Month: September 2012

Fox Searchlight has apparently decided that Anthony Hopkins‘ performance as Sir Alfred in Sacha Gervasi‘s Hitchcock is good enough to be in the Best Actor race. They announced today that the film, a kind of dramedy about the making of Psycho, will open on 11.23.12. That’ll be almost a month to the day fter the debut airing of HBO’s The Girl, a dark side of the coiner that portrays Hitch as a sexually predatory genius.

You know what I’d like to see? A movie about the making of Strangers on a Train, which marked a comeback for Hitch. In my mind he went into a kind of slump with The Paradine Case. He rebounded in a technical sense with Rope, but then he slumped right back with Stage Fright and Under Capricorn. Strangers on a Train was his big resurgence and the start of his best decade.

Hitchcock costars Scarlett Johnasson as Janet Leigh, Helen Mirren as Alma Reville, Jessica Biel as Vera Miles, Toni Collette as Peggy Robertson and James D’Arcy as Anthony Perkins. Michael Wincott as Ed Gein, Paul Schackman as Bernard Herrmann, Josh Yeo as John Gavin and Richard Chassler as Martin Balsam.

I read a version of the Hitchcock script eons ago, and it’s just a good, steady procedural — this happened and then that happened and then this happened. It will rise or fall on the performances, and not just Hopklins’ but Helen Mirren’s, I’m guessing.

I wrote the following on March 1, 2012: “If I was casting Fox Searchlight’s Hitchcock, I would never choose the buxom, thick-lipped Scarlet Johansson to play the thin-lipped, somewhat rigid-mannered Janet Leigh.

“There’s a reason Leigh was a star from the early ’50s to early ’60s — it was a generally uptight, conformist, buttoned-down era, and Leigh’s cautious look and vibe fit right into that. She wasn’t Anna Magnani or Sophia Loren or Gloria Grahame. She was large-boobed, but she was basically Miss (or Mrs.) White Picket Fence. Her face didn’t move a muscle in The Vikings.

“And if Johansson had been time-machined back to the early ’50s she would have never made it as a big-league actress. At best she would have been the tart, the cigarette girl — Barbara Nichols in Sweet Smell of Success. Conversely Leigh probably wouldn’t have found much success if she’d begun in the mid to late ’90s. Correct and cautious wouldn’t have made it in the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky blowjob era.”

Yes, yes — this is a Best Picture nominee with a new approach to making a movie musical. Accepted, we get it, fine. Keep in mind that Russell Crowe has a really fine singing voice. Remember that documentary about his band, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts?

Anybody who gives any shit to Trouble With The Curve (Warner Bros., 9.21) is a sourpuss who needs to hit the showers. This is not a great Eastwood film, but it’s an entirely decent second-tier thing that completely pays off during the last 15 minutes. Who else is making old-fashioned, tripod-mounted, one-scene-follows-another movies with plain-spoken characters that are actually about stuff that counts? This film is a classic 1957 Chevy with a well-tuned engine and brand-new radials and no GPS and an AM radio with no auxiliary plug-in — take it or leave it.

If the name “Sandy Koufax” doesn’t mean anything to you, you’re going to have trouble with Trouble With The Curve, okay? Just being straight with you.

You can’t put down Eastwood movies (even if this one has been directed, very smoothly and confidently and almost certainly with Clint overseeing, by Robert Lorenz) for their relaxed Eastwoodish pacing and right-over-the-plate writing and their emphasis on values. That’s what they do, man. It’s a brand, a consistency.

Trouble With The Curve is a baseball movie that totally sides with the savvy scouts and their gut instincts and derides the computer stats analysts — it’s anti-Moneyball in spades. And it’s a fairy tale, of course — I didn’t believe any of it in a real-world sense except for the parts that show Clint’s character getting stiffer and crankier and a little less able to fend for himself, but I went with it because it’s Clint’s World and because the ending works with a great final line. As I was walking out I was even starting to forgive Clint for being a Romney supporter. Well, not really “forgive” — I was trying to figure out ways to overlook it.

Clint gets to do his snarly older-guy thing as Atlanta Braves baseball scout Gus Lobel. Gus is starting to be regarded by the front-office guys as too old and bent-over for the game (i.e., refuses to work with a computer) . Plus he needs to forget about driving because his eyes are failing. Pete (John Goodman) does what he can to protect Gus from soulless GenX operator Tom Silver (Mathew Lillard) but Gus’s forthcoming trip to scout hitters and pitchers in North Carolina is basically “move it or lose it.” Pete persuades Gus’s attorney daughter Mickey (Amy Adams) to tag along to make sure he’s okay. In N.C. they hook up with Johnny (Justin Timberlake), a former pitcher whom Gus supported and encouraged and now a scout for another team. And yaddah yaddah.

I have to admit I was a little concerned for the first two thirds or so. Trouble ambles along in a relaxed and steady fashion but it’s almost entirely about character and old age closing in and Gus’s relationship with Mickey and Mickey’s gradual romantic thing with Johnny. All well and good, I was telling myself, but where’s the actual story? Nothing’s really happening. And then something happens at the end and it all kicks into place.

In Contention‘s Kris Tapley was right the other day when he said this is Amy Adams’ film. It is. Her Mickey performance is straight and settled down, never actor-ish, in the zone and just right. Between this and her Master performance she has to be the front-runner for Best Supporting Actress.

“Trouble With the Curve is either an off-speed pitch that just catches the edge of the strike zone or a bloop single lofted into right field. The runner is safe. The movie is too. Crack open a peanut and flag down the beer guy.” — from A.O. Scott‘s 9.20 N.Y. Times review.

With very few Gold Derby know-it-alls knowing very much, here’s the first estimate of the leading 2012 Oscar contenders. I finally submitted my own estimates today. Here’s how they stack up against the other pundits:

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Remember the old days when Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit was seen as an historic double whammy? As the first of two Hobbit features plus an occasion for the first-ever projection of a mainstream film at 48 frames per second? Now The Hobbit is a three-parter (a shameful cash grab) and Warner Bros. seems committed to playing down the 48 fps aspect, or at least to keeping it at arm’s length. They’ve been running from this technology like scared rabbits since last April’s presentation of 48 fps Hobbit footage at Cinemacon.

A tech-savvy guy confides that “delicate bits of dirt” have been added to the 4K version of The Master — to the digital intermediate, I mean — in order to give the digital versions the look of film. Is that serious madman stuff or what? Paul Thomas Anderson didn’t want it to look too digitized so he gunked it up a wee little bit. This is from a knowledgable guy who knows knowledgable guys. I hope it turns out to be true.

One aspect of all that Argo love we’ve been hearing since Telluride has been a patriotic “yay team, good for us, we Americans did that!” sentiment. Because the movie, set in 1979 and ’80, says that the successful hoodwinking of the Islamic Iranian regime into thinking that six escaped American embassy workers were filmmakers was a CIA + Hollywood job. But now director-producer-star Ben Affleck has changed the postscript to say it was a Canadian job with CIA assistance.

Former Canadian ambassador to Iran Ken Taylor with Argo director Ben Affleck two days ago (i.e., Monday, 9.17) on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank.

Liza Foreman‘s 9.19 Wrap story says Affleck “has made the change to appease Ken Taylor, Canada’s former ambassador to Iran, who plays a key role in crisis depicted in the Affleck-directed movie, a Warner Bros. spokeswoman told TheWrap. The film was seen by associates of Taylor as falsely giving credit for the release of the hostages to a CIA agent and also suggesting that Canada and Taylor wrongly took credit.”

The new postscript reads as follows: “The involvement of the CIA complemented efforts of the Canadian embassy to free the six held in Tehran. To this day the story stands as an enduring model of international co-operation between governments.”

“I expressed my concern with certain details in the movie,” Taylor told the Toronto Star‘s Martin Knellman. “In reality, Canada was responsible for the six and the CIA was a junior partner. But I realize this is a movie and you have to keep the audience on the edge of their seats. Ben was very gracious and we got along really well. There are a few points I want to address. Now Ben and I both feel free to talk about them.”

I was given freebies to see The Book of Mormon last night at the Pantages theatre. Other journalist freeloaders were there also. I haven’t seen a balls-out, world-class stage musical in years, and this was awfully good. The Pantages is too big — rear seating is just too far back. I was in the fifth row left. Two lady ushers told me I couldn’t snap photos of the magnificent interior design. I ignored them, of course. What was happening between me and the architecture was none of their damn business,

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My concern is that Barack Obama, convinced as everyone else is by now that Mitt Romney is going to lose, is going to do his usual courtly, combat-averse, close-to-genuflecting routine when he debates Romney on 10.3, 10.16 and 10.22. He’s figuring Romney has already dug his own grave to why box a dead horse? Obama doesn’t like to scrap, much less take off the gloves. I’ve always seen that as a failing.

I also strongly disagree with Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet in his view of Anna Karenina. Joe Wright‘s film is a breath of fresh air in the historical-drama genre, and a knockout in terms of design, choreography, performances (especially Keira Knightley and Jude Law‘s) and general audacity. It’s a contact high. But in trashing one of the year’s finest Brevet at least uses moderate language, unlike N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis did the other day.

The best movies define their own realm. Most reflect or recreate “reality” as most of us know it, but not with absolute slavish adherence to every last detail. Like the speaking voices of the famous. Accuracy is welcome but sounding “right” is what counts. Listen to the real voice of George S. Patton. Imagine If Patton collaborators George C. Scott and director Franklin J. Schaffner had taken leave of their senses and decided to go the tonally correct route. No legendary reputation, no Best Actor Oscar, no home video sales…an anecdote.

The best way to see The Master in 70mm is on a fairly large and flat (or only slightly curved) screen. I saw it in 70mm at Toronto’s Bell Lightbox — perfect. The best way for New Yorkers was that 70mm special screening at the Zeigfeld eight days ago. I wouldn’t know how good it looks or sounds at the AMC Leows Lincoln Square, but I’ve had some bad experiences at that place.

In Los Angeles The Master playing in 70 mm in two theatres in the Arclight, and on a single screen in West L.A.’s Landmark. (A 35mm and digital version is also showing there.) The L.A. Weekly‘s Michael Nordine recently advised readers to “see it in the Dome.” No — don’t. The super-curved Dome screen distorts. The only way this venue would work would be if the Dome’s screen has been taken down (which happened when Alan Parker‘s Evita played there in ’96).

I intend to see it again on Friday or Saturday. My money is on the other Arclight screen or the Landmark.