Month: October 2011

HE follower Reed Barker asked this morning if I think that yesterday’s exotic animal massacre in Zainesville, Ohio, may prompt 20th Century Fox to delay the release of Cameron Crowe‘s We Bought A Zoo, currently slated to open on 12.23.

No, I doubt it. The film won’t open for another two months; people forget and move on. But it does underline — remind — that there’s something fundamentally selfish and anti-nature about keeping exotic animals inside pens and cages.

Consciousness about zoos has changed over the last few decades. Zoos are intriguing, yes, but obviously not cool. This feeling would have been there without yesterday’s massacre, but it’s probably been intensified. It’s not right to sentence animals to life terms in prison, however loving and compassionate their guards/keepers may be.

Remember that Twilight Zone episode called “People Are Alike All Over“? Space traveller Roddy McDowell crash-lands on a planet, and the natives wind up imprisoning him in a cage that looks like a typical modern American home so the curious can look at an “Earth Creature In His Native Habitat”?

To his dying day, Western news sources could never agree on the spelling of the former Libyan dictator’s name. MSNBC just spelled it as “Khaddafy.” The N.Y. Times went with “Qaddafi.” Many have sided with “Kadafi.”

I’ve just heard from an MSNBC anchor that Qadaffi was found cowering in some kind of foxhole or drainage pipe after a gunfight, and that he said “don’t shoot!” when he was captured. If this is true, clearly one or more of his captors weren’t sympathetic. “Don’t shoot!” is like Frank Lopez begging Tony Montana to please not kill him in Scarface. If Qaddafi was a real man or at least a real hard-ass, he would have gone out like Mel Bernstein: “Fucking punks…can’t kill a dictator! Wait, wait, wait a minute…if you let me go I can fix this up. Fuck you!”

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.”

Sean Durkin‘s Martha Marcy May Marlene (also known in some circles as Martha Marlene…Uhm, Whatever) has been cruising along on the bearded hipster festival circuit for almost ten months now, starting with last January’s Sundance Film Festival, which is where I saw it. Everyone except David Edelstein has been pretty much on his or her knees with awe or admiration or deep like. I’m an ardent fan myself, as far as it goes.

(l. to r.) Borderline Films’ Josh Mond, Antonio Campos and Sean Durklin during last weekend’s Martha Marcy May Marlene junket.

The word-of-mouth will be very positive, I expect, and it’ll be necessary for everyone to carefully inspect Elizabeth Olsen, younger sister of the Loathsome Twins.

But an unsettled feeling is also going to kick in when Joe and Jane Popcorn sit down with this film three days hence. The smooth asphalt road of the last nine and a half months is going to become a little muddy and bumpy once they watch that ending.

All the things that are eerily good about Martha Marcy May Marlene are still going to be there in front of paying audiences. Joe and Jane Schmoe are going to feel chilled and entranced by the last few minutes, but — this is an important “but” — they’ll also be having a problem with it.

And they may, like me, feel a little frustrated with Olsen’s Martha character, specifically her inability to do or say anything that might somehow alter or transform her situation.

Olsen is playing a very young (and, it must be said, seemingly not very bright) woman who’s been so abused and traumatized by her experience with a Manson-like cult family in the boonies of New York State that while she manages to escape from the group, she can’t talk about them. She’s afraid to mention them for fear of…I don’t know what. All I know is that I was ready to roll with her inability or refusal to share her experience with her older sister or anyone, really, for the first two acts, but once act three began I wanted her to do something, dammit…anything. Woman up!

But she doesn’t. She won’t. She can’t. And that pissed me off. Because it’s not Martha who’s keeping silent — it’s Sean Durkin.

An actor or actress who doesn’t do anything will always have a hard time landing an acting nomination. Because people don’t just vote for the performance — they vote for the character.

I wrote last spring or summer that Durkin “really needs to fix the ending over the next two or three months,” and as far as I know this hasn’t happened. Martha Marcy is about weird oppressive brainwashing and the suppressing of terrible memories. And it ends (or so it seems) with the bad guys coming back and invading the world of Olsen’s hiding-out protagonist. Except, as I said during Sundance ’11, “the mildly creepy finale hints at what might be happening — maybe, sorta kinda, probably — but it leaves you up in the air and scratching your head. I walked out saying to myself, ‘Wait…what happened?’

Last weekend I talked to Durkin and his two partners, Antonio Campos and Josh Mond, who co-produced Martha Marcy. They’ve formed a company called Borderline Films, which is based in the Bedford/Williamsburg area of Brooklyn. A 10.16 New York profile by Jada Yuan said “they’re essentially a collective, or maybe a band. One directs while the other two produce, and then they rotate. If one of them needs time to write a script, the other two will make commercials and music videos and split the money three ways. The idea is to be completely self-sustaining, three amigos against the world.”

Anyway, here’s the mp3 of our chat. It was a nice discussion, they’re cool guys with a dry sense of humor, they’ve made a film that’s different and curiously affecting despite the two weak elements I’ve mentioned, and it deserves your attention and patronage.

The conference room stuff isn’t “funny” but it’s not half bad. The idea is humdrummy (i.e., we’re all mediocre) but the Jack Black routine kicks it up some. But the ending totally gets it. You just have to hang in there.

Yesterday afternoon I announced Hollywood Elsewhere’s Tyrannosaur fundraising campaign with the idea of raising $2000 to cover the rental of a screening room that Strand Releasing doesn’t want to pay for. I’m happy to announce that just shy of $700 — more than a third of the amount required! — is now in the safe. So I’m asking again for all believers to step up and throw in $20 or so to help pay for this. Tyrannosaur power!

Send your Pay Pal dollars to Jeffrey Wells (gruver1@gmail.com).

The backstory behind this bizarre but encouraging turn of events is right here.

Strand has told me that BAFTA will probably offer their facilities for a screening under their auspices, but that they also appreciate HE’s efforts and will work with me to set up this tastemaker screening, which will presumably happen next week or the week after.

Here’s a link to all my Tyrannosaur stories over the last nine months or so

“The most original adult love story I’ve seen in ages,” I wrote during Sundance 2011. “Easily the biggest shock of the Sundance Film Festival so far. I didn’t see this one coming — it’s a much stronger and more focused film than I expected from a smallish British drama about an older working-class guy with a temper problem. It curiously touches.

“Tyrannosaur is a drama that deals almost nothing but surprise cards — a tough story of discipline, redemption and wounded love. Cheers to director-writer Considine for making something genuine and extra-unique. He’s not just an actor who’s branched into directing with a special facility for coaxing good performances — he’s a world-class director who knows from shaping, cutting, timing, holding back and making it all come together.”

“I didn’t mention the actors — Peter Mullan, Olivia Colman, Eddie Marsan — but their performances simultaneously stand alone and reach in and grab hold. In fact each and every performance (and I mean right down to the dogs) is aces.

“The beast of the title is Joseph (Mullan), an alcoholic, widowed, violence-prone rage monster who lives alone in Leeds. He all but melts when he encounters Hannah (Colman), a kind and trusting shop merchant who shows Joseph a little tenderness. Hannah talks the Christian talk but is just as close to alcohol, which she’s turned to as a sanctuary from her ghastly marriage to a homely, ultra-possessive monster of another sort (Marsan) who brings violence and subjugation to Hannah on a constant basis.

“Once Mullan and Colman have formed a kind of friendship, the inevitable final conflict with Marsan awaits. One naturally expects (and in facts savors, truth be told) some sort of howling, knock-down, face-gashing fight between Mullan and Marsan, but…well, I’ll leave it there but it’s more than a bit of a surprise what happens.

“I was so taken with Tyrannosaur in the screening’s immediate wake that I shared my reactions with a young freelancer I’d spoken with in the cattle tent. He’d just seen it as well, and basically went ‘meh.’ My mouth almost fell open. ‘You think what we just saw is just okay?,’ I thought but didn’t say. Jeezus Christ. It takes all sorts and sensibilities to make a world.”

Just another $1300 to go! Please give if you can.

I’m looking to add a person or two to a large Park City apartment I’m co-renting with a colleague during Sundance 2012. I asked a columnist friend to join. “I can’t imagine attending Sundance since January is so heavy, Oscar-wise,” came the reply. “I usually have to be camped out in front of my server which continually crashes around that time of year.”

My response: “You should try Sundance once. It’s stimulating, loads of fun, euphoric at times…and it gets you out of the Oscar penitentiary for a few days, which is AGONY by the time January rolls around. You can’t keep writing ‘will The Descendants beat War Horse or The Artist?’ over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. People get sick of that stuff.”