Day: November 16, 2012

In a piece called “Dr. Feelgood — The Case for Silver Linings To Win Best Picture,” Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone offers her usual sage analysis along with a dab or two of historical perspective. But her core feelings about David O. Russell‘s antsy-brilliant screwball comedy overpower any pretense at neutrality. Her description of Silver Linings as “the little movie that could, can and does make people feel good” is an old and familiar tactic known as “patronizing with faint praise.”

Stone’s obvious point is that while credit may be due to a highly intelligent, well-crafted piece like Silver Linings, there are few things lamer than a movie that wants to make audiences feel blissed out. Films like this are fine, but they don’t belong at the grown-up’s table. So forget the dark undertows and serious threats that permeate every corner of Silver Linings — the manic mindsets, mental instabilities, emotional woundings, meds, traumas, face-slaps and fistfights. And forget the grounded performances, the skillfully woven ensemble acting and high-throttle narrative drive, Stone is more or less saying. For this is essentially a winky-dinky happy thing with green face paint (i.e., the Philadelphia Eagles version of Clarabelle-the-clown makeup) trying to give you a nice back rub.

And some of you, Stone is implying — the less wise or perceptive, the more emotionallly susceptible, the simplistic of mind, the comfort-seekers, the easy lays — love this confection like you loved your little comfort blanky when you were 18 months old. And that’s fine as far as it goes, she adds. But a film has to do more than just dispense feel-good vibes to win the Best Picture Oscar. If the Silver Linings recipe tickles your fancy, great. But sit at that little fold-up card table over there. The one with the little stools and paper plates and crayons and drawing paper and the little coffee-cup saucers with complimentary dosages of Klonopin and Trazadone.

Understand this: the real lame-itude is dismissing or marginalizing a film because it’s buoyant and screwball-intense and furiously spirited and is all about want and need and dealing with recognizable demons, and is therefore not the equal of more steadily (or more slowly) paced solemn-attitude Best Picture contenders that are about real pain, real loss and are therefore truly serious.

What could be more momentous than patiently and strategically bringing about the end of slavery with Janusz Kaminski‘s Close Encounters of the Third Kind-like white light flooding through the windows? What could be more fundamentally rooted and universally appealing than a smart, satisfying caper film about hoodwinking the Iranian Islamics of 1979 and ’80 into believing that a group of American embassy workers are filmmakers? And what can reach deeper into our souls and make us understand what truly matters than a musical about the cruel inequality inflicted upon the suffering poor in early 1800s France?

Stone excerpt: “At the helm of the Silver Linings Oscar effort is Lisa Taback, maybe the most savvy of all Oscar strategists, who knows the Academy better than they know themselves. A film only needs to be perceived as the underdog to make audiences and voters want to root for it because they root so hard for the scrappy characters. This worked last year and it worked the year before and it worked for Slumdog Millionaire on top of that, and it could very well work again this year.

“The best thing that can happen to this movie is to repeat last year and the year before — Oscar pundits, save Fandango’s Dave Karger and Jeff Wells, are underestimating it. If it were number one across the board it would have a harder time being perceived as the scrappy underdog. Slumdog is the model for this type of Oscar win: the little movie that could, can and does makes people feel good.”

What’s the point of “illusionists pulling off bank heists and then rewarding the audiences with money,” as the synopsis goes? Don’t the illusionists have mortgages and monthly car payments? Why share their hard-earned dough with the audience? Jesse Eisenberg, Dave Franco, Mark Ryffalo, Isla Fischer, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Mélanie Laurent, Woody Harrelson, Elias Koteas costar. There is, I feel, reason for concern about the guiding hand of director Louis Leterrier (Clash of the Titans).

Sally Field did a 92Y “Reel Pieces” appearance with Annette Insdorf on Tuesday, 11.13. In this clip, Annette asks Sally about the behind the scenes fight she fought to keep the role of Mary Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. When Spielberg said he didn’t see her playing the part opposite Daniel Day Lewis, she replied “you’re wrong Steven, you’re wrong” while telling herself, “this is yours…you’ve earned it…don’t let it go.”

Field says “oh….oh!….oh!” too much in the telling of this tale. I really don’t like anyone saying “oh…oh!…oh!” Because I don’t like people who need several seconds to collect themselves when they’re heard something unusual or startling or surprising. Just roll with it and return the serve.

Field is quite good as Mrs. Lincoln, but I still wish Marcia Hay Harden had been cast. No offense. Just an instinct.

Earlier today Telegraph critic Robbie Collins posted a cinema etiquette guide. Familiar rules & gripes but I’m re-posting with my own comments and exceptions:

1. Keep talking to a minimum; save the chat for after the film. Wells comment: No shit?

2. Enjoy your treats quietly; keep rustling to a minimum. Wells comment: The fault here is with the decision of candy manufacturers to package their junk in noisy plastic bags. Theatre owners could decline to sell candy packaged this way.

3. No Public Displays of Affection. Wells comment: Back in the days when there were balconies, theatres were the only dark places that kids could afford to make out in. If balconies still existed, my rule would be no PDAs in the orchestra.

4. No mobile phone use until after the film including texting, social networking and internet surfing. All phones should be switched off or turned to silent so they don’t interrupt others mid-film.

5. Keep feet off chairs — your fellow cinema goers have to sit in them. Wells comment: I once saw a young Hispanic beefalo in baggy shorts with his large, unpedicured bare feet plopped on a seat in front of him at the AMC Empire. I took one look and decided not to even sit in the theatre. Foul.

6. Arrive on time and no getting up to go to the toilet. Wells comment: I agree about bathroom breaks but c’mon, with theatres selling those 16 oz. and 32-ounce containers of syrupy Coke…? Call of nature.

7. No removing of shoes — keep your foot odor confined to your shoes. Wells comment: I like to remove my shoes while watching, but I do this knowing there are no odor issues whatsoever. I always shower before going out and wear clean socks, and I don’t wear stinky cross-training shoes (always leather loafers), and I always sprinkle a little talcum powder in the required areas.

8. No littering — take your leftovers with you. Wells comment: I don’t care about wrappers and containers being left on a theatre floor. If a theatre is going to sell this crap, it’s their obligation to clean up.

9. No plot spoilers — don’t ruin the movie ending for others by posting on social media. Wells comment: It’s bad form to spoil during the first two or three weeks, but after that all bets are off. After three weeks you can post anything you want on Twitter, any time you want. Spoiler whiners just need to avert their eyes. They wouldn’t have a problem in the firsg place if they weren’t so slow in getting to theatres and seeing the new films. Take responsibility.

10. Allocated seating — no sitting in other peoples pre-booked seats. Wells comment: If you come in late you forfeit your reserved seats. I’m sorry but that’s the penality for arriving after the film has started.

Extra Wells Rule: If you’re coming in late, stand over to the side while your eyes adjust to the darkness. No standing in a group like bewildered wildebeests in front of people trying to watch the screen.

Any widely admired screenplay that has not been filmed over the period of several years (like, for instance, the various efforts at adapting John Kennedy O’Toole‘s A Confederacy of Dunces or, more to the point, Lem Dobb‘s screenplay of Edward Ford) is either doomed to stay on the sidelines for eternity or it won’t pan out if it finally does get made. And the reason is that oft-referenced rule of creative potency.

Once something has been written (be it a novel or a screenplay), the movie version has to be made within four to six years or the film will feel faintly musty or ossified or precious on some level.

Once the egg is laid, it has to hatch within nature’s timetable. Strike while the iron is hot or the magic will escape. Because once the ship has sailed, the ship has sailed. As Dobbs himself has acknowledged via a quote from Frederic Raphael, to wit: “Screenplays don’t age like wine — they age like fruit.”

So the latest attempt to make a film of Dobbs’ Edward Ford — Tim Burton producing, Terry Zwigoff attached to direct, Michael Shannon in the lead role — probably won’t happen, and if it does…well, let’s not piss on a film that hasn’t even been made yet. But usually films that don’t get financed within four to six years probably shouldn’t be financed, and should be left alone to die like cats in the forest.

Same with Dunces — nobody will ever want to see a movie about a fat, brilliant, super-depressed guy living with his mother in New Orleans, based on a novel authored by a fat brilliant guy who killed himself at age 31.

In an 11.15 piece called “The Great Unproduced American Screenplay,” Slate‘s Matthew Dessem had made the case for Ford. “It almost seems right that Edward Ford should be immortalized in a screenplay that never quite worked out as planned,” he writes. “Or, sometimes, a movie might get made by exactly the right people at exactly the right time.”

HE readers presumably understand the perfectly chosen first line of A.O. Scott‘s N.Y. Times review of Anna Karenina — “Bad literary adaptations are all alike, but every successful literary adaptation succeeds in its own way.” It’s a re-phrasing, of course, of the first line of Leo Tolstoy’s 1878 novel: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

“The bad adaptations — or let’s just say the average ones, to spare the feelings of hard-working wig makers and dialect coaches — are undone by humility, by anxious obeisance to the cultural prestige of literature,” Scott writes. “The good ones succeed through hubris, through the arrogant assumption that a great novel is not a sacred artifact but rather a lump of interesting material to be shaped according to the filmmaker’s will.

“The British director Joe Wright has seemed to me — up to now — to belong to the dreary party of humility, but Anna Karenina is different. It is risky and ambitious enough to count as an act of artistic hubris, and confident enough to triumph on its own slightly — wonderfully — crazy terms.

“Mr. Wright’s brilliant gamble is to arrive at…emotional authenticity by way of self-conscious artifice. The cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg are rendered as elaborate stage sets. (Sarah Greenwood is the production designer.) Characters make their way around props, past painted backdrops and through catwalks, ropes and backstage rigging. You get the sense that in these bureaucratic offices, ministerial meetings and aristocratic households, everyday life is a form of theater. To play your part in this intricately hierarchical society you must speak your lines, hit your marks, know your place and beware of improvisation.

“But the film itself is the very opposite of stagy. The camera hurtles through the scenery as if in hungry pursuit; the lush colors of the upholstery and the costumes pulsate with feeling; the music (by Dario Marianelli) howls and sighs and the performances are fresh, energetic and alive. Compressing the important events of Tolstoy’s thousand pages into an impressively swift two hours and change, Mr. Wright turns a sweeping epic into a frantic and sublime opera.”

I’ve no doubt that top execs of Hostess Brands, the makers of Twinkies, Hostess Cupcakes, and Wonder Bread, have been living high at the expense of the company and its workers. But Hostess has been on the ropes for years (having filed for bankruptcy twice over the last eight) and everyone knows the score. Junk food is a dying industry, patronized (like cigarettes) only by the lower-middles and kids and the poor. But the union struck anyway and now the owners have pulled the plug.

“The Hostess corporation has been making crappy, bad-for-you snack food since 1930, and after 81 years they’re going under? I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve been eating those rotgut chocolate cupcakes (my favorite are the kind with the chocolate icing on top of the vanilla-biege cake) since I was eight years old, and I can’t be the only one who succumbs. Wonder Bread is a joke, but people are still eating it.” — from 1.11.12 post titled “Made America Great.”