Day: December 12, 2013

My “smart movie-guy friend” just told me that the “phantom-like Oscar oddsmaker” who was predicting only a week ago that Saving Mr. Banks looked like the most likely Best Picture winner…this same guy spoke today to my movie pal and reversed himself: “Banks is done,” he allegedly said. “Over. Won’t win. Not nominated for SAG or Golden Globes. Stick a fork in it.”

A friend has seen Wes Anderson‘s Grand Budapest Hotel, which will debut at the 2014 Berlinale before opening stateside on 3.7 via Fox Searchlight. “Very Wessy from start to finish, but still very special, very touching and with a little more oomph than standard Anderson,” he begins. “Ralph Fiennes gives it a gravitas that Anderson’s movies have sometimes lacked. I’d rate it way above Moonrise Kingdom, which I quite liked also.

“Grand Budapest Hotel has all the playfulness and detached air that you’d expect from Anderson,” he explains, “but at the same time I felt he’s pushing himself a little more, perhaps not out of his comfort zone but at least he’s stretching within his realm.

“The specter of 1930s fascism looms over the whole affair. Most of the film plays in a fantasy Europe of the early 30’s, but Anderson addresses fascism and impending war without making a film about it. (The ‘S.S.’ is called ‘Z.Z.’ as in ‘zig-zag organization’, for example.) The film is a flashback within a flashback within a flashback — a strategy which gives Anderson the opportunity to show how the once grand hotel has gone to the dogs under communism over time.

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The Golden Globes and SAG-influenced shifting of favorites in the latest Gurus of Gold posting is nothing short of pathetic. David Poland himself tweeted that he is “stunned, though not really surprised, how much weight my esteemed fellow Gurus give SAG and GG noms in guessing Oscar noms.”

It’s a given, I think, that the mushy-minded Academy won’t support anything nervy or ballsy or envelope-pushy, like American Hustle, or some piece of jolting social criticism like 12 Years A Slave or The Wolf of Wall Street. It’ll be Banks or Gravity or…you tell me. I hate myself for having just written that. I just gave a slight assist to the bad guys!

I wrote the following on 8.24.11: “Every year I ask what could be more worthless or contemptible in the eyes of any fim lover with the slightest trickle of blood in his or her veins than a group of online journos saying, ‘What we might personally think or feel about the year’s finest films is not our charge. We are here to read and evaluate the feelings and judgments of that crowd of people standing around in that other room…see them? Those older, nice-looking, well-dressed ones standing around and sipping wine and munching on tomato-and mozzarella bruschetta? Watching them is what we do. We sniff around, sense the mood, follow their lead, and totally pivot on their every word or derisive snort or burst of applause at Academy screenings.’

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Frank Sinatra‘s Upper East Side Manhattan penthouse is for sale. The only aesthetically tolerable area in the entire crib is the upstairs loft bedroom with the dark gray rug. Otherwise the place is a nightmare. Those floors with the godawful copper-colored squares, the Invaders From Mars metal artwork on the wall near the kitchen, the rosey tones in the other bedroom, the general atmosphere of ’60s kitsch. The only reason I paid attention is that I’ve despised and refused to use the term “horny” my whole life, but last night I fell in love with the term “horny as Frank Sinatra.” It was used in Billy Bob Thornton‘s Jayne Mansfield’s Car.

“Everyone knows that sex sells,” writes Indiewire‘s Boyd von Hoeij in a 12.12 post. “Lars von Trier‘s latest film, Nymphomaniac, has a lot of it. So one might assume its box-office potential is pretty big. But it might not be that cut and dried. With von Trier, it never is.” Von Hoeij notes that Nymphomaniac “screened for the press for the first time last week in Copenhagen. BVH presumably attended this screening, and yet he waits until Thursday of the following week (i.e., today) to post a vaguely worded reaction? Did he have the flu?

“For starters, there’s sex on film and then there’s explicit sex on film — more often called porn,” he writes. “Except this is auteur porn and though there’s a lot of sex, there’s even more time dedicated to character, story and countless intellectual digressions. Not a lot of curious horndogs looking to get off on their favorite stars having explicit sex (via body doubles) are likely to sit through an arthouse film that’s at least double a regular feature’s length. Or are they?

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In a discussion of Aisa Harris‘s 12.10 Slate piece suggesting that Santa Claus should be mythologized as a multi-colored dude (or perhaos as a team of dudes of different ethnic origins), Fox News’ Megan Kelly has stated that Santa Claus is flat-out white, which, being of Nordic or Germanic origin, is what he was to begin with. The shocker comes when Kelly says Yehsua of Nazareth was “white.” Oh, really? Judeans were most likely olive-skinned with brown eyes and dark brown or black hair, no? He sure as hell didn’t look like Willem Dafoe or Jeffrey Hunter or that guy who played him in Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s The Gospel According to St. Matthew, I can tell you that.

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This morning’s Golden Globe nominations have at least righted the Robert Redford boat — the All Is Lost star was snubbed yesterday morning by the lightweight SAGgies but nominated by the HFPA for Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama. Salutes also in this category for Mandela‘s Idris Elba, 12 Years A Slave‘s Chiwetel Ejiofor, Captain Phillips‘ Tom Hanks and Dallas Buyer’s Club‘s Matthew McConaughey.

But the HFPA blew it big-time by not nominating The Wolf of Wall Street‘s Jonah Hill for Best Supporting Actor. How could they not? Seems inconceivable. The specific cause was apparently…what, Bradley Cooper‘s supporting nomination for his American Hustle performance, which is totally juiced and on-target? That or the steady persistence of Rush‘s Daniel Bruhl, who was also nominated yesterday morning by SAG? No HE beef with Captain Phillips‘ Barkhad Abdi, 12 years A Slave‘s Michael Fassbender or the well-positioned Jared Leto of Dallas Buyer’s Club.

And at least they nominated Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street, in…okay, the Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy category. For once I’m half-agreeing with an HFPA/Golden Globe classification in this realm. The other Musical/Comedy nominees are American Hustle (okay…well, kinda), Her (ridiculous — almost nothing comedic about this essentially sad tale of longing and vulnerability), Inside Llewyn Davis (agreed) and Nebraska (stupid call — this is a film that generally puts out ennui, zombie TV-watching, old-guy snarl, economic gloom and — yes! — beer-slurping in taverns).

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It’s 7:58 am. I overslept. Didn’t go down until 2 am. Okay, so I’ll be the last to file a response to the Golden Globes nominations…big deal. Partly the fault of lingering Asian jet lag, and partly the upstairs gay guy’s fault. He was doing his cackling on the phone routine around midnight, loudly, which forced me to crash on the couch, etc. Message from HE’s New York-based ad guy: “Jesus, no Globes coverage yet?”

Some of us have been saying all along that there’s something vaguely loathsome about the Disney-kowtowing, reality-denying aspects of Saving Mr. Banks. Mark Harris said “it’s a nice Disney-corporate-retreat film about how studios always know best.” A few days ago I said “it’s Hollywood factory-friendly…the sugarcoat syndrome wins out in the end and the artist goes home in frustration and the movie is a hit.” And now L.A. Weekly critic Amy Nicholson has hit these points double-hard and stood up for the real P.L. Travers.

Leonardo DiCaprio‘s extreme performance as Jordan Belfort in Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street includes a little fourth-wall breaking — i.e., looking into the camera end and explaining directly how amazing or thrilling this or that episode felt like. That got me thinking about other fourth-wall smashthroughs, and then I remembered this Indiewire/Press Play recap. At the 6:24 mark it offers a little clip from Tony Richardson‘s Tom Jones (’63). If I’m not mistaken Jones was one of the first mainstream films to use fourth-wall breaking as a stylistic signature, going there at least five or six times. I’m presuming that a few studio-era films (’30 through the ’50s) dabbled with this device but I can’t think of any right now.

Breaking the 4th Wall Movie Supercut from Leigh Singer on Vimeo.