Day: December 25, 2013

What are you guys doing with your Robert Redford for Best Actor campaign? A few weeks ago it was Redford’s to lose and now I don’t know. I’m not feeling the pulse.

If you ask me Redford gives a much weightier, far more poignant performance in All Is Lost than Bruce Dern does in Nebraska, but Dern has been campaigning circles around him. Not circles…figure eights! Redford has been so absent from the NY-and-LA “campaign trail”, as it were, that it’s almost as if he’s given up.

A strong performance is the bedrock of any campaign, of course, but as you guys know getting out there and delivering the right message (Dern’s campaign theme has been brilliant) and talking the talk also matters. All I know is that Redford did a flurry of interviews to coincide with the release of All Is Lost in October, and then he more or less disappeared. Maybe I’m completely off my gourd and Redford has this one in the bag. I don’t know. Maybe I’m misreading the atmosphere. But I’m not feeling snapping currents of electricity coming out of the Redford corner at this stage.

I can guess what Redford is feeling or saying to you behind closed doors. Something along the lines of “campaigning for an Oscar like Bill McKay running for U.S. Senator is demeaning.” Or “Roman Polanski won the Best Director Oscar for The Pianist without campaigning so why do I have to hustle around like Hubert Humphrey in the 1960 Wisconsin primary?” Either a performance speaks for itself and merits a nomination or it doesn’t, he’s probably telling you.

Redford probably feels that campaigning cheapens All Is Lost and his performance on some level and perhaps, in a sense, the Academy itself…except no Academy member really feels that way. Redford has always been a bit standoffish (in a good way, I mean — his movie-star coolness is based on this), perhaps a bit too proud to get down in the mud. But this instinct isn’t helping, I’m telling you.

All through last September and October I thought Redford was a near lock to win Best Actor. Now I’m wondering if he can win at all with his absence from the circuit and the image of non-participatory aloofness that he’s put out plus the herculean campaign that Dern and Paramount have put forth.

Are you guys throwing in the towel or what? This is serious shit. We all know that the Best Actor competition is brutal this year along with all the other categories. I’ve heard it said that it’s possible that Redford might not even make the cut. I don’t believe that (his “Our Man” performance is probably the best of his career) but the fact that someone even threw that out there tells you how uncertain the Best Actor thing is at this point.

On this side of the Atlantic some people actually cheer when a ’50s or ’60s-era film previously released in a 4 x 3 aspect ratio is cleavered down to a 1.75 or 1.85 aspect ratio for Bluray release. They actually applaud the removal of visual information. But the people behind last month’s British Bluray release of Terence Fisher‘s The Mummy (’59) see things differently. Read this “production information,” 1.85 Aspect Ratio Fascists, and weep: “[This is] the first-ever HD release of Hammer’s classic The Mummy, which has been unavailable on any Region 2 home entertainment format since 2004. The previously available DVD was authored at the incorrect aspect ratio of 1.77:1 and widely criticized by fans. The Region 1 edition, still available as an import, is also presented incorrectly at 1.77:1. This new release…presents the film in its original UK theatrical aspect ratio of 1.66:1 for the first time (the film has never before been released at this aspect ratio)” along with an “alternate full frame aspect ratio version — 1.37:1.” In other words, there are sane, movie-worshipping Catholics in England who also believe, under certain conditions, that “boxy is beautiful.”

“No, of course Scorsese doesn’t approve of Belfort’s actions; who would? We may wish that such behavior didn’t exist, but its existence is a central part of human nature, and there’s a reason that we can’t stop watching, just as we can’t stop watching the terrifying storm or the shark attack. Within the movie’s roiling, riotous turbulence is an Olympian detachment, a grand and cold consideration of life from a contemplative distance, as revealed in the movie’s last shot, which puts The Wolf of Wall Street squarely in the realm of the late film, with its lofty vision of ultimate things. It’s as pure and harrowing a last shot as those of John Ford’s 7 Women and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Gertrud — an image that, if by some terrible misfortune were to be Scorsese’s last, would rank among the most harshly awe-inspiring farewells of the cinema.” — from Richard Brody‘s 12.24 New Yorker review of The Wolf of Wall Street. Note: The term is self-evident but for the uninitiated Brody should have used “late film” in quotes. It means a film made by an acknowledged auteur in his/her final stage of output (70-plus).

This Macca tune is half-catchy. I wouldn’t post something cheery and lightweight like this (be honest) if it wasn’t Christmas morning with a nice soothing snow blanket covering everything in Croton-on-Hudson, where I happen to be this morning. A nice day to go a little alpha on the HE community. Sorry. I can’t do the scowly-neurotic-judgmental “performance art” thing 365-24-7.