Day: September 14, 2012

This is Room 237 director Rodney Ascher doing a post-screening q & a at Bloor Hot Docs last night around…oh, 8 pm or thereabouts. If you’re any kind of fan of Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining Ascher’s doc (IFC Films, opening secretly this fall) is one of the greatest pure-pleasure organisms out there as it very entertainingly explores numerous hidden-meaning interpretations (some fruit-loopy, some fascinating) various folks have found in Kubrick’s 1980 classic.

Acher’s pronounced resemblance to Kubrick (particularly as he looked between the mid ’60s and early ’70s) is but another fascinating side dish.

I first saw and loved Room 237 at Sundance eight months ago. I had just as good a time with it last night. It’s so incredibly dense and labrynthian and jam-packed with thoughts and probes and speculations that you almost have to see it twice — there’s just too much to take in during one sitting.

One of the Toronto Film Festival movies I saw and said nothing about because I was bored and unmoved was Dante Ariola‘s Arthur Newman, which I keep misremembering the title of. What comes to mind are Alfred Newman, the composer, or Alfred E. Newman of MAD magazine.

Anyway, it costars the usually interesting or at least charismatic Colin Firth as the titular character, a very dull guy who decides to disappear from his own life and become a sort of imaginary golf pro, and Emily Blunt as a morose, leather-jacketed vagrant-knockabout. Together they narcotize and deflate and make a very dull film. I knew I wouldn’t last the duration, but I was hanging in there and hoping for the best when something happened that severed me from Arthur Newman and actually led to a walkout. It was a very minor thing, but it just hit me the wrong way and that was that.

There’s a scene in which Firth’s Arthur is urging Blunt’s Mike to get on a bus to Durham, North Carolina (she’s from there or something). But she doesn’t want to go, she says, because “I don’t like Durham.” But she doesn’t say that — she says “I don’t like Derm.” And the instant she said “Derm” I shook off the boredom and wondered why she’d say that because I was now mildly pissed off.

How do most people pronounce “Durham”? I asked a girl who worked at a Toronto cafe how she would prounounce it and she said “DurHAM?” An English literature professor visiting from Oxford or Cambridge might say “Dourhahm.” I pronounce “Durham” as a two-syllable thing with a muffled “uhr” that sounds like “Duhrrum.” But Derm (as in “perm” spelled with a p or Bruce Dern spelled with an m) is dead wrong. Nobody says it that way, and if they do they’re mistsken.

I guess Blunt got screwed up because she’s British and somebody told her it’s pronounced “Derm” and she didn’t know any better, and the director was no help because he’s Italian. I only know that “derm” was a deal-breaker, and that I can’t get the sound of Blunt saying “I don’t like derrrmm!” out of my head.

9.15 Update (9:20 am): TheWrap’s Sharon Waxman reported last night that Fox Filmed Entertainment CEO Tom Rothman was essentially whacked.

“Individuals close to the situation said that Rothman went after Ron Meyer‘s job as head of Universal Studios, and ended up losing the job he has had for more than a decade,” Waxman writes. ‘He went to [News Corp. COO] Chase Carey and overplayed his hand,’ said one insider close to the situation.

“Rothman is known as a volatile, often explosive tempered executive, while Carey is a straight-laced business executive with a very different style. Other reasons include the fact that Rothman was less relevant in a restructured News Corp.

“Of the mogul duo, Rothman was considered the creative force in moviemaking decisions, while Gianopulos is the business-minded executive and tough negotiator. In a restructured News Corp., Dana Walden and Gary Newman will report directly to Carey, eliminating the need for another executive layer.

Earlier: Eight minutes ago Deadline‘s Mike Fleming reported Fox Filmed Entertainment CEO Tom Rothman is “in the process of finalizing his exit from the studio.” annd that his exit is said to be “imminent.” So what’s that about? All I know is that Rothman, 57, is a tough headstrong bird who reads this column, and that he has what is typically referred to as a hands-on (or hands-in) management style.

In 1994 Rothman founded Fox Searchlight Pictures, and served as its chief honcho. He served as Twentieth Century Fox Film Group prez from January to August 2000, and then as Twentieth Century Fox Production topper from 1995 to 2000. Mr. Rothman has been chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment of Fox Entertainment Group Inc. since July 2000 and serves as its Director. He has also served as Co-Chairman of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. (That’s a lot of serving., but we’ve all gotta do it.) He serves as Director of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Mr. Rothman also serves as a Member of the Board of Directors of the Sundance Institute.

“Does Auda serve?”

[Cries of “no, no, no, no!”]

“Does Auda abu Tayi serve?”

[Further negative cries]

I didn’t see it, I mean. I wanted to, intended do…but somehow it didn’t happen. I said this a couple of days ago but it’s the festival’s fault. They show all the name-droppy, high-appeal films during the first four or five days, programming them against each other and forcing either-or choices, and then they refuse to re-screen them when things slow down over the last four or five days.

What’s this Argo obsession that Sasha Stone, Kris Tapley, Roger Ebert are putting out? Drop to your knees in worship? What film can steal its Best Picture thunder? Will you guys please take it easy? Argo is a very fine thing — a well-crafted, highly satisfying caper film with a certain patriotic resonance that basically says “job well done, guys…you should be proud.” But the hosannahs are a bit much.

Argo is proof that director-star Ben Affleck has clearly, seriously upped his game. He really is the new Sydney Pollack, and I say that as someone who knew, enjoyed, occasionally chatted with and deeply respected the director of Three Days of the Condor, Tootsie, The Yakuza, Out of Africa, The Firm, The Way We Were, etc.

But Argo is basically a movie designed to enthrall, charm, amuse, thrill, move and excite. It’s a comfort-blanket movie that basically says “this was the problem, and this is how it was solved…and the guys who made it happen deserve our applause and respect…no?” Yes, they do. But above all Argo aims to please. It skillfully creates suspense elements that probably weren’t that evident when the story actually went down. And it throws in two or three divorced-father-hangs-with-young-son scenes, and some CIA razmatazz and a few ’80s Hollywood cheeseball jokes and basically lathers it all on.

We all liked it in Telluride, but audiences in Scranton, Detroit, Ft. Lauderdale, Bakersfield, Terre Haute and Hartford will really love it.

I keep thinking about that jacked-up suspense finale that “works” but doesn’t feel genuine. You know it doesn’t. That last nail-biting bit with the police cars hot-dogging the departing jet on the Tehran airport runway? Standard Hollywood bullshit.

If I was a high-school teacher and Argo was a term paper, I would give it an 87 or 88. Okay, an 89. It’s obviously good, but it’s not constructed of the kind of material that ages well. It is not a film that exudes paralyzing greatness. Like many highly regarded Hollywood films, it adheres to familiar classic centrist entertainment values…and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s very pleasing thing, but it’s a fucking caper film. Boil it down and it’s Ocean’s 11 set in Washington, D.C., L.A. and Tehran of 1978 and ’89 without the money or the flip glamorous vibe or the Clooney-Pitt-Damon-Cheadle combustion.

Just get a grip, is all I’m saying. Tone it down.

In the relentlessly praised Silver Linings Playbook, Jennifer Lawrence “steals the show with her harshly barbed words and unapologetic attitude,” thefilmstage’s Jared Mobarak wrote two days ago. “So much in fact that half the theatre clapped after one of her most heated dressing-downs.

“This wouldn’t mean much [under] normal circumstances, but I saw the film at a Toronto Film Festival press & industry screening. Half these people usually leave prematurely to hit another possible distribution deal and they never show emotion, let alone willfully applaud a movie screen when no one involved in the film is present to suck up to. This shows how likeably impulsive and unpredictable her role and performance are.”

“Or look at Phoenix, lifting his head high and proud, as Brando used to do, with an added, cranky stiffness that comes from having, or being, a serious pain in the neck. The eyes narrow and the mouth is awry, one corner twisting into an Elvis curl, though it looks too sour for seduction, let alone song.” — from Anthony Lane‘s 9.17 New Yorker review.

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