Day: February 2, 2007

The Bagger (a.k.a., N.Y. Times Oscar guy David Carr) is is looking at language wrinkles regarding Babel‘s eligibility for the Golden Globes Best Picture Drama (which it won), and also the Academy’s for Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Feature.

A Paramount Vantage spokesperson tells Carr that 45 minutes of Babel is spoken in English, 33 minutes in Japanese, 24 in Arabic, 23 in Spanish and 10 seconds in French — a total of 80 minutes spoken in foreign tongues, or nearly double the time spoken in English. Carr reportss that the Academy rules state that “a foreign language film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States of America with a predominantly non-English dialogue track.” The rule, however, is only used for deciding what movies can be nominated in the best foreign film category. For best picture, any movie, in any language, or languages, is eligible for The Win.

The Babel eligibility issue “never came up,” says Hollywood Foreign Press Assocation president Philip Burke. “It was submitted as an English language film by the studio and it never occurred to anyone that this was a foreign language film. The predominant language is English. The film begins with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, who are obviously tourists speaking English in a foreign country.”

“Sarah Silverman has proved that she is in a league of her own by generating two longish New Yorker pieces within a 16 month span– a detail-rich 5,066 word profile by Dana Goodyear (pegged to the release of Jesus is Magic) that ran in the October, 24, 2005 issue, and this week’s 1,408-word review of her new show by Tad Friend (he neither loved nor hated it).

“This is a feat that’s rarely been achieved by the highest lords of literature, let alone a stand up comic who jokes about, well, bowel movements and her vagina. The steadfast, rock-solid New Yorker is notoriously parsimonious about covering the same cultural occurrences more than once (for good reason: they’re The New Yorker, after all), which makes Silverman’s coup all the more spectacular. Nearly 6,500 words of coverage from the the New Yorker? The closest most of us get to this is having two words (our name) on the subscription label.” — from Peter Hyman‘s Huffington Post piece.

Driving up to Santa Barbara again this afternoon, hopefully in time for the Inconvenient Truth shebang at the Arlington and some possible face time with Al Gore (who was just nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize) and Davis Guggenheim.

“When Ralph Nader was a child, his father asked him, ‘What did you learn in school today? Did you learn how to believe or did you learn how to think?’ The long interview with Nader that is dispersed throughout An Unreasonable Man suggests that he became, in later years, a thoughtless man who believes only in himself.” — from David Denby‘s review in The New Yorker.

The L.A. Times Deborah Netburn has put up a chart chronicling the rise and fall of Russell Crowe. Is that a given? Has he in fact fallen? I’ve been getting hammered over the last couple of days for suggesting that one reason not to vote for Eddie Murphy is that he’s a flagrant asshole. Crowe, obviously, is coping with that reputation also. Crowe and Murphy both have immense talent, but the former has authority, presence, conviction, creative cojones…he’s a real actor, the real deal.

This is a week old, but Peter Howell‘s review of the Oscar nomination disappointment factor among IMDB readers is interesting, especially considering there were more people dismayed that Children of Men failed to be Best Picture nominated than for any other film.

The word from three well-placed distribution execs — one here, two from Manhattan — is that Fox Searchlight closed a deal last night with Summit Entertainment’s Patrick Wachsberger for domestic distribution rights to John Carney‘s Once. Naturally, neither Fox Searchlight nor Wachsberger is confirming — they’d rather give the story to Variety.

It sure as hell sounds true. “I heard Fox Searchlight, but that’s all I know,” a guy told me an hour ago. Do you know how much the deal was for? “No,” he said. When did you hear? “Last night.” Another top exec also said that “the deal closed last night — I heard it was Fox Searchlight or Sony Pictures Classics.” I called SPC right after this and was told by another highly-placed person that “we haven’t bought anything since before Sundance.”

I know that Thinkfilm and First Look were in negotiations earlier this week, and that one bid was in the vicinity of $500,000. One of the disappointed bidders just told me that “they” — Fox Searchlight — “were at $600,000. We lost it because of their significant pay deal….shit!”

Hollywood Shuns the ’07 Super Bowl Ad Blitz…blah, blah. The 300 trailer is one of many you won’t be seeing during the usually clip-strewn Super Bowl this year…blah, blah. I don’t know why I’m saying this — the TV ads that run during the Super Bowl are often superb.

Risky Biz blog’s Anne Thompson has written that a “juicy Rush & Molloy gossip [item] about Sienna Miller‘s Factory Girl canoodling with Hayden Christensen” — the item alleged that Miller and Christensen literally did the deed while filming a love scene — “reeks of a gossip column plant designed to drive curiosity seekers to check out the movie.”

Maybe, but not on George Hickenlooper‘s part. I checked with the Factory Girl director about Rush & Molloy’s reporting, and he says (a) it’s dead wrong and (b) running such an item degrades Miller and Christensen’s dignity.

“This story in the Daily News is completely untrue,” he said. “There was no sexual intimacy during the filming of this scene. Sienna and Hayden are actors. The physicality of the scene was completely simulated. So I completely deny the claims. I know — I was in the room with them.

“Here are the details of how I was misquoted. After the Factory Girl premiere, I went to the part where I was cornered by George Rush. There he kept persisting that there were stories about Hayden and Sienna having sex while we were shooting. What I told him is that I don’t ever deign to comment on questions like that because they are insulting. He kept asking about Hayden and Sienna’s romantic relationship and I said to him I don’t comment on the personal lives of my cast (as I have consistently done with respect to Sienna over the past two years). He asked if Sienna and Hayden were close, I replied that we were all close while making the film.”

Rush & Molloy reported today that that “of course, Sienna Miller [has] denied she and her Factory Girl co-star and then-boyfriend Hayden Christensen actually had sex on camera, as several knowledgeable sources told us this week. She was standing next to her parents when we asked her.

“We suggest anyone who doubts it go see Hickenlooper’s vision of Warhol girl Edie Sedgwick, which opens today. We freeze-framed the movie’s hot spots (as rigorous journalism demands), and there’s no question Sienna and Hayden are deep into their roles.”

Sincere thanks to the Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell for saying I “may be on to something” in dissing Eddie Murphy‘s energetic-but-far- from-profound Dreamgirls performance and the notion that he’s got the Best Supporting Actor Oscar locked. This is probably true, but it may not be. And all I was trying to do was articulate a widespread but unarticulated disdain for the guy — trust me, the Murphy dissers are out there in force.

It’s such a pleasant thing to be misinterpreted, and to have the words that you’ve carefully assembled in order to make a precise point ignored. I really recommend it because at the very least, it shows you who the real jackals are. Topping the list are those who’ve tried to link the Murphy diss to that “bling” riff I wrote a couple of months ago. (Hint, hint…I’m an unconscious racist.) I’m going to try this again (and remember what your teachers told you about reading carefully and taking notes): dissing the “blings” was a flip-off critique of sartorially gaudy get-down types who are guilty of a kind of nocturnal insecurity and/or pretentiousness.

Men and women who flash the cash and strut around in hotel lounges and hard-to-get-into clubs wearing cheap-ass sequined T-shirts and way too much jewelry on their fingers and around their necks are looking to enhance their cred on some level by putting put on a show for their peers. The “bling” mentality has, of course, been around for centuries. Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald certainly wrote about the 1920s variety, and if they were around today they’d be saying the same things about present-day offenders. And in these present-day writings, they would no doubt observe…naahh, leave it alone.

An Eddie Murphy jab coming from someplace else! Radar‘s Jeff Bercovici has written that “a well-placed Hollywood insider” is predicting that David Geffen‘s Oscar strategy for Dreamgirls strategy “will not result in an Oscar for Murphy, noting the way the actor has alienated Academy voters by complaining in public about not getting paid enough for Dreamgirls. Says the insider, ‘You got paid for Norbit, you stupid prick.'”

The other half of Bercovici’s item says that “a source close to Jack Nicholson says the Departed star has been complaining about Geffen’s over-the-top campaigning for Dreamgirls. According to the source, Nicholson believes Geffen strong-armed Academy members into nearly shutting out The Departed‘s cast in the acting categories. (The exception is Mark Wahlberg, who is up against Dreamgirls‘ Murphy in the supporting actor category.)

“What particularly annoys Nicholson, adds the source, is the cynical way Geffen used the promise of an Oscar nomination to get Murphy to settle for less than his usual rate.”

The end-of-the-item residue is a bit muddled, but the linkage is more or less established: a vote against Murphy is a vote against a manipulative billionaire’s “over-the-top” Oscar strategy, which is also a vote against Geffen himself. Academy members, it’s in your hands. If I were voting I would say to myself, “No question about it — Geffen wants all the Dreamgirls Oscars he can get, and I, being a member of this industry and naturally susceptible to the animal-kingdom impulse to show obeisance before power, am going to vote to support Geffen’s latest power lunge.”