Day: November 27, 2007

Rudolph Giuliani has a brief but significant mention in Charlie Wilson’s War (Universal, 12.25) . It’s just a quick line in a consultation scene between Rep. Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) and his secretaries over his being investigated for snorting cocaine at a hot-tub party in Las Vegas in ’86. The debauch is depicted at the very beginning of the Mike Nichols film.

(l.) the real Rep. Charlie Wilson; (r.) Rudolph Giuliani

Wilson asks a secretary, “Who’s running the thing? Who’s the prosecutor?” She answers, “Rudolph Giuliani. From the Southern District.” Another assistant asks, “Do you know him?” Wilson says “no.”

The scene is obviously telling us that Giuliani was an opportunist looking to make headlines…which he was. Guliani was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in ’83, and it was in this position that he first gained national prominence by prosecuting various mafiosos and white-collar criminals including Wall Street’s Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken for insider trading.

Wilson once said of Giuliani’s interest in his recreational Vegas sojourn: “It’s absolutely astounding the lengths to which the Justice Department have gone to try and figure out what I did in a hot tub in Las Vegas. If they had put the same resources into drug trafficking,,,there would be half as much heroin coming into the United States as there is now.”

By taking the best feature of the year trophy at tonight’s 17th annual Gotham Awards ceremonies at Brooklyn’s Steiner Studios, Sean Penn‘s Into The Wild became the first 2007 movie to win anything significant in the year-end awards cycle.

Indiewire’s Eugene Hernandez and Peter Knegt have reported on all the managed generosity. Michael Moore‘s Sicko won the best documentary feature award, Juno‘s Ellen Page won the breakthrough actor award and Craig Zobel was named best breakthrough director for Great World of Sound. The casts of Talk To Me and Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead tied for the best ensemble cast award.

There aren’t very many Republican actors in Hollywood, granted, but they’re out there. And it seems reasonable to assume that at least some of them would be supporting Fred Thompson‘s bid for the Republican Presidential nomination. The guy has acted in “40 film and TV projects, after all, and appeared with thousands of other performers during his years in Hollywood going back to the mid-1980s until a recent turn as Ulysses S. Grant in HBO’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” as Politico‘s Jeffrey Ressner reports. And yet “only one recent contributor to Thompson’s presidential campaign, with a donation of $350, put down ‘actor’ in the ‘profession’ category.” So local conservatives prefer Rudy Giuliani or (choke) Mitt Romney?

Yesterday’s announcement about Warner Bros. production president Jeff Robinov being handed the reins of the newly formed Warner Bros. Pictures Group as of January ’07 means he’ll be running all worldwide marketing and distribution while continuing to oversee production for all studio releases. WB president and COO Alan Horn will continue to have “final greenlight authority” but will have less overall power and no dominion over marketing, which leaves domestic marketing president Dawn Taubin, a longtime ally/protege of Horn’s, in a vulnerable spot or at least a somewhat weakened position.

There are hints that the Broadway stagehands strike might not go on too much longer. A guy with some knowledge of the Broadway theatre world told me earlier today that a resolution doesn’t seem too far off. And N.Y. Times reporter Campbell Robertson wrote today that “in a sign that this stoppage might have been more of a break than a breakdown, the League of American Theaters and Producers announced that it was canceling performances only through Wednesday’s matinees” — i.e., tomorrow’s. “Two weekends ago, when the talks fell apart, the league canceled all of Thanksgiving week,” Robertson notes. The two plays to see (if I were doing my usual NYC holiday visitation, which I’m not) would be Aaron Sorkin‘s The Farnsworth Invention and Tom Stoppard‘s Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Tariq Khan‘s 11.26 Envelope piece about the ten worst Oscar losers is based upon behavior actually witnessed by TV viewers, as opposed to what’s been reported about this or that loser throwing a hissy fit. Sore-losing legend Eddie Murphy doesn’t rate, therefore, because the cameras didn’t see him leaving the Kodak theatre in a huff last year after losing to Alan Arkin in the Best Supporting Actor category.

This despite the L.A. Times‘ Joel Stein having run a 2.27.07 first-person observation piece about Murphy’s limo driver being told to pick up Murphy just after Arkin’s triumph.

Bill Murray‘s shocked and dismayed reaction after losing the Best Actor trophy to Sean Penn in ’03 wasn’t seen by the cameras either, and yet Murray ahs the #2 slot on Khan’s list. I distinctly remember not having a clue why Oscar host Billy Crystal was consoling Murray from the podium that night and begging him not to leave because the cameras showed next to nothing. Khan says Murray looked “devastated” — maybe I need to see the tape again but that’s not my recollection at all.

A day-late “welcome back!” to N.Y. Times Oscar columnist David Carr, a.k.a. “the Bagger.”

Carr has run a “comment of the day” from Kate who complains that little if anything in the way of late fall prestige movies have hit her local plex so far. HE’s reponse: Kate, the key to 21st Century moviegoing is to give up on the old lofty pedigree/ warm-emotional-bath feelings that award-level films have given you in the past. Forget about movies soothing your soul. You’re not going find deer and rabbits in the North Pole, and the state of things right now is probably about something other than what you’re looking to find right now.

David Lean is dead, Francis Coppola is in creative remission, James L. Brooks is apparently spent (or taking his time with the next thing, whatever that may be), Tom Hanks has became “Tom Hanks”…the empire is collapsing, we’re in the End of Days and you have to get your movie nutrition according to the terms and ingredients of the New Order.

On top of which there are many who feel that ’07 is one of the best movie years in a long time…since ’99 perhaps. Zodiac (have you seen it?) is a masterpiece. Control is close to that. No Country for Old Men is a landmark film. Have you seen Once? (I’m betting you haven’t.) Sidney Lumet‘s Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead is a Greek tragedy for the ages. Things We Lost in the Fire, The Assassin- ation of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Atonement, I’m Not There, In The Valley of Elah, Ratatouille…all stirring, all exceptional.

While admitting yesterday that he “got played a little” and “was not as careful as I should have been” in posting the since-discredited story about a Weinstein plan to push I’m Not There‘s Cate Blanchett in the Best Actress instead of Best Supporting Actress category, David Poland was correct in saying that Blanchett’s Dylan turn “is one of the five best performances on the year in all categories, male or female or dog or cat, if you were going to pick five…it is easily the current crowning achievement of her career.”

The Film Independent, non-IFP Spirit Awards selection committee really likes Todd Haynes‘ I’m Not There, and not just because of the four just-announced nominations — Best Feature, Best Director and acting noms for Cate Blanchett (a sure winner) and Marcus Carl Franklin. They’ve also selected the Weinstein Co. release to receive the org’s Robert Altman Award, a pat-on-the-back group award for the director, casting director and ensemble cast.

Lisa Kudrow, Zac Braff following the reading of nominations — Tuesday, 8:28 am, 2nd floor conference room, West Hollywood’s Sofitel.

Jason Reitman‘s Juno, Julian Schnabel‘s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Tamara Jenkins‘ The Savages also received four noms each.

The nominations were announced by Zach Braff and Lisa Kudrow at 8 this morning at the Sofitel in West Hollywood. I was sitting in the front row, having loaded up on the free scrambled eggs, roissants, crisp bacon and good coffee a little while before. I snapped the usual photos and left hurriedly when it was over. I left my digital recorder lying on the stage….brilliant.

I’m Not There, Butterfly and Juno were nominated for Best Feature alongside Michael Winterbottom‘s A Mighty Heart and Gus Van Sant‘s Paranoid Park.

I’m Not There (duhhh) will win the Best Feature award. Todd Haynes will take the Best Director award. The Best First Feature winner is too tough call. (The nominees are 2 Days in Paris, Great World of Sound, The Lookout, Rocket Science and Vanaja.) And I don’t know from the John Cassevetes Award.

A morbidly obese, revoltingly chummy glad-handing photographer who was sitting next to me went “ohhh” when Waitress director-writer Adrienne Shelly‘s name was announced as one of the Best Screenplay nominees, so look for a possible Shelly win as a gesture of sorrow for the tragedy that befell her last year.

Either Juno‘s Diablo Cody or Before The Devil Knows Your’e Dead‘s Kelly Masterson will win the Best First Screenplay award — edge to Cody because she lives here now and knows how to work the town, and because Masterson is a New Jersey hermit.

Angelina Jolie may win the Best Actress award for A Mighty Heart (her best performance ever), but if she doesn’t win the rightful winner should be Parker Posey for Broken English.

The Best Actor competish will be between Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Savages) and Frank Langella (Starting Out in the Evening) — edge to Hoffman.

Blanchett, as noted, as the Best Supporting Female award locked. There’s no hear on any of the Best Supporting Actor nominees but young Marcus Carl Franklin might take it on the strength of the I’m Not There coattails.

It’s too hard to call the Best Documentary nominees…pass. But the Best Foreign Film contest is between Cristian Mungiu‘s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (the best of the five nominees), Eran Kolirin‘s The Band’s Visit (possible recipient of a sympathy vote for having been fucked by the Academy and the HFPA with the language issue), and John Carney‘s Once, the little movie that could and did.