Month: September 2010

This is the most satisfyingly shot and performed poker-playing scene in Hollywood history because it’s not about poker, but about two cheats trying to out-fuck each other. Paul Newman‘s smug and rascally confidence is key, but the whole thing really depends upon Robert Shaw‘s seething rage — the scene wouldn’t play without it. It’s all about boiling blood.

I can watch this all day long and never get bored because it’s perfectly shot, acted, lighted and timed. It’s the kind of thing that big-studio movies used to do really well. The emphasis was just so.

Until last night I’d never seen this grainy copy of a b & w still, obviously taken from a cut scene in John Boorman‘s Deliverance (’72). Apparently a long-after-the-fact scene, or perhaps one of Jon Voight‘s nightmares. The Aintry Sheriff (James Dickey) has found a decomposed body, and has summoned Voight, Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty to identify and explain.

Last night TheWrap‘s Sharon Waxman reported about a seemingly horrific atmosphere at the Hollywood Reporter. The new guys — i.e., the gossipy chip-chippies hired by new honcho Janice Min, formerly of Us magazine — are talking only amongst themselves while the trade-wise old guard are suffering in morose isolation.

“The outward changes at the new Hollywood Reporter have led to an estrangement inside the newsroom between Janice Min and the staff she has brought in, and the veteran journalists who take orders from the newbies and are otherwise ignored,” says Waxman.

“The alienation has become so severe that the legacy staffers have a secret name for the new team: ‘The Others,’ according to several insiders.

“The pre-Min journalists live in a strange purgatory” — Gregg Kilday, we feel your pain! — “where they have little say and less contact with the new team. The painful word from inside the newsroom at THR is that Min (above, left) has little to do with them — doesn’t speak to them, or look people in the eye.”

I’ve been through similar newsroom vibes (such as when I worked at Entertainment Tonight in ’98 under Linda Bell Blue), and there is nothing worse in the entire world that to be on the wrong side of these henhouse dynamics. It’s all about politics and closed doors and Rasputin-like plotting and acute psychological terror. It’s awful.

“As WaxWord has written about recently, Min has started to implement her plan to take THR to a more consumer, celebrity-focused publication.

“Min has not bothered with diplomatic niceties with the staff that was previously in place, and is not winning any friends among them either. (Said one: ‘She didn’t even introduce herself to numerous key people,’ and hasn’t acknowledged them since arriving)

“Min did not respond to emails and two phone messages seeking a response.

“While Elizabeth Guider is still technically the editor, she currently functions as a ‘glorified reporter,’ as one person put it, with no management or editorial decision-making power.

“Instead, all headline and important editorial decisions are made by Min and her team, communicated via email to managing editors Mike Barnes and Todd Cunningham.

“But word is they are looking for a new managing editor, presumably to report to Owen Phillips, the former editor of the Wall Street Journal‘s glossy magazine, who is now Min’s executive editor. Most think that the ME job is likely to go to another former Us Weekly staffer. Min continues to add those people to her team.

“Meanwhile a new Human Resources director, installed by Min, has an office off the newsroom instead of where the administration people sit. Even that executive talks not to colleagues on the floor, but to Min — and gives the strong impression that she’s taking notes about what’s going on around her.”

“Change is tough all around, but the split editorial personality at THR noted by many is apparently borne out in the day-to-day of the newsroom.”

For me, the most enticing short-burst appraisal of Darren Aronofsky‘s Black Swan was penned two days ago by First Showing’s Alex Billington.

Two key portions: (a) “Wow. Now I know who I’m going to be rooting for to win the Best Actress Oscar next year”; and (b) “A brilliant, psychologically intense film that takes the audience on a very operatic thrill ride. I truly believe Aronofsky has outdone himself once again. [He’s] achieved a mesmerizing and utterly brilliant fusion of two performance mediums — theater (specifically ballet) and film in an extraordinary way that…we’ve never seen before.”

Updated, corrected: The first MCN Gurus o’ Gold Best Picture chart was posted last night, and it’s nothing. It’s too early, nobody knows zip — everyone’s hedging or spitballing or opting for safe ground. It’s significant, though, that each and every Guru — Greg Ellwood, Pete Hammond, Peter Howell, Dave Karger, David Poland, Sasha Stone, Kris Tapley, Anne Thompson, Suzie Woz — voted for Tom Hooper‘s newly-arrived The King’s Speech.

Of the top sixteen films — Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King’s Speech, Toy Story 3, The Social Network, Black Swan, True Grit, Another Year, The Fighter, Love and Other Drugs, 127 Hours, Winter’s Bone, How Do You Know, Never Let Me Go, Hereafter, The Tree of Life — eight are looking like possible (but not likely…not yet) soft sisters:

(a) Toy Story 3 — It’s pointless to explain to the Gurus (or to anyone for that matter) that as superb as Toy Story 3 is, predicting that the Academy will nominate it for Best Picture is (a) an acknowledgment of and tribute to its quality as well as a lament about live-action features often coming up short, and (b) is essentially a futile wheel-spinning exercise as it’s probably not going to be Best Picture-nominated, and is all but locked to win the Best Animated Feature Oscar.

(b) How Do You Know/Everything You’ve Got — I’ve been sensing for years that the spirit has been seeping out of James L. Brooks. It would be delightful if he wasn’t “past it” in terms of Oscar-worthy material, but I suspect that he is. He’s not the guy he was in the ’80s and early ’90s. I think he’s aged out. As Good As It Gets was the last time it all seemed to connect in the right way. I don’t think I’m alone is saying that Spanglish was the death knell. Brooks’ apparent inability to decide whether to call his film How Do You Know or Everything You’ve Got obviously indicates a shaky focus.

(c) Winter’s Bone — Never a strong Best Picture contender; the heat has always been with Best Actress contender Jennifer Lawrence.

(d) Hereafter — I’ve read Peter Morgan‘s script, and I’ve considered what Anne Thompson had to say to Kris Tapley about how Hereafter has been playing with the early-looksee crowd. And there’s reason to suspect that it’s not a strike, and that two or three or more pins will be left standing.

(e) Love and Other Drugs — The Ed Zwick factor has indicated from the get-go that this romantic dramedy wouldn’t a hot prospect for Best Picture status. It’s always looked like an Anne Hathaway for Best Actress thing — that’s the only thing I’m half-convinced of.

(f) Another Year — Admired as they always are (and for all the right reasons), Mike Leigh‘s films don’t tend to penetrate the Oscar realm.

(g) Never Let Me Go — Some feel it’s a brilliant masterwork; others are calling it a chilly dispiriting piece about meekly submitting to cruel fate. Indications are that critics and Academy members will continue to express divided opinion.

(h) 127 Hours — The red-arm factor — nausea, aversion — may be a problem down the road, or it may settle down and go away. The Telluride reviews have been very good, but there does seem (key operative term) to be a vulnerability in this regard.

That leaves seven rock-solids — Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King’s Speech, The Social Network, Black Swan, True Grit, The Tree of Life — and a complete unknown with David O. Russell‘s The Fighter. And who’s to say that True Grit is a major Coen Bros. film? They can be rote — they don’t have to be brilliant.

And what about The Tourist, The Conspirator, Biutiful, The Way Back, etc.?

Bill McCuddy of Forbes.com (and Fox News entertainment guy for several years) wrote yesterday on his Facebook page that he’d seen a sneak of Ed Zwick‘s Love And Other Drugs. He described it as a “light romantic comedy about a girl” — played by Anne Hathaway — “with Parkinson’s disease. Hathaway good [but] movie mediocre. (Bonus points for not doing a ‘shaky prospects at box office’ joke.)”

McCuddy’s view strenuously argues with several non-pro opinions noted in this space for several months running. On top of which it’s not about “a girl with Parkinson’s” as much as about a ladies’ man-slash-viagra salesman (Jake Gyllenhaal) who falls in love with Hathaway and the growth-struggle trip that results, etc. I’ve tried twice since yesterday to engage McCuddy in a detailed discussion, but he didn’t want the attention or he’s lost his phone.

I’ve had justifiable concerns about Zwick for years and have never trusted buzz about the film being a home run or a triple, but I’ve definitely read over and over about Hathaway’s performance being the shit.

Critics aren’t allowed to like Jeannot Szwarc‘s Somewhere In Time (1980), in part because it’s been a huge sentimental hit with the wrong crowd for so many years. I’m not much of a fan, but I am a huge admirer of the final out-of-body and into-the-light sequence that ends the film. No, not the version shown in this YouTube clip, but a version that I saw at a critics’ screening nearly 30 years ago…but which hasn’t been seen since.

I asked about this when I happened to run into Somewhere in Time‘s cinematographer Isidore Mankofsky at the 2004 Newport Beach Film Festival. I told him that I’d always admired the finale as originally composed — a longish, ambitiously choreographed tracking shot meant to show what Christopher Reeve‘s character is experiencing as he passes from life into death.

My recollection is that it was assembled without edits with the camera adopting Reeve’s POV — leaving his body, slowly rising up to the ceiling and then slowly gliding toward a window and into a white light cloudscape, and eventually into the arms of Reeve’s lover Jane Seymour, who’s waiting at the end of a longish tunnel. It sounds a bit sappy, but it was quite moving and technically very cool. But then I’ve always been a sucker for any extended sequence pulled off without cuts or visual trickery of any kind.

Mankofsky told me that as the film was about to be released some executive at Universal decided that the shot went on a bit too long and had it trimmed with a couple of fade-edits. What resulted is the version you see above. This was vandalism, pure and simple. Mankofsky said that as far as he knew the original cut of this closing sequence no longer exists…but he wasn’t entirely sure.

A short pip-pip-pip from the Telluride-attending Glenn Zoller: “I know I’m late in chiming in, but Tom Hooper‘s The King’s Speech is an easy lock for Best Picture, Best Actor (Colin Firth) and Best Supporting Actor (Geoffrey Rush). Very much a crowd-pleaser at Telluride in the same way Slumdog Millionaire, Walk The Line, The Reader, Babel, Brokeback Mountain and Juno have been.”

Here’s Kris Tapley‘s Telluride interview with Hooper, Firth and Rush.

I don’t personally know Michael Douglas, but I know people who know him and have heard he’s not one for sentiment. He’s presumably proud or very satisfied with his work in Wall Street 2 and Solitary Man, but the last thing he’d want would be a sympathy vote for Best Actor. So no more of this talk, a little dignity, no need, etc.

“Gemma Arterton has a slight chance for consideration for Tamara Drewe, certainly for a Golden Globe nod, right alongside Easy A‘s Emma Stone.” — Sasha Stone, “The State of the Race — Dream Big,” 9.6.

Arterton has a chance, yes. She has a chance of surviving the stink-bomb mushroom cloud effect of Tamara Drewe, arguably the most loathsome film of Stephen Frears‘ long and distinguished career. Emma Stone is a gifted personality-driven actress who’s made a breakthrough with Easy A, and that’s all. No, that’s not true — the HFPA whores will nominate almost anyone in a comedy-musical context. I spoke too soon.

Being one of those who excerpted and linked to Eugene Novikov‘s Cinematical review of Peter Weir‘s The Way Back, I feel obliged to link to Kris Tapley‘s counter-review, and particularly his feeling that Novikov’s review “completely misrepresents the film.

“Starting with the first line, Novikov says Weir’s film is ‘sadistically intent on making you feel as much of its subjects’ physical agony as possible,'” Tapley notes. “It’s a struggle, to be sure. This isn’t a happy time in these people’s lives. But there’s nothing here defying convention when it comes to a survival film, so why the hyperbole? And ‘sadistic’ is an unfortunate adjective because it assumes a twisted sort of intention, which isn’t true at all.

“If Weir is being ‘sadistic,’ then I’d love to hear what Novikov thinks Danny Boyle is doing in 127 Hours.”

http://incontention.com/?p=28043#more-28043

Martin Scorsese and Kent Jones‘ Letter to Elia “doesn’t ignore Kazan’s 1952 testimony,” writes The Independent‘s Geoffrey Macnab. “But the film turns out to be as much about Scorsese as it is about Kazan.

“What does it take to be a film director? Scorsese believes that his hero possessed ‘a very thick skin and a very sensitive soul.’ As a child growing up in 1950s New York, Scorsese used to ‘stalk’ new Kazan films, following them as they moved from cinema to cinema. He always watched them alone.

“After he had paid his 12 or 15 cents for a ticket, he was ‘safe and at peace’. Kazan’s On The Waterfront showed a New York that he recognized. He grew up in the same tenements that Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint and co lived in and knew the type of characters Kazan portrayed: the street toughs and the kids who kept pigeons on the rooftops. The film that had the most profound impact on Scorsese, though, was Kazan’s East Of Eden, with its febrile performance by James Dean and its anguished account of a family coming apart at the seams.

“A Letter To Elia works on many different levels. On one hand, it is a mini-masterclass on Kazan’s work from a director of similar stature. On another, it is a perceptive character study.

“Scorsese is fascinated by Kazan’s background as an Anatolian Greek whose family emigrated to the US and then fought for their stake there. But the film doesn’t lumber us with many personal details. Scorsese’s real focus is on the movies. It is his contention that ‘maybe you learn more from the work than the man’. By studying Kazan’s films, especially his autobiographical America America (1963), you discover far more than you might from interviews or biographies.

“The most fascinating aspect of the documentary is how much Scorsese reveals about his own obsessions. He plays certain scenes from East Of Eden showing Dean in a dark corridor, off to confront his prostitute mother, again and again. He even makes us look afresh at Brando’s ‘I could have been a contender’ monologue from On The Waterfront.

“Only an hour long, the film is unlikely to have much play in cinemas. It will not have anything like the exposure of Shutter Island or The Departed. However, this is a film admirers of Kazan, and of Scorsese, will be desperate to see.”