Month: October 2008

This photo of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio (apparently) taking a break from Revolutionary Road filming is so crisp and beautiful that it makes me wish that the film itself had been shot in black-and-white. I’m very interested in seeing this Cheeveresque period drama, but I’d be 50% more cranked if the whole thing looked this way. Not as commercial, of course, but I’m a falling-down fool for monochrome.

Revolutionary Road costars Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio in a series of on-set photos posted by Alex Billington’s First Showing.net.

One of my journalistic dreams of the ’80s was to persuade a month magazine to let me write a column for them called “Hollywood Weltschmerz.” It was a fallback thing after my attempts to fund a monthly magazine called Nothing, a concept 10 to 15 years ahead of its time, led to nought.

“Between ‘Joe the Plumber’, ‘spread the wealth’ and ‘I’m not George Bush’, John McCain at least now seems to have a few somewhat more constructive talking points. So some of those crestfallen conservatives might have moved back into the likely voter universe. What I don’t know that McCain is doing, on the other hand, is actually persuading very many voters, and particularly not independents or registered Democrats.
“If that is the case, than McCain is likely to run into something of a wall very soon here, brought about [by] the Republicans’ substantial disadvantage in partisan identification.
“People sometimes misunderstand the nature of ‘momentum’ in presidential campaigns. If McCain was down 8 points yesterday and is down 6 points today, that does not mean that he is likely to be 4 points down tomorrow. On the contrary, polling in the general election seems essentially to be a random walk, with the minor stipulation that the polling has had some tendency to tighten slightly during the stretch run (as our model accounts for). That is, the polls are essentially as likely to move back toward Obama tomorrow as they are to continue to move toward McCain.
“McCain’s other problem is that the polls in battleground states have not really tightened at all. Obama gets good numbers today, for instance, in North Carolina, Wisconsin and Florida. Obama presently has something like a 3:1 advantage in advertising, and most of that advertising is concentrated in battleground states. As such, this may serve as a hedge against any improvements that McCain is able to make elsewhere in the country.” — Fivethirtyeight‘s Nate Silver, posted yesterday at 2:08 pm eastern.

“It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards — Purple Heart, Bronze Star — showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old.

“And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross, it didn’t have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life. Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way.” — Colin Powell speaking on Meet The Press this morning, posted by Swampland‘s Karen Tumulty. Photo by Platon.

Posted a couple of days ago by Awards Daily contributor Ryan Adams. I could scratch off one or two more but what’s the rush? It’s not even November.

W. is clearly a project that the restless, edgy Josh Brolin dived into wholeheartedly. Is he comfortable with the thought that his performance may make people like Dubya more? “I dunno if they’ll like him more, but I think they’ll struggle with the humanity of him as opposed to just pointing the finger. He is more likeable. That’s my point of view. But I think it allows your opinion of him to… (pause) I can see Republicans seeing this movie and saying, that’s why he’s so great. And I can see Democrats seeing this movie and saying, that’s why he’s a sociopath.” — from a Sunday, 10.19 interview with the Independent‘s Craig McLean.

“The average studio feature now costs $71 million to produce and $36 million to market, according to the Motion Picture Association of America, a 35 percent increase from the average at the start of the decade. In the world of independent films, costs are up even more — 83 percent during the same period.” — from Brooks Barnes‘ 10.18 N.Y. Times article about the degree of color-blindness in Hollywood decision-making about which films to green-light. It’s called “Race and the Safe Hollywood Bet.”

Deadline Hollywood Daily‘s Nikki Finke reported exit polling earlier today about W., and the bottom line is that “27% felt the movie was better than expected, 38% felt it was not as good as expected (this was consistent across all groups, especially liberals), and 35% felt it was as good as expected.” Basically a 62-38 split favoring positive.

I alluded to this before but it can’t hurt to reiterate. Just to be fair, as The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil was on Friday and as Variety‘s Pamela McLintock was last Tuesday about Showeast reactions, Frost/Nixon reactions have been more mixed than outright negative (although two or three London Film Festival reviews obviously were).

“The real reason for The Soloist getting bumped into March ’09? Every single test, every single cut, the scores kept going down. It’s a non-audience picture and just a tank.” — a good and trusted fellow who tends to pass along good stuff.
And yet I wonder. How problematic could Joe Wright‘s film be if it’s scheduled to open the AFI Fest a few days from now?

“I directly know three people who have seen The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, one in a rough state in the editing room, and they were all weeping in the end. Is it 2 hours and 45 minutes? Yes, but that’s what it is. Except nobody wants to be a front-runner, so Paramount is going to keep it under wraps [until mid to late November].” — passed along by one of those “guy” sources that have mildly irritated Patrick Goldstein for being off-the-record and not described but quoted all the same.

The major London papers have reviewed Quantum of Solace, the new 007 film, and the reactions are pretty good. Not ecstatic, but primarly enthusiastic and supportive.

One slight dissenter is the Telegraph‘s Mark Monahan who says the new film “lacks Casino Royale‘s narrative drive, and is less than the sum of its parts.” He adds, however, that “those parts are often terrific. See it for them, and see it for Daniel Craig‘s fully-formed Bond: angry, icily unsentimental, and fleetingly borderline psychotic at the close.”
Times Online critic James Christopher writes that “director Marc Forster has absorbed the lucrative lessons discovered in Martin Campbell‘s Casino Royale. He has also managed to pace his sequel much better.
“Royale felt slightly wheel-clamped by one too many longeurs. If anything, the crunching chase sequences in Quantum of Solace are even more magnificently dangerous. And the daredevil leaps and tumbles through glass roofs are just as sensational as the splintering high-speed pyrotechnics.
“But it’s the amount of heartache and punishment that Craig’s new Bond absorbs that makes him look so right for our times. Bond is no longer a work in progress. He is now the cruel, finished article.”
LIkewise, the Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw is somewhere between okay and pleased with the film — he submits to the rock ‘n’ roll — but is primarily a fan of Craig’s performance.