I don’t want to make a big deal out of this, but if you’re even vaguely familiar with Scientology symbols you know that triangles are, as a colleague just put it, “a Scientology thing.” And so it seems a little weird that the just-revealed logo for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences uses a golden triangle. It looks a a tiny bit creepy, now that I’m thinking about it.
Contrary to Glenn Kenny‘s belief, The Wire‘s Esther Zuckerman hasn’t panned The Wolf of Wall Street. She calls it “a well-acted, well-directed, well-written film.” She just can’t roll with the bacchanalian debauchery that constitutes a good portion of its length. She’s ethically offended, in short, warning that Martin Scorsese‘s film “will be idolized for all the wrong reasons.” She’s entitled to her view, of course, but she’s aligning herself with the harumphs who’ve been dissing it for all the wrong reasons. “I guess, at the tender age of 23, I’m just an old fogey,” she writes within air quotes, “but Wolf left me feeling sick to my stomach, and not because the movie condemned [Jordan] Belfort‘s world, but because it seemed to love it.”
Last night Denzel Washington hosted a special screening of Lee Daniels’ The Butler at the Academy theatre. I came in late and so I missed Denzel, who showed up for photos before the film began and then ducked out. Attendees included director Lee Daniels and costars Cuba Gooding Jr., Elijah Kelly, David Oyelowo and Jesse Williams, costume designer Ruth Carter, producer Pam Williams plus six of the original Freedom Riders (Dr. William Harbor, Julia Aaron Humbles, Charles Person, Hank Thomas, Robert and Helen Singleton) along with Rev. James Lawson and Charles Allen. The moderator was Elvis Mitchell. It’s no secret that The Butler has been pushing a primal emotional button for African Americans since it opened, and last night’s comments (particularly a teary confession from Oyelowo) underlined this. Here’s my original 8.9.13 review, titled “Surprise: The Butler Isn’t half Bad.”
(l.) Butler screening host Denzel Washington, (middle) Sheila Johnson, co-founder of BET, (r.) Butler director Lee Daniels.
Butler costars David Oyelowo (who broke down while discussing the gulf between performing scenes of racial animus vs. what the original Freedom Riders went through for real), Elijah Kelly during last night’s post-screening discussion.
There was a panel discussion during today’s Wolf of Wall Street luncheon at Manhattan’s Four Seasons, during which Martin Scorsese‘s editor Thelma Schoonmaker said something a tiny bit sad: “There are wonderful things we didn’t put in [the final 179 minute cut]. But Marty doesn’t believe in [doing] Director’s Cuts so you won’t see a four-hour version.” HE friendo Bill McCuddy spoke to costars Matthew McConaughey, Jonah Hill and Margot Robbie about the admirable fact that Wolf doesn’t offer any apologetic arias. McCuddy also snapped this pic of Robbie, obviously the second image of the Australian actress appearing today.
“Who would have guessed, after a year of headlines about the N.S.A. and about the porousness of life online, that our worries on that score — not so much the political unease as a basic ontological fear that our inmost self is possibly up for grabs — would be best enshrined in a weird little romance by the man who made Being John Malkovich and Where the Wild Things Are? And it is romantic: Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) and Samantha (Scarlett Johansson) click together as twin souls, not caring that one soul is no more than a digital swarm.
New Yorker illustration by Owen Freeman.
“Sad, kooky, and daunting in equal measure, Her is the right film at the right time. It brings to full bloom what was only hinted at in the polite exchanges between the astronaut and hal, in 2001: A Space Odyssey and, toward the end, as Samantha joins forces with like minds in cyberspace, it offers a seductive, nonviolent answer to Skynet, the system in the Terminator films that attacked its mortal masters. We are easy prey, not least when we fall in love. The human heart is where the tame things are.” — from Anthony Lane‘s New Yorker review (dated 12.23).
“Like Dylan, Jagger or the Band, Leonardo DiCaprio is working himself into a sweat to seduce us — on one level because that’s just what Belfort did to his cronies and victims; on another because he wants our respect and awe, if not our love or affection,” writes Film Comment‘s Max Nelson in a Wolf of Wall Street piece.
“In this respect, the key scene is Belfort’s extended motivational speech to the office near the film’s halfway point. It’s a masterful piece of rhetoric, with DiCaprio assuming a role somewhere between a hellfire Baptist preacher and a general gearing his troops up for battle. By the end, he has his listeners standing on desks thumping their chests and chanting rhythmically, like the crowd at a rock concert or the new converts at a camp meeting.”
“When I got the material, I didn’t like the character. But by the time we got to shooting, I loved her. She’s a badass who’s making lemonade with no fucking lemons.” — Australian actress Margot Robbie, 23, speaking to Elle about her Wolf of Wall Street character, Nadine. What does that lemonade quote even mean?
Presumably Robbie understands that just being (a) hot and (b) really electric and standout-ish as Leonardo DiCaprio‘s tough, gold-digging wife isn’t enough. She needs to figure out the next thing (whatever that might be), and she has maybe 18 months to do that. Pic taken on the red carpet before last night’s Wolf premiere screening at the Ziegfeld. I’m really sorry I’m not at the WoWS luncheon now underway at the Four Seasons.
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