Month: October 2013

I never think about what big-name actors and filmmakers are worth. I know most of them are loaded but I don’t think about it. I’ll read an occasional Forbes article about who’s the richest or highest paid, but you know me — I try to focus on the purely creative and spiritual, what’s going on inside. At least to the extent that external aesthetic choices are often metaphors for “internal affairs,” so to speak. (Even during my battle with the now-legendary Hispanic Party Elephant, the guy who lived upstairs from my place in North Bergen in ’08 and ’09, it was essentially about sensitivity and spiritualism or rather the lack of as that guy was toxic — he was fucking nowhere.) I know that if I sense that a woman I’ve met is inordinately impressed by financial splendor, I immediately write her off. The important thing is to do what you love and then live with the rewards of that, whatever they may be. Which is what I’m doing, and I’m reasonably happy as a result. Especially since ’06 or thereabouts.

But I have to say there’s something that gets in the way of a film-watching experience when you’ve just read about the salaries and net worth of the actors and filmmakers involved. I’m not saying that knowing this or that actor has an ample income is alienating or off-putting. To me, at least. It’s entirely okay for actors to live well and drive nice cars. But when you’re watching a film about middle-class characters who have jobs and bills to pay and are struggling to some extent without investments or trust funds to lean on, you have to imagine or presume that the actors are drawing from some kind of real-deal, hard-knocks, rough-and-tumble experience to make their performances seem real. Even if the story they’re enacting has little directly to do with money, you still want to imagine that they understand what it’s like to live the life that you and your friends and your parents live. Obviously the vast majority of actors and directors and screenwriters manage to convey that. But knowing that they’re worth $20 or $40 million or $75 million…sorry, but that knowledge becomes part of the absorption process. It colors things a bit.

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In one of his Oscar-season analysis pieces, Variety‘s Tim Gray wonders if 60-something Oscar voters will relate to the futuristic love story in Spike Jonze‘s Her. Pointing to “rumors” about Academy voters not being able to follow or sustain interest in The Social Network because “they didn’t know what Facebook was,” Gray (who doesn’t precisely state that he’s seen Jonze’s film, but let’s assume he has) seems to be accepting a working hypothesis that Her won’t play with anyone who isn’t savvy with computers or smart phones.

There’s nothing to that assessment. All you have to do is accept that the lead protagonist, a lonely writer played by Joaquin Phoenix, could fall in love with an extremely bright and emotionally responsive female voice and personality (played by Scarlett Johansson), especially with Phoenix feeling melancholy over a recent divorce. There’s nothing more to it than that.

Gray then says that “Warner Bros.’ big assignment is to get Academy members to see it, since voters have limited time and don’t always embrace high-concept films.” Except Her isn’t a high concept film about technology or…you know, anything that could be considered challenging or exotic in a conceptual sense. Her is a very delicate and straightforward film about love, longing and intimacy. That’s it — that’s all it is. The tech element is relatively minimal.

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My second viewing of Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave (Fox Searchlight, 10.18) will happen tomorrow night at the DGA. Brilliant as it is, I was asking myself after my first viewing in Telluride whether I’d want to see it twice. It’s not an easy sit, but the discipline and directness that informs every frame is undeniable. My first thought was “this is a masterpiece.” One reason I’m going is to gauge audience reactions during the after-party. Screenwriter John Ridley (also the director-writer of All Is By My Side, the Jimi Hendrix biopic) spoke to HuffPost Live’s Ricky Camilleri a few days ago. Ridley, you can sense immediately, is quite the diplomat.

Earlier today Variety‘s Steven Gaydos reported about a “surprise” Skype interview between Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the subject of Bill Condon‘s The Fifth Estate (10.18), and roughly 50 Hollywood Foreign Press Association members. Here’s the HPFA web page that recites the basics. But where’s the YouTube capturing? Where’s the transcript? Where’s the audio mp3 file? Where’s the actual q & a content of what was said between HFPA journalists and Assange? Here,, by the way, is an account of sternly-worded letters exchanged between Assange and Fifth Estate star Benedict Cumberbatch.

Burton and Taylor, the 90-minute BBC America drama that premiered last summer in England and will air on Wednesday, 10.16, played last night at the Hamptons Film Festival. Helena Bonham Carter, who plays Elizabeth Taylor on the downslide, made an appearance at the screening. The film is basically about (a) the volatile, twice-married-and-divorced couple (Taylor, Richard Burton) costarring in a stage presentation of Noel Coward‘s Private Lives in ’83 — a near-debacle and (b) the ravages of booze upon Taylor, if only by implication. Nobody is trashing the film. It seems to have played well enough. A friend admired Dominic West‘s performance as Burton. Definitely better than Lindsay Lohan‘s Liz and Dick, everyone is saying.

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Spike Jonze‘s Her (Warner Bros., 12.18) is one of the most delicate, emotionally supple, fully-in-touch-with-the-zeitgeist movies about love, longing and vulnerability that I’ve ever seen. Some will claim it’s the best film of Jonze’s career, although others will argue that Adaptation and Being John Malkovich are still the champs. The problem is that it doesn’t quite pay off at the end of the third act. Almost but not quite. But the first 90% to 95% is a mature, profound, probing, open-hearted exploration of all the standard phases of a love affair, including the always difficult transition when lovers get past the glorious Phase One and into the complicated who-are-we?, where-is-this-going? stuff. Except — this is significant — the affair involves only one flesh-and-blood person.

Her is about a nice, slightly dweeby, sensitive writer named Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), hurting from a recent divorce, who falls in love with (no joke) a highly brilliant operating system — OS1. A just-released, heuristically programmed, extra-intelligent software with a female voice and a name (Samantha) and a striking ability to emotionally respond and adapt and dig in. A “woman” who’s extremely turned on, who’s hungry to feel and learn and explore and grow.

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I finally took a look at Sony Home Video’s long-delayed From Here To Eternity Bluray about two weeks ago, and I was so taken I watched it once more on my new 60″ Samsung a couple of days ago. This is one of the best-looking “Bluray bumps” of a classic film I’ve ever seen or owned. I’ve been watching this film since I was 12 and it’s never looked this good — rich blacks, magnificent detail, vivid but celluloid-like. That extra-dynamic, super-silvery Ansel Adams-in-Hawaii quality. All classic film fans want is for a Bluray to look significantly better than the DVD version, and this really makes the grade in that resepct.

Sony’s Grover Crisp remastered this 1953 Best Picture winner sometime in early to mid 2009 so it took Sony…what, three and a half to four years to release it? My first “where’s the Bluray?” piece ran in November 2009. I’ve run three or four follow-ups since.

Today I’m going to temporarily ignore Hollywood Elsewhere’s prohibition against discussing or even acknowledging Focus Features’ upcoming adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey. That’s because an official explanation about why Charlie Hunnam has decided against playing kinky multimillionaire Christian Grey sounds like bunk. A joint statement by Universal and Focus says that “the filmmakers of Fifty Shades of Grey and Charlie Hunnam have agreed to find another male lead given Hunnam’s immersive TV schedule [on FX’s Sons of Anarchy] which is not allowing him time to adequately prepare for the role of Christian Grey.” Hunnam wouldn’t have been cast unless the scheduling had been worked out in advance. For those who care, the truth will surface eventually. If I had to guess I’d say it has something do with former Focus honcho James Schamus being replaced by Peter Schlessel…maybe. Grey was slated to begin shooting in early November for release on 8.1.14. Not likely.

Yesterday I watched Fox Home Video’s Bluray of Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s A Letter To Three Wives (’49), which I first saw…oh, sometime in my teens. Even in that early stage of aesthetic development I remember admiring the brilliant writing and especially the way it pays off.

Nominally it’s a woman’s drama about whose husband (Jeanne Crain‘s, Linda Darnell‘s or Ann Southern‘s) has run away with sophisticated socialite Addie Ross, who narrates the film from time to time (the voice belongs to Celeste Holm) but is never seen. But that’s just the story or the clothesline upon which Wives hangs its real agenda. For this is primarily an examination of social mores, values and ethics among middle-class marrieds of late 1940s America.

Over and over the film reminds you how long ago this was. Southern is fairly liberated in the sense that she’s the main breadwinner in her household; her husband, played by Kirk Douglas, is a more-or-less penniless schoolteacher. One of the film’s quaint highlights is Douglas’s cocktail party rant against the dishonest and vulgar hucksterism of commercial radio. This was a valid point, I’m sure, from Mankiewicz’s perspective 60-plus years ago, but if Joe could see the world now…

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Grantland award-season columnist Mark Harris, who seems to file every three weeks or so, has embraced the popular view that Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity is a Best Picture lock as well as the admittedly popular but curious view that Sandra Bullock is all but guaranteed a Best Actress nomination. I accept the latter scenario but can’t understand what everyone is so excited about. Unless everyone is secretly embracing the Sasha Stone view that it’s a very significant thing for a 49 year-old actress to carry a huge film like Gravity and lend a certain emotional quality and obviously contribute to its success, and that a vote for Bullock is a vote for better, stronger roles for 45-and-older women, which I agree with. I just don’t get what’s so great about her performance. Because all I get from it are needles.

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Eccentric and intemperate as this sounds, I’m going to London for three days next weekend in order to catch a BFI London Film Festival debut on Sunday, 10.20 of John Lee Hancock‘s Saving Mr. Banks — presumed to be a major factor in the awards race (certainly in terms of performances). This will be the first time it’ll be shown to critics. Two and a half weeks later it’ll open L.A.’s AFI Film Festival on 11.7 and then open commercially on 12.13, but it’ll be fair game eight days from now. Disney (which is very high on the film) will be screening it next week for select Los Angeles elites (but not critics). I get their strategy. They want the presumably positive reviews and the buzz to start with the AFI debut, and that’s fine. I haven’t been to London for a few years…what the hell. I’ve been in the tank for Kelly Marcel‘s screenplay for months, and I totally respect Hancock for his special touch. I even liked The Alamo.