Month: December 2013

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.

Jason Bateman‘s Bad Words is “an ascerbic spelling-bee comedy aimed at the diminishing ranks of non-moronic moviegoers. It’s a kind of Rushmore-meets-Bad Santa piece about a pissed-off, close-cropped 40something guy (Bateman) who takes advantage of a loophole to compete against kids in the National Quill Spelling Bee competition, and in so doing bonds/warms up to/gets down with a reporter (Kathryn Hahn) and a 10 year-old Indian kid (Rohan Chand) as he seeks a kind of satisfaction that has nothing to do with winning the $50,000 first prize. Dry, subdued, bordering-on-perverse performances + Andrew Dodge‘s witty-ass, occasionally scatalogical screenplay resulted in much laughter. Some wondered if the film goes ‘too far,’ as one questioner inquired. Trust me, the ‘too far’ stuff is one of the main reasons the film went over so well.” — from 9.7.13 Toronto Film Festival post.

“I just got home from The Wolf of Wall Street. My jaw is still hanging open. That delayed-effect Lemmon scene deserves its own Oscar.” — from a critic friend, received this evening.

This morning Dallas Buyer’s Club was announced as one of the five films nominated for SAG’s Best Ensemble award. Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto are aces, of course, and Denis O’Hare, Dallas Roberts and Steve Zahn obviously hold their own. But I suspect that the main reason for this nomination is that SAG members wanted to nominate Jennifer Garner for Best Supporting Actress but could’t bring themselves to nudge aside Jennifer Lawrence, Lupita Nyong’o, Julia Roberts, June Squibb and Oprah Winfrey. So they gave her the next best thing on the plate. That’s my theory. If it had been my call I would have nominated Garner ahead of Roberts and Winfrey, no offense.

Jennifer Garner in Dallas Buyer’s Club.

Anyone who would actually cheer news that the forthcoming Bluray of Billy Wilder‘s Sabrina (Paramount, 9.9.54) will contain a cleavered 1.75:1 image truly has something wrong with them. People have been watching the beautifully boxy 1.37:1 version for decades. The 1.37 is also being shown on Vudu right now — get it while you can! A guy who usually knows what he’s talking about tells me the new 1.75 Sabrina will contain extra visual information on the sides…maybe. But it will definitely have the tops and bottoms sliced off.

The 1.37 version of Sabrina as currently offered on Vudu.

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I don’t like it when cops overreact to mild disturbances in toney, well-off neighborhoods. It feels pushy and obnoxious. The vibe bothers me. Three or four Sundances ago I was standing outside of Zoom, the Park City eatery, and a little surprised to see no less than three police cars (Park City or State Troopers) parked outside with their radios barking and dome-lights flashing, and three or four officers dealing with what I gathered was some kind of disturbance by a couple of rowdies. No bloody noses, no broken windows…just a couple of assholes who had misbehaved or spoken out of turn. I went up to one of the troopers and said, “You think you guys might need some backup? I mean, this looks like a serious situation here…” The cop had no sense of humor. He gave me a look that said “you want some too, buster?” No sir, I don’t. But this looks chickenshit. Disproportionate. Three cars and four troopers responding to a couple of jerkoffs. It’s theatre and I’m just giving you my review. I didn’t say this, of course.

The older Tom Cruise gets, the more noticable the bags under his eyes, the more interesting he becomes as an actor. The minimalist, back-to-basics Jack Reacher was a step in the right direction, but this…I don’t know, man. It seems classy and smart and grade-A, but almost like a cousin of Oblivion, the last big, violent, futuristic, CG-driven epic Cruise starred in. This is a solid paycheck gig for Doug Liman, whose best films are still Go, Swingers and The Bourne Identity, in that order.

Last night I saw Jason Cohen‘s Facing Fear, a gentle but penetrating short doc about the aftermath of an ’80s hate crime, at L.A.’s Museum of Tolerance. A gay homeless 14 year-old, Matthew Boger, was nearly beaten to death in West Hollywood by a gang of Nazi punks, and the guy who nearly finished him off was 17 year-old Tim Zaal. 25 years later Boger and Zaal met again, and now, incredibly, they’ve worked past the nightmares and the guilt and found forgiveness and even friendship. Facing Fear reminds that our past mistakes needn’t rule our future, and that we’re all capable of growth and transcendence. Cohen, Boger and Zaal (a guy who has really evolved in all the profound senses of the term) attended last night’s screening and sat for a q & a. Facing Fear is one of eight live-action docs that have been shortlisted for an Oscar. It seems far too affecting and humanistic not to wind up as a final nominee. And a special shout-out for the cinematography by HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko (Inequality For all, Inside Job).

Following last night’s Museum of Tolerance screening of Facing Fear (l to r.) MOT director Liebe Geft, director Jason Cohen, Matt Boger, Tim Zaal.

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