Day: January 5, 2009

Democrat Al Franken isn’t fully secured as Minnesota’s next U.S. Senator, but it’s looking very, very unlikely that his Republican opponent Norm Coleman is going to prevail, given that the Minnesota State Canvassing Board confirmed today that Franken has won by a 215-vote margin.

Franken is a bit of a snob, I feel, having met him once backstage at the old ABC Bill Maher show. He’s also smart, witty, tough and, I believe, up to the task. I’m very cheered by his apparent victory and for the fact that U.S Senate Democrats now number 59.

We’re all disappointed, I think, that the Producers Guild of America chose their Best Picture nominees from the exact middle of the pack — Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight and Frost/Nixon. They didn’t even have the balls to nominate WALL*E. Buncha timid consensus pussies. The winner will be announced on 1.24.

Heading into town to attend the New York Film Critics Circle awards dinner at Strata — drinks at 6:30, dinner and speeches starting at 7:30. Hooray for Milk‘s Josh Brolin.

Gran Torino, which goes wide this weekend, is running at 71, 49 and 18. It seems likely to beat the debuting Bride Wars, which is tracking at 68, 34 and 10. Not Easily Broken is 60, 28 and 1 and The Unborn is 56, 30 and 7.

Andrew Breitbart is starting his own conservative-minded Hollywood-oriented site — Big Hollywood — tomorrow, and he’s got Steve Mason as his box-office analyst,” a D.C.-based reader asked this morning. “Will you still quote Mason from time to time, or does this put him on your shit list?”

“Of course not,” I replied. “Breitbart’s a good man and Mason knows his stuff so it’s all fine.”

It’ll be fun to debate (i.e., mock, deride, joke about) the right-wing views espoused on Big Hollywood , which Breitbart says will “be a continuous politics and culture posting board for those who think something has gone drastically wrong and that Hollywood should return to its patriotic roots.

“Big Hollywood’s modest objective: to change the entertainment industry. To make Hollywood something we can believe in — again. In order to give millions of Americans hope.”

In order to create this sense of hope, one presumes, a good right-wing site will, as a sideline, need to fire off rhetorical stink bombs at Barack Obama whenever possible, right, Andrew? And do whatever it can to pave the way for a return of Sarah Palin in ’12?

When’s the last time a really good patriotic right-wing film came along? I love good conservative-minded films (Man on Fire, Gran Torino, etc.) but they’re few and far between. There seems to be something in the genes of right-thinking, God-fearing, flag-saluting types that seems to get in the way of good film art, for the most part. Obviously being a staunch right-winger didn’t hurt the films of John Ford (to use but one example), but the experience of An American Carol is more typical than not.

Right-wingers can grouse all they want about Godless cynical films made my left-wing pinkos, but their own attempts to make stirring films have been for the most part pathetic.

It’ll also be good to read the rants of all the right-wing machines who used to be HE commenters — i.e., the one I got rid of during last summer’s Stalinist purge.

David Poland is calling Steven Soderbergh‘s Che his #1 film of the year. I’m afraid that makes two of us, as I said the same thing 28 days ago. (I hadn’t seen Gran Torino or Waltz With Bashir at the time, but I’ve seen added them to my list of the year’s Top 15.) Here’s Poland’s piece with a few quips and quibbles from yours truly:

“When the chips are down, Che is as Old Hollywood as it gets.

“From the overture in which we watch Cuba — and then South America — laid out, to the epic length that creates a relationship with virtually every character in a way you rarely see in modern films, to the calm central ‘hero’ who is more real than Gary Cooper would have been, but just as movie star weighty, Che is the great movie experience of 2008. It is a movie that washes over you and seeps into you, as only a film that takes this kind of time can. Yet, I was never bored…not during the first, second, or third viewing.”

I’ve seen ’em both four times and have the exact same attitude.

“The notion that this is two films is silly. They are their own experiences, but they are inescapably two halves comprising a whole. And there is enough room for many different takes on the material. I, for one, do not see it as terribly political. I see it as the story of a man who believes deeply and seeks to bring his belief to action. Others see it as incredibly political, even in the modern context. Others see it very much as a biopic (and they seem to have the most problem with the movie).”

The problem isn’t the people who see Che as a biopic — it’s the people who come to it looking for a “biopic” experience.

“Soderbergh’s work here, first in narrowing the focus with hands-on producers Laura Bickford and Benicio del Toro and screenwriters Peter Buchman and Benjamin A. van der Veen, then in choosing to shoot an epic, then in production itself…stunning.

“He manages to do a lot of what Terrence Malick does, but without getting distracted by the beauty of the earth. He does a lot of what Michael Mann does, in delivering the intimacy of men who do harm. He does a lot of what Ford did in shooting people anticipating trouble. And he does work that is a lot like the modern intimists like Van Sant and even Kelly Reichardt do, allowing natural quiet to the point of distraction.

“I am in awe of this work. I remain amazed by Soderbergh’s tenacity, as he continues not to do ‘one for them and one for him’ but to be a truly experimental artist, even with big budget films like The Good German, the reflection of which can be clearly seen in Che. You can see some Bubble too.”

Soderbergh’s three Oceans films weren’t made “for them,” Poland is saying? Then who were they made for? I wanted to love them (the second one is my favorite) but they didn’t quite make it. The happiest were the corporations and the popcorn-munchers.

“At 46 (in 9 days from this writing), just 20 years into his movie career, Soderbergh has already made eight indelible pieces of American cinema,” Poland writes. Something tells me he thinks that Solaris is one of the eight indelibles. I’m afraid not. Solaris is one of Sodbergh’s “slump” films along with Full Frontal. Solaris is nothing short of infuriating. You don’t get to join your dead lover by dying. All you’re doing is turning the lights out and the power off and surrendering to the infinite. Love is for the living.

I’m actually a Bubble admirer, and I had a place in my head and black-and-white-loving heart for The Good German. Soderbergh’s ’98 to ’00 golden streak (Out of Sight, The Limey, Erin Brockovich, Traffic) will always be held over him, or even used as a beating stick, but the Che films, for me, signify a profound comeback.

I have to say, however, that I’m very, very concerned about the forthcoming Cleopatra musical . if I were Soderbergh’s most trusted advisor, I’d be saying “don’t do it! This things has the earmarks of a debacle. Especially with Catherine Zeta Jones, who’s too old to play the Egyptian queen, and has an unlikable rep of being quite the acquisitive capitalist, and who doesnt sell tickets(as the failure of No Reservations proved). Do another Elmore Leonard adaptation, another Limey…something in the crime vein.”

“And thank the heavens for Che,” Poland concludes. “You haven’t seen its like in quite away. And don’t expect something like this to pass our way again anytime soon.”

The Online Film Critics Society has decided on a list of 2008 nominees. [See below.] FilmJerk.com’s Edward Havens sent them along this morning and asked for an opinion. What I think, I wrote back, is “that (a) these are fine…the same-old same-old ’08 nominees except for Che‘s Benicio del Toro and The Visitor’s Richard Jenkins nominated for Best Actor….agreed, but (b) why issue a list of nominees at this stage? The OFCS is not the Oscars. Bring on the winners already.”

THE 2008 OFCS nominees:

BEST PICTURE

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Wrestler

BEST DIRECTOR

Darren Aronofsky, The Wrestler

Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire

David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight

Andrew Stanton, WALL*E

BEST ACTOR

Benicio Del Toro, Che

Richard Jenkins, The Visitor

Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon

Sean Penn, Milk

Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

BEST ACTRESS

Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married

Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky

Meryl Streep, Doubt

Michelle Williams, Wendy and Lucy

Kate Winslet , Revolutionary Road

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Robert Downey, Jr., Tropic Thunder

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt

Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight

Eddie Marsan, Happy-Go-Lucky

Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Amy Adams, Doubt

Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Viola Davis, Doubt

Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler

Kate Winslet, The Reader

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

In Bruges, Martin McDonagh

Milk, Dustin Lance Black

Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman

WALL*E, Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon

The Wrestler, Robert D. Siegel

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Eric Roth

The Dark Knight, Jonathan Nolan & Christopher Nolan

Frost/Nixon, Peter Morgan

Let the Right One In, John Ajvide Lindqvist

Slumdog Millionaire, Simon Beaufoy

BEST DOCUMENTARY

Dear Zachary: a letter to a son about his father

My Winnipeg

BEST FOREIGN FILM

A Christmas Tale

Waltz with Bashir

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Bolt

Waltz with Bashir

…and so on. Why hasn’t the OFCS posted the nominees on their site?

English-language Al Jazeera is reporting that “a dozen Palestinian civilians have been killed on Monday as Israeli forces pushed deeper into the Gaza Strip” with “the latest total death count in Gaza [standing] at 531 people killed across 10 days, with more than 80 deaths since the ground offensive began last Saturday.”

But the innocents are always slaughtered in any war. 47 million civilians were killed during World War II, if you count an estimated 20 million from war-related disease and famine. It’s horrific, but it’s never stopped combatants on either side of any conflict, going back to the days of Alexander the Great. War is cruel.

Any report about the current Gaza conflict that focuses solely on civilian deaths and agony (as this Al Jazeera one does) is omitting the basic shot, which is that Israel is invading in order to stop rocket attacks launched from within Gaza by Hamas.

Is there any HE reader who would say if he/she was one of Israel’s top leaders, “Well, I guess we have to live with those rocket attacks. Maybe it’s part of our karma or something. Israel, after all, has been fairly brutal in its treatment of Palestinians over the years, so maybe it’s a case of just desserts.” If you were an Israeli citizen, would you be saying “comme ci comme ca” about the rockets? Be honest.

The recently departed Pat Hingle had 84 good years, most of them on stage and in films. He excelled at playing small-town pit bulls — snarlers, bigots, cops, mayors, disapproving dads who barked and brayed, brutes, vulgarians — who caused much torment and unhappiness to various leading men and women (like Splendor in the Grass‘s Warren Beatty and The Falcon and the Snowman ‘s Tim Hutton). The rule of thumb was that if you saw Hingle approaching in a movie or TV show, things were about to get ugly on some level.

He was a steady and dependable actor whom I always found believable, but whom I never found particularly charming. He had nothing on Burgess Meredith or Lloyd Nolan or even Lee J. Cobb in the ways of slyness and insinuation. Hingle was straight and solid and lumbering. He always came right at a role through the front door. “I’m Pat Hingle,” he always seemed to say through clenched teeth, “and I’m about to get into your face. And you’ll damn well know it because sweat beads will form on my forehead!”

I’m sure Hingle was a good guy in real life. He always sounded like one in interviews. He had kids, a wife, an ex-wife, a life. He was a workaholic. I hear that.

The only time I can remember in which Hingle seemed light and likable and unthreatening was his walk-on as a waiter in that scene with Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint in On The Waterfront.

I genuinely disliked his vaguely cloddish presence as Commissioner Gordon in Tim Burton‘s Batman, and in the succeeding Batman films he appeared in. Whenever I think of Hingle, I mostly see him pointing at the Bat-silhouette-in-the-sky and shouting,”He sent us a signal!”

The poor man fell 50-something feet down an elevator shaft in ’59 or thereabouts…good God. He reportedly lost the lead role in Richard Brooks‘ Elmer Gantry as a result. (Thus paving the way for Burt Lancaster ‘s winning the 1960 Best Actor Oscar.) I can’t believe that Brooks truly intended to cast Hingle as Gantry for the simple reason that no one would have believed Hingle capable of seducing Jean Simmons‘ Sister Sharon Falconer. I don’t believe audiences would have stood for it. He wasn’t Uriah Heep….well, actually, he sort of was.

May Hingle rest in peace. His characters certainly dispensed little enough of it on-screen while he was alive.