Month: January 2007

I’m kind of Factory Girl-ed out, but a chance to speak with Sienna Miller was offered last week and I said sure, shit yeah. I don’t care what anybody says about the movie — Miller’s performance as the fluttery but damaged Edie Sedgwick is a hardcore burrow and totally bulls-eye. And it’s led her, at age 25, to a key realization: “I’m not good at being ‘the girl’, I figured out….it’s got to be more character-y.”

Factory Girl star Sienna Miller in the patio garden at the Chateau Marmont — Tuesday, 1.9.06, 3:12 pm; ditto; ditto; and ditto once more

Every actress in the world realizes this sooner or later, of course. The fact that Miller woke up to it at age 25 (or 24, presuming it sank in sometime early last year) is the noteworthy thing. A lot of actresses who also happen to be very hot blondes tend to wait until they hit their 30s or sometimes even later to absorb this attitude.

Miller, in any case, has played five character-y parts in five films over the last year and a half. Or at least, parts that seem angular in some way, shape or form, to go by their descriptions.

Edie Sedgwick in Factory Girl was first, I think. Then a soap star named Katya being interviewed by a fading political journalist (Steve Buscemi) in Interview, which Buscemi directed. (It will debut on Saturday, 1.20, at the Sundance Film Festival.) A newlywed in Gregory McKenzie‘s Camille, opposite James Franco. An ethereal sort named Jane Bellwether in Rawson Marshall Thurber‘s The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which costars Jon Foster, Nick Nolte, Peter Sarsgaard and Mena Suvari. And a cameo in Matthew Vaughn‘s Stardust, a romantic fantasy costarring Claire Danes, Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Her next film, she said, is Charles Shyer‘s Father Knows Less, in which she’ll play the daughter of Dustin Hoffman and Diane Keaton. (Shyer told me a few weeks ago that he hates this title and that he’ll come up with something better eventually.)

We sat down in the outdoor patio area at the Chateau Marmont yesterday afternoon. It lasted about 30 minutes. Here’s the mp3 file. Miller looks great (she was wearing a killer dark-blue Prada dress — check out the photos) but also strikingly unlike Ms. Sedgwick, which is obviously a tribute to the transformative nature of her craft. She also showed up at last night’s party at Drago in Santa Monica for Emilio Estvez and Bobby.

The Best of ’06 picks of (I want to be extra- delicate here) the grossly unsophisticated American flyover class were made known at last night’s 33rd annual People’s Choice Awards. I agree with (or at least feel some amount of support for) exactly one choice — Vince Vaughn as Best Leading Man. (The voters decided this because they rented the DVD of The Break-Up.) And I thought Jennifer Aniston‘s performance in The Break-Up was easily her best so…fine. But going totally whole hog for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (Best Movie, Best Movie Drama)…? Giving the Best Female Action star award to Halle Berry because of her performance in X-Men: The Last Stand? Calling Click the Best Movie Comedy? This is embarassing. These people have no shame. It’s like they’re aliens or something.

11 months ago I received an e-mail from a disgruntled agent about the alleged shortcomings of Paramount Pictures president Gail Berman. I spoke to this person on the phone about the whole deal for about a half hour, and then I threw it all together in a story called “Scent of Toast.” It wasn’t the whole story obviously, but reading it again provides at least some perspective on why Berman has been whacked, as reported today by L.A. Times reporters Claudia Eller and Meg James.

“Less than two years after she was hired to help turn around Paramount Pictures, Berman and the studio are expected to sever ties this week, according to four people familiar with the situation,” their story begins.
“Late Tuesday, Berman and Paramount chairman Brad Grey had not formally discussed the terms of her departure. Berman has more than two years left on her contract. Paramount declined to comment. Berman did not return calls. Executives with knowledge of the plan asked not to be named because the matter was not yet public.
“It was unclear Tuesday how Berman’s role would be filled. Two top Paramount executives — Rob Moore and Brad Weston — could figure prominently in a management restructuring, studio insiders said.
“Berman’s exit comes as no surprise. Almost from the moment Grey handpicked the veteran TV executive in March 2005 to become his creative lieutenant, Berman, 49, has been dogged by rumors of her demise. Some agents, producers and colleagues were put off by Berman’s matter-of-fact and sometimes abrasive style and her lack of movie experience.
“It hasn’t been a happy marriage for Berman either. She felt Grey never gave her the kind of authority she needed to be effective in her job, said people close to Berman. The studio’s acquisition last year of DreamWorks SKG’s live action studio further undercut Berman’s power by reducing the number of movies she was responsible for overseeing.”

Jeff Reichert‘s appreciation of Miami Vice, posted on 1.2.07 as part of Reverse Shot’s Ten Best of ’06 rundown , is one of the best I’ve read anywhere ever:
“How’s this for totally subverting genre expectations: an action movie in which obligatory sex wraps itself in true sensuousness and emotion, and where the required violence is sketched nearly as an afterthought — and a brutish, crude, and ugly one at that? It’s a bummer that this kind of turnabout even needs mentioning, but the aesthetics of violence in film often go so shamefully unquestioned that in Michael Mann‘s hands a little probing ends up as practically revelatory.
“But seriousness of revisionist purpose isn’t the main course here, even if it provides a ready answer for why Miami Vice is so valuable. A few months on, I’d be hard-pressed to tell you exactly what the thing was about, but here is a case (like the average David Lynch film) where the expunging of narrative in favor of seductively composed images pays dividends.
“What’s memorable is not the tracking of a drug lord by elite cops (I think?) but Miami skylines shot through with an unearthly purple glow framing be-suited Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell on a rooftop as they mumble jargon into cell phones — as deliberately anti-action as Beckett. That, and speedboats to Cuba, mo-hee-taws, salsa dancing. Miami Vice is nearly avant garde in its interest in images and instants and busts the genre mold because those moments of true concern have so little to do with explosions and dismemberment.”

A very smart handicapper has passed along an interesting thought: the Best Picture Oscar will be won by either The Departed or Little Miss Sunshine, and the edge, right now, may be with the latter. LMS “is an ensemble piece that people just love…that’s how it was with Crash, and you have to watch out for movies that people just love.
“It was inexplicable last year but the rank-and-file really loved Crash, while some of them — obviously not all, but some — felt a grudging respect for Brokeback Mountain. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris being named as Best Director nominees this morning means that people really love that film.
“If Little Miss Sunshine wins the SAG ensemble acting award plus the Golden Globe best comedy-musical award — and I’m thinking more and more that this might happen — Little Miss Sunshine will take the Best Picture Oscar.”

“The absence of Pan’s Labyrinth‘s Guillermo del Toro and Children of Men‘s Alfonso Cuaron from this morning’s DGA Best Director nomination list is a one hundred (or maybe ninety-nine) percent function of the DGA’s ban on DVD screeners plus the late release dates of these films,” says a “name” director and DGA member who wrote a few minutes ago.
“I can assure you that the vast majority of us have not even seen these films. I know that I have not. I couldn’t make the handful of screenings and was away during the holidays. I voted for four of the nominees. It’s a damn shame, of course. Scorcese will win what amounts to a lifetime achievement award from the Academy, so it would have been nice for the DGA to offer the proper recognition where it was due. Maybe we can get it right next year.”

Speaking once again about the reception to Half Nelson, ThinkFilm’s Mark Urman says to The Reeler‘s Stu VanAirsdale that he “couldn’t have wanted more. It’s a film that’s done very well commercially and critically; with respect to the awards — that sort of exposure and season. For a company like ours, I think it’s very important that you are able to show to the filmmaker community that should a film of great quality end up in your hands that you can get it to the finish line.

“And I expect to go to Sundance this year and have people feel that they can trust me with their movie because I did my job well. Sometimes even good movies don’t make it to the finish line; sometimes it’s bad luck. Sometimes it really is that they didn’t have a distributor who knew that they were doing. I don√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t mean to be arrogant, but I think we did a really good job with this movie. But it’s a very good movie.”
That said, what’s up with Ryan Gosling? He’s looking like a cross between the early ’80s Nick Nolte and late ’80s Brian Dennehy. (The above photo was taken at last weekend’s New York Film Critics Circle award ceremony.)

Producer Ed Bass — the guy Emilio Estevez allegedly said “checkmate, asshole!” to during the making of Bobby, according to John Ridley‘s famous Esquire piece — and Karen Sharpe Kramer, the widow of director Stanley Kramer, have teamed to make a sequel to the 1963 comedy classic It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, according to a story by the Hollywood Reporter‘s Borys Kit.
The only way this could possibly work would be to assemble enough money to fund a really funny script by two or three perversely talented screenwriters plus a really top-ranked comic director on board, who would then be able to cast all the super-hip, top-dog funny guys (Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Sarah Silverman, Will Ferrell. Ben Stiller, Sacha Baron Cohen, etc.) in the same way that Stanley Kramer cast all the kings of comedy circa 1962-63 when he made his film. Otherwise, forget it.

The lowdown on Apple’s iPhone, which ships in June. The 4GB iPhone will go out the door in the U.S. as a Cingular exclusive for $499 on a two-year contract, 8GB for $599. I’m kinda”sold” on this thing, frankly. The more I read about it, the damper I get.

TMZ’s Claude Brodesser has written a funny short piece about Rob Cohen‘s return to the fold with the third bullshit Mummy movie, which even Stephen Sommers — one of the all-time demonic bad guys of soulless modern-day Hollywood — has apparently declined to do.

Director Rob Cohen at XXX premiere after-party in ’02

“Is director Rob Cohen about to get sprung from movie jail?” Brodesser begins. “Our spies tell us that Cohen, the director of Vin Diesel action hits like The Fast and the Furious and XXX is in negotiations to direct the third incarnation of The Mummy franchise at Universal Pictures.
“A director with those two mega-credits under his belt normally wouldn’t be available to do yeoman’s service on the third iteration of a Brendan Fraser franchise, but Cohen took the blame for the bloated, plotless special-effects stinker that was Stealth — a $100 million bomb that that fell out of Sony Pictures’ skies back in 2005.
“After a mess like that, you’re in ‘movie jail’ — the equivalent of purgatory for directors. Performing well on an established franchise would go a long way toward rehabbing your rep, and clearly, insiders say, Cohen’s hip to this fact. Look for Universal to make the formal offer to Cohen sometime later this week.”
I remember what a great job Cohen did on The Fast and the Furious — and what a beautiful ending it had. I’m sorry he’s stuck doing a Mummy movie, but maybe he can make it work on some level and then get back and do something better the next time out.

“I’m a DGA member and I’m ashamed of my guild. [Nominating] two out of the Three Amigos would have been more of an acknowledgment of the world as it is.” — from reader Chris Dalrymple, sent a few minutes ago.

The five DGA Best Director nominees, announced just a few minutes ago, are Bill Condon (Dreamgirls), Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine), Stephen Frears (The Queen), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Babel) and, naturally, Martin Scorsese (The Departed).
In their wisdom, the Directors Guild members blew off two of the Three Amigos — Pan’s Labyrinth‘s Guillermo del Toro and Children of Men‘s Alfonso Cuaron. Rather xenophobic of them, no? Seems that way from this corner.
I have to say I’m particularly shocked that the DGA-ers did this to Cuaron as well as United 93‘s Paul Greengrass’. These are stunning, historic, legendary films, and the voting DGA rank-and-filers have now shown themselves to be a bunch of Academy mainstream go-alongers…people with no particular conviction beyond the safety of received party-chatter wisdom.
Five, ten, fifty years from now, people who truly care about films will be occasionally watching and talking about United 93 and Children of Men with great feeling. The DGA members drinking orange juice and walking their dogs and driving their SUVs to work this morning know this…and it didn’t matter to them. If I were one of them, I would be having mixed feelings, at best, and indigestion, at worst.
But congratulations to the nominees….really. Everyone on this list should feel proud. And safe. The five films directed by the five nominees will almost certainly be the Best Picture Oscar nominees that’ll be announced in a couple of weeks.
Clint Eastwood was passed over because the guild members didn’t agree with the critics, and (maybe) because their wives wouldn’t watch Letters From Iwo Jima, or perhaps because they felt it was somehow out of the realm because of the Japanese language factor. (More xenophobia!) Clint may get a nomination fom the Academy despite this. The people who vote in the craft guilds tend to skew a bit younger — only about 400 of them are movie directors, most of them work in commercials and on TV shows and whatnot. They may not relate to Eastwood’s language as much as the older Academy crowd…we’ll see.
I guess I was the only one on Sasha Stone‘s Oscarwatch prediction chart to go for Dayton and Faris, Well, they’re certainly on the map now.