Month: November 2007

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.

Charlie Wilson’s War (Universal, 12.25) is a very good-but-not-great political dramedy with a very solid and settled Tom Hanks, an agreeably arch and brittle Julia Roberts (in the finest sense of that term) and a brilliant Phillip Seymour Hoffman…give this man a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination and no jacking around…thank you!

It’s not a monumental achievement but that’s okay…it really is. It’s a film aimed at the over-40 set and that’s cool also. All right, yes…it feels a little too pat and tidy and perhaps a wee bit smug, but that’s fine also. There is room for this kind of thing in our moviegoing culture. Charlie-o is not a Best Picture contender but then we knew that last week when Time‘s Richard Corliss called it — the unkindest cut! — “likable.”

I liked Charlie Wilson’s War. Everyone did at tonight’s Arclight screening. If you can kick back, chill down and enjoy what’s awfully well-crafted and efficient about this film (which isn’t hard), you’ll be fine too.

Is it a great socio-political comedy in the realm of Rules of the Game? Nope, but director Mike Nichols stopped trying to be Jean Renoir or anyone on that level decades ago so what are we talking about? Nichols doesn’t open his veins and die for our sins here. CWW is not about great risk or passion. Nichols is not coming from a hungry, agitated, do-or-die place. But there is edge and attitude in this film — certainly irony upon irony. And it does stay with you.

This is a film that says “no good deed goes unpunished in the Middle East, especially with that tendency of the ball to keep bouncing.” It also says “let’s hear it for corrupt, seen-it-all jowly guys who like booze on the rocks– they can turn around and do some good from time to time. Or at least, they did once. Or one guy did anyway.” It also says, “Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a God among men.”

Trust me when I say there were no neg-head vibes in the Arclight lobby when everyone filed out of this evening’s screening. Charlie Wilson’s War is a very smart, agreeable, complex-but-digestible, sure-to-be-popular adult political drama supplanted with babes, boobs and a belly dancer. It’s a Washingtonian Middle Eastern “sand” movie that might actually find an audience by way of Tom Hanks‘ charm, an abundance of talent all around and a sense of bottom-line discipline to the thing. Maybe.

Charlie Wilson’s War has four excellent things going for it: (a) Aaron Sorkin‘s deftly phrased and densely plotted script, which results in (b) a highly intriguing first act and a crackerjack second act that constantly amuses, intrigues and leaves you hungry for more, which in turn results in (c) a sense of being treated to a very economical tale that runs only 97 minutes and, finally, (d) Hoffman’s Oscar-calibre performance as a coarse and cynical CIA operative who can’t not be blunt and corrosive, even when it comes to propositioning a Texas millionairess (i.e., Roberts) over drinks.

These four things (and they are, in a sense, separate, although they obviously support each other) make Charlie Wilson’s War more than worth seeing, and certainly Oscar-worthy as far as Sorkin’s script (the category would be Best Adapted Screenplay) and Hoffman’s performance as Gust Avrakotos, which has to be a lock for Best Supporting Actor nom. Well, it is that — I was being cautious there for a second, but screw it. Hoffman is beautiful, he can do no wrong and he never will do wrong.

I’ll say more tomorrow. I can’t write any more because it’s 11:43 pm and I have to get up very early in order to get to the IFP Spirit Awards nomination breakfast, which starts at 8 ayem…good God! Rewrites and refinements to come in the late morning.

When the WGA strike ends early next month a lot of creatives are going to look back on this brief turbulence as one of the warmest and happiest community periods of their lives. Because suddenly there won’t be a picket line to go to or a march to attend, and it’ll be back to struggle and loneliness before a flat screen for writers and budget meetings and power lunches and getting their car detailed by their favorite detail guy for producers.

Strikers won’t be laughing, lobbing quips at visiting reporters, shooting YouTube videos and making each other feel cared for and mutually supported and, hey, even important…the joy will be gone. Because left to its own devices, L.A. is a lonely town. It’s not some social-cultural cyclone like New York or Paris or London…it’s about people sitting inside their homes and apartments sweating it out and, okay, now and then instant messaging or e-mailing or texting each other. But almost always in solitude.

“Striking in Hollywood — at least short term — is not that bad,” N.Y. Times reporter Brooks Barnes wrote today. “A lot of strikers say they are enjoying networking, taping YouTube videos, organizing theme days and dreaming up placard slogans.

“The studios think we are having a horrible time out here,” Richard Potter, a screenwriter who made Strike Dancing, a YouTube video showing pickets bebopping in formation to “Play That Funky Music, White Boy,” tells Barnes. What’s actually happening, he said, is “we’re having a great time.”

If you ask me, an action flick about Jesus Christ having an evil twin brother is the sort of thing that only Alejandro Jodorowsky could have done justice to, and only if he’d made such a film in his late ’60s-early ’70s heyday. The fact that Reuters reporter Tony Tharakan filed a story about director Robert Sigl and producer Mario Stefan announcing an interest in tyring to make such a film (it’s to be called The 13th Disciple) is one thing, but why Reuters ran it is another.

Charlie Wilson’s War will have its first elite media look-see screening tonight in Los Angeles. Universal reps are “pretty confident” about it so “nobody’s expecting an embargo.” I don’t see what the big deal is about being the first to respond, although there’s always one or two eager beavers who drive right home and put something up by 11 pm or 12 midnight.