Just to shake things up and/or keep the fans off-balance, Liam Neeson has done a movie that may — I say “may” — play above and beyond the level of a typical post-Taken Neeson paycheck venture. And director-cowriter Joe Carnahan, having all but devalued his once respectable brand with Smokin’ Aces and The A Team, is trying his hand with a rugged survival-in-the-wilderness story.
The Grey (Open Road, 1.27.12) is about a bunch of guys stranded in Alaska after a plane crash, and trying like hell not to become wolf food. I don’t know how many guys are in the group, but if you’ve seen The Edge you know there’s a kind of whammy-chart predictability with this sort of thing. The formula says that Neeson will be the last man standing at the finale, un-eaten and unbowed.
I don’t want to see any CG wolves in this thing. By this I mean CG wolves that grab you by the shoulders and shout, “This is a CG wolf!”…okay?
I’ll be catching the second half of Martin Scorsese‘s George Harrison: Living in the Material World at a New York Film Festival press screening in a little while. And then I have a Bennett Miller interview at 2:30 pm. I’ll have a break from 3:30 to 6:30 pm before attending the MOMA screening of The Ides of March followed by an after-dinner. So no more filing until the late afternoon.
In the meantime I’ll be looking forward to Sasha Stone‘s Moneyball piece, as she saw it last night and tweeted a very positive reaction. Read Robert Willonsky‘s Village Voice review (“It really happened, it’s really corny, and it’s really great“) and a view by The Observer‘s Rex Reed (“A subtle, elegant and altogether triumphant film about a subject I thought I was tired of, told with an artistry and freshness that is positively thrilling“).
If I had to predict right now, I’d list my Best Picture Oscar favorites in this order: Moneyball, The Descendants, War Horse (who knows?), The Help, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (ditto), Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (ditto) and possibly Midnight in Paris.
I’m not talking about personal favorites, mind. I’m doing a Dave Karger thing here, predicting what the Academy will sanctify. Which I hate doing because it gives me indigestion.
The likeliest Best Director nominees are Bennett Miller (Moneyball), Alexander Payne (The Descendants), Steven Spielberg (War Horse), Tomas Alfredson (Tinker, Tailor, etc. — the kneejerk British kiss-ass factor among Academy members) and David Fincher (Dragon Tattoo — payback for last year’s Social Network loss to Tom Hooper).
Best Actor picks are, in this order, Brad Pitt (Moneyball), George Clooney (The Descendants), Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), Woody Harrelson (Rampart), Michael Fassbender (Shame, Dangerous Method) and possibly Leonardo DiCaprio (J. Edgar).
Best Actress toppers include Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady), Charlize Theron (Young Adult), Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs), Rooney Mara (Girl With Dragon Tattoo).
Best Supporting Actor: Christoper Plummer (Beginners) and Jonah Hill (Moneyball)…who else?
Best Supporting Actress: Janet McTeer (Albert Nobbs), Judy Greer (The Descendants), Jennifer Ehle and/or Kate Winslet](Contagion)
I’ve been saying for years that Steven Spielberg will be out of his depth with the Lincoln movie, which he’ll soon begin directing in the Richmond area. He’s basically a Tintin/Raiders/E.T./Catch Me if You Can/Amistad/Robopocalypse type of guy, and he knows that we know this. And leopards don’t change their spots.
But at least this forthcoming Civil War drama have Daniel Day Lewis‘s performance as Abraham Lincoln, which we all know will be some kind of thrilling-exceptional-historic. It can’t not be.
Spielberg has told the Orlando Sentinel‘s Roger Moore that “the movie will be purposely coming out after next year’s election” — i.e., sometime in December 2012 — because he doesn’t “want it to become political fodder.”
What is he talking about? What’s wrong with noting historical-political parallels between the past and the present? How is that a negative? If Paul Thomas Anderson or Oliver Stone or David Fincher were directing Lincoln, would any of them say they don’t want anyone pointing to political parallels?
This indicates Spielberg’s general discomfort with political subject matter. He’s always defaulted to sentiment and emotion. The man makes movies in order to swell hearts.
Never forget that Spielberg sent Tom Cruise‘s teenage son into a hopeless battlefield encounter with the Martians in War of the Worlds…and let him live. And then threw in Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, costars of the original War of the Worlds, as the kid’s grandparents.
“We’re basing [the film] on Doris Kearns Goodwin‘s book, ‘Team of Rivals,'” Spielberg said, “but we’re only focusing on the last four months of Abraham Lincoln‘s life.” In other words, it’s not really based on Goodwin’s book but about the closing chapter of the Civil War and the very end of Lincoln’s saga.
Six years ago Liam Neeson told me the film would span from Lincoln’s inauguration to assassination. Then it was reported that Tony Kushner ‘s script would begin with the Emancipation Proclamation and end with Lincoln’s death. Now it’s down to Lincoln’s final 120 days of life — December 1864 to April 1865.
Lincoln “is “not a battlefield movie,” Spielberg told Smith. “There are battles in it, and being in Virginia, we have access to those historic battlefields. It is really a movie about the great work Abraham Lincoln did in the last months of his life.”