Month: September 2010

Last night I read Jeffrey Goldberg‘s Atlantic piece about the apparent likelihood that if Barack Obama doesn’t man up and do something about Iran’s nuclear-bomb capability (aside from economic sanctions, which aren’t likely to influence anything), Israel will probably bomb Iran’s nuclear sites sometime next year. Which will bring hard rain down upon everyone and everything, to put it mildly.

“You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs,” Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells Goldberg. “When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the world should start worrying, and that’s what is happening in Iran.”

Israel, Goldberg explains, “is worried about an entire complex of problems, not only that Iran, or one of its proxies, would destroy Tel Aviv; like most Israeli leaders, he believes that if Iran gains possession of a nuclear weapon, it will use its new leverage to buttress its terrorist proxies in their attempts to make life difficult and dangerous; and he fears that Israel’s status as a haven for Jews would be forever undermined, and with it, the entire raison d’etre of the 100-year-old Zionist experiment.

“Robert Gates, the American defense secretary, said in June at a meeting of NATO defense ministers that most intelligence estimates predict that Iran is one to three years away from building a nuclear weapon. ‘In Israel, we heard this as nine months from June — in other words, March of 2011,’ one Israeli policy maker told me. “If we assume that nothing changes in these estimates, this means that we will have to begin thinking about our next step beginning at the turn of the year.”

“The Netanyahu government is already intensifying its analytic efforts not just on Iran, but on a subject many Israelis have difficulty understanding: President Obama. The Israelis are struggling to answer what is for them the most pressing question: are there any circumstances under which President Obama would deploy force to stop Iran from going nuclear? Everything depends on the answer.”

The article begins as follows:

“It is possible that at some point in the next 12 months, the imposition of devastating economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran will persuade its leaders to cease their pursuit of nuclear weapons. It is also possible that Iran’s reform-minded Green Movement will somehow replace the mullah-led regime, or at least discover the means to temper the regime’s ideological extremism. It is possible, as well, that ‘foiling operations‘ conducted by the intelligence agencies of Israel, the United States, Great Britain, and other Western powers — programs designed to subvert the Iranian nuclear effort through sabotage and, on occasion, the carefully engineered disappearances of nuclear scientists — will have hindered Iran’s progress in some significant way. It is also possible that President Obama, who has said on more than a few occasions that he finds the prospect of a nuclear Iran ‘unacceptable,’ will order a military strike against the country’s main weapons and uranium-enrichment facilities.

“But none of these things — least of all the notion that Barack Obama, for whom initiating new wars in the Middle East is not a foreign-policy goal, will soon order the American military into action against Iran — seems, at this moment, terribly likely. What is more likely, then, is that one day next spring, the Israeli national-security adviser, Uzi Arad, and the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, will simultaneously telephone their counterparts at the White House and the Pentagon, to inform them that Netanyahu has just ordered roughly one hundred F-15Es, F-16Is, F-16Cs, and other aircraft of the Israeli air force to fly east toward Iran — possibly by crossing Saudi Arabia, possibly by threading the border between Syria and Turkey, and possibly by traveling directly through Iraq’s airspace, though it is crowded with American aircraft.

“In these conversations, which will be fraught, the Israelis will tell their American counterparts that they are taking this drastic step because a nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people. The Israelis will also state that they believe they have a reasonable chance of delaying the Iranian nuclear program for at least three to five years. They will tell their American colleagues that Israel was left with no choice. They will not be asking for permission, because it will be too late to ask for permission.”

“Essentially a two-hander carried by Don and Peggy, last night’s electrifying Mad Men episode once again reinforced just why the 60’s set series deserved last week’s Best Drama Emmy,” says producer Richard Drew in an Atlantic.com discussion. “This really was TV at its best and yet more proof that we’re in a golden age of the medium. No wonder movie attendance is on the downturn.

“Last night’s show used the famous Cassius Clay/Sonny Liston rematch as a backdrop, but the real battle was between Don and Peggy, as they bonded and battled through the night, ostensibly over a Samsonite account but in reality the discussions were about much, much more.

“Neither character left the office for the whole episode and though a few characters came and went, essentially it was just Don and Peggy for a whole hour of TV. Yet the pace never slackened. Sometimes acting like father and daughter, at times brother and sister, and occasionally even squabbling lovers, this was a wonderfully unpredictable episode. A lesser show would have had Don and Peggy indulging in a one-night stand, but Mad Men is smart enough to always keep us on the edge. The drama could have gone in so many different directions.

“I love the bond between Don and Peggy, the secrets they share and the jagged mix of frustration and respect they feel for one another. By the end of the episode both had reached a temporary detente — but there’s no doubt there’ll be further battles ahead.”

Here’s a blow-by-blow summary from Movieline‘s Stu Van Airsdale.

With a more or less unanimous “not good enough” verdict delivered at last week’s Venice Film Festival, Sofia Coppola‘s Somewhere — which won’t open until 12.24, and will probably be hiding out for the next couple of months — can now relax. Impressions of it not being a Lost in Translation-level thing — a mildly meandering mood piece — means it’s probably out of the awards game. Which takes the load off. I won’t see it for a while, but Richard Corliss‘s Time review (filed from Venice) seemed like the best-written assessment.

“Over the past decade, directors of movies and TV shows have gone nuts with shaky-cam technique. Bless Coppola for keeping her camera still, but she goes to the other extreme, of European minimalism. Like [Stephen Dorff‘s] Johnny, the movie is an object in stasis. In the whole movie the camera moves only a few times, and then just to give a slighter wider or closer view of the same static image (like Johnny’s head caked in makeup goo for a monster mark).

“Other directorial ideas smell of freshman film school: the opening shot, of Johnny driving in a wide circle six or eight times, matched by the closing shot, of Johnny leaving his car to walk straight down a highway. The film is sometimes too obvious, often too opaque.

“The blase-faire strategy extends to the main character. Coppola is to be cheered for not editorializing about Johnny; he’s not a walking placard for Hollywood excess, not a desperate artist. He’s really not much of anything. And he’s not played by a star whose previous roles could give a hint to his internal makeup.

“In Lost in Translation, Murray’s soft, saddish face, and of course his quarter-century playing louche funnymen, brought a comic attitude to the quiet, precisely observed proceedings. Dorff, 37, started acting on TV when he was Chloe’s age, in an episode of The New Leave It to Beaver, and starred in Backbeat (as original bass player Stu Sutcliffe) and Blade. Handsome, but not distractingly so, he has an agreeably crinkled face that could reveal his character’s emotions, if Johnny wanted to convey any.

“What Dorff lacks, no insult intended, is a clearly defined movie personality that would help clue the viewer to what’s going on inside Johnny — and, for that matter, inside the film.

“Those secrets must be gleaned from the gifted young actress playing Johnny’s daughter. The younger sister of Dakota Fanning, Elle gives Cleo a fresh, winning goodness. She likes rock ‘n roll, cooking, figure skating and Twilight. She’s something you don’t find in most movies, especially movies about movie people — a nice, normal kid — and Coppola must have been tempted to make Cleo the central character. But the writer-director resists any plot device as stark as redemption. Johnny is on his own at the end of the film, and viewers will have to intuit that, for this Hollywood nomad, Cleo’s heart is his true home. She is the somewhere he needs to get to.”

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2016207,00.html#ixzz0yljxUZ9I

Jean-Luc Godard‘s girlfriend and partner Anne-Marie Mieville has explained to The Australian‘s Matthew Campbell and John Follain why the legendary French director will not be personally accepting his special Oscar. “Jean-Luc won’t go to America,” she says, largely because he won’t be given the award on the Oscar show itself, but at some piddly pre-Oscar event in November.

Bottom line: You don’t relegate the great Jean-Luc Godard to a side-show. For what it’s worth, I agree. I’d tell the Academy to shove it also.

“‘He just told me, ‘It’s not the Oscars,’ Mieville says, referring to Godard’s reaction on learning about the award. ‘At first he thought it was going to be part of the same ceremony, then he realized it was a separate thing in November.’

“Not that it would make any difference, she says. ‘He’s getting old for that kind of thing. Would you go all that way just for a bit of metal?'”

Answer: Yes, Godard would go all that way if he was assured of a golden gleaming moment on the actual Oscar telecast.

“Mieville says it is likelier that ‘someone from his production team’ will be there to represent Godard, and she rejects suggestions that his silence is a snub to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences or a reflection of his well-documented scorn for Hollywood values.

“‘He will reply to the letter,’ Mieville says.”

When…in November? Godard is right to blow the Academy off, but he’s obviously doing so without showing much respect. Not replying to a formal invitation in a timely fashion is an unmistakable “eff you” in any culture or social situation.

There are scores of generic movie-dialogue lines that everyone recites on cue. “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” “Laugh it up, fuzzball,” “”Jack, I swear,” “Who are those guys?,” “I can see you’re really upset about this, Dave,” etc. Basic stuff, right?

But the greatest loser line of all time — “I’ve been waiting all my life to fuck up like this” — has yet to make it into the pantheon. Run a search and it doesn’t pop up on any of those movie-dialogue sites. Which doesn’t seem right. Because this is a great and lasting utterance — one of the truly resonant and mythical lines of ’70s cinema.

The reason it hasn’t caught on, I suppose, is that despairing humor doesn’t connect with people all that well. People don’t like to chuckle about the possibility (one that is actually quite vivid and unmistakable in many instances) that their lives haven’t amounted to much, and that one way to quantify or evaluate this state of affairs is by those little realization-of-failure moments, as opposed to moments of pride and glory at some black-tie awards dinner.

When I first heard this line some 32 years ago, I saw myself as teetering on the edge of loserdom. I hadn’t really made it as a journalist, and had begun to consider the possibility that I might eventually enervate myself to death, or simply get sent to the showers. I was half-confident but also half-dispirited, and the latter was gaining. It had gotten to the point that I was starting to develop a bitter sense of humor about my prospects.

So when Michael Moriarty said this line about 35 minutes into Karel Riesz‘s Who’ll Stop The Rain?, I didn’t just chuckle or laugh — I went “hah!” and slapped my leg in tribute. A movie had finally said what that little man inside my chest (i.e., the one who had reminded me of my low self-esteem since I was seven or eight years old) had been whispering for years. Hang in there, Jeff — your greatest fuck-up is yet to come.

Every couple of years I’m going to chime in and remind everyone of this line (which was taken straight from Robert Stone‘s “Dog Soldiers,” which this film was called until the Orion marketing guys got scared and switched titles). I wrote about it a couple of years ago, and I’ll probably do it again in 2012. By the time I’ve quit doing this column maybe my tenacity will have had an impact. Maybe.

There’s also this Rain passage, a back-and-forth between Nick Nolte and Tuesday Weld, and this chess-playing scene between Richard Masur and Ray Sharkey.

I’ve said over and over that 21st Century dramas, action-driven or otherwise, could really use more dialogue of this calibre. “More” is actually a generous allowance because this kind of sharp, echo-filled, rebop dialogue has all but disappeared from movies entirely. Tell me I’m wrong.

A summer 2010 summary piece by Lewis Beale had been locked behind a pay wall, and now it’s free: “As far as the film industry was concerned, summer 2010 was seriously bipolar,” it begins. “The first half looked like the biz was on its last legs, at least creatively. Sure, there were some hits, but almost everyone agreed that Iron Man 2 wasn’t as good as Iron Man, Robin Hood wasn’t even close to being a great Robin Hood, and Shrek Forever After was possibly the lamest entry in the series.

“All these films (and several others) were not exactly original concepts, which seemed to confirm the notion that Hollywood was devoid of new ideas.

“Then came Inception, and all of a sudden, things changed. Love it or hate it, Christopher Nolan‘s jigsaw puzzle of a film was certainly something new, which audiences, and most critics, responded to — it has grossed over $260 million. And it was complemented by other solid entries like Despicable Me and Salt, which put a new spin on old genres, and The Expendables, an ’80s muscles and mayhem concept so old that it seemed new again.

“So, heading into the fall season, the business isn’t as bad as it looked back in early June. And as always, there were plenty of winners and losers emerging from the summer season.”

LOSERS [Note: to hell with quotation marks from here on]

1. Tom Cruise — Knight and Day opened to generally meh reviews — 55% positive on the Rottentomatoes.com scale of critical rankings — and blah business. Cruise’s last film, Valkyrie, also under-performed, which means that

until Mission: Impossible IV comes out — supposedly at the end of next year – Cruise’s once blazing hot career has cooled down to a slow burning ember. And the star’s stated intention to make a movie based around Les Grossman, the film executive character he played in Tropic Thunder, sounds like an act of desperation. How many movies based on what are essentially comedy sketches have been any good?

2. Chick Flicks — Both Eat Pray Love and Sex and the City 2 were trashed by the critics (38% and 16% positive, respectively, on the Rottentomatoes scale) and neither managed to recoup their inflated budgets at the domestic box office. The narcissism and rampant consumerism of both films turned plenty of people off, and in this era of economic downturn and joblessness, the single-minded entitlement of both films’ protagonists was like a poke in the eye with a stick. Not what folks want to see at the multiplex.

3. M. Night Shyamalan — The Last Airbender received an 8% positive on the Rotten Tomatoes scale, one of the worst ratings ever, and even though the film has grossed over $130 million (on a $150 million budget), the days when M.

Knight was considered a real talent are over, over, over. After a string of bombs including The Village, Lady In the Water and The Happening, he’s permanently joined the ranks of big budget hacks. And Hollywood already has plenty of those.

4. Jerry Bruckheimer — The mega-producer didn’t exactly have a mega-box office summer — Prince of Persia and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice underwhelmed critically and commercially. But shed no tears for Mr. Bruckheimer: a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie is in the works.

5. 3D — Avatar in 3D was great. Cats and Dogs in 3D? Who cares? Fact is, filmgoers have become more and more disenchanted with the 3D format, and are ever more reluctant to pay the extra ticket cost,

especially when, as in the case of a film like Clash of the Titans, a late switch from 2D to 3D produces lousy effects. Nearly 80% of filmgoers saw Avatar in 3D, but only 45% of the gross for the hit animated film Despicable Me came from that format. Hollywood loves to beat a trend to death: there are nearly 60 3D films due out in the next two years. How many will audiences actually shell out the extra bucks

for?

6. Jennifer Aniston — Girl can’t seem to catch a break. She’s been starring in a string of lousy movies, like The Bounty Hunter and Love Happens, both of which received Rottentomatoes ratings under 20%. Her latest, The Switch, which earned an improved, but still lousy, ranking of 52% positive, took in a pathetic $8 million on its opening weekend. And after a slew of bad love affairs, she’s even relinquished the crown of America’s Most Sympathetic Dumped-On Movie Star to Sandra Bullock. Jen needs to get into career rehab, pronto.

WINNERS

1. Adam Sandler — Grown Ups received a putrid 10% positive rating on Rottentomatoes – one critic called it “puerile and aggressively stupid” — but that didn’t seem to matter to Sandler’s fans, who turned out in droves. The film has grossed over $150 million, confirming its star’s status as easily the most critic-proof actor in the

business.

2. Stieg Larsson — He’s the Swedish author of the unstoppable Millenium Trilogy juggernaut. Not only have the three books become Godzilla-like international bestsellers, but the films based on them have hit a home run. The first, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, grossed $12 million in this country, a monster figure for a foreign-language feature. The second, The Girl Who Played With Fire, has taken in over $6 million to date. The third film, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest, is due out in October. And with an English-language version of the first book, starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara and directed by David Fincher (Zodiac) in the works, this unstoppable force will keep on keepin’ on. Too bad Larsson died in 2004, before he could enjoy this financial bounty.

3. Pixar — Toy Story 3 got rave reviews, humongous box office. What else is new? This animation house can do no wrong.

4. Christopher Nolan — First The Dark Knight. Then Inception. Writer-director Nolan makes brainy popcorn pictures that are hailed by critics and make tons of money. Right now, he’s the hottest talent in Hollywood.

5. Indie Pix — Buoyed by good reviews and the general absence of quality flicks released by the major studios, a number of independent films scored with audiences. The Kids Are All Right, Cyrus, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Winter’s Bone, I Am Love and several other films helped reverse a long downturn in the sophisticated film market.

6. Vampires — The latest entry in the Twilight series, Eclipse, grossed nearly $300 million. A low-budget spoof, Vampires Suck, recouped its entire production budget in its first week of release. Coupled with the monster success of HBO’s vampire series True Blood, this means our national obsession with sexy bloodsuckers is either a really cool trend, or The End of Civilization As We Know It.

7. Sylvester Stallone — Sly has been recycling his greatest hits for several years now, with varying degrees of success: Rocky Balboa (2006) was a hit, Rambo (2008) wasn’t. But who would have predicted that the ’80s throwback action flick The Expendables, with its AARP-eligible cast (average age: 51.5), would open at number one, with a healthy $35 million gross? And that nearly 40% of the opening weekend audience would be composed of women? Why? Probably because filmgoers are nostalgic for the macho casts of the past, and are tired of CGI explosions, films filled with high-tech babble and male stars who look like nerdy teens (i.e., Michael Cera). No matter what, Sly sure figured out what audiences wanted with his latest production. At 64, he’s a superstar all over again.

Why doesn’t DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze let his hair down and just say it? A Bluray of Jean Luc-Godard‘s Breathless (1960), which was shot on the cheap using natural light for the most part, can’t look that crisp or shimmering. It’s just a cool little landmark black-and white film, but hardly a Greg Toland masterwork. Restoring it was a good thing, but a regular Criterion DVD (which is also available) will more than suffice.

Jean Seberg in a frame capture from Criterion’s Bluray of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, an essential film to see and know and discuss with some authority, but which can’t look that good.

“Christopher Nolan proved there is always room at the multiplex, even in swimsuit season, for a smart, original story. Will Ferrell bounced back. Michael Cera fell flat. Animation was the No. 1 genre. Sorry, Sex and the City ladies: It’s over.” — N.Y. Times reporter Brooks Barnes in a summer-wrap-up piece that will appear in tomorrow morning’s print edition.

The big winner was Sony, which “owned all of its wide releases and delivered hit after hit, albeit on levels lower than most of its rivals,” Barnes reports. “Sony’s modestly budgeted remake of The Karate Kid was one of the summer’s biggest surprises, rocketing to $176 million in North America. Although Eat Pray Love was soft, the studio also scored with Grown Ups, Salt and The Other Guys.”

Yesterday’s news that Anton Corbijn and George Clooney‘s The American would out-perform Machete by a million or so was surprising enough, but now guess what? Machete has fallen to third place behind Takers and is now looking at $11 million or so for the weekend. What a tumble! I presume it’s that word-of-mouth Trejo + Rodriguez + too-much-blood-and-wanking-around factor. A major stunner for Team Rodriguez. Right now they’re all sitting around with forlorn faces and asking themselves, “What happened?”

The American is now estimated to finish with about $16.3 million, Takers (down 44% from last weekend) will snag about $11.4 million, and Machete, as noted, will earn about $11 million. Followed by The Last Exorcism ($7.6 million), Going the Distance ($6.8million), The Expendables ($6.6 million with a $92.2 milllon cume), The Other Guys ($5.4 million, $106.9 million total), Eat Pray Love ($4,850,000 with a $69 million cume) and Inception ($4,550,000 with $277 million total).

So what have we learned so far from the dual unfoldings of the Venice and Telluride film festivals? Neither has ended, of course, and there are always different perspectives and views, of course, and no one senses finality, of course, but here’s a stab:

At today’s Sunday panel at Telluride Film Festival (l. to r.): Real-life arm-slice guy Aron Ralston, 127 Hours director Danny Boyle, James Franco, moderator Annette Insdorf, The Way Back director Peter Weir, Werner Herzog. (Photo by Glenn Zoller)

(a) Darren Aronofsky‘s Black Swan may or may not be more of a favorite among impassioned dweeb critics (i.e., the Guy Lodge contingent) than a staunchly consensus-propelled Best Picture contender, but red-eyed Natalie Portman is apparently close to the front of the pack for a Best Actress nomination.

(b) Danny Boyle‘s 127 Hours is a very possible Best Picture contender, and James Franco is looking like a close-to-locked Best Actor contender…maybe. Depending on visceral reactions to the red-arm factor.

(c) Tom Hooper‘s The King’s Speech is an audience-pleaser and an awards contender. Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush are looking at possible acting award noms. “No doubt Harvey’s already got one of the ten Best Picture slots locked up for this,” Deadline’s Pete Hammond wrote yesterday.

(d) Mark Romanek‘s Never Let Me Go is apparently going to encounter divided reactions, half of them having kitten litters in the David Poland mode (“masterpiece”) and half of them saying “but why don’t they rebel or run for it?” in the Kris Tapley-Anthony Breznican-Roger Moore-ish view of things.

(e) A consensus is forming that Peter Weir‘s The Way Back, which many if not most critics admired or at least respected, needs to be at least platform-released at the end of 2010. Newmarket is reportedly planning to release the survival drama in early 2011 without any kind of minimal awards-qualifying release in late 2010. (And why, by the way, isn’t The Way Back showing at Toronto?)

(f) Sofia Coppola‘s Somewhere, generally regarded as a minor effort compared to Lost in Translation, is out of the awards game altogether (although Stephen Dorff‘s performance is the best career move he’s managed in a very long time).

(g) Errol Morris‘ Tabloid has a better-than-decent shot to finish as one of the five Best Feature Documentary nominees…maybe.

(h) Shlomi Eldar‘s Precious Life, “the agonizing story of a young Gaza woman who goes to an Israeli hospital to save the life of her five month old son Muhammad suffering from the same genetic disease that took the lives of her other two children,” may also become a Best Feature Doc contender by way of the industry factor.

(i) No one is going to pay any attention to Kelly Reichardt‘s Meek’s Cutoff, in part because Meek’s Cutoff is one of the worst movie titles ever imagined by anyone in the history of dramatic presentation. I mean, it’s worse that Winter’s Bone.

Danny Boyle‘s 127 Hours “has been expertly brought to the screen by [a] director who finds a way to put ‘urgency’ in every frame,” Deadline‘s Pete Hammond writes from Telluride, “despite the fact that the entire film is basically one man vs. the elements.”

The film is “a tour-de-force for James Franco,” he adds, noting how the 32 year-old actor “is virtually never off screen in the same way Spencer Tracy triumphed in the similarly spare The Old Man And The Sea (1958). Franco’s performance could put him in contention for a best actor Oscar nod just as Tracy’s did over 50 years ago.”

Hammond notes, however, that “Franco’s ‘farewell to arm’ scene is graphic and not for the squeamish.”

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Jay A. Fernandez reported yesterday that the real-life character played by Franco “went to the extreme to free himself from the boulder that trapped him for five days, and the climactic scene of his escape generated groans and squirming from the audience.

“At the end of the screening, paramedics were called in to assist an unidentified man” at the 127 Hours screening. “Festival press representative Shannon Mitchell told The Hollywood Reporter that she had no information on whether the man’s illness had to do with 127 Hours‘ escape scene or an unrelated medical condition.”

Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson reports that “Telluride correspondent Meredith Brody [saw] ‘somebody being taken out on a gurney from the Galaxy’ showing of 127 Hours and later that night at a second screening of the Danny Boyle film, ‘ambulances with multicolored flashing lights pulling into the Palm.'”

I attended one of the earliest L.A. screenings of The Bourne Supremacy (’04), the second Bourne film that is easily the most shaky-cammy of the three. A woman threw up on the floor about halfway into it. I was sitting on the other side of the room, and noticed a little commotion. I honestly didn’t connect this with the rapid cutting and crazy-cam photography, but a publicist with Universal publicity did. She howled and brayed and threatened me with death if I reported about the vomiting.