Day: October 19, 2011

Six and a half months ago I saw Chris Weitz‘s A Better LIfe, and I wrote right away that Demian Bichir‘s authentic, quietly moving performance as a Mexican “illegal” tree-trimmer in a tough spot due to the theft of a recently purchased pickup truck was award-worthy. I’m still saying that despite the odds, and Bichir is still the quiet-man contender with his feet planted and all that. Yeah, he’s been pushed aside by the fall contenders (which always happens) but he still delivered like a champ when he had his shot.

Demian Bichir at Le Pain Quotidien a week and a half ago.

I’m saying this in part because i’m about to attend a launch party for the Better Life DVD at the Four Seasons, and I want to look Bichir in the eye and tell him I’ve reaffirmed my respect and support for his performance. Because it’s the right thing to do.

A Better Life is “clearly one of the truest and sturdiest films I’ve seen so far this year,” I wrote last June. “It may turn out to be more of a Spirit Awards winner than an Oscar contender but let’s see where it goes.”

“Delicacy, precision, startling force,” the N.Y. Times‘ Alex Kuczynski wrote two months ago. “These are qualities that defined Bichir’s performance in A Better Life, a remarkable film that has cemented his reputation as a formidable talent in Hollywood.

“While the movie is political, certainly, Weitz (director of About a Boy, The Golden Compass and The Twilight Saga: New Moon) chose to tell the story of Carlos Galindo as a piece of social realism, rather than as political propaganda. However, as Weitz told me, ‘the moment you train a camera on someone, especially a film camera, you say they are worthy of being paid attention to, and it elicits sympathy. In that regard, the film is political by default.’

“But he chose not to push that button too hard and risk ‘turning Carlos into a symbol rather than a closely observed character,’ he said. In that sense, A Better Life is a story about the delicate relationship between a father and son, about loss of culture, about isolation, about the spiritual lives of two nations.”

Hollywood Elsewhere’s Tyrannosaur screening fundraising campaign became a complete success this morning when the collected amount topped $2000. Many thanks to all the Good Samaritans — you know who you are. The plan is to have three screenings. So far I’ve gotten verbal assurances for the Aidikoff Screening Room on Thursday, 10.27, at 4 pm, the Interactive Screening Room on Monday, 10.31 at 7:30 pm, and the Sunset Screening Room on Wednesday, November 2nd at 4 pm.

I’m figuring that between these three dates most of the necessary movers & shakers will be able to attend.

I’ve been saying all along that Tyrannosaur‘s Olivia Colman could just as easily be seen as a Best Supporting Actress contender as a possible Best Actress nominee, but either way it’s heartening that Colman has now cracked her way into the Gold Derby Best Actress list. Thanks to Movieline‘s Stu Van Airsdale, Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson and Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone for giving the fundraising drive some needed attention.

I’ve put the first Sherlock Holmes movie out of my mind. The basic idea with the new one, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (Warner Bros., 12.16), is, I gather, to (a) preserve everything that was ghastly and soul-curdling about the first one and (b) buffoon things up a bit more than before. Sherlock Holmes in drag? Absolutely! This franchise is a free-for-all anyway. But why isn’t Sasha Baron Cohen playing a supporting role?

Remember David Denby‘s review of the original, which I excerpted in a piece called “To hell With Holmes“:

“Guy Ritchie’s hyperbolic Sherlock Holmes isn’t a movie — it’s a franchise. Or, at least, a would-be franchise. Arthur Conan Doyle‘s material has been grabbed by its velvet collar and thrown into twenty-first-century media culture. Such a turn was inevitable. The subdued charm of Conan Doyle’s hansom cabs, enveloping fogs and courteous manners, in which the facade of gentility is broken up so delightfully by devilish conspiracies, is not of our age.”

“In other words, ladies and gentleman: Sherlock Holmes: The Coarsening and Degradation of Civilization As Your Fathers and Grandfathers Once Knew It.

“In Ritchie’s version, the facade doesn’t even exist: his London is rubbled and mucky, with beggars underfoot, and fouled by half-finished industrial monstrosities. Ritchie’s visual style, aided by the cinematographer Philippe Rousselot, is graphic-novel Victoriana: there are steampunk interiors — ironworks and infernal machines with a retrofuturistic look — and dim laboratories in which everything looks rank. The movie is grimly overproduced and exhausting, an irritating, preposterous, but fitfully enjoyable work, in which every element has been inflated.”

Part 1 of Aaron Aradillas and Richard Seitz‘s latest essay — “The Golden Age of the Car Chase, 1968-1985” — naturally focuses on the car-chase sequences in Bullitt, The French Connection and The Seven-Ups. The narration is by Matt Zoller Seitz.

Because Lindsay Lohan has so far performed only 21 of the 360 community-service hours she was ordered to perform at the Downtown Women’s Center, and because she was eventually kicked off that program, and because she’s never once appeared at the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office, where she was ordered to perform 120 hours of service…because she’s been acting like a haughty entitled bitch and basically thumbing her nose at the LA judicial system, Judge Stephanie Sautner revoked her bail and put her in cuffs. Lohan made bail, of course, and will return to court on 11.2.

The New York Film Critics Circle announced today they’ll be cold-cocking the National Board of Review by holding their annual vote for the 2011 Film Critics Circle Awards on Monday, 11.28…two days before the annual first-out-of-the-gate NBR vote. Hah! Eat our dust!

The NYFCC’s new chairman John Anderson was obviously the prime mover behind this initiative. This early vote will also slightly undercut the LA Film Critics Association (LAFCA), which also votes early-ish every year as the first legit critics croup following the NBR but now that’s out the window…tough!

This means, of course, that the late-arriving contenders — The Iron Lady, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, War Horse, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo — will have to screen for the NYFCC by Thanksgiving if not before.

And as Movieline‘s Stu Van Airsdale has noted, this morning’s announcement may result in the NBR “moving its own date back ahead of the critics, which would then, of course, require even earlier screenings of carefully withheld films, and thus — in concert with the NYFCC — anoint a handful of legitimate Oscar frontrunners before December even starts.”

The NYFCC awards will be handed out at a ceremony to be held on Monday, January 9, 2012.

Anderson’s statement: “As the nation’s pre-eminent critic’s group, we are excited about kicking off the annual end-of-year discussion with our new early voting date. On the basis of the films we have seen thus far, we are looking forward to another passionate debate amongst our members.”