Month: August 2013

Yesterday I posted a praise piece about Adele Exarchopoulos‘ wide-open, mesmerizing performance in Blue Is The Warmest Color (IFC Films/Sundance Selects, 10.25). I called it “Historic Performance, All-But-Guaranteed Best Actress Nomination.” This morning Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone posted the following in the comment thread: “[Exarchopoulos getting a Best Actress nomination is] certainly possible…but the one to really look out for is Brie Larson in Short Term 12. If anyone is going to break through big-time this year, it will be her.

Blue Is The Warmest Color star and Oscar hopeful Adele Exarchopoulos.

Short Term 12 star and possible Oscar contender Brie Larson

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[Note: The title of this post isn’t meant literally, but as a euphemism]: Two days ago I wrote about my recent lower back pain, which reached epic proportions yesterday. Bent over and moaning. Nearly weeping at times. It’s tolerable in the morning, and I’m walking around like an 89 year-old by 3 pm. Right about now I could use a nice codeine-and-Tylenol cocktail. Because that chiropractor I saw on Wednesday just gave me a standard quick-fix treatment — I felt great for 45 minutes and then the pain came right back.

Yesterday morning I spoke with a friend about possible remedies and she told me never to work sitting down again…sold! I now have two stand-up desks. She also told me to go to a holistic Santa Monica chiropractor named Fernando Mata. I hobbled over to his office yesterday at 4 pm, and he eliminated about 80% of the agony. I’m suffering from a sprained back, he said. Ligaments. It’ll take six to eight weeks to be completely back in the pink. I’m taking pain pills, wearing a lower-back brace, carrying a cane around, applying an electric heating pad, installing a chin-up bar.

It was my bad luck to sit in front of a compulsive scribbler during a screening that I attended last night. During the entire film (and I mean during the entire three-hour running time) this asshole was writing furiously on some kind of paper pad, and noisily. Wusha-wusha-wusha-wusha-wusha-wusha-wusha-wusha-wusha-wusha-wusha…Jesus! I didn’t have the nerve to turn around and say “would you please consider shifting gears and just make occasional quick notes like most critics do and stop scribbling during every single scene“?

It was easily as distracting as sitting next to someone compulsively texting.

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Earlier this week a few L.A.-based Hollywood columnists were politely disinvited from attending last night’s screening of Abdellatif Kechiche‘s Blue Is The Warmest Color (IFC Films/Sundance Selects, 10.25), the must-see lesbian romantic drama that won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or last May. All publicists and marketers want online conversations to be sparked by the heat and excitement of Telluride or Toronto, but if I were running Sundance Selects I would let these guys see Blue before things begin on 8.28, and not just because it’s difficult to wedge a three-hour film into a compressed Toronto screening schedule. It’s vitally important to see Blue now, I feel, because of Adele Exarchopoulos‘s incandescent, unstoppable lead performance as the teenaged lover of supporting costar Lea Seydoux. Because AE will absolutely be one of the five Best Actress Oscar contenders this year. We’re talking an almost-done deal — really.

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Kick-Ass 2 has opened with a thud. (Deadline is projecting $15.6 million for the weekend.) Can we at least get a little respect for Jim Carrey‘s performance as Colonel Stars and Stripes? Marshall Fine says it’s “the only performance in the film that has any weight to it, and seems to be in a different universe altogether. Carrey does something with the thrust of his jaw that both defines the character and makes him almost unrecognizable behind even a small bandit mask. It’s actually an interesting characterization, but of a character given too little time to…make an impression.”

For his performance as Jett Rink in Giant (’56), James Dean dug himself into a very deep mannerist hole. His Texas cracker accent was thicker than bean dip, and made his voice sound even more nasally and high-pitched than usual. And it was totally at war with consonants. The idea, apparently, was to un-enunciate as much as possible, speaking almost entirely with mood sounds and surly slurrings. If he’d gone all the way Dean would have avoided consonants altogether. Try to say “mah well came in, Bick” without the first letter in each word. I just did and it sounds something like “ahh ehhl ‘ame ihn, Ick.” That‘s what Dean was shooting for.**

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I’ve stated more than once my admiration for Destin Daniel Cretton‘s Short Term 12 (Cinedigm, 8.23), which currently has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score. And I like Cretton personally — definitely a gifted, friendly, thoughtful guy. But three-word names rub me the wrong way. I’m sorry but they sound a bit pompous. Francis Coppola said years ago that he dropped his middle “Ford” name for this reason. I can never remember if it’s Destin Daniel Cretton or Daniel Destin Cretton or Detton Creston Daniel. Or Daniel in the Lion’s Den. Why not add “Dustin” to the mix and become Destin Dustin Daniel Cretton III, Esquire?

Why haven’t I posted a Kick-Ass 2 review? One reason is that I wasn’t invited to see it. Which isn’t surprising. Publicists know that I loathe and despise this kind of film (especially sequels) and that there’s no upside. Another reason is that I didn’t ask to see it regardless. Sometimes I want to see a movie that I know I’ll probably hate because it’s “important” to see (like Man of Steel), but I decided a long time ago that Kick-Ass 2 was a low-grade rehash and not worth the effort. Presumably HE readers back east have seen it by now so please have at it.

All ahead-of-the-curve, festival-attending journalists in New York and Los Angeles want to be up to speed on Abdellatif Kechiche‘s Blue Is The Warmest Color before the rumpus starts. Sooner rather than later, I mean. The 2013 Palme d’Or winner, which I’ve been calling “the Cannes lesbian movie” or just “the lesbians,” is playing Toronto and is also expected at Telluride. But everyone wants to bag it early because it’s the hot thing to see (especially for those who missed it last May) and because nobody wants to wedge a three-hour film into a hectic film festival schedule — too much of a time chunk, eats into other screenings. There are at least three lesbian screenings happening this month in Los Angeles, and I’m naturally assuming that New York journos are being offered the same access. If I was working for Sundance Selects I’d be delighted by all this attention.

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Sony Pictures Classics will distribute Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher, a dark true-life murder tale staring Channing Tatum, Steve Carell and Mark Ruffalo. The Annapurna producer will open on 12.20. SPC distributed Miller’s Capote, which was nominated for Best Picture and for which Phillip Seymour Hoffman (a.k.a. “Philly”) won a Best Actor Oscar. Miller’s Moneyball was also nominated for Best Picture, and if you ask me it should have won.

In their latest (8.1) newsletter, the board of the Elitist Fraternity of Film Dweebs reminded readers that (and I quote) “under no circumstance will any EFFD members be permitted to say anything that doesn’t enthusiastically praise Criterion’s Bluray of John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds.” I understand the ruling, but I bought this Bluray at Amoeba last night and then drove home and watched it. And watched it. And watched it. And I’m telling you it’s a black drag to sit through. A dark, creepy, chilly-hearted downer from start to finish. Mainly about malevolence and threats and intimidation and dread. “Interesting,” yes, because of the creepy Orwellian (or do I mean Burroughsian?) tone and James Wong Howe‘s nightmarish black-and-white cinematography. But it’s mostly punishing.

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I have a system in discussing possible Telluride Film Festival selections with the publicists who represent then. A publicist can’t spill the beans so you have to be tricky about it. Here’s how I put it to a publicist friend the other day: “I know you can’t say anything but I think your film is going to Telluride. Do me a favor — if it’s not going to Telluride, please write me and ask if I have any extra tickets to the next Dodger game. Okay? I’ll repeat — if it’s NOT going to Telluride, please write me and ask if I have any extra tickets to the next Dodger game. Which means that if your film is going to Telluride, you won’t email me about Dodger tickets. Okay? Fair?”

I was thinking about that scene in All The President’s Men when Dustin Hoffman‘s Carl Bernstein tells a source to hang up the phone by the count of ten if a story about H.R. Haldeman is wrong. Hoffman counts to ten and the source doesn’t hang up. Before signing off the source says, “Okay…are we straight, man?” And then it turns out he was some kind of moron and didn’t understand what Bernstein was saying.