Month: December 2013

During our chat yesterday at the Soho Mondrian, Wolf of Wall Street costar Jonah Hill mentioned the FOMO syndrome, or fear of missing out. The term is most commonly applied to Shallow Hals who compulsively check their social media streams to see what might be happening elsewhere, etc. But I define it in as a fear of missing out on any rich, nourishing experience. Random HE FOMOs: doing the Camino trail across Spain, missing any great play on the London or New York stage, missing out on a beautiful sunrise in the Caribbean due to oversleeping, missing some hilarious joke being shared by someone two tables away from mine…I could go on all day. I guess it’s not FOMO as much as wanting to be in 100 different places at any given time. Or 100 different eras. I wish I could have spent a few days in Washington, D.C., during the Lincoln administration. Or somehow had a chance to meet Charles Dickens in London in the early 1850s, when things were going really well for him creatively. Or a chance to wander around Rome when Julius Ceasar ruled the world. Or Jerusalem during the time of Yeshua of Nazareth.

Four nights ago August: Osage County‘s Meryl Streep, Margo Martindale and Abigail Breslin dropped by for a post-screening q & a at Pete Hammond‘s KCET film series in North Hollywood. It was the final screening of the ’13 series. There’s a sameness to on-stage, post-screening interviews. You can’t step too far outside of the routine. But there’s always something refreshing and even calming about Streep’s manner of sharing. She always seems to be reaching deep inside for something semi-spontaneous. And she’s never given a rote performance, of course. August: Osage County opens in NY & LA on 12.27.

I sat down with Wolf of Wall Street costar Jonah Hill at the Soho Mondrian between 4:10 and 5:25 pm. We covered almost everything. I recorded it all. I’ll type up most of it and tap something out tomorrow. Hill’s portrayal of Donnie Azoff, partner in stock-fraud crime and quaalude comrade of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), will live forever in the annals of motion-picture bacchanalia. Which is one way of saying it’s a superb performance. Oh, and by the way: today is Jonah’s 30th birthday. Go to the 32-minute mark for Hill’s interview on the 12.19 Charlie Rose Show.

Wolf of Wall Street costar Jonah Hill — Soho Mondrian, Friday, 5:30 pm.

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I haven’t seen the majority of the nine films on the Academy’s just-announced Best Foreign Language Feature shortlist, but I know for a dead cold fact that Asghar Farhadi‘s masterful The Past, which didn’t make the cut, is a much, much better film than Thomas Vinterberg‘s The Hunt, which did make it…much.

Wong Kar Wai‘s The Grandmaster, which no one who knows anything has done cartwheels or backflips over, made the list but Haifaa Al-Mansour‘s widely praised Wadjda, the Saudi Arabian entry, didn’t? Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn must have punched the refrigerator door at least once.

Obviously a dark day for Sony Pictures Classics, the U.S. distributor of Wadjda and The Past. Life isn’t unfair — it’s infuriating.

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I landed at Kennedy around 10 pm last night. 45 minutes (!) for the bags to finally appear on the carousel. Gypsy cab into Manhattan for $60 bills, and the guy avoided the LIE (or one of the highways heading into town) to avoid paying the toll. Awoke at 9 am or 6 am L.A. time. A Jonah Hill chat is set to happen downtown around 4 pm. Nothing wrong with a little relaxation from time to time. I have to get in touch with Glenn Kenny to…actually, maybe I should hold back on paying him that $50 I bet on American Hustle winning the Best Picture Oscar. It might just make it. The Movie Godz are foursquare against Gravity winning, I can tell you that. A Best Picture winner has to have some kind of social, political or psychological undercurrent — it has to say or reflect something about who we are (or who we used to be or want to be). Gravity says absolutely nothing except that we all want to survive — big deal.

A two-minute, nine-second fragment of last night’s Charlie Rose interview with The Wolf of Wall Street director Martin Scorsese and star-producer Leonardo DiCaprio.

Results of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s George Cukor poll were posted today. While there was no runaway favorite, Holiday, Sylvia Scarlet and A Star Is Born were named most often. Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn agreed with me that Rich and Famous seems to pop through with a bit more pizazz and audacity. My fallback choice will always be Holiday.

An idea hit me this morning. The idea (and you can’t be too literal or specific-minded when you ponder this) is that the basic dynamic in this conversation is a metaphor for the back-and-forth between myself and some HE comment-threaders. I believe that I am both Lou Costello and the miserable wanderer, and HE readers are the miserable wanderer. Or something like that.

A&E executives have no choice but to hold fast regarding their decision to indefinitely suspend Duck Dynasty‘s Phil Robertson for his dumbshit anti-gay comments in a just-published GQ interview. Hinterland yahoos rallied strongly yesterday in defense of Phil and against A&E’s decision, but if the A&E guys buckle they will be regarded by history as lily-livered wimps. The bottom line, as noted by N.Y. Times reporter Bill Carter, is that “it will be a long time before any viewer even notices the suspension. The next edition of nine Duck Dynasty episodes has already been completed and the episodes will begin next month. Robertson will be prominently seen in all of them. The suspension will affect only future episodes, which have not yet been shot and will not be seen for months.”

Decent song, spirited mood, DeGeneres brings it…but why couldn’t they use live dancers? Why couldn’t they choreograph it the old-fashioned way and shoot it organically? I love it when CG doesn’t look like anything, and hate it when it does. Even if I’m wrong and it was shot live (which I seriously, seriously doubt), I still hate it. Imagine Michael Jackson‘s Thriller video with CG dancers. Imagine West Side Story with CG-ed Jets and Sharks.

“For all the considerable pain Stratton Oakmont inflicted on its investors, here is something you should remember. It doesn’t even begin to approach the kind of pain the real Wall Street can inflict. Firms like Stratton Oakmont can’t bring the financial system to the precipice. They can’t cause a global recession. They can’t cause panic in London, New York and every other financial capital. To use Stratton Oakmont to represent Wall Street doesn’t begin to get at Wall Street’s sins.” –The final graph in Joe Nocera‘s 12.22 N.Y. Times piece, “Sex and Drugs and I.P.O.’s– Martin Scorsese’s Approach in The Wolf of Wall Street.” (Nocera is a business/op-ed columnist for the Times. He also does business commentary for NPR’s Weekend Edition.)

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Artificial intelligence, etc. The airborne wifi won’t let me watch this one either. When directors of photography direct a film, some subtle but necessary ingredient always seems to be missing. Does this trailer indicate that Wally Pfister, Chris Nolan‘s dp of choice since Memento, might be the exception to the rule?