Month: December 2009

In the same 12.14 Jezebel interview, N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis has explained why romantic comedies are always fairly terrible, discussed the output of Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers, and explained why women pay to see crappy chick flicks regardless.

“One, the people making [romantic comedies] have no fucking taste,” Dargis says. “Two, they’re morons. Three, they’re insulting panderers who think they’re making movies for the great unwashed and that’s what they want. I love romantic movies. I absolutely do. But I literally don’t know what’s happening.

” I personally don’t think [Ephron or Meyers] is a good filmmaker — they make movies for me that are more emotionally satisfying but with barely any aesthetic value at all. I really like Something’s Gotta Give, but I don’t think it’s a good movie. I’m of two minds. Sometimes I think what women should do what various black and gay audiences have done, which is support women making movies for women. So does that mean I have to go support Nora Ephron? Fuck no. That’s just like, blecch.

“I think it’s depressing that Judd Apatow makes the best romantic comedies and they’re about men. All power to Apatow, but he’s taken and repurposed one of the few genres historically made for women. We had so few [genres] that were made specifically for the female audience and now the best of them are being made by Judd Apatow. But what are his movies supposed to be about? Nominally about the relationship between a man and a woman, but they’re really buddy flicks

“There’s a reason that women go to movies like Mamma Mia. It’s a terrible movie, but women are starved for representation of themselves. I go back to Spike Lee and She’s Gotta Have It. I remember going to see it at the Quad in New York, surrounded by a black audience. People are starved for representations of themselves.”

In the same outspoken 12.14 interview, N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis has responded harshly and (I think) hilariously to a quote from Hollywood.com’s box-office analyst Paul Degarabedian in a 10.25 Washington Post article by Ann Hornaday.

“What women like, at least for now, are traditional narratives,” Degarabedian said. (Note: PD always says stuff like this, repeating status-quo views on tastes and trends.) “There’s no Bourne Identity with a woman starring in it right now. It’s almost as if in real life, women want to be empowered and in control, but on-screen they seem to like the old-fashioned damsel-in-distress, love-struck female.

In response to which Dargis says, “Fuck him! What an asshole! Yes, that’s what I want! That’s exactly what I want. If Angelina Jolie had been cast in a movie as a good as The Bourne Identity with a filmmaker like Paul Greengrass, I would have gone out to see it, and I’m sure I wouldn’t be alone. That is absurd. That’s blaming female audiences – you get what you deserve? Is that what he’s saying?

“It’s a vicious cycle,” Dargis also says. “We’re not going to movies because there aren’t movies for us. Therefore we’re not seen as a loyal moviegoing audience. My point is that if there are stories about women, women will come out for that.

“That’s why [women] go to a movie like The Devil Wears Prada and make huge hits. They want to see women in movies. People in the trade press constantly frame that as a surprise. This, gee whiz…Sex and the City‘s a hit, Twilight, hmm…wonder what’s going on here? Maybe they should not be so surprised. In the trade press, women audiences are considered a niche. How is that even possible? We’re 51 percent of the audience.”

The Zelig virus is alive and well among the Indiana Film Journalists Association as far as its choices for Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor. The winners are/were (and I really do think we’re getting damn tired of this) Mo’Nique in Precious and Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds. respectively. They dared to be obsequious!

I’ll give this Hoosiers this much — they chose Up in the Air for Best Picture but they also chose Fantastic Mr. Fox for runner-up. Wes Anderson‘s film also won for Best Animated Film, beating out Up. The IFJA also chose Sin Nombre as Best Foreign Language Film — good. And The Cove for Best Documentary. Here‘s the rest.

If I could pick the winner of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar with a wave of my hand, I would give it to either Up In The Air‘s Vera Farmiga or Nine‘s Marion Cotillard. Primarily because they’re not Mo’Nique, but also because they play far more interesting women with greater portions of shading, strength and simple charm.

It’s easy to play two colors, as Mo’Nique does in Precious — i.e., repulsively malicious and boo-hoo-poor-me. It’s much harder to make a performance work without all the eyeball-glaring and emotional grandstanding, which is what Farmiga and Cotillard manage to do.

I admired the steady toughness in Cotillard’s wife-of-Guido performance, but especially the steel in her girlfriend-of-John-Dillinger role in Public Enemies, which of course is equal (if not superior) to her work in Nine. I’ve already noted that her entire Public Enemies performance can be summed up in that “bye-bye Blackbird” scene, and that she nails it cold.

And Farmiga achieves so much more in Up In The Air than Mo’Nique does in Precious….forget about it. The sexy-businesswoman warmth of her early scenes with Clooney, the calm frankness she radiates in counselling the heartbroken Natalie (Anna Kendrick) in that second-act bar scene, and the take-it-or-leave-it aloofness she conveys in her final conversation scene with Clooney. She’s really the greatest in this film, and yet Mo’Nique has the heat because…she’s badass Mo’Nique!

I wrote this morning that the cruelty in Mo’Nique’s Mary character is so malignant and beyond-the-pale that it seems like a perverse reach. What parent or human being with a shred of conscience or humanity wouldn’t recoil at such a fiendish depiction? And who the hell would vote for it? What good can it do to put such an aberrational life form in a movie? Mary is a simple case of evil sensationalism. You might as well feature a parent who kills and eats kittens every day — what’s the difference?

It’s very easy to be “evil.” The trick is to present evil in a way that (a) people recognize as something they’ve known within themselves or people they’ve run into, etc., or (b) has a commanding sense of style and pizazz.

I would also approve Anna Kendrick in Up in the Air — a much fresher and livelier performance with many more ingredients.

The New York Film Critics Circle’s website has announced that the results of today’s voting will not be announced in real time, which has been the standard deal for years. (WTF? Why do a rollback on a perfectly cool policy?) The winners will instead be posted online when voting is complete, or sometime after 1 pm. I’ll be at a Nine luncheon from that hour until 2:30 pm or so, so I guess I’ll just file from there.

N.Y. Post critic Lou Lumenick is “fairly sure” the NYFCC won’t choose The Hurt Locker for Best Picture because “they almost never go along with their Left Coast counterparts on principle. “Precious isn’t looking too good either, he says, due to the” awkward” factor stemming from NYFCC chairman Armond White, an African-American, having condemned Precious as racist. Nor does Lumenick see Avatar winning either, although a little voice is telling me that this could happen.

I know this much — if Up In The Air doesn’t win with the NYFCC, the Best Picture lock factor with the Academy will appear to have weakened. The big story of the next few weeks will be the Up In The Air cool-down factor will be discussed. I’ve already explained that if this happens, it’ll be due to gut-level reactions from pedestrian types who wanted love and hope from the film’s finale…but didn’t get that.

In a fair and just world A Serious Man will win the NYFCC’s Best Picture prize. This brilliant film needs a group like the NYFCC to stand up for it, which could result down the road (maybe) with the Coen brothers film being included among the Academy’s ten Best Picture nominees.

Here are some counter-riffs to Katey Rich‘s assessment on Cinema Blend of what’s happened so far with the critics’ group choices:

1. Rich: “The Hurt Locker is a formidable contender, but critic’s support might not translate at the Academy.” HE: In other words, the Academy will nominate a film for Best Picture, but it may not confirm the Big Win unless it’s made some serious dough (i.e., more than $12 million).

2. Rich: “Don’t mess with Mo’nique and Christoph Waltz, because they are apparently unbeatable.” HE: The critics who are voting for Mo’Nique and Waltz are spineless and easily-led sheep, listening primarily to the blah-blah conventional wisdom of last summer and the fall. I have nothing against Waltz per se, but I know why critics are voting for him — i.e., because he won a Best Actor award in Cannes and because they like to discover and promote a new face, especially a family man in his 40s who has been honest about having had a so-so career thus far.

3. Rich: “Despite the stellar reviews, Up in the Air isn’t the awards season steamroller it had the potential to become. That doesn’t mean it won’t win, though.” HE: This is because certain comfort-seeking critics have felt a bit deflated by the downish finale — by the fact that Up In The Air isn’t finally selling the kind of warmth and assurance that many people go to movies for.

4. Rich: “With the exception of Carey Mulligan, everyone seems to have forgotten that An Education ever happened — it wasn’t even in NYFCO’s top ten films.” HE: The NYFCO reflects geekish online culture, and An Education has a classy traditionalist vibe that’s a little outside the hip-dweeb barrier. But what’s going on with Mulligan losing to Meryl Streep and Yolande Moreau among the Boston and LAFCA groups? Has she peaked? Are journos rebelling against having heard over and over that Mullligan is the year’s big discovery, the new Audrey Hepburn, etc.?

5. Rich: “With the exception of Gabourey Sidibe and Mo’nique, everyone seems to have forgotten that Precious ever happened — it had scattered support for Best Picture and Best Director at NYFCO, but nothing too substantial.” HE: Good! Keep that ball in the air!

6. Rich: “Some people seem to still remember In the Loop — it won NYFCO’s Best Ensemble prize– and hooray for that.” HE: Agreed — a good thing.

7. Rich: “The Messenger didn’t take any major prizes among the critic’s groups, but it made AFI’s Top Ten and made it pretty deep into the voting rounds for several NYFCO prizes. It may only result in a Best Supporting Actor nod for Woody Harrelson, but there’s a lot of support for this film that’s being underestimated.” HE: Good for Woody, etc., but he was better in Zombieland.

The Hurt Locker was obviously the weekend’s big critics-group winner with three Best Picture wins from the Los Angeles Film Critics Associaton, the Boston Society of Film Critics and the Alliance of Women Journalists. But the relationship between The Hurt Locker and female moviegoers is the source of three regrettable ironies.

The AWJ win is ironic given that the main reason for Kathryn Bigelow‘s Iraq War film having only made $12 million is the fact that most women have refused to see it (or, as I’ve detected in recent Manhattan conversations, have claimed not to have even heard of it).

If Bigelow wins the Best Director Oscar it will be doubly ironic that a film by a female pioneer has been largely shunned by her own gender. No film outside of The Cove has gotten the shaft from female moviegoers like The Hurt Locker.

The third irony is that due to Hurt‘s underwhelming box-office Academy voters may be reluctant to vote it Best Picture. It’s a staple of industry thinking, of course, that a film deserving of being chosen Best Picture perhaps shouldn’t be chosen if it hasn’t made a decent amount of dough. So women moviegoers, in effect, will be the ones responsible for The Hurt Locker not winning the top prize, if and when. Proud of yourselves, guys?

Last night I asked a brilliant female friend and writer if she’s seen The Hurt Locker, and she immediately looked at the floor and said, “No, no…I have trepidations.” But it’s really not that violent, I replied. It’s mainly about tension and uncertainty — an existential razor’s edge thing. She was unmoved, and this is a woman who’s seen and loved The Cove!

Force-of-nature big shot Harvey Weinstein was the big winner this morning with the announcement that Nine and Inglourious Basterds had won 10 nominations each (including one each for Best Picture) from the Broadcast Film Critics Association, which does out the Critics Choice Movie Awards. The Weinstein Co. is the principal producer/distributor of both films.

But while Basterds helmer Quentin Tarantino received a Best Director nomination, Nine‘s director, Rob Marshall, was left out in the cold.

The numerous nominations accumulated by Nine/Basterds is partly due to the addition of several below-the-line craft categories.

The other BFCA Best Picture nommies are Avatar, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Invictus, Precious, A Serious Man, Up and Up in the Air.

The six Best Director nominees include Tarantino, Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), Lee Daniels (Precious), Clint Eastwood (Invictus), Jason Reitman (Up in the Air) and James Cameron (Avatar).

The BFCA consists of 235 television, radio and online film critics. The Critics Choice Movie Awards will occur on Friday, 1.15, at the Hollywood Palladium while going out live on VH1.

“The next time you want to talk some trash about what a provincial city Houston is, or how we all deserve to get blown away by a hurricane, consider this. And then consider this: In 2000, Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush in Houston. And in 2004, John Kerry got more votes than George W. Bush here. So there.” — Variety critic and author Joe Leydon, sent to yours truly this morning.

Wells to Leydon: I never called Houstonians provincial. I certainly wouldn’t in the wake of their having elected the openly gay Annise Parker their new mayor. I simply said that Hurricane Ike’s hitting Houston in September 2008 was a case of oil karma — i.e., a city living by the sword and suffering by the sword, that’s all. It’s Biblical.

As I wrote on 9.12.08, there are some situations in which you can’t be truthful because the viewers (or readers) simply won’t have it. Drawing a corollary between the oil industry, global warming and the Hurricane Ike devastation in the Galveston area was a no-brainer. Any climatologist would note the same thing if he/she were among friends and felt free to be honest. Anyone with a minimal understanding of the factors causing global warming would have quietly nodded if Al Gore had drawn this analogy, let’s say, on a radio talk show.

In a gathering today at Manhattan’s Walter Reade theatre, the NYFCO (New York Film Critics Online) voted on the following awards: Best Picture — Avatar (20th Century Fox….LITTLE BIT OF A GEEKY CHOICE BUT WE’RE TALKING ONLINE HERE…FINE); Best Actor — Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart); Best Actress — Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia…WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU GUYS?); Best Director — Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker…GOOD MOVE).

Plus Best Supporting Actor — Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds…ZELIGS!); Best Supporting Actress— Mo’Nique (Precious…GOATS PRODDED BY SHEPHERD’S STAFF…baaaah); Best Screenplay — Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino; Best Documentary — The Cove (Roadside Attractions); Best Foreign Language –The White Ribbon (Sony Classics); Best Animated feature — Up (Disney/Pixar).

I chatted last night with legendary director Whit Stillman, who’s been living in Manhattan and writing screenplays for the last several months after an extended expat period in Barcelona and Paris. The occasion was a screening at the 92YTribeca of Metropolitan (1990), which will have a 20th anniversary showing at next month’s Sundance Film Festival. Sometime during the first weekend, I was told, with a social gathering to follow. Calling all Stillman heads!

Stillman and Metropolitan star Chris Eigeman did a q&a after the screening, and then everyone hit the bar and drank beer.

My favorite Stillman film is Barcelona by far, but Metropolitan (which came out on a Criterion DVD in ’06) is still dryly amusing and faintly bizarre in its weird and chuckly anthropological way. It’s a carefully ordered tale of some Bush-era rich kids that has some of the sharpest (and at times almost surreal) young-person dialogue ever written.

In a certain sense Metropolitan is arguably a more interesting film now than it was in 1989/90. Because it shows more than ever that Stillman is Wes Anderson‘s uncle. (Or older brother, older cousin or whatever.) Because they both make/have made films about brilliant, curiously charismatic people who breathe rarified air and live on their own clouds. Stillman is a little more in the UHBs (urban haute bourgeoisie) than Anderson, but it’s a similar line of country.

Stillman and Anderson are also somewhat similar in the sense that they shoot with an exacting visual aesthetic. (Anderson a little more so). Plus they both dress nicely and have both lived in Paris (Stillman previously, Anderson currently) and probably share several other similarities. And yet they’ve never met, Stillman told me last night. Weird. (Hey, Wes? If you’re reading this get in touch and I’ll hook you guys up.)

Metropolitan/Barcelona/Last Days of Disco director Whit Stillman, Metropolitan star Chris Eigeman — Saturday, 12.12, 9:25 pm.

If you ask me Stillman laid the foundation, built the house and then moved to Europe, and then Anderson moved in and remodelled and made it his own. Anderson obviously has his own thematic signature that has manifested in many different ways, but I can’t help but think of Stillman’s three films (including The Last Days of Disco) when I think of Anderson’s. The linkage is unquestionable.

Anyway, it would be great to see Stillman get out of Director’s Jail and get back on the horse and start composing more films about witty rich oddballs who needs to find their souls. I would kill to see a Whit Stillman film about the Goldman Sachs culture — it’s a subject that has his name on it. Maybe if Anderson really and truly doesn’t feel that he wants to direct The Rosenthaler Suite (which I think he should), producer Brian Grazer could discuss it with Stillman, who’s one of the few directors who understands the ironic quirk character of uptown Manhattan realms.