Day: January 8, 2013

If Sony Pictures were to sell Zero Dark Thirty action figures (including not only Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke and James Gandolfini models but a dead Osama bin Laden with a bullet in the face), I would buy them. Seriously. Would anyone buy a Richard Parker action figure from the Pi collection? How about Lincoln action figures, including one of Sally Field‘s Mary Todd Lincoln? How about Les Miserables action figures including one of a weeping, short-haired Fantine (Anne Hathaway)?

I would really love it if the Gandolfini ZD30 figure had a lower-back button you could push and you’d hear him say, “So is he there or he is not fuckin’ there?”

Some are complaining that Django Unchained action figures somehow dishonor the real-life suffering that happened under slavery.

From Cinephile Archive and in Francis Coppola‘s own handwriting…

It was revealed earlier today that Blue Jasmine, Woody Allen‘s San Francisco-shot movie, will be distributed by Sony Classics. Except the IMDB’s location listing says it was shot as much in Manhattan as San Francisco. “The story of the final stages of an acute crisis and a life of a fashionable New York housewife,” etc. Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Bobby Cannavale, Louis C.K., Andrew Dice Clay, Sally Hawkins, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg.

“Today we face the monsters!” I’ve loved Sir Laurence Olivier‘s St. Crispin’s Day speech in Henry V since I was a kid, and I’m a fan of Al Pacino‘s (and more precisely Oliver Stone‘s) “inches” spech in Any Given Sunday, but I really don’t care for generic rally-the-troops speeches.

“I thankfully want to say that I’m standing in a room of people who understand that depiction is not endorsement, and if it was, no artist could ever portray inhumane practices, no author could ever write about them, and no filmmaker could ever delve into the knotty subjects of our time.” — Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow, speaking last night upon accepting the Best Picture award from the New York Film Critics Circle.

“I think at the end of the day, we made a film that allows us to look back at the past in a way that gives us a more clear-sighted appraisal of the future.” — Zero Dark Thirty screenwriter-producer Mark Boal speaking last night.

The story I posted earlier this morning (“Why People Vote The Way They Do”) explains the DGA choices. The members didn’t vote for the directors — they voted for the stories and themes that they felt emotionally close to or supportive of, and then passed this along to the helmers. Like most moviegoers DGA members prefer quest stories and Voyage/Return films, and so they voted for three quest stories (Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, Argo) and two Voyage/Return films (Les Miserables, Life of Pi).

And they didn’t sufficiently support David O. Russell and the brilliant film he made that blended Comedy with Overcoming The Monster (i.e., Silver Linings Playbook) because some DGA members don’t like to see those two mixed together. It’s that simple.

Repeating — they didn’t vote for directorial skill or passion as much as the final emotional product. Like chumps, like easy-going pedestrians, the DGA membership voted for their locked-in longings and allegiances.

Silver Linings campaign orchestrator Lisa Taback reminds that over the past 12 years the DGA nominations and the Oscar’s Best Director Nominations have only matched twice: 2005 and 2009. All other years there have been at least one or two nominees that were not nominated for the DGA Award.

Les Miserables‘ Tom Hooper, by common consensus the most heavily criticized director of all the major 2012 Oscar season contenders for his close-ups and dutch angles and whatnot, has been effing nominated for a DGA Best Director Award? What’s going on here? What am I missing?

I’ve said frequently that the last 40 minutes of Les Miz work for me personally so I’m not dissing Hooper’s achievement, but what about all the people who’ve been putting down his relentless closeups? That’s all I’ve been hearing for the last few weeks. The DGA membership…what, lives on a different planet or something?

And what’s with the DGA not nominating Silver Linings Playbook‘s David O. Russell, who did everything right and extracted several killer performances and wrote the adaptation and put his personal history into the film and created the most appealing ride of the year? What standards are being applied or enforced here? What the…? Somebody needs to go out and find 10 or 15 DGA members and ask them why they voted the way they did. Because I really, really don’t get it. This is diseased.

Zero Dark Thirty‘s Kathryn Bigelow, Argo‘s Ben Affleck and Lincoln‘s Steven Spielberg were nominated along with Life of Pi‘s Ang Lee, winner of the 2012 Job-Well-Done, Friendly-Back-Pat Award for having directed a lusicously-toned CGI film that isn’t at the top of anyone‘s Best Picture list.

Django Unchained director Quentin Tarantino was also snubbed. I have no issue with that.

The freezer door on my refrigerator already had a dent in it, but I’ve punched it again for good measure.

The winner will be named at the DGA Awards Dinner on Saturday, 2.2.13.

Salon‘s Daniel D’Addario has posted a concise impression of the mania of Oscar season and a few of the issues raging around. He spoke to myself, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone and The Film Experience‘s Nathaniel Rogers. I sure as hell have never claimed to be any kind of Nate Silver when it comes to predictions. I just go with what feels right to me, and sometimes the crowd agrees, etc. But the name “Nate Silver” is so widely respected these days that it’s flattering to be quoted/included.

HE quote #1: “Most people are not that thrilled with what happens at the Oscars, but they like the argument [that leads up to the climax]. That’s the fun part. The blood is up. That’s what makes it fun. Then everybody goes to sleep [on] March 1st.” #2: “The constrictions that used to be put on trade reporters for the two main trades were that they had to be reportorial, dispassionate; what’s liberating is our personal voices.” #3: “The idea that a film [like Zero Dark Thirty] can’t be ambiguous — that’s as disgusting an idea as any I’ve heard in my life. It’s one of the lowest attack campaigns I’ve ever seen.”

“The seven basic plots: Quest, Voyage/Return, Rags to Riches, Comedy, Tragedy, Overcoming the Monster and Deepthroat.” — tweeted from Tokyo by Jack Reacher director & co-writer Chris McQuarrie.

Most industry-centric people who vote for awards do so with four considerations or goals in mind. One, they vote for the emotional resonance factor (“That’s kinda my story up there on the screen, and therefore I feel a certain kinship and want to affirm that”). Two, they vote in order to kowtow to the powerful and in so doing invite feelings of emotional comfort and professional security (i.e., why people vote for Steven Spielberg when he’s made a good film). Three, because they find the plot and/or subject matter to be comforting or heart-warming or reassuring on some level. And four, because they like the way the plot unfolds within the realm of its choosing and stays there, or in other words the way it refuses to fart around by shifting from one realm (“comedy”) to another (“overcoming the monster”).

At no time in their professional lives and not even under penalty of death will a significant percentage (much less many or a majority) of voters support a film because the high level of craft that went into it. Craft considerations are strictly for the acting categories and the tech branches. Best Picture voters (and I include myself to some extent as I just voted yesterday for the Broadcast Film Critics Association’s Critics Choice Awards) vote for themselves and what they’re hoping to get out of it. One way or another they almost never vote for” the best.” They vote in order to make themselves feel better and safer and…whatever, less scared of financial destitution and death.

I’m different. I actually vote for quality all the way except (when it comes to my kneejerk reaction to almost any Steven Spielberg film shot by Janusz Kaminski and made after Schindler’s List), but that makes me an outlier. And I accept that.

Most of the 2012 Best Picture nominees are quest films. People like quest films because they’re relatively simple and schematic (with the exception of Zero Dark Thirty) as well as followable and satisfying and yaddah yaddah. Those that operate outside this realm and/or mix plot themes or style signatures (like Silver Linings Playbook, The Master and Anna Karenina) have received highly impassioned mixed reactions because many people generally don’t like the feeling of a movie doing this and also doing that. Most people prefer movies that just do this, period.

In some peoples’ minds Silver Linings Playbook is an oddball because it’s a Comedy that also focuses on Overcoming The Monster. That unsettles some folks. They just want to laugh and feel good have a good time, and they don’t want to know from (or flirt with) mental-health monsters. This basically describes your slow-on-the-pickup under-30 female audience that was hesitant to see David O. Russell‘s film in the early stages.

Zero Dark Thirty is a quest film. (They try and try and try, and then they hit pay dirt and get it done.) Life of Pi is a voyage/return film, and one that isn’t necessarily about a Bengal tiger but who cares either way because we’re still stuck in that fucking lifeboat for an hour or so. Argo is a quest film. Beasts of the Southern Wild is a quest film. Les Miserables is a Voyage/Return film.

The Master is a mixture of a Voyage/Return film and Overcoming The Monster, which obviously a significant group has had a problem with.

Lincoln is a quest film (i.e., we must pass the 13th Amendment!) that sticks to its turf and doesn’t shilly shally, and is therefore satisfying to people who like their movies to be about meat and potatoes and dark gravy and a vegetable on the side. It comes with the emotional comfort factor (“After all these years of being taught what a great man Abraham Lincoln was, I finally get to meet and hang with him and even get to know him a bit! That makes me feel kinda good!”) and an industry-comfort factor by way of a standard Spielberg kowtow (“If I vote for a Spielberg film maybe I’ll inherit a certain positive industry karma and — who knows? — my son or daughter might get a job on one of his films”)