Day: October 13, 2010

I’m a double Scorpio with Libra rising, and because of this I’ve been looked at askance all of my adult life. Mostly by women I’ve known or run into at parties. I’ve also been reading astrological analyses of Scorpios all my life, and it is their opinion, boiled down, that Scorpios are killers — just evil conniving rage-hounds with big stingers.

I wouldn’t want to go anywhere near a Scorpio based on these descriptions. And yet I’ve known Scorpios all my life and have come to like or enjoy or admire or care for quite a few of them. They’re good, worthy, fascinating people, and are never boring or at least are interesting mixed bags. They’re certainly not emotional terrorists looking to shove knives into people and eat their organs for breakfast and then howl from high rooftops.

Astrological authors really have it in big-time for Scorpios. They condemn me and my kind without mercy. So I decided eons ago that the people who write these truly ugly condemnations of Scorpios (“unscrupulous terrorist, morbid jealousy, total arrogance, sadistic and aggressive brutality”) are deranged, and to throw out the whole astrological analysis thing and just trust my own instincts and feelings.

I know what the Scorpio drill is. It partly means a person with a tendency to lash out when feeling weak and vulnerable and threatened. There’s a current of truth to this. I’m not a day at the beach when I’m being cornered and attacked. But I’m not a zoo animal either. I have thoughts and insights and observational powers and experience and determinations that have come from decades of living. And I know what “Taurus” and “Virgo” and “Libra” and “Gemini” and “Aquarius” mean, and it’s mostly just sloppy crap shorthand that sometimes echoes in little ways and sometimes has nothing to do with anything.

To hear it from the astrology crowd each and every person born under the Scorpio sign is a problem. Millions of people across the globe walking around with arrogant and sadistic terrorist personalities, ready to pounce on their victims and rip them to shreds and chew their ears off because of when they were born? It’s material from a cheap horror film.

I’ve gotten to know and and have worked with exceptionally bright and accomplished people all my professional life — the best people in the top fields — and no one of any brain size or developed intelligence buys into astrology as anything more than a burp diversion while buying groceries. It’s the truth. We’re all astrology dilletantes, but no one who’s been around and knows what goes is any kind of real follower.

The ones who do subscribe to astrology tend to be (no way around this) women for the most part, and women in particular who haven’t had a thorough education. I’m sorry if this sounds dismissive, but astrology is for people who read Tarot cards and go to seances and read supermarket tabloids. It attracts people of limited perception and intelligence.

Olivier Assayas‘s Carlos (IFC Films, 10.15) is “five and a half hours of border-hopping, bombings, botched attacks, a brutal but bungled hijacking, and many, many short scenes in which bearded men and beautiful, impassive women sit in small rooms and strategize how best to advance the Palestinian cause and defeat the imperialist capitalist world order.

“You might opt to see Assayas’s condensed [150-minute] version [but] I say go for the whole shebang. Shot by shot, scene by scene, it’s a fluid and enthralling piece of work. I wasn’t bored for a millisecond.” — from a review by New York‘s David Edelstein.

There’s nothing to be gained from another Chris Nolan Batman film, and that goes double when it comes to Tom Hardy (Bronson) playing the villain. Because Hardy’s schtick (i.e., intense shaved-head machismo) is just too obvious and big-foot primitive to steal the cool-villain crown from Heath Ledger‘s Joker. And even if Hardy does pull something off it’ll still be the same old superhero vs. super-villain crap. In the realm of fresh-water storytelling and magical potions of imagination, a reboot of a big fat corporate franchise is like toxic waste in the water table. What is Nolan thinking? Does he want to move forward and upward or slide back into the trough?

DreamWorks’ just-announced decision to move Steven Spielberg‘s War Horse from 8.12.11 to 12.28.11 indicates that the film has “awards potential,” says Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson. She also quotes DreamWorks topper Stacey Snider saying that War Horse “feels like a holiday movie,…[Spielberg] feels great about it, [and] we feel great about it.”

Awards potential? I’m not going to say anything, but please read what I wrote about War Horse on 5.4.10 and tell me if you think this film appears likely to make the awards cut, given the manipulative sentimentality that you always get with Spielberg at the helm, especially with John Williams doing the score.

War Horse is “a possible lunge at Oscar-level kudos, a Spielbergian hack move, another attempt at mass emotional manipulation, a sprinkling of art-film pretension, and yet a chance for Spielberg to show his stuff as a strongly visual storyteller who doesn’t need the engine of dialogue,” I wrote.

“Nick Stafford‘s play, which is based on a children’s novel by Michael Morpurgo, is an anti-war piece that has simple strokes, and which was aimed at kids to begin with. Plus it has ample sentimentality — (a) a kind of Lassie Come Home story about a boy and his horse being separated, (b) a scene with German and British soldiers impulsively ceasng hostilities in order to save the wounded Joey’s life, and (c) a finale that some book reviewers have described as contrived and cloying.

“Plus it will also allow Spielberg to half-riff on Robert Bresson‘s Au Hasard Balthazar without having to acknowledge this, and to try and out-shoot the trench-warfare scenes in Stanley Kubrick‘s Paths of Glory.

In Hollywood parlance “great” means “good, fine, cool, steady as she goes,” etc. In this sense Snider’s quote reminds me of President Merkin Muffley saying to Premiere Dmitri Kissoff in Dr. Strangelove, “Well, it’s good that you’re fine, and that I’m fine. I agree with you. It’s great to be fine.”

Shlomi Eldar‘s Precious Life has won the Best Documentary Ophir award at the 2010 Israeli Film Academy’s award ceremony in Jerusalem. The doc, about joint efforts to remedy a young Palestinian boy’s bone-marrow issue, played Telluride and Toronto (among many other festivals) and will air on HBO next year. A disc of this has been sitting on my shelf for a little more than a month…damn. I really have to watch it soon.

I have issues with Made in Dagenham (Sony Classics, 11.19) and Barney’s Version (Sony Classics, 12.17), but let’s not go there now. The point is that Rosamund Pike easily gives the most arresting performance in both, and has earned full consideration for Best Supporting Actress honors as a result. Really. The evidence is abundant that 2010 is her breakout year.

Rosamund Pike in Made in Dagenham (l.) and Barney’s Version (r.).

Pike, whose performance as Dominic Cooper‘s slightly ditzy girlfriend in Lone Scherfig‘s An Education had an undercurrent of self-deprecating wit, plays elegant, well-educated wives of character and principle in these two films.

Her role as Miriam, the infinitely gracious and grounded spouse of Paul Giamatti‘s Uriah Heep in Barney’s Version, is the larger of the two, but you could still call it supporting. She’s so true-blue in the film, so regal and refined and dependably honest, that you almost don’t believe her…and yet you do. Because Pike has a straight-shooting, no-time-for-bullshit quality about her, and this makes Miriam into something a bit more, I’m guessing, than what was probably on the page. Or maybe it was on the page and Pike was just a perfect fit.

Pike’s role in Dagenham is that of a classy but under-appreciated wife of a Ford businessman (Rupert Graves). She only has one strong scene really — a special moment with Sally Hawkins‘ Rita O’Grady, the leader of an equal-pay-for-women strike, when she confesses what her somewhat stilted and smothered life has been like. But it’s the best scene in the film. At a recent Dagenham after-party I was asked, “So what did you think of Sally Hawkins’ performance?” It’s good and honorable, I replied, but the one who really touches bottom is Rosamund Pike.

The only problem from my perspective is that neither Made in Dagenham or Barney’s Version are strong enough to easily catapult Pike into the realm of “assured contender.” Some may feel differently and that’s fine, but neither film delivers on the level of An Education, say. They just don’t. People are going to have to sit down and see these films and realize on their own that Pike is the best thing about both, and then do and say something about that. You can lead horses to water, but you can’t make them drink.

Forbes columnist Bill McCuddy and his wife, who have a home in the Hamptons, were driving behind me last weekend and noticed that my tail lights were out. “Do you have a compact car with New Jersey plates?,” he asked in an e-mail sent last night. “My wife saw someone with his/her rear lights not working pulling into Enclave Inn” — where I was staying — “and came thisclose to pulling in after and telling them. Sorry. And next time call me to bail you out.”