good stuff when you get a bit older.

Don Corleone had the kid thing all figured out. He said that “a man who doesn’t spend time with his children can never be a real man.” You also have to be able to roll around and laugh and play dopey kid games, especially with toddlers. If you can’t let that side of yourself out, or if you can’t find it, then you’re a kind of prisoner.

Women always let you know within seconds if you’re “in” — i.e., if they like you enough to want to go to bed with you. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. At all. There are 117 different things you can do or say that will change their mind, and if you can think of 75 of these things in advance you’re a genius. But women always flash that initial green light within seconds of meeting you. Not minutes. Seconds.

Sports-watching is obviously about spiritual nourishment, a ritual that feeds you with feelings and values that you believe are good for your soul. But guys who watch sports in a ritualistic way are essentially living in a secular and, to some extent, prohibitive realm. I’m not saying that realm isn’t a good place to dwell in many respects, but it does shut out some things. Remember how Ray Liotta talked in Goodfellas about how he and Robert De Niro and their wives always hung out and shared Sunday dinners and went on vacations together, year after year? That’s what sports guys are like. A sports guy hasn’t really turned the key in the lock of life until he can say to himself, “Yeah, I used to be an ESPN guy but now I [fill in the blank].”

“Bad luck. That’s all it is. I pray in your life you will never find it runs in streaks. Streaks. I pray it misses you. That’s all I want to say.”

People I knew who partied hard in their late teens and into their early to mid 20s — the real animals, I mean — have all tended to end up in bad and depleted places. Some of them are dead or close to it. You have to rein that shit in or it’ll take you down. I almost succumbed to it myself.

A computer is like a person. You have to turn it off two or three times a week and let it rest. I knew that instinctually when I first starting working with them, but then I talked to a tech guy who told me it’s better to just leave them on and let them “sleep.” Jerk.

People who are still hanging out with a posse by the time they hit 30 are emotional infants. And posse people who throw their heads back and laugh loudly in restaurants and bars to the point of obnoxious shrieking, over and over while others are sitting near them and having to listen to them bust a gut like jackals, are truly repellent.

Friends will not save you. Girlfriends and wives will not save you. Your mother and/or your father will not save you. You have to save you. I’ve known an awful lot of guys (myself included) who’ve spent their 20s looking for some form of salvation from some combination of the above.

But life without a few supportive friends (i.e., the ones who decided to embrace and accept you, asshole-ish tendencies and all, a long time ago and have never changed their minds) and quality-level girlfriends or wives isn’t much of a life. Dogs and cats also tend to round things out.

Oh, to live in a world without stupidity and ignorance and religions. I don’t believe that right-wing Christians should be thrown to the lions, but I certainly understand the thinking of the Romans who felt that way about their ancestors.

Woody Allen was also right about unstable kamikaze women being the best in bed. But nine times out of ten you’ll go crazy yourself if you settle down with them to any degree, so you have to be practical and choose someone sane and stable with good partnership qualities, and that, sad to say, tends to mean (and I truly wish it were otherwise) that sex with long-term partners never compares to insanity sex with nutty women in parking lots and whatnot.

You have to be able to know and sing all the harmonic parts in all the Beatles songs. You have to know them cold. If someone wakes you up at 4 am, you have to be able to sing the low-harmony stuff without thinking about it. “Sometimes when I’m lonely, wishing you weren’t so far away” and “we’ll go all night long,” etc.

When I was approaching 30 I remember feeling unnerved when I read this statement: “Whatever you are at 30, you’re going to be a lot more of.” Whoa. But the guy who said that was operating on the presumption that most 30 year-olds have come into themselves by tasting a certain amount of success and failure, and have more or less decided what they really want and how to play it, and that the remaining 40 or 50 or 60 years will involve occasional dips and turns and rainstorms but will basically be a matter of “steady as she goes.” Well, it’s not like that. Sometimes it doesn’t kick in until you’re 40-plus. Certainly the new threshold for maturity is 40 these days. That’s when you really have to stop exploring other realms besides living off your weekly poker game with your homies (not to mention video games and skiing trips and Sunday football parties).

Very few straight-male friendships last for more than a couple of decades. Sooner or later paths diverge. Guys don’t break up with each other. They just gradually diverge and call less and less and then stop calling except for special occasions, and then that starts to happen less and less. Actually, I take that back. I’ve known one straight guy who actually broke up with me.

People never tell the truth about themselves at parties.

November 21, 2010 5:58 amby Jeffrey Wells
44 Comments
Old Tron

Disney doesn’t want under-30s seeing the original Tron for fear of killing enthusiasm for Joseph Kosinki‘s TRON: Legacy, hence the decision not to put it out on Bluray as a promotion for the new model. Too rickety and old-fogeyish. How long will this clip last on YouTube then?

November 20, 2010 12:05 pmby Jeffrey Wells

14 Comments
Save Lesley Manville!

I tried to explain yesterday why I believe the great Lesley Manville can’t hope to prevail in the Best Actress category, but that she’ll rule or certainly be a leading contender within the Best Supporting Actress realm.

I know this sounds obsessive, but I’m asking other conversation-starters to kick this around once more (as Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet did on 10.27) in hopes of inciting an Academy groundswell that might result in a nomination that will do Manville and Mike Leigh‘s Another Year the most good.

A voter revolt happened before when they were being urged to nominate Kate Winslet as Best Actress in Revolutionary Road; they put her up instead for Best Actress in The Reader. Okay, it’s not the same thing but voters aren’t obliged to follow suggestions made in trade ads. They can do anything they want.

I only know that putting Manville into Best Actress contention, sublime as she is, is almost a sure-fire way to make her lose. It’s just not in the cards. There’s even a feeling that Manville may not even be nominated in the Best Actress category, even if one or two major critics groups step into the breach. But she’s almost certain to be nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category, which has fewer formidable competitors. In my book (and in the book of anyone who believes, however naively, that quality of performance should be a major determining factor) she damn well ought to win in this arena.

November 20, 2010 11:10 amby Jeffrey Wells
16 Comments
Badass Bees

These are two of the Buzz Bee illustrations found on Badassdigest.com. I don’t know if there are others besides these two, but obviously they have different skin tints. The thumbs-up bee on the left looks like he’s being held up and is begging the thief not to shoot him. The thumbs-down bee looks nauseous for a reason other than having just seen a bad film. Plus his antennae bulbs are three times bigger than those belonging to the thumbs-up bee.

November 20, 2010 10:43 amby Jeffrey Wells
29 Comments
Downswirl?

Yesterday Badassdigest.com’s Devin Faraci assessed the junket buzz on TRON: Legacy, which was shown on Thursday night (and probably again last night): “The people who saw it were heavily embargoed, but they’re also mostly fanboys and, frankly, easy lays for this movie, so I expected to see lots of folks on Twitter just skirting the embargo. But there was silence. Utter silence. Never a good sign.

“I did some asking around and while there are folks who are very positive on the film, most of what I heard back was ‘looks great, everything else is terrible.’ The script, I have heard, is especially atrocious. And this comes from some folks who I thought would for sure be huge fans of the film no matter what.”

November 20, 2010 9:55 amby Jeffrey Wells

24 Comments
Ignore — Watch HP7 Instead

“In 2007, the top 1 percent of all income earners in the United States made 23.5 percent of all income — more than the bottom 50 percent. Not enough! The percentage of income going to the top 1 percent nearly tripled since the mid-1970s. Not enough! Eighty percent of all new income earned from 1980 to 2005 has gone to the top 1 percent. Not enough! The top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Not enough! The Wall Street executives with their obscene compensation packages now earn more than they did before we bailed them out. Not enough! With the middle class collapsing and the rich getting much richer, the United States now has, by far, the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on earth. Not enough!” — from an 11.19 HuffPost article by Sen. Bernie Sanders.

November 20, 2010 9:32 amby Jeffrey Wells
37 Comments
Unstoppable Stopped

Tony Scott‘s Unstoppable “fell 49% this weekend…what happened?,” I asked a friend this morning. His answer: “No movie was able to weather the Harry Potter storm — it’s as simple as that.”

Really? So whatever the Unstoppable word-of-mouth, it’s moot because of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1? How does that work exactly?

Moviegoer #1: “So how was Unstoppable?” Moviegoer #2: “Good, real good. Lotta fun. You should see it.” Moviegoer #1: “Yeah, I’d like to.” Moviegoer #2: “Huh?” Moviegoer #1: “I have to see Harry Potter this weekend and I only see one movie each week, if that. So I…uhm, I dunno, maybe I’ll rent Unstoppable.” Moviegoer #2: “You’ve heard it’s good, you want to see it, but you’re not going to see it because of fucking Harry Potter? You know what those movies are like. They’re like being in a fucking dungeon for two hours.”

Factor in the Thursday midnight showings, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 earned an estimated $61.2 million in 4,125 situations. It’s expected to bank $130 million by Sunday night.

We are Warner Bros. We make the Potter films and you are the lemmings. We do what we want to do according to our paychecks and our determinations. We are the masters making the rules for the wise men and the fools.

November 20, 2010 8:47 amby Jeffrey Wells
28 Comments
Not Persuaded

What if you blended the zen-repetition theme of Groundhog Day with a formula thriller about terrorism, high-tech surveillance, surreal software (“a computer program that enables you to cross over into another man’s identity in the last eight minutes of his life”) and the like? This seems to be the essence of Duncan Jones‘ Source Code. The trailer, however, is telling us that the film has problems.

One, I explained last summer that guys bolting upright all anxious and bug-eyed and going “whuh!” is a cliche that has to be stopped, and here’s Jake Gyllenhaal doing more or less the same thing (on top of Daniel Craig waking up with a jolt in that just-released Cowboys & Aliens trailer).

Two, the CG for the train explosion is atrociously fake-looking. Yes, I realize that the CG will be refined as the release date approaches, and that this only represents how the CG looked a month or two ago. But those Roadrunner vs. Coyote cartoon flames still take you right of it.

Three, Gyllenhaal is giving it hell but you can see right off the top that Michelle Monaghan doesn’t have that much of a part, and that she’s just punching the clock and collecting her check. And it also seems that Vera Farmiga and Geoffrey Wright are on total auto-pilot.

Four, Gyllenhaal is wearing one of those dreaded two-week bristle beards.

And five, as far as I’m concerned the directing hand of Duncan Jones (Moon) is not a comfort factor. I was mostly bored by Moon, certainly by the second half. What, I’m supposed to hop up and down for David Bowie‘s 29 year-old kid because he got a good performance out of Sam Rockwell?

This looks very rote, very big-studio factory. But it also contains little tiny echoes of Inception here and there, and if the idea of being able to repeat an experience over and over is used in a semi-thoughtful Groundhog-y way, then Source Code might have a chance. An IMDB guy who claims to have read the script says it’s “very, very in the vein of 12 Monkeys with a touch of Quantum Leap.” I have a copy of Ben Ripley‘s original ’07 script; Billy Ray did a rewrite, I’m told.

All I know is that right now this looks like soulless high-concept crap, pushed along by raptors in expensive suits.

November 20, 2010 5:33 amby Jeffrey Wells

23 Comments
Laugh

After speaking to “reliable sources” within the Hollywood Foreign Press Assocation, Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil is reporting that certain HFPA members “absolutely love” Red. This, of course, only underlines what serfs some of them are. Red is tedious comic-book crap. O’Neil believes it will “bag noms for best comedy/musical picture, actor (Bruce Willis) and maybe even supporting actor (John Malkovich as a conspiracy-minded LSD tripper) and supporting actress (Helen Mirren as a machine-gun-toting Rambo)”…God!

November 19, 2010 3:20 pmby Jeffrey Wells
24 Comments
Shelf Life

FedExed within the last two days.
November 19, 2010 12:03 pmby Jeffrey Wells
44 Comments
Spielberg Finally Mans Up

After many years of pathetic hemming and hawing and slip-sliding away from one of the most difficult, fraught-with-peril challenges of his career, which basically comes down to a case of artistic cowardice, Steven Spielberg has finally committed to direct Tony Kushner‘s Lincoln.

Spielberg’s Lincoln will not, however, be portrayed by poor Liam Neeson, who was humiliated by Spielberg’s refusal to commit to the Lincoln project for years on end (going back to ’05), and who finally bailed last summer. The 16th president will be played instead by Daniel Day Lewis, and that, I have to say, is excellent news. An all-but-certain Best Actor nomination, I would think. Pic will shot at the end of ’11 and roll out in 2012.

November 19, 2010 10:38 amby Jeffrey Wells

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