Day: December 13, 2013

I suspect that Saving Mr. Banks might have trouble landing an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. Maybe. It certainly can’t win at this stage. But Hollywood Reporter award-season analyst Scott Feinberg believes it might still be a contender for a nomination. Maybe he’s right. A seasoned industry guy told me this afternoon that “it might squeak in.” But here’s what I wrote Feinberg earlier today:

“Your post boils down to a line that says ‘since 2001, 17 of the 240 acting Oscar nominees — or 7 percent — received neither a SAG nor Globe nom en route to the Big Show.’ In other words, since ’01 less than 10% of Oscar nominees weren’t first nominated by SAG or HFPA. But more more than 90% of the time, people who weren’t nominated by SAG or HFOA didn’t land an Oscar nomination. Correct?

“Are you going to sit there and tell me that Saving Mr. Banks is doing fine as a Best Picture nominee? It’s been a bit of a weak sister all along, and after the shut-out by SAG and HFPA plus that Amy Nicholson slam piece in the L.A. Weekly, I think it’s dead. Thompson and Hanks are fine as acting contenders, but the movie is finished. It might barely earn a nomination but…

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Nobody believes the official explanation of the death of publicist Ronni Chasen…nobody. The Beverly Hills fuzz decided that a no-account African-American felon named Harold Martin Smith had pedalled seven miles on a bicycle, all the way from a flophouse on the 5600 block of Santa Monica Blvd. to the corner of Sunset Blvd, and Whittier Drive in Beverly Hills, where he allegedly shot Chasen, who was driving her black Mercedes, with four bullets. On a bicycle? As part of an alleged robbery attempt? What idiot believes he could successfully rob a person who’s locked in a car while he’s sitting on or pedalling a bicycle?

(l.) The late Ronni Chasen; (r.) the late Harold Martin Smith.

Deadline‘s Anita Busch has written an intelligent analysis of the Chasen investigation in lieu of a just-released LA County Coroner’s report. It says that a police officer reported that an “unknown vehicle” had pulled up alongside Chasen’s car [before] “someone fired approximately four gunshots into her vehicle.” The eyebrow-raiser is that the “unknown vehicle” may refer to something other than Smith’s bicycle.

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It took me over an hour to fill out the ballot for the 19th Annual Critics Choice Awards. The tallies (noms or winners, I forget which) will be announced next Monday. The pain-in-the-ass minor categories (Best Female Action Star, etc.) are what caused all the trouble. I don’t care if my picks are consistent with previously posted preferences — I go with my moods. You don’t get bonus points for voting for the favorites, although there are some people who actually vote that way.

BEST PICTURE: 1. Wolf of Wall Street; 2. 12 Years A Slave; 3. Inside Llewyn Davis; 4. Her; 5. American Hustle.

BEST ACTOR: 1. Robert Redford, All Is Lost; 2. Joaquin Phoenix, Her; 3. Leonardo DiCaprio, Wolf of Wall Street.

BEST ACTRESS: 1. Adele Exarchopoulos, Blue Is The Warmest Color; 2. Julie Delpy, Before Midnight; 3. Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: 1. Jonah Hill, Wolf of Wall Street; 2. Jared Leto, Dallas Buyer’s Club; 3. Josh Brolin, Labor Day.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: 1. Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years A Slave; 2. Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle; 3. Jennifer Garner, Dallas Buyer’s Club.

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I saw Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street (Paramount, 12.25) for the second time last night, and it felt just as wild and manic as it did the first time. (And without an ounce of fat — it’s very tightly constructed.) And yet it’s a highly moral film…mostly. Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill and all the rest are never really “in the room” with these depraved Stratton Oakmont brokers. They’re obviously juiced with the spirit of play-acting and pumping the film up and revving their engines, but each and every scene has an invisible subtitle that says “do you see get what kind of sick diseased fucks these guys were?…do you understand that Jordan Belfort‘s exploits redefined the term ‘asshole’ for all time?”

Why, then, did I say that Wolf is “mostly” moral? Because there’s a subcurrent that revels in the bacchanalian exploits of Belfort and his homies. It broadly satirizes Roman-orgy behavior while winking at it. (Or half-winking.) Unlike the Queens-residing goombahs in Goodfellas, whom he obviously feels a mixed affection for, Scorsese clearly doesn’t like or relate to the Stratton Oakmont guys. But the 71 year-old director also knows first-hand how enjoyable drug-abuse can be for cocky Type-A personalities in groups, and he conveys this in spades.

Wolf is clearly “personal” for Scorsese. Like everyone else who came of age in the ’60s and ’70s, he is believed to have “indulged” to some extent. (Whatever the truth of it, 1977’s New York, New York has long been regarded as a huge cocaine movie.) One presumes that Scorsese is living a sensible and relatively healthy life these days, but boy, does he remember!

And it hit me last night that The Wolf of Wall Street is going to be enjoyed by audiences as a rollicking memory-lane drug party. Anyone who lived any kind of Caligula-type life in their late teens and 20s is going to get off on it. Because as deplorable and outrageous as the film’s party behavior seems, it’s also oddly infectious.

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Earlier this year I marathoned through all 13 episodes of Season 1 of House of Cards. I intend to do the same with Season 2 when House of Cards re-launches on 2.14.14.