Month: February 2013

There’s nothing wrong with a highly respected, Oscar-winning filmmaker making a popcorn thriller that uses stylish menace, bad guys, hypnotherapy, sexuality, sadism and the hero going “aarrgghhh!” to punch up ticket sales. Plus I’m trusting that Danny Boyle will do the right thing. Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle is another plus. Ditto Vincent Cassel as the arch-villain.

The best thing about it, of course, is the Dali-esque touch with the head-blown-off guy (is that Cassel?) talking like a chicken with its head cut off.

I’m not sure I like James McAvoy any more. I don’t know what it is but he bothers me. And I really don’t like scenes in which the main protagonist is held down and made to feel so much acute pain that he goes “Aaarrggghhh!”

Another comfort factor is knowing that Fox Searchlight doesn’t release crap.

The embargo only just broke, but John Moore‘s A Good Day To Die Hard is at 9% on Rotten Tomatoes. For those millions who refuse to even glance at review sites and who select movies solely based on instinct and the effectiveness of the trailers, a 9% means that you’re going to feel pissed, soiled and badly burned.

Moore and screenwriter Skip Woods know the drill by now, I’m sure. They need to put on fishing hats with the brims pulled down, put on a pair of Ray Ban shades, hop in the Audi and head out to the desert and stay there until this blows over. Why would they want to stay in LA this weekend? “Hey, John…how ya doin’, man? Hey, uhm…(quietly) what’s this I hear about your Die Hard flick being really shitty, man? Like you killed the franchise or something. That true?”

“Everything that made the first memorable — the nuances of character, the political subtext, the cowboy wit — has been dumbed down or scrubbed away entirely. I’m not saying I wish it was the ’80s again — or maybe I am. If that makes me a grumpy old man, it’s John McClane‘s fault.” — from A.O. Scott‘s N.Y. Times review.

Earlier today Grantland‘s Mark Lisanti posted a lavishly illustrated piece (tip of the hat to Mark Weinstein) called “Oscar Travesties! A tournament to determine the worst Academy Award moment in modern history.” You have to go to the site’s Facebook page to vote. I agree with almost all the dark Oscar moments listed except one. The Bill Murray travesty wasn’t him losing the Best Actor for Lost in Translation — it was Murray not being nominated for Rushmore.

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Deadline‘s Pete Hammond, one of the more savvy Academy pulse-takers, is now predicting via Gold Derby that Amour‘s Emanuelle Riva will nudge out Silver Linings Playbook‘s Jennifer Lawrence for the Best Actress Oscar. Because of Riva’s BAFTA win? I would be flabbergasted if this happened. Hammond is also going for SLP‘s Robert De Niro in the Best Supporting Actor race and…Ang Lee for Best Director? What kind of divining stick is Hammond using?

Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil is sticking with Lawrence, but has decided to abandon Lincoln‘s Tommy Lee Jones (his previous Best Supporting Actor pick) for Django Unchained‘s Christoph Waltz. Nope. Waltz has had his moment in the sun. DeNiro has been surging, and I think he’s somewhere between a safe and a very safe bet at this stage.

O’Neil wants me to update my predictions. Okay, but on the plane. I’m writing this from the LAX Virgin America departure area. My JFK flight leaves at 10:40 am.

I hate it when you’re in the middle of writing something and your plane’s boarding call is announced. You have to then decide if you can finish to your satisfaction within the next five or ten minutes or if you should bail and board and finish the piece once the plane is 10,000 feet up and getting Gogo on-board wifi (which now cost $25 per flight). Either way the initial announcement shatters the concentration so you might as well stop and board.

Last night my dp friend Svetlana Cvetko (Inequality For All, Inside Job) and I met Zero Dark Thirty screenwriter-producer Mark Boal at Giorgio Baldi (114 West Channel Road, Santa Monica). No interview, no recording anything — just a friendly candlelight sit-down. I had the most delicious dover sole of my life. The lemon and wine sauce did the trick. An expensive dish ($40), but I’ll never forget it. Just like I’ve never forgotten a slice of chocolate-chip cheesecake I had about 26 years ago in the medieval village of Rothenburg, Germany.

Boal told me a story about meeting an Al Qeada admirer when he was camping outdoors in Jordan’s Wadi Rum and staring at the glistening night sky. The lesson of the story is that if you talk straight to a stranger and politely refuse to back down when he implies that perhaps you should fear him and defer to his views, you’ll not only be okay but you and he might even become pals. I decided to visit Wadi Rum and do the whole camping-and-riding-camels thing when I finally visit there. I’ve never been east of Crotia or west of Vietnam.

In any event, we were sitting in the front area and before Boal arrived I noticed Sean Penn as he walked in and sat down at a rear table. When I hit the head about 45 minutes later I saw that Penn was sitting with a white-haired older guy. Didn’t recognize him. Hazy features. Penn’s agent or manager, I figured. Or some non-pro Malibu friend. Anyway they got up and left a while later and as he walked out the older guy was out of the shadows and bathed in amber light, and I said to Mark and Svetlana, “Holy shit, it’s Clint.” I told myself it was the subdued lighting as I never miss a famous face, but the fact is that the director of Mystic River doesn’t look as distinct or stand as tall as he used to. At age 82, who does? But he looks good. I hope he’s forgotten about A Star Is Born.

Sports Illustrated and Kate Upton have made a big deal about how difficult and uncomfortable it was to shoot a cover layout in Antarctica, but — this is why I’m tapping this out — nobody believes location shoots anyway. Certainly not in the realm of still photography. There is some element of belief when it comes to features, but the trust factor is ebbing as we speak. CGI fakery has ruined so much in terms of faith in actual things.

I believed that Zero Dark Thirty was shot in real Middle East locations and I’ll believe any Werner Herzog documentary, but a photo of an exotic backdrop means almost nothing these days. Almost everything has become a kind of lie. So S.I. should’ve saved themselves the grief and shot Upton in front of a green-screen in a Manhattan studio and dropped in Antarctica backdrops. Nothing matters. It’s all bullshit.

Great political theatre, like a revival meeting. Everyone felt it. Brilliant. And for comic relief, there was John Boehner‘s face.

I’ve been noticing Oscar-season TV promos that make use of spiritual-uplift music — music that’s not only not heard on the soundtrack of the film being advertised, but which has nothing to do with the mood of the film as a whole. The subdued, gentle choral music in this Zero Dark Thirty spot is an example. Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s film never even flirts with the emotions implied by this accompaniment.

And yet the spot “does the trick” on some level. It suggests that the film might be a lulling, calming mood bath. Or at least partly that.

TV ads for Silver Linings Playbook have done the same thing. I heard one last month that used some kind of rave-up, happy-clap “hey!” song that’s not used in the film, but it sounds good so they used it.

I realize that Daniel Montgomery‘s Oscar acceptance clip, which is posted on Tom O’Neil’s Gold Derby, is supposed to be ironically, intentionally “bad.” But all you can see are the peeling paint blotches on his ceiling. Which is a symbol, of course, for a hand-to-mouth, down-at-the-heels lifestyle, which does’t go with the tuxedo. But let’s be liberal and accept that tuxedos, poverty, bothersome over-acting, yellow walls, paint chips and huge head-shadows are all of a metaphorical piece.

But Montgomery also tries to blend this Last Exit to Brooklyn atmosphere with ancient Oscar footage (Chad Lowe tearing up at Hilary Swank‘s Best Actress Oscar acceptance speech in ’05) along with Tommy Lee Jones listening to an unfunny joke at last month’s Golden Globes. Plus you can’t hear the guy. Fail.