If you can pick out little mistakes in a short little clip like this, what hope does the movie have as a whole? Lindsay Lohan is trying to call someone or find out something that James Deen would be pissed about if he knew, hence the three or four concerned looks. But imagine how much more interesting the scene would be if we knew Deen was awake the whole time, and when he busts her he says something pithy and cool instead of yelling at the top his lungs…right?
I just confided to a colleague that apart from the all-but-certain scenario of Lincoln not winning Best Picture Oscar, “I think Argo will probably take the prize. I’ll be stunned if Silver Linings Playbook wins it, but it could. And if that happens, I will become a Golden Gleaming God among Oscar bloggers because I stood alone and suffered the arrows. If this happens I will damn sure use my terrible swift sword to go after the SLP haters. But it won’t happen so I may as well stop dreaming.”
I’m honestly at peace with Argo winning. The Movie Godz want the Best Picture Oscar to go to my first choice, Zero Dark Thirty, but they know the score on that one as much as everyone else. You’re telling me that SLP has a better shot than Argo, but…what do I know? Nothing. Okay, I feel things but what is that?
“Yeah, I don’t see the argument for Argo,” the friend replied. “It just has too much against it. If this was the election, Obama would be Lincoln, Romney would be Argo and Silver Linings Playbook is Gary Johnson.”
Who the eff is Gary Johnson?
“Or you could say SLP is Romney but you would hate that so I can’t say that. Basically the same odds apply for either of those movies to beat Lincoln as arguing Romney could beat Obama. It could happen but the chances are slim. Still, you should go with what you think — remember you were among the only ones who thought Crash might win.
“Watch the WGA as far as Lincoln vs. Argo vs. Silver Linings — ditto SAG ensemble. If Argo can’t win SAG (SLP or Les Miz will probably take that) it can’t win BP, I don’t think.
“Where we are right now is like when Obama lost the first debate. Everyone jumped ship and figured no way he could win. Nate Silver held fast to the numbers and did so with caveat that this is how it will still go and I’m 99% right. But there is still that tiny chance the numbers would betray the eventual outcome.
“Given that, with Oscar history, numbers and odds — you could probably say it breaks down this way: Lincoln: 75% — Argo and SLP split with a 20% each to win. Les Miz is the straggler with a 5% chance. But a 20% chance to win still means there’s a chance.”
I disagree. Argo has not only edged out Lincoln, or so some of us are sensing, but SLP is probably slightly in front of Lincoln also. Maybe. Forget Life of Pi and Les Miz.
I’m sorry but as brilliant and vital as Lena Dunham obviously is, the pixie cut doesn’t work, the tats on her arms and upper back are appalling and should henceforth be covered whenever cameras are around, and what was that awkward walk about? She seemed to be half-limping and tip-toeing, like her pumps didn’t fit. I realize that Dunham’s handle is being that unglammy girl who embraces her altogetherness, but a better haircut, sensible shoes and a wiser choice of evening wear wouldn’t get in the way of that.
Yesterday Entertainment Weekly‘s Anthony Breznican reported that Sarah Jessica Parker‘s performance as Gloria Steinem in Lovelace has been cut by directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman.
The Steinem scene was shot as an epiloque-type thing. Lovelace (Amanda Seyfried) and Steinem met in 1984. Steinem, editor of Ms. Magazine, subsequently gave Lovelace a forum to vent her anger at the porn industry sleazeballs (one of whom, Chuck Traynor, is portrayed by Peter Sarsgaard) who had exploited her as the ultimate blowjob queen of Western Civilization as it existed in the early ’70s. Pic now ends in 1980 or thereabouts.
A Sundance Film Festival premiere, Lovelace will have its first showing at 9:45 pm on Tuesday evening, 1.22, at Park City’s Eccles theatre.
Lovelace costars Sharon Stone, Juno Temple, Wes Bentley, James Franco (as Hugh Hefner), Hank Azaria, Bobby Cannavale, Chris Noth and Adam Brody.
Parker’s end-coda performance will probably be included as an extra on the DVD/Bluray.
UCLA film student and Yale alum Puja Maewai is looking for funds to complete Jaya, a Slumdog Millionaire-ish street drama shot in Mumbai on a Fulbright grant. The movie is based “on a true story of a teenage girl who masquerades as a boy and makes a living as a thief, until the day she encounters a man who may be her long-lost father,” says the Texas-born filmmaker.
I was intrigued from the get-go, but Maewa should include links to news stories about the true story. And she should provide an embed code to just the trailer instead of that godawful fundraising widget, which is an eyesore.
“I presume there are other plot lines besides the one about the lead finding her possible father,” I wrote back. “While watching your solicitation piece, which is nicely done, I felt there should be more of an indication that there’s a Dickensian plot weave going on in the film. (Which I presume is there.) And you should teach yourself to move your arms less while speaking. Otherwise it’s an appealing pitch. I hope posting this on HE helps.”
Jaya director Puja Maewai.
All forms of exercise are wonderful, spirit-lifting, perfect. But of all the ways to exercise and get the blood pumping and harden the bod, skiing seems the most…I don’t know, the most complacent? The most middle-class? Certainly the most indulgent and regimented. Every time I see a couple of skiers clomping down the hallway of the Park Regency or hauling their huge gear sacks into a Park City shuttle, I always look at their white faces and every time I see looks of boredom and blankness.
Skiiers might have a lot hidden underneath their gear, but they’re not interesting people. Not on the surface, at least. I’ve been watching them for too many years. I know. They seem lacking in snap and intrigue. A few Park City bar owners and resturateurs love the ski crowd and look askance at journo types like myself because we don’t spend enough. I give them the eff-you attitude right back. I almost dislike skiiers as much as golfers with their hideously-patterned golf shirts and checkered pants and shit.
Plus I vaguely despise those padded ski suits skiers all wear, especially the orange ones. I mean, I’m here trying to figure out a film festival, working hard in my jeans and deerskin cowboy boots and looking for salvation and acting cool, and then two or three pink-faced skiiers get on the bus…oh, God, here they are. Deadbeats. They sit down, fatigued and winded and not talking with each other. All zombied out. They remind me of people who go to Cancun and Las Vegas and Atlantic City for vacations.
The only time I’ve identified with a skiier is when I’ve watched the Criterion DVD of Michael Ritchie‘s Downhill Racer. Otherwise forget it. Forget the whole ski culture.
The Gold Derby status-quo conservatives are sticking with sleepy Lincoln for Best Picture, but TheWrap‘s Steve Pond, Deadline‘s Pete Hammond, Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil and Coming Soon‘s Ed Douglas are now forecasting an Argo win. Me? After forecasting Lincoln for ages, I’m starting to think that Silver Linings Playbook has a shot. The just-up Twitter Oscars Index convinced me it just might happen…maybe.
“A playful, elegantly made little horror film, Mama teasingly sustains a game of hide-and-seek as it tantalizes the audience with fleeting apparitions of the title character while maintaining interest in two deeply disturbed little orphan girls,” writes Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy, who filed last night at 11:28 pm.
“Being sold primarily on the name of its godfather, Guillermo del Toro, this Canadian-Spanish co-production from Universal is refreshingly mindful of the less-is-more horror guidelines employed by 1940s master Val Lewton, not to mention Japanese ghost stories, but the PG-13 rating might prove too restrictive for the gory tastes of male core genre fans. Still, less bloodthirsty female teens could make up the difference at the box office, as the film provokes enough tension and gasps to keep susceptible viewers grabbing their armrests or the arms of those next to them.
“In essence, Mama represents a throwback and a modest delight for people who like a good scare but prefer not to be terrorized or grossed out. With fine special effects and a good sense of creating a mood and pacing the jolts, Andy Muschietti shows a reassuringly confident hand for a first-time director, pulling off some fine visual coups through smart camera placement and cutting, and not taking the whole thing so seriously that it becomes overwrought.”
The smart Sundance journalist always watches screeners the first day (i.e., Thursday). I’ll be watching A Teacher, Concussion, Muscle Shoals and Running From Crazy. With my own earphones.
The Park Regency hotel (1710 Prospector Ave., Park City, Utah) has always had weak, spotty, sluggish wifi. It’s 2013 and it still feels like 1997 in this joint. And last night the wifi was moving like a snail in suite #202. So I asked this morning if I could please have a suite that’s closer to the router/modem, and they said sure and gave me the keys to suite #232, where I’m now sitting. And it’s even slower. It’s awful. Pages takes minutes, not seconds, to load. It took so long for my gmail page to load that I went into a dumb-beast trance. There’s nothing worse than bad-wifi headaches. The forehead throbs.
The last time the wifi was this bad was four years ago in Oxford, Mississippi, where the first Hollywood Elsewhere “mood pocket” occured.
I’ve tried to sign up for a mifi service via AT&T but it’ll take days to receive the device in the mail. I can’t do the good old “turn your phone into a mifi device” because in order to do this I’ll have to give up my AT&T international plan, according to two AT&T tech guys I spoke with.
Update: I’ve asked the Park Regency staffers for assistance in a moderate but urgent tone of voice, and they basically stared at me like I’m a circus freak, like I’m crazy and possibly dangerous. Could you please call QWest and ask for a service guy to come out and see what’s wrong? It was like talking to cows. All they do is say “uhm, could you maybe work in the lobby? Because the signal is pretty good here.” (Which it is.) As a last resort I wrote the guy in charge of running this place, Richard Zimmerman of Trading Places, and of course he’s not responding. Why would he?
Instructions for the crazy guy in room #232: Nod, listen, say you’re sorry, keep nice-ing him and wearing him down. He’ll eventually give up. And the staffers are right. They’ve won and I’ve lost. I’m now filing from the lobby. Tail between legs. But somewhat grateful. It works like gangbusters down here! What a contrast!
Update: But it still sucks back in the suite. I brought both of my Macbook Pros plus the iPad 3 on this trip. For whatever reason the Macbook Pro sitting on a table in front of the couch works a little better than the computer sitting on the desk in front of the TV. I guess between the moody couch computer and the lobby sessions I’ll muddle through, but I hate this.
If there’s one awards-quality film that warrants a deep-drill investigation by 60 Minutes, it’s Zero Dark Thirty. Obviously. Hello? With all the sharply differing views about whether the film endorses torture or if Biggy-Boal simply included it because it happened? And yet 60 Minutes executive editor Bill Owens has told The Hollywood Reporter‘s Marisa Guthrie that the show has decided against any such inquiry.
Owens’ reasoning sounds muddled to me. He says “we’d [have to] go out and find our own Jessica Chastain character,” whatever that means. And he’s apparently grappling with some level of disappointment about the fact that ZD30 “is not a documentary.”
And yet 60 Minutes exec producer and CBS News chairman Jeff Fager has told Guthrie — this is unbelievable — that the show will run a follow-up piece on Lincoln, which will be seen as a sequel to the admiring profile of Steven Spielberg’s film that aired in October. The upcoming segment will air on 2.10 or 2.17, or right near the end of Oscar balloting.
Let’s back up and look at this again. 60 Minutes, a class act among news analysis shows with the ability to provide a huge p.r. advantage to any film looking for awards acclaim, is giving two (click) two (click) two blowjob pieces to Lincoln while turning its back on what is easily the most controversial Oscar-season film of the year — a story which could obviously be illuminated by a few probing interviews with the right people.
Methinks something stinks in Denmark. Favoritism, powerful alliances, kowtowing to the Spielberg aura…something. Eyebrows were raised a few days ago when Spielberg persuaded Bill Clinton to speak highly of Lincoln at the Golden Globes, and now a second Lincoln profile on 60 Minutes within a three-month period? What’s going on here?
60 Minutes has a sterling reputation for independence and backbone (except for the Geoffrey Wigand episode depicted in The Insider), but their coverage of Lincoln is perplexing. Because if they weren’t an honorable news show and if brown paper bags filled with cash were being delivered to Owens by special couriers in black limos, they’d be covering this film exactly the way they are now.
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