Day: February 15, 2011

It’s one thing for an Academy member with a need for cuddly-bear emotion to vote for The King’s Speech as Best Picture — I get that. But it’s another thing for a hot-shot critic like the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s Carrie Rickey to endorse this mushy mindset. Plus she’s wrong in her assessment of Jesse Eisenberg‘s Mark Zuckerberg character.

“Why is The King’s Speech expected to win if The Social Network is The Movie That Speaks to the Moment?,” she asks. “Because while both are about entitled individuals, finally The Social Network is about a guy who doesn’t question his entitlement and The King’s Speech about a guy who is grateful to those who help him maintain his entitlement — and title. The takeaway of Speech is one of gratitude [and] a warmer, fuzzier feeling than the ambiguity of Network.”

Then comes the kicker: “If I were voting, I’d give Speech Best Picture and Network Best Director.”

In other words, Rickey is saying she agrees with the conventional wisdom (which every critic who knows a thing or two has mocked during this Oscar season) that warmer, fuzzier films do deserve the Best Picture Oscar. Meaning…what, that she also approves of Driving Miss Daisy having won the 1989 Best Picture Oscar?

I’ve gotten and agreed with the emotional argument from time to time (like with Titanic), but The King’s Speech doesn’t really kill emotionally — it marginally soothes. As New Yorker critic Anthony Lane wrote last November, “To a large extent, The King’s Speech is…one of those comedies of threatless reassurance [that] revels in the restitution of order.”

And like all geniuses from the beginning of civilization until today, Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg doesn’t question his entitlement (i.e., his vision and intelligence) because he knows what he knows and that’s what all geniuses have as an ace in the hole — supreme confidence. They might be faulty in the friendship and loyalty areas, but no genius worth his or her salt questions the value of his/her intellectual percolation. Anyone who looks at a genius and says “where’s the heart and the soul?” just doesn’t get it. That’s like looking at a racehorse and saying “why can’t he play the piano?”

“Don’t read Jeff Wells’ Hollywood Elsewhere rant on Incendies,” MSN’s James Rocchi tweeted about 15 hours ago. “Smug, whiny, spoilers. Actually, end that clause right before ‘rant.'” That’s fired-up emotion talking. When a bright critic falls for a certain film and then somebody trashes it? Rage. (Except I didn’t “trash” it.) Rocchi is a very dapper gentleman (he wears nice suits) and has always been very friendly and gracious in person so I don’t take it personally. And by all means, listen to guys like Rocchi on Incendies. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Because I shovel the straight dope.

According to Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet, the only new elements in Warner Home Video’s upcoming Stanley Kubrick Bluray set (due on 5.31) are the Bluray debuts of Lolita and Barry Lyndon. The rest (Universal Home Video’s “shiny” Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut) have all been released before. But WHV won’t be making Lyndon and Lolita available as stand-alones, although they’ll probably change this policy sometime in the fall. And that sucks. I feel badly for serious Kubrick-heads (i.e., those who’ve been buying Kubrick Blurays all along) who will have to wait.

I can’t get my arms around Ralph Fiennes and John Logan ‘s Coriolanus until I see a trailer, at least. I’m sorry but that’s how it is. Congrats to Harvey Weinstein for picking it up in Berlin. The reviews have been exceptional. The Hollywood Reporter‘s Ray Bennett called it “a bloody delight.” Wait — I don’t like that term. And I don’t like “bloody” used as an adjective.

To go by this mp3 audio of Charlie Sheen doing the Dan Patrick show, the man is still in deep denial. “Get me right now, guys…right now! I’m not in AA, I don’t believe in it…I was bored out of my tree [when I was sober]…a vodka drunk is more linear…I’ve done research in the field…what’s wrong with my brain, Dan?” Sheen hasn’t crossed over and gotten clean. He’s still hanging around on the mad cackle side.

Sheen’s best line comes when he’s asked whether he liked Wall Street 2. “Uhhm…it was interesting. I think it waited too long.”

Robert Duvall‘s Network performance is incandescent. His “CCA hatchet man” Frank Hackett is one of the most entertaining and live-wire bad guys in movie history. I’ve no argument with Jason Robards having won the 1976 Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing Ben Bradlee, but Duvall wasn’t even nominated.

That’s because Ned Beatty‘s burn-through as CCA chairman Arthur Jensen was, I suppose, but Duvall ruled — he was a huge kick in every scene.

Duvall’s big Network scene (“It’s a big fat, big-tittied hit!”) begins around 5:08 in the above clip. Here’s the isolated scene that I can’t embed. The other ’76 Best Supporting Actor nominees were Burgess Meredith and Burt Young in Rocky (both of them?) and Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man.

I once visited Kenneth Mars‘ North Valley home with three or four actor friends. It was sometime in ’83 or ’84. A nice Sunday afternoon barbecue thing in the back yard with beers and Margueritas. I’ve never forgotten Mars’ greeting at the front door: “Mi casa? Su casa!” Instant relaxation and acceptance. And now he’s gone. And I’m sorry.

Mars was a farceur. His best-known role, of course, was Inspector Kemp in Young Frankenstein, followed by Franz Liebkind in The Producers — both from the gifted brain of Mel Brooks, who was easily Mars’ best friend in a professional sense.

But everyone forgets that Mars played Shirley MacLaine‘s husband in Frank D. Gilroy ‘s relentlessly grim Desperate Characters (’71). I think there may even have been a sex scene of some kind. There are some guys you just don’t want to think about in a sexual context and Kenneth Mars was one of them, but Gilroy went there anyway. And I’m kind of glad that he did now. Because that 40 year-old film kind lends an extra dimension to Mars that we otherwise wouldn’t have.

I could never get past an impression that for all the trippy dandelion-pollen aspects and the close-to-perfect performances, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was too busy and bothered by itself. It tried too hard. HE reader Abbey Normal called it “a bad hipster remake of a Truffaut film.”