Day: January 12, 2009

Steven Soderbergh‘s Che “begins with a pair of boots. More than four hours later, that is pretty much how it ends, too. The first boots belong to Che Guevara (Benicio Del Toro), who is wearing them, together with his trademark combat fatigues, while being interviewed in Havana, in 1964. He wears the same outfit later that year, in New York, as a way of indicating, to the United Nations and to any bien-pensants who can gaze at him without drooling, that even in this city of chatter he remains an undaunted man of action.

“The second pair of boots, by contrast, is the last thing he sees, as he dies on the floor of a Bolivian hut; they belong to the officer who has come to check that Che, caught and shot, has finally given up his troublesome ghost. The visual echo is a fitting one, since, whatever the private impulses that fired this work, there is no doubting Soderbergh’s desire to shoot at ground level — not to linger on the loftiness of political ideals but, instead, to get down amid the dirt, sweat, and despair of putting them into practice.” — from Anthony Lane‘s New Yorker review, dated 1.19.09.

“I won’t be surprised if studios start telling themselves that when money’s tight, it’s time to greenlight some feel-good stories,” L.A. Times/”Big Picture” columnist Patrick Goldstein wrote earlier today. “But trying to second-guess moviegoer tastes is like trying to time the stock market.

“Both the movies and the market are driven by irrational forces beyond anyone’s control. Everyone knows that moviegoers want good movies but no one has ever been able to figure out how to patent that secret formula. It’s too tricky a recipe: A great book can make a bad movie and a bad filmmaker can ruin a good script, but sometimes the most chaotic mess turns into a marvelous souffle.

“All we really know is that we know a good movie when we see one, whether the Dow’s scraping bottom or running with the bulls.”

Five reasons why Indiewire‘s Anthony Kaufman isn’t making the trek to Sundance this year. Thin mountain air, stress, too many bus rides, not enough cash, etc.

Richard Shepard‘s I Knew It Was You is a longish short (40 minutes) about the late great John Cazale. He was a brave, talented, funny-looking character actor with a big forehead who didn’t last very long. His masterwork was creating the legendary Fredo — a pathetic but touching figure — in the first two Godfather films. He also played the psychotic, fruit-loopy Sal in Dog Day Afternoon, a guy named Stan in The Conversation, and another guy named Stan in The Deer Hunter.

And that was it. Five films. A career cut short due to the 42 year-old Cazale dying of cancer right after shooting his Deer Hunter scenes in April 1978. Tough break and horribly sad.

But Cazale is remembered by people who know) from great acting, by fans of classic ’70s films, and obviously by his friends and co-workers, most of whom appear in Shepard’s film — onetime girlfriend Meryl Streep, costars Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Gene Hackman; directors Francis Coppola and Sidney Lumet ; and modern admirers Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Brett Ratner (who’s also one of the producers).

I Knew It Was You, destined for HBO and due to play five or six times during the Sundance Film Festival, isn’t what I or anyone else would call a shattering work of game-changing genius. It’s just a straight, honest and eloquent remembrance of a very worthy and gifted man. Neat, trim and clean. Anyone who remembers and treasures the way Cazale made Fredo into one of the saddest and most pathetic little men of the modern cinema needs to see this.

Nobody explains in the doc why Cazale’s Conversation and Deer Hunter characters were both named Stan.

The way Cazale crumpled down to a curb, hung his head and cried out “Papa! Papa” after Marlon Brando‘s Vito Corleone was shot on a street in Little Italy is one of the most memorable character-revealing moments in ’70s cinema.

Like all great artists, Cazale drew from his own hurt and history and put it right out there. Hiding and pretending and putting on a slick movie-actor front weren’t in his vocabulary. He was a man of respect, loyalty and courage. Think of what he might have done if cancer hadn’t come along.

I was looking for a YouTube embed of Jeremy Piven addressing the sushi situation from the Golden Globes red carpet. Couldn’t find it. But I found this hilarious (if old) Young Turks clip from 3.29.07, about Piven and his entourage visiting Nobu Matsuhisa. Cenk Uygur is a truly gifted raconteur.

Sundance Film Festival director Geoff Gilmore has written a state-of-things piece for the new Indiewire called “Evolution vs. Revolution.” Here’s a taste with commentary interspersed:

Gilmore: “Audiences are changing. The over-30 audience is the target for much of the independent arena.” Wells: Because a significant portion of the over-30s (more like the over-50s) have a habit and a history of reading reviews in magazines and newspapers. Most of the under-30s glance at the scores on Rotten Tomatoes. Maybe. The majority just watch trailers online or in theatres, and that’s it.

Gilmore: “Whereas the new generation represents an interesting contradiction. There is no question that the current college audience is much more sophisticated about cinema — about art film or international and independent work than my generation was 30 years ago.” Wells: Yes, they probably are. But we’re talking about a small percentage of this group — i.e., the early adopter film-savvy sector. A fairly small slice of the pie.

Gilmore: “But frankly they seem to have less interest in it.” Wells : Could this have anything to do with the fact that many under-30s have the attention spans of gnats? That chronic ADD is fairly rampant among them?

Gilmore: Or at least they have a greater range of activities to engage in and thus are more selective and demanding about how they are going to spend their hard-earned dollars.” Wells: Fair enough.

Gilmore: “It’s difficult to say whether the new generation will continue to harbor the passion for film that we had.” Wells: Difficult to say? Obviously the movie passion among most under-30s is much less than it was 20 or 30 years ago. 40 years ago is like 400 years ago. No bearing whatsoever on the present. They’re into whatever’s going — online videos, video games, TV series, a movie at the plex, ESPN, Nickleodeon, etc. But almost never an “old” movie — i.e., a film made before 1990. And forget absolutely looking at anything in black and white.

Gilmore: “Independent film has broken a lot of ground and had a lot of success in the last two decades. But what was innovative then is now familiar. Whether new audiences can be intrigued by innovative independent work, coaxed by critics, and motivated by marketing, whether they will be interested by new subjects and artistic invention, remains to be seen.” Wells: If you know anything about the term “remains to be seen,” you don’t need me to explain it. But I will anyway. It means that things are doubtful, don’t look good, don’t count on it, etc.

There was a big dress rehearsal in Washington, D.C. yesterday for the various inauguration events and festivities. Army Sgt. Derrick Brooks stood in for President-elect Barack Obama and Navy Yeoman 1st Class LaSean McCray stood in for Michelle Obama. But honestly? The photo below gave me pause.

After 30 Rock‘s Tina Fey used her Golden Globes acceptance speech to bash neg-head posters on TheEnvelope.com‘s message board, The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil offered an apology. But why apologize for snarky mean things said by talk-backers? It’s part of the digital rough-and-tumble out there. Apologize for your own words and deeds and that’s all.

In a weird roundabout way the Golden Globes seem to have a bit more integrity this morning due to last night’s double-awarding of Kate Winslet — a Best Supporting Actress award for her performance in The Reader and a Best Actress trophy for her work in Revolutionary Road. But in another way the HFPA looks like the same old shop of whores.

We all believe that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association — the ultimate organization for obsequious celebrity suck-upping — “cooks” their nominations so as to ensure as many big names as possible showing up for the GG telecast. By this I believe that the ratings-mindful membership knows exactly who to nominate — no homelies, no dull indie-realmers (or as few as possible), and mostly big-name glamour types.

I don’t think the HFPA “cooks” the winners, but if I’d been tabulating this year’s votes I might well have gone to HFPA president Jorge Camara and said, “Jorge — why does Kate Winslet have to win two awards? Isn’t this a bit much? How does anyone figure her role in The Reader was supporting, for one thing? And what about the wonderful Viola Davis in Doubt? Or Penelope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona? Those were fierce blazing performances. It just seems excessive to give two awards to Winslet…no?”

But the fact that she got two tells us nobody went to Camara and said,”C’mon, man…let’s fix this.” It tells us that the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing. Nobody cooked anything. Anyone trying to fix the results would have thought like the rest of us — that Kate didn’t have to win twice and that Davis and Cruz really deserved their moment in the sun.

But it also tells us that the HFPA are huge bend-overs in that they totally bought the “Kate is finally due after all those years of being nominated and not winning an Oscar” argument. They wanted to be the good guys who turned things around — they knew it would be a big emotional moment. They clearly wanted to be the first to show her some awards love in a way that would result in headlines and goose the Academy members who haven’t yet voted to follow suit.

Who buys the idea of 32 year-old Ryan Reynolds pairing off with 44 year-old Sandra Bullock (who, no offense, is starting to look her age somewhat) in The Proposition (Touchstone, 6.12.09)?

On one level it seems almost exciting — at the very least intriguing — that societal standards are such that an older attractive actress can get away today with the same thing that older male actors have been getting away with for decades, i.e., romantic pairings with women 10, 20 and even 30 years younger. This is how it should be, I feel. The Demi Moore-Ashton Kutcher dynamic can and should work for thousands of couples out there. Why not?

On another level, however, I just don’t buy that a guy like Reynolds would go for a woman like Bullock in real life. Why? In a phrase, she’s just not looking as hot as Moore. She’s a very attractive woman with great bones, yes, but she’s looking fairly 40ish and she just seems too old for him. It sounds brutal to say this, but she’s not smokin’ in a way that would persuade a typical good-looking guy of 32 to say, “Yep, she’s my dream lady — a woman of character, smarts and strength whom I hope to have great sex with for the next 30 or 40 years, or at least for the next 25 or 30 years. And with whom I might want to have kids.” I just don’t buy it.

You have to do more than just sell tickets to be considered a serious heavy-hitting movie star. Every so often (i.e., every three or four years) you have to be in a really good film. And I mean a really good one — not a line-drive single or ground-rule double but a serious triple or a homer. By this standard, or even in strictly monetary terms, how can 32 year-old Ryan Reynolds be considered a star of any kind?

He’s a talented performer, obviously charming and good looking. He seems to be trying to do quality work in ambitious or unusual films. (Whatever happened to Fireflies in the Garden?). And most of his movies have been modestly profitable. And he seems (or it has seemed) as if he might eventually be Robert Redford. Maybe. But this doesn’t seem to be happening.

Where are the super-grosses, the big critical acclaim (why doesn’t he work with AAA-rated directors?), the sense of being part of some kind of special firmament in the universe? When is Reynolds going to catch a really good wave? It’s okay to flip-flop around in your 20s but you don’t hit it big in your early 30s people start to wonder.

You knew Redford was a star he came out in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid at age 32, and then Downhill Racer and The Candidate two and three years later. (All parts that Reynolds could have played and done relatively well with.) You knew Dustin Hoffman had hit it big-time when he made The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy and Straw Dogs. You knew Al Pacino was destined for greatness when he turned up in The Godfather ; ditto Robert DeNiro when he starred in The Godfather, Part II. Nothing like this has happened with Reynolds. Nothing even close.

The reason, I believe, is that he’s basically a faux star — an agreeable lightweight lacking serious hunger and possibly lacking the necessary gravitas — trying to launch himself (or at least make it work in a limited way or…you know, hang on) in a degraded environment. He seems to be doing all he can to make it happen — engage, excite, arouse — but it’s just not coalescing.