Day: September 1, 2014

With Focus World having acquired David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars for an early 2015 release , there is speculation that they may not want to spring for a Julianne Moore Best Actress campaign, which of course would require an L.A. and N.Y. platform release in late December plus the usual ad coin commitment. The talk stems from Variety‘s Ramin Setoodeh and Brent Lang having written that Moore “could be sitting out awards season.” If so, odd. Moore is madly, blazingly “on” as a fading film star. She hits exactly the right notes in a film that itself is quite a careful dance — dryly farcical, creepy hah-hah, deadpannish. Easily an award-calibre performance. Here’s my 5.18 quickie Cannes review.

Maps to the Stars will open in “early” 2015, Variety says, which of course means late January, February or early March. The only reason Focus wouldn’t give Maps to the Stars a qualifying run in support of Moore…well, there is no logical reason. They have to go there. If they don’t they’ll be cultivating a bad rep with talent — a distributor that doesn’t step up to the plate during award season.

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The sound completely sucks (forget it you’re not listening with earphones) on this video of Anne Thompson‘s Telluride chat with Birdman director/cowriter Alejandro “G.” (i.e., no more Gonzalez) Inarritu. But the printed q & a is pretty good. Read that at least.

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During last Thursday’s drive from Durango Airport to Telluride, I stopped at Zuma Natural Foods in Mancos. I ordered a delicious cappucino from storekeeper Mo (a.k.a. Maureen) while tapping out a couple of emails. And then I left. It wasn’t until this morning that I remembered I’d forgotten to pay for the cappucino. So today I decided to hit Zuma on the way back to Durango and square myself. Except that took longer than I figured, and by the time I’d gotten Mo’s attention and asked what I owe (she insisted the cappucino was free) I’d been there a little over ten and closer to twelve minutes. I peeled out of the lot and drove 80 mph trying to make my 3:20 pm US Air flight from Durango, but I missed it by — you guessed it — about ten minutes. No good deed. So I drove back to Mancos, a cool little town that’s a bit more appealing than Durango, which is too industrial and Starbucky. I’m now chilling in room 26 at the Mesa Verde Motel. My rescheduled flight leaves at 6:30 am. I have to get up at 4:15 am to be at Durango Airport by 5:45 am.

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“Popularity is the slutty cousin of prestige.” Hang onto that. It’s 12:10 pm, my plane to Los Angeles leaves from Durango at 3:30 pm and that’s two hours from here. Later.

Alan Spencer‘s recently-posted Trailers From Hell tribute to Peter Sellers and his performance in Hal Ashby‘s Being There (’79) is well deserved. But there’s a reason I haven’t re-watched Being There over the last 30-plus years, and that’s because it’s basically one very dry joke played over and over and over. But I’ve re-watched Sellers’ Claire Quilty performance in Stanley Kubrick‘s Lolita (’62) a good ten times, at least. Quilty is a throughly perverse and quite venal character, but it’s all but impossible not to laugh with him in every scene. I love the fact that Sellers used Kubrick’s Bronx-accented voice to play Qulity, and the fact that much of his performance is done off the cuff.

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I got up early Sunday morning and sat down and chatted a bit at the kitchen table, and then I slowly tapped out a longish, decently-phrased review of Birdman. I didn’t feel like writing about anything else because nothing else had really knocked me out except for The Imitation Game, but that operates on a much more conventional (and yet wholly satisfying) level than Birdman. I finally finished and was ready for my screenings around 1:30 pm. But my energy was really flat. The switch that was on during my Thursday travels and Friday and Saturday screenings, filings and schmoozings was suddenly sitting in neutral, and I couldn’t get going again. I went through the motions like a zombie. On top of which stiff winds were blowing and I hate having to grim up when wind assaults my face and blows my hair all over the place.

I’m sorry but I was just feeling pissy about everything, although I repressed that for the sake of social serenity and harmony with the people I ran into. But I strangely wanted to escape from Telluride and all this sparkling mountain air. I wanted to be on the streets of Manhattan or Toronto or Los Angeles…odd.

I saw Ramin Bahrani‘s 99 Homes, a passable if occasionally tedious drama about the oppression and exploitation of middle-class people who’ve lost their homes. I have plenty of sympathy for everyone who took it in the neck when the economy collapsed in late ’08 but I felt next to nothing for the folks in this film. Never borrow big-time to live in a place you really can’t afford and which is much bigger and splurgier than you really need. Too many Americans don’t get the value of spartan, spiritually-oriented lifestyles. They want indulged, abundant, pig-out diets and lives. They want their big pots of food and spending binges at the mall and big SUVs and all the rest of it.

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I didn’t see all Xavier Dolan‘s Mommy at the Cannes Film Festival (roughly 75 minutes worth) but enough to understand two things. One, it’s a highly original, presumably personal dysfunctional-family-combat movie, primarily distinguished by Anne Dorval‘s performance as the feisty titular character, a woman of unflagging tenacity who’s burdened with a hyper-manic teenage son from hell (Antoine-Olivier Pilon). And two, I had to see the whole thing (114 minutes) sooner or later, even though I didn’t particularly look forward to suffering through Pilon’s bullshit a second time.

Well, I saw all of Mommy last night in Telluride, and I have to be honest and say I think less of the film now. I’m just going to cut to the chase and post a conversation that transpired this morning between myself and a female Mommy admirer.

Me: “Not that great in the end, too long, story doesn’t build to any kind of finality or profound thematic resolution except for the cliche about how we all gave to keep going and have hope blah blah. Mom has hope while the kid makes a break for it inside a mental hospital?”

Her: “It’s not your thing. Still a great flick.”

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