Month: November 2009

“If this gets into the press, I will know it came from you…and I will rain down on you so hard, you’ll have to be reassembled by fucking aircraft investigators. You breathe a word of this to anyone, you mincing fucking [expletive], and I will tear your fucking skin off, I will wear it to your mother’s birthday party and I will rub your nuts up and down her leg…right?”

Peter Capaldi‘s Malcolm Tucker says this in response to a not-entirely-trusted team member who has accused Tucker’s assistant of being a leaker himself with the following rant: “I could draw you a diagram if you like…it’s like a fucking swine flu pandemic…you’re like the man who fucked the monkey who gave us AIDS…monkey shit on your balls, not mine.”

All of which reminds me that “the crowd” (as in King Vidor) never went along with my ardent suggestions that Capaldi be considered as a stone-cold nominee for Best Supporting Actor for his In The Loop ranting. (Not even the fair-minded Scott Feinberg went along with this.) Because, you know, In The Loop is essentially an Armando Ianucci British TV series made into a feature and because Capaldi’s performance is all about profane tirades and it’s hard to understand everything he says because of his Scottish accent and because Loop didn’t make enough money and so on. Right?

But people will be talking about Capaldi’s Malcom in pubs, columns and industry parties for years to come while whomever finally wins the Best Supporting Actor Oscar this year….well, I’m sure he’ll be remembered.

There’s a bit of an Invictus screening issue hanging in the air as we speak, having to do with fairness between the coasts. The Left Coast blogging crew saw Clint Eastwood‘s latest directorial effort — an inspirational Nelson Mandela rugby movie with Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon — on the Warner Bros. lot two or three days ago. They were told absolutely no reviews or Twitterings until Monday, 11.30. The film opens on Friday, 12.11.

The New Yorkers haven’t seen it yet, and the only locked-down Manhattan screening I’ve been told about is happening on Tuesday, 12.1. There’s also been a mention of a screening here after the Thanksgiving holiday, which could technically mean on Friday the 27th or Saturday the 28th. But when people say “after the holiday” they usually mean “after the holiday weekend.” If this is the case then the Manhattanites won’t be able to see it until Monday at the earliest which means the L.A. onliners will have the first word. (And you know some will jump the gun and go on Sunday night, 11.29…right?)

So in the interest of even-handedness it would be nice if the “after the holiday” NY showings meant 11.27 or 11.28.

I saw Jim Sheridan‘s Brothers (Lionsgate, 12.4) a couple of nights ago, and then conducted a brief interview with Sheridan today at Manhattan’s Four Seasons and then attended a group press conference (Sheridan, Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Relativity’s Ryan Kavanaugh). The hazy focus during the zoom-in on Maguire is due to low light — apologies. Not a good column day. A bad one, in fact. One distraction after another.

Now that Summit Entertainment is looking at weekend New Moon earnings of $145 million or so (based on yesterday’s record-breaking $72.7 million haul at 4,024 theaters), maybe they can afford now to make extra DVD screeners of The Hurt Locker and send them out to every Tom, Dick and Harry? You know…blanket the town like Lionsgate did with those Crash screeners in late ’05 and early ’06? No more excuses — get ’em out there now.

“Finally, I’d like to step out of my pundit shoes for a moment, if I may, and make a bold suggestion: Academy, if you’re reading, please consider nominating Fantastic Mr. Fox for best costumes. Where does it say costumes have to be human sized?”– Vanity Fair.com’s Julian Sancton in an 11.18 Oscar-nom handicap piece.

I know I probably won’t end up looking like this when I’m 79, but I’d like to. Cool, studly, relaxed machismo is worth its weight in gold. The cover photo lies, of course, by favoring the subject, but what photo doesn’t lie on some level? Most of them make you look worse.

Somebody said something the other day about Alec Baldwin being exceptional in Nancy Meyers‘ It’s Complicated (Universal, 12.25). The vested parties are saying this, of course, with the post-marital comedy expected to start screening for critics sometime after Thanksgiving. A non-vested writer-director guy told me this afternoon that he can “absolutely confirm” that Baldwin is the shit in Meyers’ film and a prime candidate for Best Supporting Actor. A vested party who nonetheless tends to be blunt said Baldwin is “a lay-down hand for a nom, Jeff. And he could win. Total breakout performance. Bet on it.”

Whatever the truth, it hit me suddenly that it’s taken Baldwin 15 years to recover from the downish career dents he suffered in the ’90s — sacrificing a movie-star career and the Jack Ryan franchise for a chance to play Stanley Kowalski in a Broadway Streetcar, the messy divorce from Kim Basinger and the daughter tape, getting thicker and thicker, developing the angry guy rep, being called “the Bloviator” by the N.Y. Post, etc. — and to find his kwan and ease into a nice smooth groove over the last two or three years with 30 Rock and whatnot, and that some kind of favorable karma thing is kicking in now with his acting in It’s Complicated and co-hosting the Oscars with Steve Martin and so on. I’m just feeling a little vibe telling me it’s Baldwin’s time right now and that the winds are favoring.

The non-vested director-writer said that “besides Baldwin, It’s Complicated is also a very strong showing for Steve Martin. A nice rebound after the last Panther movie and something more in tune with his talents. Part of the fun of having Baldwin and Martin host the Oscars is the possibility of one or both of them being nominated. It’s a strong film and Universal will have a much-needed crowd pleaser. Meryl could be a lock as well for Best Actress, with the Julia Child performance being pushed for supporting.”

The only thing that gives me concern is my bedrock certainty that however satisfying and entertaining her films may be on a certain level, Nancy Meyers doesn’t want to be anything more than Nancy Meyers. She doesn’t seem to want to push herself up to the next level and be the James L. Brooks of the ’80s and early ’90s (i.e., before he lost it). I’ve said this before, but she can’t stop making movies about people with money who have shiny copper pots hanging in the kitchen.

Part of the tragedy of New Moon is that it temporarily wraps Kristen Stewart — the GenY Marlon Brando/James Dean/Montgomery Clift — in a shroud of mediocrity. I’m not saying that Stewart has mastered her talent completely, but it’s inside her, for sure. It’s almost nauseating to see her grimming up and getting through the vampire/ werewolf paces as best she can. She seems tough and resilient enough (and seems to have a good sense of humor about it) but what a waste.

Kristen Stewart

Imagine if a 19 year-old Brando had been caught up in a Twilight thing. Brando being Brando, he might have sunk into depression quicksand. Brando and Dean and Clift were almost blessed in that there were no corporate franchises when they were young and just starting to show their stuff. There was only the New York theatre and the glory days of live dramatic television and directors like Elia Kazan and Fred Zinneman and Nicholas Ray and George Stevens, etc. And yet they still found ways to be miserable. Actors are nothing if not resourceful.

I expect the usual-usual from Stewart in Jake Scott‘s Welcome to the Rileys (a young-stripper role, indie-level drama, costarring James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo) and especially Floria Sigismondi‘s The Runaways (as Joan Jett).

New Moon has earned a fair and appropriate 37% Rotten Tomatoes rating. I’m amazed and almost stunned that EW’s Lisa Schwarzbaum, the Chicago Tribune‘s Michael Phillips, the Minneapolis Star Tribune‘s Colin Calvert , the Washington Post‘s Michael O’Sulivan and the Philadelphpa Inquirer‘s Carrie Rickey could either (a) give a pass or (b) at the very least go easy on a film that is so draggy and dreary and lifeless.

Hands down the most idiotic-looking CG wolf in motion picture history. Who decided on the size of this thing? I’ll tell you who decided on the size of this thing. An idiot decided on the size of this thing.

The money it’s going to make — is making — this weekend doesn’t matter. Forget. The. Money. All I know is that I felt a palpable current and chemistry from Twilight that worked for what it was, and that this special whatever is utterly missing from New Moon.

Two days ago I was thinking or imagining that I might experience more of the same, and then I saw it Wednesday night and now it’s dead. The franchise, the heat, the interest, the cultural connectivity…all cess-pooled. New Moon will obviously make financial history this weekend but it’s a total zombie franchise now — it walks and morphs and vacuums up revenue and makes teenage girls swoon, but it’s made of dead gray tissue and huge, stupid-looking, dinosaur-size cartoon wolves.

It’s been smothered by Rob Friedman and Chris Weitz and all the other Summit bottom-liners who didn’t understand what they had. They’re be rolling in dough Monday morning, but they’ve totally killed the goose.