Month: January 2009

I once had a dispute with a guy over the proper role of a Hollywood columnist-commentator. He felt that columnists should basically be receiver-responders — that they should only write about what the entertainment community puts before them. Baaaah. That’s obviously part of the game, I said, but he was thinking too passively. A go-getter columnist should also adopt the mentality of a senior vp of creative affairs for the entire entertainment industry. Come up with new ideas, approve or disapprove of scripts, and so on.

Jeff Goldblum, Chris Walken

All to explain that during a recent phone interview with Adam Resurrected star Jeff Goldblum, I hit upon a great idea for a movie he would absolutely shine in. Not that Goldblum doesn’t give a rich and savory performance in Adam — he does. But he needs to star in a vehicle that won’t get in the way of his naturally smooth charm. He’s never quite been in such a film. And he’s in a prime condition right now. And the clock is ticking.

I’m thinking about a kind of remake — call it a revisiting — of My Dinner with Andre costarring Goldblum and Christopher Walken. Two older guys of roughly the same generation (Walken is a little bit older) shooting the shit over dinner for 90 minutes or so in midtown Manhattan. Can anyone think of a more entertaining pure-talk proposition? Both are seasoned charisma machines with live-wire personalities and smart-ass urban attitudes. And both have great voices and signature speaking styles.

The thing that triggered the idea was Goldblum telling me during our chat that he knows, likes and gets along well with Walken.

If I had the power and influence I would sit down with these guys and come up with some kind of fictional-situational backstory that could be discussed and picked through during their long chat, and then get them to sit down for a week’s worth of conversation. Shoot it on high-def video, cut the best passages together, and you’d have a great chit-chat movie. I for one would pay to see this. I have a feeling it would be a very popular DVD title. Everybody knows these two guys and what they’re about. And it wouldn’t cost very much to make.

If not Goldblum and Walken, who would be a bigger attraction?

Wait…how about a short series of films about famous actors sitting down together and just yapping away? A DVD package of five or six, say. Maybe an HBO series.

In a New York/Vulture poll of 57 film critics, Gabriele Muccino and Will Smith‘s Seven Pounds has been named the worst film of 2008. Perhaps now that Seven Pounds has been fully reviled and discredited it’s okay to allow people to check out this mock poster, although please understand that it’s a complete spoiler.

Here’s a list of all the critics polled or quoted, along with their own lists of the year’s worst.

The other worst-of-the-year picks, going from tenth-worst to second-worst, is as follows: (10) Diane English‘s The Women; (9) Clint Eastwood‘s Changeling; (8) Frank Miller‘s The Spirit; (7) M. Night Shyamalan‘s The Happening; (6) Baz Luhrman’s Australia; (5) The Wachowski brothers’ Speed Racer; (4) Michael Haneke‘s Funny Games; (3) Jon Avnet‘s 88 Minutes; and (2) Mike Myers’ The Love Guru.

Here’s New Yorker critic David Denby on the reasoning behind his choosing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as the year’s worst: “Director David Fincher and writer Eric Roth have taken a playful early story by F. Scott Fitzgerald and literalized and solemnized it to death. It’s a work of extraordinary craftsmanship devoted to an idea that’s dramatically inert. When Brad Pitt finally grows young enough to look like his actual age, he doesn’t have any memories of the ardency or anxiety of youth but only relief that he’s no longer a crotchety old man. Even as a young blade, he’s an old fart. It just doesn’t work. That people can find serious ideas about death and mortality in it suggests the power of weirdness to inspire fancy sentiment.”

As expected, the award-giving party thrown by the New York Film Critics Circle last night at Strata (Broadway at 21st) was a convivial, stimulating, enjoyable thing. Thanks to the NYFCC and IHOP publicity for inviting me. The food and drink were choice and abundant. The swanky, two-tiered room was filled with distributors, publicists and all manner of talent. And the best critics, bloggers and entertainment writers around. My idea of a class-A event.

NYFCC from Hollywood Elsewhere on Vimeo

Almost all the winners were there — Happy Go Lucky‘s Mike Leigh (Best Picture, Best Director) and Sally Hawkins (Best Actress), Milk‘s Sean Penn (Best Actor) and Josh Brolin (Best Supporting Actor), Rachel Getting Married‘s Jenny Lumet (Best Screenplay), Vicky Cristina Barcelona‘s Penelope Cruz (Best Supporting Actress), etc.

The most amusing moment happened when N.Y. Times columnist David Carr (a.k.a. “the Bagger”) invited Envelope columnist Tom O’Neil and myself to do an on-camera interview, and began things by asking “how many Oscar bloggers does it take to screw in a light bulb?”

Three or four minor issues surfaced during the four-hour event, but nothing to ruffle anyone’s feathers. Not mine, anyway. I wouldn’t bring them up but I may as well for the sake of colorful reporting.

One, the acceptance speeches rambled on and on and were, for the most part and by common consensus, boring. Josh Brolin‘s lubricated comments were blunt (he called Russell Crowe an asshole) but he could have used a red pencil or a friend signalling him from a nearby table. It was very difficult to sift through the French accent of Man on Wire‘s Phillipe Petit, who accepted the Best Doc award for director James Marsh, who couldn’t attend because he’s directing a new film, Nineteen Eighty, in England.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona‘s Penelope Cruz accepting the NYFCC’s Best Supporting Actress award.

Lisa Schwarzbaum, critic for Entertainment Weekly, resented some recent backstage reporting about the how the NYFCC voted last month — she feels the voting should be kept private — which resulted in said journalist being banned from the NYFCC event, which he attended anyway after threatening to make a stink. For what it’s worth I love reading reports about how this or that critics group voted — which films led initially only to fall behind when second and third ballots happened (or when proxies were disqualified), who argued with whom, who said what, etc. Critics groups should learn to roll with this. It’s the way of today’s world — nothing is private, everything is public, every imaginable personal embarassment is on YouTube, etc.

IHOP publicist Jessica Uzzan watching over talent and paparazzi — Monday, 1.5.08, 6:55 pm

I spoke briefly to playwright/screenwriter Tony Kushner (Angels Over America, Munich). I asked him what the deal was with Steven Spielberg ‘s long-delayed Abraham Lincoln movie, the screenplay for which Kushner been been working on since ’07. (Earlier?) Kushner said (a) he’s not aware of any hesitancy or disinclination on Spielberg’s part to shoot the Lincoln film (all actions to the contrary), and (b) that he’s now on his fourth draft. I told him I had spoken to Liam Neeson three and a half years ago about Neeson’s great hunger to play Lincoln under Spielberg’s direction.

Spielberg “has become a kind of delaying sadist regarding the Lincoln film,” I wrote last March. “Chicago 7 this, Tintin that…and we never hear diddly about the Lincoln project. It’s a classic avoidance syndrome thing (a kid avoiding a homework assignment, a guy who keeps putting off doing his taxes). If a benevolent God took any kind of interest in human affairs, Spielberg would (a) officially abandon the Lincoln film and (b) arrange for another esteemed director to step in so it can finally move forward.”

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?