Month: January 2008

I’ve no idea if the image on the left is what the Cloverfield monster looks like, but a guy sent me a link to the site that first revealed this image (livejournal) and since I’ve heard there is a monster of some kind that shows up around the 25-minute mark. I’ve been told that the left-side image is bogus, though. I’ve also been sent the image on the right. Who knows?

Speculative Clover-beast #1 (l.) and #2 (r.)

My first reaction to the allegedly bogus left-side image is, “This…this is it?” It’s just another scaly monster guy. Godzilla’s angrier kid brother…whatever. The monster on the right…I don’t know. Seems to lack something. May not be scary enough.
You know what’s scarier and cooler? You’re hiding behind a dumpster on the street pictured below and something is coming around the corner — you can hear it, you can smell it, you know it’s awful but it’s not there yet and your darkest fears are churning in your stomach. That’s ten times, twenty times scarier than the monster pictured above, regardless of whether he’s the big star of JJ Abrams‘ film or not.

Week after week after week, N.Y. Times DVD columnist Dave Kehr creams over every elitist-esoteric Criterion/Janus/ Anchor Bay DVD that comes along — the dweebier and more Thalia-in-the- ’70s, the better. But every now and then he goes mainstream mushy, as he has today with a review of the fourth of fifth DVD transfer of Leo McCarey‘s An Affair to Remember (1957), a tightly corseted and overpraised weepie with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr.

Kehr has kicked in with a heartfelt, well-written tribute to Grant’s acting and how his performance as Nickie Ferrante deepened his game with a new introspection, blah blah.
Every now and then Kehr gets out the violin and goes mainstream and talks about some schmaltzy movie that has gotten to him on some primal level (be it emotional or aesthetic). He did this with the last October’s Funny Face DVD. I was duly persuaded and went out and bought it and realized after watching this sometimes elegant but often repulsively candied Stanley Donen musical for 20 or 30 minutes that I’d been burned. I’m still smarting over Kehr having sold me on the Criterion Colection DVD of John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln. I bought it, popped it in and began muttering to myself after watching for 40 or 50 minutes….burned by Kehr again!
Kehr knows from art-film esoterica — give him that. He’s definitely a guy to listen to when it comes to the latest Samuel Fuller or Vittorio Se Sica box set. But caveat emptor when it comes to ’40s and ’50s schmaltz!

DGA president Michael Apted today announced the five nominees for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2007. Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will be Blood)…no surprise. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen (No Country For Old Men)… obviously. Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton)…congrats! Sean Penn (Into The Wild)…good for him. Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).
No David Fincher/Zodiac love because they didn’t send the DGA members screeners? I feel a combination of pity and contempt for those people who are too lazy to see the films they need to see on their own, and who lack the gumption to stand up and recognize exceptional classic quality when it’s staring them right in the face. This was primarily a quality-based vote, but you and I know it was governed by the usual political, follow-the-tide, don’t-stand-alone Zelig considerations. (Thanks to Cinemascope‘s Yair Raveh for the first nudge.)

A great quote from E.J. Dionne in today’s Washington Post, passed along by Joe Leydon: “[If] Hillary Clinton‘s answers come off as well- intended lectures, Barack Obama is offering soaring sermons and generational opportunity. In 1960, the articulate Adlai Stevenson compared his own oratory unfavorably with John F. Kennedy‘s. ‘Do you remember,’ Stevenson said, ‘that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, ‘How well he spoke,’ but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said, ‘Let us march.” At this hour, Obama is the Democrats’ Demosthenes.”

Last night the BFCA’s VH1/Critics Choice Awards saluted No Country for Old Men as Best Picture, that film’s Joel and Ethan Coen as Best Director, There Will Be Blood‘s Daniel Day-Lewis as Best Actor, and Away From Her‘s Julie Christie as Best Actress.

Other awards: Best Supporting Actor — Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men. Best Supporting actress — Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone. (The return of the 33 and 1/3 vinyl record that skips says “Amy Ryan, Amy Ryan, Amy Ryan”….a game of follow-the-pack, pure and simple.) Best Ensemble Award: Hairspray. (Really? Given all the great ensmeble casts we saw this year, including the Superbad guys?) Best Writer: Diablo Cody, Juno. Best Animated Feature: Ratatouille.
Best Young Actor: Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada, The Kite Runner. (A political attaboy and a we’re-with-you! award because Mahmoodzada and his family were forced to move from Afghanistan due to fears that The Kite Runner might bring reprisals upon them from Taliban sympathizers.) Best Young Actress: Nikki Blonsky, Hairspray. (I saw the moment when the Botero-like Blonsky won — her “oh my god!” screaming was bridge-and-tunnel gauche, and if she doesn’t Jenny Craig herself down to a more reasonable proportion she’ll be shortening her lifespan. She’s a medicine ball. If Mike Huckabee can do it, so can she.)
Best Comedy Movie: Juno. (It may be the best dramedy, but the best flat-out comedy of the year was Superbad. The BFCA voters just want to attach themselves to the Juno train because it’s “well-loved” and, as of last week, starting to make a whole lot of money.) Best Family Film (live action): Enchanted. Best Made-for-TV Movie: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Best Foreign Language Feature: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. (A good film, but 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days is a masterpiece.)
Best Song: “Falling Slowly”, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, from Once. Best Composer: Jonny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood. Best Documentary: Sicko. Joel Siegel Award: Don Cheadle.
Oh, and way to go to the BFCA webmaster who hasn’t updated the site with last night’s winners and hasn’t even added photos. Get around to it eventually. Have lunch first. Don’t sweat it.

L.A. Times guy Rene Lynch is reporting that two significant Golden Globes parties — HBO and Warner Bros./In Style — have pulled the plug, and that the other big parties are expected to “follow suit.” So the whole thing is kaputski. The ’08 Globes will be a press conference, a one-day news cycle and that’s all. Phffft.

Ten months shy of a 40th anniversary. The realism — crashing car metal, wild sideway skids, flying hubcaps — is awesome. The superb hand-held camerawork and knowing it’s absolutely real (as far as that concept goes) is half the fun. That even the high-level fakery that David Fincher used in Zodiac (which you can’t spot) isn’t part of it. Seen it 20 times; ready for another 20.

“The media is either at your feet or at your throat.” — MSNBC commentator Pat Buchanan speaking earlier this afternoon during a discussion of the media pile-on that Hillary Clinton is now suffering through. Deservedly, I would add.

A couple of hours ago the Hollywood Foreign Press association officially confirmed that the 1.13 Golden Globes awards ceremony has been scrapped. Instead a news conference will be aired at 6 pm Pacific to announce the winners in 25 film and TV categories, to be covered live by NBC. And as the clock ticks, the town wonders — what will become of the Oscars if a WGA strike settlement doesn’t happen?