Month: October 2010

I got into a spirited discussion with Scott Feinberg during last night’s after-party for Sony Classics’ Made in Dangenham, a tidy but stirring rabble-rouser about an equal-pay-for-women strike at a London-area Ford plant in the late ’60s. The subject was The Kids Are All Right and what Focus may be planning to re-energize things for the film and for Annette Bening‘s Best Actress shot in particular.

Bening is facing tough competition from Black Swan‘s Natalie Portman, Another Year‘s Leslie Manville and Winter’s Bone Jennifer Lawrence, to name but three. But in a sense Feinberg is lobbying for an even tougher scenario with yet another competitor, Bening’s costar Julianne Moore, being nominated as well. Feinberg was basically asking why and how Moore has been “thrown under the bus” despite her having the larger and more assertive role in The Kids Are All Right, and having been overlooked or dissed in more award races than Annette.

I for one don’t believe that Bening and Moore have a prayer of being nominated together, and that it would certainly kill the chances of either one winning due to a vote split. Does Moore deserve to be the nominee more than Bening? Perhaps, but whaddaya gonna do? I sound like a go-alonger, right? Feinberg sure doesn’t.

Here’s what he wrote on 7.25 and 8.7, and here’s his latest rant on the subject, posted earlier today.

“Some people are adamant that Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, the co-leads of The Kids Are All Right, cannot both be nominated for the best actress Oscar this year,” Feinberg writes. “That’s a bunch of malarkey. Not only can they, and not only should they, but — if Focus genuinely fights the good fight for both of them, as studio insiders emphatically insist to me that they will — they will be.

“Those who say that it cannot happen point to the large number of quality contenders in the category this year and insist that there isn’t room for two people from the same film. I disagree. Bening and Moore are together in virtually every scene of the film (Moore actually has a few more scenes, alongside Mark Ruffalo). Both actresses have some terrific moments in the film (Bening’s return to the dinner table after discovering Moore was having an affair and Moore’s subsequent soliloquy on the challenges of marriage are both showstoppers). And both are highly-respected by their peers, who have never been shy about nominating them before (the Academy has recognized Bening with three nods and Moore with four, and neither has won yet).

“Some people are pushing the line that Bening has a leg up on Moore because she’s ‘Hollywood royalty‘ (as if people are going to vote for her because she married Warren Beatty) and because she’s made the right friends (she’s a longtime member of the Academy’s Board of Governors), but for all of the aforementioned reasons I simply cannot see a voter sitting down and voting to nominate one but not the other.

“As I first wrote back on July 25, the Academy has nominated two best actress nominees from the same film in five of the 82 years (6% of the time) in which the category has existed: (a) Anne Baxter and Bette Davis for All About Eve (1950); (b) Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor for Suddenly, Last Summer (1959); (c) Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine for The Turning Point (1977); Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger for Terms of Endearment (1983); and Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon for Thelma and Louise (1991).”

I was late to Mike Leigh‘s Another Year, missing showings at both the Cannes and Toronto film festivals. But I finally caught up with it a week ago, and now I know it will be fairly intolerable if Lesley Manville, who plays a sad and scattered and increasingly desperate single in Leigh’s masterful film, doesn’t end up as one of the five Best Actress nominees this year. It really is one of those hot-button performances that can’t be shrugged off.

Another Year star Lesley Manville at Manhattan’s Regency hotel — Tuesday, 10.5.10, 10:20 am

By the end of this expansive but absorbing film Manville’s sadness just floors you. She’s Eleanor Rigby with a wine buzz, and you just know from the get-go that her character, Mary, is probably headed for a sad denoument. We’ve all been trained like dogs to expect that “a character with a problem” will be given a shot at repairing that problem sometime late in the second act or early in the third. Not this time.

Another Year is less of a solitary character study than a family ensemble piece. The central characters or anchors, so to speak, are a 50ish couple, Tim and Gerri (Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen), who are friendly with Mary, a divorcee with an occasional susceptibility for fantasy and delusion, and invite her by for brunches and whatnot. (She and Gerri work in the same clinic) There are three other characters who pop in and out, but Mary is the one who’s tragic and teetering, and from our perspective the film becomes almost a kind of death march for the poor woman as the realization sinks in that Mary is stuck and slipping and (God help her) probably doomed.

Mike Leigh is no softy, and Another Year, amusing and finely observed and character-rich as if frequently is, is no walk in the park. But after you’ve seen it there’s no forgetting poor Mary, or, more to the point, the brilliant Ms. Manville.

I believe that certain establishments that offer free wifi are careful not to offer super-strong signals. They want to offer customers and guests satisfactory wifi for email and browsing, but they don’t want them to enjoy it too much or else they’ll hang around all day. So they set the wifi access at “sufficient” or “good enough” levels in order to subtly discourage people like me who need stronger wifi in order to upload photos and videos and whatnot.

I know what I sound like, but remember William Burroughs‘ definition of paranoia: “Knowing all the facts.”

I’m writing this because I had a horrible wifi morning at the Regency hotel (Park and 61st). I was sitting there fuming at management in the same way that Charles Grodin gets angry at that Miami Beach restaurant in The Heartbreak Kid when they tell him they have no pecan pie.

I went all Grodin on the world following an interview with Another Year Best Actress hopeful Lesley Manville, as well as a group chat session with Manville, costars Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen, and director Mike Leigh. Unfortunately the video footage I took of our sessions is underwhelming. Is it okay to call it wretched? No, no — underwhelming will do.

I’m an ardent admirer of John Curran‘s Stone (Overture, 10.8). It really is some kind of mind-bender that steps outside the box. You think you recognize the elements and know where it’s going to go, and then it does something entirely different. So to help the cause I thought I’d copy and paste the embed code of David Poland’s interview with director John Curran. Except a message popped up saying “video unavailable.” Brilliant.

On CNN’s Parker Spitzer show, Social Network screenwriter Aaron Sorkin called Sarah Palin “an idiot” — yes! He also called her “a remarkably, stunningly, jaw-droppingly incompetent, mean woman.” Sorkin also reportedly said that “the Democrats have moved to the center, but the Republicans have moved into a mental institution. I’ll take the Democrats.” Can’t find an embed code — here’s the clip.

Zack Snyder directing Warner Bros.’ Superman reboot means that the end result will most likely be a little short on depth and sensitivity, which they might have had if they’d gotten, say, Matt Reeves to direct. Snyder at the helm means a fastball right down the middle — a totally generic, impact-for-impact’s-sake, extra-large-tub-of-popcorn Warner Bros. superhero flick with a swaggering attitude. Knowing Snyder and his self-inflating tendencies, it might even be another origin story…God! Somebody kill this franchise.

I’ve talked with director Tony Gilroy twice over the past week or so at swanky Manhattan parties, and both times I’ve asked what’s next. The second time (i.e., two nights ago) he indicated something was up without getting specific. But he told me he’d fill me in on stuff when and if an announcement is made. Now Deadline is reporting he’s just signed as director of The Bourne Legacy, the fourth film in that franchise.

Hey, Tony — are you going to be aping Paul Greengrass‘s shaky-cam shooting style, or maybe tone that down a bit? Because front-line, battle-fatigue guys like myself are sick to death of shaky-cam, let me tell you.

Re-seeing Alex Gibney‘s Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer the other night sparked a debate. If you were in a marriage or a serious live-in relationship, which form of betrayal would you consider to be the more painful? If your partner/spouse had a serious emotional affair with someone, or if your partner/spouse had it off a few times with an expensive prostitute or gigolo?

That’s a no-brainer in my book. Going to a gigolo or a prostitute is strictly a payment-for-services-rendered transaction, and therefore no threat to an ongoing relationship. I would imagine that most women would be able to deal with a husband who’s into hookers much more easily than a husband who’s fallen for someone else and has transferred emotional loyalties. I wouldn’t be delighted if my wife or live-in-girlfriend had slept with a pro, but I’d like to think I could deal with it somehow.

What are the most successful and/or enjoyable films ever made involving biological twins, triplets, quadruplets and quintets? I’m not sure if there’ve been any really good ones. The absolute worst, I think, has to be Kissin’ Cousins, the 1964 Elvis Presley film. But if you’re talking short films…

I could get all high falutin’ technical in discussing the new King Kong Bluray, but I’m going to boil it down to basics. The disc arrived five or six days ago, and I watched it later that night. Jett, who’s seen King Kong five or six times, walked in and took a look and said, “That’s it? It doesn’t look any different!”

I slightly disagree. I think the Kong Bluray looks a little grainier than the 2005 DVD did. Because Blurays always make grain pop through a bit more than it does via DVD or film itself. Grain becomes feister, livelier. The bottom line is that while the monks are applauding the Kong Bluray and calling it an upgrade in image quality, common-man types don’t see it this way and could even make the argument that it’s a step down because every scene is covered top to bottom with digital mosquitoes.

As Bluray.com’s Kenneth Brown recently explained, its almost the viewer’s fault if there’s any sense of disappointment. Because the viewer should know better going in.

“Beware expectations when approaching King Kong,” he begins. “More to the point, beware uninformed expectations.

“Merian C. Cooper‘s 1933 production is littered with soft photography, spiking grain, murky visual effects sequences and many an imperfect shot, and Warner’s 1080p/VC-1 encoded transfer stays true to each and every frame. Soft edges and textures may dominate the proceedings, but a fair amount of fine detail is apparent throughout, grain is intact, delineation is as revealing as could be expected and object definition is relatively impressive.

“Likewise, black levels are quite deep, mid-range grays are natural and unimpeded, and whites never struck me as stark or ungainly. And the reinstated scenes? The gory bits of chomping, stomping and crushing that were cut in 1938? I didn’t notice any discernible difference in quality. As it turns out, the negative Warner discovered and used for Kong’s restoration featured the full, uncensored cut.

“If anything, thick fields of soupy noise occasionally swamp the presentation (chapter 16 and 17 being the worst of it), but I have no doubt the film’s source, not Warner’s restoration or transfer, is to blame. Some mild artifacting makes an appearance as well, and stands as my lone point of contention. Even then, each instance is so faint and fleeting that it rarely becomes a significant distraction. Ultimately, I would suggest arming yourself with appropriate expectations. Those who do will find Warner’s presentation to be a real treat.”

I somehow missed a 9.30 Hollywood Reporter story by Gregg Kilday and Matthew Belloni lamenting a lack of minorities among this year’s Oscar hopefuls. “For the first time since the 73rd Oscars 10 years ago, there will be no black nominees in any of the acting categories at the February ceremony,” their story says, “and there are virtually no minorities in any of the major categories among the early lists of awards hopefuls. Will white be the only color on the red carpet?”

In other words, the story seems to imply, is there any way that Tyler Perry‘s For Colored Girls can make it into one or more of the competing Categories — Best Picture, Director, Actress, Supporting Actress — so we can at least say that the 83rd Oscars won’t be entirely white-bread? That sounds like a fair-minded solution. The problem, of course, is that directing-chop-wise Perry couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a double-barrelled shotgun if his life depended on it.

Heres’ another idea, AMPAS. Nominate Alejandro Gonzalez Inarrritu‘s Biutiful as one of Best Foreign Language Feature contenders, and then you’d have a Hollywood Latin flavor (Inarritu, Javier Bardem) to mix in with the vanilla.