Another Best Picture prize has been snared by United 93, not that this will change the minds of Academy members who’ve refused to see it all along. (Hang tough, guys — don’t let the critics guilt-trip you!) The Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics have declared Paul Greengrass‘s 9/11 drama the best of ’06 while also honoring The Departed‘s Martin Scorsese as Best Director. The Last King of Scotland‘s Forest Whitaker and The Queen‘s Helen Mirren won again for Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively. And Jackie Earl Haley took the Best Supporting Actor prize for his work in Little Children. (Again, following his win earlier today among the Southeastern Film Critics.) There was a surprise, at least, with Cate Blanchett winning the Best Supporting Actress award for her performance as an obsessively-inclined art teacher in Notes on a Scandal. The org also named Clint Eastwood‘s Letters For Iwo Jima as the Best Foreign-Language Film, with Pan’s Labyrinth named as first runner-up in that category.

“Not long ago, the Bagger was at an event with a major film writer and director and ended up in a booth with him for several hours. He admired the man tremendously, [but] did not like his last project. Finally, the subject came up and the Bagger told the truth, after which there was suddenly very little to say. Later, he asked a colleague with more experience if he had been wise to speak his mind. ‘No, that was profoundly stupid,’ he was told. ‘They really don’t want to know the truth.'” — from David Carr‘s latest Oscar-related posting, “Ten Things I Don’t Hate About You, or At Least Your Movie.”
Carr’s friend was right, but I’ll never forget the shame I felt eight years ago when I lied by saying something encouraging and enthusiastic about Armageddon to its producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, at an early-bird industry screening. That Michael Bay film felt way too forced and agitated. As Variety‘s Todd McCarthy famously said at the time, the pace felt to me like that of “a machine gun locked in the firing position.” A guy in the know told me a week or so later that Armageddon was “frame-fucked…the length of every last shot was cut down to the absolute bare minimum to keep it moving as fast as possible.”
Anyway, I saw Bruckheimer in the lobby right after the show and told him, coward that I was, that Armageddon “seriously rocks.” Jerry knew right away I was full of it; he gave me a look that said, “Huh, that”s funny…you’re lying to me and you’re doing a bad job of it.” He didn’t look at me for the rest of the evening. Nice feeling, that.

The Southeastern Film Critics Association has given its Best Original Screenplay award to Michael Arndt‘s Little Miss Sunshine, on top of Sunshine being named among the org’s top ten 2006 films. And three big awards went to The Departed — Best Film, Martin Scorsesefor Best Director , and Best Adapted Screenplay (i.e., William Monahan). And Guillermo del Toro‘s Pan’s Labyrinth won for Best Foreign Film. The rest followed what’s become the standard form: The Last King of Scotland‘s Forest Whitaker for Best Actor, The Queen‘s Helen Mirren for Best Actress, Little Children‘s Jackie Earle Haley for Best Supporting Actor, Dreamgirls‘ Jennifer Hudson for Best Supporting Actress, and An Inconvenient Truth for Best Documentary.

“When the studios are in for a penny, they’re in for a pound. When you’re giving them product, then their nose is in the wind a lot more. If it smells good, they’ll run with it. But if it doesn’t, they’re not invested in it.” — The Painted Veil star Edward Norton to Hollywood Reporter/”Risky Business” columnist Anne Thompson in her 12.18 column.

This is the money quote that pretty much explains why Veil producer Bob Yari is flustered about what he sees as faint Warner Bros. support in terms of “For Your Consideration” Oscar ads for The Painted Veil. The bottom line is that Warner Bros. honchos have put a damp finger to the wind and decided that the film doesn’t smell all that good — that it’s a respectable stiff.
This despite its high-pedigree credentials (an adaptation of a Somerset Maugham novel, shot in rural Chinese locations, well-rendered 1920s period sets and costumes), mildly interesting performances and Stuart Dryburgh‘s eye-filling cinematography. As Slant‘s Jason Clark has written, Veil “is more or less from the school of motion picture that Pauline Kael used to say ‘reeks of quality.'” And the import of the story….good heavens.
It’s basically about how a pretty young British woman (Noami Watts), under pressure from her parents to find a suitable mate, marries a dweeby stuffed-shirt bacteriologist (Norton)…and gradually comes to love and respect him for his character and steadiness and compassion for Chinese peasants afflicted with cholera. The message, in short, is that humorless prigs with commendable inner qualities make good husbands as long as the woman in question gives up all those immature ideas about heady romantic attraction, great sex and other spirit-lifting chemistries.
Watching this film a few weeks ago made me feel frustrated, impatient, bored — bees were buzzing in my head. 70 minutes into it I got up and asked the projec- tionist how much time was left, and when he told me there was another 55 minutes to go my heart just sank. I went back to my seat and told The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil, who was sitting next to me, “I can’t do this”…and I left. As I was driving out of the parking garage I saw a woman who’d been sitting behind O’Neil and myself walking up the ramp. “You left too?” I asked. “Oh, God…please!”, she replied.
Yari, naturally, believes in the film and is fighting for it tooth and nail — the mark of a good producer. But The Painted Veil is one respectably doomed film if I ever saw one. That said, 67% of the Rotten Tomatoes critics who’ve posted so far have raved, liked it or gave it a qualified pass.
L.A. Times film reporter John Horn has written a similar piece about the same kettle of fish.

This is hardly a new or even a profound thought, but everyone seems to overlook the fundamental current driving the end-of- the-year superlatives, and particularly the Oscar-contender positioning. Arguing or lobbying for this or that movie as the best is not, in the final analysis, about this or that movie or even the awards that may result, but about certain visions, themes, philosophies and capturings contained in these films.
It’s not an insipid thing to recognize, salute and/or champion certain values or spiritual poems that matter to some of us in this day and age — films that express and reflect who and what we feel we are deep down. This, for me and (I suspect) many others, is what all the end-of-the-year horseshit is really about.
Just as cigarettes are “a delivery device for nicotine” (a term coined by The Insider‘s Jeffrey Wigand), good movies — the ones that are about more than craven emotional button-pushing or EED (extraordinary eyeball diversion) — are delivery devices for visions, dreams, philosophies…ways of thinking, feeling, being.
The Departed is not just a package of high-octane Scorsese flash but an idea, an immersion, a Boston street-crime theology of sorts — something that most of us were moved to let inside and reflect upon after seeing it, apart from its obvious cinematic razzle-dazzle. Ditto The Good Shepherd, The Lives of Others, Little Miss Sunshine, Children of Men…reflections and summations of what life is, might be, used to be, ought to be, inevitably is.
When The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil enthuses over Dreamgirls, he’s really saying “it’s the movie, of course, but more to the point, this is a world and a spirit that moves me…that I want to live in and share and spread around.” Substitute any Oscar prognosticator and film and the same equation applies.

Would you believe a brand-new computer developing a serious sound-drive glitch and being unable to generate any sound after two weeks of use? I have no choice in the matter. Hence my tardiness in getting stuff up for the next few hours, being at the total mercy of the Geek Squad at the Best Buy on lower Broadway.

Bryan Reesman‘s 12.17 N.Y. Times piece considers the tribulations of “Oscar Hell” week — i.e., Academy members having to see every last film in a relatively short space of time (mid November to late December, although they have until early January), and, apparently for a majority of Academy members, mainly on DVD screeners. The reality is that a lot of films — the lower-budgeted indies without big stars — simply don’t get seen.
“You’d be amazed how many smaller movies don’t even get the cellophane cracked by academy members, because they’re into looking at the higher-profile films first,” says publicist Murray Weissman. “They just don’t have time.”
Motion Picture Academy officials, Reesman writes, “claim indifference to the frenzy that they have unleashed by compressing the Oscar season.” AMPAS spokesperson John Pavlik says that Academy members “should have been seeing the films throughout the year, not waiting until the week after Christmas to start watching movies.” And Pandemonium Films honcho Bill Mechanic (who’s also a former member of the academy’s board of governors), says, “There’s probably a greater volume in December than there used to be, but if you’re a caring member of the academy, you do your work.”
Just as a relatively modest percentage of kids in your high-school English class did their reading and turned in their homework with absolute regularity, so goes the Academy’s approach to “doing the work.” Most of them do it catch as catch can; some are outright slackers.

I can’t find it on Amazon, but I’ve been told that Warner Home Video will release Alexander Revisited: The Unrated Final Cut on 2.27.07. I presume this isn’t a put-on. Oliver Stone‘s epic will arrive in its third incarnation with more than 45 minutes of never-before-seen footage restored into the tale of the Macedonian conqueror. The nearly four- hour version will arrive (naturally) with a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track. Selling for $24.98, it says. This is not, just to be clear, the “Director’s Cut” DVD that came out last August, but a new incarnation.

Universal Pictures chairman Marc Schmuger has said the following to the Wall Street Journal about Evan Almighty, which looks like the most expensive comedy ever made: “You’ve got…a PG-13 movie that men, women, children and audiences of all ages are going to want to see and you’ve got the eye candy of great spectacle and visual effects. That adds up to a movie we’re supporting to an enormous degree.” It’s taken from a WSJ piece, excerpted here by Hollywood Wiretap‘s Nancy Vialatte, about how comedies are the new tentploes…right. Tentpole movies are necessary evils — producers and studio chiefs have no choice in the matter — but to guys on the street like me, they’re instant avoiders unless they have a certain attiudinal spark.

All the implied downward-swirl indications about American Pie and Scary Movie 2 costar Natasha Lyonne are probably valid — the girl needs help. And there’s certainly no excuse or upside in exhibiting unruly behavior or missing four court hearings and all that. But there are very few readers of this item who haven’t momentarily lost it and used a colorfully vicious expression in the midst of a heated argument. Lyonne’s choice of words during an argument with a neighbor was to threaten sexual molestation of the neighbor’s dog. Audiences would laugh if that phrase was used by Samuel L. Jackson in a Quentin Tarantino movie, but because it’s part of a legal complaint and has been the lead in various tawdry news stories about Lyonne’s latest meltdown, “I’m going to schtup your dog” is in her Wikipedia biography from here to eternity.

Two hits, one bomb among the major openers this weekend. The Pursuit of Happyness is #1 with a projected $27,165,000 tally, or roughly $9525 per print, and Eragon, believe it or not, is #2 with an expected Sunday-night cume of $23,929,000, or $7923 a print. Charlotte’s Web is the shortfaller — $13,145,000 projected at $3695 a print spells weak and sputtering.
Happy Feet will be #4 at $8,910,000 for the weekend…off 31%. The Holiday is #5 at $8,143,000, off 36%…decent hold. Mel Gibson‘s Apocalypto is sixth at $7,629,000, off 49%. Blood Diamond, off 39%, will hit $6,045,000 for the #7 slot. Casino Royale will bring in $6,045,000 for an eighth-place finish. The Nativity Story will be #9 with $5,398,000, and Unaccompanied Minors is tenth with $4,781,000.
The limited hard-ticket debut of Dreamgirls is looking at $279,000 for the weekend, or about $93,000 a print. Theyr’e doing pretty well but crowds are not breaking down the doors. They’re doing about 50% of capacity,although business will bump today. The problem is that it’s angled at a mainly-older crowd. — 35 to 40 and up — and the 10:30 pm show is too late for this group. Young people have no problem with late-evening shows, but under 20s wouldn’t be caught dead seeing Dreamgirls. (My 17 year-old son Dylan, in Manhatan for the weekend, said as much.)
Steven Soderbegh‘s The Good German opened in 5 theatres and will do about 79,000, or 15,737 a print. Irwin Winkler‘s Home of the Brave, also playing limited, died. The weekend projection is for about $22,000 or $7000 a print…Winkler strikes again. It was pretty obvious this film was doomed from the get-go short of ecstatic reviews, which haven’t manifested.

Here’s something to go along with Tom O’Neil‘s impressions/ lessons about the Golden Globe noms, and one delivered by one of Dreamgirls‘ most ardent journalist fans: the dirty little secret (suspected or otherwise) about the Hollywood Foreign Press is that their racial attitudes or predispositions are not, to put it gently, fully enlightened. This water-table element, the journo believes, is the reason there’s a good chance they may blow off Dreamgirls for the Best Picture (Comedy or Musical) award. The tipoff, he believes, was in the HFPA’s refusal to give Bill Condon a Best Director nom. This showed their true colors…where they’re basically coming from.