Craig Johnson‘s The Skeleton Twins is the third bang-slammer I’ve seen at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, the other two being Damien Chazelle‘s Whiplash and Lynn Shelton‘s Laggies. (If I had rushed to Saturday’s 9 pm screening of Maya Forbes‘ Infinitely Polar Bear I might have had a fourth, to go Justin Chang‘s Variety review.) Here’s Geoff Berkshire‘s Variety review of The Skeleton Twins — pretty much a rave.
Made/assembled by Lance Bangs, and sent to my inbox earlier today…even though the piece went live on YouTube yesterday.
So Matthew McConaughey has the Best Actor Oscar in the bag, and the Best Supporting Actor winner will be, of course, Jared Leto. Even people in rural China know that Cate Blanchett is a deadbolt lock for Best Actress. But at tonight’s SAG awards, a surprise. 12 Years A Slave‘s Lupita Nyong’o finally beat American Hustle‘s Jennifer Lawrence for Best Supporting Actress…yes! And American Hustle won the Best Ensemble award, meaning that it’s now it’s at least probable that David O. Russell‘s film will take the Best Picture Oscar, and that Glenn Kenny will owe me $50. Remember when $50 seemed like a moderately hefty sum?
I’ve only three films on today’s schedule, which may sound lazy but is more realistic, I feel, in terms of filing and eating and getting various stuff done. If you see four films you’re constantly running and can barely breathe — it’s awfully tough to file. (It’s difficult enough to write anything with three films to cover.) 75 minutes from now (i.e., 11:15 am) I’ll be seeing Zach Braff‘s Wish I Was Here, the “Kickstarter movie” that’s basically about Braff’s underemployed 30something actor character becoming a homeschooler. Costarring Mandy Patinkin and Kate Hudson. At 2:30 I’m catching a Library screening of Craig Johnson‘s heavily hyped The Skeleton Twins. Kristin Wiig and Bill Hader giving “astonishing dramatic performances” as an estranged brother and sister, etc. Finally there’s a 6:30 pm screening of Ira Sachs‘ Love Is Strange, a relationship drama about a couple of older gay guys (John Lithgow, Alfred Molina) facing convulsive changes after they decide to get married after being together for nearly 40 years.
“A number of people have asked me, what if you had stated your position [about] the morality [in The Wolf of Wall Street]. It’s a bad thing [that] they behave this way, not behaving just in terms of the drugs and the sex [but] the violence of the ‘confidence man,’ taking your confidence and your trust. That’s one guy here and perhaps other guys, or it could become the entire financial establishment. That’s happened many many times in history. So you take this as a microcosm, this kind of thinking is what it’s about. It’s obscene. You say, okay, fine, you go home and you feel you’ve done your duty by watching a film that has an obvious moral statement, you know it’s there, and forget about it. In the meantime, I wanted to get deeper and provoke it, provoke the audience. It came out of just frustration. Frustration and anger about this situation in 2008. Go back and there’s more and more. People get thrown out of their houses, people sleeping in the street, people killing themselves. Why? So you can have a plane ride and have sex on a plane? That is the thinking that disturbs me. Saying, what you do with your private life is up to you. But when it’s affecting people the other way and nobody goes to jail or nobody is really stopped, I don’t understand. Anyway, that’s my reason for doing it this way.” — Wolf of Wall Street director Martin Scorsese to interviewer Paul Thomas Anderson and audience during a 12.15 q & a in Century City, recorded and transcribed by Award Daily‘s Sasha Stone (whom you can hear chuckling through the video).
I wasn’t expecting that much from Lynn Shelton‘s Laggies. I was actually a bit fearful before tonight’s Eccles screening. Having more or less hated Touchy Feely, I thought she might be on a downturn. But surprise — Laggies is the best Shelton pic since Humpday (’09), and that was essentially a bromance. Laggies is a Keira Knightley movie aimed at women and couples, but I swear to God Shelton and screenwriter Andrea Siegel get it right. The only problem is that Knightley’s character lies her teeth off in almost every scene or something like 80% of the film. She doesn’t lie emotionally or behaviorally in our eyes but she’s almost constantly fibbing to…you know what? This needs a more thorough explanation and I cant tap one out in the back of a moving cab.
Centered, spiritually mature Zen types don’t go in for loud sustained hysterical giggling in cafes and restaurants. Just saying. It’s great to hear people erupt in laughter once or twice, but I always look up and make a face when people do this repeatedly. The louder and more sustained the laughter in mixed company (i.e., with me around), the more emotionally repressed and spiritually suppressed the laugher(s).
Adult World (VOD, limited theatrical on 2.14) is about a “fame-hungry, financially-strapped, would be poet” (Emma Roberts) working at a “run-down adult bookstore” because she needs the scratch. John Cusack (hey, he’s not playing a creepy psychopathic murderer!), Cloris Leachman and Evan Peters costar. HE friendo Scott Coffey (Ellie) directed. What poet who wasn’t born into money isn’t financially strapped (or holding down a day job)? And isn’t being a poet probably the least likely creative path to becoming famous? The only poet whose work I’m familiar with, frankly, is Sophie Black, but that’s because she’s an ex-girlfriend. From way back. Who was born into money.
The first screening of the day, KStew‘s Camp X-Ray, happens 45 minutes from now (12:30 pm) at Park City’s Eccles auditorium. Three more at the Eccles will follow — God’s Pocket, Laggies and Frank. Spotty, shitty or nonexistent wifi at the Eccles means fewer postings. Twitter if nothing else.
Park City’s Yarrow hotel is where a good portion of the Sundance Film Festival press screenings happen, and each and every year I’m appalled at how chilly and drafty it always is in the lobby. Even the makeshift screening room feels underheated if there’s not a full house. I wore my overcoat during last night’s half-filled showing of Dinosaur 13. I’ve hung out in several snow lodges (New England, Germany, Italy, Switzerland) and none have had lobby areas as poorly heated as the Yarrow’s. That said, the bar is warm and the restaurant is fine.
Todd Miller‘s Dinosaur 13 is an intelligent, moderately interesting downer — a story about a group of nice guy dinosaur-fossil hunters in South Dakota getting badly screwed over by the government. Basing the story largely on Peter Larson‘s “Rex Appeal: The Amazing Story of Sue, the Dinosaur That Changed Science, the Law, and My Life,” Miller tells the tale with scrupulous exactitude. The fossilized remains were discovered in August 1990 in the black hills of South Dakota by Larson’s friend, paleontologist Sue Hendrickson (the Rex fossil’s namesake), but the story is mainly about Larson and his paleontologist homies. The film is good and intriguing as far as it goes, but it plods a bit. Especially after it reaches the halfway point and becomes a story about a demimonde of government assholes making Larson’s life hell. We all know the name of that tune. Franz Kafka wrote that tune. Dinosaur 13 is a doc that Tea Party and lefty types can agree on — i.e., there’s nothing like the oppressive hell of being fucked with by the government.