Month: October 2010

Today is everyone’s Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Sanity/Fear Rally travel day. My Washington, D.C.-bound Megabus leaves midtown Manhattan at 1 pm. I’ll be arriving around 5:30 pm. And I’ve just downloaded the Sanity/Fear App on my iPhone.

I’ll have wifi on the bus, but I’ll probably spend a good part of this evening sitting in a cafe somewhere and posting. Okay, and maybe wandering around and taking pictures. I’m determined to relax and socialize for at least an hour or two later tonight, although I know not where as I speak.

All this time I’ve been assuming that the rally will take place on the National Mall in front of the picturesque Lincoln Memorial, which is where the Glen Beck rally happened. But no — the Sanity rally is happening on the eastern end of the National Mall near Seaton Park, which is next to the National Museum of the American Indian and not that far from the Capitol building.

Yesterday a film-critic friend told me he’d be going down with his wife. But today he said nope. “It looks like we’re not making the trek tomorrow after all. I have to spend the day unpacking the contents of a moving van full of stuff that arrived from my late mother-in-law’s house.”

“That sounds a very amiable and helpful and cooperative-husband thing to do,” I responded. “You have my respect and understanding. But it’s a capitulation to the mundane.

“What if someone offered that excuse not to attend Martin Luther King‘s 1963 ‘I Have A Dream’ speech on the National Mall in 1963?

“Son: “Hey, dad, what was Martin Luther King’ s speech like? You went to that rally, right?” Dad: “I actually didn’t go to the rally, son. I stayed home and spent the day unpacking the contents of a moving van full of stuff that arrived from my late mother-in-law’s house.”

There are always boxes of stuff from your late mother-on-law’s house to unpack. There have always been boxes of stuff from your late mother-on-law’s house to unpack. There always will be boxes of stuff from your late mother-on-law’s house to unpack. But moments in history happen only once.

The Hollywood Elsewhere comment-post problem (i.e., Movable Type software blocking readers from posting comments) was fixed around 1 am last night. The problem was caused by a certain fellow’s attempt to create a new HE column called Woman on the Verge, which is still in flatline mode as we speak. Everything this guy did followed normal procedure for setting up a new blog, but he copied aged coding in order to do so and the javascript was accidentally overwritten. But the fault, I’m told, is largely due to Movable Type.

They’re bad people, the Movable Type crew. Trying to communicate with them is slower and less efficient than trying to communicate via Morse code with British solders in India during Rudyard Kipling‘s day. They’re slow, their operation is covered in molasses, and they hide behind walls. Their refusal to install an instant-chat function or charge extra for certain customers to have phone support if needed is intolerable. This is the end of Movable Type. I can’t wait to get rolling with WordPress.

Admit it — Inception has been doing a very slight fade, certainly in terms of its Best Picture contention. Not that it won’t end up as one, but last summer was last summer, etc. But pushing the red button and hearing that Han Zimmer/Edith Piaf chord got me going again.

Lionsgate’s just-released Rabbit Hole poster is highly intriguing. Congrats again to co-marketing chief Tim Palen. The hanging tire suggests a kind of emptiness by way of the absence of a child who once played with it. It also suggests a kind of purgatory. A body isn’t hanging from the rope, but something is stuck and twisting in a world of hurt. I also like that the poster doesn’t resort to the expected cast faces (Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest, etc.)

The near-total shutdown of Hollywood Elsewhere’s comment-response capability over the last 24 to 36 hours has killed my willingness to stay with Movable Type, the software that I’ve been using to publish this column. I despise their tech support system with the same saliva-spitting fervor that Sessue Hayakawa expresses in The Bridge on The River Kwai when he says “I hate the British!” Write them about your problem and they’ll get back to you 36 or 48 hours later…or not at all. They don’t even have a live-chat option. As soon as I can afford to switch over to WordPress, I will. Dingbats.

Many thanks to VanRambling’s Raymond Tomlin for his very generous assessment of Hollywood Elsewhere’s daily gruel. He also compliments the commenters, calling their remarks “first-class, thoughtful, well-considered and informative” and “sometimes screamingly funny.”

Tomlin’s appreciation, he says, “has grown since the recent debut of his and Sasha Stone‘s iTunes podcast, Oscar Poker.

“Both Jeff and Sasha are incredibly well-informed about film, the film market, and the work of prominent actors and directors past and present. Their rapport on Oscar Poker is utterly relatable, natural and becoming, informed and compelling. Honestly, Oscar Poker’s two commentators come across as if they’re lovers, their affection for one another so deep, abiding and respectful.

“Despite Jeff’s propensity to be curmudgeonly, which Sasha only laughs at with a knowing affection for Jeff because he’s outrageous but right, Jeff and Sasha come across as generous and thoughtful commentators and human beings — these are people you’d actually like to get to know, to discuss ‘the movies’ with over a beer.”

There’s just one thing complicating the situation for Peter Weir‘s The Way Back, from my humble Manhattan perspective. It’s a deeply admired film, but there’s just this one tiny problem. The Newmarket guys (i.e., the ones releasing it on 12.29) are keeping it under wraps, screening-wise. At least as far as my e-mail box is concerned. They showed it a couple of days ago in Los Angeles, but they’re apparently still sorting things out in terms of East Coast media.

Sorry but Sasha Stone has it wrong: Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen are clearly the leads in Mike Leigh‘s Another Year. They are the center-of gravity couple whom the supporting characters (including the tragically touching Lesley Manville) visit and congregrate around. They’re the base and the core of the piece.

I agree that Broadbent and Sheen are “soft” leads and that Manville is a much more vivid presence that both of them combined, but there’s no way Manville can be called the absolute and unquestioned lead in that film. Her sad-eyed character is the one you remember the most, of course, but that doesn’t mean she rules the roost.

This, at least, is the argument that Sony Classics has to make to persuade everyone concerned that Manville should be nominated for Best Supporting Actress and not lead. As I said the other day, this would be a tactical error. She has an excellent chance of winning in Best Supporting, and at best an iffy chance of winning for Best Actress. And I’m saying that as one of her greatest admirers.

This is not a “review,” okay? Definitely not a review. Call it an enthusiasm spasm. The point is that Roger Michell‘s Morning Glory (Paramount, 11.12) is much better than what Paramount’s marketing has so far indicated, and a tiny bit better than what that Showeast guy told TheWrap‘s Steve Pond a week or so ago.

The exhibitor said “it’s close to James L. Brooks territory, or to the border between Brooks and Nancy Meyers” and “a solid entertainment that in November will appeal to the over-30 audience in a way that nothing else will.” Total agreement with the second statement, but forget the Nancy Meyers analogy. This film is close to Broadcast News-level Brooks + grade A, totally-on-his-game Michell + Harrison Ford‘s best performance in years + Rachel McAdams giving an ever better performance than she did in The Wedding Crashers (and that’s saying something).

Ford’s performance as a grumpy, past-his-prime, Dan Rather-ish newsman has a shot at a Best Supporting Actor recognition. Or not. He’s surly but smirking all the while. The role as written isn’t quite home-run-level, but it’s fair to call it a solid triple, I think.

That’s all I have time to say before the next movie starts, but I just had to counteract the impression I gave when I posted this 10.19 story, which was mainly a reaction piece to the one-sheet. No offense but the one-sheet “lies,” in a sense. Morning Glory is much smarter, more more realistic, and much more adult in a spritzy and reasonably real-world sense than you might expect.

I was afraid of screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna in the wake of 27 Dresses, but what a surprise! In the realm of commercial confections about big-city, fast-lane ambition, Morning Glory is a notch or two above McKenna’s The Devil Wears Prada. It’s somewhat similar in terms of the choice that the main character faces between an exciting career and a strong personal relationship, but it resolves this situation more satisfyingly, I feel, and Patrick Wilson plays a much cooler and more interesting boyfriend that Adrian Grenier played in Prada.

Everything has changed, Jon Stewart Rally in D.C.-wise. I’m busing down on late Friday afternoon, staying in a rented room near Dupont Circle, attending the rally with purchased VIP tickets (the Comedy Central p.r. person, Renata Luczak, totally blew me off because I applied too late for press credentials), covering the rally, and staying on Saturday night and running around and whatnot. I’m open to schmooze and libations (i.e., the Tabard Inn on Friday evening?) with any HE readers who’ll be in the vicinity.

For me, President Obama‘s visit last night with Jon Stewart wasn’t all that satisfying because of Stewart’s tendency to flick questions in a roundabout way rather than put them straight. I would have loved it if he’d said, “Have you seen Inside Job, Mr. President? The same bad guys who authored and endorsed our ridiculous derivative-scheme predicament in the Clinton and Bush years are part of your team right now. What about that?”

Also: “What did you think of The Social Network? More to the point, what did you think of the Larry Summers scene in that film? Is that the guy you know to any degree? Did he seem a bit familiar, or was Aaron Sorkin just flying off and having fun in his own realm?”

I have a 10:30 am screening and then a 2 pm screening, and not much time to post or reflect between the two. The way it is. Back sometime in the late afternoon.